was done being left in the dark. I could find my own answers without him.
I pulled the seer water from my pocket and glared at Ryo as I drank every drop. The spring water tasted crisp, like sunshine, but the aftertaste was sour, almost metallic.
Ryo’s jaw dropped. Take that, you pretty boy.
The world shifted green.
Oh no, what did I just do?
5
DAGNEY
I was dreaming. I knew it.
Symbols and letters swam past like a school of fish, before the images multiplied into a swarm with sharp teeth that nipped at me as they rushed past. My nerves ached and my toes trembled.
The flow silenced and the world brightened.
The ground beneath me disappeared and I soared over a castle. My stomach sunk at the heights. A Whirligig zoomed past me, all gears and ghostlight and flapping wings. Then an image of a gigantic girl filled the whole sky. She was about my age, lounging in a throne, holding a bloody sword thicker than her waist. The Savak queen, I guessed.
A man’s voice filled the sky, “Welcome, adventurers, to the land of traitor kings and vicious queens!” The image shifted to a battle on the ground between ghosts and machines, and then shifted again to a Whirligig’s view of an island filled with jagged mountains. “Who will win the throne in this epic RPG by the makers of Ashcraft?”
There was a flash, like static from a Whirligig. The briefest of glimpses into a dim world filled with people wearing the strangest clothes.
A man walked past dressed in plain blue linen, a shirt with a V at the neck, and simple cotton trousers. A silver necklace lounged like a snake around his neck. He removed it quickly, placed two ends in his ears, and a third he held to the chest of a woman in a bed. He placed the end on her chest and turned his ear to one side like he was listening, perhaps to her heartbeat.
My bright vision came back and the voice with it: “… is great, but so is your victory. You’ve selected the Trader class. You will aid your party by—”
Sparks and static cut through the bright picture.
I was in the dim world again. Strange machines lined the walls, each with lit mirrors, or windows open to strange worlds. A disembodied voice shook the walls.
“Dr. Garcia to the players’ hall. Dr. Garcia to the players’ hall.”
I retreated three steps back. Something cold and metal pressed against my skirts.
I turned. It was the curve of a bent bed. A young woman lay beneath blankets, silver jewels attached to the end of her eyebrows, a silver band twisting across her forehead like a wire crown. She appeared to be sleeping, but I stared at her like she was a monster reflected.
I knew my own face.
My memory was reversed, though, the freckle above my eyebrow on the other side. This odd world was a lie, or a dream, but I knew the scar on my eyebrow, and the faint bruising on my temple.
I’d lived through that bruise, and I could remember it now, flashing white when Seth had shoved me into a locker.
No.
I covered my face with my palms and this strange world silenced under a flood of symbols.
Ones and zeroes, I recognized now.
That didn’t mean anything.
“I know you were expecting a cut scene right here,” a woman spoke from a chair near the metal bed, “but I needed to send you a warning. Don’t get hurt.”
I held on to my knees. I knew that face. Nao Takagi. She had smiled at me as I sat in a chair and they’d strapped the wire crown edged with sparks to the sides of my temples. I’d watched her turn away and flip a switch.
Her face was the last memory of a different dream.
And now her expression was tormented.
I palmed my skirts.
It was a trick of the Savak, that’s all. A lie called a vision, meant only to confuse me.
“Don’t get hurt,” she repeated. “It wasn’t supposed to be very painful. But there’s a glitch in the safeties on the pain receptors.”
“What do you mean ‘a glitch’?” I asked “What’s going—”
“It’s okay. You’re okay.” Her voice cut me off. She wasn’t listening, or maybe she couldn’t hear me. “But you need to know this is the real world. These are your real bodies.” She gestured to the beds next to mine, where other teens about my age lay strapped to medical devices. “The world you know isn’t real. You’re inside a game.”