Ann walked down a hallway that stretched forever, like something out of a dream. A small girl bounced happily at her side, chattering at Ann and the little boy holding onto Ann's other hand. Her brother hummed along, focused on keeping the seamstress' gift from tumbling onto the floor. The box was too large for him to carry comfortably. The bow alone was as big as the child's head.
"Let me take that," Ann tried.
The little boy shook his head, as he had done every other time Ann had asked.
"We're almost there," his sister added. She carried a burden of her own – a grumbling porcelain doll that struggled for freedom every chance it saw. When she noticed Ann looking, the little girl tucked the doll behind her back, holding the poor thing by the foot. The doll shrieked in outrage.
"Just a little more," the girl said, face dimpled in an innocent smile. Her grip on Ann's hand tightened. If Ann took the doll, or the box, she would have to let go of one of the children. Neither was willing to be left behind.
"We should have asked A along," Ann sighed, although she doubted the man would have agreed to play the part of a pack mule, however briefly.
"He is very strong," little Sarah agreed, glancing thoughtfully back the way they had come.
"Mr. A doesn't like that room," Nick said softly.
Sarah's face scrunched guiltily. "Oh, right. I forgot." The girl brightened almost immediately, exclaiming, "There it is! Quick!" and tugged on Ann's arm, lurching the trio forward before Ann could open her mouth to ask any questions.
The reason soon became apparent. A door had appeared in the endless hallway, but it did not sit still. It flickered in and out of existence, more a fleeting shadow than anything corporal. Ann quickly took the lead. She managed to catch up to the fleeing door in a few hasty strides, grabbing onto the brass handle and wrenching it open in one decisive motion.
The door shook and filled, no longer a bare outline against the wall. Ann took in the sterile little room tucked beyond the threshold. She turned questioning eyes to her charges.
"That's the one!" Sarah confirmed happily.
So in they went. The door closed behind them, but did not disappear. Ann spared it a glance, then turned her attention to gleaming floor tiles and white walls and what looked like a screen in the stead of a window in a corner. Ann approached it warily. It was older tech then she was used to seeing, and decidedly out of place in the antique game world.
Two small beds sat pressed against the far wall. They were neatly made, the covers tucked in tightly beneath the mattresses. The frames were solid metal. The letters scratched into the headboard were decidedly out of place, the lines thin and misshapen and rusted with age.
A and K. Single letter each, cut into the metal in a shaky scrawl.
"This..." Ann began.
"Here we go!" Sarah exclaimed, purposefully loud, and set the doll down with a thump.
The doll sprang to its feet. It spent good few seconds straightening its dress and hair before stretching its short arms up in demand.
"Box," it said imperiously.
Nick handed the gift box over. The doll set the box on the ground, tottering awkwardly onto the toes of its shiny black shoes to reach the bow. It tugged at a loose end. The bow swelled before bursting apart, the box unfolding beneath it like a flower spreading its petals.
Sarah leaned into Ann, whispering an explanation, "Seamstress deliveries are very pre- parci-"
"Particular," Nick aided.
Sarah bobbed her head. "That's right. A doll has to open them for you, but the dolls are naughty and like to play tricks. You've got to catch them right when they deliver, or who knows where your things will end up."
"Mr. K missed a delivery one time. It took over a month to track down the order," Nick recalled.
Ann's brows shot up in amusement. "Where did he find it?"
"In a tree," Sarah giggled. "A great big bird had made a nest out of the box! Mr. K had to barter for it back."
Ann laughed under her breath. She was still smiling when the sour-faced doll waved her forward, pointing to the center of the very empty and very flat remains of the gift box. The elaborate bow was thoroughly unraveled. The ribbon peeked from beneath the box, like a snake staging an escape.
"Where are the clothes?" Ann asked.
The doll glared as well as it could with its stiff, painted face, and pointed to the box. "Step inside."
Ann pressed down the urge to snap her heels in a sarcastic salute. As soon as she had both feet inside the box, the doll pulled at one of the trapped ribbons. The flattened box shot up again, the walls stretching up far over Ann's head. The world went dark and cramped and Ann's mind went to the one time she had woken up in a coffin in a game and had to claw her way out from a vampire-infested tomb. She ground her teeth over a panicked shriek and vowed to chuck the vengeful little doll out of the nearest window when all was through.
There was a spark of red in the dark. Fabric fluttered over Ann's shoulders and down her arms in a wave of warmth. Strings of code glowed briefly where the clothing passed over the VR suit before disappearing.
The box burst apart in a cloud of colorful confetti. Ann squinted under the glare of the overhead lights. She looked down at herself and for a moment, all she saw was red.
"Ka-hem," the doll coughed. It had rolled out a mirror from somewhere and it now looked at Ann expectantly, its arms crossed over its chest.
Ann paid the doll no heed. Her focus was entirely on the pale mask in the mirror, decked out in sturdy leathers and armored plates. The furred collar was a nice touch.
Too bad that Ann herself was, once again, entirely absent in her own reflection.
"It looks great!" Sarah clapped in excitement.
"Almost as scary as Mr. K," Nick agreed. Apparently, that was a good thing.
Ann thanked the children, then the doll. "My gratitude to the seamstress," she added, and was answered by a dry harrumph.
The mirror shrank to the size of a coin and flipped in the air, landing safely in the doll's porcelain palm. Large glass eyes glared at the room at large until Nick thought to open the door, as the doll could not reach the doorknob. They all watched their small guest totter out in a huff.
Sarah let out a relieved sigh as soon as the door closed. The little girl threw herself onto the nearest bed, legs swinging off the edge in energetic arcs. "That was close!" she exclaimed. "Miss Ann, you really have to be careful! It's a good thing Miss Seamstress gifted you a suit, but she could have just as easily cut you down!"
"She could have?" Ann asked, bewildered.
Nick nodded heavily while his sister threw out her arms in exaggerated exasperation. "Yes! Of course she could, and she would, if you were any other player! Do you not know what this place is?"
Ann spoke carefully. "I think that you'd better tell me. In case I have misunderstood."
The children shared a look.
"We can't," Nick said.
"It'd be against the rules," Sarah added quickly, darting Ann an apologetic look. "Players aren't even supposed to be able to get here! So you – you have to figure it out on your own. But you have, haven't you?"
Had she? Ann supposed she did. A new world, at the core of the VELES universe – that was what the VELES reps had told them, going in. The source of the glitch, the cause of the corruption. But this was not a new world. This place, with its self-aware NPC inhabitants and antiquated wonders, was likely the oldest part of VELES. The very first world in an expanding constellation.
Ann's eyes went to the thin letters carved into the beds. There was a wardrobe in a corner. Ann opened a few drawers at random. In one, she found sets of shirts emblazoned with the logo of an institution and a familiar name.
Federal Home for Gifted Children
Kellan T.
"You can't tell me about this world. Can you tell me about yourselves?" Ann asked softly.
There was no movement behind her. She kept her back to the children, pretending to be riffling through the contents of the wardrobe. The monochrome clothes didn't deserve much attention.
"It should be alright," Sarah said. "What, um, what do you want to know?"
"Your names," Ann said.
There was another stretch of silence. It was Nick who spoke this time, his voice flat and very close.
"We're not them."
Ann turned around, then. She was startled to find the two children behind her. She had not heard them move. They watched Ann with large, still eyes, their faces stripped of human warmth.
A shiver of alarm went up Ann's spine. "Who?"
"Sarah and Nick Barton. That's who you're looking for, isn't it?" the little girl asked, a little meanly.
Exasperation rolled through Ann, bursting out in a disgruntled snort. She placed her hands on her hips in her best imitation of a grade teacher and glowered down at the little brats.
"Are you quite done?" she asked.
The kids blinked, startled out of their attempt at intimidation. Their confusion reanimated their features, so they no longer looked as if they'd come straight out of a horror instance. "We – but –" the little girl struggled to explain.
"I am not here for you. Although if you need my help, I would listen," Ann told them.
The children deflated. They glanced at each other, then at Ann, a little shame-faced.
"They're dead, you know," the little girl blurted out.
Ann's heart tightened. "I know." Children that young would not have survived a VR immersion of any considerable length. Ann had known of Sarah and Nick Barton's fates, and yet, it still hurt to hear.
"It was an accident," the little boy offered. "We were built in their memory, but we're not them. We're not like those things in Dead City."
It was the most Ann had ever heard him speak at once. She listened without interrupting and, when he fell silent, glanced at his sister.
"You are NPC programs, like all other avatars in this town," she said.
The little girl nodded proudly. "Level S!" she boasted. "You should see our instance – no player has beaten us yet!"
"What of Castle Lona?" Ann asked, confused. The children had certainly not been the final bosses in that copy. She wouldn't rate the Lord and Lady of Castle Lona at S-level difficulty, either.
The little girl shook her head. "Oh no, that was just a test. Mr. K updated our clearance after the glitch. He said we were supposed to help the players when we could. It was real tough at first. I'd never saved players before."
Ann hid a shiver. She was very much glad not to have faced the two little menaces in a game. "But the avatars in Dead City are different," she said.
The girl's cheer disappeared. "Yes," she said shortly.
"They're not coded properly. Just data, fragmented and without purpose," her brother added.
The picture was rapidly clearing. Ann did not at all like what she saw.
"Why bring me here, to this room?" she asked.
The children didn't answer. Against the rules, Ann remembered. The little girl did cut her eyes to the screen that faced the beds, however. Very subtle. Ann smiled under her mask
It took some finagling with the buttons and the modem – an actual, physical modem! With wires and everything! Ann would be charmed by the old tech if she wasn't feeling quite so frazzled – to get the screen to light up. There was a clunky menu and quite a lot of folders to sift through. Many were empty, or filled with corrupted files.
Ann paused on a data log labeled, Test_VL1. It was part of a larger database so messy it was sure to drive a game dev into an angry fit. Clicking into the log did not lead to blue screens or gibberish lines of code, but a video file. When the recording blinked on, Ann found herself looking into a familiar room. A young boy sat in front of the screen on the other side. His lips were moving, shaping soundless words as he worked. A keyboard flashed under his fingers.
Ann recognized the boy as Kellan. Years younger, still baby-faced and looking a little too thin. His eyes glistened with a reflection of the screen, looking a little manic.
"Test number – oh hell, who cares," the boy said. He jabbed at the keys, voice lowering to a mutter, "Sync at thirty-five percent, branch test failed, logic error detected in quadrant three point – Lie back down!"
The command was meant for the other occupant of the room. Ann could just barely make out a shape in one of the beds. She knew who it was even before a thready voice reached the mike.
"Go to sleep, K."
"In a minute. Don't get up, doc said you'd be dizzy for a while. Did you take your medicine?"
"Yeah, just did. You've got time, you know," Alexander told him.
"I know," Kellan said flatly. It sounded like an old argument between them. Still, Kellan kept his back to the camera, his attention on his sick brother.
"They won't really kick me out just because I got sick in the pod. Hughes was bluffing. You know how he's like," Alexander continued.
Kellan didn't answer. Ann read the tension in the boy's thin back and the way he gripped the chair, white-knuckled.
"So go to sleep, alright?" Alexander continued. "They've been trying to build this thing for years. You won't figure it out in one night."
Vicious green eyes cut to the screen. "Watch me," Kellan snarled.
The video cut out. Ann stared at her own distorted reflection in the screen, then at the two silent children.
"Sarah and Nick Barton were testing an instance, when the accident happened," she said.
It was not a question. Still, the children nodded, and Ann's heart wound tighter. She remembered Danny and his crew. The teens were older than Kellan and his brother appeared in the video. Certainly older than the Barton children and even so, Ann had found them too young for the kind of VR instance they were playing. Danny had let it slip that they were testing the game. Ann's eyes moved to the wardrobe, her mind on the neat little logo printed onto those gray shirts.
"Vyraj better bury them," she hissed.
If not, then she would unravel VELES for the world to see, one way or another.