The corridor was dank, poorly ventilated and heavy with some unidentifiable smell that made me feel nauseous. Jesse walked slightly ahead of me. I waved her ponytail bounce in the dim light. Her gait was a little odd, as though she were perpetually taken by surprise by the sensation of the ground. It made her a little stiff-legged, but also gave her something of a swagger that I thought suited her.

  My breathing was shallow with nerves and disgust at the smell. Realising I was fiddling with Gabriel’s ring, it occurred to me that I hadn’t checked to see if Jesse was, in fact, Jesse. Before I could, she stopped suddenly, her arm angled back to prevent me from going any further.

  “What is it?”

  “Do you know what that smell is?”

  “It smells like some parts of the wet market, but…”

  “Wet market? Are you from Singapore or something?”

  “Hong Kong,” I said, before I could stop myself.

  “Oh, nice. I’m from New Zealand. I didn’t realise how many places the beta testers would be from. Are all your friends from Hong Kong too?”

  “I guess,” I hedged. “Are none of your friends here?”

  “Most of my friends are outdoorsy types rather than gamers. One of my cousins is a character designer for this game, so I got a beta test code. What about you?”

  Jesse was friendly. So friendly and casual that I felt bad about being suspicious of her.

  “Uh… a friend of mine works for the company.”

  “Nice. Oh right, the smell… Well, it would smell like a wet market. That’s rotting meat and blood we’re smelling.”

  She said it so casually, she might have been remarking on the weather. I flinched.

  No wonder it was so awful. I wanted to turn and run the other way.

  “You can go.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ve come across a lot of dead things. When you spend a lot of time outdoors, dead animals are a common occurrence.”

  “And dead people?”

  “Haven’t found one of them yet,” she admitted cheerfully.

  “We should wait for the others…”

  “Are any of them good at fighting?”

  I had no response for that. Another thought came to mind. “Did you meet anyone else in your tutorial?”

  “Yeah, cute little girl called Peach. Why? Are you looking for someone?”

  “… my best friend.”

  “What’s their name? I’ll look out for them.”

  “Tom… Tommy…”

  “I’ll keep an ey- There’s someone coming.”

  There was nowhere to hide in the corridor. Jesse grabbed me by the elbow and turned.

  “Wait! It’s Leah.” I twisted to look behind and recognised the figure in the distance.

  “Is that necessarily a good thing?”

  Good point.

  Still, Leah had seen us, and now sped up. We waited until she arrived, wheezing and panting.

  “Why… Why are you here? Lady, you have to run! You… who are you?”

  “Your Lady’s knight in shining armour,” Jesse replied glibly. “Why shouldn’t we be here?”

  “They’re coming back! You… This way!”

  She turned back the way she came and we trotted after her until she came to the first doorway they had seen. Hurriedly, she unlocked the door with shaking hands, the keys clinking on a brass ring.

  The room within seemed to be a kitchen of sorts. There was a large countertop, a collection of knives, and a series of barrels around the edges of the room. Leah shoved us in.

  “I have to lock the door just in case, Lady. I’ll open it again when they’re gone. You must leave as soon as they leave for the day.”

  “If you say so,” Jesse replied. She hopped lightly over a barrel, settling in the narrow space behind. “Hey, Maria, come join me. Let’s get to know each other.”

  I almost fell over. She was worse than a man trying to pick me up at a bar.

  Still, she had a point. I climbed down next to her as I heard Leah shut and lock the door. We were left in the dark, with only the sound of our breathing.

  “… Aren’t you scared?” I asked at last.

  “Scared? I guess, a little. But this is also really exciting.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “I’ve been told that. But seriously, Maria, this is such a rare situation. Who would have thought that transmigrating into a game was actually possible?”

  “How did it happen though?”

  “No idea. And that’s not really our concern right now. Survival is.”

  She actually began to hum. I wanted to punch her.

  “So what keeps you busy most days?” she asked suddenly.

  “Do you mean… what do I do for work?”

  “Sure.”

  “I work at a university. Legal advisory for students.”

  “Oh, nice! Sounds technical. I work with little kids. Outdoor activities. Camping and kayaking and such.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  That would probably explain how she managed to reach me before the others. She had to be very fit. I wondered how far away they were. Would they even be able to work out how to get in?

  We fell silent as the sound of voices began to grow outside. I waited for them to pass.

  They did not pass.

  A key turned in the lock.

  I froze.

  Jesse’s hand found mine in the darkness. “Breathe.”

  The door opened, and the small room was flooded with sound.

  “Put her on there.”

  The sound of a heavy object being dropped on the counter. Jesse’s hand gripped mine tighter.

  “Ah, half of these are blunt.”

  “We’ll sharpen them later. Use that cleaver on the legs. Pass me the filleting knife.”

  Our hands probably should have hurt, given how tightly they were gripping each other. But my head was a rushing vortex of fear and I could think of nothing but the gruesome wet crack and crunch as the knives worked.

  There was a sound of metal snapping.

  “This knife’s fucked.”

  “So get another, fool,” Robert Fox’s voice responded coldly. “Someone get that ring off her.”

  “It won’t come off. The finger’s swollen.”

  “Then cut it off.”

  SLAM.

  Something flew over the barrels and landed on my lap. I shoved my fist in my mouth to keep from screaming.

  “Fuck! Where’d it go?”

  “Over there somewhere.”

  “Go find it.”

  I felt Jesse shift. Her hand had gone to a dagger at her side.

  “Sirs…?”

  “What, Leah?”

  “The… The new young Lady’s family are headed this way.”

  “WHAT? Leave the ring. We need to clean ourselves up. Leah, lock up afterwards. Move!”

  There was a clattering of knives and a stampede of feet. The room was silent within moments.

  I seized the object in my lap and almost reflexively threw it across the room.

  So this is what a dismembered human finger felt like.

  I barely registered as Jesse pulled me upright, lifting me as she swung her legs over the barrels. Leah was twisting her apron in her hands by the doorway.

  On the once pristine counter lay the remains of a young woman. Her blood was draining along a channel carved into the countertop. It was almost like looking at a pig on a butcher’s table, only it was a pig that had long blonde hair and wore the remains of a white gown. Jesse turned her face away and placed a hand at the side of my face so I couldn’t see the body.

  My gaze fell on the knife we had heard break. I thought of picking it up, for some reason, but left it where it was.

  “Lady, you have to get out of here. Mr Fox will be looking for you.”

  “Are my fri- Is my family really coming?”

  “Yes, Lady, I saw them.”

  “Let’s go.”

  My legs felt boneless, but as Jesse pulled me into a run, my movement grew easier. We rushed down the dim hallway towards the rectangle of light that represented the doorway into the entrance hall.

  “Where is she?”

  That was Poppy’s voice.

  We slowed our run as we neared the door and peered out.

  Poppy, Calvin and Rohan stood in the hall, glaring at Robert Fox. The men who had been with him were scattered around the hall, now dressed in the uniforms of servants. Poppy glared at them too.

  “Do you only have male servants? What is this?”

  “No, not at all. Old Leah is your sister’s personal maid… Leah! Leah! Where is that old woman?”

  At this point, I noticed that there were multiple other people behind my three friends. I didn’t recognise them, and they seemed to be a mix of people. A weeping woman. Multiple men, some carrying weapons.

  The woman was blonde, blonde like the dismembered carcass in the cellars.

  “It’s strange,” Poppy was saying loudly, using the kind of voice she used when people were being rude to her on the phone. “But this lady here insists that her daughter was only recently married to you, Mr Fox. What’s that about?”

  “I’m afraid she must be mistaken-”

  “Then I suppose it would be fine if the local constables were to search the premises?”

  “And why would that be required, Lady?” Robert Fox’s velvety voice was growing harsher. “They would not find anything-”

  “They don’t need to,” I said as I stepped shakily out from where I was hiding. I could feel Jesse close behind me. I couldn’t stop my hand from trembling as I raised it, but everyone could clearly see the finger I held.

  “That ring!” screamed the crying woman.

  Simultaneously, both Robert Fox’s men and the constables drew their weapons.

  The entrance hall was suddenly a seething mass of fighting. Poppy ran for cover as Calvin also drew a sword and Rohan almost randomly fired off a blast of flame that struck the ceiling and brought parts of it down on the fighters’ heads.

  “Don’t just blow up things without thinking!” Poppy screamed.

  “I’m sorry!”

  Robert Fox was rushing towards me. Before I could move, Jesse had stepped in front of me, knife drawn, and thrown it.

  The knife slammed into his left shoulder.

  “Throwing knives at a moving target is a bit different,” Jesse mused with a grimace.

  I looked at Calvin, swinging his sword like a baseball bat. “I think you’re doing fine.”

  Still the constables were outnumbered, and they had non-combatants on their side too. I thought frantically as Leah came panting out of the hallway behind me.

  “Leah, you need to hide somewhere,” I said distractedly. What could I do? I looked at the ring on my finger, scanned my stats screen with growing frustration. It looked like there was only one thing I could do.

  I dropped to my knees and began to pray.

  “Yes! Yes! Just do it!”

  “Dear God, please help us!” I yelled aloud, my nails digging into the backs of my hands.

  Calvin, Rohan, and the fighting constables glowed momentarily.

  Calvin swung his sword. It sliced into the hand of one of Robert Fox’s men, and he dropped his weapon with a yelp. A constable drove a dagger into the side of his neck and he fell, blood pumping high into the air.

  The small dexterity buff seemed to have enough of an effect to turn the battle. Most of Robert Fox’s men lay dead or restrained. The metallic smell of blood was sickening.

  “Where’s Fox?” I asked Jesse anxiously as I tried to stand. My head swam. I didn’t want to know what having an Endurance stat of 1 felt like.

  “No idea. Are you okay?”

  “A bit dizzy.”

  “Nice work with the buff.”

  “I had no idea if it would work or not.”

  “It did.”

  Did it? As I began to take in the scene, my heart dropped into my stomach. One of the constables lay dead in the middle of the hall. Several others were injured. One of the non-combatants, a boy in his teens, was also dead by the doorway, and from the blond of his hair and the way that the now-howling woman was bent over him, he must have been a brother of the dismembered girl in the cellar.

  Leah was slumped against the wall, her throat cut.

  “No… This…It shouldn’t have…”

  “You did your best,” Jesse said wearily, gripping my shoulders. Her dark eyes tried to catch mine, but I pulled away.

  “They’re dead. I should have-”

  “What, saved them? How?”

  “This is a game… There’s always a way around…”

  “We don’t know what’s going on, Maria. Maybe this is a game, or maybe we’re in some kind of alternate universe. In any case, the main thing is that we survive as best we can.”

  “That’s not enough!”

  “What could you have done?”

  “I don’t know! Got the evidence to the constables before they arrived? Warned them? Stopped Robert Fox?”

  “How?”

  “I DON’T KNOW!”

  The remaining constables had begun to move down the hallway behind us. One took the dismembered finger from me. I could barely see him through my tears.

  I’d failed.

  “Mik Tsaam…” Poppy rushed to hug me. I held her tightly, crying with relief that she was alive and guilt that several others had died. Calvin and Rohan staggered over too and we stood in a big hug.

  “Wait… wait!” The scene began to dissolve. I met my friends’ eyes, panicking, then looked over to Jesse. She was pale, but she saluted me with a resigned smile.

  “See you later, Maria.”

  I was alone again.