Kiara grabbed a heal potion and tossed it to Edge. “You better use that on Pusher. He’s about to blink out.”

  Edge nodded his head and leaned down to help Pusher. Edge’s comrade took the potion and then was able to stand and leaned on Edge as they walked to loot their fallen. Edge examined a handgun while Pusher tossed the Civil War era rifle into the water.

  Trix watched them until she was satisfied that they were done fighting and then slumped to the fetid floor, knees up, and hung her head on her arms.

  KIARA: You okay?

  TRIX: Just need a minute or ten.

  We sat together, and I tried not to think about how close we’d been to losing it all.

  KIARA: Will, what did you do before they brought you here?

  WILL: Drugs.

  Trix chuckled.

  KIARA: Are you joking or . . .

  WILL: I lost my Mom when I was twelve and started using Z a few months later.

  TRIX: Your lucky you stopped using when you did. Z can leave users permanently dissociated.

  KIARA: Do people use Z in here? Are you still using?

  WILL: I think they do. But I haven’t. This is the first time since I was twelve that I haven’t used Z for longer than 24 hours. All that time on Z felt like a disconnected dream. Once it had been months since I’d seen my reflection, and then I walked past a mirrored window and nodded to the long-haired bum walking by, only to find I was waving to myself.

  TRIX: Yeah, you need to stay far away from Z.

  KIARA: What was your mom like?

  WILL: She was so kind. And she wanted to give me a good life, but she couldn’t. Not with her disability. She’d sometimes forget where she was. She’d forget everything, and I’d have to hold her and say again and again, It’s Will. I’m here. But sometimes, when her mind was clear, at night she’d hold me and sing.

  KIARA: What would she sing?

  WILL: Ah, I’m not much of a singer.

  KIARA: I want to hear it. Just sing it as well as you can.

  WILL: Don’t laugh. Here it goes.

  Out on the green

  Running fast and sleek

  Go out my sweet

  And keep my memory

  KIARA: Thanks, Will.

  Kiara wiped a tear from her eye but didn’t say anything.

  TRIX: Okay, I have to know. What happened to your mom?

  WILL: It’s kind of a long story.

  TRIX: Tell your story, Will.

  I sighed.

  WILL: The winter after I turned twelve was hard, especially on Mom. She stopped singing to us, and her eyes took on a vacant tiredness. One night, she wouldn’t stop coughing and her skin was hot to touch. Kane and I half carried, half dragged her to a hospital as she talked out of her head. An orderly helped her through the doors of the intensive care unit and that was the last time I saw mom. She didn’t even look back at me.

  KIARA: That’s so hard.

  WILL: I still wonder if life would have been different if mom hadn’t gotten sick.

  Trix looked at me with a tender smile, and we all sat in silence for a while.

  Once Trix’s psy points ticked up past half, we got up to see if the Mother of all Crocs had anything useful to loot.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  TRIX: Where’d you get all of those heal potions, Ki?

  KIARA: In a store topside. Fifty credits a shot, but way worth it. And, actually, we’d better head back there soon. I’ve only got two left.

  The croc boss dropped a Quadrant 1 Sewer Map and a Genuinely Hideous Genuine Crocodile Skin Belt, a.k.a., The Mother of all Belts. Once I looted the sewer map, all three of us could see the vast underground arteries spread out underneath the city grid, with access points peppered across. I wanted to spend more time studying the map, but the belt grabbed my attention. I looked at its description.

  The Mother of all Belts. Paul Hogan was once offered this belt, and he straight refused it. The question is, once you know the stats on this baby, will it loop you in or not? +3 strength, +3 constitution, -6 charisma. As a bonus, the wearer of this belt will receive a resistance to poison based on their charisma. Not trying to troll you here, but the lower your charisma, the higher the resistance.

  “Yeah, someone else is going to have to put this on,” I said, holding it up by two fingers for all to see.

  Kiara shook her head. “Ab-so-lutely not. I mean look at me. Do you really want to negative six my pretty face?”

  I looked at Kiara and sighed in agreement.

  “This is clearly for your build,” said Trix. “You’re our tanky, psycho killer.”

  I ran my eyes across its ugliness. It was like the opposite of a diamond. Every angle revealed a new horror. “I’ll be uglier than Frankenstein’s monster with this thing on.”

  Trix put a friendly hand on my arm.

  TRIX: He wasn’t ugly—he was misunderstood.

  WILL: I know what you’re trying to do, Trix, and it’s not going to work.

  TRIX: You got me, but wear the belt. There’ll be no love lost between us.

  WILL: If I put it on, my charisma will be zero, or maybe negative. Can I have a negative stat?

  TRIX: Try it and see.

  I frowned at Trix, but put on the belt and felt stronger and tougher.

  WILL: Ok, yeah, this feels great. How do I look?

  Kiara eyed my now rock-solid pecs.

  TRIX: You look buff, like a backwoods Schwarzenegger.

  WILL: Trix?

  KIARA: Yeah, you do look buff. Kinda like one of those guys you see at the gym that just works his upper body, but, yeah, buff.

  WILL: I’m taking this stupid thing off.

  KIARA: No!

  TRIX: No, no! I’m just kidding. You look awesome. Really awesome.

  I knew Trix was lying, but sometimes lies are comforting.

  TRIX: What abilities did the guys you kill have?

  KIARA: That the game encourages players to kill each other for abilities is straight evil.

  TRIX: It’s totally rigged. This place is the Roman Coliseum. The only way out is through the other slaves.

  KIARA: So, get this, Pusher was a Drug Dealer.

  WILL: No kidding. With names like Pillman and Bagman? They were all drug dealers.

  KIARA: No, I mean, that’s actually what his class was called: Drug Dealer. Take a look.

  I looked, and sure enough, there was a Drug Dealer class and it really works well for gunfighters.

  KIARA: Pusher had Heartless, which increases the accuracy and damage of a ranged attack by 2% per level. That would work nice with Magic Smack. He also had As If, which raises dexterity by 30 points for two seconds, but it’s only good once a day for every 10 levels of the user.

  WILL: Must be how he dodged your attack even though he was hurt.

  KIARA: Yeah, that ability is basically a get-out-of death free card.

  TRIX: Anything else good?

  KIARA: It’s a big list. These guys were busy hunting noobs. Oh, this one. Meditate. While you’re in meditation you can’t do anything else—can’t move, attack, speak, nothing at all—but while meditating your health and psy points regenerate at six times their normal speed.

  TRIX: That’s not going to help us get out of the first quadrant. And As If didn’t help Bagman in the end. Two seconds isn’t enough of a difference maker.

  KIARA: I agree. I’ll take Heartless. What about you, Will?

  Kebab’s list was long, and mostly filled with unusable abilities. He had likely been killing off level 1s. My experience had shown me that the game usually started players out with something incredibly underpowered.

  WILL: He had something called Paunch Out. It temporarily converts all charisma points to strength.

  TRIX: Yeah, that won’t be useful to you. What else?

  WILL: Beer Me causes the user to believe their charisma is 10 points higher than its real score. A check is rolled on players’ intelligence to determine how well it works against them.

  KIARA: Hmm, what’s next?

  WILL: What about Chick Magnet?

  TRIX: Is that a joke?

  WILL: No, it’s for real. Chick Magnet draws any attack that an ally would have taken and sends it to the caster instead.

  TRIX: That could be dangerous for you, but it has serious synergy possibilities. If you’re comfortable with it, I think it makes us more dangerous.

  WILL: Then Chick Magnet it is.

  Trix looked at Kiara, as if for the first time.

  TRIX: Ki, you were never homeless were you?

  KIARA: No.

  TRIX: Then how’d you get thrown in here?

  KIARA: It’s a blur. I was out for a jog and the next thing I knew someone grabbed me and pushed me in a van.

  TRIX: Jeez, someone doesn’t like you then. Have any enemies at work?

  KIARA: Maybe. I do have a lot of jobs. On weekends I pick up shifts bartending. And I teach adjunct journalism courses online and write a column for Ready, Set, Bachelorette.

  TRIX: Never heard of it. Did you ever get hate mail?

  KIARA: Oh no. People love that column. What about you two? They kidnap you?

  TRIX: Naw, babe. They did the right thing when they came for me. But I don’t speak for Will.

  WILL: I think I pretty much fit their dream profile. Still, I never did anything to anybody that wasn’t asking for it. The main crime I’m guilty of is being poor.

  TRIX: And that’s crime enough for BioZone. They consider it the worst crime of all because the poor don’t make them richer.

  WILL: But in this game, now we do.

  TRIX: Correct.

  By this time, Edge and Pusher had finished looting their fallen, harvested their new abilities, and moved on. I wasn’t sure we’d made the right choice with them. Trix had been one Flamebroil away from Pillman’s best ability, and I think I could have taken Edge.

  KIARA: You’re delusional, probably because of that knife. Come on. We need more supplies.