The next day, our ragtag crew was riding in style thanks to Tabby’s wagon. Most of her knick-knacks were currently in her shop, so there was plenty of room in the back. I offered to take Tabby back to her shop to gather anything she might need for our journey, but she said she already had everything she needed with her.

  I rode atop the wagon next to Tabby, while Ersabet, Delen, and Kitz rode in the back under a canvas shade. Today’s sun was bright and hot, so I envied their shade, but after hearing Delen and Ersabet argue in the back about something meaningless for the third time, I decided I was sitting right where I needed to be.

  “How are you doing today?” I asked Tabby. “Last night was a lot for all of us, but I’d say you had the worst of it.”

  She flicked a lock of hair from her eyes. “I’m a lot better than I was. It’s still hard to accept that my memories of growing up here aren’t real.” She shook her head. “I feel so sure that I lived it. I remember details and feelings and smells. It’s so strange.”

  I nodded. “It was like that for me, too. It gets easier with time. The hardest part is remembering my name. The one I use now, I mean.”

  “John McClane?” she said with a snort. “It’s not fair that you got to pick your name, you know? If I had the chance, I would have chosen Ellen Ripley.”

  I laughed. “Oh, that’s good. Unfortunately, naming yourself after any pop fiction character is a bad idea. Trust me, I’m a bit of an expert on bad ideas. I recommend sticking with Tabby for now.”

  She frowned. “Why not Candace?”

  “No one other than the people in this group can ever know your real name,” I said. “Ever. The beings running this game know you as Tabby. If they caught wind of you using your original name, it could mean trouble.”

  “It’s really that dangerous to use my real name?” She asked, brow raised.

  “Unfortunately, yes. Names are important in this game. I know this from personal experience.”

  “Oh, do tell,” Tabby said.

  “Maybe someday. That particular tale includes wounds not yet healed.”

  Her eyes cast downward. “I’m sorry. We can change the subject.” Her bright eyes popped back up. “What did you do after college?”

  “I worked at an oil and gas company for a while, but it wasn’t for me. Too corporate. I ended up getting a job designing wind turbines, and while it didn’t pay as well, I enjoyed it. I met Elena a few years into that job, and we were married a year later. Six months after that, the world ended.

  Tabby blew out a breath. “Man, you sure know how to bring down the mood.”

  I grinned. “It’s a gift. What about you?”

  “Landed my dream job right out of college with a big architecture firm. I met a man, got married, but that turned out to be a mistake. He wasn’t the man I thought he was, so I divorced him a couple of years back, and I’ve been happy ever since. Or, I was, I guess.”

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  “I’m glad you got yourself out of a bad situation.”

  “I’d take living with that asshole over being featured in an alien apocalypse game any day.”

  I snorted out a laugh.

  “Can you really save us?” she asked.

  I thought about that question before answering. “I don’t know. But I’m the only one who has a shot, so I have to try.”

  “Would you really die on the spot if you told me how you became a player?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Val said. “Or I’ll burrow out of your eye and into that girl’s skull right this instant.”

  I tried not to smile. Val wasn’t a risk to me, not anymore. Plus, she wouldn’t risk detaching from my cerebral cortex while I was still alive, or she might hurt herself. There was no room for Val to sit on the wagon bench with us, and I wondered if I would see her avatar if I peeked in the back of the wagon.

  “Let’s just say, it’s not a risk I’m willing to take,” I said to Tabby.

  “Fair enough,” she replied.

  We rolled down the road, heading southwest toward Nessa. I tried my best not to dwell on the mess that I was leaving behind. Weeks had passed since the destruction of Danver, but any stray thought about what might be happening to the people there would set me on the verge of a panic attack. Val had given me some idea of how the Voxals would likely address the problem. As I had surmised, the city and the NPCs within were too valuable to the early game to be destroyed on a mass scale, but Val had mentioned that the Voxals might consider a local reset. If they did that, then everything I had tried to accomplish there would have been for nothing. The truth that I had shared, the one I had hoped would spread through this game like an immersion-breaking plague, was probably already snuffed out. I had tried to fight back, and I had failed, and Val had sat by and let me do it.

  She had wanted me to fail on my own, so that I would recognize how much I needed her guidance. The cost meant little to her in the long run. Unfortunately, I had become far more like Val than she had become like me, but I recognized this, and slowly I was reclaiming my humanity. My hate-driven impulsiveness was taking a back seat to caution. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and I planned to take my sweet time before delivering. There was a right way to do this, and it was Val’s way. Instead of me taking over and running headfirst into a firestorm, I would step with caution. This time, we would work together and do it right.

  “What are you thinking about?” Tabby asked.

  I blinked away my thoughts. “Oh, uh, just thinking about how wise it’d be for me to learn from my past mistakes.”

  “Wow,” Tabby said. “That is wisdom most profound. The aliens turn you into a philosopher or something?”

  I laughed. “No, quite the opposite. I’m just a simple farmer.”

  She gave me an appraising look. “I could see that. You strike me as a guy who prefers to live a simple life.”

  “Yet here I am,” I said, arms outstretched. “Riding in a wagon with a girl who has lived two lives, an alien, an eccentric genius, and a monster-boy.”

  “Hey!” Kitz shouted from the back. “Don’t call me monster-boy, you…you ass-man!”

  I met Tabby’s eyes, and the moment I saw the laughter in them, I lost it, laughing until my eyes watered.

  When I finally settled down, I wiped my eyes and noticed Kitz had a flap held open on the wagon cover. He was mean-mugging me something fierce.

  “I’m sorry, Kitz,” I said. “I’m not laughing at you. Ass-man means something else where I come from.”

  “What’s it mean?” he asked, still frowning.

  I looked to Tabby for help, but she was useless, putting her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

  “Uh, well,” I stammered. “I don’t really know how to explain it. Ass can mean a lot of things, and well, umm, in this case, well…”

  “Mother bless me,” Ersabet said. “Let me handle this before your tongue completes that knot it’s tying.” She turned to Kitz. “Ass-man means that a man is more attracted to a woman’s buttocks than, say, her breasts. In John’s culture, men often make crass jokes like this about human females.” She eyed Tabby. “And apparently, some women find it just as funny as the men.”

  “Hey!” Tabby protested. “Funny is funny.”

  “You guys are mean,” Kitz said. “Ersabet’s the only nice person here.”

  She put her arm around him. “They are terrible, aren’t they? Come. Let us think of a creative way to correct their behavior.” She shut the flap, blocking my view into the back of the wagon.

  “That sounded ominous,” Tabby said. “How worried should we be?”

  “She’s just messing with us,” I said. “Don’t worry about them.” Of all my lies, that one was pretty tame.