“Well well well, if it isn’t Swanhole,” a taunting voice jeered as Swansong and I walked through the bar toward a back corner and a pair of familiar faces. “Where the hell have you been hiding for the last few days?”

  “It’s nice to see you too Pinky,” I said with a forced sigh. “How am I not surprised that you follow the subreddits that came up with that dumb name.”

  Seated at a hightop table in one of the corners of the building wearing a bright pink two piece outfit, was one of the few other Augments that I had so far befriended. Interestingly, Pretty Pink Warthog, or Pinky as she told her friend’s to call her, seemed to have gotten an upgrade in her gear, even if the neon, hot pink color of it remained. When I had first met her, while she did have some gear, Pinky had only worn yoga pants and a matching pink shirt that was now replaced by a skin-tight, paneled armor that made her look like she was a Power Ranger just without the head covering helmet.

  “Don’t go changing the subject Loophole!” She shot back. “You’ve been ignoring my messages for days now, where the hell have you been?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed by my score, I have been busy,” I said and Pinky rolled her eyes.

  “Oh please, we’ve all been busy, that doesn’t explain just going radio silent!” She said before looking over at Swansong who had been standing like a deer in the headlights. “And you! Miss Third Place but impossible to find. It’s about damn time you and I met! Other than that scary Tempest’s Wrath chick, we’re the only ladies up on the Top Ten, you and I should be best friends. You’re a healer right? I bet there’s some sort of duo fights up in the Fight Club that we could enter! I bet you and I would be unstoppable.”

  Swansong looked up at me before she looked back over at Pinky and I could actually hear her swallow.

  “I think you’re overwhelming her,” a goggled figure seated next to Pinky said, lifting a can of soda up to his lips and taking a long drink.

  “You two taking a lunch break BrainCraft?” I asked and he nodded. “How are things going out there for you two?”

  “It’s been a surprisingly busy morning actually. We’ve been dealing with an odd assortment of giant insects of all things,” BrainCraft said and Pinky noticeably shuddered.

  “Why did it have to be cockroaches…” She said.

  “Swansong, I know you can highlight them, but this is Pretty Pink Warthog and BrainCraft, they are based out somewhere in California and are generally good people. Though be careful, she might try to get you to spar with her just for the fun of it,” I explained and Swansong nodded.

  “Please, call me Pinky,” Pinky said, jumping to her feet and holding a hand out that Swansong took and shook with a smile of her own.

  “Why did you give yourself such a long name if you’re just gonna tell everyone to call you Pinky anyway?” I asked as she shrugged, stepped backwards, and hopped back up onto her chair.

  “What’s life without a little whimsy?”

  “I… You are not what I was expecting from the videos that got shown on the nightly broadcasts,” she replied, finally able to get in a word and then looked over at me with a raised brow. “So exactly how many of the people in the top ten do you know?”

  “Umm… Well Hydramental was on it, but he fell off and was really only there for a day… So uh, just you two?” I said with a shrug of my own, following Swansong as she took a seat on one of the two open chairs and sitting down.

  “Yeah, yeah. The better question is how long have you two been palling around and taking down robots? And where have you been hiding all this time, Swansong? Actually, hold that thought, I see my lunch,” Pinky said in rapid succession as an NPC waitress walked up and set down two plates with large burgers and fries in front of both her and BrainCraft. The waitress looked over at me with a raised brow.

  “Uh, I’ll actually take one of those burgers too, hold the tomatoes and add extra pickles. Oh, and I’ll have a strawberry lemonade,” I said and then looked at Swansong.

  “Ummm, sorry but other than when Logan had me come here during the onboarding I haven’t really come back through for anything. I mean, it’s cool, just sort of felt like a distraction, especially since I've never drank before…” Swansong said sheepishly and looked around. “Is there a menu I can look at?”

  “They have most everything you can really think of, it’s a rather convenient and fair way for them to provide the same general benefits across a wide range of dietary needs and preferences. For example, my meal here is an Impossible burger since I’m a vegetarian,” BrainCraft said as he pressed down on the top of his burger, pulling a small pocket knife sized item out of thin air before a green light beam buzzed out from it, slicing the burger cleanly in half before disappearing back into the hilt.

  I looked over to the waitress who was still waiting, a single hand on her hip and pointed at Pinky. “Correction, I’ll take a burger like the one she has.”

  “And um… Can I just get, like, a big Caesar salad and a Sprite?” Swansong asked and the waitress nodded.

  “I’ll be right back with that for you two,” she said, turning on her heel and heading back toward one of the many kitchens.

  Part of me found it peculiar that the system would literally materialize things, yet the Common Ground still went through the motions of having NPC staff deliver and dispense both food and drink. While I was sure there was probably some odd reason that this was the case, it didn’t seem to be because of an inability to materialize items, the mini-lightsaber BrainCraft had materialized had to have come from somewhere.

  Given that I had still been able to access my B.E.L.T. even when I had been in the Dead Zone that had been SnakeBite’s prison, this didn’t speak to much, but since the Common Ground was apparently only a Null Zone that prevented communication with our P.A.I.s, this was the perfect place to raise the one concern I truly had about forming a squad with Swansong. There was still the chance that she would buck at the idea, but if there was ever going to be a place to raise the concern, it was somewhere that she wouldn’t have an A.I. trying to talk her out of it.

  And, since we had been on overall friendly terms, if I could also possibly talk a bit of sense into both Pinky and BrainCraft at the same time then that was just as big of a victory. True, it did have the chance to backfire, but at the end of the day it was always going to be a leap of faith.

  “Are you two gonna answer any of my questions?” Pinky asked after swallowing a rather large bite of her burger.

  “Well to be fair, you’ve asked, what, a dozen questions and haven’t actually let us answer any of them,” I said, staring at her until she scrunched her nose.

  “Okay, how about we start simple. What’s up, why’d you go and disappear off the face of the Earth after you randomly jumped pretty much 10,000 points in a single night?” Pinky asked and then took another large bite.

  “Yeah… that,” I said. Taking a look around and wondering just how much our voices carried. “It’s honestly kinda hard to explain how it happened, at least not without raising a whole bunch of questions. But I actually had intended to tell Swansong about it while we had lunch, I suppose I can explain it to you two at the same time.”

  “Well you’ve certainly piqued my curiosity,” Swansong said with a small laugh and a reassuring smile in my direction. “What exactly are you trying to tell us? Does it have to do with that whole snake thing you had mentioned?”

  “Err… Well, it would kinda explain why I didn’t just jump at making a squad with you,” I said to her before looking over at Pinky, “and why I had sorta gone radio silent with you. It may not be a complete explanation, but I think it should answer your questions.”

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  “Oh?” Pinky asked, quite literally perking up in her seat as her eyes widened and she continued to eat.

  I didn’t really know any of these people and they didn’t know me, but I didn’t exactly have anyone else inside of this game that I could turn to. It was almost annoying that I had to remind myself that I hadn’t pulled myself out of my bedroom to let paranoia eat away at me. While I had found myself unwillingly in the middle of something much crazier than even the existence of the Augmentation system in the first place, they all had been thrown into this craziness and had each chosen to try to help people in their own ways. That had to speak to something.

  Sure, TechWarden had gotten his hooks into one person that I knew of, and it was foolish to believe that his reach ended with SnakeBite, but that didn’t mean he was always watching and listening. I had to convince myself of that, otherwise I was going to be constantly looking over my shoulder. Pinky, though eccentric, had been nothing but nice to me, as had Swansong, even while I treated her with an undeserved amount of suspicion. And if Pinky trusted BrainCraft, then I was reasonably certain that I could trust him as well.

  Maybe it was being back inside of a Null Zone that had finally let me clear my mind again, but I took a deep breath and decided to press forward.

  “Okay, screw it…”

  “Wait,” BrainCraft said, holding a hand up and materializing a small spiky ball that he placed at the center of the table. He snapped his fingers and the ball started to levitate, spinning rapidly before a clear but noticeable wave spread out around us. I looked around curiously before shooting him a confused glance. “I apologize, but you seemed hesitant to tell us whatever it is you’re about to say. While you seemed determined to push forward, I figured you might appreciate a bit of privacy from the tables near us.”

  “Wait, are you saying that thing is-”

  “A personal auditory privacy barrier,” BrainCraft interrupted Swansong as the device bobbed lightly up and down in the air, humming ever so slightly. “It is technically experimental, but as soon as I realized that some of our fellow Augments could have enhanced hearing and that Pinky loved to come here for every meal I wanted to ensure we had a way to discuss things without being overheard. It only creates a bubble about six feet wide, but that’s more than large enough to cover our table here.”

  “Hey, you’ve had the food here and I don’t have to convert credits, sue me,” Pinky shot back, sticking her tongue out at him before looking back at me, “You were saying?”

  “Huh… I might need you to explain how that works for me later, or maybe hook me up with one of these things,” I said as I leaned down to try and take a closer look at the hovering device as I felt a bit of respect for his quick thought. “And I mean this thing not the teammate addicted to coming to this place. There’s this place that I like to get lunch from near my Safe House that I don’t intend to stop going to. Best Cuban around.”

  “Be distracted later, get back to the “screw it” thing,” Pinky said, snapping her fingers and signaling for me to continue.

  I let out a long, slow sigh as I set my resolve.

  “Okay… so first off, I disabled my Acceptance Matrix a few days ago,” I started, receiving a slightly shocked look from both Pinky and Swansong, though BrainCraft’s goggles hid most of his eyes, making him hard to read as he sat back and listened when I continued. “This is going to sound really weird, but I swear it’s all true.”

  They all listened intently as I explained the craziness that had been the first phase for me. I explained the Viper biker gang that had been my Phase One obstacle and how I had been led to believe, at least at the time, that SnakeBite from the Seventh Wave had been behind the increased activity. While I was detailed about my encounters with the Temporarily Augmented NPCs, I kept my encounter with SnakeBite’s family and Hydramental’s relationship with him to myself. With SnakeBite out of the picture, it didn’t feel like my place to disclose Hydramental’s personal connections to anyone and while I didn't tell them everything about how Jon became Codex, I felt it prudent to also bring up how Axio had been moving me around like a pawn, all without me even realizing it.

  Eventually I got to the Dead Zone. I explained how I found SnakeBite, how he appeared to be nothing more than a shell of a man as he begged me to end his life. It was here that I really lingered, explaining how SnakeBite’s Matrix had been exploited by someone he had thought he could trust and how that had led to him becoming an enslaved science experiment.

  I only had to stop my story briefly when the waitress came back, depositing our food in front of us before leaving without even a word. that didn't exactly tell us if she had been able to hear us or not due to BrainCraft’s privacy bubble, but none of the tables surrounding us had reacted either so I just had to assume it was working. By the time I had finished my explanation, Pinky and BrainCraft had both cleared their plates and Swansong had put a solid dent into her impressively large salad.

  “I knew it,” BrainCraft muttered as he rubbed his chin and Pinky looked at him dumbfounded.

  “You knew what? That there’s apparently this TechWarden asshole that is able to just fuck with the programming of the game however the hell he wants?”

  “No… well I didn’t know it was TechWarden, but I did assume that someone like him existed. Actually, I assumed multiple someones like him existed, but that wasn’t what I was focused on,” BrainCraft explained as I finally turned to my untouched burger and took a bite. While it had cooled down, it was still a delicious burger.

  “Then enlighten us oh wise one,” Pinky said overdramatically.

  “The Acceptance Matrix. I had a hunch early on that there was more to it than my P.A.I. had been telling me,” He said, looking down toward the table as he continued to rub at his chin. “The idea that it was installed and able to control our emotions indicated, at least to me, that there was the possibility for greater functionality. If they could control how we felt, who’s to say they couldn’t control anything else that we were doing? It was why I turned mine off the moment I learned that it existed.”

  “Wait… you’ve had yours turned off the whole time then?” I asked, joining Pinky in staring at him slightly dumbfounded.

  “Not the entire time, but the majority of it, yes,” He confirmed. “While I am Augmented, the majority of my powers come from my mind and my ability to think and reason clearly. Even if it was just modifying my emotions, that meant it was altering how I perceived things. It was after I disabled it that I began to consider the larger ramifications to the system and what it could possibly do.”

  Pinky reached over and shoved him with a bit of a pout on her face.

  “And you just let me have this weird mind control stuff lingering in my head all this time!? What the hell dude!” She said and BrainCraft looked at her apologetically.

  “It was a hunch. I had no concrete proof of the assumptions I was making,” He explained. “My own mental health is one thing but given that you are an up close fighter while I tend to wait in the wings, I didn’t think it was prudent to put that on you without being entirely confident about my assumptions.”

  “So… you want me to turn off my Acceptance Matrix before we make our squad? You’re worried that you can’t be sure who this TechWarden guy might be controlling? Is that it?” Swansong asked, finally speaking up after remaining quiet for the entirety of my explanation.

  I swallowed the bite I had taken and nodded. “I know it’s a lot to ask just to make a squad, but between whatever the hell Axio is up to and TechWarden’s own agenda, it just feels like having it active is courting disaster. It doesn’t make this game and being an Augment any easier, but your decisions… your thoughts… they’ll be your own.”

  Swansong seemed to contemplate this, dragging her fork through the remains of her salad as she looked down toward it. Pinky on the other hand, pretty much immediately closed her eyes and a moment later she shuddered ever so slightly.

  “Ah, yeah that’s a weird feeling,” She said, shaking her head out as her brow scrunched together ever so slightly. “Why do I feel like I want to throw up?”

  “The Matrix and system doesn’t want you to turn it off so your body has a sort of natural aversion to doing it. The P.A.I.s also generally push you not to turn it off either which can add to that feeling of unease,” I explained, not taking my eyes off of Swansong as she continued to focus on her salad. “It doesn’t go right away when it’s off, trust me I’ve been maybe a bit too paranoid, but it is getting a bit better.”

  Swansong finally broke her gaze, looking up at me with her brow scrunched. “Is that why you wanted me to buy the Tranquility book? You think I might be able to create a Song of Calming or something along those lines?”

  “I’ll admit that that was a thought, but I do stand by that that can actually be really beneficial in fights… you know, when we aren’t fighting robots,” I said and Swansong’s gaze hardened.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” I asked, slightly surprised that I had received so little push back.

  “I haven’t gone through any of the craziness that you’ve gone through, but after… well after earlier when I introduced you to, well, that boy, I don’t know, I just got the sense I could trust you,” She explained not so subtly avoiding mentioning her brother.

  “Honestly… I can’t promise that that feeling also wasn’t just pushed on you… I told you that Axio has already had his fingers in the pot with how he pushed me into the altercation with SnakeBite and TechWarden,” I explained and Swansong shook her head.

  “If we are going to be going over everything I’ve felt over the last week to debate which ones were my own, then that alone is reason enough to go through with this,” She said and closed her eyes. Just like with Pinky, a small shudder moved over her like a wave and she closed her eyes tighter just before it all stopped and she looked around.

  “Feels weird, right?” Pinky asked her, toying with one of the few leftover fries on her plate.

  “A bit… but nothing I can’t handle,” Swansong admitted, her voice wavering for just a moment before it relaxed and she looked at me expectantly. “Now, what are you and I going to do about a squad name?”

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