Bailey’s mother was kidnapped by an evil dreamwalker, the Rat King. Using her own dreamwalking powers, Bailey finds her way to the Rat King’s twisted palace and is about to face him in a fight to—
The game starts, and I’m holding a giant sword.
With no mirrors around, there’s really no way to tell if I look like me at this moment. The only parts of me visible are my hands—which, pixelation aside, look close enough to mine. It’s a blessing no one bothered to give me those boobs as per the marketing department—they’d be blocking my downward view completely, not to mention smacking me in the face if I needed to run.
I wave the sword a few times and begin studying the dark cavern when a disturbing monster jumps down from the ceiling.
He/it has the body of a spider but the head of a clown. In case that wasn’t terrifying enough, the lower portion of the clown’s face is covered by a surgeon’s mask and the front legs are holding scalpels.
Before I so much as blink, the thing leaps at me.
Chapter Fifteen
I swipe with my sword, cutting off one of the scalpel-wielding legs. The clown’s eyes shoot fire at me. I tilt to the side, dodging the projectile.
I’ve got to hand it to the cameras and the primitive headset: My real-world motions are copied pretty well in VR.
Just to see how well the physics work, I hurl my sword at the creature’s head. It flies in a very realistic arc and slices at the mask. The mask falls, revealing a clown face that seems vaguely familiar underneath all that white makeup.
Did they model it on a celebrity?
The creature yelps in anger, and a little cloud appears above me. Above it, a text box proclaims, “DREAM POWER.”
I activate the cloud, and a new sword grows inside my hand, but it’s too late.
The monster’s head rushes toward me, and its fangs rip into my chest.
The world around me grows red, but for one line of black text hovering gravely in the air.
GAME OVER.
“So cool.” I take the headset off and hand it to Felix. “You’ve got to check it out.”
Rattie beams at me. “I’m so glad you like it.”
Felix puts on the headset. A minute later, he shouts obscenities and jerks it off his head. “I hope you don’t let little kids play that,” he says, his breathing uneven. “Or people with arachnophobia, coulrophobia, and whatever the phobia of medical staff is called.”
Rattie nods. “The industry consensus is that little kids shouldn’t play VR at all. As to adults with phobias, they can always stop playing when they see something they dislike.”
As he speaks, I realize why the monster’s face looked familiar.
It shares features with Rattie himself.
Then another thing dawns on me: The villain mentioned in that backstory was called the Rat King.
I catch Rattie’s gaze. “Did your team use your likeness in the game?”
Everyone on his team chuckles, and he smiles shyly. “My team likes to put Easter eggs like that into all our games. That way, people on the street might think me a dreamwalker and see my face in their nightmares for years to come.”
“If you’re sick of your face being in all these games, you can use mine,” Felix says hopefully.
I grin. “I don’t think we want to scare the user base that much.”
Felix groans. “Second time I walk into something today.” He looks at Rattie. “Tell me about the security issue you need solved.”
Rattie explains it to Felix and looks excited when it becomes clear that Felix understands what he’s talking about.
I yawn. Cryptography and sleep debt don’t mix well.
After what feels like days of mind-numbing tech talk, Rattie pulls out a laptop with proper access, and Felix begins typing away on it.
I suppress another yawn. “What can I do to help?”
Rattie glances at his team. “You can’t do much for the demo at this point, but we could use your help with level design beyond that. Valerian said you’d be good at it.”
I’m sure Valerian’s praise predated the kiss fiasco. I doubt he’d say nice things about me now.
Banishing anything kiss-related from my mind, I describe some good dream-world-like levels for the team, relying in part on my game design background and much more on the actual dreamwalking experience. Rattie particularly likes it when I describe the ceiling in my dream palace—a mosaic depicting an archery target-like mandala made out of multicolored glass.
Just as I’m about to yawn out loud again, Rattie says, “That’s more than enough to get us started.”
“Good.” I rub my eyes. “If you guys don’t need me for the next few hours, I’d like to use a sleeping pod.”
Rattie smiles wryly. “Of course. The one you last used can be officially yours.”
I walk over to Felix to make sure he’s okay with my slacking off, and he gestures his dismissal without looking up from the screen.