“Yes! Can you believe it?”
I looked to the man beside her. I recognized him from the game as well. “Wow,” I said, letting my brain catch up. “You’re Alexius.”
He nodded and grinned. “I have heard much about you from Jamie these past few days. You look just like in the training program. I’m eager for combat with you. Your MCS skills are brilliant.” Alex turned to Kass. “Another pleasure. We are lucky Velerions to have these women as our pair bonds.”
Kass set his hand on my shoulder. “Agreed.”
Jamie took my hand and tugged me to a chair. “I watched as you beat the game,” she said.
I remembered the feeling when I won, when Lily was shouting in my ear. As I wondered where Jamie was—and it turned out she’d been watching all along. “I didn’t know where you went. I looked everywhere for you.”
She looked sheepish. “Except space.”
I nodded. “Except space. Why couldn’t you have left a note?”
“And say what?” she asked, arching a dark brow. “The game is real and I’m going to Velerion with Alex?”
“Yes. I texted Lily so she wouldn’t worry when I disappeared, too. Also to let her know Darius was going to come knocking.”
Jamie laughed. “Oh man, I wish I could see that. Lily is going to totally freak.”
“What are you doing here on the battleship? Kass said you were on some moon base and the general mentioned you’d intercepted a bomb of some kind.”
“You know about the IPBMs?”
I nodded. “Well, I didn’t know what they were called, but the last training mission in the game changed and included a ship loaded with bombs that could destroy an entire planet. I thought it was in-game, science-fiction bullshit.”
“They’re real.”
“Great.”
She frowned. “They’re no fun. But I don’t have to tell you they’re real. It took me a while to grasp that everything up here is real. Everything we encountered in the game is real. Every moon base and asteroid and planet out here. It’s like living in the game. I even got to meet Queen Raya, personally.”
I stared at her. She’d met Queen Raya? Scheisse. “And?”
“Psycho bitch, per the usual crazed, power-hungry megalomaniac.”
“Does she look the same as well?”
“Right down to the dramatic, dark gray trench coat.”
“Well, it won’t be too much of a leap for me. I believed it was real when Kass showed up.”
“When I showed you my scar,” Kass added. “And other parts of my body.”
He winked.
I blushed.
Jamie grinned.
Alex leaned in and said something to Kass I couldn’t hear, although if the smile on his face was any indication, he was amused.
I pursed my lips in fake annoyance, but I wasn’t embarrassed. The way Alex was looking at Jamie indicated their relationship was as hot as mine with Kass. And they’d been together two weeks longer.
If Kass and I had sex within ten minutes of meeting, we could have too many orgasms to count by day fourteen. My body was still sore from the hard ride Kass had given me at work. And at my apartment. In my shower. On my couch.
On Earth. God, that seemed so far away.