“Quiet, there’s another group up ahead.” Aiden ducked down behind the open door of a Honda Civic. The rear half of the car was missing, ripped off somehow, and twisted and scorched metal littered the street behind them. Aiden knelt on the ground, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “I need a minute to catch my breath.”

  The city was in chaos. Several cars had smashed through the plate-glass windows of surrounding buildings, and more were up on the sidewalk. Most had more than a few bloodstains on the hood and doors.

  Up ahead, a group of humanoid pig-like creatures stalked the street. Standing up on their hind legs like a human, their bloated pink skin stretched over thick muscles. Beady, deep-set eyes scanned the area while they grunted at each other. They were a minor nuisance in the game, slow, disorganized, easy enough to kill. But enough of them together in a large group could be deadly. These three stood in the street, dressed in ragged clothes with an assortment of weapons, from meat cleavers to crude wooden clubs, strapped to their bodies. The creatures stared up at the surrounding buildings warily, skulking right past the two men without noticing them. Aiden hoped it would stay that way.

  “Piglets now. The hell is goin’ on?” Ravi crouched beside his friend. “This’s crazy, seriously, what the actual hell.”

  Sounds of violence and panic rang out all around them. Screams sounded from inside the shattered shell of a 7-Eleven, while the buildings around it had been reduced to rubble. Far in the distance, the sirens from emergency services were bleating, and car alarms were going off. It was worrying how few people they’d seen on the way, but Aiden tried to block it all out of his mind. They needed to get themselves to safety before he could think of anything else. Before he could try to figure out what the hell was going on.

  After several blocks of breathless sprinting, the two had made it from the park to where Alison worked. Dodging through back alleys and destroyed storefronts when necessary, they’d had a few close calls, but made it all the way to her building without being noticed.

  “That’s where she works?” Aiden popped his head up over the car to glance across the street.

  Ravi wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist and nodded. “Yeah, there at the top of the plaza.”

  “How the hell are we supposed to get over there?”

  Across the street was a short set of stairs leading up to a wide-open corporate plaza, which fed into the lobby of an even bigger office complex. What used to be a beautiful green space where employees could enjoy the sun while they had lunch in front of the building was now a scene from a horror movie. Glass and chunks of siding from the lobby windows lay shattered across the sidewalk, a few jagged edges now stained with blood. A dozen more piglets rooted through the well-manicured shrubs and bushes. Somehow a dumpster had made it into the middle of the green space, and several of the creatures had flipped it onto its side and were now digging through it, snapping up pieces of food trash in their snouts.

  “This can’t be happening,” Aiden said, shaking his head.

  “Look, there she is,” Ravi nudged his friend with an elbow. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the lobby, he made out Alison, crouched behind the receptionist’s desk. She waved frantically, finally getting their attention. Ravi stayed low, but moved his palms in a down gesture, letting her know he saw her, and she disappeared back behind the desk.

  “There’s four of them things up in the plaza. I think we can take ‘em.”

  “Are y—” Aiden nearly shouted before catching himself and lowering his voice. “Are you nuts? Those are monsters. Monsters! I sit at a desk all day, we’re not fucking superheroes.”

  Ravi hesitated a moment, then turned to look Aiden in the eyes. “Turn on Final Contingency. These are mobs from the game, right? So, we use the game to fight them.”

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  Aiden just stared at him.

  “I’m serious,” Ravi said. “We at least gotta try man, come on! Alison needs us right now.”

  “Okay. Fine, okay,” Aiden muttered. He connected his interface to Final Contingency and a moment later, the game UI popped into space around him. Ravi had connected to the game as well and was wearing his usual blue armour and lance. “What’s your plan?”

  “So look, those piglets are only level one. We’ve fought hundreds of those things in the game, and we’re both over level twenty. We can do this.”

  “Those things aren’t a fucking game, Ravi!” He waved his hand back and forth through his friend’s weapon, passing harmlessly through it. “See? I can’t feel your lance, it’s not real. We’re not level twenty, we’re level nothing!”

  “I know, but like… maybe to them it is? We gotta try somethin’ man.” Ravi steeled his gaze and pointed to the dumpster where a piglet was down on all fours, digging through the spilled trash. “That one. Use one ah yer fire arrows and see what happens.”

  “Fine.” He exhaled. “This is pointless, and if it spots us you’re gonna get us killed. Just get ready to run when this doesn’t work.” Aiden poked his head up over the hood of the car, pointed two fingers at the lone piglet and whispered the command word for Fire Bolt. A small, arrow-sized surge of orange energy burst forth from the tip of his fingers and flashed through the air, a perfect shot to the piglet’s head, then right through it, splattering harmlessly into the bushes behind the creature. The piglet continued rooting through the garbage, oblivious.

  “See?” Aiden put his back to the car and slid to the pavement. His game interface and Ravi’s gear disappeared from view as he disconnected from Final Contingency. “This isn’t a game, Ravi. Something else is going on here. Maybe they’re aliens or something? I don’t know.”

  “Then why do they look exactly the same as what was in the game, huh? Why are they—oh god. Alison.” Ravi jumped to his feet, eyes wide and locked on something in the distance. Aiden propped himself up to see what his friend had spotted.

  Through the shattered lobby windows, Alison crouched low, moving around the reception desk. Two of the pig monsters had shuffled through the broken glass and were sniffing around. Tracking her. One of the pair lifted its head and sniffed deeply, then whipped around straight at where Alison was hiding. Its pulpy, snotty nose twitched like a bloodhound on the trail. The monster pawed at the clean tiles of the lobby, its trotters scuffing the floor, then it snorted and charged.

  “ALISON!” Ravi threw himself over the hood of the car and sprinted across the street into the greenery of the plaza.

  “Ravi, you idiot,” Aiden hesitated for a moment, then stood up straight and assessed the street. As a back-line caster in most of the games they’d played together, he was used to being the strategist during battle. While others were locked in combat he usually had a little more freedom to look things over from the back and call out attacks or telegraphs others might be too distracted to notice. Here in the moment, he fell back on old habits. His eyes flicked back to Ravi, about to warn his friend of the piglet rearing up to charge from beside the overturned dumpster, when blue light erupted from his friend.

  The man’s body shimmered like a heat wave as a long blue lance solidified in his hands. Ravi stumbled slightly from the weight, but his grim expression didn’t falter. He closed the last few steps between himself and the broken window, driving the lance full force into a piglet scurrying through the gap. The creature squealed and rounded on him, swiping at him ineffectually with a chipped and battered short sword, but Ravi didn’t let up. He knocked the sword aside like it was second nature and stabbed forward again with his lance, this time putting the creature down for good.

  Alison scrambled to her feet from behind the desk. “Thank God you’re safe,” she exhaled. “The hell is going on?”

  “That’s the question of the day,” Aiden said, nimbly stepping into the lobby, his boots crunching over the bits of broken glass littered across the tile.

  Aiden eyed the lance Ravi held limp at his side. “Ravi? What the hell did you do?” He reached out tentatively and touched the lance with the tip of his finger, then traced along the handle. It was cold to the touch. “It’s solid?”

  Ravi shrugged with a confused shake of his head and turned his attention to Alison, “Are you hurt?”

  “One of those things ate my boss,” Alison said in a daze. “Are we under attack?”

  Aiden peeled his eyes away from the lance. “I guess this confirms it’s not the government trying to brainwash us with the implants.” He looked at Alison. “You don’t have an implant at all, right?”

  “Huh?” She blinked, taking a moment to process the question. “No, my—my family doesn’t do that stuff.”

  “Well, if you don’t have an implant, and you can still see all these things too, then… yeah. We can rule that out, I guess.”

  Alison reached out her own hand and ran her fingers over Ravi’s lance. “Incredible,” she breathed. She stood up straighter and composed herself. “We should go. Those things won’t stay outside for long.”