The monitors cast blue shadows across pizza boxes and empty energy drink cans. Alex hunched forward, the click-clack of her keyboard punctuating the basement's musty air. Her shoulders tensed with each keystroke, but not because of the hack. It was the weight of Ethan's presence behind her, close enough that she could smell his cologne, that woodsy scent that always made her thoughts scatter like dropped code.
She'd been in love with him since sophomore year. Before Mia. Before everything went sideways. They had always been best friends, the three of them. It was easier to keep everything in the friend zone, that was until Mia evened the numbers. She was Alex's first girl friend, first girl best-friend.
Behind her, Ethan cracked his knuckles, and Alex's fingers faltered on the keys. She felt his breath near her ear as he leaned in to check her progress.
"Looking good, Alex," he murmured, and her stomach did that stupid flip it always did.
On the other side of the basement, Mia whispered "almost there" under her breath, cross-referencing security protocols on her own station. She didn't look up, but her jaw was tight. Sam's leg bounced rapidly beneath the folding table beside her, rattling a nearby stack of programming manuals. His hand rested on the table between them—close to Mia's but not touching. Never touching, not since prom night six years ago.
Sam shot a glance at Alex, and their eyes met for just a second. There was understanding there. Comfortable, safe understanding. They'd gravitated toward each other in the aftermath, two people seeking shelter from the storm of their own broken hopes. What they had was real, but it had always been built on the foundation of what they couldn't have.
"Are we really doing this?" Ethan asked, his voice pulling Alex back to the present. His eyes sparkled with that familiar mischief as he leaned back in his chair, a cocky grin plastered on his face. "Hacking Novatech's new game? It's a bold move, even for us."
Alex forced herself to focus on the screen, not on the way his smile made her chest ache. "Bold is what we do."
"Bold is our specialty," Mia chimed in, adjusting her glasses as she scrolled through the game's code. Her voice had an edge to it, the same edge it got whenever Ethan and Alex worked too closely together. "Besides, this isn't just any game; it's an alternative reality game! Imagine the possibilities!"
Ethan's grin widened, and he turned to Mia with that easy charm that had won her over at prom. "That's my girl. Always thinking big."
Alex's fingers clenched around her mouse. His girl. Right. She'd had six years to get used to it. You'd think it would hurt less by now.
"Yeah, as long as we don't get caught," Sam added, his expression a mix of excitement and caution. He reached over and squeezed Alex's shoulder, a gesture of support that felt more like an apology. "But what if we get stuck in there? I heard it's immersive, like really immersive. There are rumors of beta testers losing their minds. Like really getting lost in there."
Alex turned to face the group, grateful for the excuse to put distance between herself and Ethan. She shot Sam with a reassuring smile, the one she'd perfected over three years of dating him. "Relax, we'll be fine. We're here to explore, not to get trapped. Besides, I've cracked the security protocols; we'll be in and out before anyone knows we were ever there. Where just going to see what all the hype is about"
"That's what I love about you," Sam said softly, but his eyes betrayed him, his gaze flickering toward Mia for just a heartbeat before returning to Alex. "You always know what you're doing. Always so sure of your choices."
Mia's keyboard clicked louder, faster. Ethan shifted in his seat, his grin faltering for just a moment as he watched the exchange. His eyes found Alex's, and something passed between them, something unspoken and dangerous. Something from a time before, when they were allowed to like each other. Before things got complicated. Mia cleared her throat, and the moment shattered.
"Are we doing this or not?" Mia asked, her voice clipped. "Because I'd like to get in before dawn. The last three times Ethan and I hung out with you-"
"Right," Ethan said, standing up and moving to Mia's side interrupting her sure to be tirade. He placed a hand on her shoulder, and Alex looked away. "Let's do this, and not waste anymore time"
Alex turned back to her screen, her heart hammering against her ribs. She could feel Sam's concerned gaze on her back, he was always watching, always worried she'd slip away. Worried she would leave him alone to watch Mia and Ethan live their love story.
It didn't help that she felt Ethan's presence behind her. That magnetic pull she'd been fighting since she was sixteen, sitting in AP Computer Science while he cracked jokes and made her forget every line of code she'd memorized. This was why she'd suggested the hack in the first place. Not to expose Novatech's secrets, though she'd convinced the others that was the mission. Not for the thrill, though her hands had shaken with adrenaline as she typed. She'd suggested it because she needed to escape, to lose herself in something, anything, that wasn't this suffocating dance they'd all been doing since high school.
She needed a world where she wasn't Sam's girlfriend-by-default. A place where she didn't have to watch Ethan's hands on Mia's waist at every group gathering. A place where she didn't have to pretend her heart didn't crack a little more each time he called Mia "babe" while his eyes lingered just a second too long on Alex. She just needed somewhere she could breathe.
The irony wasn't lost on her, she was running away into a game about gods and trials, as if virtual reality could solve the mess they'd made of their actual lives. At least in a game, there were rules. Objectives. Clear conditions and expectations. Not like real life, where she could love someone for six years and never say a word. Where she could date a good man and feel guilty every single day for wishing he was someone else. Where her best friend could steal the person she loved the most at prom all while being expected to smile through it. What else could she do? The game offered her escape. In a game, maybe she could finally be the version of herself who made different choices. Braver choices.
As she typed the final command, the screen flickered and glowed, transforming the basement into a virtual realm of pyramids and celestial landscapes. The friends exchanged glances, a mix of thrill and trepidation washing over them.
"Welcome to the game, my fellow gods," Alex announced with a grin, her heart racing, though whether from the hack itself or from Ethan's proximity, she couldn't say. "Let's see what Novatech has in store for us."
Sam took her hand. It felt warm, familiar, safe. Wrong.
Mia's fingers laced with Ethan's. Alex watched them from the corner of her eye, that familiar ache settling in her chest. With a deep breath, they plunged into the digital abyss, unaware that their adventure would test not just their skills, but their friendships and maybe even their hearts.
The world snapped into place around them, sharp and impossibly real. Above, the sky shimmered copper and jade, threads of vapor snaking from horizon to horizon and weaving impossible symbols into the air. Alex and her friends were now standing at the edge of a river of black-glass water reflecting a scattered city of obsidian spires and low, bulbous domes. Farther upstream, a stepped ziggurat rose in silhouette, its terraced ascent ringed with flickering blue fire.
Sam's hand had slipped from hers during the transition. Now his outline wavered like heat off pavement, his fingers passing through his own wrist as he reached to steady himself. He retched, nothing coming up but a shimmer of pixels that dissolved midair.
"Sam!" Alex moved toward him instinctively, but Ethan was faster, reaching him first. His hand passed through Sam's shoulder twice before finally making contact, his smile twitching at the corners while his legs wobbled beneath him.
"I got him," Ethan said, and their eyes met over Sam's hunched form. For a second, they were teenagers again, before the complications, before the heartbreak. Just Alex and Ethan, best friends who could read each other's thoughts. "Do you need -"
His question being cut off by Mia, pushing between them. "Move, let me see." She pressed her hand to Sam's forehead, checking for... what? Fever? In a virtual world? Alex stepped back, swallowing the bitter taste in her mouth. Why did Mia always have to get in the way. Ethan and Sam were friends long before Mia every stepped into the picture. Her concern for Sam left a strange ting of jealousy in both Alex and Ethan's mouths.
"Jesus," Ethan's words rippled outward, his voice layering over itself, the familiar tenor overlaid with something that rumbled like distant thunder. "My tongue feels... weird, like everything tastes metallic." He stood there licking his lips, and Alex's gaze lingered on his mouth for a second too long before she forced herself to look away.
The thin black frames around Mia's eyes melted, reforming as intricate golden filigree that pulsed with her heartbeat, curling against her temples like living vines. She gasped, both hands flying to her face, but all that greeted her touch was smooth, cool skin, unnervingly perfect.
"Whoa," breathed Alex, watching the transformation play out on Mia's avatar. "You're, like, gilded now. Did the game do that, or was it your profile settings?" Even transformed, even in a virtual world, Mia was beautiful. No wonder Ethan chose her.
Mia blinked, pupils expanding into starbursts of amber. "Wasn't me. Maybe it's adaptive customization? I bet it's part of the systems set up and game protocols."
Ethan reached out, his fingers hovering near Mia's face, hesitating for just a fraction of a second before he tucked a strand of her now-golden hair behind her ear. "You look amazing," he said softly.
The gesture was tender, intimate, almost practiced. Alex turned away, her chest tight, pretending to examine the water's edge. She'd seen that same hesitation before, that split-second pause where Ethan's body did one thing while his mind was somewhere else. With someone else. But Mia didn't notice. She never did, she was too lost in her own desires.
Alex glanced down at her own virtual form. She'd expected maybe a sleek bodysuit, the typical cyberpunk chic, but instead she wore a robe of shifting hexagonal scales, each tile reflecting a slightly warped fragment of her surroundings. She lifted her arms, turning them slowly in the strange copper light. The scales rippled with the movement, each one catching and distorting the world around her. The black river, the obsidian spires, fragments of her friends' faces scattered across her skin like broken mirrors. Her hands looked the same as always, slender fingers that had typed a million lines of code, but the skin had an odd luminescence to it, as if lit from within. She reached up, fingers finding her hair, long impossibly long. It was no longer the short pixie cut she'd had in the real world, but long, ink-dark braids that fell past her shoulders, tipped in circuitry-blue. The weight of them felt strange, unfamiliar.
She tried to catch a glimpse of her own face in the scales on her forearm, tilting it to find the right angle. The hexagonal tiles reflected back fragments of an eye, part of her cheekbone, a sliver of jawline. Each piece was warped and scattered, impossible to see as a whole. Like trying to recognize yourself in a shattered mirror. She touched her face tentatively, feeling smooth skin, the familiar shape of her nose and cheekbones, but something was different. Sharper somehow. More defined. The new look brought a jolt of pleasure, the sensation of power. It felt mysterious, like she'd stepped into the skin of someone braver than herself, followed by immediate suspicion. This wasn't what she'd programmed for an entrance. This wasn't anything close to her avatar settings.
"Damn, Alex," Ethan said, and she turned to find him staring at her. Really staring. "You look like some kind of warrior goddess. Sexy as hell." Her breath caught. Mia's hand tightened on Ethan's arm.
"Yeah, well," Alex said, forcing her voice to stay steady, "someone's got to lead this ragtag group. And I guess I do make this look good." She said it with confidence, but honestly looking around no one was outfitted in the setting she had programmed.
Sam appeared at her side, and she felt the weight of expectation settle over her like a cloak. She should take his hand. She should play her part. But in this new world, with her new skin, she couldn't make herself do it.
"He's right, you know," Sam said quietly, his voice carrying a note of resignation that made her stomach twist with guilt. "You look good." It was the kind of compliment he always gave, supportive, sincere, safe. The kind that never made her pulse race or her breath catch the way Ethan's comments did. She managed a small smile, the one she'd perfected over three years of being grateful but not in love.
"Thanks, Sam. Okay, inventory check," Alex said, desperate to focus on something else. Anything else. A flick of her wrist summoned a floating pane of glyphs and graphs. "Strange, I don't understand what each thing means, but I'm sure one of these is a manual. Novatech must have built in some sort of guide."
As the group gathered around her display, Alex felt Ethan's presence at her left shoulder, his heat impossibly real for a virtual world. She could feel the warmth radiating from him, close enough that if she leaned back even an inch, they'd be touching. Sam pressed in at her right. Mia stood slightly apart, her golden filigree pulsing in the strange light. "So," Sam said, his voice uncertain in this new world, "Now that we got in, how do we get out? There should be a logout command, right?"
Alex swiped through the floating interface, her confident expression faltering. "Should be... but I'm not seeing one. Give me a second." The glyphs shifted and rearranged under her touch, but nothing looked like an exit protocol. Nothing looked familiar at all.
"Alex?" Ethan's voice was closer now, concerned. "What's wrong?"
She looked up at him, then at Sam, then at Mia's increasingly worried faces. "I... I'm not sure. The interface isn't responding the way it should. It's fine, we just got here. I probably need to access a different menu or - "
A deep gong resonated across the water, cutting her off. The ziggurat's blue flames flared brighter, and symbols began to burn themselves into the copper sky above.
Whatever was happening, they were about to find out if this was still just a game.