Sebastian flew high above the digital landscape. The wind roared past his ears. The absolute freedom of flight was intoxicating, but his tactical mind was entirely focused on the UI clock in the corner of his vision.
As he crossed the border from the beginner zones back toward the towering, smog-choked spires of Ironhold, the atmosphere of The Ethereal Plane violently shifted.
It wasn't a localized event like the World Boss spawn. This was server-wide.
The ambient soundtrack of the game completely cut out. It was replaced by a low, vibrating hum that seemed to rattle directly in the players' digital bones. WUB-WUB-WUB…
Sebastian stopped mid-air. He looked up.
The sky, previously a standard rendered grey, began to bleed.
A sickening, deep crimson hue washed over the clouds. It looked as though a massive, invisible brush was painting the heavens with arterial blood.
The digital sun was normally a bright, comforting yellow. It warped and shifted. It turned into a harsh, glaring red eye that glared down at the world below.
[System Alert: The Dimensional Bleed has intensified.]
[Warning: Synchronization Rate increasing globally.]
System notifications began to pop up, but they were corrupted. The text flickered and the letters replaced themselves with unreadable alien symbols before fading away into static.
"Holy shit… The Crimson Moon," Sebastian whispered, his breath catching in his throat.
In his past life, this event hadn't happened until month six. It was the prologue to the Great Merge. It was the moment the game's code actively began tearing down the dimensional barriers and preparing to flood Earth with the horrors of the Void.
"It's happening earlier than I thought," he gritted his teeth, feeling a spike of pure dread. "My synchronization… my presence here. I sped it up."
He didn't have a year. He might not even have a month.
He had to check reality. Now.
He dove toward the ground. He didn't bother to find a safe zone. He landed heavily on a desolate, ash-covered mountain peak just outside Ironhold's borders.
He pulled up his system menu and hit 'Disconnect' with a violent jab of his finger.
The bloody sky of The Ethereal Plane shattered into static.
Sebastian woke up in his cramped 2077 apartment with a violent gasp.
"Haa… Haa…!"
He ripped the VR helmet off his head. His chest heaved as his physical lungs desperately pulled in the stale, recycled oxygen of the room. He rolled over, and every muscle fiber in his body seized up at once.
"Fuck!" he groaned, clutching his arms.
His body felt incredibly strange. The heavy, sluggish feeling of reality was gone. He felt lighter and dangerously coiled. He was buzzing with a latent kinetic energy.
[Real World Synchronization: 2.5%]
[Physical Stats Updating...]
The synchronization was pushing past the two percent mark!
He ignored the aches and the burning in his veins. He scrambled off the lumpy mattress and rushed to his single cracked window.
He wiped the condensation off the glass and looked out at the megacity.
The neon signs still buzzed. The hover-cars still streamed through the traffic lanes between the towering concrete skyscrapers. The acidic rain still fell in a relentless, depressing drizzle. Patter... patter...
But it wasn't grey anymore.
The rain hitting his window had a faint, rusty tint. And the sky above the city, usually choked with black smog, was glowing. It was a faint, sickly shade of blood-red—perfectly mirroring the horror he had just seen inside the game!
The apocalypse wasn't knocking on the door. It was already turning the fucking handle.
BZZZT! BZZZT!
A loud, sharp buzzing shattered the silence of his apartment.
Sebastian flinched. His newly enhanced reflexes made him spin around instantly. It wasn't his crushed comm-link. It was his encrypted holographic terminal sitting on the desk.
It was ringing. An incoming audio-visual call.
Nobody had this number. Not the debt collectors. Not his landlord. It was a burner node he had set up specifically to order his bulk survival supplies.
He approached the desk cautiously. He tapped the 'Accept' key.
The hologram flickered to life.
It wasn't a corporate logo or an automated spam bot. It was a woman.
She looked pale and disheveled. She was completely terrified. Her raven-black hair was usually perfectly styled. Now it was plastered to her forehead with sweat. She was sitting in what looked like the interior of a highly secure luxury panic room.
It was Valerie.
"You," she breathed, her voice trembling slightly as she looked at Sebastian's face through the feed. "You're the guy. From the crater."
Sebastian didn't show an ounce of surprise. She was a corporate heiress. Her family owned half the data nodes in the hemisphere. Tracing the IP of a player she had just physically interacted with in-game was expensive, but entirely within her means.
"You look stressed, Valerie," Sebastian said, trying to keep his voice steady despite the adrenaline still pumping through him. "Did you break your staff?"
"Shut up," Valerie snapped, though there was no real venom in it. She was too scared. She pulled her knees to her chest. "The sky. Outside my penthouse. It's red. The rain is turning red."
"Atmospheric anomalies," Sebastian lied smoothly. "Pollution. You should probably stay indoors."
"Don't patronize me," Valerie whispered, her dark-blue eyes locking onto his. "I was logged in. I saw the sky in the game turn the exact same color. I saw the error codes. And I saw you."
She swallowed hard. "I saw you fly. I saw you carpet-bomb a guild. You're not playing the same game as the rest of us. You know something. What the hell is happening?"
Sebastian looked at the woman in the hologram.
In his past life, she had been his anchor. She had been the tactical genius who held humanity together while he acted as the executioner. Right now, she was just a terrified girl who was smart enough to realize the world was ending.
He needed her. Her resources, her mind, her eventual power.
"What's happening," Sebastian said, his voice dropping all pretense of sarcasm, "is that the servers are bleeding. The game isn't a game, Valerie. It's an overlay. And it's crashing into our reality."
"Very soon, the fucked-up things you hit with your staff are going to be walking down your street."
Valerie didn't call him crazy. She didn't laugh. She just stared at him. Her breathing was shallow. Her survival instincts were telling her he was telling the absolute truth.
"What do I do?" she asked quietly.
Sebastian stood up straight. He walked over to his terminal and typed in a string of encrypted coordinates. He sent the data packet directly to her secure line.
"Those are the coordinates to Warehouse 4 in the industrial sector," Sebastian said. "It's heavily reinforced. It's off the grid. And it's going to be the only safe place on this continent in a few days."
He leaned closer to the holographic projector. His dark eyes were intense.
"If you want to live, you pack up every piece of physical wealth you have. You get in an armored transport, and you get your ass to those coordinates."
Valerie looked down at the data packet, then looked back up at him. "Just like that? You're offering me a bunker?"
"I'm offering you an alliance," Sebastian corrected. "I have the firepower. But I'm going to need logistics. And I'm going to need supplies."
A ghost of a smirk crossed Sebastian's face.
"If you want in, Valerie... bring food."