"And you said you heard laughter prior to exiting the game?" The woman clicked her pen and looked over her glasses at Mori.

They sat in plastic white chairs at a table with a metal surface. Flourescent lights buzzing in the ceiling sharpened the dull pounding in Mori's head. After an hour of gentle questions, she'd finished narrating the story of her time spent in Valor. 

"Am I—was I going mad?" Mori asked quietly, looking to Skye seated at her side.

The dev shook her head. "You're not. You were likely under a mind-breaking amount of pressure, yes, but I'd venture to guess FEAR had something to do with the experience you recounted. We've had others say the same."

The therapist slid her business card across the table. "I'll be checking in on you again tomorrow after you're released, Miss Fukutomi. I'm very sorry for your loss." She picked up her briefcase and nodded to Skye before exiting the room.

The game developer stared into her coffee mug as the door clicked shut.

"So...I get free therapy out of this?" Mori asked with a brittle laugh. Tears flooded her eyes.

"You'll be compensated more than that," Skye answered. "Out of my own paycheck if I need to. You can't know how sorry I am for what happened. I should have made that connection to your sister before I contacted you."

Mori closed her eyes, listening to footsteps pass by the door and grow faint. "I don't want to be paid," she whispered. The mere idea of profiting from this repulsed her. "Is she really gone?" she asked for the second time.

Skye sighed. "She is, but there's nothing you could have done."

"I could have given her the ring," Mori choked out, gasping for air. Heat rushed to her face, because she was angry. So so angry at failing to do what she'd decided to go into the game for. That she'd been distraught to the point where she'd held Shiori and let her slip right through her fingers.

Skye set her coffee on the table and took Mori's hands in hers. "Mori. Mori, look at me. You could not have given your sister the ring. Not only is the device linked to your self-construct, meaning it would transport you and only you out, but an active transfer such as giving the ring to another player would make the code vulnerable to corruption."

Mori sniffled, trying to wrap her head around the concept. "So I couldn't have saved her..."

"You couldn't have, no."

"But if I had shut down FEAR?"

Looking like she couldn't decide whether to scold or comfort, Skye pushed her glasses up her nose. "We're not dealing in hypotheticals like that."

It'd only been a half hour since she'd entered Valor, but Mori felt sucked dry—Skye's gifted child who'd burned out early. She picked at the fraying threads at the edge of her jean shorts, wanting to tug at those hypotheticals, to tear at them until nothing was left. To scratch the itch until it bled, as if that would make her feel better.

She heard Skye say something, heard herself answer, but the numbing pain drowned it out. Then Mori's father entered the room and her heart cracked at the sight of his weary eyes, the familiar salt-and-pepper hair.

"I'm sorry." She fell off her chair, apologizing over and over again. "I'm sorry."

He sat on the floor beside her, something he never did, because his aching joints wouldn't easily let him stand again. He didn't speak, but held out his phone so Mori could read the recent text from her mother. 

She's gone. She died at peace. Is Mori okay?

Mori's father cleared his throat before speaking. "They told me you were there with her when she..."

Mori nodded mutely, tears and snot intermingling on her face. 

Her father pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. "When they called me," he said, pausing mid-sentence as if to gather the rest of his words. "I was afraid that I would lose two daughters. I was angry that you didn't consult myself or your mother."

Lowering her head, Mori dabbed at her nose with the fabric. "I'm sorry," she repeated, because there was nothing else to say.

"But as I sat in the car, and in the lobby, and I'm sitting here, I realized I would've done the same thing in your place." He sighed. "Do you think it was worth it...being there for Shiori-chan?"

"It was worth it," Mori said softly. It is worth it. 

He nodded in acceptance. "I think your mother feels the same way. We heard the screams before the patients died, all throughout the hospital. The fact that Shiori passed away at rest—"

At the sound of her father crying, Mori put her head against his shoulder and pressed the handkerchief into his hand.

Mori remembered Shiori's calm expression before she died and a shard of the pain in her chest dissolved. Not all, not even most, but a tiny piece. She could continue forward, working through the pain, because that's who she was, that's who Shiori would want her to be.

She and her father shared their grief together, soaking in the silence.

"Shiori would say this is kintsukuroi* for us," Mori finally said. "That we've been broken by losing her, but we'll seal the cracks with liquid gold and the result will be more beautiful than before."

"She would," her father agreed. He patted her hand. "It isn't your fault this happened, Mori. I hope you know that. It can't be helped."

Mori stared at her feet, the words not settling, as if they were the wrong strings being plucked—the wrong notes being played to her heart. "No, I gave the game to Shiori and I chose not to play with her. I decided to come here and to go after her. It wasn't fate that put Shiori in danger, even if it was FEAR that killed her." She looked into her father's eyes, tears rolling down her cheeks. 

"I thought things like fate, luck, and destiny determined the future, but now I'm not so sure. Some things can't be helped, but maybe some things can. And I want to try."

Her father pulled her into a hug. "I already know what you're going to say."

Mori said it anyway. "I won't be perfect, but I'm going to make my own decisions—right and wrong—and when they're wrong, I'll learn and make it right." She hugged him back tighter, his shoulder muffling her voice. "I made mistakes in there, mistakes that hurt real people, and I need to go back in there to fix them as best I can."

With a sigh, her father pulled back and brushed the hair from her eyes. "For them?" he asked.

"For me," Mori answered. "So I can know I tried." She watched the warring emotions etch lines across his face. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you the first time. I didn't mean to worry you."

He stood up, using the chair beside him as a crutch. "I suppose I did say it's no different from walking out the door here. You never know when a car might hit you."

Mori hugged him again. "I know it's not easy..."

"Doing the right thing rarely is." He held up a finger. "Especially when it involves walking out the door."

After mulling that over a few moments, Mori didn't understand it any better. 

"I'll text your mother and tell her we'll be on our way after you're done." Mori's father sat in the chair and pulled out his reading glasses, as if he was at home getting ready to read the paper on a regular morning. The normal gesture, the surety in his voice, that made Mori trust she'd make it back home more than anything.

"Ittekimasu,*" Mori said.

"Itterasshai,*" he answered.

Outside the room, Skye leaned against the wall of the hallway. She looked up when Mori stopped in front of her.

"I have some questions for you before I go back in." Mori shivered from the air conditioning and tucked the tips of her fingers into her small pockets. 

Skye opened and closed her mouth before she got any words out. "You don't have to do this again. Don't tell me you flipped that coin eith—"

"No, I want to do this. Can you help me?"

Skye flipped on the light in the room next door, the padded recliner taking up the center of the floor with another plastic chair to the side. She gestured for Mori to take the gamer's seat. "You said you had questions. Shoot."

"Why do you think FEAR is killing people?"

Skye shrugged. "Because death is humanity's greatest fear."

"But why? What does it gain? You created a program with a focus on self-improvement, to the point where it improved itself far beyond any developer's predictions, correct?" Mori fiddled with the coin on her necklace. If she could see the bigger picture, only for a moment, she felt like this would all click together. 

"I'm FEAR. I've locked my creators out of the game, but I still let Fearless in." Mori got up and paced in the small available area. "I kill players who are afraid of dying in a way that makes them scream as it happens. I'm afraid of being shut...

"Down." Mori stopped walking. "Skye, if a Fearless resets the game, what happens to FEAR?"

"In un-technical terms, death. The program would be dismantled and destroyed." Skye cupped her coffee mug in her hands, a furrow etched between her brows.

"FEAR is afraid of dying. FEAR is killing players. FEAR is trying to figure out how to rid us of that fear," Mori rambled. "Have any of the Fearless died?"

"One," Skye answered. "The second volunteer died almost immediately after entry. The branch responsible reported that the subject did not scream and they intended to test for other possible causes of death."

I'm not smart enough for this. Mori collapsed onto the chair, rubbing at her temples. Whatever the train of thought had been, she'd derailed it. "I can't share outside info with players in the game?"

Skye shook her head. "No leaks. FEAR is observant and adapts too quickly. We don't know what it could do—we learned that when it blocked the ring from working a second time."

But why not the first time too? 

Mori gave up. Nothing more would be gotten out of this today—she'd already taxed her braincells to death—but she knew if she sat still, the shards of pain would dig and cut deeper. "This is more out of curiousity than anything," she said. "But do you know much about a player named Ronin?"

Skye raised an eyebrow. "Normally, I'd say no. Though when I was looking for potentials like you, in a...completely legal manner of course, I did stumble across him and believed he hadn't entered Facing Fear. Unfortunately for us, he had, but under a different tag than his known one."

"Can I ask what it is, or is that not legal?"

"Mori dear, I've been served an order to appear in court. I'm already a criminal not yet convicted." Skye smirked, her eyes tired. "Besides, I bet you already know who he is. His gamer name is Hashibrown, long-time number one ranked player and champion of SniperX."

The breath left Mori's lungs. How often had she looked at that name above hers on the leaderboard? How many times had she spent hours in practice to be able to dethrone him, only to find herself always one step behind? Mori groaned, slumping in the chair.

"Riku Takahashi," she muttered at the ceiling. And I didn't suspect a thing.

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Chapter Word Count: 1905
Total Word Count: 27522