"Well, here goes nothing," I said, grabbing Gwen's hand and running at the elevator door.

"What are you doing?!" Gwen whisper yelled, pulling back. She lowered her voice when we heard another NPC scream and the Alien screech triumphantly. "You're not going to break down a steel door by ramming into it!"

"I'm not trying to. We're going to door clip. Unless you want to play with the xenomorph, that is. I'm sure it just wants to give you a big hug." There was another scream. "A big, scary hug."

Gwen looked extremely skeptical, but let me pull her along when I moved again. Doing the crouch sprint while in VR was a bit weird, but sure enough, my hand started to phase through the door. "Ha!" I said quietly. Gwen stared in amazement as I continued to work my way through the door. Pins and needles traveled along my arm then chest as I went further. I almost got stuck between the elevator's inner and outer doors, but Gwen gave me a push. I was about to thank her when I heard her yell through the metal, "The Alien's coming back! It sees us!" I hurriedly got myself through the rest of the way, one hand still clamped onto Gwen's, and started pulling her through. I had her about halfway through the inner door when she suddenly got yanked back. I strained as Gwen screwed her eyes shut in pain and stammered, "It's got my ankle!" My eyes widened as I saw a health bar flicker into existence next to her player model and start dropping.

"No you don't" I growled. I kicked the door, startling the Alien just enough that it let go of Gwen with a screech. Both of us fell over as Gwen made it the rest of the way into the elevator. Another ripple ran through the game as we hit the floor. I chuckled, still running on adrenaline as I stood up and hit the elevator button. "Well, that could have gone a lot worse...ohhhh g*d, your ankle!"

The Alien's claws had gone clean through her pants leg into the skin, leaving deep gouges that still bled. Glancing up, I saw Gwen's health bar was still slowly dropping as well. I started making a quick medkit while Gwen rolled her shredded pant leg up to expose the wound. I grew worried when she hissed in pain. "Hey, you alright?"

"No, actually. This hurts a lot," Gwen said shakily. "What I don't get is why it hurts in the first place," She added, meeting my eyes with a worried expression.

I frowned and moved her hands away from the wound, jabbing the medkit's needle into a patch of undamaged skin before asking a question, "The VR isn't supposed to do pain, is it?"

Gwen winced and shook her head as her health bar stabilized at half health. The bleeding slowed, but we both agreed it needed bandaging, just to be safe. Gwen sacrificed her blazer to tear into strips for the purpose, leaving her in a short sleeved blouse and ¾ of a pair of pants. It wasn't a pretty bandage by any means, but it did the job. We kept the remains of the blazer for later use, though I hoped we wouldn't need to.

"So, why can we feel pain in here, and why can we smell the Alien? Why can we actually feel items in game?!" I asked, shaking the empty medkit before tossing it aside. "You designed this VR system. So what the f*cking hell is going on here?!" I yelled at the ceiling, intending the question for Gwen as well as Devon and Michael.

"I'll explain, but we should keep moving," Gwen sighed and motioned for me to help her up as the elevator doors opened. She insisted on limping forward on her own, grimacing every few steps, and I stayed close, just in case she needed help. When we reached the room with the motion detector, she slid into a chair to rest. "My tech can do some amazing things, but what makes it exceptional isn't the graphics per se. It's the neural interface." When she saw me looking at her like she'd suddenly grown a second head, she elaborated. "The helmet interacts with the wearer's brain. It uses your own imagination to enhance the world it projects, adding all the small things that wouldn't normally be there, the things that make a world more real. That's why our player models look exactly like us," She said, motioning to herself.

"It should only be able to affect sight and hearing though," She said, eyebrows furrowing. "The interaction is too minute to do all this. I ran hundreds of safety tests, accounting for everything from power surges to world corruption. I don't understand it." Her expression changed from one of confusion to frustration and disgust.

We moved on in silence while I digested what Gwen told me. I examined our surroundings as we went, noting how much more detailed this place was than the original game. I wonder if the details are clientside or combined since we're in multiplayer? Seeing a set of machines that looked way more complicated than anything I remembered seeing before, I suspected the latter.

Thinking about all this was giving me a headache. I rubbed at my eyes and kept walking. By the time we reached the noisemaker blueprint, the headache had grown much worse. Gwen noticed when I tripped on nothing and barely caught myself. "X33N? X33N, what's wrong?" She asked, grabbing my arm to steady me.

"I'm fine. It's just a headache," I said, trying to brush it off.

My statement had the opposite effect, and I saw Gwen's gaze harden as she examined my face, lingering on my eyes. "X33N, take your helmet off," Gwen said calmly.

I blinked at her in confusion before shrugging. I reached up...only to feel my own face and hair. "What the actual...?" I wasn't wearing a helmet. I knew for a fact I was, but it wasn't there now.

"Ignore that. Hold where your helmet should be and lift," Gwen insisted.

Before I could move to try, I heard someone yell, "No, stop!"

I blinked and looked around. "Meza? Is that you? Why are you just now talking?"

Gwen cocked her head at me and asked, "X33N, are you sure you're feeling okay?"

"Yes, yes, I...Hey! My headache's gone!" I declared.

"Thank goodness you can hear me. Whatever you do, don't try to take your helmet off," Meza's voice echoed.

I couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from, and I frowned. "Why not?"

Gwen was still looking at me like I'd lost it. "Who are you talking to?"

"Meza. You can't...?" I trailed off.

"No, she can't hear me. The virus affected her code too much. If we tried to tweak hers, it would trigger a kill code. We could barely get through to yours."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Virus? Kill code? Explain!" Gwen had been about to say something, but froze when I mentioned a virus.

I heard Meza sigh. "Someone hacked the VR system and introduced a virus. Devon and I are trying to get rid of it, but we're not having much luck yet. What we do know so far is that you don't want to try entering/exiting the game. The virus has rigged the system to kill you if you try. You should probably avoid dying in game too," Meza added as an afterthought.

"Rigged to kill? Are you sure?" How could that even be possible?

Meza's voice was heavy with regret when he answered. "We know because Michael tried to go in as Player 3 when Gwen got hurt."

My eyes widened in shock. Michael was dead?! "Please tell me this is a bad joke."

"It's not."

I started pacing without realizing it. Gwen watched me with growing concern, but I didn't notice. I was far too busy panicking. If things in here could actually hurt or kill us, how were we supposed to last through the whole game? Who said making it to the end even guaranteed escape? I've played this game a hundred times, and a deathless run is still a rare thing. Gwen's never played before. The Alien's pattern is all screwed up, and...

"X33N!" Meza yelled, cutting through my thoughts. "Calm down! You're going to be fine."

"Fine?! How are we fine, Meza?!" I yelled. "The hacker altered the Alien's pathfinding and probably the androids'. We're running this blind! No way are we getting out of this without getting hurt!"

"You don't have to last the whole game, just until we get this virus dealt with. As for avoiding trouble..." Meza trailed off, and I thought I could hear typing in the background. The world rippled around us—a sign that something in game had been altered, I realized. "There we go!" Meza said triumphantly.

I looked around for what he'd changed, finally looking down when I heard an all too familiar cluck. "Meza, no! Bad Meza!" There, pecking at my feet, was a boxy, minecraft chicken. "Why is it always chickens?!" Meza didn't quite cover his laugh when I punted the chicken away from me. It squawked and ran a few steps ahead of us before stopping to peck at a floor panel.

Gwen stared wide-eyed at the thing like it was more dangerous than the Alien. After a few seconds she tore her gaze away from the bird and looked at me. "So you're not going crazy, and we are dealing with a virus?" She asked, fear tightening the faint lines at the corners of her eyes.

Oh, right. She's only been catching half of the conversation. I gave her a quick summary, leaving out the part about Michael. Gwen looked like she was barely keeping it together as is; I didn't want to know what shape she'd be in if she knew. There'd be plenty of time to grieve once we were out of here.

"So what's the chicken for?" She asked when I was done. "Or is Meza just messing with you to lighten the mood?"

"As amusing as this is, it does serve a purpose," Meza replied with me relaying the message to Gwen. "Minecraft chickens are coded to run away from danger, taking the safest path possible. I tweaked the little guy's code to recognize Aliens and androids as threats. You'll still have to look out for hostile NPCs, but the chicken will let you know if the others get too close. He'll also follow the mission objectives as they update. Devon had another idea to counter the doors the hacker jammed."

I could hear a bit of background noise before Devon's voice replaced Meza's. "X33N, could you give Gwen the access tuner?" Once I did, he continued, "Only use this if you have to, but I found a loophole for those permanently locked doors that doesn't involve you door clipping. You're lucky you didn't get stuck back there. I preloaded the access tuner with a copy/paste code to replace any door with a properly working one. But the more you use it, the more likely our hacker friend is to notice and counter it, if they're still poking around."

That seemed to make more sense to Gwen than it did to me, and she toyed with the tuner's settings for a moment before nodding. "Got it."

Gwen was about to say something else, but a creaking in the air vent behind us set both of our nerves on edge. The chicken looked back at the noise and shuffled anxiously. "We should get moving," I whispered, and Gwen nodded her agreement.

"We'll be in touch," Meza said before falling silent.

I glanced at Gwen with her bandaged ankle as we moved away from the Alien. Her health bar was still at half, and we weren't even a quarter of the way through the game. At least this is normal mode, I thought, pausing to grab some supplies from a room I usually bypassed in favor of speed. Gwen saw what I was doing and did the same after listening to reassure herself that the Alien wasn't too close. I had a feeling that we were going to need all the items we could get.

With everything on my mind I didn't notice when Meza's chicken stopped right in front of me, tripping me. I caught myself and kicked the chicken in anger, grumbling under my breath. It squawked and ran in a circle before stopping again by the vent opening to my right. "Oh, we're here," I said flatly. Gwen glanced at me questioningly, but I didn't answer.

We entered the vent and followed it until we came upon the scene I'd watched unfold so many times. Through a series of slats in the vent wall, we could see an NPC and an android talking, the human quickly losing patience with the obstinate synthetic. I pushed Gwen to keep moving, but she froze when the android turned violent and bashed the NPC's head in with surprising force. The color drained from Gwen's face as she stared at the far too realistic streak of blood and grey matter left on the wall. Looking at it too, I wished the VR didn't use our imaginations to enhance that particular detail. Apprehension coiled in my chest as we started moving again, a new sense of urgency driving us.