Tara lay blinking up at her ceiling as her phone alarm chimed in her ear. 5:30 AM was way way too early for anyone to wake up, let alone someone who usually went to bed at 2. She felt a tremulous pressure building up between her eyes, like the static aftershocks of a sneeze, and it wasn't going away.

  "Please... shut up..." she stage whispered to her phone.

  She had set twelve alarms, all one minute apart. The third jingle started in response to her plea. She dragged her legs over the edge of her bed and heaved herself up onto shaky legs. She tugged her oversized shirt down and stumbled out to the living room, where the two 'eggs' took up more than half of the cramped space. She deftly avoided tripping over the mess of tubes and wires snaking their way to the powered of the two eggs. It was lit up like an arcade cabinet and bathed the otherwise dark room in neon.

  Tara affectionately rubbed the smooth white plastic of the egg's shell as she passed by, "Mornin' Shells."

  At least the new coffee machine thingy had worked. The apartment smelled of freshly roasted beans and the final drops of coffee were spilling into their glass vessel. She poured the entire thing into an enormous stainless steel thermos, then dumped a tablespoon of sugar into it before filling the remaining inch of space with hazelnut creamer. The coffee blossomed with roiling clouds of white before settling into a light brown.

  As she drank from it, she scrolled through her meal delivery app. She had bought a countertop toaster oven to cook with after her roommate had destroyed their range oven, but without Shelby there to guilt her and prod her into 'saving money' and 'eating healthy' she had quickly devolved to ordering delivery for every meal.

  I was only doing it for Shells anyways...

  Shelby had been living with Tara since their freshman year of college, where they were assigned to be dormmates. Shelby was a scholarship student, but not on a full-ride. As a result, she was was always scrimping and saving by doing things like eating the cheapest possible ramen, or making sandwiches for the entire week. Tara went from finding it incredibly annoying to just another Shells quirk as they became friends. More than friends, really. Inseparable.

  Which was good, because Shelby was practically allergic to leaving their dorm. If Tara wasn't there to force her out into the world then... she wouldn't be trapped in a 148 cubic foot virtual reality prison egg. She probably would have missed a lot of fun events at the student union, too. The tradeoffs you make.

  The only place delivering at 5:36 AM was the 24-hour Taco Bell three blocks away, and Tara didn't think that her stomach could handle that on four hours of sleep. With a sigh, she turned off the rest of her alarms and set her phone down on the slightly heat-warped linoleum counter. Coffee would have to be enough for now.

  She still had about an hour before she needed to go catch her bus, so she turned on her computer and waited for the caffeine to kick in. Her Twitch inbox was overflowing. The circular red indicator over the mail icon read "1000+". Worse than I thought.

  She wrote a cross-post to explain why she was suddenly absent, or, rather, to delay really explaining. She probably couldn't get away with another day of letting her stream stagnate. She was dreading reading her statistics readout.

  Ugh. Not a total lie, at least. I did try to help, and Shells is family, right? Just missing one stream had cost her around $1700 in dropped subscriptions, and she wasn't going to be able to fulfill her media tour video quota, but that was just icing anyways. She flagged the dozens of dozens of fan messages to go back to tonight on stream, but some of the sponsor communiques were highlighted by an angry red 'priority' flag. Failing to fulfill their contract terms would make losing $1700 look like pocket change. Guess we'll be doing extra product talks tonight...

  She spent the next half hour writing simpering apologies to various corporate emails. They didn't need to know exactly what had happened, but she didn't feel like saying 'a sudden family emergency' was too much of a stretch. There. Get off my back, you freaks.

  With a stomach of coffee and a bonnet full of bees, Tara got dressed for a big day. She had an annoyingly late take-home final for her video production and engineering capstone, but she was planning on skipping it and figuring out a way to wriggle her way into a pity-pass. Somehow. If this didn't have to be a secret it would be a lot easier to use it to my advantage, Shells...

  She needed to be low key today. Inconspicuous, even. That disqualified a lot of her usual clothes. She had a modest athleisure set that was 90% heather gray. The neon accents on the leggings could be hidden by her cutoffs, and... yes, her old denim jacket could hide the stripe running up the sides of her tank top. Wait, denim on denim...

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  On second thought, she went with running shorts. They weren't her favorite, but the plan was to not be noticed. Fit be damned. A tight bun and a baseball cap tied the bow on a very plain presentation, and Tara turned back and forth in front of her full-length mirror.

  "Perfect! I hardly recognize her!"

  She took a moment to pop in and see if Shelby was awake, but her stream window revealed nothing but a tangle of befurred arms and legs sprawled across a plain blue blanket. Tara listened intently and heard slow, steady breathing that was interspersed with squeaky murmurs.

  Tara whispered as quietly a she could, "Hey, Mr. AIDAN, you up?"

  The black glass sphere on the side table flashed orange as a flame came to life inside, "Ms. Tara. Hello. I'm afraid Ms. Shelby is currently sleeping."

  "I see that. I just wanted to check in..."

  "An admirable display of consideration."

  It turned out that AIDAN had a lot to say, but Tara excused herself and departed fifteen minutes later. She had a lot to think about on her bus ride. The early morning northern line was mostly empty, and the bus driver was still bleary eyed. Tara took a seat in the very back and pulled up her route map. These stupid tech campus jerks... Do I really have to transfer twice? She stared out the bus window at the orange juice glimmer of early sunrise, then bounced her head against the glass.

  Julian had been trying to get into the offices around 4 AM this week. Weekend. It's only been 2 days. His usual schedule was something like arriving at 11 AM and then waiting until his bosses left at 6 PM. He would usually mess around for a few more hours after that, playing games or working on personal projects. Now that he had to report for his entire, miniscule, team, he wanted to at least take a stab at a 8-to-5.

  Unfortunately, Vivensight was a global company, and his new supervisor lived in New York City. This unbearable man, a mixture of a lawyer and a Masters in Business Administration type, believed in rising with the sun and immediately beginning his work. His work entailed bothering Julian every 30 minutes with questions he could have answered with a search engine. Good for him, but have you considered that sunrise in New York is 3 AM here? No, of course you haven't. If you had a shred of empathy you wouldn't be in charge of other human lives at this stupid company.

  It didn't matter anyways. A group of scandal chasing reporters had taken to camping out in front of Stormsys' main office on The Campus and they had ambushed Julian yesterday. He managed to slip inside without saying too much, but he was chagrined to see himself on the front page of a dozen different online periodicals.

  Top Developer Denies Wrongdoing in Videogame Manslaughter Catastrophe.

  If he wasn't so... busy? burnt out? tired of his own existence... he would probably spend every waking moment trying to point out what was wrong about the coverage he was getting, but instead he was camped out in his car, summoning the willpower to clock in. He drank the last of his terrible convenience store coffee, rolled down his windows and ushered out lingering wisps of vapor.

  He didn't intend to be ambushed again today. Plus, he had massively overslept, and, as a bonus, many of the bloodthirsty reporters were languishing in the early dawn, sapped of their energy. Better sneak in the back anyways, I'm not getting yelled at for three hours again.

  By tomorrow this would be a non-issue. He planned on setting up a secure personal connection so that he could work from home. Management usually frowned upon, or actively persecuted, remote connections. Well, if they felt so strongly about it then they shouldn't have fired the team that enforced that policy. The team he had selected to maintain the game servers were competent, but competent engineers were, as a rule, huge fans of reducing work. Lazy, some might say. For example, they were big fans of eliminating the two hour commute to this idiotic campus.

  Hell, if I had the server rooms to myself then I might actually want to come in. Time would tell, he supposed. Okay, enough stalling. Lets go put out some fires. He exited his car, crouched behind a row of neatly trimmed shrubs to avoid media detection, and slipped between two of the glossy, white-and-blue buildings to access a maintenance entrance. Why did Julian Soon know about this unassuming door? It was a well kept secret that the hallway coming out of the service elevator bypassed the front desk and many of the glass walled offices his former supervisors dwelled in.

  As he badged in to the poorly lit, unassuming greige door, a small hand reached out from his blind spot and slammed it back closed. He flinched. Shit! No front door, no security. He whirled on his assailant with his hands raised. He took on a stance that looked halfway between inexperienced martial arts student and kitten who has been surprised. He backed up against the door, but deflated when he saw that he was about to be harassed by a woman who was maybe 5 feet tall and probably weighed less than his mattress.

  He snapped at her, "What the hell are you doing? I'm calling the cops."

  She kept her hand on the door, "No you aren't. You're J. Soon, right? Current head of Starchaser?"

  "I'm not answering any more of your questions. Get lost. If you want to talk to someone, call Vivensight's media relations offices," He crossed his arms, "get out of my way."

  "No," she said, and leaned her entire body against the door, "You're the ones who trapped my friend in your little game. I'm not going anywhere."

  Oh... this woman is about to shoot me. A vigilante. He sunk back a few steps, getting ready to sprint back down the alleyway he had entered through. He visually scanned her. I don't see a weapon...

  "Relax, you clown. I'm here to help you," the woman huffed.

  "What? Are you an idiot?" Julian's upper lip curled back in disdain. This is even worse than a vigilante...

  "Oh my god," Tara rolled her eyes, "You're the worst, huh? Can you just listen for a second?"

  Julian glanced down at his watch. Just before 8... if I scream loud enough there should be someone around... Maybe a janitor?

  Tara reached out and jabbed him on the shoulder, "I know there's someone who is still awake in your game. I can talk to them. Let. me. help. you."

  Julian's back went painfully rigid. His brain completely stopped working. Her jaw was set, and her lips were pressed into a firm line. Something dangerous burned away behind her eyes, which were locked on him. After a tense handful of seconds he finally nodded once, said "Okay. Get inside," and swiped his ID a second time.

  End of Patch 1.3