For now though, I had more pressing matters than figuring out whether the universe personally disliked me.
Like water.
I turned on every tap in the apartment.
The kitchen sink first, then the bathroom. I filled the kettle, several empty bottles, a stock pot that hadn't seen actual cooking in months, and eventually the plastic bucket I normally used for mopping.
It looked ridiculous. That didn't matter.
The government hadn't said the water supply was going to stop, but that was the problem with infrastructure. Nobody really thought about it until it wasn't there anymore. There were thousands of people sitting somewhere behind those conveniences, doing jobs you never thought about because they were doing them properly.
If enough of those people stopped going to work tomorrow...
I looked at the running tap.
"...Yeah."
Better to waste some containers now.
I checked my phone again while they filled.
The reservist group chat was moving so fast that reading from the beginning was pointless.
Anyone got through to hotline?
No.
My unit says standby first.
Which unit?
Bro m tellin u, guon side says nt t move yt
Screenshot?
[Image]
My side still says report.
Trains still running?
Not sure.
DON'T TAKE THE TRAIN
why
Some guy got bitten at Central
Fake news?
It's on fucking TV.
Then someone sent a video. I didn't open it. I'd seen enough videos tonight. More interestingly, one of the messages had come from a number I recognised.
Our reservist platoon commander.
All personnel under this group are to remain contactable. Do not attempt independent movement if your route is unsafe. Await confirmation of reporting instructions.
...At least I wasn't imagining the contradiction.
I replied with a simple acknowledgement and put my phone down.
I closed the tap. My bathroom now contained enough water to make future me slightly less miserable.
Good. Next. I pulled my old military field pack from the storage cabinet. It smelled exactly the same as I remembered. Fabric, dust and the faint scent of something military that seemed impossible to wash out no matter how many years passed. Inside were a few things I had never bothered removing after my last reservist cycle.
Poncho. Torch. Spare batteries. A small first-aid pouch. Utility cord. Work gloves. There was no rifle, obviously. These were kept in the armskotes of Eden army camps across the island. That would have been useful. Unfortunately unlike countries like the States, the government of Eden had generally taken the position that civilians shouldn't keep weaponry in their apartments. Even oriental swords like shinken-style katanas were classified as Controlled Bladed Weapons by Eden customs. You needed paperwork. Tons of them; the sword's certificate, reason for ownership, intended storage location, and proof that it would be kept securely. Even past that, a customs officer or licensing assessor would have to conduct an interview or inspection before approving ownership. Public carrying would remain prohibited except under a specific transport exemption, such as taking it directly to a martial-arts event, exhibition, licensed dealer or residence.
The States believed in a fundamental value of freedom, which had always given them an edge in apocalyptic movies. Here, we didn't have such a luxury.
I settled for my entrenching tool. It was basically a folding shovel. Heavy enough to hurt. Short enough to use indoors. More importantly, it meant I didn't have to get within biting distance while holding a kitchen knife like an idiot.
I unfolded it. Stared at it, then folded it again.
"...I'm not fighting them." Just establishing that.
I knew how to fire a rifle, and some basic CQC. I also had experience with wilderness survival. Once spent several days sleeping outdoors with every fucking insect in Eden crawling up my ass. But zombies man? You needed to experience what it was like seeing a zombie, and fighting for your life to get it. The smartest fight was the one you didn't have to fight.
Damn. That sounded like wisdom. It's also the kind of wisdom cowards probably came up with.
I was comfortable with both interpretations.
The next half hour passed strangely.
The world was ending.
But inside my apartment, very little happened. Outside, things were less normal.
Sirens came and went. Occasionally someone screamed. Once, there was a loud crash somewhere beyond the other blocks, followed by smoke rising between the buildings. The news advised everyone to stay indoors. Naturally, the police hotline must surely be overloaded.
Emergency shelters were being activated in some districts but not others.
Military vehicles had appeared on several major roads. There were rumours everywhere online. Some said the infection took minutes. Others said hours. Someone claimed infected people could climb walls. There's also claims that they could use weapons.
A third person posted that drinking salt water prevented infection.
That post already had twenty thousand shares.
Everyone's panicking.
Tons of hoaxes like these were spreading, and for good reason. Panic was contagious.
I closed the social media feed. If something looked dramatic enough, people would share it first and think later. Normally the worst result was your aunt forwarding nonsense into the family group chat. Now bad information could get someone killed.
I opened the building residents' chat instead. That wasn't much better.
DO NOT GO DOWNSTAIRS
There are sick people at Lobby A
Call the police!!!!
We already called
Anyone know if lifts are shut?
Management disable the lift!!
My mother is downstairs please help
Stop opening doors
WHO IS SCREAMING ON FLOOR 13
I stopped scrolling.
Floor thirteen.
The high-school girl from earlier had stayed inside the lift after I got off.
Had she been going there?
Maybe.
There were hundreds of people in this block.
Could be anyone. That fleeting interest was gone as I scrolled through the moving chat.
Another message appeared.
Something is in stairwell B
Wonderful.
I got up.
Then immediately wondered why I had gotten up.
What exactly was I planning to do?
Go investigate?
No. Absolutely not.
I went to the door instead and checked the peephole.
Empty corridor.
Good.
I moved the shoe cabinet slightly closer to the entrance.
Not enough to block the door. Just enough that I could push it over if necessary. The fire escape was at the opposite end of the corridor. If something entered from there, I would hear it.
Probably.
That word was beginning to appear too often in my thoughts.
I returned to the living room.
Sat down.
Stood up again.
"...Status Window."
Nothing.
I waited.
"Inventory."
Still nothing.
I felt stupid. But only a little.
Considering what had happened tonight, a magic system was no longer significantly more unreasonable than everything else.
Unfortunately, the universe had apparently decided zombies were realistic enough while leaving the useful fictional elements behind.
I sat down again.
Then someone started pounding on my door.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
I nearly fell off the couch.
"Fuck!"
BANG!
"Mister!"
A girl's voice.
"Mister! Please!"
I froze.
I knew that voice.
The lift.
The high-school girl.
For a second, every survival instinct in my body gave me the same recommendation.
Don't open it.
There were zombies outside.
People could be bitten.
Opening doors during a zombie apocalypse was famously associated with negative outcomes.
"Mister!"
Another sound came from the corridor.
A crash.
Then a scream.
I was already moving before I had finished arguing with myself.
"Shit, shit..."
I grabbed the folding shovel.
The peephole showed her standing directly outside.
Same school uniform.
Same girl.
Her face was pale. Strands of hair stuck to her forehead from sweat.
There was no visible blood.
Behind her, near the stairwell—
someone stumbled into view.
A woman.
Bare feet.
Blood across one side of her face.
The girl looked behind her.
Her expression changed.
"Oh god—"
I unlocked the chain.
Then stopped.
Am I seriously doing this?
Yes. Apparently.
There were times when self-preservation was common sense. There were also times when hiding behind common sense was just a convenient way to live with yourself afterward.
She was a kid.
Not technically, maybe. Sixteen? Seventeen?
Still. I couldn't watch her get eaten through a peephole and then spend the rest of however long I survived pretending that had been a reasonable decision.
I opened the door.
"Inside!" She didn't need convincing. I grabbed her arm and pulled.
The infected woman ran.
Fast. Much faster than she had been walking.
"Oh shit—"
I slammed the door.
Too late.
An arm came through the gap.
The infected woman shrieked.
Not like a person. Nothing in that sound resembled fear, pain or anger anymore.
Her fingers clawed blindly toward my face.
I pushed against the door.
The girl joined me.
"Push!"
"I am!"
The infected woman was stronger than she looked.
Or maybe adrenaline simply made normal people terrifying.
Her shoulder forced itself further through.
Teeth snapped centimetres from my hand.
I recoiled. This was a fucking bad idea.
The pressure changed.
The door opened another few centimetres.
"NO—!"
I swung the shovel.
The edge struck her forehead. A horrible impact travelled through the handle.
She didn't stop.
I hit her again.
This time her head snapped sideways.
Blood splattered against the doorframe.
Still moving.
My stomach turned.
I'd hit people before.
Sparring.
Training.
Stupid fights when I was younger.
This was different.
There was something deeply wrong with striking a human face and feeling nothing in return except the desire to hit it harder before it bit you.
The girl screamed.
The infected woman's hand caught my shirt.
I lost balance.
The door opened.
She fell through.
On top of me.
My mind turned at top speed.
Everything happened very quickly after that.
The shovel disappeared somewhere beside the cabinet.
My back hit the floor.
Her face was above mine.
Blood dripped onto my cheek.
I shoved my forearm against her throat.
Her teeth snapped.
Once.
Twice.
Too close.
Far too fucking close.
"GET HER OFF!"
The high-school girl grabbed the woman's shoulder.
It did almost nothing.
These things were insanely strong.
"GRAAAARRH!!" The girl was slammed to the wall, and shortly fell to the floor limply.
I tried rolling.
Couldn't.
The infected woman's fingers dug into my arm.
My strength was disappearing much faster than I expected.
There was a lesson there somewhere about gym memberships.
Assuming I survived long enough to appreciate it.
The zombie's mouth lowered.
I turned my face away.
I'm going to get bitten.
That thought was surprisingly calm.
Not because I was calm.
My entire body was shaking.
But fear eventually became too large for panic to properly express.
I'm actually going to fucking die here.
Really?
That was it?
Revolving memories flashed past my mind.
Mom...
The zombie's teeth brushed my sleeve.
Something appeared in front of my eyes.
[CRITICAL CONDITION DETECTED.]
I snapped out of that brief reverie.
"...What?"
The zombie continued trying to eat me.
Right.
Hallucinations later.
I pushed harder.
Another message appeared.
[Compatibility confirmed.]
Pain exploded behind my eyes.
"AH—!"
For half a second, my grip weakened.
The zombie lunged.
Then the world froze.
Not actually.
It simply felt that way.
Blue interfaces filled my vision.
Menus I recognised.
Icons I had spent years staring at.
Most were dark.
Locked.
Unavailable.
Only one button glowed.
[TUTORIAL RECRUITMENT AVAILABLE]
[Emergency deployment recommended.]
I stared at the message while the still form of the zombie was still on top of me, its ravenous and sharp fangs about to chew through my arm.
"You THINK?!" I hit it.
Anything.
Everything.
"YES!"
A second passed.
In the next moment—
—The light collapsed inward. Something hit the floor. Not hard. A boot. Then another. A woman materialised between blue fragments of light as though reality had loaded her one piece at a time.
Black combat boots hit the floor first.
Then dark shorts beneath an armoured, black fit, practical rather than flashy, with reinforced plating around the shoulders and ribs.
A compact chest rig sat tight against her torso, lined with spare magazines and small utility pouches. Her thighs had straps clipped with more pouches. Everything looked worn-in, used, like equipment of a combat veteran.
And she came prepared for combat.
The new presence carried a mean-looking handgun, all hard edges and matte-black metal. A short set of stamped initials sat near the slide, marking its make.
Short brown hair in a bob cut, framing a youthful face I recognised immediately. Sharp brown eyes took in the room in an instant, alert without looking panicked.
...No fucking way.
This sudden manifestation of a person froze my thoughts.
There was no time.
The woman looked down.
At me.
At the zombie.
Her eyes widened slightly.
"Doctor?"
Then she fired once.
BANG!
The sound inside an apartment was deafening.
My ears rang.
The zombie's head snapped backward. The body collapsed on top of me.
"GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!"
"Doctor."
"IT'S ON ME!"
"I can see that."
She grabbed the corpse by the collar and threw it aside.
The body struck the wall beside my shoe cabinet.
I scrambled backward until my spine hit the living-room partition.
My hands immediately went over my arms.
No bite.
No bite.
No—
Blood.
There was blood on my sleeve.
"Fuck."
"Doctor, don't move."
"That's blood."
"I know."
"That's infected blood."
"I don't know what that means."
"That's worse!"
She grabbed my wrist.
I nearly hit her.
Then stopped.
The woman crouched in front of me.
I knew her face.
Everyone who had played Cyber World Online knew her face.
She was practically impossible not to know.
The translucent screen before me spelt out her name and rarity.
Mira ★★★
The tutorial NPC character every new account encountered at the start of the game.
Former security officer of Arcology Nine.
Tutorial companion.
The character who taught players how to shoot, dodge, use cover and deploy skills before they went off pulling for their first roster of characters.
I skipped the tutorial and immediately used a five-star I pulled.
No one went through the tutorial properly if you were already familiar with basic game mechanics. And her skillset wasn't anything showy either.
This very tutorial NPC, Mira rolled up my sleeve.
"Skin isn't broken."
"...What?"
"The blood is external."
She examined my arm more closely.
"No wounds."
I stared at her.
At the pistol.
At the body.
At the blue text still floating in my vision.
Then back at her.
"...Mira?" Her eyebrows drew together.
"Yes?"
"You..."
I pointed at her.
Very intelligent.
"You are Mira."
"I would hope so."
"No, I mean—" My voice disappeared.
What exactly did I mean?
You're fictional?
I played you on my computer?
I replaced you immediately when the gacha function was unlocked?
None of those seemed like an especially good introduction.
Mira studied me with increasing concern.
Then her expression changed.
"Doctor."
There it was again.
Not player.
Not stranger.
Doctor.
She knew me.
Or believed she knew me.
But there was no affection in the way she said it.
No instant devotion. Nothing remotely resembling the women in cheap isekai novels who saw the protagonist once and immediately began planning children. It sounded professional.
Familiar, somehow.
But guarded.
Like someone meeting a superior she'd worked with before under circumstances that made absolutely no sense.
Mira looked around my apartment.
Her eyes moved over the television.
The windows.
The furniture.
The air-conditioning unit.
The dead zombie.
"...Where are we?"
That question told me more than anything else had.
She didn't know.
I swallowed.
"Eden."
No reaction.
"Lincol District."
Still nothing.
I tried something else.
"For now, let's just say we're on a different continent."
Mira went completely still.
The room became quiet except for the news playing from my computer.
She slowly turned toward me.
"What did you say?"
"..."
"Doctor."
"...Yeah."
"What happened?" Her voice had changed.
Still calm. But tighter. And I realised something rather obvious then.
To me, Cyber World Online had been a game.
To her—
assuming this wasn't some elaborate hallucination caused by zombie blood—
it had been her life.
Her city.
Her friends.
Her problems.
...Her death.
She wasn't a character who had suddenly gained memories.
She remembered being there.
I suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable explaining that her entire universe had existed inside my PC until about an hour ago.
"That's..." I rubbed the back of my neck.
"...a little complicated. For now... let's deal with the immediate situation first."
Only after Mira dragged the corpse off me did I notice the girl.
She was on the floor near the kitchen entrance.
Completely still.
For one horrible second, I thought she was dead.
"...Shit."
I pushed myself up too quickly and nearly slipped on the blood.
Mira caught my shoulder.
"Doctor."
"...The girl."
"I see her."
We crossed the room.
She had apparently gone down sometime during the struggle. There was a small red mark near her temple where she'd struck the edge of the cabinet, but no obvious bleeding beyond that. Mira crouched beside her and pressed two fingers against her neck.
I quietly watched in a daze. A fictional character tending to a high school girl.
"Pulse." She assured.
I exhaled.
"Thank god."
"Breathing normally."
"Also good."
Mira glanced at me.
"You don't sound particularly calm."
"...I almost got eaten thirty seconds ago."
"..." Mira seemed to muse over what I just spoke.
My thoughts ran a little colder. Did I play out my cards too much?
In the first place, despite being a tutorial character, Mira, in the setting of Cyber World Online was...
"Fair." Her eyes returned to the girl in a prone position.
For some reason, I'd expected her mannerisms to feel more... game-like.
A canned response.
A tutorial line.
Yet here she was, no different from a real person.
Mira carefully rolled the girl onto her side.
"She likely struck her head when she fell."
"Is that bad?"
"It can be."
Not reassuring.
"How bad?"
"I'd prefer to examine her properly before guessing."
Right. Of course.
I looked toward the front door. The dead infected woman was slumped against the wall where Mira had thrown her.
Part of me still expected her to get back up.
Nothing.
Good.
I stepped over, shut the door properly, then locked it again.
Deadbolt.
Chain.
I stared at the lock for a second longer than necessary.
Then checked it again.
Mira watched me.
"...Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"You've checked that three times."
"I know."
A pause.
"Is that normal?"
"Tonight?"
I looked at the corpse.
"Probably."
She didn't argue.
I appreciated that.
For now, the high-school girl was breathing, unconscious and apparently not bitten.
That moved her slightly lower on the emergency list.
Slightly.
I went back to Mira.
"...Uhh... ...So... Can you tell if she's infected?"
Mira's expression shifted.
"Infected with what?"
I stopped.
Right.
She didn't know.
Of course she didn't. I had been so busy trying not to die that I had almost forgotten the much larger problem standing in my living room.
Mira.
The Mira.
Three-star NPC.
Former security officer of Arcology Nine.
Tutorial companion.
No, an objectively beautiful woman was kneeling on my floor.
In Eden.
Checking the pulse of an unconscious schoolgirl.
Even if I'm no gynophobe, this sudden, high-tension encounter still leaves me slightly rattled.
My eyes drifted again along with my thoughts, and Mira noticed immediately.
"Did you notice something wrong?"
"...Nothing."
"Doctor."
There it is again, doctor. Her perception of me... really don't seem any different from the game.
"No, sorry, actually it's definitely something. I just don't know which part to explain first."
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
That was familiar.
I'd seen that expression in cutscenes.
Usually right before she accused someone of hiding information.
Apparently that hadn't changed. Good to know.
Mira looked around the apartment.
Her gaze moved across my apartment again.
Then back to me.
"Primitive equipment. Doesn't seem to be Tesillite, or Arcology Nine. ...Where exactly are we?"
I rubbed the back of my neck.
"This is going to sound strange."
"Doctor."
"Yeah?"
"There's a corpse by your door, an unconscious civilian on your floor, and I don't recognise anything outside that window."
Her voice remained calm.
Somehow that made the sentence worse.
"I think we're already past strange."
...She's really calm.
I glanced at the unconscious girl.
At least she couldn't hear this part yet.
Probably for the best.
"I'm sorry, I lied. This isn't a different continent."
"What... do you mean?"
"This world... isn't Cyverse."
Mira went completely still.
For the first time since appearing, her composure cracked.
Only slightly. But enough.
"What did you say?"
I suddenly remembered part of Mira's story.
Not much. But just enough.
To me, Cyber World Online had been a game.
To her, it had been home.
Arcology Nine.
The Blackout.
Her brother.
Her unit.
The people she'd known.
All the things I had half-read while clicking through the tutorial missions because I wanted the clear rewards.
"...Yeah." I had to remind myself that I was talking to a real person.
I sat down slowly.
"Maybe we should start from the beginning."
Mira remained beside the unconscious girl.
She didn't sit.
"Doctor."
Her tone changed.
Less professional now.
More guarded.
"What happened to our world?"
I opened my mouth.
Then closed it.
Wonderful.
Somewhere out there was probably a player who could explain CWO's lore from memory down to the names of minor political factions. And the person currently responsible for explaining her situation had clicked SKIP because he wanted the tutorial rewards.
I sighed.
How do I even start...