On Monday, Owen discovered there was one thing in the world he'd forgotten more completely than his own father's laugh, and it was his locker combination.
He stood in front of locker 1148 in the north hallway of Harbor View High School at 7:52 AM and tried every three-number sequence he could think of. His birthday. Maddie's birthday. The Gnasher's respawn window. The Sunken Quarry spawn timer. The level requirement for every hidden form in the Riverlands, in order.
I know the exact second a clay monster surfaces under a crane chain in a video game, he thought, and I do not know how to open a metal box I opened every day for four years.
"Bro," said Theo, appearing at his shoulder. "It's 22-8-14."
"How do you know my locker combination?"
"Because you forget it every Monday. You've literally been forgetting it since sophomore year." Theo leaned on the next locker and grinned. He looked tired. He also looked about twenty times more awake than he had in Vael at forty-one percent. "Also, hey, you're famous."
"I'm not famous."
"You're a clip," said Theo, which was worse.
That morning's walk had gone better. His father had been waiting by the front door at 6:29, already in the CALLERY jacket, holding a travel mug of coffee and an expression of deep martyrdom.
"Again?" Rick had said.
"Every day. That's how it works."
"Says who?"
"Says your son, who loves you."
His dad had made a face like he'd bitten a lemon and also like he was trying not to smile, and they'd done three blocks of mailbox intervals, and when they came to the footbridge over the drainage creek, his dad had climbed the steps slowly, one hand on the rail, and stopped at the top to look at the water for a while, like he was just enjoying the view. Owen had stood next to him and enjoyed the view too, and they hadn't talked about it.
Soon, he'd told himself. You're getting him to a doctor. Soon.
Harbor View High School on the Monday after launch was a war zone.
Every third kid in the hallway was talking about Vael Online. The ones who'd gotten headsets for Christmas were telling the ones who hadn't. Somebody had printed out the xXDarkReaperXx meme and taped it to the vending machine: the drowned avatar in the mill race, with the caption NO THOUGHTS. ONLY WHEEL. Three guys from the soccer team were having a loud argument about whether Rangers were overpowered. They weren't. They would be in month four. Owen didn't say anything.
In homeroom, a kid named Jaden Price, who had never spoken to Owen in four years of school, turned around in his seat with his phone held out.
"Yo. Callery. Is this you?"
It was the clip.
Nilo Faust's stream, cut down to fifty seconds. Orange armor. The dead Gnasher in the water. And Rook, sitting on a mud hump, looking up with an expression that, Owen now realized, was basically his real face with a slightly sharper jaw. He'd adjusted the character creator for six seconds on launch morning. In his first life, he'd spent an hour on it and made a guy who looked like a shampoo commercial. This time he'd been in a hurry.
The caption said RAT KING STOLEN BY RANDOM LV6 (THE REEDS DON'T SLOW HIM???). It had 2.1 million views.
"No," said Owen.
"It literally has your face."
"Lots of people have this face."
"It says 'Rook.' You've drawn a rook on every binder since seventh grade."
"That's a coincidence."
Jaden squinted at him. "Bro, how did you know the reeds thing?"
"Some guy's video," said Owen, and from the next desk, Theo made a noise like a balloon losing air.
Chemistry was fourth period.
Mrs. Okonkwo was a short, fierce woman with reading glasses on a beaded chain who had been teaching chemistry at Harbor View for twenty-six years and had, in that time, developed the ability to tell exactly which of her students had done the reading by the way they sat down. She looked at Owen as he came in and visibly lowered her expectations.
She handed back Friday's quiz. Owen turned it over.
D+. In red pen at the top: Owen. You're better than this. See me?
He remembered this quiz. Not the questions. The feeling. In his first life he'd crumpled it up and shoved it into his bag and never gone to see her, and he'd squeaked through with a D-minus in June, and taken one semester of chemistry at community college the next year and failed it outright, and that had been the end of college.
He looked at the D+ for a long moment.
Mrs. Okonkwo was doing ions today. She wrote Na⁺ and K⁺ on the board and asked the class, in the tone of a woman who had asked this question for twenty-six years and expected silence, why the human body needed both, and what happened when you sweated.
Owen put his hand up.
The room went quiet in a way that was not entirely flattering.
"Mr. Callery," said Mrs. Okonkwo, slowly.
"You lose sodium and potassium in sweat," Owen said. "And water. If you only drink plain water after, you dilute the sodium you've got left, and your cells don't fire right. That's why you put a pinch of salt in. Potassium helps your muscles contract. And your heart." He stopped. "My mom's an ER nurse. She made me a drink."
Mrs. Okonkwo looked at him over the top of her glasses for about three seconds.
"...That's right," she said. "Mostly. We'll be talking about what 'fire right' means in very much detail." She turned back to the board. Then, without turning around: "Tutoring's Thursdays at three."
"I'll be there," Owen said.
She did turn around, then. Just to look at him.
His sister ambushed him at 3:40.
He came in through the kitchen door with his backpack on one shoulder, and Maddie was sitting at the kitchen table with her hands folded on top of a stapled document, like a lawyer waiting to begin a deposition. She had changed into her nicest sweater. She had a pen.
"Sit down," she said.
Owen sat down.
She slid the document across the table. The cover page said, in a font she'd clearly spent a long time choosing:
TWELVE REASONS WHY MADELINE CALLERY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO PLAY VAEL ONLINE
(A Presentation)
He turned the page.
1. I am responsible. (See: hamster, 2023–2025. He died of OLD AGE.)
2. I will not touch your stuff.
3. I will do my homework FIRST.
4. It is educational. There is a map. Maps are geography.
5. You are always in your room anyway so it is not like I'm taking you away from anything.
6. Everyone in my grade is talking about it. (Not actually everyone. But Priya's cousin.)
7. Theo plays and he is literally Theo.
8. I already know what class I want.
9. I will be very quiet.
10. You can teach me. You are good at it. (I think.)
12. You never let me do anything with you anymore and I miss you.
He read number twelve twice.
In his first life, she'd had this list. Or something like it. He didn't remember a stapled presentation, but he remembered a Monday after launch, and his sister standing in the doorway of his room, and him not taking off the headset. It's not for kids, Mads. Go away. She'd gone. He hadn't thought about it again for years. She got her own headset at fourteen, from Dad, played alone for a month, and messaged Owen once, asking for help with a quest. He'd been in a raid. busy. She'd quit a week later.
This page reused material from NovelPhoenix without the author's permission. The author's publication is supported when readers read it there.
Thirteen years after that, at her wedding, he'd shown up late with his tie in his pocket.
"Number five's a little mean," he said, when he could talk.
"Number five is true."
"Yeah," said Owen. "It is."
Maddie looked at him. She'd been ready for a fight. She had a pen and everything.
"There's a problem," he said. "The terms of service say thirteen and up. That's not me. That's the company. If you're under thirteen and they catch you, they ban the whole account, and Mom and Dad get a letter, and it's a whole thing."
Her face started to fall.
"So you're going to have to wait," Owen said, "until April fourth."
She stared at him.
"Your birthday," he said. "Three weeks. If Mom and Dad say yes, you make your character on the morning of April fourth and I take you through the starting zone myself. Every quest. I'll show you the reeds. There's a thing with a ring."
"...Seriously?"
"Seriously. But it has to go through Mom and Dad."
His sister looked at him for a long moment. Then she took the pen, flipped to the last page, and wrote something in very small letters, and slid it back across. Under (A Presentation), she'd added: Approved by OWEN.
"That's not legally binding," he said.
"It is now," said Maddie.
It became legally binding at dinner.
It was chicken and rice and green beans, and his mother was on her second day off and fully awake, and his father had come home from the shop with grease up to his elbows and been sent back out to the garage to wash it off, and by the time Maddie put her presentation on the table between the salt and the green beans, Owen had already decided this was going to be the most important negotiation of his life. More important than the Iron Hollow bank deal in year eight. More important than the Gilded Ledger price war. He was going to run it like a raid.
"I have a proposal," he said.
Twenty minutes later, on the back of Maddie's presentation, in his mother's handwriting, because his mother had the best handwriting and also didn't trust anyone else's, there was a contract.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS — The Callery House, v11. Owen plays a max of 3 hours on school nights, done by 9:30. Lights out 10:30. On weekends: get up every hour, eat lunch with a person, be at dinner.
2. Owen gets a C or better in chemistry by the end of the term, or his hours are cut in half. (Mom.)
3. From April 4, Maddie plays 1 hour on school nights and 2 hours on weekends, only with Owen. Homework first. (Mom AND Dad.)
4. Everybody eats dinner at the table. That includes Dad. No eating in the truck. (Maddie. Amended by Owen.)
5. Owen and Dad walk at 6:30 every weekday morning.
6. Dad makes a doctor's appointment for a physical before summer. (Owen. Seconded by Mom.)
7. Everybody drinks water. (Mom. Non-negotiable.)
Clause six had been the hard part.
"I went last year," his dad had said.
"And he said walk," Owen had said. "So now we're walking. So you go back and tell him we walked, and he gives you a gold star, and he does a blood test."
"Why is my son negotiating my blood test at the dinner table?"
"Because you take antacids on the stairs," said his mother, very calmly, and the table had gone quiet, and his dad had looked at her, and she'd looked back, and something had passed between them that Owen didn't have the context for even after fourteen years.
"Before summer," his dad had said at last. "Fine."
Clause five got its own argument, but it was the fun kind.
"What do I get out of clause five?" his dad asked.
"You get to walk with me every morning."
"That's a punishment."
"It's a privilege," said Maddie. "I don't get to walk with him."
"You can have my spot."
"No," said Owen and his mother at the same time.
Everyone signed. Maddie insisted. His mother signed her full name. Maddie signed in cursive she'd clearly been practicing. Owen signed Owen Callery, and then, after a second, (Rook). His father took the pen, looked at the page for a long moment, and drew a small, excellent wrench.
"That's not a signature," said his mother.
"It's my mark. It's legally binding in the state of Washington."
"It is not."
"Ask any mechanic."
Maddie took the contract upstairs and stuck it to the fridge with four magnets, then came back down and moved it to the center of the fridge, then took a picture of it.
He logged in at 7:02.
[LATTICE OS v1.0.4]
[Calibrating... please lie still and breathe normally.]
[Baseline synchronization estimate: 48%]
And then, before the river came up, something new: a little panel with a gold border.
HOTFIX 1.0.4 — Notes• Login queue stability improvements.
• Fixed an issue where some players could become stuck in terrain near the Fenwild Islands.
• Harrowgate — Mill Race: The sluice wheel now checks Strength instead of Stamina.
• Reduced the respawn variance of some Rare creatures.
Owen read the third line four times.
He knew that change. Everyone who'd ever done the Mill Race knew that change. It was the reason his first-life guide had a big red warning at the top that said DO THIS BEFORE WEEK 2. Low-level players with no Strength suddenly couldn't turn the wheel, Reedwalker got rare overnight, and Iron Hollow started buying it from people who'd done the quest early.
It had come out in week two. Monday, March 23rd. He was almost sure.
A week early.
He lay very still on the dinosaur blanket and thought about that.
Maybe he was wrong about the date. He'd been wrong about the miller and about the pools; he could be wrong about this. Except he remembered sitting in his room in his first life, in week two, reading that patch note, and thinking, smugly, glad I already did that.
Or maybe two players had turned the sluice wheel with almost no Strength within a day of each other, and someone at Lattice had watched the numbers, and thought, huh. Maybe a clip with 2.1 million views, in which a Level 6 explained that the reeds didn't slow him, had sent a thousand people to the miller, and someone had panicked.
Or maybe the world just moved now. Maybe that was the price. He'd stepped back into the river, and the river noticed.
Respawn variance of some Rare creatures, he read again, and thought of Gnasher, at the east pools, not the north.
"Okay," he said out loud, to nobody. "Cool. Cool cool cool."
He got on with it, because there was a clock on the fridge now and it said 9:30.
The Exchange Board was in the middle of Market Street: a huge slate wall covered in pinned slips of paper, with a clerk behind a counter who took two percent of everything and looked like she enjoyed it. You could buy and sell with any player in Harrowgate without ever meeting them. You pinned your price, you went away, and the coins turned up in your bank. It was, in practice, the first stock market of Vael Online, and like every stock market, it was mostly full of idiots.
Owen was about to be one of the idiots. Or not.
He flicked through the listings until he found the Cairn Hills materials.
[Copper Bell] (Common, crafting material)
A small hand-forged bell from the Cairn Hills. Cairnfolk hang them on gates, doors and rams: "a ringing house is a living house."
Used in: Shepherd's Charm (Lv10), Bell-Ward (Lv15).
Vendor: 1c.
Copper Bells were going for three to five copper. Bellwether rams dropped them, along with mutton nobody wanted. Most people were selling them to vendors for a single copper because they took up bag space. In about two weeks, a patch would cut the ram's drop rate to almost nothing just as the Lv15 crafters found out they needed them, and the price would go up and up, to forty-five copper a bell. And then, two days after the peak, a Cairnfolk vendor would start selling them for two copper, and the price would drop off a cliff and land at zero.
In his first life, Owen had bought three hundred bells at thirty-eight copper the day before the vendor appeared. It had been the single most expensive mistake of his first year. Gilded Ledger had bought low and sold high, and then they'd been the ones who sold three hundred bells to him.
He had four silver and seventy-two copper from the quarry. He bought every bell on the board.
[Purchased: Copper Bell ×118 — 4s 31c (incl. 2% fee)]
Somewhere in the Harrowgate zone chat, which Owen usually kept muted:
[Zone] Ffffinch: who is buying all the bells lol[Zone] Tamsin_W: probably a bot
[Zone] Ffffinch: a bot with a rook avatar? lmao
[Zone] grumbleglove: wait isnt that the rat guy
Owen muted zone chat again.
He spent the rest of the evening in the Cairn Hills killing rams.
Bellwether rams were Level 8 to 11, big, shaggy and stupid, with a copper bell around the neck that rang every time they moved, so you always knew where one was. They charged in a straight line. They couldn't turn while they did it. If you stepped sideways at the right moment, the ram went past, skidded, and stood there for two seconds trying to remember what it was doing, and those two seconds were yours.
At forty-eight percent, Owen's sidestep was almost exactly on time. He'd step, hit it with Rising Cut while it was skidding, Back Step away when it shook its head, and wait for the next charge. Gnasher's Molar added three percent to his damage against Beasts, which meant nothing, and five percent chance to cause Bleed, which turned out to mean a lot, because a bleeding ram kept losing health while it ran.
It was soothing, in a way. Clean. The same dance over and over. Step, cut, step back, breathe.
He tried the Breath Guard once, on a Level 11 that had come at him from the side while he was looting. Rooted stance, blade across, a long breath out as the horns hit.
[Breath Guard (Imprecise): damage taken −15%]
About what the screen promised. He'd expected that. But for a split second, as he breathed out, the impact had felt softer, like the game was deciding something, and the number had flickered, and he'd almost seen it go a little lower.
Not yet, he thought. Fifty first. Then we find out.
He got twenty-two more bells from the rams, a bag full of mutton, and two-thirds of a level. At 8:02 and 9:01, he logged out, stood up, drank half a bottle, and logged back in. Neither break cost him anything. He could feel the drift trying to start around 9:15, a little stickiness in the sidestep, but it didn't get far.
At 9:28 he stood on a cairn on the highest hill and looked at the Riverlands. It was game-night now, the second night since launch. The river was a silver line in the dark, and Harrowgate's lanterns burned on its banks, and far off to the east, across the hills, on a ridge he knew very well, a single point of blue light glowed where the shrine was.
Not yet, he thought again. Not at forty-eight.
He logged out at 9:29. One minute early. He felt a bit smug about it.
[Session ended. Final SYNC: 47%.]
His phone buzzed on the nightstand while he was still taking the headset off.
In his first life, he'd deleted the Lattice Companion app on launch day because it kept telling him to drink water. This time he'd left it on, because it kept telling him to drink water.
LATTICE COMPANION — Session SummaryDuration: 2h 27m
Baseline in: 48% · Baseline out: 47%
Breaks: 2 ✓ · Hydration check-ins: 2 ✓
Physical adaptation: logged
Nice work, Rook! Wellness streak: 3 days.
Physical adaptation: logged.
He frowned at that line. He didn't remember it. Then again, he'd never looked. It was probably just the fitness-tracker stuff, heart rate and recovery and how many steps it thought you'd taken, packaged for their wellness dashboard. Lattice had a whole wellness branding thing in the first year, before the pod deals. Everyone had ignored it. He'd ignored it hardest.
Adaptation to what, he thought, briefly. Push-ups? Mom?
He put the phone face down and went to brush his teeth.
At 10:24, there was a knock on his door.
Maddie stood in the hallway in pajamas with cartoon owls on them, holding a photo of the contract on her phone, like she needed to show him evidence.
"Did you mean it?" she said. "The starting zone. Every quest."
"Every time," said Owen. "It's in the terms and conditions."
She nodded, very seriously, like a business partner. Then she said, "I already have a name."
"Yeah?"
"Magpie. Because they're smart, and they steal shiny things."
Magpie, he thought. She'd used that name in his first life too. For a month. He'd never once grouped with her.
"Let me guess," he said. "You want to be a Ranger."
Her eyes went huge. "How did you know?"
"Lucky guess," said Owen. "Go to bed, Magpie."
She went. He heard her whisper Magpie to herself all the way down the hall.
At 10:30 he turned off the light. He lay in the dark with his arms still sore from the bench and his head full of ram bells, patch notes, a slate wall in Market Street, and a contract on a fridge. In nineteen days, his sister would be thirteen. In fourteen, the bells would start to climb. In ten years and three months, something would happen to his dad in a parking lot, unless it didn't.
The map was wrong in places now. Fine.
He'd signed the terms anyway.