Read The NextWorld 02: Spawn Point for Free Online Page A

there. I vow right then to never let another NPC fall. It's a foolish, naive promise, one I know that's impossible for me to keep, yet it's all I have. It's all I can offer. The past is gone, written in code, but the future scrolls ahead of me. I have to be in control of something.
    There's a tapping above us that breaks the silence.
    “Rain,” Cyren says when she sees my confusion.
    I look up at the stonework of the ceiling. Above that are the grains of sand that cover the desert zone. Above that are the clouds in the sky that cover all of DangerWar 2.
    I've never seen a real sky before. My dad always promised to take me on a tour of the upper levels of our tower, but we never found the time. Work and school and the growing distance between us got in the way. It doesn't matter. I doubt it's as beautiful as a virtual sky, even during a storm. In this world, everything is meticulously crafted, shaped, and reworked until every last detail is exactly what the designer pictured in their imagination. This is better than the “real world.”
    But the real world is still there.
    I sit down on the stone bench along one wall and open my message screen. The most recent attempts to contact me are from my father. It surprises me. Even if someone within the government alerted him that I fell into the log-out loop, that I was trapped in a coma state, I can't imagine him caring. It would be no different than me being “trapped” inside the game. It changes nothing for him. In the real world I'm a body. A hunk of flesh lying in an E-Womb.
    I try to push away the painful thoughts and mindlessly scroll through the endless list of message requests. I smile as I realize ninety percent of them are from Xen and Raev. Of course they are. I choose “Delete All” and select “New Connection.”
    It takes a few seconds before the screen opens in front of me, but instead of Xen's smiling face, the image on the screen wobbles for a second before dissolving into monochromatic static. Ones and Zeros scroll down the screen, separated by black and white pixels. I swipe at it, but my gestures aren't activating any commands.
    The civilians all scream at the same time, “Turn it off!”
    I keep swiping my hands at the screen, but it retracts from my grasp and explodes into a cloud of digital noise.
    “What's happening?” I ask as panic tries to collapse my chest.
    “The firewall is down!”
    I stand up, but I don't know what to do.
    “How did that happen?”
    The civilians are flipping through pages, scanning each line of code at lightning fast speeds.
    “The spawn point. It forced the firewall to shut down so that it could slip you back into the game.”
    I look over to Cyren. She appears frozen next to me, her body unable to react to the news.
    “What was the firewall protecting us from?” I ask her, reaching out and touching her arm. “What else got through?”
    As soon as I touch her, she jerks, catching up to the present. She leaps to her feet and rushes to the door, throwing it open and running down the halls of the underground labyrinth as fast as she can. I follow her, but by the time I catch up to her, she's outside the hidden entrance to the labyrinth, standing in the cold sand of the desert night, helplessly staring upward.
    “What are you doing?” I yell over the pounding rain and howling winds. “We shouldn't be outside. The monsters could-”
    The rain comes to a sudden stop. The clouds twitch, turning from a gray mist to flashing, monochromatic static.
    “What is happening?” I ask.
    Cyren is silent as we watch the static spread out. Black and white pixels flash on and off randomly, like the entire game is glitching. I glance at Cyren's face. The hyper strobe effect of the sky is bouncing off her porcelain skin. Her contemplation is stoic as she peers upward, but there's a look in her eyes that I can't quite place. It's like she's struggling against another emotion, fighting against an overwhelming feeling that's threatening