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Art3mis was right—for someone who had trained themselves to identify pop-culture icons from the ’70s and ’80s, this world was one huge distraction.

As we continued to follow Art3mis, she instructed us to split up and look inside each classroom we passed, to see if we could locate Andie Walsh.

I ran to the nearest door and glanced inside, then retreated as soon as I saw that it was an economics class being taught by Ben Stein, who was, of course, currently calling the roll.

“Adams, Adamly, Adamowsky, Adamson, Adler, Anderson? ” he said. “Anderson? ”

“Here! ” I heard Anderson shout as I turned away and hurried on to the next classroom.

It was the school’s computer room, and it was currently filled with student NPCs typing out their term papers on rows of ancient desktop computers. A sign posted above the chalkboard said HACKERS WILL BE EXPELLED, and that was one of the reasons I did a double-take a few seconds later, when I spotted the greatest fictional hacker of the ’80s, Bryce Lynch, sitting at one of the computers. Then I noticed that Bryce looked older than I remembered, and he wasn’t wearing his glasses. That finally made me realize that I was looking at Buck Ripley, a character in The Great Outdoors portrayed by Chris Young, the same actor who had played Bryce Lynch on Max Headroom a few years earlier. Even so, before I turned to leave, I silently saluted him, recalling the dark time during Halliday’s contest when I’d used the name Bryce Lynch as my fake identity, to avoid detection by IOI and the Sixers.

A bit farther down the hall, I peeked into the open door of an art classroom. At first I thought it was empty, but then I spotted Keith Nelson (Eric Stoltz’s character from Some Kind of Wonderful) standing at an easel near the back of the room, painting a portrait of Lea Thompson, aka Miss Amanda Jones, with the song “Brilliant Mind” by Furniture playing out of a jambox on the desk beside him. I stood there transfixed for a moment, after it occurred to me that I was watching the original Marty McFly paint a portrait of his mother. Then Art3mis shouted for me to keep up, so I hurried to catch up with her. We passed by the open doors of the school gym, and inside we could see a bunch of girls in blue leotards doing various gymnastics exercises. On the wall, I noticed a large banner that said GO MULES GO! I pointed it out to Art3mis.

“I thought it was the Shermer Bulldogs, ” I said.

“The football and wrestling teams are the Shermer Bulldogs, ” she said. “The basketball team is the Shermer Mules. See? ”

She pointed to a poster, announcing an upcoming away game, between the Shermer Mules and the Beacon Town Beavers.

Ahead of us, we found Shoto looking through another open doorway, into some sort of shop class, where dozens of male students were making identical ceramic elephant lamps. They lit up when the elephant’s trunk was pulled. But one of the boys couldn’t get his lamp to turn on, despite repeated attempts. When he turned around, we saw that it was Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall’s character in The Breakfast Club). Aech turned away to continue on to the next classroom, and I reluctantly followed her. Just before I lost sight of him, I saw Brian frown and cast a terrified glance toward his gruff-looking shop teacher.

We rounded another corner and Art3mis suddenly threw her arms out as she skidded to an abrupt halt, causing the rest of us to collide with her and one another. Once we’d regained our balance, Art3mis pointed up ahead. There was Andie Walsh, standing beside her open locker with an oddly dressed and extremely young Jon Cryer.

“There he is, ” she said. “Philip F. Dale. Better known as Duckie, aka the Duck Man. One of the most divisive and controversial characters ever to spring forth from John Hughes’s imagination. ”

“Oh, that dude, ” Aech said, rolling her eyes. “What do we want from him? Fashion advice? ”

Art3mis laughed and shook her head.

“Just trust me, OK? ” she replied. “I used to come to this place a lot. I’ve completed every single documented quest anchored here. A bunch of the older quests don’t have any developer credits in their colophon, so no one knows who created them. But there were always rumors that some of these quests were created by Kira and Ogden Morrow, including several of the Pretty in Pink quests. I never took them seriously, but now I’m thinking those rumors may have been true…. ”

We watched as Andie closed her locker and began to walk down the hall, Duckie buzzing around her like an insect.

I recited the clue printed on the Second Shard again in my head, trying to figure out why Art3mis had brought us here. Then I groaned and rolled my eyes.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me, ” I said. “The first line of the clue is a goddamn pun? ‘Recast the foul’? Meaning a ‘fowl, ’ like a waterfowl? ”

“Correct, ” Art3mis said, smiling at me. “More specifically…a duck! ”

She nodded toward Duckie, then drew her curved Elven sword from the scabbard on her back. Its blade sang like a giant tuning fork as she pulled it free.

“Arty, ” Aech said, “what the hell are you doing? ”

“Wait for it, ” she said, gripping the hilt of her sword with both hands. She stood there waiting as another warning bell rang. Andie bid Duckie a hasty farewell and scurried away from him. Duckie raised his voice and continued to shout at her, asking if he should make lunch reservations for them in the cafeteria, perhaps at a table by the window. Andie covered her face in embarrassment, then turned and continued to walk in the other direction.

“Um, listen, may I admire you again today? ” he shouted as Andie disappeared into one of the classrooms down the hall.

“Poor Duckie, ” Shoto whispered as we watched all of this go down.

“Poor Duckie? ” Art3mis repeated, aghast. “Don’t you mean poor Andie? She takes pity on the guy because she knows he’s struggling with his own sexual identity, and that he doesn’t have any other friends. And how does Duckie repay her sympathy and kindness? By ignoring her boundaries, hounding her twenty-four-seven, and humiliating her in public every chance he gets. And check out how he treats other women when Andie isn’t around…. ”

She turned and motioned back over at Duckie, who had just walked over to a pair of preppy-looking girls standing a few yards away from us.

“Ladies, ladies, ” we heard him say. “Listen, I may be able to work out a deal where either one or the both of you could be pregnant by the holidays. What do you—”

Before the Duck Man was able to finish his sentence, Art3mis ran over to him and swung her sword, lopping his head completely off at the neck.

“There can be only one! ” she shouted as Duckie’s head went flying, taking his blow-dried pompadour along with it. It bounced off a nearby locker with a loud metal clang before coming to rest on the waxed marble floor of the hallway, not far from his now-decapitated body. The preppy girls he’d been addressing a split second earlier screamed and scattered, along with the other student NPCs who had been lingering in the vicinity.

“Jesus Christ, Arty! ” Aech shouted. “You could’ve warned us first! ”

“Yeah, ” Shoto added, chuckling to himself. “Next time give us a heads-up! ”

Aech cut his laughter short by shoving his avatar into a wall.

I watched as Duckie’s head and body faded away, leaving behind the loot he’d been carrying—a few gold coins, his vintage thrift-store clothing, a bolo tie, and a pair of battered white wingtip shoes with buckles instead of laces.

Art3mis scooped up the shoes and the tie but didn’t bother with the clothes or the coins.

“Annoying dipshit, ” she said as she wiped Duckie’s blood off her blade and slid it back into its scabbard. “I never liked him. Or the generations of spineless tool bags who’ve rooted for Andie to end up with him. ”

“Hold the phone, ” Shoto said. “Are you telling me you’re on Team Blane? ”

“Of course not, ” Art3mis replied, looking mildly revolted. “Blane is even worse than Duckie. I never thought either one of them was a good match for Andie. And Kira Morrow held the same opinion…. ”

“OK…” Shoto said slowly. “But I still don’t understand why you decapitated Duckie. ”

“To ‘recast the foul, ’ ” she said. “And ‘restore his ending. ’ ”

“How are we supposed to restore the ending where Andie winds up with Duckie, when you just killed Duckie? ” I asked.

“I’ll show you, ” she said. “But we need to make one more stop first. ”

She took off running again, and since we really had no choice, Aech, Shoto, and I followed. After several more identical-looking hallways, Art3mis finally slid to a halt in front of a long row of orange lockers. One of these lockers had a warning scrawled across its door in black magic marker: TOUCH THIS LOCKER AND YOU DIE, FAG!

“Hey! ” I shouted. “Bender’s locker! ”

Aech nodded and folded her arms. “I always questioned his reasoning here, ” she said. “Don’t you think this homophobic graffiti would encourage people to mess with his locker rather than discourage them? Bender didn’t think things through! ”

“Yeah, ” Art3mis replied. “Lucky for us…”

She turned and grabbed a fire ax off the wall. She used it to smash open Bender’s combination lock, then gingerly opened the locker door and quickly yanked her hand clear. When the door popped open, a small guillotine slid down the length of its frame, chopping off the toe of a sneaker that was poking out of the bottom of the locker.

Art3mis dug through the locker’s bizarre contents until she finally found a crumpled brown paper bag. She opened it and pulled out another, even smaller paper bag, stained with what appeared to be French-fry grease. From inside that bag, she then withdrew a clear plastic sandwich bag, filled with a copious amount of marijuana.

Arty held up the bag of weed in her left hand and Duckie’s shoes in her right.

“We’ve got the magic herb and the magic slippers, ” Art3mis said. “Now it’s time for us to hit the city, baby. Dead-on. We have some drinks. A little nightlife. Some dancing…Let’s go! ”

She took off running again. We ran after her.

Once we made it back outside, Art3mis took us on a shortcut across the football field, and as we walked past one of the goal posts, we triggered another needle drop on the simulation’s soundtrack. It happened to be one of Aech’s all-time least-favorite songs—“Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds. She already looked as if her nerves were hanging by a thread, and this nearly pushed her over the edge.

“Oh, give me a fucking break! ” she cried, shouting to be heard over the opening of the song. “Seriously? Do all of us need to be here for this shit right now? ”

I gave her a playful shove forward, and we ran to catch up with Art3mis and Shoto. As we did, the song continued to play, and when it reached its crescendo, Aech mockingly raised her right fist to the sky. It made the rest of us crack up.

A few seconds later, Aech’s smile vanished.

“I’m getting a call, ” she said. “It’s Endira. I promised to check in. I gotta take this. Gimme one second. ”

Aech walked several yards away and turned her back to us before she answered the call. I caught a glimpse of the worried face of her fiancé e, Endira, in a vidfeed window in front of her. She was calling from their home in L. A., where she was still holding a vigil beside Aech’s sabotaged immersion vault. Aech muted their conversation, so we couldn’t hear what they were saying. But we didn’t need to. It was obvious that Endira was distraught and Aech was trying to calm her down.

Shoto sighed. “I know we don’t have time for this. But I’ve been dying to talk to Kiki too. ”

Art3mis looked thoughtful for a moment. Then she turned to me. “It won’t take all four of us to collect this shard, ” she said. “How about you and I keep moving and give Aech and Shoto a few minutes with their ladies? We can call them once we have it. ”

The prospect of being alone with Art3mis for the first time in years rendered me momentarily speechless. After a few seconds of awkward silence I finally blurted out a response.

“Sure, ” I said, as nonchalantly as I could. “That’s a great idea. And very thoughtful of you. ”

Art3mis nodded to Shoto, then tilted her head at me and gave me an odd grin. “OK, Z. Let’s go snag this thing. ”

Then she was gone, running down the street again. I sprinted to catch up with her. Then I continued to follow her for several blocks, into a section of the simulation where it was always night, and the season appeared to be set to sometime in the spring or early summer. We were still on the rich side of town, in another upscale neighborhood near the lake shore, on a street lined with large, expensive homes. And there appeared to be a wild party going on in every single one of them.

“Parents are in Europe, ” Art3mis said, pointing at one house, then another, and another. “Parents are in Europe. Parents are in Europe. All of the rich kids’ parents are in Europe. ”

The first house we passed on our left was one I recognized from Some Kind of Wonderful. It belonged to Craig Sheffer’s character, Hardy Jenns. I could see him inside, through one of the big picture windows, plotting with his yuppie pals. A few seconds after we walked past his house, a black-and-gray limousine pulled up out front, and Mary Stuart Masterson got out. She opened the door for Eric Stoltz, and then he opened Lea Thompson’s door. Eric and Lea went into Hardy’s house, and Mary Stuart stayed behind and leaned against the limo’s bumper.

A few seconds later, a black cargo van pulled into Hardy’s driveway, and a skinhead named Duncan (Elias Koteas) jumped out, along with a whole gang of mean-looking hoods, and they all ran into Hardy’s house too. We could hear the song “Beat’s So Lonely” by Charlie Sexton blasting from within.

“That party is about to become a historical fact, ” Art3mis said.

That made me laugh out loud, which somehow earned me another one of her smiles.

We continued down the street. The neighboring house belonged to Steff McKee (James Spader’s character in Pretty in Pink). He was greeting guests at his front door. For a split second I mistook the NPC for the male form of L0hengrin’s avatar, which looked nearly identical but had shorter hair.

A few minutes later, we reached the Donnelly residence, where the events depicted in Weird Science were transpiring in and around the house. A few seconds after we arrived, a half-naked girl shot up out of the chimney and landed in a small pond in the front yard with a loud splash.

“Here we go, ” Art3mis said. “We’re looking for two NPCs from Weird Science. Hang here for a minute. I’ll be right back! ”

She drew her guns and ran inside the house. I heard a rapid volley of gunfire, followed by what sounded like a grenade going off. A few seconds later, Art3mis rejoined me on the sidewalk in front of the house.

“They’re not in there, ” she said. “Sometimes Max and Ian leave to party-hop when things get too crazy at the Donnelly residence. Sometimes they stick around and get turned into farm animals—but that usually doesn’t happen until after midnight. ”

“Max and Ian? ” I said. “The two assholes who dump an ICEE on Gary and Wyatt in Weird Science? Why the hell do we need them? ”

“So that we can get the Third Shard, Z, ” she replied in the tone of someone explaining something obvious to a very small child. “Just trust me, OK? That’ll save us a lot of time. ” She pointed behind her. “We need to look for them at the parties being held on that side of the street now. I’ll go see if they’re at Stubby’s. You go check out the shindig next door. ”

She pointed to another huge house across the street. Long strands of toilet paper were hanging from all of the trees out front. Beer cans, pizza boxes, and horny teenagers were strewn across the lawn. Music was blaring from within.

“Who lives there? ” I asked.

“Jake Ryan, ” she said. “If you spot Ian or Max, I need you to restrain both of them and then call me. If I spot them at Stubby’s, I’ll do the same. Okie-dokie, Augie Doggie? ”

I grinned and replied, “Okie-dokie, Doggie Daddy. ”

Art3mis took off, sprinting toward Stubby’s house. I stared after her uncertainly for a moment, then I took a deep breath and ran in the opposite direction, toward Jake Ryan’s house.

The front yard looked like a war zone. Teenagers were milling around in the yard and the street, leaning on vintage Porsches, Ferraris, and Trans-Ams, dancing, drinking, and making out. Parked in the middle of the driveway, there was a red BMW with a drive-in food tray hanging from its passenger window. A mud-covered blue sedan was parked on top of a beemer, and two teenagers were making out in its back seat.

I walked up to the front door and pressed the doorbell. A loud gong sounded as it swung inward. A young Asian man was hanging from the inside of the door. He was extremely intoxicated. It took me a second to realize I knew him—it was Long Duk Dong, Gedde Watanabe’s infamous character from Sixteen Candles.

“What’s a-happening, hot stuff? ” he said, speaking with a thick accent. When I failed to answer, the Donger motioned for me to come on inside. I thanked him and continued on into the house. It was packed with rich drunk white kids in full-on party mode. I bumped into a young Joan Cusack—dressed as the girl in the neck brace we’d seen earlier on the bus. She was trying to drink a beer by leaning her whole body backward, but then she leaned too far and fell on the floor.

Then I went to do a sweep of the living room, but was nearly crushed by a set of exercise weights that came crashing down through the ceiling. They continued to crash on through the floor, opening up an enormous hole into the wine cellar and smashing dozens of the bottles stored there.

I continued to make a complete circuit of the house but didn’t see Ian or Max anywhere.

I had just made my way back to the living room when I received a text from Art3mis on my HUD, telling me to meet her at Stubby’s house next door, in the backyard.

I sprinted outside and across the perfectly manicured lawn, to the rear of the adjacent house, which was also in the process of being trashed by reckless, drunken teenagers. In Stubby’s backyard, I found Art3mis holding two extremely handsome teenage boys at gunpoint—Ian and Max from Weird Science. Max was played by the actor Robert Rusler, whom I also knew from his role as Ron Grady in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. And Ian was played by an impossibly young Robert Downey Jr.

“Holy shit, ” I said. “The OG Iron Man! I forgot he was in a John Hughes movie…. ”

“Just one, ” Art3mis said. “A supporting role in Weird Science. But—little-known fact—Robert Downey Jr. almost played the lead in another Hughes film. That’s why we need him. ”

Art3mis pointed at Max. “Him, we can let go, ” she said. She lowered her assault rifle, so that it was no longer pointed at Max’s head. Max stood there frozen for a second, then he turned tail and took off running across the expansive green lawn, in the direction of Jake Ryan’s house. He never looked back.

Art3mis turned her attention back to Ian. She removed the bag of weed she’d taken from Bender’s locker and dangled it in front of him. The expression on his face suddenly went blank, as if he’d been hypnotized.

“Would you like some of this? ” Art3mis asked.

“Why yes, madam! ” Ian replied. “I certainly would. ”

He reached for the bag, but she yanked it back out of his reach.

“I’ll make you a deal, ” Art3mis said. “I’ll give you this whole bag of doobage if you just perform two simple tasks for me. ”

“Sure, ” Ian said, batting his eyelashes at her. “Anything you say, doll. ”

“I figured out this little trick by playing through all the official Weird Science quests, ” Art3mis said. “The NPC re-creations of Max and Ian are both total hedonists, and they’ll perform nearly any task in exchange for sex or drugs. ” She turned to smile at him. “Isn’t that right, Ian? ”

RDJ batted his eyelashes at her again and nodded. Art3mis opened her inventory and took out the wingtip shoes and bolo tie she’d looted from Duckie back at the high school, then held them out to Ian.

“First, I need you to put these on, ” she said. “Then I need you to go dance with Andie Walsh at the senior prom tonight. Deal? ”

“Deal, ” Ian said. He took the shoes from her and put them on. Then he put the bolo tie around his neck. As soon as he did, his wardrobe and hairstyle changed. He no longer looked like Robert Downey Jr. as Ian in Weird Science. Now he looked like Robert Downey Jr. in Back to School, in the role of Derek Lutz. But he was dressed in the same vintage suit that Jon Cryer wore in the original ending of Pretty in Pink.

When his transformation completed, it triggered another music cue. At first I thought I was hearing the song “I Want a New Drug” by Huey Lewis and the News, but as soon as the lyrics kicked in, I realized it was actually Weird Al Yankovic’s parody—“I Want a New Duck. ”

The song only played for five or six seconds, while the newly anointed Robert Duckey Jr. did a little dance to show off his new attire. Then the song cut out and he struck a pose and said, “I remain now, and will always be, a Duck Man. ”

He pointed down at his shoes, turned his left foot left, then his right foot right, before realigning them both. Then he looked back up at us. When we failed to applaud, he frowned and sniffed each of his armpits before asking, “Do I offend? ”

Art3mis let out a victorious cry, then ran over and slapped him on the back.

“Robert Downey Jr. was originally supposed to play the role of Duckie, ” she explained. “But the studio decided to cast Jon Cryer in the role instead. And when the first cut of the film was screened, no one in the test audience wanted Duckie and Andie to end up together. So on short notice, Hughes was forced to write a new ending—one in which Andie ends up with that rich douchebag Blane instead. ”

“Really? ” I said. “I never knew that. ” I shook my head. “Pretty impressive, Arty. ”

“Why, thank you, Parzival, ” she replied, sounding genuinely pleased with herself. “I remembered reading an old interview with Molly Ringwald, where she said she believed Hughes’s original ending of Pretty in Pink would’ve worked if Robert Downey Jr. had played the role of Duckie as originally intended, because the two of them would’ve had a lot more onscreen chemistry. ”

I recited the inscription again, this time from memory. “ ‘Recast the foul, restore his ending. Andie’s first fate still needs mending. ’ So that was Andie’s first fate? ” I said. “To wind up with RDJ as Duckie? And the only way to ‘mend’ that fate is to ‘recast the foul’? ” I smiled at Art3mis and shook my head. “Arty, you’re a genius! ”

I gave her a round of applause, and she took a small bow. Then she grabbed Robert Duckie Jr. by the arm and took off running again. I ran after them as they sprinted across Stubby’s lawn, and then over to a Rolls-Royce convertible that was parked in Jake Ryan’s driveway. Art3mis shoved Duckie into the back seat and then got behind the wheel. I jumped into the passenger seat beside her.

“Hey, ” I said. “Wouldn’t we get there faster…in a Ferrari? ”

I pointed to the woods behind Jake Ryan’s house. There, visible through the trees, was a secluded house on stilts. I recognized it as Cameron Frye’s residence. And from here, we could see the separate glass-walled garage at the back of the house.

“Forget it, ” Art3mis said. “Cameron’s dad has a state-of-the-art security system. You can only steal that car in the daytime, with the keys and with Cameron’s help. If you try to steal it now, you’ll end up in the Shermer jail, with the kid from Reach the Rock. It’s easy enough to escape, but we’d waste thirty minutes. ” She smiled. “We could steal the same Ferrari from Alec Baldwin, in a church parking lot just a few blocks from here, ” she said, pointing off to the south. Then she glanced at her watch. “But the Briggs-Bainbridge wedding doesn’t start for another hour. Sorry, but I’m afraid Mr. Ryan’s Rolls-Royce is our best option at the moment. ”

“Fine, ” I muttered. “We’ll take this brown shit box. ”

“Buckle up, ace, ” Art3mis said, glancing over at me. She waited for me to comply. Once I did, she gave me a devious smile.

“This is getting good, ” she said as she shifted the car into drive and floored the gas. This triggered another needle drop—the “Peter Gunn Theme, ” which continued to play as the Rolls-Royce peeled out, carrying us off into the night.

As Art3mis drove through the moonlit labyrinth of suburban streets at breakneck speed, Robert Downey Jr. and I were jerked around in our seats again and again as she whipped the Rolls around sharp corners. For a few minutes I felt like we’d been transported into a game of Grand Theft Auto: Shermer, until Art3mis turned onto the highway and our ride smoothed out. (Taking the onramp triggered a fresh needle drop—“Holiday Road” by Lindsay Buckingham—which cut back out when we got off the highway a few exits later. )

At some point we must’ve crossed over the railroad tracks and entered the poor side of town, because the houses around us became smaller, crappier, and closer together. As we were driving down one of these streets, I spotted Harry Dean Stanton, dressed in a bathrobe, sitting on a lawn chair in his darkened front yard, reading a newspaper. A few houses down, I saw John Bender standing in an open garage, smoking a cigarette while he stirred a can of paint. Then I noticed the house right next door, which looked completely abandoned. The lawn was overgrown, the windows were all boarded up, and a Foreclosed sign was nailed to the front door. Then I noticed the name printed on the rusted mailbox out front: D. GRIFFITH.

I pointed it out to Art3mis, and she smiled.

“There are five different John Candy NPCs wandering around Shermer, ” she said. “Can you name all of them? ”

“Sure, ” I said. “Del Griffith, of course. Then there’s Chet Ripley, C. D. Marsh, and Gus Polinski, the Polka King of the Midwest. Oh, and I saw Buck Russell this morning. ”

She grinned at me, impressed.

“Not bad, Watts, ” she said. “Still sharp as a tack. ” She pointed to a log cabin–style restaurant on the other side of the street called Paul Bunyan’s Cupboard, with large statues of Paul and Babe the Blue Ox by its front entrance.

“Want to stop in and try to eat an Old Ninety-Sixer? ” Art3mis asked. “It’s probably a lot harder when you’re using an ONI—”

Appearing to realize what she’d just said, she cut herself off, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her wince.

“Fuck yes, ” I said, elbowing her in the ribs to let her know it was all right. “If we had time, I would destroy an Old Ninety-Sixer right now. ” I lowered my voice. “You might think I’d be opposed to eating something with the word ‘sixer’ in its name, but I am not. At all. ”

Art3mis laughed her laugh again, and it was music to my ears.

“When this is over, we’re coming back here to chow down, OK? ” I said.

She nodded and said, “It’s a date. ”

I felt myself turn several different shades of red.

As we continued to drive, I stole a glance over at her in the driver’s seat. The top was down and the wind was in her hair. She looked beautiful. And happy. And I was still madly in love with her. No matter how much I denied it.

Out of nowhere, another needle drop triggered and a new song began to play—“More Than a Feeling” by Boston. The same song plays during a brief flashback in She’s Having a Baby, when Jake falls in love with his future wife, Kristy, at first sight.

As soon as it began, Art3mis snapped her head to the right and caught me staring at her. I glanced away, pretending to look out the windshield. But in the reflection in the glass, I thought I caught a glimpse of her smiling. Then I heard her laugh.

“What’s so funny? ” I asked.

“That song, ” she replied. “It starts to play whenever one avatar stares at another avatar for longer than five seconds while also experiencing a drastic increase in their heart rate. It’s a little Easter egg they added for ONI users last year. ”

“Great, ” I muttered. “Busted by my own bio monitors. ”

She laughed, keeping her eyes on the road ahead. I sank down into my seat and pretended to look out the window, wishing that magic worked on this planet, so that I could turn myself invisible.

We arrived at the Shermer Hotel a few minutes later. Art3mis screeched Mr. Ryan’s Rolls-Royce up onto the curb, causing several NPC pedestrians to dive out of the way.

The three of us jumped out of the car and sprinted toward the hotel’s main entrance. But RDJ skidded to a halt just shy of the threshold.

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