I had always thought Axel didn’t know about the Warheads and my panic attacks. I’d done my best to hide it from everyone except the childhood therapist I’d seen when they started. I guess my dependence on the lollies originally stemmed from Axel, though I never remembered telling him about it. Maybe he was more observant than I thought. We had known each other all our lives after all.

Pocketing the Warhead for later, you know, just in case, I spoke to Axel’s back. Without him hunching, it seemed wider than it’d ever been. “I never told my parents, you know.”

“Never told them what?” he said, looking back with a toothy smile.

I scoffed. “That you have a shit eating grin.”

“And that’s why you love me.”

“You’re confusing love and loathe.”

Axel started singing a song so off-pitch that I didn’t recognise it, and I said as much.

He looked stricken. “You don’t vibe with Pink?”

“Not with your tone deafness I don’t.”

He snorted. “Like you can sing any better. I’ve heard you in the shower.”

“You need better hobbies.”

We fell into step and continued on in amicable silence. Though the world around us was anything but. Security alarms were screaming, sirens were wailing down streets in ambulances, police, fire trucks, and the further we went along, the more it became clear that nearly every other window on ground floor had been smashed in.

As though it mattered, Axel and I walked down the footpath, like we were clinging to the vestiges of human etiquette, even as people sprinted past us faster than should be physically possible, screaming and shouting, items falling from their hands. Looters were amok, and smoke rose into the skies of the setting sun in several locations. I’m certain at one point I saw someone materialise inside a storefront next to a dapperly dressed mannequin.

Somewhere a child was crying, but it sounded like it was coming from all different directions. Part of me wanted to go looking, unable to dismiss the noise, but the other half of me suspected it was bait. Still the guilt formed inside me. What if it was a lost child in the middle of all this chaos?

For that’s what it was.

Absolute bedlam.

In the span of an hour from the first Dungeon announcement Brisbane had fallen to lawlessness. With citizens having no immediate way of communicating with law enforcement, or getting news to each other, it was everyone out for themselves. Maybe that was a more sane reaction than what we were doing.

“We’re here. Come on, the back is accessible through this gate.”

It was a non-distinct gym, clearly not a franchise, with large glass windows so you could see the people exercising within. Why pay for advertisement when your clientele would do it for free? There were three people on exercise machines, all looking incredibly toned. How could they continue like normal after all those announcements? Sweat glistened on their skin, their AirPods probably blaring some sort of pop as they worked.

I glanced down at myself. I’d never been the type of person to hit the gym. Hell, I was probably considered unfit. I preferred just kind of existing rather than forcing myself onto reality.

I hoped that our stats weren’t actually a reflection of our real life bodies. ‘Cause that would be a blow to the ego more than I could take. Below average in all stats…

~Dungeon 14 entered for the first time. Player Fati Okeke rewarded title of Jester~

Axel met my gaze. If he’d been tallying them up like I had been, that was the last one, unless there were more than fifteen. I held my breath. Surely something would happen now that all Dungeons had been entered.

~All current Dungeon initiations completed. Sponsorships now available~

I frowned. “Sponsorships… Like advertisements?”

He opened the gate for me and I walked through. Closing it behind him, he said, “Does that mean people will be or are watching us?”

Pulling my phone from my pocket, I checked for reception. Still zero bars. My battery was now at 53%. “Nothing’s up. It’d be impossible for anyone to watch anything right now. And if people were watching, how would they be doing that? It’s not like there’s a camera on everyone on Earth.”

I paused, rethinking my words having just put away a personal camera that I technically carried everywhere. Still, not everyone had a smartphone. Some people had to be rocking those minimal T9 physical button Nokia bricks somewhere in Japan.

Axel continued, “Lee, we’re hearing voices in our heads.”

It was still weird for him to call me that.

“A single voice,” I corrected him.

“We’re hearing a voice in our heads,” he said. “We’re seeing personal AR-like stat windows. We’re feeling driven to enter the Dungeons. We just walked through several active crime scenes on the way here. I think I saw someone bleeding out down an alley.”

It was only a brief recap of what events had taken place, but when he put it so simply like that… “I get what you’re saying. Somehow having something like invisible cameras filming everyone on Earth isn’t that farfetched in comparison, huh?”

“Maybe not even cameras. You remember the first Dungeon title. First Contact, right?”

I laughed. “You’re not saying aliens are watching us.”

“Is that really so hard to even consider?”