Insomniac Player

Damien stretched and opened his chat window. Still nothing from John. Not one message.

He stared at the empty conversation for a while. "...Busy. Or maybe he just doesn’t care anymore."

The thought sat longer than he wanted it to. John had searched for him hard in the first few months, interviews, public appearances, mentioning his name whenever a camera pointed his way.

The last time it came up in an interview had been fourteen months back, according to what he’d found scrolling through old articles the other night. Nothing since. The story had quietly slipped out of the public eye the way most missing-person stories eventually did.

He sighed. "...Can’t really blame him." Two years was a long time to keep looking for someone the world had already decided was gone.

He closed the chat and let his eyes fall shut, and a black-haired woman surfaced in his thoughts without any invitation. Daria. The corner of his mouth lifted before he noticed it happening.

"...She’s beautiful." He frowned a second later. "What was her last name again."

He scratched his head. "Libido? No." He tried again. "Lebedora? Still wrong." He clicked his tongue. "Russian last names should come with a manual."

Her smile stuck in his mind a while longer, and he wondered idly what she was up to right now. Probably asleep. Lucky her.

He rested both hands behind his head, eyes still shut, breathing slow enough that anyone watching would’ve called him asleep outright. He wasn’t. His mind never actually went under, not once, not since the coma, not before it either. It just lay there in the dark, fully aware, hour after hour, until gold light finally started leaking through the curtains.

A notification opened with the morning.

➤[Doctor Smoke has sent you a friend request.]

[ACCEPT] [DECLINE]

He blinked. "...Doctor? What’s she want now."

Curiosity won out. He hit Accept, and barely two seconds later his head rang with an incoming call, her name already lighting up the screen.

He answered. "Hello?"

Her voice cut through the line, cold as ever. "...Country bumpkin."

"..."

"Where are you?"

He rubbed his eyes. "Home. Sleeping."

A short silence, then, colder. "Get up. Wash your ass. Do-Re-Mi Coffee, Sector Eleven branch. Two hours." A pause, dead serious. "If you’re late, I’ll kill you."

Click.

He stared at the disconnected screen. "...What was that." No greeting, no explanation, just orders wrapped in a threat. "...She’s unhinged." Still, something told him ignoring it wouldn’t end well for anyone involved.

He got up, showered, dressed, and was out the door twenty minutes later.

◇◇◇

Sector Eleven turned out to be one of the wealthier commercial stretches of the city, glass towers throwing sunlight everywhere, suits crossing intersections in a hurry, delivery drones threading between the buildings overhead. He followed the map to a storefront with an elegant little sign: Do-Re-Mi Coffee.

Inside, soft music sat under the smell of fresh coffee, and every customer looked like they cost more than his whole outfit. Designer suits, watches worth more than a month of rent, a couple of clearly high-level players talking business over espresso in the corner.

He looked down at his plain black hoodie. "...I don’t belong in here." He walked in anyway.

Doctor Smoke sat near the window in a simple black coat instead of her usual gear, and even out of combat clothes she carried enough weight in the room that nobody had claimed the tables around her, a few men throwing careful glances her way and deciding against approaching.

Her eyes found him the moment he stepped through the door.

He crossed over. She checked the wall clock, then him. "You’ve got nerve."

"...Huh?"

"Made me wait."

He checked his own watch. He was ten minutes early. "...I’m early."

"I’ve been here for twenty."

"That still makes me early."

"It makes me wait." She said it like the two things were unrelated.

He gave up. "Sorry." He sat across from her, and the waitress arrived almost instantly.

"What would you like?"

He looked at the menu, and his expression slowly went blank. "...One coffee costs this much? I could eat for two days on this."

Doctor Smoke sighed like it physically hurt her. "So poor." She took the menu out of his hands. "Two Americanos."

The waitress smiled. "Anything else?"

Doctor Smoke glanced at him. "He looks hungry."

"I’m not."

His stomach disagreed, loudly.

Grrrr.

Silence. Doctor Smoke looked down at his stomach, then back up at his face. "...Your stomach says otherwise."

The waitress covered a smile with her hand. He wished the floor would just open up.

"One sandwich, two cheesecake slices, and another sandwich," Doctor Smoke told her.

"Right away."

Once the waitress left, he shifted, uncomfortable. "You didn’t have to. I’ll pay you back."

"With what money? Rent you haven’t collected yet?" She waved it off. "Eat. We’ll talk after."

The food showed up a few minutes later, and he realized halfway through the first sandwich just how hungry he’d actually been, gone in minutes, the second one just as fast.

She watched the whole thing over her coffee. "...You eat like a stray dog."

"That’s mean." He said it through a full mouth, which didn’t help his case.

Even the waitress looked mildly impressed on her way past.

He finally sat back. "So. Why am I here?"

She set her cup down. "I’ve got work. You need money."

"..."

"I need someone useful." Her eyes held his. "You currently qualify."

He didn’t answer right away. She wasn’t the type to waste breath on small talk, which meant whatever came next wasn’t going to be simple.

She leaned in. "Another gate. Difficult one. I’ve turned down offers from half a dozen guilds already. I don’t need muscle for this one. I need someone who actually thinks before he acts." She tapped the table once. "You."

"You’re overestimating me."

"No. I’m being accurate. Different thing entirely." She slid a thin black folder across the table. "Read it."

He flipped it open. The first page showed a stone gate half-buried in mountain rock, CONFIDENTIAL stamped across the top in red, and underneath it, one line.

Estimated Rank: Unknown.

Whatever ease had been sitting in his posture drained out of it. Two words, and every experienced player he’d ever heard of would have walked away on the spot.

She finished her coffee, unbothered. "We leave tomorrow."

"I haven’t agreed to anything."

"You will." She stood. "Curiosity beats common sense every time. In your case especially."

She headed for the door, then paused without turning around, the faint edge of a smile in her voice. "...And because you’re exactly the kind of idiot who walks into impossible places just to see what’s inside them."

The door chimed behind her. He sat there staring at the folder for a long moment before letting out a breath.

"...She’s not wrong."

Outside, the city kept moving the way it always did. Somewhere underneath that, though, he already had the feeling his quiet morning had just quietly ended.