Insomniac Player

Damien stayed at the table long after Doctor Smoke had walked out, the black folder still sitting untouched in front of him. Unknown rank. Just reading those two words was enough to tighten something in his stomach.

"...Tomorrow, huh." He stirred coffee that had gone cold a while ago without really noticing.

The door chimed again. He looked up in time to see her walking back in, and before he’d even fully registered it, she was already dropping back into the chair across from him like she’d never left.

"Forgot something," she said, flat.

He raised an eyebrow. "That’s never good."

She set her elbows on the table. "Got a call. Another party’s already inside the gate."

"...What does that mean for us?"

"Means we wait." She leaned back, unbothered. "Only one expedition gets to work a gate properly at a time. If we go in while someone else is already there, we either get in their way or let them finish first." A shrug. "I don’t feel like cleaning up after some greedy idiot’s mess."

"So we’re waiting."

"I hate cleaning up messes more than I hate waiting."

She stretched both arms overhead, and that was when he noticed.

"...Your arms."

"What about them."

Ordinary. Smooth skin, no trace of the mechanical limb that had punched Elite Knights through fountains back at Ironfall.

He stared a second longer. "I thought..."

"That it was permanent?" She flexed her fingers. "No."

She knocked her knuckles against the table, and it made a perfectly normal sound. "This arm’s real. What you saw in the gate was equipment."

She curled her fingers into a fist. "Unlike gear you wear over a limb, that one replaces it entirely while it’s active."

She wiggled her actual fingers. "Honestly can’t tell much difference between the two, feeling-wise. I still prefer the mechanical one."

He nodded slowly, filing it away with everything else about this world that kept turning out stranger than fiction.

Quiet settled for a moment. Ever since meeting her, he’d suspected she wasn’t half as cold as she liked to act.

"What guild are you with?"

Her expression didn’t move an inch.

"Just curious how the system works," he added quickly.

Instead of answering right away, she pulled a cigarette from her coat and flicked a lighter to life.

He glanced up. Directly above her head, a large polished sign read NO SMOKING.

She ignored it completely. The waiter caught it, looked her way once, and immediately looked somewhere else instead.

She took a slow drag and let the smoke out. "I don’t work for those guild bastards." Real disdain in it. "I work for the government."

"...The government?"

"Special Disaster Response Division. Real name’s a mouthful nobody bothers with. People just say Government Players."

"I thought guilds handled gates."

"They do. They also chase money."

Another drag. "We take whatever gates the guilds won’t touch, the ones too dangerous or too politically messy for them to bother with." Her eyes narrowed. "They complain about taxes, complain about regulations, and the second a city’s about to get wiped off the map, suddenly they remember we exist."

He couldn’t help a small smile. "You really don’t like guilds."

"I don’t."

"Reason?"

"They’re businesses playing dress-up as heroes."

"And the government’s different how?"

"Guilds don’t care about non-combat classes. The government has to, politically. And levels come easier the better you actually do for people. Structure’s basically the same as it was before the system, just wearing a new coat of paint."

She didn’t elaborate further, and something in her tone told him not to push.

He hesitated instead. "...Can I ask something else?"

"You already are."

"...Your name."

The temperature at the table seemed to drop a degree. Her crimson eyes settled on him, and he immediately regretted asking.

Several seconds passed before she answered. "Salma." A pause. "Salma Saldaña."

He repeated it silently. Salma. It suited her, somehow. Sharp and cold in equal measure.

She took another drag. "You got your answer. Don’t waste it."

He noticed, curiously, that she never once asked for his name in return. Either she already had it, or genuinely didn’t care to. He decided not to find out which.

"One more thing?"

"Tsk. You ask a lot."

"Why are you only Level Twenty?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Expecting a government veteran to be sitting at Level One Hundred?"

"...Kind of, yeah."

A short laugh, no real humor in it. "Leveling gets expensive. Ridiculously expensive, the higher you climb." She tapped ash into the tray. "And unlike the idiots chasing every gate they can find, I pick mine carefully."

"You don’t enjoy fighting."

"I hate it." No hesitation at all. "Hate monsters. Hate gates. Hate this whole system, honestly. Hate the entire gamified mess we’re living in now."

Her fingers tightened slightly around the cigarette. "I was a military doctor. Joined up to save lives."

Her voice stayed level. "Then the system showed up, and saving lives suddenly required killing first." She looked out the window. "I adapted. I survived. Still hate every part of it."

Something tired sat behind her eyes when she said it, worn in deep, the kind that doesn’t come from one bad day.

She caught him looking. "What?"

"Nothing." He looked away.

She stubbed out the cigarette. "You know." Unprompted this time. "Every one of the girls has a story."

He looked back up. She’d settled comfortably into her chair.

"You’ve met Madam Marvel. Daria Levedeva."

He turned the name over in his head, matching it to what he already knew from the train ride. "Old money family, right? Powerful."

"The kind that thinks governments owe them favors." Salma nodded. "They wanted an obedient daughter. Got Daria instead. Wrong personality, wrong choices, wrong everything by their standard."

"So what happened?"

"They disowned her. Now she ignores them right back, and they pretend she never existed."

He tried picturing Daria smiling and having a family that had simply erased her for it. It didn’t sit easy.

"What about Naked Nun?"

"Her real name doesn’t matter for this." Salma’s face darkened. "She became a player because another player forced his way into her monastery."

His stomach dropped. "...Forced?"

"He assaulted the sisters there." Quiet, matter-of-fact. "No monster involved. Just a man." A pause. "Most of the church refused to become players at all, called the system devil’s work, forbade it outright. She was the one who tried to stop him, in front of everyone. Didn’t survive what he did to her, internal bleeding, days later."

He said nothing.

"She lived through it, but she never came back the same person. Blamed the church for not protecting anyone. Left her vows. Became a player instead."

He thought about her flirty smile, the black sword, the constant teasing. It read entirely differently now.

"And Delulu?"

Salma actually chuckled. "Hamari Nakamura. Japanese girl."

He waited for the rest of a tragedy that never came.

"Nothing," she said.

"...Nothing?"

"She’s normal."

He blinked. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. Turned sixteen, the system tagged her, she woke up in a Class Change Tower like everyone else her age. That’s it."

"No abusive parents. No dead family."

"No."

"No betrayal."

"No, dumbass, she’s sixteen. Loving parents. They support her."

"...That’s really it?"

"That’s it." Salma laughed, quiet. "Not everybody needs a tragic backstory to be interesting."

"Some people are just lucky, then."

"Normal," she corrected. "The world isn’t only misery. Some of it’s just fine."

He leaned back, oddly relieved by that answer. Something about it reminded him that ordinary happiness still existed out there somewhere, untouched by all of this.

She folded her arms. "My turn now."

He straightened. She leaned in across the table, studying his face with a lot more attention than she’d given it before.

"Tell me something."

"...What?"

"Are you." A pause. "The Damien?"

His heart lurched. "The Damien?" He forced a laugh that didn’t land right.

"...The one Sir John Jones keeps talking about?"

Everything in him went still. His hands curled under the table, a dozen different lies flashing through his head at once.

"...Why do you ask?"

She didn’t answer right away, just watched every small shift in his face and smiled slightly. "I’ll take that as a yes."

His pulse spiked. "...How much do you know?"

"Enough." She pulled up a screen and turned it toward him after a few taps.

An old interview. John standing in front of a wall of reporters, a giant screen behind him showing Damien’s own face, a photo he vaguely recognized from the orphanage, one he had no memory of anyone taking.

"I don’t care how long it takes." John’s recorded voice came through the speaker, quiet, worn down but steady. "If you’re watching this. Give me any kind of signal. I’ll keep looking."

She stopped the playback, and the screen faded out. "He’s looked longer than anyone I’ve ever seen search for someone."

He looked down at the table, mouth opening without any words ready to come out of it. He understood now why she’d handed him everyone else’s story first, laid them all out one after another like stepping stones. She’d been building him a path the whole time, one that only ended in him finally saying his own out loud.

She held his eyes. "So tell me. What actually happened to you?"