Harry looked down at the text block on the lower right side of his vision, his eyes wide in horror as he read the message. Foryty-five minutes? Where the hell had the last fifteen minutes gone? There’s no way it had taken fifteen minutes to walk over to Cheddar and strike up a conversation.


    And what the hell was this immersion about? If this was his mind slowly shedding away, then the doctor had severely underestimated how quickly shit was going to get bad for Harry.


    Or was this something else?


    Fear maybe?


    He’d heard about people that lost their minds due to fear, imagining mythical creatures that weren’t there, experiencing psychotic breaks or having spontaneous heart attacks purely because they were terrified. It wasn’t the sort of thing that happened too commonly these days, but—


    “Hey? Harry?!” Cheddar called. “Hey?!”


    Harry ignored him, still staring at the words glowing on top of the semi-transparent box.


    Is this my subconscious telling me how much time I have left, using game mechanics to get the message through? God, that’s depressing. I’ve spent so long gaming that now my entire subconscious is stuck in game mode.


    That didn’t make sense, but then very little made sense at that moment. He closed his eyes, checking if he felt anything different internally. He felt no pain, and real no discomfort other than when the disembodied voice was speaking. And except for the lingering tiredness form the previous night’s activities. Aside from all of that though, he felt fine. Normal.


    Perhaps it is just a mind thing?


    “Harry, you doink!” Cheddar called again, prompting Harry to turn and face his friend. Cheddar was leaning forward, staring at him with crazy eyes. “What the fuck are you staring at, bro?”


    “What?” Harry asked, confused for a moment. “No…nothing. I was just…”


    “You can see it too, can’t you?” Cheddar asked, voice suddenly intense. “You can see the HUD thing, the little box in the top left.” Cheddar grinned, shaking his head. “Jesus, I thought I was going nuts. Figured I hit a real bad strain or something. Did you hear the voice too?”


    Harry blinked. “The voice. Yeah. You heard that?”


    “Forty-five minutes until total immersion,” Cheddar confirmed. “I thought I heard it a little while back too, but figured it was just my head screwing with me.”


    Harry looked around the office to check that no one was listening. The place was practically deserted, do he needn’t have bothered. He leaned forward heart racing despite his relief that he apparently wasn’t alone in his madness.


    “I heard the guy speaking pretty much straight away when the I came out of the elevator.”


    “Guy?” Cheddar asked. “You’re hearing a dude speaking?”


    Harry reclined, confused. “Yeah. A bit of a posh English accent. Guy sounds like a buttler. What does your sound like?”


    “A chick. English too, I guess, now that I think about it.” Cheddar pulled off his glasses, wiping his forearm across his face before slipping them back on again. “What do you think they mean by immersion? I figure it’s some kind of attack, right? Or R&D is screwing with us again?”


    Harry shook his head. “Downstairs, when you first came in, did you notice anything weird about Gary or Clarice?”


    Cheddar shook his head. “No. Not that I can remember. But,” he leaned forward, grinning conspiratorially, “I’m pretty baked right now.”


    Harry rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I know. Everyone in the damned building probably knows, you moron.”


    Cheddar nodded, leaning back in his chair and playing it cool. His eye were snared by the screen up above again and he grinned as they glazed out of focus.


    “Hey!” Harry said, clicking his fingers in front of the other man to get his attention.


    Blinking, Cheddar looked down at Harry. “What?”


    “The guys downstairs,” Harry insisted. “You were saying you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary about them.”


    “Yeah. I already told you, dude. I didn’t notice anything. Why? What did you see?”


    “Looked like a monster tag, like you’d get in a video game. There was one right above Gary’s head. It said level one Drone, pre-absolution.”


    “Lind of game?” Cheddar mused, as though he was mentally fumbling around the edges of an idea. “What if this whole thing is some kind of game? Like, a simulation, or maybe R&D are testing some new A.I. bullshit? Gil would know, right?” He looked around outside of the pod. “We should ask him.”


    “He’s not here, remember?”


    Cheddar chuckled, nodding. “Oh, shit. Yeah. I forgot. He’s not here dude.”


    Harry couldn’t help but grin. Cheddar was less than useless when he was stoned but his laughter was infectious. Harry forced himself to focus. They’d both heard the voices, different voices, sure, but voices nonetheless. That meant that the morning’s craziness wasn’t all in Harry’s head.


    Given the nature of the company they worked for, the best explanation was that they were trialing some new kind of AI integration and using Harry and the other corporate drones as test subjects. It wouldn’t be the first time and Veridian was famous for only letting employees know after the fact that the’d been involved in some secret study or other.


    He clicked his fingers, jabbing them at Cheddar.


    “Lia! She’ll know what this is all about. If we can’t find Gil, Lia will know.”


    Cheddar nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”


    “She has to know,” Harry said, convinced that he was speaking the truth but not moving from his seat.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Cheddar leaned forward. “So, you gonna go ask her?”


    A few seconds passed before Harry answered. “I don’t think I’m ready to see her just yet. Mabye someone else will know?”


    “Or, you could just man up and go see her, dude?”


    Harry shook his head. “Nope. Not yet.”


    “Okay, well then I guess we just park our asses here and wait,” Cheddar suggested. “I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. If this is just some kind of test, then we will know soon enough.”


    They sat nervously. Harry noticed Cheddar had somehow climbed down from his high. He was blinking, eyes shifting left and right in obvious parranoia. Harry wondered whether this was a side effect of whatever test they were currently undergoing.


    “You okay, dude?” he asked.


    Cheddar nodded. “Yeah. I just…shit man, it feels like I just fell into a bucket of ice water or something. My buzz is…completely gone. Shit!”


    “It’s alright dude, just calm down.”


    “Not sure I can. I’m not equipped to handle this shit sober, dude. Maybe I should just head home? Say I’ve got a bout of explosive diarrhea or food poisoning or something?”


    Harry put a hand on the other man’s shoulder, trying to calm him down.


    “Just, take it easy, man. It’ll be fine. Like you said, we just need to sit here for a bit and run out the clock, okay? Then Gil will show up, make us sign some bullshit waiver and we can go get a coffee and forget this shit ever happened.”


    That seemed to do the trick. Cheddar nodded, chest rising and falling as he tried to steady his breathing. They sat for a few minutes, each lost in thought.


    Harry considered calling his mother mother. He hand’t told her the latest from the doctor yet. Last night had been another attempt to put that off but he knew sooner or later he’d have to call her and deliver the bad news. Later, but not now. There was too much going on at the moment.


    I’m fine. This is nothing. Just another stupid test.


    He closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe calmly in and out in the hope that this would still his mind a littl.


    There was always something odd going on in Veridian. It was exhausting.


    “Fuck, man this is taking for ever,” Cheddar said, breaking through Harry’s meditation. “Why don’t you just go and talk with Lia?”


    Harry shook his head. “Ain’t gonna happen dude. You can go ask if you want though?”


    “Don’t you think it’s time to stop avoiding her?” Cheddar asked.


    “What?”


    Cheddar snorted. “So you poured beer all over her tits, big deal. Shit happens and I’m sure she understands that.”


    Harry looked over at his friend. It was easy for him to say. The bastard could have been a male model if he’d wanted. From his scruffy blond hair, deep blue eyes, and square jaw down to his naturally athletic physique and the casual way he carried himself, Cheddar had a way with women. They tended to be far more forgiving when he flashed his pearly whites.


    By contract, Harry wasn’t nearly as handsome and had to work through a pile of social awkwardness just to open his mouth and offer a simple greeting to a member of the opposite sex, let alone flirt with anyone. That shit came naturally to Cheddar, but in Harry’s case it was a little more like teaching a chicken how to ice skate.


    “You just gotta forget that shit and get back on the horse,” Cheddar went on. “Ask her out and just see what she says. Worse case she says no, right? Besides, she was totally laughing when you threw the beer all over her. She knows you didn’t do it on purpose.”


    Reliving one of the worst moments in his recent history wasn’t exactly what he had in mind this morning but thankfully Harry was saved from the necessity of replying as a head-splitting shriek tore through the office at precisely that moment.


    Harry flinched, slipped off his chair and bonked his head on the edge of a nearby desk. He didn’t feel the impact because the momentary pain that had shot into his mind at that moment was a blinding flare that pushed back his other senses entirely. He flailed about on the floor, seeing Cheddar sitting nearby, hands clasped to his own head, glasses askew.


    A voice pierced the haze of pain. It spoke in slow, punishing clarity, counting down the seconds of a timer, the timer to Immersion.


    Harry tried to stand, but pressed against his body, forcing him down against he floor. He cursed trying to shove off whatever was holding him in place. It was like trying to lift a cement truck on his back. Harry groaned, finding it hard to breathe with the pressure all around his body.


    The voice continued, steadily. Untouched by the madness.


    Another scream echoed to Harry’s left. The pain in his head had become a living thing, stretching. He grabbed his head, trying to cry out but finding that he could no longer hear or sense anything other that...pure agony.


    Whatever was in his head tried to claw its way out through his eyes. The pain was excrucianting and Harry scrapped and scratched at his eyes, desperately trying get at whatever had burrowed into his mind and was now trying to escape.


    Then, just as soon as it had begun, it was over.


    All of it.


    Gone.


    —Hello, Harry Stone. Welcome to the Infernal Crucible!—


    Harry blinked, opening his eyes to see the building foyer appearing before him. He stood within a milling crowd of confused co-workers. Cheddar lay sprawled on the floor, blinking, his glasses gone. Harry gave him a hand, heaving him up to his feet as they looked around the foyer.


    “What the fuck is this now?” Cheddar asked.


    Blood dripped from a shallow cut on his cheek, staining his light blue shirt as it dripped down onto his chest. He shook his head, still disoriented.


    “No way in hell I’m signing a waiver now. Bastards are gonna get their asses sued for this shit.”


    Harry reached up and pressed a hand against his head. The excruciating pain had gone and there was no sign of whatever had torn its way into his mind.


    “Gill?!” Cheddar said. “You better not have signed off on this one, bro. I got myself an injury here!”


    Harry looked around at the crowd of workerss. Some of the faces were familiar, others were not. He wasn’t surprised by that though. Veridian was too big to know everyone. Most of these people worked on floors Harry had never been to.


    As he was looking through the crowd he spotted her in the distance. Lia stood with a hand on her head, looking left and right in confusion and speaking to a co-worker. Harry ducked behind Cheddar, hiding himself so that she wouldn’t see him.


    Jesus, Harry, grow a backbone!


    He chided himself, but didn’t move out from behind Cheddar.


    “How the hell did we even get down here?” Cheddar asked. “They must have cholorormed us. They pumped gass through the air conditioning unit, or… Shit, I dunno.”


    Harry was about to reply when a voice echoed through the foyer, loud enough to cut through the din of confused employees.


    “Welcome, suplicants, to the Infernal Crucible!”


    Harry looked up at the figure in front of the crowd. For the first few seconds staring at the figure his mind tried desperately to accommodate what he saw, to rationalize the impossibility of it. Then someone screamed, and another joined. Soon chaos erupted like an erupting volcano.


    Fear was a terrible thing. And it could be contagious.


    They all pushed at each other, trying to escape the monsters floating above them, watching them with alien eyes. Harry pulled Cheddar to his side and the pari joined the wave of people trying to get out of the foyer through the automated door that led to the car park.


    The same force Harry had felt when he’d been pressed to the floor up above returned. This time it was brutally efficient. Harry thought his bones would snap under the weight of it. They all collapsed, every single employee within the foyer, crushed by an unknown power and forced to the floor within seconds.


    Some cried, others begged for mercy. Harry did neither—his face was pressed to the foyer floor. The pain was excruciating.


    This is how I die? Not from some mind-eating sickness?


    “I will release you in a moment,” the alien voice said. “But if you try to flee again I will continue to increase the suppression field until your bones are turned to dust and your insides are pulped. Do you understand?”


    A few people muttered strangled acknowledgement.


    “Good.”


    The pain instantly vanished and the pressure against Harry’s body dissapeared. Slowly, people got to their knees and stood shakily, leaning on one another for support and staring over at the strange creature that had caused their excruciation.


    “Once again, I welcome you to the Infernal Crucible. Congratulations! You have all been chosen—you have been gifted a chance to save yourself and your race. You, weak as you are, are the few found worthy to participate in the Crucible.”


    Whatever that thing was, its mouth didn’t move as it spoke. It shone hot red, like lava molded into the shape of a woman with a single stinger extending down from its abdomen. A black, bone horn jutted from her forehead, just above a pair of crimson eyes. Her body was wrapped in layers of rough black metallic skin and she hovered above the ground.


    “I am Rhoar of the Arbiter Dominion, and I have come to prepare you for immersion.”