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.hack//EVOLUTION Chapter 5 (Protected)

The weeks and months following the release of The World's collector's edition had been met with a look back at the game's success. The news and talk shows were full of stories about friends forged, adventures taken, mysteries discovered. There was a look back at Nuke Usagimaru's comedy series based in The World, the movie based on the game, even the evolutions of The World's back story. It was all neat and tidy, all sponsored by Cyber Connect and Altimit. Enkidu knew they didn't get it at all.

The noises of a New York street were outside; cars idling in gridlock, people shouting at each other, a faint spring time shower washing the grime off the buildings. The apartment was another story. It was filled with the sound of fingers typing across keyboards, techno music blasting out of headphones hanging around Enkidu's neck. Enkidu sat in nothing but cargo shorts, his brown eyes darting between four computer screens running four very different tasks.

One screen scrolled through a massive list of information, character data stolen from CC's servers. It was heavily encrypted but Enkidu was confident he'd be able to crack it. Another screen displayed real time value statistics for in-game items, an entire economy of trade. Enkidu had tabs on TAN, Gabba and half a dozen other guilds that had the bulk of the market share. While both activities held his attention to a degree, most of the hacker's focus was devoted to the remaining screens.

Two massive computer towers churned with power to keep up, their fans blowing off excess heat into the air. It was the reason Enkidu only wore shorts. His bare chest was moist with sweat, his curly mane of hair frizzier than usual. The entire world was pushing toward simpler, smaller phones to handle their lives. Simple tech made for simple exploits, at least in Enkidu's experience. While the masses became Sheep, Enkidu remained a predator... but even he feared he wasn't ready to take on the final mystery of The World.

With all the news reports, with all the stories... One thing hadn't been mentioned - Coma's. There wasn't one mention of the urban legend, the stories, the history of the game. The clues were there, it was even mentioned in the user agreement of the game. It didn't surprise him though. CyberConnect had always been good at managing its failures, though he'd never expected there to be so many. In the early days the company had survived by blaming the comas on hackers, but in more recent years they had the coma victims moved to hospitals sponsored heavily by the company, keeping it all under wraps. The conspiracy ran deep, but there hadn't been any mention of comas yet...

A flashing light popped up on the screen, followed by a chirp. Enkidu cursed and changed his satellite feed. The light disappeared, but a moment later it appeared again. Enkidu switched feeds again, then again. He swapped out a flash drive in his computer to load different credentials, but in a few moments two flashing lights appeared. The hacker cursed again before he loaded an escape routine.

His connection was severed, his tracks being brushed clean and replaced with dummy data rather than leaving it blank. Geneva, the Mediterranean, Carpentaria... Enkidu had wormed his way through the world's network searching for truth. Instead he'd come across watchdogs... and watchdogs left paw prints. Enkidu opened the log file and started cross referencing, trying to figure out who had been looking for him. The last watch dog had been from the Network Administration Bureau, but the other was impossible to trace... another hacker. Enkidu grinned a bit, looking into the algorithms, the coding used. There would never be any way to track it... but the code was Japanese.

Enkidu leaned back in his chair, reaching up to flick the gold ring hanging through his brown nipple. Enkidu felt his mane of hair spill around his face, his very long goatee resting on his chest. His hand moved, rubbing at the eye of Ra tattoo on his neck. His eyes glanced around his apartment, moving from the hundreds of cables running from system to system to the stacks of ramen and junk food littered around. The reason why people loved The World was simple. It was just better than real life.

[Delta Server - Eternal City Mac Anu]

The differences between player levels had spread out as the game progressed, but life would never be dull in Mac Anu. It was home to new players, to the low level alternate characters players made, and to those that loved it for its own charm. For a player like Spirit ohm, it was perfect in everyway. The black wolf sat in the back of a gondola, watching the water ripple in the late afternoon light as he drifted through the town. It had taken clearing an entire dungeon to afford the GP to get the ride, but there wasn't anything like seeing Mac Anu from its canals.

It was amazing how safe people felt when they thought they were alone. One could walk forever in Mac Anu, getting lost in back alleys or on hillside paths, assuming they were all alone... when a canal ran right past it, carrying the passenger through everything. Usually Spirit enjoyed the canal rides to see all the different player designs and enjoy the scenery, but with Gabba around it was growing more and more difficult to afford a ride. Prices had gone up due to the constant demand.

Spirit's focus drifted from his surroundings to himself, watching the simulated wind ripple through his character's thick black fur. It was so realistic, so amazing... It was almost real enough to believe that it was his own world, but he couldn't feel it. There was a numbness to the fantasy. Still, as far as a game went it couldn't get much better. He couldn't blame Hawk for taking so much time on the game. When he looked up at the heavens it was as if the real sun was in his eyes.

"I'm not interested in your made up side quests..." came a discontent voice from up ahead. Spirit turned, putting his paws on the side of the boat. His girth forced the boat to lean, the boatman having to work harder to keep the gondola going straight.

"Why does it have to be a side quest?" came a woman's voice, "You like exploring and seeing things no one else has seen, right? All we want to know is what you see... What they're like, the unbeatable monsters." She added.

Spirit nearly fell back into the boat. Unbeatable monsters? Surely that couldn't be true. Every video game villain could be defeated. If it wasn't a case of hit points it had to be a puzzle. Someone had to find the right item, the right trap, the right logic. The harder the foe, the greater the rewards. The fat wolf pup looking around, trying to figure out a way to hear more about the conversation. If he was able to defeat the monsters, he'd become even more famous than his brother.

The wolf pup stood up, backed up and then ran, leaping off the side of the boat. He landed on a narrow stone ledge running around the outside of one of the buildings, a few pieces crumbling into the water. His claws dug into the stone, keeping him in place. Spirit panted, amazed he'd been able to execute such a complicated set of movements but even more surprised that the game had accepted it. The interpretive artificial intelligence was boggling, but so was the level of detail. There was no reason for the building to react to his presence and yet it had. For the moment Spirit just counted his blessings.

"You really don't belong in this game." Adapa said with a low voice, "You don't come here to do the same things you do in real life. You don't come here to be afraid. You come here to be better. I'm not going to feed you my experiences. What I see is for me. You... are just an unwelcome distraction." Adapa said, brushing past the other two.

"If you change your mind, its Sigma Pulsating Shadowed Canopy!" Iain called out.

"Iain, why did you tell him that?! We never give away information for free!" JennBee complained. Spirit was wide eyed. It had worked. He had gotten the information. He grinned with wide glee, his hands tightening on the controller... which was just enough to force his character to move. Spirit toppled backwards, falling into the canal. His screen fizzled gently before the chaos gate appeared in front of him, his character respawning. Spirit groaned, feeling ashamed he'd managed to die within the borders of the root town... but it didn't matter. He was about to become one of the most famous players of all time.

****

The Altimit loading screen filled the monitor, the white hexagon filling before it spread out in every direction. Spinning silver rings fluttered around a white background before they fell into place, the program ribbon filling with glossy icons. A hand reached out for the keyboard, tapping over a few icons. The hand was wide, square and strong. There were touches of callous but not too much, just like there were traces of hair on the knuckles and the back corner of the hand.

As the enter key was tapped, the internet browser was loaded to its default homepage - the forums of The World. There were several new and updated topics, though most seemed to be the typical. There were rants about player killers, excitement about various events like the cherry blossom festival, pleas for help defeating various monsters or finding rare treasure. The reader's eyes gazed over all the topics, looking for something to jump out at him... and then he saw it: New DLC announced.

A grin formed on lips framed by a fairly well maintained short brown beard. The large hand moved the mouse, clicking on the link. The page loaded, showing the new Barbarian class, a mace wielder. High HP, medium SP with the ability for job extension missions, opening up new weapon options down the road. While that was all fascinating enough, what really caught the reader's attention were the pictures in the forum entries.

The barbarians were huge characters... Muscled to a degree, but more than that it seemed like they took no consideration of societal rules. They had long hair, huge beards on the men and massive breasts for the ladies... and almost all of them had huge, rotund bellies. The reader leaned back, looking at his own reflection in the glass panel covering one of the cubbies on his computer desk. Leo was far from a barbarian. His brown hair was trimmed by hand but fairly neat, his beard kept in check by the cheapest beard trimmer money could buy. Leo had broad shoulders and big feet, he would have been big no matter what, but he'd had a bit of a belly since the end of middle school. Even that was kept in check though. No matter what he did, positive or negative, his weight remained the same.

Leo took a long, slow breath. He'd been the good boy his entire life. He'd never dyed his hair, cut it into wild styles, gotten a piercing or bucked the rules. He'd been meek and mild through school and now that he had graduated and had a job in retail, it really was over for him. He'd missed all his chances to be wild and he was tired of people looking at him like he just wasn't interesting enough... and he was really tired of thinking of his belly as a bad thing. Leo hated to admit it, but he kind of liked being a big guy with a gut... and if The World was a place where people could chase any goal they wanted, then Leo was going to do whatever it took to be wild and have fun. His protected and sheltered life was over. With a few more deft clicks of the mouse and a sweeping hand over the keyboard, Leo's information had been fed into the computer and the purchase of the DLC was complete. Now came the fun part, character creation.

[Sigma Pulsating Shadowed Canopy]

Gold rings dropped down around Spirit Ohm, the black wolf appearing in the forested area. The young boy's eyes widened as he looked around with great curiosity. The trees were thick and moss covered. Vines ran from branch to branch and the wild grasses swayed around softly. Dew ran down the waxy leaves, dripping into ponds tucked behind bushes. Spirit moved forward slowly with wonder.

He tried to stray off the path but the trees were so tight, it felt almost like an outdoor dungeon. Stone pillar seemed to mark the only exits from spot to spot. Spirit moved forward, his paws treading lightly. He held out his hand, the light shimmering as his shadow grimoire appeared, the book floating along. Spirit tried to be brave but in real life his controller was coated with sweat. He'd never come to the Sigma server. It was outside of his league, but even learning the character's moves would let him train. He had to see it with his own eyes.

"Piney Apple!!!" Came a squeaking shout. Spirit yelped and backed up, looking around before he spotted the source of the noise. It wasn't a monster like Spirit expected, it was puchiguso food. The apple was split in half, the exposed core seeming to be fleshy and yellow with a pineapple like texture, though faint green eyes and lips quivered as it watched the character. Spirit backed away from the fruit slowly, backing all the way through an archway into another section.

"What are you screaming about in here?" Came Hawk's voice. Spirit cringed, having been caught.

"Just trying to level up..." He murmured.

"You aren't even fighting any monsters yet." Hawk said, moving over. He tapped the controller, bringing up the level information. Hawk's jaw dropped when he saw the details, "Spirit, this is level fifty five! Are you crazy, the monsters are going to one hit kill you here!" Hawk groaned.

"Let me do it! I got smoke bombs." Spirit replied. Hawk rolled his eyes, watching his brother's screen. It wasn't the same as virtual reality, but he could still see what his brother was facing. Spirit wandered around the area, but as he got deeper and deeper, there seemed to be some flickering on the screen. Lines of visual noise popped and snapped like static before clearing again.

"Aw crap, the tower's glitching out..." Hawk murmured. He knew their system was old, very old, but computers weren't the sort of thing they could afford. Their food budget was stretched as it was. The only spare change that Hawk could manage to dig up went to keeping his account active in The World. Spirit gasped in the beat up office chair and Hawk brought his attention back to the screen. The glitching got a lot worse as the portal spun and widened, opening up. From the sparkling light three monsters appeared, feral black wolves covered with red markings and a strange patchwork of glowing green hexagons. The enemy data appeared on the screen, but the monster name was gibberish, made out of random symbols rather than numbers.

"The unbeatable monsters..." Spirit whispered, hearing a faint tone in the back of his ears. His fingers tightened, his breathing increasing.

"Log out of there you fool, they're forth levels above you. You can't even land a hit." Hawk said, expecting a retort from his brother. For the first time, however, he was silent. Hawk looked at his brother, "Spirit, log out." Hawk said. Again, no response... but something was wrong. His brother was rigid, his muscles tight, drool leaking from the corner of his lips. Hawk's eyes narrowed in concern.

On the screen the wolves were advancing, but Spirit looked to be on the edge of a seizure. Hawk grabbed the FMD off his brother's face, throwing it to the side. Spirit continued to tremble and shake. Hawk tried to pull the controller from his brother's grip but it didn't work, the fingers too tight. Hawk panicked. Even with the FMD off, his brother seemed to be having some sort of reaction. Hawk turned, looking at the computer. It seemed ludicrous that it could be responsible, but he had to try. Hawk all but lunged over the old tower, his fingers curling around the power cord before he yanked. The cord popped out, the computer went dark and Spirit let out a scream before collapsing to the ground, his spasming slowly subsiding.

"DAD!!!!" Hawk screamed out at the top of his lungs, moving to try and keep Spirit cushioned from the remnants of the reaction.

****

A gentle mist rained down across Tokyo, soaking the sidewalks and the buildings, running down in rivulets along the glass. Pedestrians moved about quickly beneath clear plastic umbrellas and neon yellow rain slickers... Everyone seemed like they had somewhere to be, somewhere to go. In all their bustling, none noticed the man in his late forties sitting on the cement edge of the large planter box in front of the Sol-Net building. Masato reached out slowly, running his fingers through the rain soaked bark dust, feeling the grit against his fingers, letting out a long, wistful sigh.

"Now... that is far too miserable for a great sensei to look." Came the soft, silky voice of Hoshi. Masato lifted his head and turned, looking at Hoshi. The woman was far from being as outlandish as her character in real life, garbed in a black dress suit with a red blouse beneath the black jacket, an ornamental ivory orchid clip in her black hair. Despite being more reserved, Hoshi still looked on the edge of perfection. Masato slowly lowered his gaze, shaking his head.

"How in the world could you have known to come here?" Masato asked.

"You are a man of habit. You didn't log on, I figured something had to be up." Hoshi replied, pausing, "Did you get fired?" she asked, looking at his rain soaked suit. Masato let out a soft snort, shaking his head.

"No, I'm protected from that... Tenure, unions and the slight fact that they depend on infrastructure in places so old that they need insurance. Still, it isn't much of a difference." Masato said softly. Hoshi moved forward, extending the hand that wasn't holding the umbrella.

"Walk with me." She said. Masato reached out, taking her hand before he stood, lowering his head a bit to fit under her umbrella.

"Where are we walking?" Masato asked. Hoshi gave a slight shrug.

"Does it matter, as long as we're walking together?" Hoshi asked. Masato smiled at that before he shook his head. Hoshi gave a resolute nod and began moving forward, letting Masato keep up at a languid pace. The two walked past the Sol-Net fountain, leaving the towering skyscraper behind eventually. In the distance they could hear the sounds of the pachinko parlors, the motorcycles and the music common to a less industrial neighborhood.

"They're cutting back my hours... Four hours a week for consultation of the new hires. They're still going to pay eighty percent of my salary despite that... But I'm barely more than a placeholder." Masato admitted.

"Eighty percent of your salary... is pretty respectable for four hours a week." Hoshi admitted, "Many players dream of a day job like that." Hoshi replied with a soft smile before she sobered again, "I take it that the new methods to train them didn't go over well?"

"Actually, your advice worked. They started to listen to me. They were motivated, they were learning the new and the old, taking my advice." Masato paused, watching the cross walk signal flash in the rain, warning them not to cross, "They started expecting it from the other employees... They wanted a better way of working."

"Well, punished for your success for more time to play. I'm surprised they left you the four hours. You might attempt a coup de tat." Hoshi replied.

"I don't know if they would have left me that much, but the translator broke down in the middle of the meeting with the division in Toronto. If I hadn't been there, they wouldn't have known what to do. They were completely reliant on the tech." Masato said.

"A glitch in the translation software? What did you do?" Hoshi asked in surprise.

"I loaded the macro from 'The World', used it to translate." Masato grinned. Hoshi let out a chuckle at that as the cross walk light changed and she began to walk again.

"You used the game software..." Hoshi grinned.

"Well we use it everyday to talk with players across the network." Masato admitted.

"I guess The World is as globalized as ours is." Hoshi smiled. Masato smiled at that, the two walking for several more blocks before Hoshi came to a stop outside the narrow door of an apartment building. Masato paused, looking at the building and then back at Hoshi.

"Is this-" Masato started to ask before Hoshi spoke.

"Want to come up? I could make tea, you could dry off..." Hoshi offered. Masato slowly smiled, feeling a warmth spread in his heart a bit.

"I'd like that very much." Masato said, looking into Hoshi's eyes. In all the years that they had known each other, he still felt as though she could see right into his very soul... but it was his heart that he wanted her to see most of all.

****

The hospital was sterile, bright and unyielding. Hawk sat in a hard chair in the hallway, his shoulders slumped, his brown eyes looking around. For some this was a place of recovery, of healing... but he'd never liked hospitals. For one, it always came with a bill they'd never be able to cover, but more than that it never seemed to resolve anything. They'd been there for almost ten hours and still they were no closer to figuring out what had happened to Spirit.

Hawk lowered his head even more, his head nearly at knee level. He still couldn't believe what he'd witnessed merely by accident. If he hadn't been there to pull his brother out, he wasn't sure how much worse it might have been... but Hawk still didn't know what had caused it. Was it their system breaking down from old age, some terrible glitch? Or was it something in The World itself, something his brother had stumbled across unknowingly.

There was really only one way to tell. Hawk had to see it for himself. The teenager slowly rose to his feet, looking around before he moved to the doorway, peering in. His dad stood by the bed, the doctors shining lights in Spirit's eyes. Spirit twitched a bit but showed no other signs of response. Hawk couldn't sit around and watch. He moved down the hallway, wandering.

The faint pink walls and brown carpet were a terrible match, but it was all in the name of ease... Ease to replace, ease to clean. Everything was about making the impossible that much easier. As far as Hawk was concerned, he was still hoping for a bit of a miracle. He glanced both ways, making sure no doctor or nurse was coming before he moved over to some cupboards outside some of the hospital suites. He opened a few and found them empty and moved on to the next. It wasn't until his eighth drawer that there was an obstacle... a lock.

"Bingo..." Hawk murmured, knowing there was something worth protecting. He reached into his pocket and fished out a pocket knife, flicking out the blade. He took another glance both directions before he jammed it into the lock, wriggling it around. The tumblers resisted the brute force but Hawk was able to work it enough to pop the drawer. The wood lurched and the sliders gave way. Hawk looked in, spotting a wallet and a watch, a belt... and a cell phone with an FMD.

Hawk reached in and scooped up his find, sliding it into the deep pockets of his basketball shorts before he slid the drawer back, trying to get it to stay. As much as he wanted to run back to where he'd started from, he casually moved down the hallway further, passing several rooms and the nurse's station before he came upon the bathroom. Privacy... it was just what he needed. Hawk pushed through the door, moving past his reflection in the mirror before he moved into one of the stalls, sitting down.

It wasn't long before the cell phone was in his hand, the controller wings slid out from the underside of the phone. Hawk erased the login information in the phone already, entering his own. It took the phone a moment to load the data before the connection started. Hawk lifted the slim line FMD up onto his nose, the lenses resting over his eyes. There was a rush of the digital tunnel flying around him, his senses accepting that he was no longer in the real world.

The long path of the digital tunnel broke into sparkling light as Naval Mond appeared around him, the last place he had been. Hawk stood there a moment, trying to remember where his brother had been playing... He'd only seen the area information for such a fleeting moment. Sigma... It had been sigma server. Hawk turned, facing the chaos gate, changing servers. Gold rings dropped around his character, the root town of Iota disappearing into a sea of darkness before a new visage unfolded before him... Fort Ouph, the flying city.

Wide, round platforms were bridged together like dew drops in a spider's web, all connected. It was a beautiful sight, but it wasn't why Hawk had come. Again he turned to the chaos gate, opening up the keyword menu. His muscles tightened, trying to remember, racking his brain. His black and white tennis shoes tapped the tiled floor.

"Come on... Come on, what was it?" he muttered. It felt like his brain was full of static. He knew it was a forested area and the name reflected that. The word 'canopy' popped into his brain, the last word, and soon after he remembered that the first word was pulsating. It had seemed strange since that word usually led to flesh wall dungeons... but he still needed the middle word.

Hawk flipped through his options, watching the picture of the selected area change. Shinto shrines, barren burning wastelands, vast labyrinths... but then he saw it, a forested glen. Sigma, Pulsating Shadowed Canopy. Hawk accepted the area quickly, watching Fort Ouph disappear from around him, replaced by darkness before the designated area became clear.

Blood Ohm appeared in the midst of the trees, seeming slightly out of place in a rain forest. His colors were for the plains and mountains, his design based off of his own tribe. Hawk eased the controller forward, looking around carefully, retracing his brother's steps. This was the true test. He wasn't playing on a broken down system with used parts, he wasn't outmatched for the area level. It would be a challenge but not an impossible one... assuming that the area wasn't glitched, that it didn't put him into the same condition as his brother.

"Come on, where are you..." Hawk muttered, "I'm right here..." he growled softly, pushing through a stone archway into another area. Up ahead a golden portal began to spin and grow, becoming larger and larger. In the back of his mind he heard a faint tone, the reverberation lost to his conscious mind. Hawk took a breath, "I'm right here!" he shouted, his fingers tight on the controller.

The portal cleared, disappearing as the monsters were released... In its place were three black wolves with red tattoos, covered with glowing green armor. The hexagons flickered with intensity as the wolves seemed to sniff the air, their maws parting. Their fangs glinted, saliva dripped from their black lips and their eyes were flaming red. Hawk's eyes moved from his enemies to their data... and his heart sank.

Their enemy name was illegible, their hit points displayed in utter gibberish. The wolves snarled and lunged, moving to attack. Hawk used Blood Ohm's best moves, the tribal grappler moving quickly. Ohm punched and kicked at the wolves, lunging out of the way. They spun around, snarling and growling viciously. Ohm kept fighting, watching the gibberish symbols change with every hit, but nothing he did turned them into real numbers. Up or down, better or worse, there was no way of telling.

One of the wolves ducked under the others, moving to slash at Ohm, the paw swiping the character. Hawk felt the phone vibrate in his hands, rumbling to indicate a strike, but he didn't need the feedback to know. He'd felt it, a flash of searing pain across his arm. He cried out in sudden agony, panting hard. Hawk didn't understand how that was possible, how he'd felt something in the game, but as much as he wanted to drop the controller, he couldn't. His hands kept playing, his muscles tight like he was in a life or death struggle.

The wolves continued to move, slashing and biting. Ohm was good at evading, but every percentage had a chance for failure. One of the wolves leapt, knocking Ohm back, biting into his neck. In the toilet stall Hawk fell forward off the basin, landing on his knees, groaning hard. The skin around his throat burned and he felt a fever raging through his body. The wolves started circling his character, as if ready to move in for the kill... but something else was happening, something very strange.

Blood Ohm's long braided black hair was getting thicker, stray strands obscuring his ears from view... but ever so slowly, pointed black ear tips pushed out of his mane, rising up to the top of his head. The wolf paw gauntlets he wore flickered and sizzled, the seam between his weapon and his character disappearing. The black fur started working up his character's arm, coating it thicker and wilder. The claws curved and sharpened, looking far more real.

Hawk panted, on his knees in a bathroom stall, unable to let go of the cell phone tying him into the virtual world. He watched his character's data being modified, violated, changed... but it felt like it was happening to him. His fingers throbbed and burned, his muscles ached with power. His mouth hung open, drool starting to leak from the corners. The camera orbited around Blood Ohm, showing his eyes turning red, his mouth agape as his teeth turned into sharp fangs. Even the digital face Hawk had picked out was changing, his mouth pushing forward as thick fuzzy sideburns grew down his cheeks, growing wilder.

"Spirit..." Hawk murmured, his tongue barely able to make words. He could feel his humanity getting stripped away, his freedom slowly dissolving... but somewhere at the edge of his senses, he heard something else - movement. Something was coming through the trees, getting closer. Branches in the canopy wobbled, twigs snapped and vines slipped free before an orange and black tamarin landed in the tree above Blood Ohm.

Enkidu looked at the glitched characters with shock before he lifted his staff and threw it straight down. The staff embedded in the dirt between Ohm and the wolves, a massive ring of orange light spreading outward from it. Hawk's FMD began to flicker and shift, noise appearing before the screen went dark, severing his connection without warning, ripping him out of the reality that had become his.

The cell phone clattered across the bathroom tile, Hawk landing on all fours, panting and retching, feeling like he was about to throw up. He reached up numbly, trying to rip the glasses from his face. As they fell to the ground, he looked at his hands, his eyes dilated. Hawk could have sworn he felt his claws, his paw pads, the fur on his arms. His sense of touch and sight were disagreeing, but it was more than cosmetic. Hawk could feel the wolf, the fever, the rage inside him.

Hawk growled and moaned, reaching up to grab at his shirt. He balled up the fabric of the jersey in his fist before he pulled, tearing the resilient cloth. Once he got it started, the sheer material split up the middle, pulling back to reveal his chest... a chest with a bit more hair than it had before. Hawk's nipples were hard, his muscles twitching, but it wasn't enough. Hawk was doubled over, his pants tight. Even his groin was burning. He was so aroused, so turned on. He hadn't felt it come on, but now he felt it all... The game had been making him feel so good.

The eighteen year old's fingers grabbed the waist band of his shorts, pulling them down, his hard cock aching as it sprung into the cool air, his balls hanging heavy and hot behind the rod. Hawk curled his hand around his shaft and began to pump it instinctively, thrusting into his hand, trying to get sweet release. He pumped his meat frantically, overtaken by pure instinct. Whatever had been rewriting his character had worked into his brain as well.

Hawk panted and drooled, fucking his hand mercilessly, his shoulders bumping into the walls as he went at it. His meat was aching and red, aroused beyond all previous standards. Hawk was so hard that it almost hurt, but in turn almost felt that much better. There was no logic, no concern, nothing but base instinct. Hawk was feral and wild just like the wolves that had attacked him. Moments passed, his grunts growing louder and louder before a blinding light of bliss filled Hawk's head.

A howl left his drool coated lips, the teenager lifting his head as he came. His cock shot out rope after rope of cum onto the bathroom floor, coating the tiles and the one hand Hawk used to keep himself upright. Hawk came for several moments before the stream slowed, still jerking his cock a few more times before he reluctantly let go. Hawk panted hard, reclaiming his breath before he shifted his weight onto his hind haunches, lifting his hands slowly.

It took a few moments to recompose himself, but as the first semblances of thought began to return, something else kicked in stronger... his sense of smell. Hawk sniffed the air, smelling something musky and salty. He slowly lifted his hand, looking at his own cum before his lips parted, his tongue emerged and he began to lick up his own semen. One lick, two licks, then three and the cum was gone, but it wasn't enough.

Hawk whimpered, moving to lean down and lick the floor, his tongue emerging from his lips before everything came to a crashing halt. The smell of the cleansers, the sound of the plumping, the muffled voices from the intercoms outside. Reality came crashing back around Hawk. He wasn't just in a hospital, he was in a bathroom. Hawk sprung up to his feet and stumbled out of the toilet stall, his foot coming down on the phone he'd dropped. There was the sound of cracking glass as the shoe crushed the screen.

There was a moment of terror, shock and regret as Hawk realized what had just happened. He turned and pushed out of the bathroom door, nearly knocking down an intern as he ran for the nearest door, trying to get away from it all. Hawk didn't know what had just happened, why he'd lost control or who had come to save him. All he knew was that he had to get out into the open, to get fresh air, to feel the wind against his fur... or his hair. Hawk groaned, not even knowing that as he burst through the emergency exit.

[Omega Hidden Forbidden End of Land]

"You're being careless!!!" The shout echoed across the island, carried on the wind into the distant double seas. Wotan was furious, his eyes set as he looked around, his wavemaster staff slammed down into the dirt. Wotan let the echo of his voice fade before he spoke again, "A little boy is in the hospital, he had a seizure while playing in the game!" Wotan growled.

"He is not a lost one, there are no lost ones yet... even if that is ultimately your goal." Morganna replied.

"If he hadn't been saved, he would have been. What are you doing? What if someone finds out, what if they can tell?" Wotan asked.

"The epitaph users are sensitive, yes, but they have lived their lives in the shadow of data drain... They look for loss, for lack, for the void. I am not draining them of their data, I am adding to it." Morganna replied.

"It isn't just the epitaph users." Wotan said, pulling his staff out of the ground. He started to move around the island, "What if she returns? What if-"

"Aura is still missing... Lost in your battle with the NAB. Would I even be here if you still had her?" Morganna asked bitterly. Wotan said nothing. It was true his organization had planned to use Aura as the origin data to feed their movement, to control the networks and all of humanity... but a new plan had been forged when Aura had disappeared.

"What are you adding?" Wotan asked finally. The question surprised Morganna. Normally humans were too focused on their own agendas.

"I am adding... myself. I am adding this world to their data." Morganna replied.

"Why?" Wotan asked in surprise.

"If I take their data, they become lost ones. People will come, people will investigate. If I am their data, I am protected. I see and feel what they do, and they protect me because we are one and the same." Morganna replied.

"You're... adding yourself to living players?" Wotan whispered, "H... How?"

"You still think in such limited dimensions... This is not some simulation, this world is its own reality. Humans voluntarily leave their own to touch this world, pushing the boundaries of their own mind. What little does it take to bring them that much further inside?" Morganna asked. Wotan was once more speechless.

[Omega Server - Pinnacle City Breg Epona]

The complex multi-ringed chaos gate spun quickly from its position on the platform, the portal inside barely blue at all. The gate and the area had yet to be activated, granting players access to the most difficult areas of the entire game and the most powerful items to balance the battle out with. Despite being empty, the city had been lovingly restored, sprawling out in all directions. Much like Fort Ouph and Dun Loireag, it was another city in the clouds... but it was far more advanced. Only Carmina Gadelica had as many buildings for player use, so many so that cable trams drifted along from cluster to cluster in a network of mass transit.

The server had sat in silence, waiting for players to rise to high enough levels to utilize it properly... but that silence came to an end. The light in the center of the chaos gate flickered and grew before it suddenly turned green. The space next to the chaos gate flickered and sparked before a second chaos gate formed, only this one was of the classic design and made entirely of green light. As it spun, a slightly higher harmonic tone sounded with each revolution.

Gold rings dropped down around Enkidu as he appeared in Breg Epona, his primate feet gripping the stones beneath him. His eyes darted around at the forbidden area, looking for anything out of the ordinary... but he saw nothing. There were shops waiting to be populated, alleys and roadways, theaters and meeting halls. It was all empty, all waiting. Enkidu moved his staff before him, opening up a data screen.

The encounter data was listed, both from the Hulle Granz Cathedral and forest area with the data bug wolves. Both areas had superfluous data, but it hadn't originated on those servers. It had come from the Omega server. Enkidu turned, facing his own hacked gate before he opened up the keyword interface.

"Omega, Hidden Forbidden..." Enkidu murmured, starting to flick through word after word. The lost grounds had become fairly common knowledge and were popular destinations for the players that knew about them. They all seemed to start with the same keywords, but they only worked on specific servers. Entering the same words anywhere else resulted in a simple, random area like any other. What Enkidu was searching for was something that didn't belong.

Picture by picture, he moved through the options. Many of the keywords were grayed out in his menu, the hacker seeing words that hadn't been unlocked for anyone. He kept flipping through before he paused, coming to Hidden Forbidden End of Land. He stared at the picture for a long moment, wondering what had caught his attention. The icon was no different from many of the other levels that had appeared, an island chain with the quest to unite the symbol fragments...

"This keyword isn't on the other servers..." Enkidu said finally to himself, a grin crossing his lips. He accepted the area parameters and initiated a warp, but as the gold rings dropped around him, they stopped in place and disappeared. Enkidu's field of vision filled with a black screen with flashing red text; 'PROTECTED AREA'. Enkidu's fingers slowly slipped from his controller. He had never seen an area he couldn't hack into. His gate hacking macro didn't pop up, nothing. He was simply forbidden from the area.

The black screen cleared, revealing the city beyond but Enkidu nearly jumped. There were new NPC's standing every thirty or forty feed apart, wearing purple uniforms with hats down so low that the brims covered their eyes like visors. On their chest's were the double embedded C logo of the CyberConnect corporation.

"Attention players: This is a system announcement. The bounty boards have been updated. Information pertaining to the Hacker Character Enkidu is desired by the system authority. Those able to provide valid information about the player character and system user will be rewarded handsomely. More information can be located on the bulletin board system. Attention players: This is a system announcement." The NPC repeated, going into his speech again.

As the NPC prattled on, virtual holographic wanted posters began to appear on all the walls of the city, flittering outward, popping up in every direction. Enkidu knew it wasn't just Omega Server. He'd just become wanted everywhere in The World. A quick tap to his headset force-logged him out of the world, bypassing the normal steps. The FMD and computer screen went dark, leaving Enkidu in his apartment. He leaned back in his chair, taking a long breath.

Was it his research into the coma victims? Into quantum computing with the brains of convicts? Or was it the protected area? If it had been the protected area, the response had been shockingly fast. Whatever it was, Enkidu knew he'd have to lay low for a while... or at least seek out answers in a far different way.

****

The door to the hospital suite eased open as Hawk returned. He looked a lot worse for the wear. His clothes were soaked with sweat, his skin was pale... but he couldn't run away forever. He had to see his brother. He moved over to the bed side and sat down in the empty chair. Hawk's father stood on the other side of the room and looked up, glad that Hawk had come in at last.

"Your sister is on the way back from the reservation, but I need to use the bathroom, get something to eat. Can you stay here a while?" Hawk's father asked. Hawk nodded slowly.

"There's no where I'd rather be." Hawk replied. His father gave a slight nod before he moved out of the room, leaving the boys alone. Hawk turned and looked at Spirit, lying in the bed, listening to the heart monitor chirp away. Hawk shook his head, "I'm so sorry brother... I really wish you'd just wake up." Hawk said. In the bed, Spirit's hand twitched and then tightened. There was a slight moan before his eyes woke up.

"Hawk?" Spirit asked in a soft, tired voice. Hawk's eyes went wide.

"You woke up? Dad! Dad, he's awake!" Hawk shouted, but his father was already too far down the hall. Hawk looked back to his brother, "I was so worried! I'd hit you if you weren't in a hospital." Hawk chuckled before he grew more serious, "Why did you do it? Why did you go to such a dangerous area?" he asked. Spirit looked down at the blankets covering his belly for a long moment.

"I wanted to do something so you'd take me with you one day, so we could play together and no one would think it was because we were just brothers." Spirit admitted.

"But we have the same account, we can't play together..." Hawk said softly. Spirit shrugged.

"I've been saving up to transfer my character." Spirit replied.

"We still don't have more than one computer." Hawk replied. Spirit looked flustered at that idea.

"Maybe I can borrow one from school..." Spirit replied.

"As long as you don't get out of school by pretending to be sick, I think this is plenty." Hawk said with a reassuring smile. Spirit nodded slowly before he looked at his brother.

"Your claws are really cool though." Spirit said. Hawk hesitated, looking at Spirit.

"What?" Hawk whispered. Spirit reached out and lifted Hawk's hand, looking at it. He traced his fingers through thin air, past the finger tips and then to the knuckles.

"Your claws are really cool, and your fur is so soft! I told you that you shoulda been a wolf like me." Spirit said. Hawk's back was rigid, his muscles tense. He thought it had been a dream, a hallucination... But it had to be, and it still was. He could see his human hands, his human arms but it felt like he had fur and claws... and Spirit could see them.

"Spirit, what... do I look like?" Hawk asked gently. Spirit grinned at that.

"You have such nice wolf ears and sharp teeth and red eyes... I have the coolest brother ever!" Spirit said happily. Hawk felt like his heart was going to explode.

"Spirit, what you see is a secret... We can only talk about it in the Game. If you let dad hear you talk about it, you won't get to come home. Do you understand?" Hawk asked. Spirit looked suddenly hurt.

"We can't talk about you being a werewolf?" Spirit whimpered. Hawk shook his head.

"Not yet, not until we figure out what's going on. I want to keep you safe." Hawk replied. Spirit smiled at that.

"My protector." he grinned.