I tunneled through until I came to a cross section cavernous enough that I could stick Lonnie in one corner and have a look around. The wolf followed close by. The cave didn’t have an outlet, at least not one I could make out immediately. There was no way to know exactly what part of the hill I was trapped in. Any direction could mean trouble, but I figured up was my best bet because I’d hit light eventually.

“What do you say, Howl?” I asked the wolf. “Lonnie?” No response from either. “Well, here goes nothing,” I said to both of them and neither at the same time. I started mining upward in a jagged pattern, making stone footholds as I went. The wolf bounded up with me, jumping from ledge to ledge. When I’d moved up far enough to lose the light from the torches below, I went back down and grabbed Lonnie, and dragged him up to a landing I’d created that was just big enough for the two of us. Howl watched from a spot a little higher up and on the opposite side of the hole I’d made. I dropped Lonnie’s lead again and mined upward some more. There was light. I dug up faster and burst through to—not daylight—another cavern that was already outfitted with torches.

“Esme and Anton must have come through here,” I said to Lonnie and the wolf. The torches were all on one side of the narrow path, which was a tactic I often used when I was digging through a cave, to remind myself which direction was in and which was out. Only, I wasn’t sure which side they’d put the torches on to show “out.”

“Well, the game makes everyone a righty, which means as they came through they’d put the torches on their right, right?”

Lonnie stared into the distance, and the wolf walked up ahead, and back again, tail wagging.

“Which means they would have gone in this direction,” I said, pointing down the path.

The wolf followed my lead, and Lonnie came along mutely through the dark, winding trail.

I felt a chill, which I wasn’t sure if it was just me feeling eerie about being inside the game, or me actually feeling a chill out in the real world where my body was. I blamed A.J., really. If that kid hadn’t come into my room with his VR goggles, none of this would have happened, and I’d still be in the real world, in the hospital with my parents, and maybe someone would be ready to tell me what had happened to my friend. I took another look at Lonnie and tried to recognize something in his eyes, but they were the same dull, lifeless avatar eyes that everyone had.

“Are you there, Elon?” I asked. He always reacted when I called him that. He hated it so much. But it didn’t work. To be honest, at this point, I’d take another attack to see if he’d help out. At least then I’d know he was thinking something.

There was an audible fizz as I moved around the next corner and came face-to-face with a creeper. The fizzing was getting louder, so I backed off with Lonnie in tow. The creeper exploded as I moved back the way I’d come, but behind me were two more.

The path curved ahead to the left, so I cut through the stone, hoping I’d catch the path at another point, and avoid the explosive creepers at our backs. I mined through, pulled Lonnie along with Howl crawling closely behind.

I moved faster, despite the fact that every now and then Lonnie would bump into solid rock.

“It’s not real, so it doesn’t count,” I said, more to make myself feel better than anything else.

The path split into two up ahead, one leading up and the other leading to the right. But neither of them had torches. I had no way to tell which way Esme and Anton had taken.

“Heads or tails?” I asked Lonnie. It was our usual way of choosing stuff. The fizzing of another creeper got close. I chose to go up. It had worked before. There was a network of tunnels, and I kept choosing one and heading through any one that seemed creeper-free, but with Lonnie in tow I wasn’t moving as quickly as I could have on my own, and pretty soon I was surrounded again. Howl snarled and snapped. I let go of Lonnie’s lead and prepared to square off against the creepers pressing in. One on a far end popped and set off a chain reaction. As the one closest got ready to go off, I pulled Lonnie out of the way, but Howl jumped on the creeper, pushing it back and muting the blast. The mob was gone and Howl lay on her side on the cave floor.

“No!” I shouted, feeling the sting of tears in my eyes. The sight of her on the ground hit me harder than I would have imagined. She wasn’t a real pet—none of this was real—but she’d sacrificed herself to save us. I shook my head and repeated, “None of this is real.” Then I looked at Lonnie. Maybe some of it was…I hesitated a beat, but the moan of a distant zombie got me moving.

Illusion, illusion, illusion, I said to myself as we ran. It’s all an illusion.