I was still falling.

No, wait. After a moment of panic, my brain caught up to its surroundings, making sense of the lack of ground beneath my feet—feet that, suddenly, were pointing the right way down.

I wasn’t falling—I was floating. I mean, floating down, so still technically falling, but at a much slower rate than before. No body-exploding impact for me. Not just this moment, anyway.

That said: For some reason, my shoulders hurt. I looked down and saw I was wearing a brown leather shoulder harness that definitely hadn’t been there before I entered the game. The straps dug tightly into my chest and were adorned at the top by a set of strings. I turned my gaze up to follow the strings and found myself under a parachute, bright and colorful and wide, lowering me gently from a beautiful blue sky.

Well, that made as much sense as anything else.

Then I looked back down, and what I saw made more sense than anything else—certainly anything that had happened today. After a morning of careening from one high-stress situation to the next, I could finally breathe a sigh of relief because I knew exactly where I was, and I was going to be just fine.

I was in Animal Flossing.

Now, fad games come and go, so I don’t know if this will be a timeless classic to you or a long-forgotten novelty. But for the uninitiated, or those who were initiated so long ago they have since forgotten: Animal Flossing was perhaps the purest available virtual expression of fun. It was the ultimate game of HIVE birthday parties, or of little kids cutting class. Heck, even I had a soft spot for it.

Which I guess wasn’t saying much because of how totally fine I was with HIVE, as you know. But still. Whatever.

The gist was this. Cute bipedal animals—and you!—were dropped onto a cozy woodland island with very few resources beyond a parachute, pluck, and the occasional plunger gun. Or bubble blaster, or some such. Your goal was to be the last one remaining on the island, taking out your fellow players and NPCs with gumdrop gauntlets, or bismuth-plated butterfly nets, or such some. If you tried to hide and wait them out, you’d be eliminated anyway, inevitably getting caught and thrown into debtors’ prison by Tom A. Toehead, an adorable red mole who appeared to run the island with the firm capitalist paw of a nineteenth-century industrial baron. And if you won? You got to do the most delightful little victory dances.

It was cute. It was innocent. It was exactly the kind of game Sammi convinced us all to play whenever she was stressed out from taking six AP classes and helping with one of her older sisters’ weddings. And more to the point, it was the perfect place to hide from Markus Fawkes, and the first stroke of good luck I’d had all day.

“You have to get out of here.”

Rather than respond, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the last few seconds of peaceful descent before I breached the forest canopy. I would not let Jason spoil my moment of Zen.

“We’ve really gotten off track,” Jason persisted, un-Zen-ly. “We’re farther from the top of the game than we were before. I don’t know where the rest of your friends are or how to help your dad when he gets there. And I’m no closer to getting back to where I belong. Except maybe I am because apparently, your mom is the second-most famous HIVE architect who ever lived.”

Okay, that, I would respond to.

“Second-most?” I frowned, eyes still closed.

“Well, Eric.”

“Oh, you two are on a first-name basis now?”

“I don’t know, are you? Because apparently you could be, and you haven’t been telling me!”

“I don’t see how this is my—aak—fault.”

My eyes popped open at the feeling of something snagging on my feet. I had reached the tree line now, and my slow descent became even slower as I found myself having to knock branches away from my face.

“You definitely saw her when she picked me up from the—pfftaak—library. A few times she—blegh—asked if you—arh!—wanted a ride home. Oof. ”

I’d made it through the branches, but my parachute had not, having quickly become entangled in limbs and leaves. I hung there helplessly in the air, swinging in circles six feet above the forest floor.

“Okay, but she never mentioned she was the great VR genius of our time,” Jason said, taking full advantage of his captive audience. “And neither did you! That information could not be more relevant to the problem at hand! She could be our connection to Eric—heck, she and Eric could be in the same place right now! And here I am, trapped outside of my true home—do you know what that’s like? And you just let me dangle like—like—”

“Like me?” I asked, dangling.

“Well.”

“Look,” I said. “My mom is a genius, yes. But she’s not that great. And it’s not that relevant. I haven’t heard from her in years, Jason. None of us have. I honestly have no clue where she’d be right now. Do you know what that’s like?”

At long last, a thoughtful pause from my inner critic.

“Yes,” Jason admitted finally. “I do.”

“Great,” I said, reaching up to unbutton my left shoulder strap. “So you understand. Nothing’s changed.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Jason said, and something about his tone made my hand freeze. “Kara, don’t you know what this means? You’re real, too.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “I am real. We’re all real.”

“No,” Jason said, like somehow I was the one who was off base here. “Real like me. If Eric Alanick is from the real world, and my parents are from the real world, then Kimi Swift is definitely from the real world. And so are her kids. Those other players? They’re just code. No wonder they were easy to turn into Drones—it’s just HIVE converting its NPCs from one type to another. But you … you may not even be able to become a Drone. And— Oh, of course. How didn’t I see it?”

I wasn’t going to ask. I couldn’t ask.

“See what?” I asked.

“Kara, what are the odds we would find each other today in the street? Me, the person in Bullworth with the most knowledge of HIVE, and you, the daughter of a HIVE architect and the only person not to be in there for the Update? What are the chances we would have known each other in the first place? None. Because it wasn’t chance. It was the simulation. It brought us together. It knew we could help each other.”

For a minute now, my hand had been frozen in front of my shoulder harness. Now it wasn’t frozen—because it was shaking.

“You’re sick, Jason,” I said. “You need help.” And before I could think anymore about the points he was making—and how they were almost, maybe, possibly, actual points—I unstrapped myself from my parachute and fell the last few feet to the forest floor.

“My only sickness is that I’m trapped outside of the world I’m actually from,” Jason said. “I can feel it, and it’s awful. You’re lucky. You’re in there. You know I’m right. I do need help—I need your help.”

My fall to the ground had a bracing effect, sending shock waves up through my knees and freeing me from the fog of Jason’s words. Some games played tricks with their physics engines, making you lighter so you felt like you could do anything—Aaron loved those games—but even in Animal Flossing, gravity still ruled. I stood up tall with renewed intent.

“I’ll help you,” I said. “But only after I help my friends. And I’ll only do that after I’ve spent a few more minutes in here to make sure Markus doesn’t follow me. And since I’m here …”

I picked up something I had spotted while hanging in the air—a plunger gun hidden between two bushes. Classic Animal Flossing.

“I might as well have some fun.”

Jason groaned so loudly I almost didn’t hear the rustling in the trees behind me. I turned, smirking as I held up my wacky weapon.

I froze when I saw the girl who had emerged from the undergrowth. She was not smirking. Like, at all.

“Please,” she said, her voice cracking. “We don’t have to do this.”

She was holding what appeared to be some sort of a weaponized waffle iron, but it was pointed at the air, her hands raised high above her head in surrender. She had outfitted herself in an adorable sundress and cat ears. I realized the cat ears were actually a Mod when I saw them quivering with fear. Did I really look that threatening?

“We can get through this together. You don’t have to shoot me. We can form an Alliance.”

I was unnerved by her serious tone, but I still found myself laughing—partly to put her at ease, and partly because I couldn’t help myself. The contrast of the absurd handheld waffle iron with her deadly serious expression was just too great for words.

“Hey, listen, I think you have the wrong game,” I said. “I’m not trying to harsh your mellow. I’m not even sure how this thing wor—ohp!”

I had tried to gesture at my plunger gun to indicate how little I knew about it, but since I was holding it, it was more like gesturing with my plunger gun. And apparently one of the many things I didn’t know about gesturing with plunger guns was: It caused them to fire.

The girl screamed and threw herself to the ground, narrowly dodging a plunger to the stomach and firing off her own weapon in return. Her panic made her a poor shot, and I easily sidestepped as three waffles flew up past me like spinning discs. They were things of beauty to behold: perfectly golden brown, and whipping syrup and butter off them in spiraling arcs as they whirled through the air.

And collided with another girl who had just emerged from the trees.

This girl was taller than either of us, and as such, she caught two of the waffles right in the face, each landing with a syrupy splat. The third bounced off her forehead, causing the first two to detach and fall to the ground, revealing a face slathered with maple, butter, and seething rage.

“You jerk!” she spat, pulling out a slingshot and loading it up with a rainbow-colored jawbreaker. “I was going to help you ambush her!”

“Please,” begged the first girl, pushing herself up from the ground. “It was an accident! I would never—”

But it was too late; I heard the snap of the slingshot’s release, and then the rainbow jawbreaker was whizzing right past me and conking the girl directly between her cat ears. I’ll admit I winced—I could hear the bruise forming already—but I still didn’t understand the girl’s wail of abject misery upon being struck.

Then I heard the hoarsening of the tall girl’s voice as she croaked, “I hope you’re happy now, Lexi. You’ve doomed us both.”

I knew that croak. I’d heard it just a few minutes ago.

I turned around and, sure enough, the tall girl was frozen in place, her knuckles clenching white around her slingshot. No, not white—gray.

I whipped around again, like following a terrible tennis match. Lexi’s cat ears were sinking into her head, and her body was beginning to float off the ground.

They were both becoming Drones.

“No,” I breathed, though I wasn’t sure who I was addressing. “I didn’t—I didn’t know.”

But Jumpsuit’s words echoed in my head: Don’t go into the games—that’ll just be worse. I may not have known, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t been warned.

And now I was getting another warning:

“Look out!” Jason cried. Instinctually, I threw myself to the ground, and for the third time in as many minutes, something flew past my head—a gumdrop that embedded itself with a thunk in the tree behind me. Looking up, I saw a player in a glistening gauntlet striding out of the trees, drawn to our little clearing by all the commotion and here now to see if there were any survivors he could pick off.

“Shoot him!” Jason urged, and sure enough, another plunger had magically appeared in my gun. Talk about instant reload. But I couldn’t bring myself to use it. I already felt bad enough about accidentally contributing to Lexi’s and her friend’s horrific transformations; I couldn’t imagine how awful I’d feel being the direct cause.

The new player didn’t have any such qualms. He was already aiming his gauntlet down at me. I popped to my feet and—oh no, I was taller than him, he was a child, a blond little boy with a flyaway cowlick. I was racked by a wave of conflicting emotions until he fired his gauntlet again and missed me by a mile, at which point I just felt grateful. Children: not fantastic with hand-eye coordination.

Also: not extraordinarily fast runners. I took off into the undergrowth, grateful to have encountered, for once, someone with legs even shorter than my own. Twigs snapped and cracked under my boots as I ran, but all I could hear in my head were the other words Jumpsuit had said: Only go in there if you know you can get out.

My thoughts flashed to my friends. What if they were in these games? What about Kyle if he really had gone into Brawl of Duty—and what about Dad if he had decided to go find him?

And what about me, trapped, absurdly, in Animal Flossing?

Winning a HIVE game—even a fun, family-friendly game like this—was no longer just a way to score points or bragging rights. Now it was the only way to get back to the Honeycomb with your body and soul intact.

And if you lost a HIVE game …

Well.

I just couldn’t afford to lose.