Somewhere else in the corner of the country, Dr. Hal lounged in his room, sprawled on his bed in his pajamas. A half-eaten bag of chips lay next to him as he idly scrolled through various livestreams on his laptop.

"Isn't there anyone new?" he whispered to himself, yawning as he dragged his fingers across the screen. "Tch… still thirty minutes until Remiru's live. Wasn't she going to try out the new swimsuit?"

He continued talking to himself, and even though most of the videos being shown in his feed could be considered… dubious, he barely paid attention to any of it.

"Ha… life."

He was just about to grab another chip when something on the screen caught his eye. It caught his eye since it was completely different from everything else on his feed. While most of the thumbnails were inside rooms, this one was outside in the bright day of the sun.

But of course, if it were only that, then he wouldn't have clicked on it.

"Wait a second..." he muttered, leaning forward. He fumbled around for his glasses and, once found, hurriedly perched them on his nose.

He squinted at the screen, his expression shifting from relaxed to intensely curious. The video showed a boy wielding a katana, clumsily swinging the blade but still managing to dispatch monstrous creatures. Hal took several looks, zooming in and pausing at crucial moments.

"Is that...?" He could hardly believe it. His first instinct was that it was someone else. But he couldn't mistake the face for anyone else—after all, the man's youthful face had been ingrained in his mind for years.

"It… can't be."

But it shouldn't be him. It shouldn't be Adam.

Because Adam should have been dead, burned in the last Game.

"What the…" Hal snapped his laptop shut and sat there staring at nothing for a few seconds.

After gathering his thoughts, he opened the laptop again and replayed the video, pausing at various intervals. He then opened a photo of Adam from his files and compared it with the video.

"No way," he gasped loudly. His hands trembled so much that he nearly closed the laptop again by accident.

"No fucking way!" Hal quickly got off the bed—no. He rolled out of bed before rushing to his closet, almost ripping off the hinges. He started to get dressed, fumbling with his pants.

Before he could even finish pulling them up, however, Dr. Aniston barged into the room without knocking.

"Aniston!" Hal yelped, nearly tripping over himself. "I-I mean, Dr. Aniston!"

She ignored him completely, striding purposefully past him and heading straight for his bed, sitting down without even saying a word.

"Uhm… okay? Is… Is this ethical?" Hal then awkwardly lowered the pants he was in the process of wearing, but when he saw her opening up his laptop, he quickly pulled them back up.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said, scoffing at him without looking up.

"Uh…" Hal slowly approached her as she stared intently at the screen, playing the video again.

"It's him," she declared, closing the laptop hastily and grabbing it before Hal could even get close. "Finish getting dressed and follow me."

"Oka—"

She didn't wait for a response at all and strode out of the room, leaving Hal scrambling to finish putting on his clothes. The hallway outside was cold and oddly metallic, not even a single natural light seeping from its windows… because it had no windows at all in the first place.

With how enclosed the hallway was, each of her steps could be heard by everyone there… or perhaps her steps were just that heavy.

"S-shit… it's her!"

"Ssh! Don't look at her! Are you crazy?!"

The people she passed by whispered to each other, making it a point to avoid her as much as possible. Dr. Aniston didn't care at all, however, and continued to march along the hall until she reached a door at the end of the hall.

The door slid open. Rows of monitors flickered and glowed—dozens of them mounted on every desk, cascading across the walls. People moved between the stations, but the screens outnumbered them three to one.

The noise was deafening, but it died down as soon as Dr. Aniston entered; everyone quickly returned to their stations. She ignored all of them, making her way straight to one person in particular and handing over Hal's laptop.

"Find more information about this video," she demanded without even looking at the woman.

"Y-yes, Ma'am—I mean doctor!" The person scrambled to open the laptop, checking the video before searching it on her own terminal. And within seconds, information about the video's uploader appeared on the massive screen dominating one entire wall of the command center.

Aniston didn't waste any time; she just snapped her fingers at the woman while walking toward the large screen, still not looking at her. She didn't need to, however, as the woman knew exactly what she wanted and opened up a map.

"Where is this?" Dr. Aniston asked, her eyes scanning the map.

"Dustyville, a small town somewhere in Kansas," the woman responded.

"Send the location to the captain, as well as the extraction team," Aniston ordered sharply before turning on her heel to leave.

As she exited, Hal arrived breathless at the door just in time for her to brush past him without breaking stride.

"We're leaving," she said over her shoulder.

Hal stood there bewildered as he watched her go, feeling every eye in the command center turn toward him with looks of pity mixed with concern. Some even shook their heads—they thought they already had it worst, but they couldn't imagine what it would be like to actually work alongside Dr. Aniston.

As for Dr. Hal, he just blinked a couple more times before rushing to follow Dr. Aniston. He didn't ask any questions at all and just walked next to her.

It wasn't until she finally stopped that he opened his mouth.

"It's… him?" he asked, watching as Dr. Aniston placed her hand on the only window along the hallway.

"I'm afraid so," she answered. The tremble in her voice echoing quietly as she stared outside—outside the vast… and dark world of the deep ocean. "Even the Game couldn't kill him. We're… royally fucked."

Dr. Hal carefully stood beside him, just holding his breath as he too, stared at the darkness. But after a while, he glanced at Dr. Aniston.

"How… did you know that I saw him?" he asked.

"You're using company laptop," Dr. Aniston said, scoffing as she stepped away from the window.

"Stop watching porn."

"Wh—" Dr. Hal gasped, rushing to follow her. "Those… those are livestreams!"

"Disgusting."

***

Back in the small town of Dustyville, the sound of metal clanging against pavement whispered through the air. The katana Adam gripped had transformed into something unrecognizable—completely jagged, chipped, and blunt… a testament to just how hard he had swung them.

"Ha…" He dropped to the ground, landing hard on his butt. There was a piece of verdleck jaw near his feet, or at least he thought it was a jaw. It didn't matter, however, as he kicked it away all the same.

He then turned to survey the carnage he left behind him. Scattered across the street lay the corpses of verdlecks; their blood, guts, and everything else decorated the once peaceful and quiet town.

But Adam wasn't celebrating his win. His gaze difted to the other side of the street, where two people lay alongside the wall of a store—holding hands, dead.

They were probably a couple, he thought.

You should've acted sooner.

He did. He had acted as fast as he possibly could. He responded at the first sound of screaming—and yet, Adam still thought that it was his fault. Their deaths weighed him so.

The pastor, who saw everything from his car, approached carefully, his footsteps hesitant on the now blood-soaked pavement. But still, he dropped to his knees in front of Adam and clasped his hands together, soiling his white gown in red and dirt.

"Don't," Adam quickly said, pushing himself to his feet while gesturing to the pastor to also rise. "Pray for the monsters and the dead instead. They need it more than I do."

He turned toward the diner to check on the survivors, but froze when he caught sight of the phones pointed in his direction. Adam quickly looked down, hiding his face beneath his hood as he hurried toward his bicycle. The crowd was already emerging from the diner—he needed to leave before they swarmed him.

"N…No!"

But before he could reach the bike, another scream cut through the air—the truckers.

"They… they're going to kill us! How… how did they even get out?!" They were bawling, crying hysterically. "S-shit… they're going to kill us!"

Adam was about to rush at them when he realized that they were the ones responsible for the appearance of these monsters, but chose to continue walking back to his bicycle instead.

"Fuck! Go check the eggs!"

But then, he heard those words and stopped. He turned back toward the scene, his feet carrying him before his mind could object. The truckers gasped when they saw him approaching, terror replacing their panic.

"Speak," Adam said. "What eggs?"

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