State of the Art

Friday, August 29th, 2042, Parking Lot of the KOIN 6 Building, Downtown Portland, Oregon.

Megan swiped through the pod's diagnostic panels, the reflected glow painting pale rectangles across her knuckles.

Elevated heartbeat, blood pressure rising, cortisol levels spiking past baseline, excessive perspirations.

She frowned. "That's not normal."

A moment ago, everything had been steady—slightly elevated, sure, but within range for someone immersed in FullDive for hours. Then, without warning, the graphs had skyrocketed.

She leaned closer to the tiny monitor above the pod's cradle. Autonomic irregularities detected. Possible panic response.

Then she heard a sound. Not the soft, steady hum of the fans and monitors—but a sharp mechanical click, followed by the telltale hiss of a manual override.

Megan's head snapped to the side. "Ryan?"

Before she could move, Ryan's torso jerked upright, disconnected from the neural jack, skin gleaming with sweat.. His breath came in short, ragged gasps, eyes wide, unfocused—like someone waking from a nightmare that had not finished letting go.

"Hey—hey, wait, don't—"

He was already climbing out, legs tangling in the cables. The motion was clumsy, desperate. He hit the floor hard, one hand gripping the frame for balance, the other clawing at his own chest like he could not breathe.

"I—need air—"

And before Megan could stop him, he slammed both hands against the rear doors and shoved them open.

The August heat punched into the van like a furnace blast as Ryan staggered into the light, half-formed feline tail and ears catching the glare for all to see. He walked slowly, squinting, shoulders hunched, still dressed in Lucia's hand-me-downs. The wind caught his shoulder-length hair—half in Kaelyn's blonde, the rest somewhere between theirs.

Megan's stomach dropped. This was probably the worst place and time—they were in the middle of downtown Portland—right in the middle of lunch hour.

She quickly grabbed a raincoat and followed Ryan out. The asphalt burned through her sneakers; the smell of gasoline and sun-baked rubber filled her nose.

Ryan had stopped a few paces away, bent over with his hands braced on his knees. His breathing sounded wrong—too fast, too shallow.

She approached slowly, careful not to crowd him, and gently covered his shoulder with the coat. "Hey, babe, you're safe. You're out, okay?"

He remained silent, and his shoulders trembled. When she finally circled around to face him, her heart clenched.

He looked distraught, and his whole body quivered.

Lucia's tank top clung to him, outlining a frame that could only read as feminine. His hands, gripping his knees, seemed almost delicate, veins standing out against skin that no longer matched the tan on his forearms.

Megan swallowed hard, forcing her voice steady. "You're hyperventilating. Focus on me, not the air."

He raised his head, eyes glassy. "I can't—" He broke off, shuddering. "I just had to log out. I can't do this alone, not without her help…"

She took another step closer. "It's okay, I'm here. You're not alone anymore."

He shook his head violently. "No, Meg, you don't get it. I can't feel her—them—anymore. I still—" He looked down, voice cracking. "Even here… I can't handle this."

He tried to slow his breathing, inhaling sharply through his nose. The breath hitched halfway.

Her chest ached. She wanted to hold him, to say something that would make the fear go away—but anything she said would sound hollow next to that kind of panic.

"Easy," she said, matching his rhythm with her own. "Four seconds in. Six out."

His chest moved, trembling. Sweat beaded along his temple and down the delicate line of his jaw—softer than it had been yesterday. The micro-fine blond strands caught the light again, almost translucent.

"You're okay," she said, mostly to convince herself. "Let's do some grounding exercises, okay? Five things you can see."

He blinked, unsteady, like he was trying to remember how to count. "Cars. Pavement. Skyscrapers. You. My—hands."

"Good. Four things you can touch."

He flexed his fingers slowly, like testing the idea. "Wind. Coat. Ground. You."

She let him keep the last one, even when his trembling hand found hers.

"Three things you can hear."

"Engines. Pedestrian crossing. My heart."

"Two you can smell."

"Gasoline. You."

Her throat tightened. "And one thing you can taste."

He hesitated, licking dry lips. "Fear."

The word came out barely above a whisper.

Megan squeezed his hand. "Then spit it out. We're not keeping that one."

He let out a small, shaky laugh that broke halfway through—still brittle, but at least human.

They stood there for a while, the roar of the city filling the silence neither of them could.

After a minute, she guided him toward the curb. "Sit before your legs give out."

He obeyed, shoulders slumping. The air shimmered off the asphalt; the van's reflection warped in the heat haze. She crouched beside him, keeping a careful distance so he did not feel trapped.

"Why don't you tell me what happened?" she asked. "From the beginning."

Ryan did not answer right away. His hands still trembled in his lap, his fingers tightening and relaxing like he was testing whether they still belonged to him. When he finally spoke, the words came haltingly.

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

"It started during a dungeon run. Low-level dungeon outside Umbraholme. We went in with my party—Vaelith, Elyssia, Leoric. It was an undead-filled dungeon, and we were supposed to find the source of the corruption."

Megan kept her voice even. "Was it you or Kaelyn in control?"

He shook his head and gave a small, broken laugh. "Neither. Lyn was."

Megan gave herself a moment to let that revelation sink. If they were at the point of naming themselves, then the line separating Ryan's alters was getting clearer. The simple fact they could have this conversation proved just how much Ryan's understanding of his own system had progressed already.

"Is that the confident one, then?" she asked.

It made sense, after all, that she would be the one to take the lead for a dungeon run.

"No," Ryan answered. "She's not. Lyn's the meeker, people-pleasing one. The one who picked these clothes," he said, looking down. "But she wanted to see if she could handle healing the dungeon."

Ryan's words hung in the air for a moment before she found her voice again.

"Then who's the confident one?"

He swallowed, his throat working. "She still goes by Kaelyn. She's the louder one… The one who handles people. She can flirt, negotiate, command attention. Everyone listens to her."

Megan nodded slowly, mapping out the relationship between the alters in her mind. "Okay. So what happened during the dungeon, then?"

"The start went smoothly enough. Until the first water break, when Lyn asked for fruit-punch lemonade…"

Ryan stopped talking. The specificity of the drink probably indicated it had some sort of sentimental value for him.

"What happened then?"

"She drank it." He let out a long sigh, winced, and then spoke quietly. "And then broke down into tears."

From the way his shoulders folded in, she could tell he saw that moment as a personal failure.

Megan gently placed one hand on his knee. "Do you know why?"

Ryan shook his head at first, eyes distant. Then he pressed his lips together, as if weighing how much to tell her. "It made her realise something, I think," he said finally. "That drink's from my memories. When I was a kid, Dad used to mix fruit punch and lemonade, and we'd sit outside all summer with it."

His voice cracked, the memory catching him off guard. "Lyn remembered it. Or she thought she did. She knew what to expect—the sweet and tart taste. But when she drank it for the first time, she realised she never had any before. Because that memory was mine, never hers."

Megan felt the explanation settle in her chest like a stone.

She could almost picture it—someone realising mid-sip that the memory was not theirs to taste.

Ryan stared at the pavement as he spoke, his voice thin and uneven. "She started crying. Not from the taste, but from what it meant. That she was… not real in the same way I am. That she had always been there, but at the same time, it was as if she never had."

He laughed once, a soft, broken sound that was not humour at all. "I didn't know what to say to that. How do you even comfort someone in that situation? It's not like I ignored her—I didn't even know she existed!"

Megan stayed silent, just listening. His words were raw enough without interruption.

"But Vaelith was the one who figured it all out. Vaelith mostly stayed by her side, listening. She explained to the party what was going on and calmed Lyn down. That's when she got her to give us her name. She told Lyn that she was real and told her she was allowed to continue existing."

Megan had to ask.

"And how did that make you feel? Do you agree with this Vaelith?"

Ryan shook his head, wiping at his cheeks. "I don't know…"

It was not much of an answer, but it was as far as he could go today. Still, talking about his alters openly was already a good sign he accepted them.

"Where is Lyn now? You said earlier that 'they' were gone? Both Kaelyn and Lyn?"

"Right… That's what I was telling you about." Ryan paused, visibly focusing on how to tell the tale. "The boss at the end of the dungeon—some kind of mad scientist—was apparently connected to Kaelyn's past. My character's backstory."

He rubbed his palms together, staring at the glistening sweat still drying on his skin. "The doctor was consumed by guilt. He'd been living with it for over a decade—every death he couldn't prevent, every patient he lost. It was still inside him. You could feel it, like the air was heavy with grief."

Megan waited. He needed the silence more than reassurance.

"He wanted to die, to get rid himself of the weight of it all. So, every day, he kept doing worse and worse atrocities, hoping for adventurers to find and end him," he said at last. "Then Kaelyn forcefully shoved Lyn aside—furious. She snapped at the doctor—how he failed her and her mother. That's when she used one of her abilities—shadow magic."

His voice faltered. He drew a slow breath, eyes unfocused. "She drained him—took it all. Every ounce of guilt, fear, sorrow. Said she wouldn't let him take the easy way out. But there was too much. It wasn't just memories—it was ten years of dying patients screaming in our head. She couldn't handle it. Lyn stepped in to help her. So I was left in charge."

Megan's stomach turned. "And it hit all of you?"

He nodded. "Like a tidal wave."

He pressed the heel of his hand to his temple. "I felt them fading, both of them. And now, it's like someone muted the whole world. That's when I realised I've never been truly alone before. Every feeling from my body—this one or the one in game—is for me to process…"

Megan let the words hang there a moment. "And when you say gone…"

"I mean it, Meg." He looked up at her, eyes wet and glassy. "It was just me left in her body. Every muscle, every breath—it was all mine again, and it felt wrong. The moment I realized that's what my real body would feel like in two days, something in me snapped. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think—just spiralled."

He looked away, shame pooling across his face. "I panicked. The moment we hit town, I pulled the plug."

For a while, neither of them spoke. The steady drone of city traffic filled the silence between words.

Megan just watched him—really watched him. The way he sat slouched on the curb, his borrowed clothes clinging in uneven folds. The sun caught on the faint, golden strands of his hair, that impossible in-between shade, and the small, trembling motions of half-formed ears hidden beneath it.

She had heard every word he had said, but her brain was still trying to assemble the full picture. The dungeon. The guilt. The flood of voices collapsing into static. The way he said my body and meant hers.

How easily he said we now, not I.

If she had heard this story a week ago, she would have thought he was delusional.

Now she just thought he was surviving, albeit crushed by dysphoria.

But her heart focused on something else entirely—the sheer weight of what he carried, and the fact he kept fighting.

He had every excuse to walk away.

"Hey," she said finally, gentle but firm. "Look at me."

Ryan did, eyes rimmed red, lashes still damp.

"This isn't over," she said. "You didn't break. That matters."

He frowned faintly. "It doesn't feel like it."

"I know," she said. "But you're still here. That's a win."

She paused, weighing how to steer him forward without dismissing what he had just been through. "Now, let's think about what comes next. How close are you to level thirty now? To get the shifter class?"

He blinked, as if the thought had not fully formed until she said it aloud.

"Still a ways off," he said softly. "It's still the plan—" he hesitated, then finished, "—when we reach thirty, we should be able to shift between forms at will. Maybe it will make all of this easier. Some control again."

Megan nodded slowly. "Then that's our next milestone. Level thirty."

He gave a tired laugh. "Our?"

"I'm allowed to have goals for you," she said. "Besides, it's something concrete. Something that isn't just panic or pain. You need that right now."

Ryan rubbed at his eyes, his voice small. "I don't even know if I can go back in."

"Not yet," she said. "Not until you've rested and eaten. But when you do, you'll go in with a plan. You don't need to save the world or fix anyone. Just focus on getting stronger. Survive, learn, hit thirty. That's all."

He looked at her for a long moment, searching her face for something—doubt, pity, maybe belief. Whatever he found seemed to steady him a little.

"You really think it'll help?" he asked.

"I think progress always helps," she said softly. "Even if it's just giving your brain something it can measure while everything else feels like chaos."

Ryan exhaled slowly, the tension in his shoulders easing by degrees. "Yeah. Maybe you're right."

Megan squeezed his hand, just once. "I usually am."

He managed a ghost of a smile.

She tightened the coat around his shoulders. "I'll take you back inside, all right? Slowly. You need shade and water. Then I'll run to get you some fast food."

He nodded weakly, though his ears—those half-formed, twitching ridges of cartilage where human and felinae anatomy met—flicked once toward the street noise before flattening against his head. The motion was instinctive, not conscious.

She placed a steadying hand between his shoulder blades. His skin was hot to the touch, pulse racing under her palm.

"One step at a time, Ry. You're here. We'll figure the rest out."

As they made their way back toward the van, Megan spotted her father crossing the lot alone. No sign of Ryan's parents—probably still inside, signing paperwork.

Ryan slowed near the rear doors, his gaze drifting to the rigs inside. While Megan immediately caught the third pod's steady green light, Ryan did not seem to notice yet.

A quiet dread settled in her chest.

How long would it take before he realised Lucia had gone in after him?