Page 57

For a while, neither of us speaks. His free hand moves the mouse, scrolling through directories, clicking on files. The screen fills with text I don’t read.

“Bunny,” Kain murmurs into my ear. “What’s bothering you?”

I stare at the deleted threads scrolling past, a blur of user complaints and arguments I’ve seen a thousand times.

“Nothing.”

His arm tightens around me. “Try again.”

I pick at a loose thread on the sleeve of my hoodie. “I don’t know.”

“Does it have to do with Julian?”

My jaw clenches.

“Maybe.” The word comes out small. “I don’t—I don’t know what it is, exactly.”

Kain is quiet for a long moment, each breath warming the side of my neck, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm I’ve matched my own breathing to for years.

“Okay,” he says at last.

He reaches past me to the shelf beside the desk and pulls down a second laptop, older and slower than the one he uses now. He sets it on the desk in front of me and wakes the screen.

With a thumb drive, he transfers a folder from the dedicated hard drive to the secondary device.

“These are the buy and sell threads,” he says. “I want you to read through them and flag any that give out wrong information. We’re going to build a database for a walkthrough.”

My own little packet of data. Excitement prickles through me. “Really?”

“Really.” His hand finds my chest, and he rubs the spot over my heart. “You know more about this than I do, so you’ll be able to sort that one without having to cross-reference the info.”

I give a little wiggle.

Kain reaches for the bunny-eared headphones hanging on the wall hook and settles them over my ears. The world muffles, and then a repetitive guitar loop fills my head, clean and unhurried, with just enough complexity to occupy the part of my brain that would otherwise wander.

Save Point.

I pull up the first thread and start reading.

User_SentinelFan47 is selling a full Sentinel armor set, mint condition, for sixty. The thread runs forty-two replies.

I recognize the username. They were everywhere back in the day.

By reply eight, user_Ember229 has driven the price down to thirty-five.

By reply nineteen, someone named user_Omega4Life has accused user_SentinelFan47 of scamming and the whole thing devolves.

I flag it for deletion and move on.

Kain’s arm stays around my waist, his chest warming my back, and his other hand works his own keyboard beside mine.

That uneasiness hasn’t disappeared. But it’s now small enough for me to ignore.

I sink back against Kain and keep reading.

11

Two hours of scrolling, and I can’t feel my pinky anymore where it’s frozen in position over the trackpad. I shift, propping the laptop higher on my knees, and the bean bag chair exhales a soft hiss.