John: Deliver.

*knock knock*

"Who's there?"

"Pizza delivery!" John shouted through the door. His right hand held a large insulated bag. He checked his watch on his left. 3 minutes ahead, good. The door was answered by a young man who appeared slightly older than John, but who's carefree look reflected a much different life than John had had. As John cordially completed the transaction, he saw three other young men climb out of a row of four machines; large chairs with monitors attached to a swing-down arm that surrounded the user completely when pulled down. John recognized them as "immersion rigs", high end gaming systems that were quite a rare sight. They took the pizzas. He got the money. And no tip. Lousy rich kids. He headed for the elevator and made his way down to the ground floor, and stepped out of the apartment building and onto the streets of New York City.

New York City, 2030 AD.

At the edge of the street, John sat down on his motorcycle... ok, that's a lie. It was an electric bike. Truthfully, the thing was a damn moped. But that's all he could afford at the moment. He checked his delivery itinerary on the tablet screen embedded into the controls. One more stop, then back to work to punch out. And he was still a few minutes ahead of schedule. No sweat. He opened up the heated box bolted to the back to confirm the cargo was still intact. It was. As he closed the lid, he looked up to see someone bolting down the sidewalk towards him, pushing passersby out of the way as she ran. She had long black hair with extreme volume, and was wearing black pants, a black Spiderman T-shirt, a cobalt jacket, orange scarf and round glasses.

"John, start the 8ike!" She shouted at him. It was then he noticed a pack of four upset looking men chasing her.

"oh shit!" John jumped on the moped and started it, but remained standing rather than sitting down. Behind him, Vriska vaulted over the heating box and onto the seat before gripping both sides of him.

"GO!" The moped lurched forward as John maneuvered the vehicle skillfully, putting three lanes of traffic between them and Vriska's pursuers. He felt her breath a sigh of relief.

"so what did you do this time, Vris?" John asked loudly to talk over the traffic around them. Vriska leaned forward closer to his ear to speak in a quieter tone.

"Nothin." She told him. "Nothing out of the ordinary anyway. One of the 8astards figured out the trick to my 8-card-monte and riled up the crowd."

"y'know this is gonna backfire on you sometime, right?" John asked her. "what if I hadn't been around?"

"I would have worked something out."

"you need a safer line of work. Vinnie's is looking for a new waitress." John suggested his own workplace hopefully.

"8luh, fuck no." Vriska declined with disgust.

When all the victims of the Skaianet experiment escaped captivity, their group had been split into several "cells", as Scratch had called them. Subject 18, as Skaianet called him, had clearly been given very elaborate directions by AH-4 before being sprung early. In the three weeks between his escape and their's, he'd faked his death, hacked databases, forged identities, orchestrated their escape and made all the arrangements for them to go into plain sight-hiding in cities across the country. All without every showing his face to any of them; doing all of his correspondence digitally. After arriving in the various cities, they'd been told to await further instructions. And that was the last they had heard from him or Snowman. And that was three months ago.

Though Scratch had arranged housing and start up money, the members of the New York group had all found some form of job to fill the time and earn some spending money. John delivered pizzas. Vriska had found a talent for suckering tourists at games of chance and slight of hand. Their income, and everyone elses, went into sustaining themselves and the four bedroom apartment that Scratch had secured, with a generous down payment to ensure no questions asked. None of them knew where Scratch was getting his income from, but they were all pretty sure he wasn't working for it like they were.

Vriska waited with the scooter while John popped into another building and made the last delivery.

"so you want a ride home?" John asked.

"Nah, I got something else to do first. I'll gra8 the su8way." She told him. "Thanks for the lift." She said, before leaning in and kissing him on the lips, leaving John blushing. Two months into dating, and he still wasn't quite used to that.

The discovery of the "true nature" of Sburb, and thus themselves, had impacted them all differently. Some had existential crises of their identity, having not only been thrust into a very different world, but some of them becoming a different species entirely. There was also the realization, that AH-4's "characters", none of them had really been in control of their own actions whilst inside the simulation, a fact that had taken a huge burden off the minds of some of the players. Vriska especially benefited: everyone she'd ever killed was either alive as a human now or never existed at all. The guilt that she'd confided in John during their conversations was lifted and he'd seen her take to the human life very well. However, aside from the 28 subjects, no one else any of them had known ever existed either. Jade's grandpa. Becquerel. Dave's brother. Rose's mom. Their sprites. Their consorts. His dad. John shook his head to dislodge that thought before it pitched a tent on his brain and ruined his night. Lastly, there was the fact that, though none of them had a clue about it, they had all been completely different people before being experimented on. People with lives and histories and families that WERE real. There was a nagging sense that none of them were real. How do you tell what's real when some computer can overwrite your whole life without you knowing the difference? Scratch had warned them against inquiring down that path. Finding out who they once were would be nothing but painful. But John couldn't help but think about it.

Back at Vinnie's Pizza, John dropped off the delivery payments and punched out, passing the dinner shift delivery crew as they made their way in. Twenty minutes later, he was back in front of the building housing their apartment. Instead of going directly inside, he stopped and sat on the scooter for a few minutes, staring at one particular skyscraper about two blocks away. The gleaming tower of glass and ivory stone. Skaianet's corporate headquarters. At the foot of the tower, starting from the second floor and covering it up to the fifth, was one of the massive electronic billboards, much like those in Times Square. It cycled advertisements and news on Skaianet's products, and in the last week one particular product had entered the rotation.

Reality Anchor

The new model was nothing like the massive, life-support enabled pods used to imprison them back in the silicon valley facility. Shrunk down to a simple, full headed helmet, the first "true virtual reality" device for the consumer market. It was the most hyped and hotly anticipated tech in years, especially after Skaianet had pioneered true VR years ago for government and military use. Promises of games and social media apps, virtual tourism and anything else the marketplace could conceive of had made it the top of the world's Christmas list. John would have been ecstatic for such a thing too... if he didn't know better. What Skaianet had done to them didn't have anything to do with any of what they were advertising. Something was very off the level, as they all knew first hand. They weren't sure what, only that the end result would be very bad. And it was coming out in four months. Four months to find a way to stop them. Then the genie was out of the bottle, and whatever plan Skaianet had would have too much momentum to stop.

John's phone beeped, indicating a next text message.

"Everyone get back here ASAP. Scratch just called a confrence call."

Jade

Rose: Compose.