Samantha Carrillo's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Samantha Carrillo had been trapped inside Terra Venture for six days, and she still did not know which direction led out of the starter plaza. She stood near the warning post at the plaza's edge, reading the carved words again. Wilderness beyond. Go back if not prepared. Around her, other players sat on benches with their hoods up, saying nothing, the way she had watched too many of them go since the login screen locked. Ten thousand people stuck in one game, and most of them had already stopped talking. Samantha pulled her ponytail tight and decided, again, that she would not be one of them. She wanted to live through this, and if she was honest, she wanted to find someone worth living through it with. The problem was simpler and meaner than that. Daylight was burning, the safe zone gave no map past its own gate, and she had no idea where the next town was. Wandering into the trees blind would waste the hours she had. She looked at the watchtower that marked the plaza border, four stories of wood and stone with a shop and an inn crammed into its base. A board beside the door bristled with pinned notices. She had read every one yesterday. None of them named a road. So she turned back toward the building she had been avoiding. The quest hall took up most of the plaza's far side, tall and loud, its front doors thrown open. Inside, players crowded the long walls of posting boards, arguing over leads. Samantha picked the smallest knot of people and waited her turn. A girl with a small blue fox curled on her shoulder was tracing a hand-drawn map pinned at chest height. The map showed a road east, a river crossing, and a village marked Hollowmere. Two days on foot if you didn't stop. The girl noticed Samantha staring and smiled without moving the fox. "First time out?" she asked. Samantha nodded. "Copy it," the girl said. "Everyone does. The mods leave it up." Samantha pulled up her interface and traced the route into her notes, hand shaking once near the river mark. When she finished, she had a direction, a destination, and roughly forty-eight hours of walking between herself and any roof that wasn't this one. She thanked the girl and stepped back out into the plaza. The warning post was still there at the edge, telling her to go back if she wasn't ready. She wasn't ready. She started walking toward it anyway, because the sun was already past noon and Hollowmere would not move closer on its own.