The revelation about Sally did not ignite an explosion of fury in Ishtar. It brought something colder—a glacial focus, a clarity of purpose so absolute it devoured everything else. And as Ishtar grew sharper, deadlier, more brilliant within the game's universe, Helen began to fade.
Revenge, she discovered, was a parasite.
And it had started to collect its due.
Day and night lost all meaning. Helen slept in fragments—two, maybe three hours at a time—dragged from unconsciousness not by nightmares, but by the need to log in, to plan the next operation, to track Apex's movements. Sleep was downtime she could no longer afford.
Food became an inconvenience. The automated deliveries still arrived, but most sat untouched. When she forced herself to eat, it tasted like ash. Hunger was just another system alert she had learned to ignore. She began to lose weight, the soft curves of her face giving way to sharp cheekbones, her eyes growing large and hollow in pale skin. The reflection in the bathroom mirror showed a stranger—a starved echo of the woman she used to be.
Her empathy eroded into dust. She watched the news flicker across a hologram while swallowing mouthfuls of nutrient paste—disasters, politics, human suffering. She felt nothing. They were abstractions, as distant and irrelevant as a graphical glitch in a system she would never visit. The only real emotion left, the only thing that mattered, was the cold pulse of anticipation before battle and the icy gleam of satisfaction after victory.
The real world became a dream—a gray, tedious blur she was forced to visit between sessions. Her apartment, once her fortress, turned into a prison, a loading chamber where her body was kept alive. The traffic outside, the hum of the air conditioning—everything sounded distant. Muffled.
The game became more real than reality.
There, consequences were immediate. Actions had purpose. Enemies were clear. Allies were reliable—contractually, at least. Pain was merely a loss of hit points; death, a temporary inconvenience. Reality, by comparison, was slow, chaotic, and unbearably permanent.
The collapse came on a Tuesday. Or maybe a Thursday. The days no longer had names.
She had just logged out after an eighteen-hour operation, orchestrating the capture of an Apex supply convoy. Helen's body revolted, trembling from exhaustion and malnourishment. She stumbled into the kitchen for a glass of water and caught her reflection in the dark screen of the food terminal.
For a second, she didn't recognize herself.
She expected to see the commander—the battle-hardened survivor she was in the game. She expected to see Ishtar.
Instead, she saw the gaunt, frightened face of a stranger.
That was when the thread snapped.
Reality bent. The walls of her apartment seemed thin as paper. The hum of the air conditioning twisted into the roar of starfighter engines. She looked at her own hands, and they didn't feel like hers. They looked like flesh peripherals—controls for the real her, trapped somewhere else. A wave of claustrophobic panic crashed over her. Who was she? The woman in the apartment, or the goddess in the cockpit? Was she in control—or merely the battery powering the avatar?
The room spun. The air thickened. She couldn't breathe. A silent scream built in her throat. Her brain—overloaded, starved—began to shut down.
In one last act of self-preservation, an echo of the Helen still buried somewhere inside her reached out. Her trembling hand found the wall beside the door.
In that building—where isolation was a feature, not a flaw—every unit had a small red square.
A panic button.
With the last shred of her strength, she pressed it.
Light.
White.
Merciless.
The smell of antiseptic. A soft, rhythmic beeping.
Helen blinked, disoriented. She wasn't in her apartment. She was in a hospital bed, the sheets strangely rough against her skin. An IV line fed into her arm.
A man in a white coat stood beside her, studying a holographic chart. His eyes were kind. Tired.
"Hello, Helen," he said calmly. "My name is Dr. Aris. You're at Central Hospital. You experienced… a severe exhaustion episode. Malnutrition. Dehydration. When the paramedics arrived, you were in syncope."
He examined her carefully, gaze methodical. "I have a few questions, if you don't mind."
Helen nodded. Her throat was too dry to speak.
"Have you been eating regularly? Do you remember the last time you had a full meal?"
She tried to think. The memory was a blur. "No…" she whispered.
"Have you been sleeping? More than four hours at a time?"
"No."
The doctor nodded, making a note in her chart. He looked at her again—not with judgment, but like an archaeologist studying ruins.
Then he asked the question that mattered. The question that defined everything.
"Helen," he said gently, "how many hours a day are you online?"