Penny was sinking. She kicked hard, but her legs were too heavy, weighed down by her now water-logged jeans.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  She bent backwards, craning her neck to look up, searching for the surface. Had she been spawned hundreds of feet underwater? But no.

  There, far above her, she could see refractions of light glimmering through the surface. It was impossible to know exactly how deep down she was, but it had to be at least ten feet, judging by the pressure on her skull.

  Penny kicked, a second and third time, adrenaline rushing through her. It had only been a few seconds, but her chest already felt tight from panic. She reached upwards, and pulled with a stroke, propelling herself toward the surface. Tendrils of her red hair floated in front of her face, obscuring her vision.

  No. I'm not going to die like this.

  She took another stroke and then another.

  Her jeans and t-shirt dragged her down, but she ignored the resistance, just like she ignored the cold spreading between her ribs, and took one stroke, and then another, until finally she broke the surface. Gasping, she drank in a deep lungful air, or at least tried to. Halfway through a wave slapped her in the face, filling her mouth with salt water.

  She coughed, then squinted. Sunlight glared off the choppy waters around her. The air was warm against her skin. She wasn’t going to die of hypothermia out here. Not right away at least. Well, technically she wasn’t going to die at all, because this wasn’t real.

  "Log out," Penny called. "Log out."

  A voice, eerily genderless , echoed in her head.

  Penny pumped her legs, treading water, and a slow moving dread crept over her. She felt like she did when she when she accidentally locked herself out of her house, and put her hand in her pocket, looking for a key that she knew wouldn't be there.

  What had she done…

  "End game," Penny said again, her voice full of false calm.

  Okay, so the system was taking a moment to scan her and log her on. Not a big deal. This was fine. She just had to like not die until she was logged on. Then she could log off.

  A swell pulsed underneath her, the magnitude of it taking Penny’s breath away, as she rode the massive wave.

  Experimentally, Penny kicked down harder, so that she could raise up a view inches out of the water. From there she could see above the crest of the nearest wave. Her heart sunk as she took in her surroundings. Nothing but choppy white-caps stretched to the horizon.

  Had the game dropped her in the middle of the ocean?

  But no, Penny turned a little more, and there, she saw it-- land

  Penny gave a small gasp.

  Royal blue ocean waters unfolded out toward a curving shore of steep tree-covered hills. They were so green, Penny didn't even think it was even possible. At the top of the nearest one loomed a real life castle

  A castle.

  Penny laughed, and drank in a breath rich with the slight tang of salt and the smell of fish.

  On the hill beyond that there was a circle of tiny dots Penny guessed had to be thatched houses or maybe tents. Curls of smoke spiraled up from the encampment. On the hill after that there were a few scars of empty land slashed into the green hill-side. Maybe the camp was for harvesting lumber? Or maybe there had been a battle? Or a monster attack?

  All of it was insane, and felt somehow more real than reality.

  In the real world there was cars, and jobs, and computers. Penny spent most of her days staring at Photoshop, and Illustrator files, adjusting vectors by millimeters, looking at recreations of reality that were cartoonish and simplified. People replied to emails that had sentences like "My branding goal is to capture the attention of single white females who like cats and yoga, and who follow Gen Z attitudes about brand authenticity."

  Brand authenticity.

  Penny wanted to laugh.

  How was it that this fake world was the most authentic thing she'd felt in years? The world here was full of concrete nouns. Water. Sky. Sun. Trees.

  God, she hated Prince. Why could such an asshole make something so primal, so true.

  Penny blinked, this time instead of the voice coming from inside of her head, there was an accompanying blue box that hovered, semi transparent in front of her face. She swiped at it, but it was like touching a projection at a movie theater. The thing was only made up of light.

  “Welcome to Astrea.”

  Penny’s hand froze mid-air.

  Unlike before, the voice that spoke those words wasn’t genderless, or inhuman. No, it was very, very familiar, the tone deep, with a metallic edge that made the voice piercing even at a whisper.

  Edward Prince.

  Penny wished she could’ve sworn at him, could’ve told him to let her out of this stupid game, could’ve done anything except for what she did, which was, for just a second, freeze up.

  Thankfully, as the voice went on, Penny realized that the message was pre-recorded and she relaxed. As the voice spoke, words appeared on the blue-box like closed captions.

  Penny found herself rolling her eyes.

  God, Prince was such a dick. Of course anyone he didn't consider strong was a parasite, what a sociopath.

  "Free me from this hellish prison you giant, gaping asshole" Penny yelled, but more out of annoyance than because she thought it would actually work.

  Another blue box appeared.

  ** PLEASE NOTE ALL ACTIONS IN GAME WILL ONLY MODIFY ASTREAN ATTRIBUTES. EARTHEN ATTRIBUTES ARE GATHERED VIA SCAN. **

  As Penny scanned the stat box, she found herself forgetting her rage and panic for a moment, and instead giving a mild smile.

  It looked like this game scanned who she actually was and distributed stats on that basis, and considering Prince's opening speech, all in all her stats were pretty generous. It also seemed as if the Earth numbers would remain constant regardless of whatever she did in game or how powerful she became.

  Interesting.

  The other thing that Penny found funny was the labeling of the item names. It looked like the system had generated her belongings based on what her mind currently thought she was carrying, which was why they had labels that were so specific.

  She wondered if because the system decided her inventory based on her perceptions of herself, if she had imagined herself with sixteen bars of gold while she was being scanned, if they would have appeared in her pockets when she logged on. Although, considering where she had spawned, it was probably for the best she hadn’t known to try that.

  Not that it mattered.

  She was not here to play, she was here for one reason and one reason only, to get the money and get out.

  Which she still was no closer to doing.

  As Penny read, she noticed at the very bottom of the box a menu.

  Penny went to hit the button for settings, but as she did she noticed something breaking the top of a wave about a hundred yards away from her. Due to the menu blurring her vision, she couldn't quite make out what it was, but it didn't matter. If it was something dangerous, her best course was to log out as quickly as possible. She had no weapons. No magic. She couldn't even run, because she was in the middle of the ocean.

  Quickly Penelope scanned through the settings, noting that there were a number of sliders, she could tweak that all had latinate sounding names. She tried to focus on them for a moment, hoping stupidly there might be a setting for “CAN BREATHE UNDERWATER”, but as she did, she noticed on the other side of the menu, there was a shadow moving under the water.

  It was big, much bigger than a normal sized fish.

  Shark? Fuck.

  Penny pawed at the menu, making a motion that sent the text flying upward in a scroll, until she came across the very bottom of the settings. Then she saw it.

  Penny slammed the button with her palm.

  For one terrifying moment, nothing happened.

  Then the blue box morphed, the white letters of the sliders and the disconnect button fading away to be replaced with a message.

  “Fuck,” Penny said. “I–”

  But she never finished her sentence, because fingers closed around her ankle.

  And pulled her down.