The neutral zone exists outside of time.
That's what it feels like, anyway—stepping from the collapsing industrial nightmare into a space where the rules of reality bend differently.
The game provides this liminal area between matches, a simulation of normalcy designed to make the trap feel livable. There are corridors lined with doors, each leading to small recovery rooms.
There's a communal area where food materializes on request, tasting impossibly real despite being nothing but code.
There are other players moving through the space with shell-shocked expressions, survivors of their own elimination rounds, carrying wounds both visible and not.
Time stretches here, compresses. I lose track of how long we wander before Simon spots an unclaimed room and pulls me inside, sealing the door behind us with a fierce protectiveness that makes my chest tight.
"Privacy." He exhales the word like he's been holding his breath for hours. "Thank God. I couldn't handle being around other people right now."
The room is small but functional—a bed against one wall, a basin of steaming water on a stand, supplies arranged on a shelf like the game anticipated our needs.
Soft light filters from sources I can't identify. It feels almost peaceful, which makes the violence we just survived seem even more surreal.
Then Simon moves, and I see the damage.
"You're hurt." The words come out sharper than I intend. "Simon, you're really hurt. Why didn't you say something?"
"It's fine." He waves off my concern, but the motion makes him wince. "Just some scratches. The game heals you between rounds, right? I'll be good as new by tomorrow."
"Sit down." I'm already moving toward the supplies, grabbing bandages and a jar of salve that smells like herbs and something chemical. "Now. Let me see."
He doesn't argue. Maybe he's too exhausted, or maybe he can hear something in my voice that tells him resistance is pointless.
He lowers himself onto the edge of the bed and, after a moment's hesitation, pulls his shirt over his head.
My breath catches.
The gash across his ribs is worse than I thought—deep and angry, the kind of wound that would need stitches in the real world. Bruising blooms purple-black across his shoulder where Thornback's strike connected.
Scrapes ladder up his forearms, evidence of every desperate grab for handholds during our escape. He looks like he fought a war, because he did. Because he spent half that match throwing himself between me and danger.
"It's not as bad as it looks." Simon's voice is gentle, like he's trying to comfort me. "Seriously, Kira. I've had worse at the gym."
"You have not had worse at the gym." The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, and I freeze.
That's something Gordon would say. That's something I've said to Simon a dozen times after watching him push through sets that left him groaning about soreness.
Simon's brow furrows slightly. "What?"
My heart slams against my ribs.
"I mean—you've mentioned the gym before. How intense your workouts are." I force a light laugh, praying it sounds natural. "You talk about it constantly, remember? All those stories about your training partner pushing you too hard."
"Right." The confusion clears from his face, replaced by a small smile. "Yeah, Gordon does go pretty hard on me sometimes. He's kind of relentless."
I swallow the hysterical laugh that threatens to escape and kneel beside the bed, dipping cloth into the steaming water and changing the topic.
"This is… Simon, you could have died. You almost did die, multiple times, and every single one of those times was because you were protecting me instead of yourself."
"That's kind of the point." His hand catches mine before I can start cleaning the wounds, forcing me to meet his eyes. "You're my partner. Protecting you is protecting us. If you go down, I go down. That's how this works."
The sincerity in his voice makes something crack behind my ribs. I pull my hand free, focus on the task. "Just let me fix this. Please."
He lets me.
I work in silence at first, cleaning the scrapes on his forearms with careful precision. Every touch is necessary—medically necessary, I tell myself—but every touch is also devastating. Through Kira's fingers, I map the terrain of Simon's body.
The ridge of his collarbone. The flex of muscle beneath damaged skin. The way his breath catches when I press too close to a bruise, the small hiss of pain he tries to swallow.
"You don't have to be so careful." His voice drops low, almost intimate. "I can take it."
"I know you can." I don't look up, don't trust myself to meet his eyes. "But you don't have to. Not with me."
I move to his shoulder, spreading salve across the mottled bruising. His skin is warm beneath my palms, almost feverish, and I can feel his pulse jumping where my wrist brushes his neck.
I want to memorize every inch of this. Catalog the heat radiating from his body, file away the small sounds he makes when the salve stings and soothes in equal measure.
When I reach the wound across his ribs, my hands falter. This one is serious. This one he earned when he threw himself between Kira and an enemy blade, taking a hit that would have killed me.
"Hey." Simon's hand closes around my wrist, stilling my movements. His thumb strokes across my pulse point, and I wonder if he can feel how fast my heart is racing. "Thank you. For patching me up."
"You got hurt protecting me." My voice comes out rougher than I intend. "It's the least I can do."
"I'd do it again." His grip tightens slightly, not painful but insistent. "Every time. You know that, right? I'd throw myself in front of every blade in this game if it meant keeping you safe."
The words hang between us, charged with something that has nothing to do with gratitude. I finish bandaging the wound with shaking hands, but Simon doesn't release my wrist.
Instead, he tugs gently, pulling me closer until I'm standing between his knees, looking down at him.
"Your turn." His voice is soft but firm. "You took hits too. Let me see."
"Simon, I'm fine. My injuries are nothing compared to…"
"Let me see."
I hesitate. Kira's injuries are minor—scrapes, bruises, nothing that requires attention.
But Simon is already reaching for the hem of my shirt, his fingers brushing the strip of skin above my waistband, and my real body shivers beneath the headset.
I let him.
His hands lift the fabric just enough to expose my ribs, my stomach, the small wounds scattered across Kira's skin. They're superficial, we both know they're superficial. But Simon tends to them anyway, his touch deliberate and electric, lingering longer than medicine requires.
His palms flatten against my ribs, feeling me breathe. His thumb traces the curve of my hip, a slow arc that sends sparks cascading through my nervous system. When he looks up, his eyes are dark with something that isn't about healing at all.
"I keep thinking about what's happening to my body out there." The confession comes quiet, fragile. "Whether anyone's looking for me. Whether my parents are losing their minds right now, watching me lie there unconscious."
He swallows hard. "My mom calls me every Sunday. She'll have called by now. She'll know something's wrong."
The words strike to kill. Because my own body is in my gaming room, alone.
Lily saw me enter the game—she might have found me unconscious, might have called for help, or she might have left me there out of spite. My father might not even know anything is wrong yet. He might be watching TV downstairs while his son slowly dies in the room above him.
But those thoughts feel distant, like they belong to another person.
"What about you?" Simon's hands are still warm against my skin, anchoring me in place. "Your family—do you have people who are looking for you right now?"
I hesitate. The truth is impossible, but the lie comes easier.
"I lost someone." The words surprise me, borrowing from my own history, rearranging it into fiction. "A few years ago. Someone I loved. After that, I.. I've been afraid to be seen. To let anyone close enough to hurt me like that again."
"Kira." His voice breaks on my fake name. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"You couldn't have known, I don't talk about it. I've spent so long hiding from everything that actually mattered. "
I look away, unable to hold his gaze.
"And now we're trapped here, and I don't know if we'll ever get out, and I keep thinking about all the things I never said. All the ways I made myself small because I was too scared to be anything else."
Simon pulls me down onto his lap.
The movement is gentle but deliberate—an invitation I could refuse but won't. Kira's body settles against him, my thighs bracketing his hips, his arms wrapping around my waist.
The position is intimate without being sexual, tender in a way that makes my chest ache with something I can't name.
"You don't have to be afraid with me." His forehead presses against mine, breath warm on my lips. "Whatever you're hiding, whoever you really are—I'm not going anywhere. You hear me? I'm right here, and I'm staying."
The words brand themselves into my memory.
I'll carry them like scars.
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