Down was a spiral.
Stone steps worn smooth by feet that had never actually touched them. The walls wept condensation that looked like water but probably wasn't, not in any chemical sense. Bioluminescent moss provided light in shades of blue and green, just enough to see by.
The air got warmer as they descended. Wrong direction for thermodynamics but this place wasn't bound by that anymore.
Jr. sat on her shoulder, quiet now, alert.
"How deep does this go?" Vivian asked.
"Architecturally? About forty metres. Conceptually?" He chittered, almost a laugh. "Who knows. Blackwoods does what it wants with interior spaces."
The stairs ended in a corridor. Doors lined both sides, some open to empty rooms, others sealed. Vivian's HUD populated with data tags, file names that appeared in midair, dates that went back almost a decade.
She walked slowly, reading. Project names that meant nothing. Budget reports. Personnel files with names redacted. All of it Verdant's, all of it abandoned here like garbage nobody bothered to take out.
"Your mother's files are deeper in," Jr. said. "Third room on the left past the junction."
They reached the junction, a space where four corridors met beneath a ceiling that rose into darkness. Something moved up there. Not another user. The architecture itself, settling, reshaping. Blackwoods did that sometimes in unstable zones.
The third room had a door that looked like it was carved from a single piece of dark wood, handle worn brass, warm to the touch. Vivian pushed it open.
Inside was a library.
Not like the one where her mother had worked. This was older, grander, shelves rising three storeys to a vaulted ceiling painted with constellations that didn't match any sky Vivian recognised. Books lined every surface, spines labelled in languages she couldn't read, some that might not be languages at all.
And in the centre, a desk.
Her mother's desk, Vivian realised with a jolt. Not metaphorically. The actual desk from their home office, down to the coffee ring on the left corner where Emilie always set her mug. Detail that specific didn't happen by accident in Blackwoods. You had to upload it, model it, embed it with intention.
"She built this," Vivian said.
"Yeah." Jr. hopped down, scurried across the floor to the desk. "This was her real workspace. Everything she found, everything she figured out, she stored it here."
Vivian approached slowly, half afraid it would dissolve if she moved too fast. The desk had three drawers. The top one was open, empty except for a pen Vivian recognised, the good one her mother used for grading, blue ink. The middle drawer was locked, old-fashioned keyhole rendered in perfect detail.
The bottom drawer was slightly ajar.
"She left it open," Jr. said quietly. "That one she wanted you to find."
Vivian pulled the drawer fully open.
Inside, a single object. Not a folder, not files. A snow globe.
She lifted it out, turning it over in her hands. Inside the glass, a tiny model of their apartment building, the one they'd lived in when Vivian was small, before they'd moved to the house. She shook it gently. Snow swirled around the building, and something else, small white shapes like...
Moths.
Vivian's throat tightened. Her mother had collected moths, had books about them, could identify species by wing pattern. It was the kind of small, strange interest that made Emilie who she was, the thing Vivian thought about at odd moments now that she was gone.
"It's a key," Jr. said. He'd climbed back to the desk, was examining something. "Look at the base."
Vivian turned the snow globe over. The base had an inscription, tiny letters etched into the metal: What flies towards light but lives in darkness?
A riddle. Her mother loved riddles.
"Moths," Vivian said. "The answer is moths."
The snow globe grew warm in her hands, then hot, then... it dissolved. Not breaking, not shattering. Just ceasing to be solid, becoming light that flowed up her arms and into her interface, data integrating directly with her avatar.
Her HUD exploded with new information.
Files, hundreds of them, appearing in her vision, organising themselves into folders with clinical labels: PHASE 1 TRIALS, PHASE 2 MORTALITY RATES, PHASE 3 AUTHORISATION, INCIDENT REPORTS, SUBJECT PROFILES.
And one folder, larger than the rest, simply labelled: EMILIE'S EVIDENCE.
Jr. was reading over her shoulder, scrolling through files with gestures she couldn't see. "Oh shit," he said quietly. "Vivian, your mother documented everything."
She opened the first file in PHASE 1 TRIALS.
Test subject profiles. People who'd volunteered for Verdant's early Blackwoods research, back when it was just about extended immersion, seeing how long consciousness could safely remain connected to a virtual environment. The results looked fine. Minor headaches, some dizziness upon logging out, nothing serious.
Phase 2 was different.
Mortality rates. The header alone made Vivian's stomach clench. She forced herself to read.
Summary: Phase 2 testing involved 47 subjects in extended immersion trials (72-168 hours continuous connection). Of these subjects, 6 experienced fatal neurological events. Cause of death in all cases: catastrophic feedback loop between neural interface and brain stem, resulting in cardiac arrest or stroke. Dr. E. Petersen has recommended immediate cessation of extended immersion protocols pending further safety review.
Six people. Dead because they'd stayed connected to Blackwoods too long, because the neural interface had created a feedback loop that killed them.
And Verdant had kept going.
Phase 3 authorisation was a memo, dated nine months before her mother died:
To: E. Petersen, Lead Researcher From: M. Thorne, Executive Director Re: Phase 3 Implementation
Emilie,
Your concerns about the neurological feedback loop have been noted. However, the board feels that the benefits of extended immersion outweigh the risks you've identified. The potential applications for this technology (medical, military, educational) represent a multi-billion dollar market. We're moving forward with Phase 3 deployment, with or without your approval.
Your expertise is valued, but this decision is final. Please direct future questions through proper channels, and remember your NDA covers all aspects of this research.
We hope you'll choose to remain part of this groundbreaking work.
Vivian's hands were shaking. She pulled up the incident reports.
Seven, not six. One more death after Phase 3 started, a boy named Mikael Johansen. Sixteen years old. From Oslo. Vivian's city. She tried to remember if she'd heard the name, if he'd been at her school, but couldn't place him.
Died in his sleep, the report said. Neural interface still connected. He'd been logged into Blackwoods for 96 hours straight, some kind of endurance gaming event that Verdant had sponsored. By the time his parents found him, he'd been dead for six hours.
The report was clinical, detached. It noted the death, logged it, and recommended "continued monitoring of extended-use subjects."
Not stopping the trials. Not warning people. Just monitoring.
Jr. was quiet beside her, reading his own set of files. When he spoke, his voice was tight. "Your mother tried to blow the whistle. Look at this."
He pulled up a series of emails. Emilie reaching out to journalists, to other researchers, to regulatory agencies. Most didn't respond. The ones that did said they'd need more evidence, official documentation, something that could withstand Verdant's legal team.
So Emilie had built a dead man's switch.
Vivian found the file, labelled simply: INSURANCE.
If you're reading this, something has happened to me.
I've configured this archive to automatically upload to multiple news outlets, regulatory bodies, and research institutions if I fail to log into Blackwoods every 72 hours. It's crude, but it should work. Verdant can threaten me, but they can't touch this data without triggering the release.
To whoever finds this: I'm sorry. I tried to stop them the right way, through channels, through proper procedure. But they have too much money, too much power. People are dying, and they don't care as long as the research continues.
The neural interface technology works. It's revolutionary. But it's not safe, not at the extended durations Verdant wants. The human brain wasn't designed to remain connected to a virtual environment for days at a time. The feedback loop builds slowly, and by the time symptoms appear, it's often too late.
I have a daughter. Vivian is fifteen, smart, stubborn. I want her to live in a world where companies like Verdant can't murder people for profit. But I'm afraid. They've started following me. My files at work have been accessed when I wasn't there. Someone broke into our house last week, nothing stolen, but everything slightly wrong, moved just enough that I'd notice.
They're coming for me. I can feel it.
If this switch triggers, if this evidence goes public, maybe it will matter. Maybe someone will care. Maybe these seven people won't have died for nothing.
Emilie Petersen January 2025
She'd died in March. Car accident, they'd said. Rainy night, lost control on a curve she'd driven a thousand times.
The dead man's switch hadn't triggered.
"Why didn't it work?" Vivian asked. Her voice sounded distant, someone else's. "She set it up. She logged in every 72 hours. But she died and nothing happened."
Jr. was already pulling up system logs, his paws moving through code faster than Vivian could follow. "Someone disabled it. Look, three days before she died, there's a login from her account, but it's not her. The access patterns are wrong, the timing's off. Someone with admin privileges got into her profile and deleted the automation script."
"Verdant."
"Yeah. They figured out what she'd done and neutralised it before they..." He didn't finish.
Before they killed her.
The words hung unspoken in the digital library, in the space her mother had built as a last refuge, a place to hide evidence that was supposed to save lives.
It hadn't saved Emilie's.
Vivian closed her eyes, which did nothing, she was seeing through her avatar's eyes anyway. But the gesture felt necessary, grounding.
When she opened them, she pulled up her own interface and started copying files. Everything. Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, incident reports, Emilie's emails, the disabled dead man's switch logs. All of it, duplicating across the encrypted servers Jr. had set up, spreading it so wide that deleting it would take more than admin access.
"What are you thinking?" Jr. asked quietly.
"I'm thinking my mother tried to do this alone and they killed her for it." Vivian's voice was steady now, cold. "So I'm not going to do it alone."
"Good. Because you're going to need help." Jr. pulled up a map of Blackwoods, marked with dozens of coloured dots. "These are people your mother was in contact with. Other researchers who suspected Verdant was hiding something. Activists who've been trying to expose corporate malfeasance in VR spaces. Hackers who just hate seeing shit like this happen." He highlighted three dots in particular. "These three have been asking about Moth for months. They know she had evidence. They just couldn't find it."
"Until now."
"Until now." Jr. looked at her, monkey face solemn behind the wire-frame glasses. "You know once you reach out to them, once you share this, there's no taking it back. Verdant will know you have the files. They'll come after you."
"They're already coming after me. They've been following me for weeks, I just didn't realise it." Vivian thought about the car that always seemed to be parked on her street, different car each time. The man in the coffee shop who'd been too interested in her laptop screen. Small things she'd dismissed as paranoia. "At least this way I'm not alone."
The library shuddered.
Small at first, just a vibration, but growing. Books fell from shelves, the ceiling creaked, and the painted constellations started moving, swirling like they were being drained down an invisible sink.
Jr.'s fur stood on end. "Shit. They found us."
"How?"
"Doesn't matter. We need to go, now!"
The door they'd entered through slammed shut. Vivian ran to it, tried the handle. Locked. Sealed. The wood was growing over itself, reinforcing, making sure they couldn't get out.
"The architecture's turning hostile," Jr. said. He was already scrambling up the bookshelves, looking for alternate exits. "This is advanced security protocol, the kind that traps intruders and holds them until corporates arrive."
Vivian pulled up her threat display. Red was blooming across the map, filling in from all directions. Multiple hostiles, converging on their location.
"How long do we have?"
"Minutes. Maybe." Jr. reached the top shelf, peered into the darkness above. "There's structure up here, not just void. I think I can get us to an access tunnel, but it's going to be tight."
"Lead."
Vivian climbed. The bookshelves were solid enough, rendered with detail that included handholds and footholds her mother must have planned for. She hauled herself up, shelf by shelf, while below them the library continued its transformation. The desk, her mother's desk, was sinking into the floor, being absorbed by an environment that no longer wanted it to exist.
The ceiling was closer than it looked. Jr. squeezed through a gap between support beams, disappeared into darkness. Vivian followed, pulling herself through into a space that was barely there, crawling on her stomach through something that was more concept than architecture.
Behind them, the library collapsed.
The sound was immense, crashing and splintering and a deep groan like something dying. Vivian didn't look back, couldn't in the confined space, just kept crawling forward with Jr. somewhere ahead, his voice calling out directions.
"Left, there's a drop coming, ease yourself down, don't fall."
She felt the edge with her hands, found it dropped maybe two metres into another tunnel. She slid through, landed in a crouch, kept moving.
The tunnel opened into one of the corridors they'd passed earlier, but it was different now. Walls were closing in, floor buckling upward. The architecture was trying to crush them, compress them into nothing.
"Run," Jr. said, unnecessary, Vivian was already running.
They sprinted through the corridor as it collapsed behind them, through the junction where something massive and angular was forming from the shadows, past doors that sealed as they approached. Ahead, the spiral stairs, the way up.
Vivian hit the stairs at full speed, taking them three at a time. Jr. was on her shoulder, claws digging in, shouting something about security protocols and override codes, but she couldn't process it, could only climb.
The stairs shook. Cracks appeared in the stone, spreading like fractures in ice.
They burst into the entrance structure, the organic building that covered the dungeon access. It was dissolving around them, walls melting, roof opening to show the forest canopy above.
And beyond that, avatars descending.
Three of them, sleek and predatory, rendered in Verdant's corporate grey and green. Combat skins, designed for hostile encounters. One carried what looked like a containment sphere, glowing orange, meant for trapping other users.
"Go go go," Jr. was saying, and Vivian went.
She threw herself through the dissolving wall, out into the clearing, into a run that was part physical and part willing herself forward through the space. The forest blurred around her, trees streaking past, ground barely registering beneath her feet.
Behind them, the corporate avatars followed.
They were faster. Professional pursuit, coordinated, cutting off angles she didn't know she'd been using. Vivian's HUD was screaming warnings, threat indicators turning from red to crimson.
"Split up," Jr. said. "They're tracking your avatar signature. I can scramble it but I need thirty seconds."
"Where do I go?"
"There's a dead zone three hundred metres northwest, old glitch pocket where the environment doesn't load properly. Verdant security can't follow you there without destabilising their own avatars." Jr. launched himself off her shoulder, became a streak of grey-brown fur heading east. "Lead them away, I'll meet you inside!"
The corporate avatars hesitated, split their formation. Two followed Jr., one stayed on Vivian.
She ran northwest, arms pumping, lungs burning even though her real body was sitting safely in a desk chair. The haptic feedback made it feel real, made the exhaustion and fear as visceral as physical pursuit.
The forest was changing. Trees becoming glitchier, textures flickering, ground that wasn't quite solid beneath her feet. The dead zone, had to be close.
Behind her, the corporate avatar was gaining. She could hear it, heavy footfalls that didn't belong to any human gait, something designed for speed and power.
Ahead, the trees stopped.
Not thinned. Stopped. A wall of nothing where the forest just ended, gave way to void, grey static that hurt to look at.
Vivian didn't slow down. She hit the edge and threw herself into the glitch.
The world screamed.
That's what it felt like, reality itself protesting her presence. Colours inverted, sound became visual, gravity suggested directions that didn't exist. Vivian tumbled through space that wasn't space, falling up, spinning sideways, completely disoriented.
Then everything stopped.
She was standing in a clearing that looked like the one she'd started in, but wrong. Trees were there and not there, flickering in and out of existence. The sky was a solid sheet of grey. No sound except a low hum, electromagnetic, the sound of systems struggling to render an environment they'd forgotten how to build.
Jr. materialised beside her, looking rougher than before, his avatar texture degraded, bits of code visible beneath the fur.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Define okay." Vivian checked her files. Still there, still intact. "Did we lose them?"
"For now. Corporate avatars can't enter dead zones without risking corruption. They'll have to wait for us to come out." Jr. sat down on a rock that kept forgetting it was solid. "Which means we have time to think."
"Time to plan, you mean."
"Same thing."
Vivian pulled up the files again, Emilie's evidence, seven dead, a corporation that killed to protect its profits. She thought about her mother, building dead man's switches that got disabled, reaching out for help that never came.
Thought about doing this alone versus doing it right.
"We need allies," she said. "Real ones, not just contacts. People who can protect this data, spread it so wide Verdant can't suppress it."
"I know people," Jr. said. "Your mother knew people. We can build a coalition."
"And then?"
Jr.'s monkey face managed something like a grim smile. "Then we burn Verdant to the ground."
The dead zone flickered around them, reality struggling to maintain itself, and somewhere beyond its borders, corporate security was waiting.
But Vivian had what her mother died for. She had evidence, she had allies waiting to be contacted, and she had time.
Not much. But enough.
"Let's get out of here," she said. "We have work to do."
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