“There’s something wrong with this,” I mutter.

  “It’s the smell,” Frankie groans.

  “Eat it,” Lenora urges.

  My hand drops to my lap. “It stinks.”

  “Like dead spiders,” Tess agrees, wrinkling her nose as she lets her hand fall too.

  “Don’t drop it in the dirt,” Lenora chides. “It’s all we get to eat until we level up.”

  I glance at the last dead spider. The ugly beastie twitches once, then flips and collapses, steam hissing from its mouth and every joint. In another minute it’ll be gone—just vapor and stink hanging in the air—leaving behind the usual loot: a granola bar (chocolate or cinnamon, never anything exciting), a single copper coin, or a luck token—whatever that is—and maybe a potion or random trinket.

  I already have three bars, socks that didn’t match, and a dozen vials of antidote clinking in my pouch like dice.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I whisper to Lenora.

  “You’re overthinking it,” she says, tugging at the strap of the new orange sports bra she looted off one of the spiders she smashed.

  “Your new underwear is bigger than the bug.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Tess snickers. “Did you get a level in unarmed combat?”

  “No. I already have it at nine. It went up by two-tenths.”

  Frankie huffs. “I didn’t get any experience.”

  I quirk an eyebrow. “What’s your unarmed combat?”

  “Fifty-one.”

  “You should still get something.”

  “Oh, I did. Hundredths of a point at a time. They’re too far below me.”

  “What’s this?” I hold up the tiny green luck token.

  “Dangerous,” snickers Frankie.

  “It can be,” says Lenora, “or it can save your life in a pinch.”

  “The Fae of Chance is a wicked master,” Frankie mutters, shaking his head like someone with bad memories.

  Tess nods. “Luck tokens can bend probability, give fate a little shove when everything’s stacked against you.”

  “Aye,” Frankie warns, “but twist fate too often and Maddox will notice. He keeps the books balanced. Push too hard and the ledger will snap back on you when you least expect it.”

  Lenora rolls her eyes and flips a token. “Not if you’ve got these to spend. They’re like cash in the bank.”

  “True enough,” Frankie sighs, “just don’t go into debt. The Fae’s a cruel creditor.”

  “They’re both right,” Tess concludes gently. “Use luck when you need it most, never borrow what you can’t repay—and you’ll be fine.”

  Jenny stretches, glitter puffing weakly from her gown, and yawns like a kitten. “Did I miss all the fun?”

  “You slept right through all the trick-or-treaters,” I deadpan.

  Tess bites back a smile. “Should we share our candy?”

  I hold up my half-eaten granola bar. “It’s chocolate.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Looted it from a spider’s ass.”

  “Eww!”

  Lenora snickers. “It’s loot.”

  Jenny’s eyes widen. “Oh man, I missed the first battle?”

  Frankie laughs. “Snored—”

  “—loudly—” I add.

  “—right through everything.”

  “I do not snore!” Jenny flips her hair and sniffs.

  We all give her the same flat look, half glare, half grin.

  Jenny crosses her arms. “I don’t…”

  “We should have you checked for sleep apnea,” I tease.

  “That’s a fat old person’s thing,” she mutters, plucking a spider leg off her skirt and flinging it away. Her face scrunches. “What is this stuff on my clothes?”

  The last spider exhales a final hiss, dissolving into vapor. In its place, a rainbow-colored micro-miniskirt materializes. I pinch it up between two fingers and toss it to Jenny. “Not my style.”

  It lands across her face, barely covering one eye and an ear.

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  “You can use it as a belt.”

  “I’ll save it for later,” she snickers, stuffing it into her pack.

  The cavern feels suddenly too quiet—stone walls swallowing sound, the glow of torches flickering off rock that sweats heat instead of moisture. My stomach knots as I rake my fingers through my hair. The air tastes faintly of minerals and burnt stone, like someone left an engine running deep underground. This isn’t just a back door to some override panel. It’s not a game. I almost died down here—from an allergy I didn’t even know I had.

  And those spiders—what the hell were they? Sure, there are big spiders in the world, even poisonous ones, but not that big. Not with silk thick as rope. Worse, the system identified them as baby fanged titan spiders. Baby.

  If those were hatchlings… what does Mommy look like?

  I edge closer to Tess and tap her arm. “What is this place?”

  “The Catacombs of Inanna.”

  “Catacombs? On a starship?”

  “Inside the training simulation of a virtual world.”

  “What in the name of God are we supposed to learn fighting spiders in a cavern?”

  “Tactics. Group dynamics. Survival priorities in hostile environments…”

  I wave her to silence. “So you’ve been down here before. What’s the fastest way to the panel?”

  Frankie drops across from me, folding her legs crisscross like a soldier instead of a lady, leaning forward. “Doesn’t matter. This place changes between visits.”

  “Why?” I motion with my hands and legs trying to subtly suggest she close her legs, or at least not give us a show. Instead, she wriggles like she’s adjusting bits she doesn’t have. I groan and focus on Tess.

  Tess’s tone sharpens into her teacher’s voice. “Why are we in this simulation?”

  “To get past a zero-trust lockout so we can fix the ship.”

  “Right answer to the wrong question. Why does the world-sim VR simulation exist?”

  I blink. “…To teach us how to survive in a virgin world.” It’s a kindergarten answer, but I don’t have all day for the long version.

  “Correct. A place we’ve never seen, with challenges we can’t foresee.”

  “But dropping bugs on us?”

  “The spiders were for you,” Jenny giggles.

  “Me?”

  “This place,” Frankie chirps, “adapts to the lowest average in the party.”

  “I’m better at ranged combat than anyone in our town.”

  “What are your average levels?”

  My mind flashes across the truth—the hole in my stats, my bottomed-out intimacy skills—and balks. “This is a combat environment.”

  “No, silly,” Jenny giggles again. “This is a school of everything.”

  “All eight of Inanna’s Rays are taught here,” Tess says. “Why do you think our adventure started with a pillow fight?”

  My mouth goes dry. “No…” The word rasps out of me. “Everything?”

  My team nods.

  My gaze snaps to the new star poking from the waistline of my skirt. The talent, job, financial, and physical rays are half-filled. Everything else? As Dad would say—significant opportunity for improvement. His voice echoes in my memory, sharp and kind all at once.

  “Frack! We don’t have time—”

  “Wrong,” Lenora says with a patient, doctor’s bedside smile.

  I stand and sling my pack over one shoulder, my quiver over the other, bow in hand. “We can play in Inanna’s Catacombs after we save the ship.”

  I turn, scan the walls—and gulp. The stairs are gone. Eight doors now line the stone; each marked with an eight-pointed star and a rune. Half the rays shine red, a few green, and one glows gold.

  “Tess… what’s going on? Which door leads to the access panels?”

  “Probably the gold one, but—”

  I march to the gold door and yank on the cold silver handle. An electric tingle crawls through my hand. I brace my foot on the frame and pull.

  A crack of energy slams through me. I fly backward into Tess and Lenora’s waiting arms.

  My body spasms and my head swims. I wet myself.

  “Come on, pay up, Jenny,” chimes Frankie.

  “Worth every penny,” Jenny snickers, flicking two coppers across the floor.

  “You bet on me getting—”

  “It happens to everyone,” Frankie says.

  Doc examines my red aching hands while Tess explains. “You can’t enter a green door if you have any reds. It’s the same with the gold.”

  “What the hell? We don’t have time to screw around—”

  “Time is meaningless here,” Frankie says.

  “The Sidhe's Seraphim is falling apart. Everyone’s going to die—our colony mission will fail!” I glare at the ceiling as if I can pierce stone and see the AI core. “MIRA! Let us out of the game.”

  Tess rubs small circles down my spine.

  I jerk away, chest tight, glaring into the distance. “MIRA!”

  “MIRA can’t hear you,” Tess soothes. “This place belongs to Inanna.”

  “And before you try,” Jenny says, oddly sober, “don’t yell for Inanna. It’ll make things harder.”

  I squint at Jenny’s smirk. “Did you…” My words fade as Frankie lifts her hand.

  “That was me. Don’t do it. The Lady of Learning keeps a big paddle under her desk.”

  I turn back to the doors, scanning the symbols as I change my soaked panties. Some I expect to be red, but others? “Why are finance and family skills red? And what is gift?”

  Lenora arches a brow. “So you’re the one dragging down our Intimacy?”

  Heat floods my cheeks. I spin toward Tess. “My financial and childcare skills are solid.”

  Tess stifles a sigh. “It’s not just you. The colors show our team’s average. Red turns green once we pass twenty. Gold starts at forty and completes at sixty.”

  “But you’re maxed out—”

  “I don’t count.”

  Jenny mock bows. “Oh, great teacher, show us the path to enlightenment.”

  “Shut up or I’ll have Frankie paddle you,” Tess snaps before turning back to me.

  Jenny’s grin only widens. A spray of pink glitter floats from her fingers. She actually wants that? What the frack?

  Tess closes my gaping mouth with a finger. “Nice tonsils. We work as a team—teaching, learning, and strengthening each other.”

  I fling up my hands. “Great. So the ship burns while I teach Frankie elementary accounting.”

  Frankie flops onto her back, arms wide. “I keep telling you, lass—time is meaningless here.”

  “Real time is passing outside the VR,” I growl.

  “Fine.” Frankie tips her head toward Tess. “Teacher, how long have we been in here? Real time, not VR.”

  Tess stares into the distance, whispering under her breath like she’s listening to someone I can’t hear.

  “Who are you talking to?” I demand.

  Her eyes meet mine. “A little over five minutes.”

  “No…” My bow slips from my hand and clatters on stone. I’m sitting beside it a breath later, the weight of Tess’s words pressing me down. “Not possible. We’ve been in here for hours—if not a day—”

  My stomach growls, loud in the silence. I dig a mangled granola bar from my pocket, peel back the green wrapper, and nibble. Cinnamon-apple sweetness soothes my stomach, but not the writhing knot in my gut. “What now?”

  Jenny brightens, a spray of glitter scattering as she waves around the circle. “We each pick our weakness and ask the team for help.”

  Tess nods. “If we can’t figure out the best way to teach, we go through the appropriate door.”

  “What’s on the other side?”

  “Anything—a room, an adventure, whatever we need,” Jenny says. Her eyes flick between Frankie and Tess. “I’m working on family skills. My rooms are always packed with dirty, stinky street urchins.”

  “Mine are full of smelly dumbbells lifting weights,” deadpans Lenora.

  “Hey,” Frankie protests in mock offense.

  Jenny snickers. “That’s her favorite place.” She shields her mouth with a hand. “I wonder if she’ll still work out topless.”

  “I always get stuck with some tottering wimp wearing a green visor,” Frankie mutters.

  I tug the green baseball cap I looted from one of my spiders out of my pack and set it sideways on my head. “Will this do?”

  Everyone chuckles for several seconds before their eyes settle on me.

  I stare at my toes, shame crawling up my throat. My voice comes out small. The silence stretches too long, thick as stone dust in the air.

  “Lenora… I need your help.”