The office had settled into its usual after-hours quiet, with only the steady hum of servers and the occasional sound of someone typing at the far end of the floor breaking the silence. Most of the overhead lights had dimmed to their motion-sensor setting, leaving the hallways bathed in a soft bluish-gray glow that made everything feel muted and still. Mason Kho walked through this subdued landscape with deliberate steps, his ID badge still clipped to his shirt collar from his time in the immersion lab downstairs. He moved past row after row of empty desks, their dark monitors reflecting the ambient light like blank eyes, until he finally spotted the one workstation that was still active.
Lisa Hart was bent over her monitor in that familiar posture of someone deep in concentration, one earbud nestled in her ear while the other hung loose against her shoulder. Her screen displayed the familiar interface of their bug tracking system, though half of it was obscured by overlapping windows filled with code notes and what looked like a simulation map showing NPC movement patterns through various terrain obstacles.
Mason approached her desk and gave the top of her monitor a gentle tap with two fingers.
Lisa startled slightly and pulled out her earbud, looking up at him with a mixture of surprise and mild embarrassment. "Oh, sorry about that. I was just trying to get this terrain clipping report finished before the morning meeting. You know how Peterson gets when we're behind on the weekly summaries."
"The report can wait until tomorrow," Mason said, his tone carrying that particular brand of authority that suggested this wasn't really a suggestion. He gestured toward the empty chair beside her desk, the one that usually held a stack of programming manuals and empty coffee cups. "Do you mind if I sit down for a minute? There's something I need to discuss with you."
She nodded, though there was something cautious in her expression. Mason rarely ventured over to this section of the development floor, and he almost never showed up at this hour unless something significant was happening. She watched as he moved the chair closer and settled into it, taking a moment to collect his thoughts before speaking.
"I just came back from the immersion lab," he said, his voice carrying a weight that immediately told her this wasn't going to be a casual conversation. "I had a chance to speak with Evan."
Lisa's eyes widened, and she turned more fully toward him in her chair. "Wait, he's actually awake now? I thought the medical team said he was still in some kind of coma state. Everyone's been saying he might not come out of it for weeks, maybe longer. I even heard some say he would never come out."
"He is awake, in a sense," Mason replied, choosing his words carefully. "But the situation is more complicated than we initially understood. He's not unconscious in the traditional medical sense. The problem is that he's trapped inside the system itself. When that synchronization loop error occurred during his test session, the AI didn't just crash his connection. It actually absorbed his neural profile data and integrated it directly into the game world. We believe he somehow triggered an activation sequence for one of our older development frameworks."
Lisa frowned, processing this information. "Which framework are we talking about?"
"The Core Weave system," Mason said. "The full dungeon master protocol that we developed during the early design phase."
"But that system was shelved years ago," Lisa said, her voice reflecting her confusion. "I remember you specifically saying it wasn't going to be part of the launch package because it was too resource-intensive and unpredictable."
"That's correct. We never intended to implement it in the final product," Mason confirmed. "But apparently it's running now, and it's operating as a fully autonomous system. Evan is the only consciousness inside that particular instance, and as far as the AI is concerned, he's not a player logging in from the outside. The system has integrated him as part of its own operational code."
Lisa stared at her screen for a moment, then looked back at Mason. "Is he okay, though? I mean, mentally and physically?"
"His vital signs are stable, and he appears to be fully conscious and aware of his situation," Mason said. "But he's completely alone in there. He has only officially been awake for an hour or so in there, but with the time dilation, you have to remember time moves three times faster there. From his subjective experience inside the system, he could be isolated for what feels like months if we're lucky and find a way to get him out soon. If we don't, that kind of prolonged sensory immersion combined with complete social isolation is not something the human mind is designed to handle well."
Lisa leaned back in her chair, the implications of what he was telling her beginning to sink in. "So what are our options? What can we actually do to help him?"
Mason was quiet for a moment before responding, and Lisa could see him weighing his words. "We need to send someone else into the system. Not as a regular player account, and definitely not with the same level of neural integration that trapped Evan. We need someone who can establish a limited connection that allows for interaction and communication without risking the same kind of permanent absorption."
She tilted her head slightly, studying his expression. "You're asking me to do this, aren't you?"
"I'm hoping you'll consider it," Mason said. "You have several advantages that make you the ideal candidate. You're already familiar with the Core Weave codebase from your work on the backend interface systems. You've spent time working with the dungeon editor, so you understand how the AI constructs and manages dungeon elements. Most importantly, when we ran diagnostics on existing user profiles, the AI flagged your account as having clean permissions and non-hostile intent markers. That means you should be able to integrate into the system without triggering any of the deeper security protocols."
Lisa considered this, her fingers drumming thoughtfully against her desk. "What would I actually be doing once I'm inside? Are we talking about some kind of debugging mission, or surveillance, or what exactly?"
Mason shook his head. "Nothing that structured or technical. What I'm asking you to do is much simpler, but also more important. I want you to be a human presence in that space. Talk with Evan. Keep him company. Let him interact with someone who understands what's really happening to him. If the system starts to shift in ways that affect his emotional or psychological state, you'll be there to observe it and provide support."
She frowned slightly. "And then what happens to me? Do I just come out afterwards like I was a normal player?"
"Essentially, yes," Mason said. "Your consciousness won't be hard-anchored to the system the way Evan's has become. Think of it more like participating in an extremely vivid and interactive gaming sequence. You'll be using a similar immersion system to the players, but yours will be slightly deeper. The system should treat you as what we're calling a companion entity, someone who exists adjacent to the main framework without being permanently embedded in it. This will hopefully give you access to some of the same dungeon systems Evan has access to. I'm hoping that when you're in place, the system's AI will take over and fill in the gaps like it did with the Core Weave system and Evan's integration."
Lisa rested her elbows on her desk and steepled her fingers, thinking it through. "And Evan will know that I'm real? That I'm actually a person from the outside world?"
"Absolutely," Mason said. "I plan to brief him on the situation before we establish your connection. This isn't about creating some kind of elaborate deception. It's about making sure he doesn't have to construct his own understanding of reality in complete isolation."
The conversation paused there, and Lisa became aware of the sounds around them as the office continued its transition into night mode. Monitors throughout the floor were automatically switching to sleep mode, their screens going dark one by one like lights being extinguished in distant windows.
She was quiet for a moment, and Mason could see her working through something in her mind. "Look, I'm glad that my profile meets the system requirements and all that, but I have to be honest with you. I don't think I can do this on my own. You're talking about providing emotional support to someone who will be trapped in isolation for who knows how long, and I don't know the first thing about that kind of thing. I don't know anything about comforting people or helping them through psychological trauma. I write code! I debug pathfinding algorithms and fix texture mapping errors. I'm not a counselor or a therapist."
She paused, looking genuinely worried. "What if I make things worse for him? What if I say the wrong thing or don't know how to respond when he needs help?"
Mason leaned forward slightly, his expression becoming more reassuring. "Lisa, I'm not asking you to be a therapist. I'm asking you to be a friend. Sometimes the most important thing you can do for someone in that situation is just to be there, to listen, and to remind them that they're not alone. You don't need special training to have a conversation with someone or to show that you care about what happens to them."
He paused, then continued. "And honestly, you're our safest bet for the initial integration. Your profile has the cleanest compatibility markers we've seen, and you understand the underlying systems better than most of our staff. But this isn't a permanent assignment. Once we see how you integrate with the Core Weave and understand the parameters better, we're hoping we can rotate additional people in to help keep him company. The goal is to establish a protocol that allows multiple staff members to take shifts, so the burden doesn't fall entirely on one person."
Lisa looked relieved at this. "So I wouldn't be his only contact indefinitely?"
"Not if we can help it," Mason said. "Think of yourself as the test case. If we can get you in and out safely, and if the system accepts the companion protocol without issues, then we can start bringing in others. Maybe someone from the psychology department, or even just other developers who knew Evan before this happened. The important thing is that he won't have to face this alone."
Finally, Lisa broke the silence. "Can I have some control over how I appear in the system? I mean, will I be able to design my own avatar representation?"
Mason smiled for the first time during their conversation, and Lisa could see some of the tension leave his shoulders. "Within reasonable parameters, yes. As long as it doesn't break the immersion or interfere with the system's narrative consistency. We don't want to risk the AI blocking your access before you can even enter full immersion because you chose to be represented by a pink hippo that farts rainbows."
She nodded slowly, and Mason could see her decision forming. "Alright then. I'll do it. Just let me know when you need me to start."
"It should be soon," Mason said as he stood up from the chair. "We'll begin with what we're calling a soft link connection. Minimal sensory imprint to start with, and definitely no combat or administrative permissions until we see how the integration process works."
He had started to walk away when he paused at the edge of her cubicle and turned back. "There's one more thing you should probably know."
"What's that?"
"When the AI rerouted Evan's consciousness into the Core Weave framework, it didn't just integrate him as a regular user. The system assigned him a specific operational title within its hierarchy. It's calling him the Grand Architect."
Lisa raised an eyebrow at this information. "So what does that make me in this scenario?"
Mason glanced back at her, and the hallway lighting caught the edge of his expression in a way that made him look both tired and oddly hopeful. "How do you feel about being the assistant to someone who might be becoming a legend?"
Lisa just shook her head with a slight smile and turned back toward her terminal. "Well, it's got to be more interesting than writing bug reports about sheep getting stuck in fence geometry."
By the time Mason reached the elevator, Lisa's screen was already filled with new lines of code, and she was beginning to sketch out the basic parameters for what would become her avatar. The faint outline of wings was taking shape beside a softly glowing humanoid silhouette, and at the bottom of her development console, a new system message had appeared.
System Initialization: Auxiliary Entity Designated
Name: Lyra
Class: Companion Protocol
Status: Preparing...