Anorak looked genuinely surprised that Og was still alive. He looked even more surprised a second later, when tines of blue lightning erupted from Og’s fingertips and blasted him backward several hundred yards before he collided with a mountain, creating a large impact crater that immediately started an avalanche. Anorak was buried under tons of rock in a matter of seconds. But moments later, he exploded up out of the rubble looking completely unharmed.‌

Og flew after him like a rocket, and then the two of them faced off in the sky directly in front of me, hovering over the same field where the Battle of Castle Anorak had taken place over three years earlier.

Og wasn’t behaving like someone who was at death’s door from a gunshot wound. He looked completely fine—and he didn’t even appear to be in any pain. How was this possible?

Then I realized how—for the first time in his life, Og had donned an ONI headset, so that he could log back in and face Anorak.

“It’s funny,” Og said. “Back when we first built this place, schoolkids all over the world would argue about who would win in a battle between Anorak and the Great and Powerful Og. And I have to admit, I always used to wonder too.” He smiled at Anorak. “Of course, when Jim died, I didn’t think we’d ever know the answer. But life continues to be full of surprises

—right up until the bitter end.”

With that, Og launched his avatar forward, flying toward Anorak as Anorak hurtled forward to meet him.

And that was how I ended up having a front-row seat for what was undoubtedly the most epic player-versus-NPC battle in the history of the OASIS, as the avatars of its two creators locked horns for the biggest prizefight in history—the Great and Powerful Og versus Anorak the All-Knowing, the digital ghost of his old partner, James Halliday. And since I had such a great view, I decided to air everything I was seeing on my POV channel, so the whole world could tune in.

The two mighty avatars collided with a thunderclap, and the sky overhead suddenly filled with dark thunderclouds that rolled in and spread from one end of the horizon to the other, like a dark cloak being unfurled.

Then Og and Anorak began to grapple with each other as they careened across the heavens, throwing boulder-crushing punches at each other like Superman and General Zod, while they shouted things only the two of them could hear.

Then they suddenly broke apart and began to hurl fireballs and thunderbolts at each other like two warring Olympian gods. But Og and Anorak both appeared to be impervious to each other’s powerful attacks, which ricocheted harmlessly off of their unarmored avatars’ skins, wreaking havoc and destroying huge chunks of the simulated landscape around the castle.

I zoomed in on my HUD for a better look. Og looked like he’d gone into full berserker mode. He was attacking Anorak with a relentless and uncharacteristic ferocity that I’d never seem him exhibit before, in person or in old simcaps. Now that Nolan Sorrento was no longer holding a gun to his head, Og was finally able to get some long-overdue payback for all of the pain Anorak had caused him over the past few days….

I was still standing there at the study window, watching their battle in awe, when I suddenly felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through my skull. The pain made me drop to my knees. I felt myself starting to black out as I struggled to maintain control of my avatar. I’d been wondering when this would happen. It was even more terrifying than I’d anticipated.

I slowly lowered myself to the floor and lay very still. That was when I noticed the broadcast-invitation icon flashing on my HUD—an indication

that one of the handful of people on my friends list was currently doing a live broadcast of their avatar’s POV….

When I tapped the icon, I discovered that it was Og!

Og was broadcasting his battle with Anorak live to the entire OASIS. Along with the rest of the world, I watched as the battle of the OASIS co-creators continued to rage on outside, in the skies around the castle. Anorak and Og exchanged blasts of red and blue lightning, scorching the landscape all around them.

The pain in my head subsided somewhat, and I managed to pull myself back up to the windowsill. When I looked out, to my horror I saw that an army of Anorak’s acolytes had begun to arrive via teleportation. In just a few seconds there were hundreds of thousands of them.

I was worried they were all planning to try to gang up on Og. But they all remained on the sidelines, watching like spectators at a prizefight. They all began to broadcast their POVs to the rest of the OASIS, too, and suddenly it became possible to watch the battle from hundreds of different locations and angles.

Anorak and Og collided again in the sky above the castle, creating a massive shockwave that rocked the surrounding landscape.

A few seconds later, Art3mis teleported to Chthonia. Her avatar rematerialized on the steps of Castle Anorak far below me. Then she immediately launched herself into the sky to try to assist Og.

Art3mis had one of the most powerful and well-equipped avatars in the OASIS, and she was a deadly PvP combatant too. But it didn’t matter. Anorak dispatched her avatar with a single blast of energy from his right hand. Her ninety-ninth-level avatar instantly disintegrated, and its enormous inventory fell to the ground outside.

I desperately wanted to fly down to retrieve her things, but I was too weak to move. And I knew I couldn’t leave the study without making myself temporarily vulnerable to Anorak and all of the powerful magical artifacts in his possession.

When Og saw Anorak kill Art3mis, he looked completely enraged, even though he must’ve known that even though her avatar was dead, Samantha

was still alive and well in the real world. Maybe he’d forgotten. Maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly either. Or maybe he’d just had enough of Anorak.

Og let out an angry cry of rage as his avatar took flight again. He rocketed toward Anorak like an ICBM and the two of them collided in another explosion of light and energy.

From that moment on, Og and Anorak were locked into a knock-down, drag-out man-versus-machine fight to the death that seemed like it might go on forever.

It was like Yoda versus Palpatine, Gandalf versus Saruman, and Neo versus Agent Smith, all rolled into one epic clash of the titans.

Even without his robes, Anorak was still incredibly powerful, thanks to the vast arsenal of magical artifacts his acolytes had collected for him.

In a matter of minutes, Anorak forced Og’s avatar to the ground with a barrage of magic missiles and then immobilized him with a powerful hundredth-level spell called Anorak’s Entrapment. An egg-shaped cage made of bars of white-hot iron suddenly appeared around Og’s avatar, trapping him inside. He appeared unable to move or escape. For a moment, it looked like Anorak might actually defeat him. I watched in horror as he drew a deadly magical artifact from his inventory known as the Wand of Orcus….

But at that exact moment, L0hengrin arrived on the scene, teleporting to the planet’s surface just a few meters directly behind Anorak, out of his line of sight.

The bad news was that she was completely alone. The good news was that she held the Dorkslayer sword aloft in her right hand. Blinding sunlight glinted off its silver blade.

Og spotted her right away. As soon as he did, he drew an artifact of his own from his avatar’s inventory—a ridiculously large cartoon sledgehammer that he must’ve picked up on the planet Toontown. He swung the hammer in a wide arc and used it to shatter the glowing bars of the magical cage surrounding his avatar, freeing him from Anorak’s spell. Then he swung the hammer a second time and struck Anorak on the top of his head, pile-driving his avatar several feet down into the ground, burying him up to his waist. As Anorak struggled to free himself, Og ran over to

L0hengrin and held his hand out to her. She bowed her head and presented him with the sword.

In the same moment, Anorak pulled himself free of the ground and pointed the Wand of Orcus at Og’s back. But just as he activated it, Og did an evasive sidestep at the last second, so his attack hit L0hengrin instead. A swirling black cloud issued forth from the wand’s tip and enveloped her avatar, disintegrating it and killing her instantly. Her avatar turned to black ash and vanished, leaving behind a pile of inventory that Anorak scooped up. Then he turned back to face Og, flashing him a self-satisfied grin.

But his smile vanished the instant he spotted the sword in Og’s hand. He seemed to recognize the ornate runes carved into its silver blade, because his eyes widened in an expression that could only be described as absolute terror.

Og held the sword aloft, then he teleported directly behind Anorak, who turned to face him just as Og swung the Dorkslayer around and sliced Anorak’s avatar in half, miraculously killing him with a single blow.

Anorak’s avatar slowly vanished, leaving behind the biggest loot drop in history. Og was standing right in the midst of it, so all of Anorak’s items were automatically added to his inventory.

But Og didn’t seem to notice. The moment after he killed Anorak, all of the color drained out of his face, and what little remaining energy he had seemed to evaporate. He began to sway on his feet. He dropped to one knee and clutched his chest. A red cross appeared above his avatar’s head, pulsing on and off in time with the sound of an alarm bell.

I knew what this icon meant, even though this was the first time I’d ever actually seen it in person. It meant that the user operating that avatar was experiencing a serious medical problem in the real world. When this happened, the user was automatically logged out of the OASIS, and an ambulance was summoned to their real-world location (if one was on file).

A second later, Og’s avatar froze in place. Then it slowly vanished.

Anorak turned out to be an AI of his word after all. When he died, his infirmware shut down, and the ONI overrides took over. His hostages around the world were released and logged out, and everyone woke up all at once, all around the globe.

I experienced two or three seconds of fleeting consciousness—just enough time to open my eyes, see the canopy of my immersion vault crack open, and feel the cool air outside hit my face. Then, due to the effects of Synaptic Overload Syndrome, and my complete physical and mental exhaustion, I immediately passed out and lost consciousness again.

Then I was dead to the world.

I didn’t wake up again until the following day, a little over fifteen hours later. I was in a hospital bed in the private infirmary on the GSS Building’s tenth floor. I recognized the view. Faisal was sitting by the window, in the flesh, smiling at me. He looked to be in perfect health. I shifted my eyes to the right and saw Aech and Shoto smiling at me from vidfeed windows on a monitor mounted above my bed. They were teleconferencing in from their own recovery beds, which were in their own homes. They both looked fine too—alive, healthy, and enormously happy. They had emerged from their immersion vaults in perfect health, without any lingering signs of SOS.

I realized someone was holding my left hand. I turned to see who it was and saw Samantha sitting there beside my bed. When she saw that I was awake, she squeezed my hand tightly.

“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty,” she said, just before she planted a kiss on me.

“Hey there, Prince Charming,” I replied once the kiss was finally over.

I sat up in bed and looked around at all of my friends uncertainly. Then I asked them what happened. And they told me.

For reasons I’m still not sure I understand, Anorak had told the truth. He’d programmed his hacked ONI firmware to suspend all headset activity once a user hit their usage limit, but to keep them logged in. This prevented

all of his hostages from suffering the effects of Synaptic Overload Syndrome. Everyone had been released from their ONI headsets unharmed.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Og.

Samantha told me that he succumbed to his injuries just a few seconds after he killed Anorak inside the OASIS. It was like he’d summoned all of his strength to hold on just long enough to do what needed to be done.

“Og was too weak to operate his avatar with a conventional OASIS rig,” Samantha said. “So he told me to put an ONI headset on him. That was how he was able to fight Anorak.”

I’d already assumed this was what had happened. But hearing her confirm it, I was suddenly struck by a wave of grief. I felt my throat constricting. I couldn’t breathe. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. I was on the verge of breaking down into a gibbering, blubbering mess.

“Wade, listen,” Samantha said. “There’s more. Og gave me a message to pass along to you. But I’m not sure he was making sense….He told me to tell you he was wrong. Leaving Kira locked away forever wasn’t his choice to make. It should be her decision. He said you should bring her back and let her decide what she wants. And, if she thinks it’s a good idea, bring him back too.” She shrugged. “Do you know what he meant by any of that?”

The shards. They were still sitting in my avatar’s inventory. All seven of them. Waiting to be recombined into the Siren’s Soul.

I suddenly recalled something L0hengrin had told me—something she’d read in Kira’s module notebook….

The party has to collect all seven of the shards and reassemble them into the Siren’s Soul, she’d said. Only then can they free Leucosia from suspended animation. Once they do, she presents them with their reward. A powerful artifact with the power to resurrect the dead, and make them immortal in the process…

Of course, that was just teenage Kira’s imagination running rampant.

There was no such thing as immortality. Was there?

My thoughts suddenly racing, I yanked the IV needle out of my arm and tossed it aside. Then I jumped up out of bed and began to put on my clothes.

“Hey!” Aech said. “What do you think you’re doing? You need to stay in bed.”

“I need to log back in,” I said. “There’s one more thing we have to do.” “Are you joking?” Samantha said. “You just escaped from the OASIS

with your life, and you’re already dying to log back in?”

“Please, Samantha,” I said. “There’s something I need you to see with me.”

She studied me for a moment. Then she gave me a silent nod and walked out of the room. I followed her out of the infirmary and down the hall, to an OASIS immersion bay that contained half a dozen haptic rigs used for physical therapy and rehabilitation. Samantha walked over to one of these rigs and climbed into it.

“Meet me at the Shrine to Leucosia,” I said, climbing into the rig next to hers.

“OK, but Anorak killed my avatar, remember?” she said. “It’ll take me a minute to create a new one.”

“You won’t have to,” I replied. “I stole my robes back from Anorak, remember? I can resurrect you! Just give me a minute before you log in.”

She nodded and gave me a thumbs-up. She was still in shock from losing Og. I think I may have been too. I wasn’t thinking very clearly, that’s for sure.

I finished strapping myself into the haptic rig, then I put on a visor and pulled on a pair of haptic gloves. Then I logged back in to the OASIS for the very last time, to reassemble the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul.