“Hey, I’m sorry,” the driver said. “It’s none of my business. I just got a brother who’s in trouble is all, those men reminded me of him. How about we listen to some music. They’re only playing Christmas songs, but it’s pretty all right.”

Joey rolled down the window and felt the coldness of the wind outside. Maybe tomorrow winter would come and wouldn’t leave for a long time. Tonight, when he crawled through the window, the constellations would move across Lacy’s empty bed. He’d call the police, report the house to them, and maybe they’d bring his sister back, or arrest her, or find her in parts. But what did it matter? She wasn’t his sister anymore, just another model with messed-up circuitry, trapped in a small room in a dark ranch house in the Midwest, a robot who’d figured out how to get past her own programming to become someone he didn’t want to love anymore. And the little balloon inside him expanded and deflated, expanded and deflated, so full of pain he was certain it would pop.

Joey took his house keys from his pocket and reached under his shirt, placed his fingers against the soft flesh of his ribcage, and pushed the thin metal tab. When the cartridge released, his body grew cold, but there wasn’t any pain anymore, just the chilling wind and a man driving, and the radio playing the tinny sound of Christmas music. And all this, Joey felt, was fine.

SANCTUARY

EARLY VISITATIONS

The first to stumble across the new lifeforms weren’t NASA scientists or marine biologists, but a group of teenage gamers who posted their findings on GameShare. Their retweeted video arrived on our phones, looking like classic clickbait, but soon circulated every social media feed until even news stations were replaying the clip. We watched the recording and listened to the young boys’ voices.

Any of you see that?

See what?

Down there, right side, past the cliff.

Got it. All zombies dead.

No, past the zombies—like on the side of the cliff.

Whoa. What the hell?

I don’t know.

Is that part of the game?

I don’t think so.

Whoa!

Newscasters enlarged the image, and there it was, climbing through a rip in the fabric of the immersive game, as real as any living creature we’d ever seen. Its mouth snapped at the air with pincer-like teeth and the pixels around its body flickered with the prism of deep programming glitches. Yet, in interview after interview, programmers reported this wasn’t an elaborate Easter egg nor a technological prank. “We don’t know what that thing is,” they said, looking pale and frightened. It sure didn’t seem like they were lying.