Zula was not a gamer. She avoided people who were (another reason she’d liked Peter). She’d fallen into the job at Corporation 9592 not out of any desire to work in that industry but because of the family connection and the accident of knowing how to do what Pluto wanted. The character she’d created in the world of T’Rain was her first personal exposure to this world, and it had taken some getting used to. She had learned to understand and appreciate the game’s addictive qualities without really being addicted herself. Devoting this much time—six hours and counting—to a game session was a new behavior for her. She was only doing it to extricate herself and Peter from this freak situation they had gotten into. She had assumed that it would take about fifteen minutes and that then she would go home and never see Peter again, never see Wallace again.