"The way you dress is an expression of your personality."

  Alessandro Michele, Italian Designer

  Milly woke in her cubicle with the sun cascading over the mountains to the north. She groaned, rolling over and feeling her muscles ache and joints crack from an awkward sleep beneath her desk. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was and what had happened yesterday, and she pinched herself hard to make sure this was not a dream.

  “Ouch. You know, in stories, for all the hardships the characters go through, at least they get to stop going to work,” Milly complained, looking around her cramped cubicle. “I don’t even get that luxury.”

  Her eyes flickered up to Xavier’s computer, and she blinked to clear the sleep from her eyes. She looked at the clock in the bottom right corner of the screen.

  “It’s almost ten o’clock?” she exclaimed, sitting upright and smacking her forehead, again, on the underside of her desk. She kept her curses to a mutter this time, her healing touch soaking up the pain. “I have got to find a better place to sleep.”

  Xavier was nowhere to be seen, and Milly’s fears were confirmed when she grabbed the note he had pinned to their cubicle wall. “Heading out to hunt. Left you to sleep. Stay safe.”

  “Stay safe?” she scoffed, “It was you who had to be saved yesterday, not me. Twice.”

  She knew why he had gone on his own, and why he had chosen not to wake her up. He didn't want to share the experience.

  For fuck sakes, Xavier. You're going to get yourself killed.

  She tore the note in half in her frustration. She had gone her whole life without having anyone to care about. It was always just her. The emotions that came with worrying about someone else were strange to her, and she didn't like it.

  It was more than just worry. Milly felt abandoned. Xavier had taken her under his wing yesterday, and they had fought alongside one another. Today, he did not even bother to wake her up. Her anger at that reality drowned out the worry for his safety that had been building.

  “You’d better return tonight, Xavier, so I can give you a piece of my mind,” she declared to the empty cubicle.

  She got to her feet, knees popping in protest, and reached for her black hoodie draped over her cubicle wall. It was ragged, blood stained, and still damp, the tear in her midriff steadily growing as the fabric unwound bit by bit. She felt like she was watching her comfort blanket disintegrate before her eyes and she could not bring herself to put it on again for fear it would disintegrate entirely.

  She picked it up and put it in her inventory. “I’ll see if I can get those blood stains out of you later,” she whispered, as if to an old friend on their last legs. “And someone around here must have a sewing kit.”

  Milly realized she was standing in her cubicle wearing only her bra. She saw two of her coworkers, Amir and Kenji from accounting who shared the cubicle across from her, staring. She quickly ducked behind the cubicle wall, blushing and embarrassed. Thankfully, they were the only two she saw. The rest of the floor was empty.

  Where had everyone gone?

  “Keep your eyes to yourself, guys,” Milly scolded, surprised at her sudden willingness to speak up.

  Muffled apologies came from across the aisle, followed by animated whispers. Milly rolled her eyes.

  She opened her inventory and pulled out the moon and stars dress she had taken from the orb last night. Rain had insisted on it.

  “I keep spare clothing in the shop. But you need something else to wear besides that hoodie. It’s about to fall apart,” Rain had insisted, leaving no room for Milly to argue.

  She unfolded the dress gently with a sigh. She had never worn a dress. Dresses were expensive, and you wore them to fancy parties or on dates. Milly did not go to parties. She did not date. She went to work, road the bus, and slept in her apartment, and that was it.

  "I guess I don’t really have a choice,” Milly conceded to herself. “Unless I want to walk around in my underwear all day.”

  She focused on the dress. “Let’s see if you do anything other than look fancy,” she whispered, watching as a tiny screen above the dress appeared.

  Milly gawked at the screen. Xavier had mentioned that items to boost a player’s power were common in games like this. The ring on her finger proved that was true, yet this was one a whole different level.

  Yet the gown was not meant to be part of this Contest, and Milly suspected the same was true about the memory orb from last night.

  There's something going on behind the surface of this Contest.I can either play by its rules, or play in its cracks.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  “Resize the gown,” Milly answered, deciding to take the risk.

  As the gown stretched and grew, Milly stripped off her filthy jeans, stashing them in her inventory for later. She peeked around the corner of the cubicle to make sure that Amir and Kenji were not watching her – they were still whispering like schoolboys – and a few seconds later the gown was ready. She picked it up, frowned, and slipped it on.

  It was a perfect fit. Absolutely perfect, as if it had been made for her. It was smooth as silk, falling halfway between her knees and ankles so it did not bundle around her feet. There were slits on each of the sides along the legs, giving her freedom of movement without a single bit of constraint. The moon and star pattern shimmered as the dress flowed around her. It rose up to her shoulders, the gown dipped low enough to draw eyes without making her feel uncomfortable. Air flowed through the openings in the gown, providing a cooling sensation that would have been beneficial in yesterday’s heat. Milly relished the feeling and wondered if she had been missing out on the joy of dresses all her life.

  “Now if only it wasn’t white,” she mumbled. "White isn't really my color."

  The dress started to shift, and its white fabric transformed into black from hem to shoulder, until it looked like she was wearing the night sky.

  Milly’s mouth hung open. She stared down and smiled despite herself. She twirled in a circle, the dress flowing outward, and she laughed. She caught herself, blushed, and ducked back down behind the cubicle wall.

  Milly looked down, smiled, and whispered “Yes.”

  Milly suddenly felt the power flowing from the gown into her. The pool of magic she could sense within her grew larger and more powerful. She felt light on her feet as her agility increased.

  Milly looked at her office chair and, on a whim, leapt onto it. The chair rolled from the sudden momentum, but Milly stayed on easily as it skidded across the cubicle, even standing on one leg before jumping back down with a fancy twist. It gave her such a rush. She felt like a gymnast.

  She looked over and saw Amir and Kenji staring again, this time with mouths hanging open.

  “What did I tell you about staring?” she scolded. They ducked back down with quickly mumbled apologies.

  “Okay, just one more thing,” she said, pulling out the rounded glasses from her inventory. “Let’s see what you are.”

  “Another one with an error,” Milly whispered.

  There was no option to resize the glasses, so she simply put them on. They were large, too large for her face, but they held firmly on her nose. The world seemed sharp and crisp when she put them on, and Milly realized she might have been near-sighted for her whole life and never known. She hadn't been to an optometrist before.

  She waited for something else to happen but nothing did.

  Perhaps they only worked when I'm around something hidden or when there was an enemy nearby?

  “Okay, Milly,” she instructed herself. “Be brave. Day two of the Contest. You have a lot of work to do.”

  She left her cubicle, strolling past Amir and Kenji with as much attitude as she could muster, and headed for the elevator.

  As she waited for it to arrive, the gears creaking as it climbed, Milly looked at herself in the distorted metal of the elevator door. She looked… well, Milly would not say good. Her hair was still tangled and greasy, her face too fat, the rolls of her stomach still blocking the view of her feet. But the gown accentuated what it should and seemed to hide what she did not like, and the glasses framed her face in a way to give structure to her large face and highlight her hazel eyes.

  In short, Milly thought she looked acceptable. That was better than she had felt in years.

  “It’s just the clothes,” whispered Milly. “Remarkable clothes hiding an ugly girl beneath.”

  Her mind turned briefly to her depression medication, still sitting in a bottle back in her apartment, and wished she had brought them to work. The elevator arrived, and she dismissed the thought from her mind.

  When the elevator opened to the lobby, Milly was startled to see hundreds of people packed shoulder to shoulder, crammed inside the inner courtyard and spilling out beyond, everyone straining to get a better view of what was happening within. The crowd was loud, protests and demands shouted into the courtyard, interspersed with the rare helpful suggestion. Volunteers circulated the crowd with clipboards, collecting information about each of the residents of the tower and trying to sort them into groups based on skills.

  Milly was stuck at the back of the crowd, and jumped up trying to see what was going on. Her new strength and agility gave her a brief but decent view of four individuals seated high up on a makeshift platform in the centre of the inner courtyard, fielding questions and demands from the crowd.

  Milly recognized the CEO of Acicentre, Jacob Stone, seated amongst them. He was younger than the others, with thick black hair with a touch of grey, though Milly suspected it was dyed to give him a more distinguished look. He had a chiseled jaw and broad shoulders and stood a head above the others at the table and above most of the people in the crowd, giving him an imposing look. He smiled, exuding a practiced charm that made Milly feel uncomfortable.

  Beside him sat an elderly blond woman with droopy skin in a business suit, who Milly recognized from the late-night commercials as Judy Brass, the top lawyer from the Legal Eagles law firm upstairs. Her eyes pierced the crowd with a contemptuous glare. If Jacob Stone exuded charisma, this woman was a charisma black hole.

  Milly did not recognize the other two on the platform, but she could hazard a guess. There was a middle-aged woman who leaned over and spoke to a crowd of bureaucrats. Milly assumed she was the most senior manager down on the public service floors. Next to her was a strange old man in a fluorescent green jacket and pink high-top sneakers, who looked like he had sprung from a 1990s commercial and then continue to age.

  “That would be the EnergyWave CEO,” Milly guessed. "I've heard he's weird."

  Jacob Stone slammed his palm down on the folding table multiple times, until the crowd quieted down.

  “If you have not met with one of the volunteers, make sure you do so. We need to know what we are working with here,” Stone shouted insistently.

  “And who put you in charge, Stone?” whispered Milly, louder than she intended.

  The man in front of Milly - one of Acicentre's middle managers - glanced back at her. He whispered something to his neighbour, who began to weave his way through the crowd towards Stone.

  Oh, this is not going to be good.