The Path

Trapped in the game.

Vanitha is the world's greatest parahuman hacker, who can physically enter computer systems to control them from the inside. To relax, she's created a Hindu-themed multiplayer online role-playing-game called The Path. When a mystery presents itself, she goes to investigate the strange, new Malevolence.

It kills her.

She awakens inside the game as a new character, unable to use her parahuman powers to return to the real world. Nor can she access any of her administrative privileges. She can't even speak her own name. With no other options, she embarks upon a desperate quest to locate her body, a corpse run that may present her only chance to escape. All the while, the Malevolence is spreading like a cancer, rewriting and corrupting the game. It's a speedrun where failure will be lethal: get her body and her powers back before the Malevolence destroys the game and everything inside it-including her.

Ian Thomas Healy is a prolific writer who dabbles in many different speculative genres. He's a ten-time participant and winner of National Novel Writing Month where he's tackled such diverse subjects as sentient alien farts, competitive forklift racing, a religion-powered rabbit-themed superhero, cyberpunk mercenaries, cowboy elves, and an unlikely combination of vampires with minor league hockey. He is also the creator of the Writing Better Action Through Cinematic Techniques workshop, which helps writers to improve their action scenes.

Ian also created the longest-running superhero webcomic done in LEGO, The Adventures of the S-Team, which ran from 2006-2012.

When not writing, which is rare, he enjoys watching hockey, reading comic books (and serious books, too), and living in the great state of Colorado, which he shares with his wife, children, house-pets, and approximately five million other people.