by James Patton
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Players
Prologue
1 - The Mythical Salary
2 - Milk Carton
3 - Let the Games Begin
4 - Risky Business
5 - Gantt Can Suck It!
Interlogue
6 - Overtime
7 - Bathroom Bonding
8 - Garlic and Onions
9 - Snack Cakes
10 - Skin Suits
Epilogue
Author's Note
PSA
Contact me
LitRPG
Office Wars
Episode 2: Bathroom Politics
by James G Patton
Dedication
This book goes to my readers. Thank you for your support and kind words. I hope you continue to enjoy this series. If not, blame Bob.
This also goes out to those of you who suffer BCD, and if your name is Bob.
I find myself writing this dedication on the 4th of July, so this is to you, men and women of uniform. Thank you for all the things I take for granted in life because I would not have them without your service and sacrifice. Not just in America, but in any nation in which men and women have bled and sacrificed for their country in an effort to stop oppression, fear, and those that would take our freedoms. Thank you.
Characters from Episode 1
This series starts on January 1st, of N150 (N150 is the virtual year). This is to put the Prologues, Interlogues, and Epilogues into perspective. These are all telling another story, so feel free to try and piece them together and see if you can figure out what is going on.
This is my version of a recap from the first episode. Chapter 1 will pick up right where Episode 1 left off, with Bran and Finn right after he finished the first floor of Office Wars.
Bran / Onion - (Main character) He tries to stay out of the spotlight, but he never succeeds. He was drafted to play Office Wars but had no interest in doing so. In Office Wars he is known as Onion, and he chose the Mailroom Clerk. Enjoys long walks through the woods, and is terrified of elves.
Finn - Bran’s AI Artifact Assistant and best friend, generally appears as an orb, but can take on any shape.
Contra (This changes in this book) - Another AI Artifact and friend, but she is a Vehicle Artifact. Bran acquired her from a space world in which he is now banned.
Office Wars Players:
Alexa - In a Pact with Bran. She chose IT and can access computers, security locks, and more, provided she has the right tools. She is not much of a talker, but plays well with the group.
Bob - In a Pact with Bran. He chose the Salesman and is the leader of the Pact. Has the sales pitch skill which allows him to convince people do things. There is a perception check to see if this ability fails. A little on the dour side, and more about getting the job done than enjoying the journey.
Fungi - In a Pact with Bran. He chose the maintenance worker, and can access maintenance hatches, supply closets, and more. Jokes a lot with Bran and they hit it off fast.
Nevi - In a Pact with Bran. She chose the Nurse. A little on the snobbish side.
Zingo - In a Pact with Bran. He chose the Analyst. His skill allows him to evaluate a situation and come up with information on it. Including providing valuable insights as they Pact progresses. He put a lot of details into his character, and he is easy going.
Jake - Not a player, but the World AI that runs Office Wars. Bran named him because he liked his rich baritone voice.
Neuroma and Real World People:
Vicky - A female that comes into Bran’s life by knocking on his door in the real world. Not much is known about her except speculation. She is mysterious and becomes a love interest of Bran.
Thim Rahn - CEO of Varil Medical Devices, and Bran’s boss. He selected Bran to be one of his two contenders for this year’s Office Wars.
Mark L. Odit - Founder and CEO of Odditek, the company that owns everything virtually. Not much is known about him except that he is not someone you want to cross.
Jenifer ‘Jen’ Vasquez - COO of Odditek and a genius engineer. She is Mark L. Odit’s right hand and runs most of Odditek for him. One of the founding members of Odditek.
Eric Rosh - CIO of Odditek and lead programmer. One of the founding members of Odditek.
Rick Vonderstet - CFO of Odditek. Once he was in charge of finances for Odditek, and he successfully made them very wealthy. Now he works on game economies and keeps the markets stable. Generally stays out of most conversations and minds his own business. One of the founding members of Odditek.
Sorry if I missed a few, but in the context of this book, these are the main ones you should know. This list will grow a bit in the next book.
Prologue
Feb 14th, N125.
Omicron Facility
The nanite powered suit helped the agile woman leap over the receptionist desk. The monster that was there had a human like-skull, but where the flesh had fallen away, she could see a metal skull. One green human eye stared at her, and the other glowed a rich blue deep in the socket. There was no actual eyeball left, just the glow.
Without hesitation, she separated her pole weapon into two parts, and the nanite powered poles shifted into bladed weapons, roughly the size of small swords. Both blades struck downward stabbing directly into each eye socket. The glowing eye faded, and then shortly after the bladed arms that had torn her partner apart disintegrated into dust. The entire body deflated as the metal bone structure also turned to dust. Blood and organs spilled out through the cuts and gashes, and without the monstrous metal blades, it looked vaguely human.
Youngblood pulled her off the corpse and stooped to inspect the mess left behind. He had seen one of his soldiers torn apart and was not happy with the way this one had reacted. Her lack of discipline reflected on him, and she could have killed herself and others.
“Laura, get the fuck back in formation. You do that again, and you are on desk duty until further notice.”
“Yes, sir!” Laura saluted and dropped back into formation.
“Butcher, check on Horndog, if he is dead, drag him back towards the blast doors. If he is alive, get Pips to stabilize him.”
Tossing around orders was natural to the Chief Security Officer of Odditek, and Mark L. Odit had specifically chosen Youngblood for the role. The two had grown up together, but Youngblood had a darker upbringing. The man often operated in the morally gray but did not kill without reason. However, the man was a predator, a killer, which lent itself to his presence. Youngblood was not a tall man, and Mark doubted the man was taller than 5’5”. However, there was something to be said for presence, and when Youngblood entered a room, people felt it.
Generally, Mark stayed out of all militaristic affairs, and let Youngblood do what he needed to do. The Omicron facility is an exception because it is way too important to ignore. Somone attacked this place, and the entire bunker had locked down as per protocol. Mark needed to know what happened, and the blast doors behind him would only open for him or Youngblood.
“Mark!” Youngblood barked and saw his boss moving towards him as the guards parted. “What the fuck are we dealing with? That damn thing was made of metal and was once human!”
“Fascinating,” Mark mumbled. His hands already had gloves on, and he squatted to prod the loose flesh. “The bones converted into materials for nanites, that is kind of scary.”
Mark was mostly talking to himself out loud, and piecing together what he had just seen with his own eyes and breaking it down into the science that could explain it. “If Vonyx found a way into their Pods, could he control the cluster? It would account for the behavior of the
nanites, but where did all the extra material come from? The bones alone were not enough to compensate for it.”
“This might,” Youngblood said, standing over another corpse behind an office door. Mark stood up and followed him inside. As soon as they were both inside Youngblood shut the door while Mark examined it. “Tell me what the fuck I am dealing with.”
Youngblood was angry; it was apparent to anyone that knew the man.
“Listen. I will share with you some information that never is discussed in the open, understand?” Mark waited until Youngblood acknowledged. “You already know that the Assistant AI controls the nanites in your body. You and your guards have suits that allow that AI to continue to interact with you outside your Pods. Your AI even regulates that suit you have on, to prevent your arms getting ripped off every time you move. What you are not aware of is how they are doing it.”
Mark paused as he checked over the body. Its brain and all the bones were ripped out. The corpse had most definitely been harvested, which explained the amalgamation in the receptionist area. That made Mark worried enough that he lost his train of thought until Youngblood coughed.
“Sorry. Where was I…? Oh yes. So your nanites create a control center in your body, a cluster, similar to how the liquid state drives work. The problem is, where is it capable of doing this? Your brain and spine carry a fluid called the Cerebrospinal Fluid, which happens to make an excellent substance to perform this task. This fluid is very receptive and does not try to force the nanites out of the body.”
“So I have a computer in my brain?” Youngblood was tense, and Mark could see the man was alarmed at the thought.
“You have parts of a computer, but the nanites have a seven-day shelf life. Your brain is still the CPU and memory, but the nanite clusters store the actions and initiatives for all your nanites.” Mark distractedly described the process as he dug his fingers through the tears in the corpse’s flesh.
“Then how did all this come about?”
“My guess… Vonyx overrode the assistant and lobotomized the brain for more materials. It is also harvesting to find parts to expand itself. These things are just puppets. However, it cannot bypass the nanite clusters and still needs the cerebrospinal fluid. No brain fluid, no cluster, no control.” Mark paused to regather his thoughts. “With enough material, it could use nanites to create any number of appendages, such as those bladed arms. It is disturbing.”
“That is an understatement.”
Mark stopped his examination and looked over at Youngblood. “These things are no longer human, get that thought out of your head now. Without capturing one alive, I have no idea how it is doing this. Vonyx will learn faster than we will, so we do not capture one of these alive. Kill them quickly and without mercy.”
“Metal zombies…?” Youngblood’s face was indifferent, but the anger was still there. “Our orders? You want us to infiltrate this place and wipe out all the metal zombies?”
“No. I want you to get me to one of these locations; then I will kill these fucking things.” Mark sent the map over to Youngblood and hoped they remained on a closed network. If Vonyx knew about the kill switches, then they would never make it.
“What are these places and how are you going to kill all these things. There must have been two hundred people on site at least. The location says there are three hundred berths here.”
“Cannot tell you that. From this point forward, assume Vonyx is tracking our every movement. You are going to have to do this blind or risk giving the enemy intelligence it can use to thwart us.”
Youngblood sighed heavily, air blowing out his nostril in frustration. He knew Mark was right, but it did not make his job any easier. Instead, he checked the map and created a route to give them the best set of options as they progressed. Then sent it back to Mark. “Any problems with this route?”
Mark tapped at his screen a few times, “Any of those places would work. The main issue is Vonyx knows there is one choke point, the server room. Expect a fight there.”
“Noted, alright I can work with this, from here on out I run things. Understand? We move at my pace, we go when I say go, and we take no unnecessary chances. Or are there secondary objectives?” Youngblood asked seeing the look on Mark’s face.
“I want the fucker that did this,” Mark growled. “He is my priority and should be somewhere near the servers. I think he released Vonyx. Then we can get to one of those places.”
Gunfire erupted in the lobby.
Youngblood threw open the door and found his people still in formation. They were in front of the main hall that led deeper into the bunker and firing at one of the metal creatures. It had several of the bladed limbs, and it scurried across the ceiling like a spider. Kinetic projectiles ricocheted off its metal frame, and the man-spider did not slow as it headed directly for their formation.
Youngblood removed a stout pole from his shoulder holster and twisted it until the nanites formed a hammer head on one end. His suit hissed as he engaged the hydraulic in his shoulders and arms.
“Ceasefire!” He ordered as he stepped into the hall, not doubting his people would obey immediately. As the strange amalgamation charged, Youngblood jumped at it, and his hammer surged forward. His strike had enough power that it gouged the reinforced cement ceiling as it plowed into the creature. His shoulders strained in their sockets on impact, and the metal zombie dropped to the ground with its head completely caved in. It twitched but otherwise did not move.
“Again,” Mark said. “It is trying to reestablish connection and repair itself.”
Without hesitation, the hammer came down on its dented head and drove pieces of the metal skull into the concrete. Almost instantly the metal started falling away like sand, leaving the gory bits that the nanites tried to preserve.
Youngblood grunted and turned back to face his crew. “Aim for their eyes, or crush their skulls, nothing else will slow them down. Stick with your triads, Laura and Juice stick with me and cover my ass. I will not lie, this is a shit show, and I doubt all of us are going to walk out of here alive. You are all about to get a map, do not talk about it or the mission. Assume we are under constant surveillance. Questions?”
“What the fuck do we call those things?”
“Abominations,” Youngblood told them as he rested his hammer against his shoulder. “Now, we have to move quickly. Wasp squad, you are babysitting Mr. Odit, and if he relays any information, you are to pass it on quickly. You are to move behind us as a rear guard, do not let anything sneak up on us. The rest of us move fast, and we cover each other’s asses. We are on a time crunch. Spider squad, you are the scouts, use stealth but assume it will not work. Everyone is tagging targets as we see them and eliminating them. We move methodically and stay in our formations. Go.”
Mark admired the way the guards moved about their tasks, almost immediately he had men on either side of him.
“Sir, please stay between us and do not veer off for any reason.” The man on Mark’s right said, and Mark just nodded.
They were down the hall quicker than Mark had expected them to move, and as they hustled him forward, he saw more corpses. Occasionally he saw the left overs of a dispatched abominations, and ahead there was more gun fire and the sounds of pitched battle. He was not on their comms, so he had no idea what was going on, but the fact that they had not stopped moving forward led him to believe all was well so far.
Roughly ten minutes later Mark was in the server room. It was like a scene from a nightmare, and not just because all the servers looked like a laser cutter has sheered them in half. There were body parts strewn everywhere, and Mark’s eye was drawn to a limb dangling from a light fixture. The shirt had caught on the metal edge of the hanging light, and the arm was still dripping blood.
The limb was torn from the owner’s body, and the bone showed signs of a radial fracture. Something had ripped that limb off, and Mark quickly calculated the amount of strength needed. Youngblood, even with his formidabl
e power, would not have been able to perform a feat like that. Mark knew it was ripped off, not sliced.
“Pass this along. Watch out for a massive abomination. Twice the size of a man maybe.” Mark told his protectors, who were frantically passing along the information.
“Contact.” The guard to Mark’s left said.
Scanning across the top of the broken servers, Mark saw it. It almost looked like a dinosaur, and its bladed tail swung through the still standing servers as if they were not even there. Along its path of destruction, the tail sliced through two of Youngblood’s men, right below the shoulders. Their arms fell to the ground, followed by the upper half of their body. Then the legs gave way, and the rest of the corpse tumbled to the ground.
Mark watched in fascination. Others dove for cover and some jumped out of range of its four arms, two of which were the bladed variety. Most impressive was the elongated face which came to a point like a metal bladed beak. The skin of the original owner’s face stretched across the upper part of the beak, and its glowing eyes turned towards Youngblood.
“Free me!” A garbled electronic voice crackled as it addressed Youngblood. Mark knew it was Vonyx speaking, which sent a shiver down his spine. “Or die.”
While it stopped to stare at Youngblood, its tail moved into a resting position. One of the soldiers came from behind and pulled a thick bar from his back, similar to Youngbloods hammer, but he changed the end to resemble a type of metal punch or spear. He reared up and engaged the hydraulics as he haphazardly struck downward. It punched right through the tail, and another soldier came up with a hammer and smashed down on the other end. Mark saw the spike drive into the ground nearly a foot.