by Ben Ormstad
“Just checkin’,” I said, zigzagged around the bloody mess she’d created and closed in on three child-sized ones. They’d all broken out from the same capsule and half crawled, half limped toward us. In the curling red lights from the alarms in the ceiling, the web of visible veins on their heads and arms seemed to pulsate. Thick, black hairs grew intermittently around their contorted, pink-skinned bodies.
“Braaawh,” the closest one growled. Its bulging, circular eyes – I realized – faintly resembled Ayamii’s. But these were not like him. He was actually a person, while these freaks couldn’t even move properly. Not that that was any kind of measurement of personhood or not. It dawned on me I had no idea whether or not their minds functioned like mine.
But what if they’re only a few notches away from being human? Maybe some of them can even form coherent–
I felt a nudge of compassionate hesitation tickle the back of my mind and instantly dropped the train of thought. This is not a time for hypothetical philosophical considerations!
I arrived at the closest one and kicked it – yes, it, goddammit! – in the stomach so it stumbled into the one behind. They slipped on the alcohol and fell to the floor, splashing in liquid. Meanwhile, the third sidestepped and came at me, mouth agape, veiny arms flailing.
The weight of the Ripper machete became the very force driving it forward as I swung it at my target. Steel met flesh. Dug into its shoulder area, almost separating its neck and head from the torso.
“Bleeehhh!” the mutant wailed, before doing something completely unexpected: The little fucker used his opposite hand to press the cut shoulder tightly against his body, effectively trapping my blade inside the wound.
“What the hell are ya doing?” I said, sounding panicky. I tried to yank the machete back out, but it was caught between bones and cartilages. Instead, the mutant itself was pulled closer. Smarter than I gave it credit for, it took advantage of the swift motion and attacked with teeth and claws.
-5 Armor
-1 HP
A sudden sense of panic when the morbid humanoid attacked. I tripped and fell backwards as the other two joined in – biting and clawing.
-7 Armor
-3 HP
Flapping my arms like a drowning person, I wanted to call out for Frida, but the voice got stuck in my throat. Waves of dizziness flooded me as their claws and teeth tore through my jacket and pants. Like velociraptors – they weren’t big, but many.
-6 Armor
-2 HP
I forced myself to remember the experience was purely virtual. Took a deep breath and held it. Brought my attention to the enemies’ positions.
One gnawed on my right leg. The other – the one with my machete still stuck in his shoulder – chewed away on the chest plate armor. And the last one had a mouthful of my left arm between its gross, humanlike jaws.
I gave up, pushed the machete through him instead, and let go. Centered myself around the immense potential power I knew lived inside this Battle-Marine character. Imagined I summoned even more power – drew it in like plentiful oxygen, gathering it in the space between my solar plexus and lungs.
Suddenly, I simultaneously knew my heart pumped blood through my veins; the sour smell of spoiled meat from the mutants on top of me; the wheezing breath of other freaks closing in; and even Frida’s strained grunts hidden somewhere in the background – all of it became crystal clear. A boost of unknown energy surged through me.
I exploded.
As if hugging myself, I wrapped both arms around my chest. Felt my biceps swell and harden as I crushed the two mutants on my upper body together. I squeezed. They squealed. Raising my upper body and legs, like performing sit-ups and leg-ups at the same time, I captured the bastard chewing on my right leg and included him in the squeeze.
“Diiiieee,” I roared and fed off of the energy upsurge. Using every bit of power, I mustered the strength to ball myself up into a tight knot, trapping them in the middle of this violent Hug of Death. Yet again I roared. Merciless, I squashed harder. Their screams were silenced by the cracking of their bones and backs breaking.
Less than a second passed before I stood, shaking, my vision a narrow tunnel of crisp detail. The mutants lay dead in the wetness at my feet. I crouched, fetched the machete and wiped it off on my ripped denims. Met Frida’s gaze from across the floor, where she’d stopped moving. Hands by her side, eyes wide, she gaped at me.
Energy and adrenaline still surging, I merely smirked at her and turned to face the next batch of growling humanoids. Raised the machete and ran at them.
Out of nowhere, the edges of my sight started cracking, as if the very seams of my visual field ruptured. The fissures grew and exposed the digital infrastructure of the virtual reality itself. More and more broke apart. I blinked frantically in an attempt to remove it, but the bluish bits – digitized ones and zeros – leaked into my sight and overshadowed everything. By the time I reached the mutants, my body evaporated into thin air.
Reality disintegrated.
Weightlessness.
Blackness.
Void.
.
..
…
A seeming eternity passed.
Floating in nothingness as a point of consciousness – just like I’d done when I started the game, right before the introduction video played.
Then Lily’s voice spoke in my mind, louder than thoughts: “Dex, I’m so, so sorry. Are–” The voice drowned in static. “Are you still–” Static devoured it once again.
Streaks of white light flashed like lightning across the black vastness. A tiny speck of orange popped up in front of me. It grew rapidly in size until it became everything.
Next, a sense of form and weight anchored me in the experience of a body. I laid on my back, staring up at a cloudless sky. The deeply burning sun colored it orange – a sun I’d only seen from outside the planet during the game’s intro video. Leaves rattled on nearby trees. Birds chirped in the distance. Not believing anything, not moving an inch, I dug my fingers into the ground. Blades of grass tickled my palms.
Almost scared my speaking would tear open another rift in the cosmos, I whispered: “What is this?”
Radio static-like noise sounded in my mind, followed by Lily’s disembodied voice: “Dex, can you hear me?”
I jolted in surprise and used my elbows to push myself up in a sitting position. Surrounded by large trees in deep greens and reds, bathed in the strange orange atmosphere. Even though I knew Lily wasn’t actually present, I glanced in all directions. But there was nothing to see other than peaceful nature.
“Don’t worry, Dex,” Lily’s soft voice said in my mind.
“Don’t worry?” I shouted as I realized all my clothes and weapons were gone. I was naked – not counting the lame loincloth-bullshit-boxer shorts wrapped around my groin. “Where am I? And where the fuck is all my stuff?” I quickly stood and pumped a fist in the air. “What have you done?!” My hoarse voice reverberated through the forest.
“Dex, please,” she continued. “I know you’re scared.”
“Scared?” I yelled. More birds fled from the nearby trees, casting shadows on the grass. “I’m angry, you… you bitch!” Not knowing where to look, I just kept turning around and around, pumping my fist in the air like an imbecile.
Still in a controlled manner, she said: “I understand you are frustrated, Dex. Now, please, calm down–”
“You lied when you promised you’d guide me through the first quest,” I interrupted her. Anger bloomed like a fireball in my chest. “And worse yet, you sent me straight into that hellish prison-lab-shithole not suitable for new players at all. What the fuck?”
“Dex, listen, it was an–”
“No, you listen! It’s been a hard frikkin’ experience, but I managed it, okay? I’ve been making allies, saving people and was in the middle of a mission right now – and now you decided to just randomly remove me from the situation? I repeat, what in the actual fuck, Li
ly?!” The outburst must have drained all my stamina or some shit, because a sudden lightheadedness forced me to lean on the nearest tree.
“Are you done?” she said, still controlled and calm, but a bit less understanding in her tone.
I didn’t reply. Just breathed heavily and fixed my eyes on the ground. I wanted to rip the entire tree out with its roots and throw it at whoever or whatever.
“As I am trying to explain,” she continued, “there was an accident. A bug in a recently added piece of code messed up the system. Basically, it disrupted the strict allocation of beginner-friendly locations to new players. The algorithm is programmed to never dish out dangerous locations to fresh players. The selection is limited to mildly difficult places with easily obtainable introductory quests and missions.” She took a breath and sighed. “You see, the bug resulted in the inclusion of every single possible location in the world as a potential starting point for newbies. Which, as you so eloquently pointed out, caused you and a bunch of other brand new players to spawn in less than optimal areas. Unfortunately.”
I wanted to scream and shout more, but couldn’t ignore the probable truth of her message. She was innocent. The aggression melted away, and I felt empty. I said: “Oh.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “And, Dex, rest assured – and it’s not an excuse – but a lot of players spawned in locations much worse than the prison-lab you found yourself in. Many have been caught in vicious cycles of spawning and immediately getting killed over and over and over, until our programmers managed to correct the code a few minutes ago.”
“You’re right,” I said in low volume, “that’s not an excuse. Also, I expect a partial refund.”
“I’ll… I will do what I can.”
I nodded. “Good. That being said, as a game designer, I’ve worked closely with programmers on multiple projects, and understand how sneaky bugs can be. Now, as a safety measure, I reckon you indiscriminately auto-spawned all noobs out of any dangerous location they found themselves in, which would explain why I’m in this cozy forest now.”
“Correct, you are.”
“But why didn’t you communicate with me when I was at my lowest, being beaten half to death?”
“Believe me, I wanted to, Dex.” I heard an audible click from her throat as she swallowed. “Do you remember I told you how the players need to jump through a bunch of hoops to talk directly to their merge-assistants while in-game?”
“Of course, but not during the introductory quest,” I said and was getting really anxious to get back to Frida. She was a tough nut, but the mutants were numerous, and there was no telling whether more would appear – or even guards or more drone-heads. I walked restlessly back and forth between two trees, kicking the trunks as I reached them.
“Again you are correct,” she said, then quickly added: “However, the communication lines are only freely open in designated newbie areas, which excludes the prison-lab. I’m truly sorry, but I couldn’t talk to you.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever.” Rubbing my eyes with thumb and index finger, I increased the force in my voice: “But, Lily, this was way too late – I need to go back. Right now.”
“You want to return? To the daemonorg prison-lab?”
“Yes, and I need all my clothes, weapons and items back.”
“You know that’s unnecessary, right? You still have your accumulated XP, the skills you’ve learned and anything else counted as real change in your character. And you’re not even poisoned anymore,” she said in a happy tone. “It’s like getting a fresh start – clean slate! But without losing any gained experience. It’s a great opportunity.”
I understood her viewpoint, but couldn’t stop the aggression from flushing my face with waves of heat. Through gritted teeth, I said, as calmly as possible: “It’s not about that. There are people back there depending on me. You pulled me out right after flesh-eating mutants ambushed us. I need to go back.”
“Then I won’t be able to help you,” she said, a tad disappointed. Even sad, perhaps.
“I made it this far,” I said, then added the last sentence in a hoarse wheeze of badly concealed contempt: “I’ll manage the rest alone as well. Now bring me back.”
Again she sighed. “As you wish, Dex. Good luck, then.”
The edges of my vision cracked. Bluish bits leaked in through the widening tears in reality, rapidly filling every pixel of visual information with a matrix-looking grid, before the vast blackness swallowed everything.
Once again, I experienced myself as a point of consciousness in the void.
Weightless.
.
..
…
An unknown amount of time passed.
Streaks of light shot across the emptiness, lumping together in a ball of flashing red and gray in front of me. It increased in size and became everything.
The distinct experience of having a body with weight came at the same time as the awareness of the flashing red LEDs in the ceiling. Humidity and warmth. A putrid smell of spoiled meat, sweat and alcohol mixed with throbbing pain from bleeding wounds across my body. Looking down at my hands, I saw my feet were still planted in the same spot as before Lily removed me. The three child-sized mutants still lay dead around me.
For a moment I thought no time had passed, but the idea dissolved when seeing deformed corpses cluttering the way ahead. All sliced and diced like chicken in a Thai kitchen, laying sprawled between the broken capsules.
She’s wiped out all of ‘em? I thought when movement further down caught my attention. Nope. Guess not…
The four largest glass tubes near the lab’s exit were now ripped apart. A mutant huge as Hulk Hogan had a Ripper machete sticking out of its back, and was crawling toward three others of equal size. They encircled a human a quarter their size – against the wall, trapped.
Frida.
She tried kicking their legs out from underneath them, but the sluggish movement had no impact. She was hurt. Badly.
The damned forest-timeout with Lily lasted too long. “Frida, I’m coming,” I yelled, raised the blade above my head and ran toward the cluster of deformed humanoids.
“Dex, help!” she replied as one of them clutched a thick bundle of hair. Then violently jerked her head down, locking her in a bent over position for the others to help themselves however they wanted.
“Fuck the fire hazard,” I grunted, sheathed the machete and equipped the Rap-Attack. “You won’t die today. Not on my watch.” Leaping over dead foes, I struggled to stabilize the automatic rifle enough to hit anything of value. At this point, I didn’t have the luxury of time. To avoid accidentally blasting Frida, I figured my safest bet was to shoot something other than the assholes ganging up on her, and then while firing, slowly direct the sight toward them. Hence, I aimed at the crawling mutant with the blade protruding from its back.
I squeezed the trigger – and kept it pressed.
The Rap-Attack came alive with a steady rumble of jolting kickbacks. The muzzle flashes reflected in hundreds of glass shards around me as the stream of bullets sped through the air and bit into the crawling bastard. I now felt the push of the bullets being spit out and could easily maneuver the sight closer and closer to the freaks attacking her.
Blood spurted from the legs of the one trapping her hair, moving upwards to his back, until he let go and toppled over, tumbling to the ground. The others barely noticed I was hunting them before they too became bullet-food.
I picked them off one after the other. Kept firing till I’d emptied the magazine and the smell of gunpowder oozed from the rifle barrel.
Frida pushed the mutants off. Knowing she was alive, I took the time to reload, while scanning the area for more abominations.
When I was sure the area didn’t host any more dangers, I quickly checked the withheld notifications:
*
Killed 3 Daemonorg Failed Mutants – Level 1
+30 XP
*
Killed 4 Daemonorg Fai
led Mutants – Level 2
+80 XP
*
Battle-Marine Ability unlocked!
SELF-INDUCED AGGRESSION (req. 1 MP per 2 seconds)
Current intensity: 2%
*
Self-Induced Aggression? I thought. Is that what happened when my awareness became super-crisp and I squished the three mutants in a death-hug? It was cool. Exceedingly handy skill to master. Kind of like going berserk in Doom. And the ability used one magic point every other second. So that’s one way Battle-Marines consume MP, then. Interesting.
I went to Frida and helped her up. “Close call, girl,” I said, brushing blood and dirt off her leather jacket.
“You vanished into thin air,” she said in a frail, exhausted voice and pierced me with her beautiful eyes. “What happened?”
“A glitch in the system, basically.”
“A glitch?”
“Yeah. Well, the glitch was what originally led a noob like me to spawn in a hellhole like this.” I pulled her machete out of the dead mutant and handed it to her. “Remember Darius said I never should’ve started here?”
“Maybe,” she said, shrugging. “But I do know new players are supposed to be eased in, so to speak.”
I swung her arm around my shoulder to support her as we moved to the exit. She moaned in pain but didn’t resist. “Exactly,” I said, “and since I hadn’t heard even one word from my merge-assistant, I suspected her – or her superiors – to be exposing me and potentially other noobs to difficult areas just for the fuck of it – or even as a form of strange scientific experiment.”
“But it was only a glitch?” she said as we crossed the red line separating the humid lab-section from the room with neatly made beds.
“A bug in some newly implemented code or whatever. So when they fixed it they re-spawned all the affected new players to friendly locations where they could start over. I even got to talk to my merge-assistant.”