“It is the Control Panel,” Echo said without elaborating.
Nate crossed the room and stopped before the table. I walked to the Control Panel as well.
“It kinda looks familiar,” he said, eyeing the four windows with the descriptions of the game classes hovering above the surface.
Before I could reply, Nate blinked hard and then put his right hand to his forehead.
“Gosh,” he muttered.
“Are you alright?” I asked, taking a step to him.
“I’m okay,” Nate replied. “My memories rushed back. I’ve just remembered everything.”
He went silent for a moment as if thinking about something. He then turned his head to look at me and said, “I remember everything. My name is really Nate. I’m from the UK. And I live in 2020.”
“Me too,” I said. “But I’m from the US.”
Nate nodded. “Did you get to this place after playing a VR video game called The Weaponized too?”
“I didn’t actually get to play it,” I said. “I put on my headset, pressed START GAME, and everything turned dark. When I came around, I found myself in this place.”
“The same happened to me,” Nate said. “I put on my Macro Envision headset and saw a button saying START GAME hovering in the air before my eyes. As soon as I tapped the button, I passed out. When I opened my eyes, I found myself lying in that pod.”
“Yeah, it’s weird,” I said.
“So we are in a video game?” Nate asked as he held his hands to his head as if trying to feel his headset and put it off.
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” I said. “I don’t think we are actually inside a video game, but who knows?”
For the next ten or fifteen minutes, I recapped what I had learned from Echo. When I finished, Nate asked him a few questions of his own, yet we failed to learn anything new from him.
“How can this be possible?” Nate said. “How did we get in this video game?”
“I know no more than you,” I said. “And unfortunately, Echo doesn’t know either.”
“As I said, the hard drivers on the WSS were damaged during the riots,” Echo said. “Which is why I cannot get information on how you got here, warriors. I am sorry about that.”
“I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it,” Nate said. “We put on our headrests, started the game, and then were somehow transferred to this place. It sounds like a story from a Sci-Fi book.”
“I thought the same thing,” I said.
“I guess we have no choice but to play the game,” Nate said. “Or whatever it is.”
“Yeah,” I nodded as I glanced at the holographic screen. The message was now saying that the other two warriors would be found within ten minutes.
I wondered how the Control Panel was searching for players, warriors, or whatever we were. Was it just waiting until someone put a Macro Envision headset before teleporting them to this place, either a super realistic video game or the far distant future?
I kind of felt bad about it. I did not want more people to be stuck in this place. Not that I really had any choice in the matter. The Control Panel was searching for two more people, and there seemingly was no way to deactivate the machine.
“So these are playable classes,” Nate said, bringing me back from my reverie.
“Yeah,” I said. “But you can’t pick a class yet.”
“Why can’t I?”
“We have to wait for two more people to join first.”
“Figures,” Nate said. “This is a team-based game, after all.”
“To be honest, I don’t really think it’s a video game,” I said. “I think it’s real life. I think the moment we started the game, we were somehow teleported to the distant future.”
“Well, it’s hard to tell which one is the case,” Nate said. “If it’s not a video game but real life, then whoever put us in here clearly wants us to work in a team. But anyway, I think I agree with you, mate. Everything’s around us is way too realistic to be a video game.”
“Yeah,” I said. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Or us being part of the game, we just see things the way we saw them in real life,” Nate said, and before I could say anything, he added, “Anyway, all we can hope for at the moment is that we will find out the truth, sooner or later.”
He then took a step closer to the Control Panel, examining the information about the classes. After a minute, he said, “Which class would you like to play as?”
“Damage,” I said. “What about you?”
“Front Line,” Nate replied. “Or Support. But I’d prefer to play as Front Line because I always play as a tank in role-playing games. So if nobody wants to choose this class, then I’ll pick Front Line.”
“Okay.”
“Too bad we can’t check out the classes’ skills yet,” Nate added.
“We need to choose classes first,” I replied.
“Yeah.”
A ringing sound reached our ears.
“What was that?” Nate asked.
“Another player’s just arrived,” I said and turned toward the wall along which two still closed teleportation chambers lay.
The lid of the one that was in a corner next to the window gradually became transparent.
We walked to the teleportation chamber and looked down. As expected, there was a person lying inside the pod. It was a blond-haired guy in his mid-twenties. He was wearing a blue shirt under a jacket and a pair of blue jeans.
The blond guy looked pissed off. He was thrashing around in his teleportation chamber, kicking his legs and banging his fists against the insides of the pod. When he saw us towering above his teleportation chamber, he glared up at us and yelled in heavily accented English, “What the fuck? Let me out, motherfuckers!”
Nate looked at me and raised an eyebrow. He then shifted his gaze to the blond guy and said in a soothing voice, “Don’t worry, mate. Don’t be afraid of us.”
“Do I fucking look scared to you?” the guy yelled. “I’m not fucking afraid of you, assholes!”
“Hey, you need to calm down,” Nate said. “We’re not your enemies.”
“We’ll see about that,” he growled in reply and then smacked his fist against the inside of the lid, trying to shatter it. It did not open, nor did it break or even crack.
“Let me out,” the blond guy snarled. “What did you lock me in here for? What do you want from me?”
“We didn’t put you in there, mate,” Nate said.
“Oh, really?” The guy said sarcastically. “How come I’m locked inside this thing, whatever it is, while you two are standing outside?”
“It’s actually pretty easy to get out,” Nate said. “All you need to do is press a couple of buttons on your right.”
It took the blond guy a few seconds to find the button Nate had just told him about and figure out how to open the lid. When it finally parted and slid into the pod, the blond guy sat up and glared up at us.
“Back the fuck up,” he snarled. “Step back from me, sonofabitches.”
We took a few steps back to give the nervous guy a bit of space. He climbed out of his teleportation chamber and quickly looked around, studying the room he found himself in while always keeping us in his field of vision.
He clearly could not remember anything. I wondered if his aggression was because of his memory loss. I hoped it was not his usual temperament. It would be really hard, if not impossible, for us to get along with him and work as a team if the guy was always so mean and unfriendly.
I was afraid that my suspicion about his disposition would turn out to be correct. Half an hour before, when I had woken up in this place and had no memories, I had acted very calmly, the way I always did. While I had suffered a temporary memory loss, my temperament as well as the manner of my thinking and behaving had been genuine. It was safe to assume that it was the same with this guy.
While he was looking around, I studied him. T
he guy was pretty short and had the hard-edged Slavic look. He was probably Russian. Or Ukrainian.
“What the hell is this place?” He asked, returning his gaze to us.
“This is a space station,” Nate said.
“What am I doing here?” The guy demanded. “How did I get here? What is going on?”
“I take it you can’t remember anything,” Nate said.
“How do you know?” The guy asked suspiciously.
“Because the same thing happened to us,” Nate explained patiently.
“You woke up in this place like me too?” He asked, squinting at us.
“Yes,” Nate nodded and threw his thumb over his shoulder to point at the two teleportation chambers on the other side of the room. “Just like you, we woke up in this place, having no memories whatsoever. Then we remembered everything. So you should have your memories back very soon too. Am I right, Echo?”
“You’re absolutely right,” the AI replied immediately. “He should get his memories back in about a minute.”
“Who the hell is talking?” The blond guy said, looking around for the source of the voice.
“It’s Echo,” Nate replied. “The AI of this space station.”
“Okay,” the blond guy said. “Good to know. So who are you, guys?”
“I’m David,” I said.
“I’m Nate,” Nate said as he stuck out his hand and took a step toward the blond guy.
The nervous guy immediately jumped back and yelled, “Don’t come any closer, or else!”
He balled his hands into fists and brought them up as if getting ready to fight.
Nate stopped and shook his head. “You still don’t trust us, huh?”
“I don’t know nothing about you two,” came the reply. “So why should I trust you?”
“What is your name?” I asked.
The blond guy was silent for a moment as if considering if telling us his name was worth it. Then he finally said, “That thing gave me some info about a guy named Vlad.”
“Guess you’re Vlad then,” I said.
“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock,” the blond guy said. “Unless that pod, or whatever it is, was just messing with me.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“So what are we doing—” Vlad began but did not finish.
He blinked, then shook his head once. He looked around once again, this time more meaningfully, paying attention to all the details.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he muttered as he slowly walked around the room, turning his head left and right, examining his surroundings.
“What’s wrong?” Nate asked.
“Have you just gotten your memories back?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Vlad replied. “I remembered how I got in here. I can’t fucking believe it.
He continued to walk around the room. As he approached the rear wall, he touched it with his fingers.
“So this is what this video game looks like,” he said. “It’s fucking amazing. I knew that The Weaponized had breathtaking graphics, I didn’t expect it to look this good.”
I just watched the guy for a few seconds. He did not seem to be joking. He seemed to be actually believing that it was just a video game.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “The only problem is that you can’t quit this so-called game.”
Vlad stopped and turned to face me.
“What the hell are you talking about?” He asked suspiciously.
“We seem to be trapped here,” Nate said. “We can’t get back to where we came from.”
Vlad just eyed him for a moment, then held his hands to his head.
“What the hell?” He muttered. “Where’s my headset? How the hell do I quit the game if I can’t feel my headset? Where is it?”
“Are you for real?” I asked. “Do you really still think it’s a video game?”
“Duh,” he said as he rolled his eyes. “Of course it is. What else can it be?”
I swept my arm around the Control Room and asked, “Does all of this really look like a video game to you? ”
Vlad glanced around and said, “I don’t think I get what you mean.”
“Have you ever played a video game that looked so realistic?” I asked.
Vlad made a face. He was clearly getting annoyed.
“I bought a Macro Envision headset,” he said. “Then I downloaded a VR video game called The Weaponized. I then launched the game on my PC and put on my headset. What do you think happened next? I saw a START GAME button before my eyes. And what do you think I did? I pressed the freaking button, and voilà, I found myself here. So where the hell do you think we are if not inside the video game? The only thing that I don’t understand is why I can’t take off my headset.”
“If we are inside the video game,” Nate said, “then our minds seem to have somehow detached themselves from our bodies and gotten trapped in here.”
I opened my mouth to say something but then decided against keeping arguing. I had a gut feeling that it was real life, not a video game. Yet I could not prove it. I might have been wrong while Vlad and Nate might have been right. So far, all we had seen was this room. Until we saw more of this world and met other people who had nothing to do with The Weaponized, it was hard to tell anything definite about all of this.
“Now that you have your memories back, can you tell us more about yourself?” Nate asked, eyeing Vlad.
The guy shot him a suspicious look. “Why?”
“Why not?” Nate said. “After all, we’re going to have to learn to work as a team, so I think it’s a good idea to get to know one another a bit better.”
Vlad just watched him for a moment as if considering if he should tell us about himself. Then he shrugged and said, “Well, my name is Vlad, as you already know. I’m Russian. What else would you like to know about me?”
“So you’re Russian?” Nate said. “You speak English pretty well.”
Vlad shrugged again and said, “My father dragged my mom and me to America when I was sixteen. Not that I wanted to leave all my friends behind and move to your country, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass about my desires, of course. Since then, I’ve been living in your country. Now that I no longer live with my parents, I can do whatever I want to. At some point, the thought of getting back to Russia crossed my mind, but in the end, I decided against it.”
“Why?” Nate asked.
“Well, I dunno,” Vlad said as he shrugged his shoulders. “Guess I just got used to living in your country.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘your country’, by the way?” Nate asked.
Vlad raised an eyebrow and said, “Because you’re Americans, aren’t you?”
Nate nodded at me and said, “David is American. I’m British.”
Vlad raised an eyebrow. “Ain’t it the same thing?”
We just watched him for a second, trying to figure out if he was joking or not. He seemed to be dead serious.
“No,” Nate said. “It isn’t the same thing. David lives in the US. I live in the UK.”
“The UK?” Vlad asked. “Where is it?”
Again, we went silent for a second. I waited for him to crack a smile and say that he was just messing with us. He never did, though.
“The United Kingdom is in Europe,” Nate said. “I hope you know where Europe is.”
“Of course, I know where it is,” Vlad stated. “You think I’m dumb?”
“It’s just hard to believe that you have never heard of my country,” Nate said.
“Of course, I heard of your country,” Vlad said. “The United Kingdom, or whatever.”
Yet I had a feeling that Vlad was not leveling with us.
Before Nate or I could say anything, the blond-haired Russian said, “Anyway, let’s stop talking about real life, shall we? It’s way too boring. Let’s play the game instead. After all, that’s why we’re here.”
Vlad walked to the Control
Panel and looked at the holographic screen hovering above the round surface.
“What do we have here,” he said, examining the information. “So we’ve got four playable classes to choose from.”
He then went silent for a moment as he read the descriptions. Nate crossed the room to the Control Panel. I did too.
Vlad turned his head to look at Nate and asked, “How do I choose a class?”
“We can’t do it right now,” Nate said.
“Why not?”
“We have to wait until the fourth player gets here,” Nate answered.
“That’s a shame,” Vlad said.
“By the way, now that you have your memories back, don’t you want to know more about what is happening here?” Nate asked.
Vlad frowned. “What do you mean? We’re trapped in this video game. What else there is to know?”
“Well, there’s much more to it than that,” Nate said. “For instance, we’re working for a private military organization called The Weaponized. Strangely enough, this organization has the same name as the VR video game created by the Chinese developers who created the Macro Envision headset. We’re currently on one of the secondary space stations owned by this organization. There’s the main space station somewhere, which is the residence of the leaders of the organization. As to us, we are called warriors, and our job is to fight bandits and—”
“You know, I don’t really care about any of that,” Vlad interrupted him. “It’s an action-oriented video game, so of course, we’re going to fight some bad guys. The rest doesn’t matter to me. I just can’t wait to begin playing.”
Nate went silent and just watched him for a moment. Both Nate and I wanted to know more about The Weaponized, the world we had found ourselves in, and how we had gotten here. Unfortunately, Echo could not provide us with many answers. Every time we had asked him a question that had anything to do the latter, Echo had been giving us an error.
As to Vlad, he did not really seem to care about any of this one bit.
“Okay,” Nate finally said as he shrugged his shoulders. “Suit yourself.
Vlad shifted his gaze back to the holographic screen.
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 4