Occultist

by Oliver Mayes

  Damien’s eyes darted to the table. The pills and the injection capsule were still there. He grabbed them before kneeling by his mother’s side. He’d been told what to do in this situation, but shock numbed his senses.

  Grabbing his mother’s arm, he drove in the injector below her wrist as he’d seen her do a thousand times before. Nothing happened. Damien turned it to face him and realized it was still empty. She hadn’t reloaded it since she last used it.

  “Damien, look at me.”

  He made eye contact and his panic grew. Although her breathing was still labored, Cassandra had stopped struggling. She was smiling now, which only scared him even more. She feebly took his hand in her own and squeezed it.

  “It’s not your fault. I love you very much.”

  Damien clenched his teeth so hard he felt they might shatter in his head. She had decided she was going to die on the kitchen floor and was too busy worrying about him to worry about herself.

  “Don’t say that,” he said, voice trembling as he fumbled with the clasp on the injector. “You’re not going to die.” The clasp clicked and the empty cartridge popped out, hitting the floor and rolling away. Under the crippling pressure, Damien had failed to think ahead.

  “Mom, where are the cartridges? MOM!” There was no response. Her eyes flickered and her head lolled to one side as she lost consciousness. The screech of the wristband increased in volume and pitch.

  Damien was on his own.

  The first responders would be there soon, drawn by the emergency signal Cassandra’s bracelet was broadcasting, but without immediate treatment they might be too late. Damien bolted to his mother’s bedroom, tearing open her bedside cabinet; the drawer crashed onto the floor before he threw the contents out in a frenzy. Where was it? The screech had followed him into the room, cutting into his mind and drowning out rational thought.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw it. The little metal box was sitting inconspicuously on Cassandra’s dresser. He’d passed the damned thing on his way to the cabinet. He snatched it up and ran back into the kitchen, his shaking hands fumbling to open the box as his vision blurred with tears.

  He’d only been gone a few seconds, but it felt like hours. The lid snapped open and most of the capsules spilled out, scattering across the floor. He wailed in frustration and wasted a precious second to look at his mother.

  Cassandra was unconscious but alive, her breathing coming in agonizing gasps that were painful even to look at. Her eyes were twitching rapidly, only opening enough to show a glimpse of the whites underneath. Her brain was losing oxygen.

  Damien snatched up a capsule and inserted it into the injector. He held it in a closed fist and slowly raised it above her prone body, trying to prepare himself for what he was about to do. It was far too late to deliver the dose to her arm, it wouldn’t reach her heart in time. After uttering a single frightened sob, Damien drove the injector through her shirt and into her chest.

  Cassandra’s body heaved upward, her back arching off the ground. Her fingernails grated against the kitchen tiles as her hands clenched into fists. It was all Damien could do just to hold on. The metallic whine of the bracelet subsided, reverting to intermittent beeping as Cassandra collapsed back to the floor. She was breathing, and her eyes no longer flickered. But they did not open.

  Damien pulled the injector out and threw it away, wondering if after all his efforts he’d only managed to kill her himself rather than letting it happen on its own. He cradled her head on his lap, just in time for the terror to finally consume him.

  Before he even knew what he was doing, Damien found himself wailing with shock and fear. Each time he stopped, the cold electronic tone would fill the void and he would try to drown it out with his own wretched cries. In the span of a few minutes, he became a child again.

  That was how the paramedics found him. That was how they left him when they took his mother away, leaving him to wonder how things might have been different if only he’d been as strong as she was.

  3

  Playing the Hand You’re Dealt

  Damien opened his eyes, briefly worrying that he’d overslept. He sat up in bed and the phone he’d been clutching to his chest all night clattered to the floor. He stared at it dully, trying to remember why it was with him. As he reached down to pick it up, the events of the night before wormed their way back to him.

  The paramedics had seen Damien as a liability and elected that he was too young to go without a guardian, opting instead to leave him in the relative safety of his home. They had left him with a hospital calling card attached to his mother’s case number. Damien, still not fully back in control of his own mind, had called the number almost immediately after they were gone. A politely detached voice had informed him that there had been no change in his mother’s condition, that the ambulance was still on its way to the hospital and that it would arrive in approximately six minutes.

  He’d spent most of the night repeating this cycle, calling every few minutes just to make sure there was still no change in her condition. At last, a slightly concerned voice informed Damien that he had called forty-six times in the last two hours and that if there was any change in Cassandra’s condition they would call him immediately. A few calls after that, the card stopped working.

  Damien curled up underneath the blanket, though it was poor insulation from reality. What was he supposed to do now? Even if he could have brought himself to attend his online lectures and even if he was able to concentrate, his exams suddenly seemed incredibly unimportant.

  He thought about finding the NOOB headset, just for a moment, and his lip trembled. If not for Saga Online, maybe this would never have happened. He tightened his body still further until he could wrap his hands around his knees.

  It would be better just to wait. If he waited long enough, someone would come and tell him what to do. He wasn’t ready for this.

  The intercom rang. Damien sat bolt upright. She was back! He jumped out of bed and almost fell through the doorway in his eagerness to welcome his mother home. He flung open the door and directed his eager grin at… a startled looking delivery man.

  “Delivery to Mr. Arkwright?”

  Damien nodded sullenly, as if everything was somehow the delivery man’s fault. He signed his name on the tablet provided and a box was picked up off the floor before being thrust into his hands. Damien turned it over. It had the Mobius Enterprises logo on it. He hadn’t ordered anything from Mobius.

  Frowning, Damien closed the door and went back inside, only to be met with a deeply unpleasant scene. The kitchen was as he’d left it last night; the chicken pasta was a sad splat on the floor and there were shards of broken plate and injection capsules scattered everywhere. Only Cassandra was conspicuously absent.

  He placed the box on the table before purposefully striding around the mess to grab the dustpan and brush. The apartment was not going to look like this when his mother came home. Cleaning up didn’t take that long and he found himself once again with nothing but his spiraling thoughts.

  Well, whatever happens today, it might as well happen on a full stomach.

  He walked over to the food processor and checked the tank. It looked like it still had just enough for one portion of bacon and eggs. Unwilling to dedicate any more thought to the exercise than necessary, Damien thumbed in his order and the machine started to whir. He filled the kettle and switched it on before finally directing his attention to the Mobius package.

  Cutting through the tape and cardboard he was met with white chunks of styrofoam. He reached in, grabbed what was inside and pulled, undoing his cleaning by spilling styrofoam onto the floor. Seeing what he now held, he couldn’t have been less interested in the mess he’d just made.

  It was a sleek, black headset, emblazoned with the Mobius Enterprises logo. It was unlike any headset he’d ever seen. Most headsets were a simple visor with some nodes that attached to the temples. This one would encase his entire head.

  He revere
ntially placed it on the table before rummaging in the box for some clue as to why it was in his house. He found the charger first, examining it briefly before depositing it alongside the headset. As he scraped the bottom of the box, his hands seized upon an envelope with his name printed on it in shaky block capitals. He opened it and found that the message inside was handwritten as well.

  Dear Damien,

  Sorry for the handwriting, an electronic message would show up in our database and we don’t want to draw attention to this bad boy just yet. If you’re reading this, you’re the proud owner of our prototype headset, the IMBA.

  This should allow for greater control while you play Saga Online. After all the excitement of fighting Toutatis, you’ve drawn a lot of attention to the game. I’ll cut to the chase; Mobius Enterprises wants to capitalize on the publicity. They approached me and I decided we could kill two birds with one stone: if you test this headset for us and give us feedback, we’ll let you keep it.

  Just a thought: now you’ll be playing the real game, maybe you should join the 2072 Streamer Competition. You never know!

  See you online!

  Kevin

  P.S. Please pass on my apologies to Cassandra. I was just so rushed to come up with a solution yesterday that things went badly. I hope this gift shows her how grateful we are at Mobius Enterprises for your contribution.

  P.P.S. Consider my debt to you repaid!

  Damien brayed a harsh dry laugh at the last sentence. He didn’t feel like Kevin had repaid his debt at all. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he realized it was incredibly unfair. Kevin had no way of knowing what happened last night. The headset was just his way of doing his job and saying sorry at the same time. It certainly looked like a great piece of kit. It was light years ahead of the NOOB headset, at least going by how it looked. Looking at it only made Damien sadder. He was in no position to appreciate it anymore.

  He suddenly remembered his breakfast, getting cold in the food processor. After making an instant coffee he sat down and began tearing into his meal, pausing between bites to contemplate the new headset on the table in front of him.

  He’d have been all too happy to test it for Kevin if he’d been asked a few days ago, but a lot had changed since then. His mom was now in hospital and after she got out there would be medical bills to pay. Maybe he could sell the headset somewhere for cash? No, that didn’t seem like a good idea. It wasn’t his property to sell.

  Damien paused halfway through a mouthful of bacon and eggs. There was the Streamer Competition. Kevin had given him access. There was an obscene amount of money up for grabs, enough to pay his mom’s medical bills and then some. This latest incident would probably push their insurance to the edge, maybe forcing them to lower it to bracket E. It would require drastic measures to keep them afloat. As the insane idea hatched in his brain, he looked at the IMBA headset and discovered a gaping flaw in his plan.

  He wasn’t sure he could bring himself to play Saga Online.

  The prospect of using the IMBA headset filled him with guilt. He had arguably put his mother in hospital by playing Saga Online, and now he was supposed to help her out of it by doing the same thing? It seemed ridiculous. And yet… it wasn’t as if there was anything else he could do. His only other option was to sit at home, twiddling his thumbs while he waited for the phone to ring.

  The popularity of his fight against Toutatis was another factor. The stream had shown every sign of breaking a million views when he saw it the day before. Who knew how far it had gone by now? The 2072 Streamer Competition was, in essence, a popularity contest, so the huge amount of views could only work in his favor. Perhaps this was a smart move after all.

  He picked up the headset and the charger before going back to his room. So strong was his resolve that he only felt the tiniest nagging sense of misgiving as he removed the NOOB headset charger from the wall and tucked it away in his cupboard, out of sight but not quite out of mind. He grabbed the house phone from where it had clattered to the floor earlier that morning and dropped it in his pajama pocket. He didn’t know if that would be enough to alert him when it rang but he was too invested to turn back now.

  With the new and improved headset plugged in and the red-lit power icon indicating it was active, Damien carefully eased it onto his head. It was well cushioned, although when he concentrated he could feel a multitude of small hard nodules pressing through the fabric against his skull. At least there were enough of them that the weight was distributed evenly. He lay back until he was completely horizontal and closed his eyes.

  He waited for the headset to start counting down, warning him that it was about to take control of his senses. The headset remained eerily silent. Now that he thought about it, the IMBA had seemed a little uncomfortable when he was standing up, but laying down it felt like he wasn’t wearing it at all.

  Welcome to Saga Online

  Damien opened his eyes to find himself standing in a plain white room, wearing a plain gray jogging outfit and sneakers. He shook his head and blinked. That was weird. With the NOOB set there had always been at least a small delay and a gradual immersion into the virtual space. This had been almost instantaneous.

  ‘Before you start playing you must calibrate your headset. Using your eyes only, please follow the red dot around the room.’

  The red dot appeared on the wall in front of him and Damien obediently followed it with his eyes. The program ran through for a few minutes, having him point, rotate, jump and generally make as many motions as the headset felt necessary. When it was over, he was invited to review specific body parts. He did some stretches and decided everything was fine the way it was. The first time he’d calibrated his NOOB headset he’d manually set his height to eight feet tall, thinking he’d breeze through the game as a giant. Instead he’d been spawned as a freakish gangly spider creature, lost control of all his limbs simultaneously and fallen flat on his face before sullenly setting it back to the default.

  ‘Scanning. Please stand by.’

  Damien had the briefest sensation of his face tingling before the camera panned out of his body. He was suddenly looking at himself in the third person. It should have felt strange, but it was actually like looking at an extremely compliant mirror. Even if most mirrors wouldn’t let you look at the back of your own head. His face had been rendered perfectly.

  He looked himself over, watching his own hands rotate in a circle in perfect time with the camera circling around him. He dragged it in close and pulled a few faces to see if everything was functioning correctly. Kevin hadn’t been kidding – this headset was amazing. He’d been stuck in this room for a few hours with the NOOB set, trying to make his face resemble himself and not some moon-faced uncanny valley copy. Satisfied, he clapped his hands and the camera’s perspective panned back into his face.

  ‘Are you eighteen or over?’

  Damien put on his best poker face and nodded vigorously. If he told the truth, the game would place a hard cap on his gore, pain and mature scenes settings.

  ‘Calibration complete.’

  A keyboard appeared at chest height in front of him.

  ‘If you would like to make and receive phone calls or e-mails while in game, the headset can be linked to your home network. Would you like to link your new device?’

  Excellent. Now he wouldn’t have to worry about missing a phone call while he was playing. As he keyed in the details, Damien found himself hoping that Mobius really would let him keep the headset. He shook his head roughly before continuing to type. Focus, idiot. You’re here to help your mother. He finished syncing the headset and the keyboard vanished.

  ‘Please select your character’s race.’

  That’s when it hit him. He should have realized before, but he’d been too awed with the IMBA-set to notice. He was making a new account. His hopes of playing the already well-leveled, well-recognized Scorpius were dashed.

  Damien thought about it and decided it was no surprise. On the beta
server he’d gone through several updates that were not currently live in the main game. If any of those were related to warrior skills, Scorpius might not play properly. On top of that, Mobius probably wanted him to start afresh so he could test the headset through and through.

  Damien scratched the back of his head. This was a serious blow. It had taken a month to get Scorpius to level 28. Valuable time would be wasted repeating boring early game quests when he needed to be building himself a profile and capitalizing on his fifteen minutes of fame. He’d have to talk to Kevin and try to persuade him to transfer Scorpius onto this new online account. Sure, there might be some issues with his gameplay since he was on the test server, but they could patch him so he had the same abilities as regular warriors, right? Kevin had said that Mobius wanted to capitalize on the publicity, so it shouldn’t be too much trouble. At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

  Damien brought his attention back to the selection bar. The four core choices were human, orc, elf or dwarf. Kevin had instructed him to play as a human when he was beta testing, but there had been no such instruction this time. He could use one of the other classes instead, taking advantage of one of their combat based racial traits.

  Elves had ‘Alacrity’, granting them 10% increased attack, casting and movement speeds. Dwarves were blessed with ‘Stone Skin’, reducing all elemental damage by 20%. Last but by no means least, the Orcish trait ‘Magic Blood’ boosted their health, stamina and mana regeneration by 25%.

  Damien was gleefully rubbing his hands together when he realized there was actually no choice at all. There was no guarantee he’d be able to transfer Scorpius over. He needed to take his character creation seriously. As much as he’d like to try something new, that would mean moving into unexplored territory. This was not the time; he needed to stick to what he knew. If he couldn’t get his hands on Scorpius, he’d have to recreate him in order to use the Toutatis fight to his advantage. He needed his new character to look as similar to the original Scorpius as possible.