Winter Harvest

by Dawn Chapman

  The frexul seemed to mill around in a way that wasn’t threatening to me. Just creatures, not wanting to kill. That was when shots fired. And I dived for cover along with Derk and Reece.

  I heard the sound of gunfire as Mora and Ven returned fire. I was pinned down. Sight failing, all I could do was wait for someone to tell me what to do next.

  SIGHT FAILED = 0% VISUAL ACUITY

  No kidding. That was it. I was blind. Nothing was showing up apart from some flickers of light—I could only presume that this was from the weapons. I tried to sit up, but someone slammed me down.

  “Stay down, we’re sorting them.”

  “I can’t see,” I said.

  The weight of the person almost sitting on me stayed the same. “I know, we’ll get you in, in a few. Trust me.” It was Mora.

  I didn’t have a choice, and let myself fall back, listening to the weapons’ fire, the screech of monsters, breaking branches, and more around me. Derk and Reece were under some constant fire as the frexul tried their best to get through to us. Our shields held, I could only presume, whether it be those from Nehi or something else from the ship.

  Then it stopped.

  I could hear nothing but my own heartbeat and breathing. Nothing else.

  Rytin’s voice came in clear then. “Move! Now, before they re-group and make a counterattack.”

  I felt myself being pulled up. My feet found solid ground as they led me forwards. I struggled, but I didn’t let myself fail. Rustling, running, breathing.

  I was shoved into a chair. While I was settled, I tried casting Minor Healing, it relieved a little pain that was all. My injury now was far too severe. I couldn’t see anything, and the smells in here were dank, mechanical. I’d no idea where I was, but it felt like I was inside.

  Whatever I was in began to move; it picked up speed quickly. “Where we going?”

  Derk answered me; he was close. “Underground. We’ll be safer down here for a while. Get you fixed up.”

  “What about Delta 81? They’ll not let us go. Right?” I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Kyle, there’s a lot that you don’t know. Let’s get you fixed up first.

  Then maybe if Rytin thinks we can bring you in fully, we can. Nehi’s betrayal…” His voice faded.

  “It’s my fault. I’m sorry. Whatever it was, if I leave maybe it will be fixed?”

  “No, I think she’s out,” he replied sadly. “All this time, and she betrayed us. That will never be forgotten.”

  I couldn’t comprehend what that would mean to her, to them. Their nice team, broken. “It was a moment of weakness surely?”

  DUE TO YOUR RECENT HEALTH ISSUES, YOU HAVE GREATLY IMPROVED YOUR HEALING SPEED AND MANA POOL! GET YOURSELF INJURED SOME MORE, AND YOU’RE IN FOR A TREAT OR TWO!

  HEALING SPEED +2

  MANA + 4

  AS AN ASIDE, I WOULD HIGHLY SUGGEST YOU CONCENTRATE ON NANITE REPLICATION! YOUR STORES ARE LOW! TOTAL 7,147

  Nice little bonus for healing and mana, but it didn’t really help me that much right now.

  Focussing in on Xe I asked her, Replication, orders, tell me what you need? I’ll see to it as soon as I can.

  Thank you, Kyle. We appreciate that.

  Rytin’s team arguing grew louder, and I tried to look in their direction, but someone pulled me towards the opposite direction. It made my back click. Hurt, slightly. The voice I didn’t know. Soft, metallic.

  “I need you to look this way. Stay calm.” It was pretty hard to do either.

  “I’m Alek,” the voice then said. “Hold still. You’ll need a few injections—that will help.” I felt a hand in mine, then an object. “Drink that, if you can stomach it. It will help more.”

  Rytin’s voice was muffled in the background. I couldn’t make out what he was actually saying. Was he talking another language? Or were things progressing with this thing she’d given me? The warnings had stopped after he cut off my face, then gone weird; I tried to look for the warnings. But nothing stood out as wrong.

  Xe, I said internally. Can you give me a report, anything?

  Again nothing. I let out a sigh.

  “Give it time. You’re not going to operate any of your internal well like this.”

  “Fuck,” I said, trying not to let the downward drop in adrenaline and panic make me feel worse, but it was a spiralling whirlwind of terrible sickness and emotions. I swallowed.

  I put the bottle to my lips. The smell wasn’t so bad. Fruity. But the taste?

  “Damn.” I struggled with it, swallowed. Gagged. And then drank some more.

  “Good, that will really help. Give me your arm. These will do more.”

  I did as he requested then waited. A few moments later and he spoke again.

  “I can see you on the monitor, but I need access to your internal.

  Even if you can’t give it to me. I may be able to get around the code.” I felt cold hands touch the side of my neck. I held my arm out steady for him, and he rolled up my suit. “I’m going to give you some extra nanites as a booster. They should be able to help with the pain and the face. The salve I’m going to apply will help them with their needs. It’s going to hurt, okay?”

  Xe, did you hear that? Are you okay with more nanites coming in?

  Can you control them?

  I had so many questions for her, but she answered smoothly. I am very okay with that, and they’re easy to program from the base up.

  I nodded, not seeing Alek, but the calmness in his voice was reassuring. I had no idea what he looked like. But I felt safe. “Do what you gotta do. I’ll take it.”

  I heard movements around me. Nehi and Rytin were arguing again, but Reece stepped in. “Time out, guys. Right now, we need you both. We can’t get out of this without you.”

  I didn’t want them to argue. Alek moved around me, and I felt his fingers touch the front of me, carefully. So, so gently.

  “You don’t know this because you don’t see, and you wouldn’t want to see this just yet.”

  Then there was cold as he gently touched the salve over my face. “Nite Gel,” he said. I tried not to wince, to pull back, but I couldn’t help it.

  NANITE INCREASE x 9,872

  Each time, he did his best to reassure me. “It won’t last long. Give them some time.”

  “Is the threat, totally gone?”

  “You have no full frontal, no face.”

  “I have no face, at all?” I suddenly felt sick, and I heaved.

  Leaning over, I vomited, not knowing where, but Alek didn’t say anything horrid, and he wiped my mouth.

  Well, what I thought was my mouth.

  Alek whispered, “You’re doing great. This is a terrible injury, but you will be fine.”

  Reece let out a low chuckle, and I felt another hand on my shoulder. “Better than respawning where we aren’t. Where they obviously had planned to take you.”

  “That’s why you wouldn’t let me die?” I asked Rytin. “You think that was their plan?” Derk asked.

  “Yeah,” Nehi confirmed. “Saskia knew. They had a separate tank ready. They wanted you to themselves for something. She didn’t tell me what, though.”

  I wondered what that might be.

  I started to tingle all over. Hot, burning red notifications flashed all over my vision.

  “I’m in,” Alek said, then added, “I’ve never seen an internal like this, who is he?”

  “Just a normal denti.” Rytin came up near us.

  “He’s not normal by any means.” Alek tapped something. “I’ll be damned,” Rytin said.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you when you regain your sight in a little while,” Alek said to me. “Rytin, I am glad you didn’t let anyone else get near him.”

  “What does this mean?” Rytin asked.

  I could hear the tension and concern in his voice, but I tried not to worry about it, about any consequences.

  “I wouldn’t want to speculate fully,” Alek
said. “Something else is going on for sure. I think he knows too. The tide’s finally turning for us.”

  The tingling sensation started to burn more, and instinct took over. I raised my hands to try and wipe the stuff off my face. My eyes were watering like crazy, and I couldn’t stop any of it.

  Alek held onto my hands. “Don’t. Ride it out. You can do this, a few more minutes. They’ll be working their way up to alter the DNA.”

  “There’s just nothing like it—” I tried to grit my teeth together, to hold in the agony that permeated every pore. Someone held my hand and squeezed it. I let them.

  “Nothing else you can give him for the pain?” Nehi said from somewhere behind me.

  “No, you know how well those things take to the internal core.

  Almost as bad as any old-school narcotic back on Earth in the eighties.” Did he really mention a decade so talked about for its drug use?

  Xe, can you help me out any?

  I am sorry, but this time I can’t. We are weak and too few. We will get stronger again. Forgive me.

  I held back the next moan that wanted to escape me, feeling something switch inside me. Was the pain really getting better?

  I finally started to see the red boxes flash less, and they changed to orange and yellow. Text inside them started to form, and I could read it again.

  DENTI CORE FAILURE 97%

  I didn’t know what it meant, but the little box, almost full, was slowly moving. At least in the opposite direction. “I was that close to losing it.”

  “Kyle, your core failure would have been the end of everything for you. That is your back up. There’s no other place your brain waves are stored. Nowhere. All that you are now is here. In your head, and in your nanites. If they hadn’t gotten to you in time, even they would have lost the chance to do anything with you.”

  In my nanites too?

  Yes, Kyle, we make up your storage. Good reason to take care of us, no?

  I had to laugh at her then.

  To do anything with me? That sounded terrible though. I cringed.

  Tiny stars started to form in my view. I watched them dance around as I heard clacking on keys, like an old-school mechanical keyboard.

  That was interesting. I wondered why. Then as more and more stars formed, I saw green boxes appearing too.

  SYSTEM INTEGRITY = ALIGNING FULL CORE EVALUATION = ONGOING DEATH PAUSED

  REBUILDING REBOOTING REBORN

  I watched as more and more flashed on past, and as Alek spoke again, I focussed on his voice, his face. His features started to form.

  “That’s it. Good. Shouldn’t be long now before he’s back with us.

  Might take a day or two more for his face to feel normal again. That was some hell of a horrific thing you did, Rytin.”

  “Cutting his face off saved his life, didn’t it?”

  Alek nodded. Long, scraggly, golden hair floated around his shoulders. “Yeah, though I wish there’d been another way, it was one of the harshest treatments I’ve seen in the field.”

  I breathed in nice and slow as things started to make more and more sense to me. The room around me came into view too, and I thought we were still moving. “Still going underground?”

  Reece moved away from where we were to a window. I took another look at what we were actually in. Some kind of train cart? It was fairly interesting. There were pieces of equipment everywhere. Weapons and bits. I was in awe of the haul here.

  What took my attention the most then was the screen on the computer before me. I could see all the code as I stared closer at it, and I noticed patterns, sentences. “That is me?”

  Alek smiled my way. “Glad you’re seeing again. That’s my own system design. No one else can read it, so I would be surprised if you could.”

  I watched the way his eyebrow raised, the way he noted my struggles. He was waiting for me to confirm something I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I could read it. All of it. It was simple old-school coding. From the very age I’d mentioned. Coupled with the mechanical keyboard and the style of clothes he wore, I knew I was looking at an old-school programmer. Whereas I knew all the new tricks and codes-- this was my pastime, my hobby. I loved it.

  “You know who I am.” His forehead crinkled, and his eyes flickered to Rytin and the others. “Would you give us some alone time? Get some food out of the main cart. We should be at the main base in a few hours.”

  Hours? Crikey, how far underground were we travelling?

  I watched as Rytin waited for the others to leave, then he glanced to Alek. “I’ll clear him for now, but if anything changes…”

  It was a threat. I could see it cross his face. “Changes?”

  What would change?

  Chapter Twelve

  Alek sat back and tapped the screen on the computer. “What does it say?”

  I read the words in primal coding, words I’d already seen.

  YOUR DEATH WAS A LIE. LONG-TERM STORAGE IS REAL. BRAIN IN A BOX.

  I tried not to let that emotion show, that my internal had just told me what I had feared all of my life. That the VR system wasn’t just sending out the wrong and evil people in our lives, the ones who deserved death as punishment and to serve society for their crimes in the only way possible. Forever servitude in the war.

  I wasn’t going to answer, but my mind ran over the code easily. “It’s my full character sheet and breakdown. You’ve got everything from the moment I was reborn to now. Without any restrictions.”

  “Yeah, it’s the ‘without restrictions’ that’s bothering you, though, right?”

  “Of course. Someone of your calibre can do a lot of damage on the inside.”

  He held out a hand for me then, a smile on his face. “I am Alek Bardon. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Alek Bardon? The Alek Bardon?” I couldn’t quite believe that it was true, I swallowed. I was staring at the highest-scoring tech head on the planet. “They don’t know who you really are, do they?”

  “No, and it was pure luck that you ended up here.” I shook his hand with enthusiasm.

  “I am beginning to think none of this is luck anymore. You couldn’t have just landed here by pure chance.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked as I let go of his hand.

  He pointed to the screen. “The fact that you have primal coding inside your mind. That shouldn’t be there—a top-of-the-range internal AI that transferred with your consciousness.”

  Yeah, somehow. This was set up. Set up the moment they decided to fake my exam results.

  “They failed you on purpose. Yeah, I can see how that would get you here under one pretence, but I am stuck as to how they got the tech through. I am struggling to understand some of what you are.”

  I stared at the screen. Within their own system, it was clear cut. I was above everyone else already. “Are you going to tell Rytin?”

  “No, because I don’t know what you’re here for.”

  “I’m here to bring down Arndale,” I simply said.

  I watched his eyes flicker from side to side. “You’re in an old-style gaming system with which you’re supposed to level up, make friends, defend their wealth.”

  “Yes. It’s their wealth that’s the problem. Nothing of this game is real. They’re getting us to do their dirty work in the pretence that it’s saving lives back home. That the military stance here is worth the billions of funding it gets every year.”

  “I can’t lie there.” Alek nodded. “You are one hundred percent correct.”

  “But it’s all lies. They’re not defending anything from what I’ve seen.”

  “You’ve not been here long, either.” He frowned. “How can you see it all, yet they don’t?”

  He motioned to where the others had gone down the train carriage. “They see more than you think they do.”

  He seemed to stare at the carriage where they’d gone. “So you’re the one running all this?” I asked.

  “I am indeed. Rytin’s been my inside man f
or a long time. This is the first major issue we’ve actually had.”

  “You can’t let Nehi break up the team.”

  He frowned, tucking his loose locks into a ponytail and sitting back. “I don’t know if they’ll trust her again.”

  “She made one mistake. She doesn’t know me. She wanted to protect her family, take the easy route.”

  “Would you trust her?”

  I wasn’t answering that one.

  “Look, Kyle, I can take out the trackers and more. Alter some of their settings to give you better edge. But I can’t make your character level up. You need to do that yourself. There are lots of things in here you need to grasp. Rushing it won’t help you or your main mission.”

  I just nodded with him. “I need to go back to Delta 81 without them, don’t I?”

  “Their missions changed, yes.”

  He tapped the screen. “One of your standard games, really. Dealing with other players in the game, right?”

  “You want me to face Tyto on my own.”

  I hated PVP, and this is exactly what it felt like. Bullies sucked, and usually where there are those kinds of confrontations it just meant lots of bad news. And fighting.

  Fighting was good, though. I never shied away from taking someone on. Some of my finer moments with Craig and Paul were against other teams, but these were games. This here right now was much more serious. We weren’t playing for fun. My end goal was the fall of the whole system. If I were to take Arndale on seriously, I needed details, more evidence as to what they were doing. Stealing life, taking memories. It was insane, and all for what? More product, more money. The highest corporate betrayal. But sounded about right for companies— the more they got, the more they wanted.

  I was torn with all the facts given so far. I had to corroborate lots of things, find out the truth. If we took down Arndale, what happened to all the denti, the millions of people out here? What would happen to the bodies or brains stored in their boxes? I shivered.