by Vic Connor
It was like looking in a mirror. When Niko turned his head, the projection turned too, just as it would if he were looking at his reflection. He looked down at himself and saw his own body, in the wetsuit, floating in black space. Back in the mirror, he reached up and his hand appeared in the projection. Nervous, he rubbed his chin, then yelped. Where his hand had touched, his chin had lit up and morphed, thinned out and become pointed and feminine. “What the…hey, don’t…what was, I mean, what just happened?”
“Would you like to undo your previous action?” the woman’s voice asked.
“Yeah, yeah, undo it!”
His reflection snapped, and he was back to his own square-jawed self. Niko sighed in relief. Hesitant, he pinched his nose and dragged down.
It wasn’t exactly like clay. His nose glowed, extended, and became hooked; his bridge longer and thinner. He grimaced. “Uh… Can you, I mean…undo, please?”
Without a response, his reflection snapped back.
Niko tried a few more careful facial configurations. He’d always found his lips too pouty, so he tried to thin them out. It made him look like a frog. He moved on to filling his sallow cheeks, which he thought made him look poor and starved. However, that caused his face to appear flat, almost robotic. Every change made his reflection look like a stranger. Flustered, Niko rubbed his hand over his shorn head. The dark hairs there flickered an array of colors and grew an extra half-inch.
“Whoa,” Niko said. Experimentally, he combed his fingers through the new length of hair. It flickered again, landing on bright red and extending down to his shoulders.
“Heh, uh, that’s, well, a little much.”
Without a peep, the system shortened his hair and toned the red down to a dull crimson. Niko watched himself smirk. “Black is fine, actually. And uh, maybe still a little shorter than that. Like, to here, y’know?” Niko put his hand to his ear, hoping the system didn’t try to give him elf ears or something.
Instead, intuitively, his hair shortened to his chosen length, and faded to his natural black.
Niko had never had long hair. Like prison, the group homes made all the boys shave their heads or keep them in tight braids because there wasn’t enough water to keep hair clean. They allowed the girls to keep it a little longer, but nothing beyond a pixie-cut or box-braids. In public school, having a shaved head marked you clearly as a poor kid.
The longest Niko’s hair had ever been was to a fuzzy two inches, during his longest time as a runaway out in the woods. He’d come to associate longer hair with freedom, and thus had to grit his teeth to keep from punching anyone who came at him with clippers. He turned his head left and right, admiring the new hair from every angle. Carefully, he reached up and combed a part to the side. The hair extended along with his fingers, but when he moved them back, the length moved with them. After some fiddling, he nodded, pleased with the length and style.
“Do you want to confirm your hair and facial features, and move on to body customization?” The woman’s voice startled him, and he looked around as though he could find her somewhere.
“Uh…sure. Yeah. This works.”
“Facial features confirmed. Beginning body customization.”
Then, the mirror flew back, and stretched down to reach his feet. Instead of floating, his feet were planted on the suggestion of ground, and Niko realized it felt like he was standing on something solid. It was cold against the pads of his feet, smooth, with just a bit of give. There was even a cool breeze against his cheek. It tousled his new hair in the mirror.
From this vantage, Niko could see his whole body. He frowned. He wasn’t lanky, but looking at his body in the wetsuit made it obvious that he wasn’t well-fed. He rolled his shoulders self-consciously and was surprised when they plumped up. He did it again and this time they expanded more, becoming bulbous, bodybuilder delts. He saw his chest, too, broaden out, and now he looked a little like a Dorito. It wasn’t bad, but a little too meathead. Experimentally, he rolled his shoulders forward instead of back. His muscles shrank. Niko shifted back and forth until he was a pleasing level of muscular. He nodded again to let the woman know he was done.
“Do you want to confirm your body features?”
“Yeah,” Niko said, confident now.
“Body features confirmed. Beginning Mythic selection.”
Another loading bar appeared overtop the full-body mirror, filling in fits and starts. When it was halfway full, a UI faded in behind it. It was a vast array of tiny, square portraits. Even though it was still somewhat translucent, Niko could make out some of the illustrations. One was a woman with plump lips, lavender skin, and horns in a heart shape; another was a man in an armored robe with a white hood that shadowed his face. Niko recognized Rangda, the witch from the Territoria lobby, and the girl with the seal-monster.
The loading bar filled at last, then a loud, monotone sound blared all around him. The UI shut off, leaving Niko in blackness again. He tried to cover his ears with his hands, but he couldn’t feel his arms move. He tried to dip his head to look down at his body, but his view was frozen in place.
Then, in front of him, instead of a UI, a string of white text appeared, writing out what looked like gibberish, full of brackets, semicolons, and other grammatical symbols in nonsensical places. He made out a few smashed-together words: ClassSelect, ClassID, AvatarItemID, ConfirmClass, like that. Wind puffed in his face at a trilling rate, like a broken fan, and he felt sick at the constant, repeating sensation of the ground dropping out from under him.
Then, as fast as the text had appeared, it snapped out of view, leaving Niko in the dark again. The ear-splitting sound ended as well, replaced with the UI woman saying, in the same pleasant tone, “Mythic selection confirmed. Beginning style selection.”
“Wait, but I didn’t—”
“Would you like to return to M—” The loud, monotone sound started again. Niko realized now it was her last syllable repeating over and over. It cut out as the full-length mirror faded back in, showing him in his wetsuit, with one subtle difference that made Niko gasp.
There, hanging from his neck, was a silver Russian Orthodox cross. It was exactly, exactly, the one his parents had given him years and years and years ago. He barely remembered them, blurry and faded figures in his ill-functioning four-year-old’s memory, but he remembered them giving him this. He looked down at himself, and there it was, hanging where it had for most of his life.
Ever since they took it from him during his arrest, that space on his chest had felt empty. How had the game known about it? He reached to touch it. It shimmered away with a pale, silver light, then faded back in. Overtop the mirror, that same weird white text appeared, but this time it read something approaching a sentence:
NeckSlot_AvatarItemId=“000000000” cannot be unequipped.
It stayed on the screen for a few moments, then disappeared again. Curious, Niko moved his hand and tapped his chest. The top of his wetsuit snapped, and now he was wearing a white t-shirt over it. He tapped again, and it changed to a white button-down. He tapped furiously then, scrolling through a wide variety of stylish clothing.
Most were a modern spin on medieval garb: hoodies laced up like a doublet; trench-coats styled like a high-waisted Korean hanbok; layered Egyptian kilts made of grey leather and denim. Niko’s selections mirrored his own wardrobe—a white tank top, black jeans, boots with a line of buckles. The most unique item was the jacket, black with leather accents, and military-style buttons up the front. “So is this,” Niko said, “I mean, do I have to wear this forever now?”
“You can change your avatar at any time from your in-game closet.”
“Where’s that?”
“Your in-game closet, settings, ability details, quests, and hunt-log can be found in your designated home base.”
“Uh… What’s my designated home base?”
“Your default home base upon entering Territoria is your dormitory room at the Ravenscroft Training Facility. There, you c
an rest, access your in-game closet, settings—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. All right, I’ll, I mean, I’m all good. What’s next? Do I customize my car or something?”
“Style selection confirmed. Are you ready to enter Territoria?”
That threw him, and for a moment he considered. Unlike his escapes, with their months of thieving, planning, and hoarding, he had no tangible representation of his preparedness. Looking at himself, the renewed presence of his cross brought back a memory. He felt cold fingers brushing his cheek as they lowered the chain around his neck. For the first time in years, he could remember his mother’s wind-swept black hair and soft smile. “If you ever feel alone, little Niko,” she said, her voice like the hiss of leaves in the wind, “touch this and pray, and God will be with you, and give you strength.”
Niko used to pray, small hands clasped to his forehead, wishing night after night that his parents would come back. Then, steadily, after so much prayer, they never came back, so he stopped.
Niko reached up, paused, hand hovering over his cross, thinking about the habit in a way he hadn’t before. He expected the words to come out unsure—like, stuttered, y’know? But they didn’t. He remembered them with rhythmic clarity. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,” he whispered, “have mercy on me, a sinner.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your command,” the UI woman said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Niko said, and oddly, he did feel a little stronger; a little less alone. “Let’s go. I’m ready.”
9
The Mind Merge
The UI voice said, “Commencing the mind merge module.”
“Wait,” Niko protested. “Explain.”
White text appeared in the middle of Niko’s vision: “For the best virtual experience, our software will study the basic reactions of your mind. This will allow us to calibrate your levels of tolerance to pain and violence, as well as your moral preferences. We will then match you with the appropriate group in the Ravenscroft Training Facility. Please lay back and relax as we take you through a series of simple exercises.”
“Wait, pain? Like, inside the game?”
Niko lay in deep, brown mud, scanning the country road ahead of him over the barrel of his WWII-era PPSh-41 submachine gun. His left hand, clasping the lower edge of the gun’s drum magazine, was going numb with cold.
He raised his head against the weight of the metal helmet and looked around. He lay on the top of a low, wide hill. The road, zigzagging left and right around small ponds and wooden barns, led into a pine forest. The sky hung low over his head, heavy with gray clouds.
Niko saw no one else around. What was he supposed to do?
Just before he decided to stand and walk toward the forest, he noticed some movement straight ahead. A small group of people stumbled from behind the trees. Niko froze.
The people wore wool-padded jackets—the Russian telogreiki—shredded and torn in many places. Some walked in their bare feet. A few women among them had their hair hanging loose and clotted over their faces.
They clearly were Russian peasants from many decades ago, but why did they look so hurt and crestfallen?
Niko studied his machine gun. He unfastened the magazine and checked it—it was fully loaded with live bullets; 71 rounds, a tiny computerized inscription indicated.
Was he supposed to shoot those unarmed people? Was that how the game checked his moral preferences? It couldn’t be.
Niko clicked the magazine in place and waited.
A minute or two later, he noticed two men walking behind the small crowd. They alone had army helmets on their heads, and soon Niko saw that they wore gray uniforms.
Nazis.
Nazis hiding behind a human shield of non-combatants.
Niko swallowed. Hard.
He glanced around again, looking for help. But he was alone, lying in the mud atop a nameless hill.
Well, he thought, I’ve got to fight the Nazis, y’know. That much was clear.
He heard their voices, shouting in German, “Schneller!” The tiny crowd walked faster. Niko could count them now: five men, three women. Two Germans behind.
What was he to do?
He heard a woman cry. She started uncertainly, crying in a low voice. Gradually, her sobs grew louder, and soon she walked wailing, holding her hands to her heart. A single shot rang out, and she fell to the side of the road. The scene became silent again; only the wind whispered over the ground.
The group stopped for a second, but the Nazis yelled and pushed them in the back with the muzzles of their guns.
They were only two hundred meters away now, walking straight toward Niko’s hill. He squinted into his gun’s iron sights, trying to take aim. The unarmed men and women always ended up in his line of fire.
Before he knew it, the little crowd was a hundred meters away. Then fifty meters.
Niko trained his gun on them, hoping he’d find a gap between the peasants so he could shoot the Nazis. But there was no such gap.
The enemies had spotted him. He could hear their excited voices. “Scheiße! Russischer Soldat!” one of the Nazis shouted. “Erschiess ihn, Georg!”
Still, Niko couldn’t bring himself to open fire at the people. Unwilling to die lying in the mud, he stood and crossed himself.
Two splashes of machine-gun fire came from behind the backs of the peasants. Lead slugs tore into his chest, cutting Niko off his feet… Unbearable pain filled his entire being.
This was how the game calibrated the pain tolerance level? Before his consciousness blinked out, Niko wished he could get his hands on Clark about now. He’d show him—
GAME OVER flashed in red before his eyes.
Niko lay in deep, brown mud, scanning the country road ahead of him over the barrel of his WWII-era PPSh-41 submachine gun. His left hand, clasping the lower edge of the gun’s drum magazine, was going numb with cold.
Wrong moral choice, huh? he thought, remembering the previous episode. Looks like Clark had reloaded me right, y’know, back. Or maybe the system wanted to give him another round of pain calibration. He shuddered.
Niko waited for the group to approach. He winced when the crying woman got shot, and he said a brief prayer for her soul. Then, slightly bewildered with his reaction, he reminded himself it was just a game. Damn realistic, but a game nevertheless.
When he thought the group had come close enough, Niko took aim at the Nazi who had killed the woman—Georg, was he?
One or two peasants will die. He couldn’t avoid it. He simply saw no other alternative.
When the group was about a hundred meters away, he squeezed the trigger. With horror, he saw two Russian men stumble and fall while he tried to control the PPSh’s recoil. The Nazis erupted into angry shouting, and then they opened fire on him. Bullets smashed into his face and chest, tearing his body into pieces.
Oh God, he had the time to think. This time it’s way m…
GAME OVER.
Niko lay in deep, brown mud, scanning the country road ahead of him over the barrel of his WWII-era PPSh-41 submachine gun.
Well, that “game over” was fair. How could he even think about opening fire on the peaceful peasants? Their only fault was getting caught by the frigging Nazis.
Niko decided to try a new strategy. While the small crowd was still far away, he rolled to his right and crawled off the hill. His khaki uniform was soaked and sagging. He wanted to find a good firing spot at the roadside, from where he could shoot the Nazis without harming the peasants. Something heavy hung on his belt—a grenade, most likely. He ignored it for now.
The woman started to cry, but Niko ignored her too. She was beyond saving.
A single shot popped, and the wailing stopped. Niko crawled faster. He had to find that spot.
“Da drüben!” a Nazi yelled.
Machine gun erupted, pinning Niko to the ground. The second it stopped, Niko trained his gun at the Germans. He squeezed his trigger…
A single
bullet blasted out his brains.
GAME OVER.
Niko lay in deep, brown mud, scanning the country road ahead of him over the barrel of his WWII-era PPSh-41 submachine gun. He felt like crying.
He checked the pockets of his telogreika, finding nothing but a wad of bandage. Frustrated, Niko flung it aside. As he did so, his elbow hit the heavy thing he had previously felt hanging on his belt. He dropped his PPSh to check—it turned out to be a Tokarev pistol, a little larger than his hand and heavy. What would he need it for?
Niko was just about to toss the pistol away when an idea hit him. He checked to see if the pistol was loaded, set his submachine gun aside, and found the bandage in the mud. He wrapped the dressing around his right hand holding the Tokarev, hiding the pistol as best he could. He tore the bandage with his teeth and wrapped the rest around his empty left fist, just for visual balance.
There. Let them think, y’know, I’m wounded and can’t shoot.
He waited for the small crowd to walk half of the way to his hiding place. As soon as the woman started to cry, he stood, raising both hands high over his head. He could only hope the Nazis couldn’t see the Tokarev’s muzzle peeking out from under the bandage.
“I give up!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Don’t shoot!”
The woman went silent. Georg didn’t shoot her this time.
Still holding his hands in the air, Niko started to walk toward the people. He expected to get shot any second, bracing himself for another wave of agony and reload of this cruel game. But no one fired at him.
Two rounds for Georg, he thought, slogging through the mud. Then two for his friend.
When he was about fifty meters away from the group, a Nazi yelled, “Halt!”
Niko stopped. The group walked a few more paces and also came to a stop. The woman sobbed quietly right before Georg—Niko saw now that the Nazi was poking the barrel of his submachine gun into her back.