by Wolfe Locke
Instead, the hammer bounced uselessly off a prismatic shield that appeared just over the figures body, and though sparks flashed, the figure remained unharmed, much to Kurt's frustration and annoyance. "Impossible," He muttered as he readied his second ability, feeling the heat of bullets and lasers bounce uselessly off of him as they began their counter attack.
Not to be outdone, Kurt reached into his inventory, throwing out a smoke grenade to conceal his movement and lobbied explosive grenades towards his enemies, hoping to disperse part of the group before they managed to land any successful hits on him.
Kurt began reached out in his mind and accessed his 2nd ability, "Light Rain" and selected the interior of the crater in the red circle that appeared, marking the entire area of effect for the massive ability. A pulse of power released from his body as the system acknowledged his command.
Above head, beams of light shot down from the heavens, searing into the ground where they landed and filled the crater with smoke as everything began to burn. Kurt was confident he had done enough to destroy the specialists, but before he could even react, some of the armored figures began fanning away the thick smoke.
These guys are good, Kurt thought to himself, seeing that he'd only managed to take out about a third of the group. Something Kurt hadn't expected. With the difference in strength, his attack should have been absolutely devasting. One of the armored figures jumped out at him with raised glowing dagger that Kurt couldn't recognize. Before the blade could ever reach him, Kurt was back on the offensive, ducking underneath the attack, and brought a fist up in a brutal upper cut. As soon as it connected, Kurt felt an uncommon impossible searing pain throughout his body. Pain? No way.... Kurt thought, realizing his attack had been stopped by a shield and he was suffering the aftermath of a feedback ability.
A feeling of dread and panic started to set in as the vague notion hit him that he might actually be in danger. This is supposed to just be a video game, he thought as another bullet slammed into his back, but unlike the previous shots this one landed, piercing through his armor as a searing pain erupted in his shoulder at the entry point. A trickle of something warm moved down his back, and Kurt looked and saw a bloody spot, and something else that made his blood run cold.
Where the bullet had struck him, his avatar had started to break down into clear pixels. I need to get out of here now, he thought with a grunt as he tried to use his third ability, [Gigmanity] and grew instantly to the size of a small building and tried to turn to run away. As soon as he tried to swat away a few of the armored figures, a painful shock spread through his body as the gunshots continued.
A single shot from a sniper rifle boomed as Kurt's gut erupted in a mass of gore, as a prismatic bullet passed through him, and with it, the effects of [Gigantify] were dismissed, causing his body to return to its normal size.
Kurt collapsed on the ground bleeding from multiple wounds as he heard only footsteps around him, his playlist long since having been turned off. One of the armored men can closer.
"What a dick head. He's still streaming though, make sure to erase his feed. This has been a fairly successful test run of the Talon. We'll need to try it on the player bazaar to make sure it's working right. It might have been the gear or level difference, but the system was resistant at first to the Talon. It took more than a few shots before hits started to register. Make sure to send a team to his home address. I'll have his information downloaded in just a minute if this works." The figure said through an intercom linked to his arm.
With his vision turning dark, Kurt tried to force a log out, calling out to PAL to save him, calling out to his old friends to come help him, but none come, and no one but the armored figured heard him. The figure looked down at Kurt, removing the Rat Helmet and looked at Kurt's true face as the Talon worked to break safety controls in the system.
"Still alive huh?" The figure asked good naturedly as he looked down at Kurt, watching blood drip out of Kurt's nose and his eyes dark with bloody cataracts. "That looks really unpleasant. I'm sure it won't matter to you, but your sacrifice will be remembered in the world to come."
In the feverish parts of Kurt's brain, the words barely registered, instead replaced by the last good memory of his family he had. A bear he had bought for his daughter and an afternoon downtown eating ice cream and laughing. A time before the divorce, before the embargo, back when the world had been a different place.
Kurt was already gone by the time the figure was able to pull out a clear knife and thrust through Kurt's heart as all of his personal information was downloaded and sent onwards to whomever the armored figures answered to. As the light went out in Kurt's eyes the very last words to register were, "Let’s keep going with the test, this whole area is locked down. None of them can escape. We’ve got deniability if this goes sideways and we won’t get a shot like this again.”
As they continued on their way, the silence was broken for just a moment. “He had a lot of gear on him, arrogant though. He still had an ultimate he didn’t use [Arms of the Kraken]. Wouldn’t have helped him, but I’ll be taking that for me. We can divide up the rest once were done here.”
The Talon System
Wolfe Locke
Author’s Note
Hey Everyone,
I’ve been working on Talon System for a long time. It’s actually the first book I started writing. That was almost 5 years ago.
After an almost infinite hiatus, I decided to return to this world to finish the story. Call it an obsessive itch. I just hate to leave a story unfinished.
This is a little different from the stuff I usually write, but I certainly hope you enjoy it.
Thanks For Everything,
-Wolfe Locke
Chapter 1: The Board Convenes
* * *
The chairman’s assistant, a young man named Paul Gibson, stood nervously by the door to the conference room as he carried out his duties faithfully and handed the heavily sealed manilla envelopes to each member of the board as they passed by him. Even though Paul wasn’t privy to the information contained within the pages, he knew what those folders had within them wasn’t good.
He had seen some leaked footage from within the game world of Seven Cities Online within the digital platform of SynaCAID. He had heard rumors of fatalities within the user base.
They’re all walking around like the world is ending. Is it really that bad? Paul thought, based on the severe and grim looks on each face that passed without a second look, as if they were heading to a funeral.
Because they are. Something worse than what I saw on the video must have happened, Paul realized, as he quietly and as discretely as he could manage sent a message to his wife to sell their employee stock match and get a leg up on looking for new work for both of them. Hopefully, they could get ahead of whatever was happening and find new positions to take them far away from the sinking company.
When the last member of the board had entered the conference room, it was time to begin. John Greyson, the Chairman of the Board, a powerfully built man who had only just started to stoop with age, turned towards his young assistant who was still at the door. With a tone of finality, he told him it was time to leave.
Paul did just that and left the room to the older men with a thankful nod and silent gratitude. He left them to discuss their business alone. Whatever dire calamity the company was facing. Paul wanted nothing to do with it.
John waited for the door to snap shut before speaking as he looked around the room at each of the darkened faces and tried to stifle his own sense of unease.
He was not alone in his discomfort. John noticed each of the other board members fidgeting in their seats, faces flushed and pale, adjusting themselves to try to manage the tension everyone was carrying.
It seems they all know, or at least heard, sometimes the best way to get through a crisis is to rip the band-aid off and go straight through it. John thought to himself bitterly regarding the recent string of issues in the Syndica
ted platform and the more public failure in Seven Cities.
“The situation is far worse than you might have suspected or heard,” John said plainly, putting it out there in a blunt manner. “I had hoped the issue would have been resolved by now, but the team wasn’t able to find any issue with the hardware itself. This is a growing problem that could easily mean the end of everything we’ve built here.
“I’m sure by now you’ve all had a chance to see that our numbers have taken a big hit, and the hits haven’t stopped. If you haven’t seen it yet, the numbers are down. Dramatically down, and it’s only getting worse. You all know we’ve too many big investors out there wanting to see this technology and their money succeed. People need it.”
A hush came over the room as one of the board’s older members, a man named Grisham Delaney, slammed an open palm on the table in anger, causing more than a few of them to flinch.
Grisham motioned towards the paperwork he had spread out in front of him, papers that showed different graphs and reports assembled to portray a more positive picture of the platform’s health and the company.
“Goddamn it, John. These numbers don’t tell me anything, and my kids are telling me rumors are all over the dark web,” he yelled, his tone tired and bitter. “Just give it to us straight, just how bad is it? I’m not wading through any more of your dog and pony horseshit to try to find the truth.”
John nodded his head, understanding the sentiment. “There have been deaths. More than a few. I understand the frustration. It’s true. What you have in front of you is mostly to calm the shareholders in the hopes that we can get this under control before anything verifiable leaks to the press or one of the sub-forums.
“We don’t want the truth to go viral. It’ll be every bit as bad as our worst projections. Like I said, the numbers are way down. This information is already starting to get out. We have been hemorrhaging subscribers. We can trace the original incident to a player’s market about 7 weeks ago when one of our top-ranked players, the griefer Vendormate was attacked in the game and was found dead a few days later in his apartment from a heart attack in his immersion unit. If this continues, the company will be looking at bankruptcy and forfeiture of all our assets by Christmas.”
“Those projections can’t be true. I refuse to believe it. We have a literal monopoly on virtual reality. Actual virtual reality, not that garbage they used to sell in arcades to kids,” argued the youngest member of the board, Hunter Gleeson,
“This is state-of-the-art technology. This is the stuff that dreams are made of. There is no way the SynaCAID system could fail. Do you know how much money our families have put into this? How much money we stand to lose as a company? Do you know how much the investors stand to lose?”
The room got quiet for a minute as Hunter pressed forward, giving voice to the same thought they all had on their minds.
“You know what kind of people we took on as investors. Failure is not an option. You know exactly what they are capable of. Better to silence the lot of us and take the tech full Darkside rather than lose the technology in bankruptcy court to one of the other major players.” Silent mutters spread throughout the room as sharp and furtive glances were cast about as they all silently agreed with each other.
That silence was interrupted by a solemn voice. “It’s more of the latter, I can promise you that. We prefer things to remain discreet. Though please understand, we would prefer a far less complicated solution than liquidation. But it is an option on the table if need be.” The man at the end of the table announced an otherwise normal-looking man, whose averageness was an identifier all of its own.
The only information any of them had on the man was that he went by the name Michael and personally represented a few of the investing parties. Unofficially, they all knew him to be the government spook assigned to watch after their activities.
Even though Michael had spoken up, the man was still buried in the report looking for answers as he tried to figure out the root cause of the decline and if there was a way to potentially fix it. Michael sat the report down and looked up at the head of the board, demanding answers. “What’s the word, John.? Tell me what really happened.”
“We think we’ve been able to link it back to some illicit activities on the servers. I wouldn’t even call it hacking. More like they’ve found a way to install trainers and mods into the program itself. They call themselves the Old Dominion, and wherever they go, chaos follows, and we lose money afterward.” John responded, hoping that the government representative would recognize that SynaCAID was simply too big to fail and put the weight of his organization behind the company to fix the problem and maybe give them an easy out.
But Michael wasn’t having any of it. “So what? You’re telling me trolls are sabotaging a trillion-dollar enterprise by what? Griefing? And you mean to tell me you have no audio, picture, or sound recordings of these users? What about the logs? What about where are these people are now? Why haven’t they just been banned? What other information have you omitted from the reporting.”
A look of frustration crossed John’s face. “The feeds are heavily corrupted. Don’t you think I’ve tried? We believe these players have somehow managed to hack our System and move past most of the safety lock features we have in the game. The most recent attack was in the 3rd Ward of the Commerce district belonging to the AZM Conglomerate Region in the North American server.”
A tense hush came over the room; the AZM Conglomerate was their largest non-governmental investor. “All the digital storefronts in that sector have been completely deleted from the System. But that’s not the only issue. We’ve reported that users whose avatars were killed during the attack have also been killed. Whatever these people are using, it’s deleting anything that interfaces with the System.”
“We don’t want to cause a panic and have worked with local law enforcement to keep rumors about foul play at a minimum. As you all well know, we have been trying to streamline the e-Commerce platform within the game. People need these jobs, and panic won’t make things any easier on anyone.” John stopped talking and looked around the room, waiting for somehow to say something.
“People are dying. Actually dying. Why haven’t we told anyone? People have a right to be warned, and why haven’t these trolls been banned?” Grisham questioned in a voice full of irritation as thoughts of expensive litigations and painful public outcry crossed his mind. “What are we doing to stop it?”
“It’s not that easy. We’ve tried that numerous times.” John corrected with a voice of authority, not even bothering to hind the feelings of irritation.
“Somehow, they’ve managed to avoid even being detected by the System. Technically the accounts are banned. They don’t even exist in the System anymore. We’re not even sure how many of them there are as there doesn’t seem to be any audio or video. The little bit we do know has been entirely gathered by the destruction they leave in their wake and interviews with survivors. Just so we’re all clear, I’m talking about heavy pixilation. Visual captures of their avatars corrode too fast to get any real kind of surveillance done. It’s like they’re invisible.
The conversation shifted back to Michael. “I don’t think they’re invisible, or at least not really in any traditional sense, probably just invisible to the outside world. Invisible to us, that is, unless you know what you’re looking for one. It’s one of the reasons we started manually auditing user complaints. The slew of reports that started coming in led us to conclude that users within the System were able to avoid detection from the outside but could still be seen within the System itself.”
“So, do you have any ideas then, Michael? John queried, hoping that the man from the government would just along with the topic and let them settle on a way and path forward without his intervention.
But Michael had already settled on an answer, and whatever his response was, it overruled the rest of them. ‘”It’s simple, we bring in the professionals, and I’ve already filed the r
equest with my people. We have a candidate who would be perfect. I’m sure you’ve all seen the studies done on immersion with the eRehab unit out in Stockholm….”
Chapter 2: An Invitation
* * *
Snow fell in short flurries across the top of the mountain as Niles kept up a nice even pace along the mountain trail. He took disciplined and even steps. Keeping his breathing steady as he sang a cadence to only himself to echoed across the mountain, as he worked to keep his speed at a constant.
A shadow image of himself ran beside him, helping to keep the pace. An afterimage burned into the rendered environment. Niles found it helped him feel less alone, and the mirror image helped to hold him accountable to his pace. There were glowing letters burned on the image.
Pace: 7.4 miles per hour Time Elapsed:00:24
Around him, the pine trees bent under the weight of the accumulated snow and bowed against the steady flow of the wind as Niles’ breath showed white in the air, freezing on each exhale. It was comforting and peaceful, a serene scene. Niles had always loved being alone in nature.
The only other sound was the constant plodding of Niles’ steps and that of his after image as the two of them continued the run, occasionally shifting his eyes to peer over the ledge at the iced-over lake at the bottom of the mountain trail.