Glitch Boxset

by Victor Deckard

  “Ran out of them.”

  The player shifted his gaze toward Melissa.

  “Give him some, will ya?”

  Sure enough, she resented having to give some of her vigors to me. She hissed, “What? I have to give him my vigors because he can’t go easy on mana, huh? No way!”

  “We’re the team, aren’t we?” Guard said tiredly. “So we have to help each other. If we don’t, we won’t survive the night.”

  “And more to the point,” Stan cut in, grinning. “It was us who gave you the vigors. Don’t you remember that, Melissa?”

  The girl grudgingly agreed to give me some of her vigors, “Make sure not to use up all of them at once. Because I ain’t gonna give you any more!”

  “Don’t worry,” Stan winked at me. “She will if she has to.”

  Melissa stared daggers at him for a couple of moments before whirling around and stalked across the room to the stairs.

  “Take care, guys,” Stan said to as and hurried after the girl upstairs.

  The fifth wave started. It wasn’t long before all the windows were being pounded at. Then there were a few explosions followed by flashes of greenish light. The metal plates on two windows instantly melted away and mobs started to climb into the building.

  Guard and myself cut loose as Stan and Melissa on the second floor did the same. Mutants tried to get through windows all at once. Due to that, they got jammed in the broken windows from time to time, striving against each other to be next to enter.

  The swarm of mutants made us retreat from the windows. Robots and turrets fired endlessly but accomplished little. Eventually, I started using my psi-powers, consuming mana and vigors.

  After a spell, Stan and Melissa dashed downstairs.

  “What’s the matter?” Guard asked glancing at them.

  “There’re too many of them up there,” Stan replied unleashing a long burst on the mobs rushing downstairs, monsters bloodily cartwheeling down the steps.

  We all clustered together back-to-back in the middle of the room and opened up on the swarm of mutants all around us. We managed to hold the monsters for a few minutes. Melissa and I activated the Shield alternately as Guard’s medical robots healed us.

  Then a few boomers got inside the house. One of them started for us. It was emitting bright illumination, teetering on the edge of exploding. We scattered as the mob burst. Acrid fluid spattered in all directions. We were fortunate enough to avoid being hit by it.

  More and more mutants made it inside the house. We tried to huddle up together, but they didn’t allow us to.

  Another boomer exploded. Melissa stood nearby. She managed to turn on the Shield in time. Still, the power dome popped almost instantly when acid splattered all over it. Melissa got splashed as well. Burning fluid eat numerous holes in her light armor almost instantly.

  Guard directed two medical drones toward the Melissa. They started to tend to her numerous acid burns as the girl stayed still, constantly discharging her pistol on the nearby mobs. Stinging acid ate at her flesh, yet the girl didn’t so much as squeak. Instead, she did something altogether different. She laughed! I could barely believe it. I knew how it felt to be burnt by acid. Nevertheless, the girl was laughing. Unfreakingbelievable.

  She waved to Guard to attract his attention and when he caught her eye, she stated joyfully, “Thanks for the healing drones! But for them, I might’ve been as good as dead by now!”

  “No problem,” Guard said in reply and commenced blasting his shotgun on the approaching boomer, buckshot peppering its bulky pus-oozing frame.

  After replenishing Melissa’s HP, the two medical drones evaluated the situation and came flying toward Stan, who was sporting a few fresh wounds covering his body.

  As for Melissa, she wasn’t laughing any longer, but there was a smile on her lips and her eyes were gleaming happily as she gunned down one monster after another. She sure relished every minute of the game.

  That she took great pleasure in playing the game wasn’t what had surprised me. No, it was something altogether different that amazed me. Stan had recently told me that he’d been burned alive inside his car. Oddly enough, he related this story absolutely calmly.

  Then, all three of them had suspiciously stared at me when I told them that after the boomer exploded, a few drops of acid splashed me and how much it hurt. And now this, Melissa got splashed by acid, yet she didn’t even cry in pain. On the contrary, he was laughing as is nothing happened.

  I’d wanted to ask a question to the guys some time before. I wanted to ask them if they could feel pain in the game when wounded. But as things turned out, I didn’t have to pose the question because now I knew the answer.

  I remembered thinking that no player would’ve played the game if they’d had to suffer extreme pain. Burning alive or boiling in acid hurt like hell, so it goes without saying that nobody would’ve ever wanted to be subjected to such tortures. Nobody.

  So yeah, I knew the answer to my question now. No, all the players in the game didn’t feel any pain. For some weird, really weird, reason I seemed to be the only player in the game who felt pain when wounded.

  I recollected something else. Unlike all the other players, I couldn’t not only quit the game but also I didn’t get disconnected if died during a night. Also, I felt pain while all the other players didn’t. I remembered reflecting on the game and speculating that it might have a lot of bugs. But now another thought struck me. What if I myself was some kind of a glitch?

  The thought sent chills down my spine. Guessed I had to reach out to the developers somehow. And the sooner I found a way to do it, the better.

  I absorbed myself into reflecting so deeply that it wasn’t until a gigantic spider sneaked up on me and spat a blob of acid that I noticed it. My shoulder burned as the blob smacked against it. Screaming involuntarily, I whirled around and snuffed the ugly creature.

  More boomers got inside. Monsters managed to corner Melissa and then two boomers exploded near her. This time the girl didn’t make it.

  There were only three of us left alive now. We fought our way to each other and opened fire in the opposite directions. Shortly afterward, I ran out of vigors again. Guard didn’t create robots as well. Either he depleted all his resources or the cooldown wasn’t over yet.

  Also, we were out of stimulators. We were doing our best to hold off the swarm of monsters, but I was certain we’d fail. I had almost no HP left and the guys probably didn’t have much left as well.

  Then I realized mobs were no longer spawning, which meant the wave was finally over. As if in confirmation of my thoughts, Melissa revived behind us. She waited for us to finish off the remaining mutants and then headed for her dead previous character to pick up her stuff.

  So we were fortunate enough to get through the fifth wave. But as far as I was concerned, we had no grounds for optimism. We had barely made it alive through the fifth wave. Had it lasted a trifle longer we would’ve been overwhelmed by mobs, that’s for sure.

  And it’d been only the fifth wave. The next ones would surely be way worse. Doubts rose in me. I was certain that the next wave would turn out to be the last for us. I didn’t entertain any delusions about our team’s ability to withstand another wave.

  I voiced my thoughts.

  “Snap out of it, bud,” Stan said cheerfully. “We’ll make it.”

  “Max’s right,” Guard objected. “The last wave was a dire struggle. I get it now. When I played alone, I sailed through the first six waves. But we’re struggling now. The reason for this is that the mob count and mobs’ strength scale with the number of players on the group.”

  “So what do we do then?” Stan wanted to know and instantly added. “Hey, you’ve just leveled up, haven’t you?”

  I looked at the Guard’s level. Stan was right. Our leader had leveled up to 9.

  “I suggest you upgrade the skill for reinforcing windows and doors,” Stan opined.

>   “Nah, armor wouldn’t get much tougher. I’m better off upgrading my drones.”

  Guard lifted his left arm and looked at the crystal embedded in his flesh. While he assigned the skill points, Melissa and me gathered up the loot, and Stan fortified the windows. Then we bunched up together, converging into a group in the middle of the room once more.

  “So what’s the plan?” Stan inquired.

  “Guess there’s no use in splitting into two groups,” Guard replied. “Let’s all stick together on the first floor. That way we might ratchet up our chances of survival a few notches.”

  “Okay.”

  The sixth wave began. After a half a minute or so, a few boomers approached the building and exploded. The acid ate away at the armored windows almost instantly. Monsters started to get inside, leaping up, catching the jagged edges of the broken windows, and pulling their bodies up and through. There were so many frantic mutants all the openings were choked with them, mutants fighting among themselves frenziedly, each one trying to be next through the windows and doors.

  We were standing in the middle of the room, firing away at the monsters. Melissa and I utilized our skills, freezing or knocking away monsters. We were consuming mana fast and had to resort to using vigors constantly. Guard disapproved of our squandering the vigors because he thought we might run out of them pretty soon. We’d need vigors so bad to deal with bosses when one of them showed up.

  However disapproving, Guard said nothing. He was well aware that our constant utilizing psi-powers was the only reason why we were able to hold off the swarm of monsters now.

  When I depleted my mana again, I reached for another vigor only to find out that I had none left. Turning my head, I looked at Melissa. She felt me staring at her and met my eyes.

  “Don’t even look at me! I don’t have any more vigors too!”

  Nevertheless, the girl was smiling. She really got a kick out of playing the game. She didn’t care about our group teetering on the brink of failing, for she played the game just for the heck of it.

  I gnashed my teeth in frustration. We’d had pretty many vigors to begin with, yet we used up all the consumables before even the seventh wave began. We could barely hold out now. What would we do with one of the bosses who would spawn during the next wave?

  After a short while, we ran out of stimulators as well. Guard’s medical drones and battle robots were our only hope for victory. He created a lot of them, but they didn’t last long, with so many enemies around. Spiders spat blobs of acid at them and robots exploded one after another, sending charred pieces flying every which way.

  Then Guard was no longer creating drones.

  “Out of resources?” Stan asked.

  “Cooldown,” Guard gave a terse reply. “Gotta wait for a few minutes.”

  As if we were going to survive that long, I thought but said nothing out loud.

  Melissa was the first to get killed. It was no wonder. Her level was the lowest so she didn’t have many health points. Level-wise, I had to be the next to get whacked. Yet it didn’t turn out to be the case. It was Stan who died after Melissa had. He played a Soldier so he had an enormous amount of HP and wore heavy armor. He protected us, bearing the brunt of the enemies’ attack and in the end was killed.

  It was only Guard and myself now. We were doing our best to stay alive. The swarm of mutants tried to corner us. We were forced to run around the entire first floor, firing our weapons as we ran. But it was just a matter of time before we perished.

  My HP slowly vanished, but I couldn’t heal myself, for I got no mana, no vigors, no stimulators left. No jack-squat. It wasn’t long before monsters got me and I became a silent spectator, watching the lone survivor, Guard, trying not to get offed. Although I couldn’t see the other teammates, Melissa and Stan, I knew that they were observing Guard playing as well.

  It was quite a pleasure to watch Guard play. From where I stood, he was an extremely experienced player. He waited for mutants to get close and then blasted them to gory pieces with his powerful shotgun.

  When his weapon would run dry, he would whip around and run away, tearing shells off his tactical vest and rapidly thrusting them into the loading port.

  Monsters were relentlessly trying to grab the guy, but he dodged their claws, ducked their blows, and successfully avoided being hit by acid blobs that spiders ejected from their mouths at him.

  Watching him play, I realized Guard shouldn’t have bothered with rounding up the other players, for he would’ve had much more chances of survival if he’d played alone. Non-experienced players like Melissa or myself only inconvenienced him.

  When the cooldown was over, Guard created a medical drone and it instantly began to heal the player, hovering above his head.

  Guard actually was able to get through the wave on his own. After reviving, we picked up our armor and weapons. Stan and Guard then started to reinforce the windows once again. I figured that they just squandered their resources, for armored windows didn’t check monsters for so much as three seconds. But I kept my mouth shut for fear of sounding being critical of them.

  Melissa and I found a few vigors dropped from the killed mutants and shared them between us. Then we all rallied in the middle of the room.

  “So we’re about to face one of the bosses,” Guard said grimly. “Do you remember what you have to do, you guys?”

  Stan and me nodded silently. Melissa just smiled excitedly.

  The seventh wave began. I tensely waited for a boss to show up. It didn’t take long for him to announce itself. A tremendous roar filled the air, causing the walls to tremble.

  “Is that a boss?” Stan quizzed with a crooked smile on his face.

  “Yep,” Guard answered.

  The windows got shattered once more and mobs piled inside. Discharging my pistols on the swarm of mutants, I listened to the heavy footsteps approaching, that made the floor vibrate slightly.

  Finally, the boss showed up. It had a hard time getting through the doorway, which looked too small to accommodate his mammoth frame. Finally, it squeezed through and entered the room.

  The boss was humanoid. It stood ten or so feet high. It was giant and extremely muscular. Huge spikes protruded from its flesh here and there, tearing its skin. But the most prominent feature of his body was a large gizmo attached to each arm. It looked like some mix of a drill with a grinder.

  My HUD showed the boss’ stats.

  > Name: Fleshshredder

  > Level: 10

  > Health: 950/950

  The boss spotted us clustered together in the middle of the room and let out with an earsplitting, thunderous roar. Stan let loose with his assault rifle, the weapon clattering, a long burst stitching a line of gory holes across the boss’ broad chest. The fleshshredder didn’t seem to sustain any damage at all, its HP completely intact.

  The boss suddenly roared again and forcefully drove one of its grinder-drills into the floor. The gizmo vibrated and the ground shook violently. Thrown off the balance, Melissa dropped flat. All the others managed not to topple over. After a few seconds, the boss withdrew its drill from the floor and the earthquake instantly ceased. Giggling, the girl rose to her feet.

  After nodding Melissa and me, Guard and Stan started to aggro the boss, letting it have it with both barrels.

  “Rest assured, it can’t run,” Guard said. “It can move only at pretty slow pace.”

  Emitting another roar, the fleshshredder burst into a race in the guys’ direction.

  “It can’t run, huh?” Stan smirked.

  Guard sweated. I thought that the mob count not only scaled with the number of players in the group but monsters also got new abilities. For instance, the more players were on the team, the higher got the speed at which the fleshshredder moved. If the gamer played alone, the boss couldn’t run but only walked at a leisurely pace.

  The monster dashed after the two guys, brandishing its grinders overhead. The pla
yers retreated hastily in another room with the boss on their heels, all of them disappearing from sight. Melissa and I hurried after them.

  The fleshshredder would come to a stop and dug its drills into the floor from time to time. Guard and Stan would take advantage of it and fired away at the boss. However, I noticed that bullets dealt little damage to the monster and its wounds almost instantly healed over as its HP fully replenished.

  Melissa and I were trying to do our best to keep pace with the guys, who were racing around almost ceaselessly, and keep the swarm of weaker mutants at bay.

  After the fleshshredder pulled its drills from the floor for the hundredth time, it turned around and dashed toward Melissa and me instead of the guys. The reason for that was that Melissa had aggravated it after wounding the monster with her pistol a few times.

  On seeing the enormous monster pounding directly toward us, I almost freaked out. But the next moment I managed to gather my wits and employed the Stasis.

  The silvery power filed circled the monster in. But to my amazement, the boss didn’t get frozen up but slightly slowed down. After a few seconds, the fleshshredder exited the power dome and his movement speed recovered.

  The monster charged at Melissa, clearing the three or so yards between them in one huge leap and sticking one drill into her body. The girl got slain in half a second, getting torn to pieces, ragged gory flesh and blood splashed everywhere. After dealing with the girl, the boss turned toward me.

  Freaking out, I took off. The footsteps sounded behind me, making the walls quiver. I looked back over my shoulder from time to time. The monster was gaining on me, narrowing the distance between us real fast. Guard and Stan opened fire on the fleshshredder to attract its attention. Still, the boss seemed to be eager to deal with me first.

  Suddenly I felt something penetrate me. One drill went through my body and burst from my chest, blood oozing around the thick tip of the grinder. The sharp pain flashed through me. In a moment I was dead. The spectator mode got activated.

  Guard and Stan were being chased by the boss. The fleshshredder drove its drills into the floor every now and then as the two players fired shots at the monster. Yet they inflicted little to no damage on the boss. The enormous creature regenerated its health exceptionally fast. There had to be a vulnerable spot somewhere on its body like blisters appearing on the swelled-out bodies of boomers. But the players failed to find it thus far. And so did I.