Anatoly smiled sadly. “No, Duke. I’m not going to let you out. You’re going to do what the client says. If you do it well, we will keep you around. If you don’t cooperate, well… you won’t like what happens next.”
I had no idea what this crazy asshole meant by that. “Fuck you. I’m not going to do anything you ask. You’re going to what? Make me live in the body of this stupid zombie thing? For how long?”
“I want to show you something,” Anatoly said. He raised his hand, and a view portal appeared on the wall, floating where the brick wall stood in the real world.
“You’ll have view-only web access during your stay as long as you behave. There are a few channels of interest I want to show. Namely channels one and two.”
He waved his hand, and a familiar view appeared. It was the interior of Mary’s Subaru. It took me a moment to parse what I was seeing. I could clearly hear Mary’s voice as she sang along to a song on her oldie’s station.
With horror, I realized I was watching a POV shot from my wife. It was just about 4 p.m., and she’d be driving from the hospital where she worked in Kent. It was as if I’d been physically slapped. I felt the breath knock out of me.
He’d somehow hacked into the feed from her work implant. He had audio and visual access for her corneal graft.
“Of the two, your wife Mary’s implant was the easiest to hack. The interface from Saint Joes uses a pretty insecure protocol. Most of the doctors have an extra layer of security, but the lower-tier nurses have the cheap stuff installed. As long as your wife isn’t wandering around someplace off the grid, we can track and see her position.”
“What the fuck, man?” I said.
The implants weren’t supposed to be accessible or recording outside of the hospital. They were encrypted and were only supposed to be accessed if an inquiry was made about patient care. Mary hated that she had them, but they were a necessary evil if one wanted to work in the healthcare field.
I watched as Mary slammed the steering wheel in an all-too-familiar motion, swearing at the car in front of her that swerved into her lane. The blue light above the car’s brake lights indicated the vehicle as a selfie. Mary hated sharing traffic with self-driving cars.
“Fucking robots,” she muttered.
Anatoly flicked his wrist, and the view changed.
This channel had no picture, but the distinctive sound of snoring filled the room, indicating the owner of this implant was asleep, and their eyes were closed.
My eyes caught the line of text at the upper left of the screen.
Prisoner 401147B
Hudson, Ruth.
“She sleeps most of the day, since she got out,” Anatoly was saying. “It’s a sign of depression. Her implants were taken offline six months ago when she was released. Getting them powered back up without her knowledge was a bit of a chore, let me tell you. But we got it done. She’s doing well, by the way. The doctor at the center thinks she has a good chance of staying clean this time. The visual quality of her implants is crap, but she has the bloodstream monitors. You’ll know straight away if she falls off the wagon.”
I stared, flabbergasted at the screen.
My daughter was currently in a halfway house in Phoenix. She’d been released from prison a few months back. She was supposed to graduate in the morning, and she was to board a plane to Seattle, where she would move in with Ruth and me.
I couldn’t breathe. I was having a panic attack. The word Unsteady appeared once again in my vision.
“Why are you doing this?”
“We have done this for two reasons. One is to give you a view of the outside world, so you know your wife and daughter are all right. You have access to television also, though you’ll be rationed to an hour a day. The second is to prove to you that we can get to either of them at a moment’s notice. If you do as we ask, we guarantee they will be left alone. If you excel at what you do, we will further make certain that they will both share in some of the profits of our venture. We’ll not only pay off your back mortgage, we will buy the loan on that shitty apartment of yours outright and tear it right up. If you defy us or refuse to participate, you will be forced to watch as first Mary and then Ruth are captured, then tortured, and then eventually converted into a consumable for our project. We have invested a significant amount of capital into getting you here, Duke. We plan on protecting that investment. Please don’t force us to resort to extreme measures.”
“But why me?” I gasped. “I’m a nobody. I’m not even a good artist. I’m a goddamned hack.”
Anatoly shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You were handpicked by the client.”
Jesus Christ, this had to be a nightmare.
I stepped forward, and I punched Anatoly in the face with all of my strength.
It felt as if I’d just struck a brick. My vision flashed red. I’m pretty sure I’d broken my hand. Above, my health bar ticked down.
Anatoly laughed.
His hand shot out, crushing my ribs as I was bodily picked up and pressed against the back wall. I could feel the ribs in my undead body creak and crack. An ominous red flashing filled my vision as my health bar nosedived.
In my stomach, I felt Banksy the gut hook thrash.
I couldn’t breathe. My chest caved in. Pain spiraled across my ribcage, like cracking glass.
“Don’t ever think to touch me again,” Anatoly growled. “I do not like being touched.”
He shoved, and my vision went black.
You have died!
Half your experience toward level two lost!
I fell. Down I went, falling and falling as I flailed my arms. I still couldn’t breathe. My chest felt broken open, and air rushed through it as if Anatoly had punched a hole clean through my frail body.
Spinning red lights filled my vision, and it soon became clear I fell within a tight, bottomless tunnel. The red lights were fires. First torches and then the walls themselves were fire, rushing by as I plummeted.
I smashed to a stop, my body slamming into the sudden ground like a meteor crashing from the heavens. I tumbled and crunched, my neck and legs and arms all shattering with the impact, my insides liquefying within me. I could see, I could feel, and the pain did not falter. I’d been taken far beyond the normal realm of pain, past the point where a person in the real world would’ve lost consciousness or fallen into shock. I lay ruined on top of a pile of writhing, screaming, burning bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, but my jaw did not do as I commanded.
The fire consumed me.
This is what hell is.
I blinked.
The pain was gone, just like that. It remained, though, burned into my memory.
Pain does that to a person. It tattoos itself into your memory, deep, bright, and burning, so much so that the remembrance of it is just as bad.
You have died once.
I opened my eyes.
Entering Bast – Player Base. Restricted area. Access granted by brand.
Guardian Health: Unknown. Scan recommended.
This base is owned by player Anatoly.
This home base is your current regeneration spot.
Anatoly stood, grinning down at me.
I looked, stupidly, at the naked corpse with the ruined chest lying on the ground nearby. A timer ticked over the body’s head with a notification Corpse—Duke.
A notification window popped up as I stared at the body. Body will disappear after two minutes unless it is interacted with by another player or NPC, or upon the generation of another corpse.
Anatoly grinned down at me.
“You were probably too in shock to fully appreciate how exquisite that death sequence is. You fell down the burning hole for twenty seconds before you regenerated. The default is 10 seconds. I just adjusted it up to two minutes. Every time you displease me, I will add ten seconds to the sequence.”
“Fuck you,” I said, my voice creaking.
His gauntleted fist smashed at my face. I didn’t even feel the death-causing in
jury this time.
I did, however, feel the fire.
You have died two times.
I didn’t say anything after waking up the second time. All I could think about was Mary, screaming.
This is too much. This is too much.
Words can brand themselves onto you, too.
“Are you ready to listen now?” Anatoly asked. He sat in the leather chair by the fire, waving his hand. It appeared he’d been doing something on a screen only he could see.
I’d awakened on the floor in the middle of the room, not even on the bed like one usually does when they regenerate at a home base.
“You can’t do this,” I said, sitting up. My stomach rumbled, flashing with pain.
He sighed. “We’ve already established not only can I do this, but I already have. You need to get past the anger and denial stage. Don’t bother with the bargaining stage, either. I don’t remember what the other stages are, but I’m pretty sure the last one is acceptance. The sooner you move to that one, the sooner we can get you comfortable.”
I glared at him, my mind racing. I was absolutely fucked, and we both knew it.
“What’s going to happen next?”
He sighed again, this time pulling himself to his feet. “This is a more acceptable question.” He moved toward the kitchen. He reached into one of the cabinets and pulled out an apple. He took a bite.
“Worm surgeons are one of a few races who don’t sleep in this game. That’s unfortunate for you. Time will move much more slowly. But you also don’t need to eat, which is good. I won’t have to keep you stocked up. I already have a food box for me and another for Clara. I won’t need to invest in one for you. You just need the soul power you can get from your gut hook.”
“Who’s Clara?”
He waved his hand. “You’ll meet her soon enough. She’s out on a field trip right now. When they return in a couple days you’ll get to work. I gotta fly to Boston in the morning, so I’ll leave you to your own devices. You probably won’t see too much of me over the next couple of weeks. They’ll tell you what to do next. It’s in your best interest to do as they say. The client has free reign to control your behavior.”
“A few days?” I asked, a new panic rising. “What about me? I’ll starve to death!”
“I already told you, worm surgeons don’t need to eat.” He paused then laughed. “Oh, you mean you. The meat world you. You’re in a modified Honda Labs penal rig, fully stocked. You don’t need to worry about that. It has six months' worth of sustenance and has some great new technology built in that’ll keep your muscles from atrophying. The first few test subjects had this issue where their meat bodies would go into shock after just a bit of extreme fun. Don’t worry though. These new rigs have squashed that bug pretty good. Here.”
He waved his hands in the air, motioning with his fingers, movement I now recognized as him delving into his developer menus.
“I’ve given you read-only access to the state of your rig, so you’ll know how Duke prime is doing. You’ll also have access to some web channels, so you can keep tabs on the outside world. And of course, you have the Mary channel and the Ruth channel. But like I said, you only get an hour a day.”
“I’m going to get out of this, and I am going to rip you to shreds,” I said, anger rising again. I kept fluctuating between terror, anger, and an incredible, pounding feeling of what? Loss? I’d only felt anywhere close to this once before in my life. That was worse. If you can survive that, you can survive this.
“You’re at two minutes and twenty seconds,” Anatoly said. He said it absently, like he’d already dismissed me. “You’re free to wander around, but if you step outside of my base, you’ll be devoured alive in minutes. You’re a level one in an end-game zone. You don’t get experience for anything but killing things and performing surgery, and that’s not going to happen. So you’re going to remain level one for the remainder of your stay. I’ll be back in a week, maybe two, to check on you.”
And just like that, he was gone. He disappeared, leaving an outline of his large form floating in the air. The words Anatoly – Offline appeared over the outline, and together they faded away over the next few seconds.
That falling sensation, the one that occurred upon death, it was a part of me now.
“Fuck,” I said, to the empty room.
Chapter 6
The first thing I did was figure out how to work the view screen. I spent the next hour, not moving, just flipping back and forth between my wife and daughter. Ruth remained asleep, so I focused on my wife. Mary was now home, sitting on the couch in the living room, playing a game on her phone while two of our roommates argued in the background over whose turn it was to change the cat litter. I watched as she sent me a text asking where I was. She wouldn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. Not yet.
The screen flipped off on its own. A 24-hour countdown appeared in the channel changing menu on my display. Shit. I’d used up my daily one-hour allotment already.
I screamed into the empty room. I pounded on the wall. I’d only been here an hour, and I already felt my sanity start to slip.
I spent the next hour exploring every corner and area of the base. Bast—the giant monster I now lived inside of—seemed to be doing nothing but wandering around, occasionally roaring, which shook the whole apartment. I’d become mostly used to the uncertain movements, though my stomach still lurched from time to time. The hideous smell remained, but like Anatoly said I would, I’d already gotten used to it.
The paintings, including the Manet remained on the walls. Upon closer examination, the Manet had an oddly pixelated look to it, but I suspected it was more of a result of the mapping software that had copied Anatoly’s apartment.
The flesh ceiling rippled with movement, a constant reminder I was in this terrible place. It appeared train-sized serpents scuttled about outside. Parasites. I wondered what would happen if I attempted to administer my antiparasitic talent. Something bad, probably.
The kitchen did not hold any large appliances, unlike the real-world version. Where the refrigerator and oven stood in the real world were just more cabinets. The sink remained, and I tested it. It worked, though it appeared it only gave cold water. The cupboards were all empty save for two, rectangular boxes nestled inside of the larger cabinets where the fridge once stood. I slid open the door on the first, and a message appeared.
This is a level 5 human food box. It is attuned to player Anatoly. The box is not locked, but the food is not compatible with worm surgeons. Do you wish to extract food anyway?
I clicked yes. An orange magically appeared in the empty box, coming into existence like it was being beamed in with a Star Trek transporter. I grasped the orange, examining it. Anatoly had extracted an apple last time. Was it something different every time, or was there a way to pick what you wanted? A message appeared warning me that I couldn’t eat it. A wastebasket sat near the sink, and I tossed the orange in. A grinding noise shook the basket, and it was gone. I spent some more time examining the food box, and I found if I placed my hand on top of the object, sliding my hand into the space between the box and cabinet, I could pull up a second menu with multiple options like Upgrade, Remove, Lock, Options, and Stats. All of the selections were grayed out.
I moved to the second box. I opened it and received a similar message.
This is a level 2 fae food box. It is attuned to player Clara. The box is not locked, but the food is not compatible with worm surgeons. Do you wish to extract food anyway?
A fae? That was an elf-like humanoid. I clicked yes just to see what sort of food they ate.
What appeared to be a rice crispy treat plopped into the box. I picked it up, sniffing it. It smelled delicious. I was pretty sure it was a rice crispy treat. Despite the warning, I took a tentative bite.
Warning! You’ve been poisoned!
Damage taken! Damage taken!
My health bar, which had been gradually ticking down on its own, now star
ted to rocket toward zero.
Damage taken! Damage taken!
I fell to my knees, an incredible pain welling in my chest. Banksy thrashed about inside of me. Holy shit. I was going to die again.
I can self-heal. I had a full bar of soul power. I made the karate chop motion and pulled up the spell menu. I hadn’t spent too much time in this menu yet, and I awkwardly tried to select Reconstitute. My mind accidentally clicked Upcycle, and a message appeared.
You have not selected a valid upgrade. Spell did not cast.
Damnit! Pain washed over me as I tried to click Reconstitute.
You have died!
Half your experience toward level two lost!
Zero points lost.
Two minutes and twenty seconds of hellfire might as well have been two hours.
I awakened in the middle of the room, sobbing.
Holy shit. It felt as if bugs crawled all over me. Burning, biting, unbearable.
I stayed like that for some time, not moving, not knowing what to do. I needed to avoid dying. I wouldn’t be able to endure that again. I had to get out of here. My nerves continued to scream with phantom pain.
Are you… are you my daddy?
The voice spoke in my mind. It was the voice of a little boy. I felt the worm in my stomach twitch.
What the hell?
“Hello?” I said. My voice echoed in the chamber.
When you die, I also die if I am inside of you. It hurts to die. Also, I’m hungry, daddy. I am eating, but I’m not getting full.
“Uh, Banksy?” I said.
Is that my name? Banksy? I like it. I need food, daddy. I am eating you, but it’s not working. What do I do?
Shit. Anatoly hadn’t told me the gut hook would talk.
“I’m a worm surgeon,” I said. “You can’t feed off of me.”
How will I live, then? I need to eat.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But don’t call me that.”
You are my daddy, daddy. What else can I call you?
“I don’t know. Call me Duke.”
I’m not going to do that. You’re my daddy.
My stomach lurched in pain.
Banksy has low health.
Kaiju- Battlefield Surgeon Page 5
