“No, you don’t understand it. If you kill me here, I’ll revive in the real world, but then I’ll be a dead man anyway because I’ll be beaten up to death.”
“What? I don’t get it. You’re babbling. I can barely understand you. Get a grip on yourself. Tell me what you’re talking about and probably I won’t kill ya.”
The player’s mood visibly lightened and his eyes lit up.
“Do you promise not to kill me if I tell you everything?”
“Yeah, I promise. Spill the beans.”
He opened his mouth. Then a scared look appeared on his face.
“Wait a sec,” he exclaimed. “What about those two guys? What if they barge in this room and take us by surprise while we’re distracted by my story?”
“You mean this guy was not alone?” I asked gesturing behind me toward a corpse in the corridor.
“Yeah, he teamed up with two other guys. They cornered me here. I managed to kill one of them and ward off the other two down the stairs. Where are those two assholes now? Did you kill them or not?”
“Are you sure there were three of them? Because I took out three guys in this building. One was on the ground floor and the other two attacked me in the staircase.”
“I don’t know, man. Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t have time to count those bastards up, y’knew. I was busy trying to stay alive and give them the slip. ”
Then his face reflected a mixture of amazement, disbelief, and even a bit of admiration.
“Wait a minute. You said you killed three guys on your way up here?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you kill them all by yourself?”
“Yep.”
“Wow. You must be a really good player, man.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. Now tell your story.”
“Okay.”
He took a moment to gather his thoughts and then began.
“I’m paralyzed from the waist down,” he revealed. “I mean, in real life, of course. I don’t feel my legs and can’t walk. I use a wheelchair to move around.”
Vic Morgan stopped speaking. I waited for a few seconds and then prompted him, “Go on.”
“I live with my uncle now,” he continued, “in Lincoln Park.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
I also realized Vic Morgan and I lived in the same city. Yet I omitted to reveal this to the player.
Vic Morgan clammed up again.
“So you live with your wealthy uncle,” I prompted him again. “Lucky you.”
“Yeah. Kinda.”
“Kinda?”
“Truth be told, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about me. The only reason that he invited me to live with him is me being a hacker.”
“You are a hacker, huh?”
“Yep. I’ve always loved computers, programming, and stuff like that. Unfortunately, my uncle always knew about my passion. He also knew that I could hack into computer systems. It’s just my big mouth. One day I boasted about my hacking skills to him. I wanted to impress my rich uncle, y’knew. However, he didn’t seem to really care about it. At least, at that time. But a few months ago, he came over to my place and started asking questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“About hacking and stuff. How good I was at it, what I could hack and what I couldn’t, and such.”
I was starting to realize where this was going.
“Then he asked if I could hack Battle Royale Online. I’d never tried to and so I told him. He asked me to find out and said he’d come over again in a few days. At that time, I was elated by this. My rich uncle whom I’d always wanted to impress asked me to do something for him! I could barely believe it. So I got to work. Little did I know what I was about to get myself into!”
“Go on.”
“True to his word, he soon visited me again. I told him I found a breach in the game’s security, which might allow a player to revive in a pod after getting killed in the game, safe and sound, and then to play another game when it launched. The trick was building and using your own pod instead of using one of the gaming ones the developers provided to the players. My uncle asked if I could build such a pod. When I answered that yes, I could do it if I had enough money and resources for this project. Then my uncle asked me to build the pod. He was very polite at that moment. He said that I would have as much money for this project as I needed. He also added that when I was done, he would generously reward me for my work. Sure enough, I agreed to build the pod for him. And then the nightmare began.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like I said, he invited me to live with him in his big house while I’d be working on the pod. Again, I agreed. Yet as it turned out, to build such a pod wasn’t an easy job. Sure, I knew I was likely to encounter some difficulties, but I didn’t expect my uncle to monitor all my actions. He just wouldn’t get out of my face and always hurried me to get the job done. He was such a pain in the ass. His constant monitoring my actions and hurrying me up did little to speed up the process. On the contrary, it only hindered my work.”
“Did you try to man up, stood up to your uncle, and to tell him to lay off so you could concentrate on your work?”
“Of course I did. Well, kinda. But sure enough, he wouldn’t listen. He made me work on the pod around the clock, constantly snapping at me and hurrying me up.”
Vic Morgan lapsed into silence for a couple of moments and then continued.
“Only then did I get to know my uncle. He’s a really bad person. When he realized his constant hurrying me up didn’t work, he started to threaten to kill me. And he wasn’t just baffling. He meant it. He’s an evil man. He held me at gunpoint the whole time. Not literally, but almost literally. I could easily see the telltale bulge of a pistol beneath his closing. And he knew that I saw it. He wanted me to see it.”
“It’s my understanding that your uncle was in financial difficulties and wanted you to build the pod so he could cheat Battle Royale Online to fix his money problems?”
“Yeah. I don’t know every detail of the jam he got himself into. What I do know is that he ran into big debt and needed lots of money to pay off his debt and he had to do it real soon at that. If he didn’t, he’d lose everything he had, his house, his cars, everything.”
“So I take it you’ve built the pod.”
“I’m here in the game right now, having the pleasure of talking to you, so yeah obviously I’ve built the pod.”
“Don’t get smart with me,” I warned the player, raising my shotgun to remind him that his life was on the line.
“Chill, man,” he said as his face turned white. “That big gun of yours just makes me nervous, that’s all. Maybe you should put it away. You may fire it accidentally and kill me.”
“Don’t you worry, dude. It won’t fire unless I want it to. So go on with your story.”
“You remind me of my uncle right now,” he said nervously. “Okay. So after I built the pod, my uncle demanded that I test the pod out. So when the next Battle Royale Online game started, I had to join it through my pod. After I got killed in the game, I revived safe and sound inside my pod in my uncle’s house.”
“So it worked.”
“Yeah. Then the nightmare only worsened. He demanded that I play this game till I earned a few million dollars, which meant that I had to win several times. But the problem was that I was a hacker, not a gamer. I’d never played virtual reality video games before.”
“It shows.”
“Also, if I got killed in the game, I woke up in my uncle’s house but couldn’t return to the current game. So I had to wait a while till the next game took place, which typically happened in a month or so. I’ve been living in my pissed-off uncle’s house for about six months. I’ve played the game several times but never been the last man standing. Not even close. I ain’t no gamer.”
“I hear ya, but you got only yourself to blame. Yo
u dug your own grave. You shouldn’t have lent your uncle a hand with cheating this game.”
“How could I know that my uncle was such a violent asshole?”
“I’m afraid you missed the point. You shoulda turned your uncle down as soon as he asked you to build the pod. But you didn’t. You gotta admit you had this punishment coming.”
“Cut me some slack, man. I’m the victim here, don’t you see? Please, have pity on me, man.”
“Why should I? People die in this game. They die for good. Each player has only one life here. But not you. You are quite another matter. When you die in the game, you wake up in your pod, safe and sound. You’re cheating. You got a huge advantage over the others.”
“I wouldn’t say I’ve got an advantage, man. Like I said, I ain’t a gamer. I don’t have any gaming skills whatsoever.”
“By the way, what about the developers? You play this game over and over again and they are still none the wiser?”
“That’s correct. They can’t do jack to find me.”
“Wait a minute, I just realized something. How come there’s a rumor going around about you having won several games?”
“I have no idea, man. I wasn’t the one who spread that rumor, that’s for sure.”
I thought that perhaps the developers accidentally told some of their friends about some player using the nickname Vic Morgan in every single one Battle Royale Online game for the past several months. Spreading from person to person, the rumor must have been changing each time it was told, which ultimately resulted in its altering to the point where people started to believe that Vic Morgan had been the last man standing several times in a row.
“Vic Morgan ain’t your real name, is it?”
“Of course not. It’s just a pseudonym.”
“Why do you always use the same nickname?” I wanted to know. “Is there any special reason for that?”
“Nah. Guess I’m just too lazy to think up a new nickname every time I start a new game.”
“Or probably you neglect to take a few seconds to think of a new alias from terminal stupidity.”
“Hey man, no need to be rude. I don’t waste my time trying to conceive a new nickname because I’ve got bigger fish to fry, y’know. Winning the game, y’know. Trying to figure out a way to stay alive, and such. That’s my first and foremost priority.”
“Do you think the developers are dumb? They shoulda long since gotten aware of you. Guess they’ve been trying to find you since the very first day of your popping up on their radar.”
“No worries, man. I’ve thought of everything. Always change my ID-address, and such. They can’t find me. I’m not afraid of them.”
“Probably you should.”
“The developers don’t worry me in the least, man. But you’re right to some extent. I am scared. Not of the developers but of my uncle. I do realize he didn’t kill me yet only because he needed me to build the pod. Now that it’s already built he doesn’t need me anymore. I can tell he’s sick of me being unable to win the game. He’s plotting something. He said if I didn’t win this time, he’d beat me to death. And he wasn’t bluffing. You shoulda seen his eyes. He was dead serious. He meant every word he said.”
“Can’t you get away from him?”
“He locked me in his house. And I’m wheelchair-bound, remember? If I’d had the slightest chance of escaping, I’d long since have been outta my uncle’s home.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m scared, man. I know what my uncle’s up to. He’s gonna kill me if I don’t win this game. Then he’ll find some guy with gaming experience and have him play the game through my pod. He may have found such a guy already. He doesn’t need me now that the pod’s built. If you kill me, I’m a dead man, for sure.”
“Not my problem.”
“Please, man. Don’t kill me. Do you remember what you told me back there on the roof? There are lots of players in the game. If you let me go, we’ll most likely never meet each other again.”
“Tell me something,” I said. “You’re a hacker, right? There’s a person in the game who I care for a great deal. That’s a girl. She shouldn’t be here. I don’t know where she is now or if she’s still alive. Can you find her? Better yet, can you get her out of the game somehow? If you do this for me, I’ll promise not to kill you.”
“I’ve already told you what I can do and what I can’t,” he whined. “I don’t die in real life when I got killed in the game because I use my own modified pod to illegally connect to the game. That’s all I can do in terms of cheating in this game. I’d be glad to help your friend out, but this is beyond my control. I’m sorry, man.”
He was telling the truth. Or he was an excellent actor, which I doubted. He was too scared to lie to me. I was sure everything he had just told me was true. To make up this whole story, he would have to be a really good actor, not to mention have a vivid imagination and be very resourceful.
I didn’t like this guy a bit. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to take him out. I had known that I wouldn’t finish him off the moment I wounded and found him lying on the floor, bleeding. It wasn’t in my nature to kill people in cold blood. Sure, he had tried to ice me himself, but now that he was harmless, I just couldn’t kill him.
I recollected my recent encounter with a guy following the dirt road. I had hidden myself in the undergrowth and waited until I had a clean shot on the player. Yet I neglected to kill him, which resulted in my almost getting killed by the grenade. What if something like that happened if I let Vic Morgan go?
My common sense told me that I should croak this player to avoid problems that might occur at some point if I elected not to punch his ticket.
Yet against my better judgment, I decided to let him go. This guy sucked at the game. Even if I met him again, I could easily take him out without breaking a sweet, right? So what could possibly go wrong?
“What’s in your bag?” I asked.
“My pistol, some ammo, and a couple of auto-injectors,” Vic Morgan replied.
“Give the bag to me.”
He hesitated for a bit, then unslung his bag, and hold it out to me. I dumped the contents of the bag onto the table next to me, stowed all the pistol bullets and the auto-injectors away in my own bag. I then glanced at the pistol. It was inferior to my Desert Eagle, so I tossed the bag and the empty pistol back to Vic Morgan. He managed to snatch the bag out of the air, but the pistol dropped to the floor with a clang.
“I’m gonna count to ten,” I said, “then I’ll shoot. If you don’t wanna be croaked, get the heck outta here.”
“You stripped me of all my bullets, man,” he whined. “What am I gonna do when I run into someone?”
“One,” I started counting. “Two.”
“Come on, man. Gimme my bullets back.”
“Three. Four.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Five.” I racked the slide and pointed my shotgun at Vic Morgan. “Six.”
“Alright alright, man, I’m leaving. Geez.”
“Seven.”
I lifted the shotgun to eye level, slid my index finger into the trigger guard, and sighted down the barrel, which finally got my point across. Vic Morgan leaped to his feet and dashed across the room.
“Eight.”
The player reached the door and was through. Lowering my shotgun, I crossed the room, walked through the door, and looked down the corridor. By that time, Vic Morgan had already reached the staircase. He glanced my way, saw me staring back at him, and barreled down the stairs. I listened to the pounding of the retreating footsteps of the player, then returned to the room, and walked up to the window facing the street.
A second later, Vic Morgan burst onto the street. He glanced back and up, saw me in the window, and hurried toward a sedan parked at the curb. After climbing in behind the wheel, he gunned the engine. The car lurched forward, barreled down the street, and soon disappeared f
rom sight.
Everything fell silent.
I scoured the other rooms but found nothing of interest. I then left the building and spent about fifteen minutes painstakingly searching the other buildings in the town, collecting any useful items I found. Yet there was no sign of my girlfriend. Now that Vic Morgan had driven away, there was no one in this place except for me. I wondered if Jennifer was still alive.
When I returned to the building, where I had met Vic Morgan a message emerged in the log.
> Be advised that the Circle will begin to collapse in 04min59sec…
I took the stairs all the way up to the roof, walked up to its edge, and surveyed the street down below. From up there, the whole town could be easily seen. If a car appeared on one of the roads leading to this place, I would immediately notice it.
Before my eyes popped up another message.
> Be advised that the Circle collapse is imminent. Relocate to the safe zone.
I brought up the map, which appeared in my HUD. The town of Pineapple was outside the inner ring now. When the Circle shrank to its size, this whole town would be swallowed up by the Red Zone.
I decided to stay here and wait until the last possible moment to get into the safe zone. I knew that Jennifer would’ve done the same thing.
I looked over my shoulder at the red wall. It advanced on the town at the unsettling rate of speed. It wouldn’t be long before Pineapple got plunged into the red zone. I shifted my gaze toward the street below again.
Jennifer, where are you?
Chapter Five
The Circle kept shrinking. Half of the town had already been swallowed up by the Red Zone. In a few minutes, the rest of the town would become an unsafe area to be in. With each passing second, I was getting more and more sure that Jennifer would never show up, yet I stubbornly stayed put.
I heard a sound to the east and looked that way. As I stared to the east, I saw a black speck appear on the horizon. It got larger as it moved in the direction of the town and soon the spot took on a distinct form of a car. I then made out two more vehicles behind the first one. The noise of the three approaching cars grew louder and louder.
Battle Royale Online Page 8
