by Brian Simons
“I mean it, Vin, stop.” I dropped my basket of leaves and stared him down. He didn’t turn away from his lite bush.
“Now you sound like her,” he said. “Stop, Vin, stop. No, Vin, don’t stop!” He affected a high pitched voice, mocking the sound of whatever woman he had in mind.
I punched him in the face. I only knocked off 4 HP but I did split his lip. Then I realized he wasn’t just bigger than me, he was a melee fighter. A Level 17 Mace Fighter. He clocked me in the jaw for 48 HP. Lucky for me, he didn’t have a mace handy.
I tumbled backward and landed on the ground. Vin pounced on top of me and punched me in the face again, and again. He had all the instincts of a brawler. The guards pulled him off of me before he could pummel me to death.
“Fuck you, man,” Vin said, spitting bloodied saliva at me. “Can’t even take a fucking joke.”
I lay there, my head resting against the dirt. A joke. A cruel, immature, not-funny-at-all joke.
The guards scooped me up by my arms and dragged me toward a small hut in the middle of the planation. Alonso stepped outside.
“Tsk, tsk,” he said. “Starting schoolyard fights now. What are we going to do with you?”
What did he want, an apology?
“Nothing to say for yourself? Fine. Take the rest of the day to heal up in the barracks. You’ll pick up tomorrow where you left off.”
“Sir,” one of the guards said, “shouldn’t we put him in isolation?”
“No, no. I want Mr. Cross to see what he’s missing out on. I think he’ll be better behaved tomorrow.”
The guards dragged me to a low building a few hundred feet behind Alonso’s lookout hut. They brought me to a cot and dropped me onto it.
I rested for hours, alone in that room with my thoughts. My hands were shaking, which I attributed at first to the adrenaline of the fight. When it didn’t subside, I realized I was jonesing for another hit of lite.
The sun set, turning the white walls of the barracks orange, until they faded to shadows. It was dark by the time the other workers started piling in. Each took up a cot. Many were chatting or joking around with each other. Then the guards came in to administer everyone’s nightly dose.
One by one, the workers took their drug and quieted down. Unlike the morning, when the guards gave out only a small hit, they didn’t force the workers to spit out their leaf. They just left everyone to their silent reveries. The guards headed toward the front door of the barracks.
“What about me?” I asked. Again my brain screamed to stay away from the drug, but my body was in control now. I was operating on instinct. This drug would correct whatever imbalance I had, and would give me at least a glimpse of Nadine again.
“You were a bad boy,” the guard said. “Remember that tomorrow.”
This was the Ripcord equivalent of being sent to bed without dinner. My tremors were getting worse, as was the sweating. I felt like my thoughts were being short-circuited. I just needed a little leaf and everything would be ok again. How could I get one? I could fish it out of someone’s mouth and pop it into my own, but then there’d be another fight. I didn’t know what they’d do to me then. At some point, I might become too much trouble.
I could go outside and get my own. I was dying of thirst in a sea of leaves. I went to the windows, but they were all covered in bars. The front door was locked. There was no way out until tomorrow when the guards released us into the fields again.
I climbed back onto my cot and cried. All I wanted was to go back to that beach and get far away from this field of drugs and broken people. My stomach knotted up. I couldn’t stop my arms and legs from shaking.
I wasn’t sure if I slept at all that night.
The next day, I walked past Vin at the head of the line, and took my place at the end. When the guard put a leaf to my mouth I practically bit his finger trying to get my fix. A few blissful moments later, I had stopped shaking and a guard scooped the leaf from my mouth.
No more Nadine until I picked my daily leaves.
The afternoon sun was hot, and I worked as fast as I could, but my basket filled slowly. I set it down for a moment to pick more leaves when someone kicked it over, sending my day’s work into a dusty scatter along the ground.
“Hey!” I yelled. I had visions of another night on my cot without drugs. It had been a guard that kicked my basket over, and now he held a worker by the upper arm.
“You think we wouldn’t see that you little thief?” he said.
“No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the worker said.
“Give it,” the guard said, “all of it!”
The worker took a handful of leaves from his pouch and handed them to the guard. The guard stabbed a sword through the worker, leaving his HP bar an angry shade of red. “Next time I chop off your head,” he yelled. “Alonso has no patience for thieves!”
The worker knelt on the ground, bleeding from his sword wound. “Up,” the guard yelled, “you can bleed out in isolation and not all over the product. Everyone else back to work!” The guard dragged the bleeding worker toward the hole in the ground that I had only recently spent a night in myself.
I stooped down to gather the leaves I had plucked earlier.
And that was that. I spent my days plucking leaves, Growing plants, and chewing lite. I earned XP gradually as I rejuvenated Alonso’s lite plants for him. With nowhere to go, and no incentive to strengthen my green magic, I let my skill points and attribute points accumulate. I didn’t bother to upgrade my skills. All I wanted was to quell the sweats and shakes with another hit of glorious lite.
It could have been weeks, or maybe months that went by with no change.
Then we were attacked.
11
The day started like any other, with a quick dose of chew to kick things off. No sooner did I spit out that first leaf than arrows started sailing over the walls of the compound.
A blaring horn from one of the watch towers served as a call to arms. Guards opened metal boxes that rested against Alonso’s lookout hut. I hadn’t paid any mind to the rusty crates before. They were war chests, full of whatever blades and bludgeons the compound used to protect itself. One guard passed weapons out to other guards, who ran in all directions to arm the workers.
A guard thrust a small knife into my hand and then ran away. The weapon looked foreign in my fingers. I hadn’t wielded anything other than my own magic in Ripcord.
Rusty Switchblade: Power +2.
One of the other workers took an arrow in the back and stumbled toward the barracks. I followed the guards and the other workers as we rushed toward the front gate, past Alonso’s mansion and the sticky, sappy trees in front of it. The gate was open, and the workers poured out front with their weapons raised.
This was my chance to escape. I sped through the front gate, but there were dozens of people in torn clothing and battle-worn armor charging toward us. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“Raiders,” Vin said. Of course it was Vin.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“They’re trying to raid the plantation,” he said, “and steal all of the lite for themselves and whatever else they can get their hands on. They’ll kill us to get in there. Fight with your life.”
Ten minutes earlier and I would still be shaking for want of my morning lite, the drug my captors forced on me. Now, steadily avoiding withdrawal, I was called on to protect their drug operation with my life. I wished I had a Ripcord as a backup to Ripcord.
I stood near the front gate, my knife in hand. Arrows flew overhead and small pellets of fire fell from the sky. One landed on my shoulder, but I patted the fire out as soon as it caught. Then a bolt of fire snaked through the air, red and sizzling, slamming into the closest tree. Rather than catch fire, the plant seemed to absorb the heat. A glistening sheen formed along the trunk where the fire bolt had landed.
Dozens of workers had rushed toward the battle, seemingly eager to protect the compound, or at least prove
to Alonso’s men that they were team players. I wasn’t so eager.
“Come on, man,” Vin said. He hung back too, though I didn’t know why. He was a melee player of a much higher level. He should be out there.
The guards and workers held the wave of attackers at bay a hundred feet from the front gate.
“I’m a prisoner here, Vin,” I said. “I’m not risking my life for this place.”
“You don’t get it,” Vin said. “If it weren’t for Alonso we’d all be dead. I’m Level 17. I’m real good with a mace. I was no match for what was out there. Like the Stricken. I can’t go up against that mess alone.”
Vin leaned in toward me, his face as serious as I’ve ever seen in it. “But it’s more than just the Stricken out there. This game, it’s full of creatures designed to prey on your weaknesses, to lure you in and kill you dead. It’s mental as much as it is physical. It’s not just that the game gets inside your head. You’re inside its head. I’ve seen some strange things out there that killed players stronger than me. At least here, together, we can survive.”
“This isn’t surviving,” I said. “I don’t belong here, I should be looking for Nadine.”
Vin nodded. “Life behind walls isn’t great, but I’d rather dream small and live, than dream big and die. Still, that’s my choice. And the drugs are good.”
I nodded. Maybe he wasn’t a total cretin after all.
A few attackers broke through the front line and charged at us. We were all that stood in the way between the dusty steppe and Alsonso’s drug farm.
“I’ll take the bigger one,” Vin said, raising his mace and charging forward at a Level 18 Spear Fighter. She held her polearm in both hands across her body, blocking Vin’s attack and holding his weapon at bay. Vin’s mace was a dull gray, but the spikes covering the large metal ball on the end were brown. I chose not to think about whose blood had dried there. I had my own problem to worry about.
A man in tattered brown pants and a chainmail vest swung a whip in the air. A Level 13 Whip Fighter.
I should run. I should just tear off along the outer wall of the plantation and disappear on the horizon. The raiders didn’t want me, they wanted drugs and loot. I certainly didn’t want to tangle with this guy.
He, however, was intent on tangling with me.
In the blink of an eye, I felt a stinging pain in my calf. He had sliced his weapon through the air, licked me in the back of the leg for 57 HP, and retracted the whip. He was ready for another go.
I dropped my knife in my inventory bag and I ran. I might not have the stamina to outrun him forever, but running sure as hell beat getting smacked again. He followed. It was too much to hope that he would just ignore me and head into the plantation. He wanted the XP first for an easy kill.
A burning sensation along my back told me I wasn’t out of range. I yelled out, worried that the loss of another 65 HP doomed me to lose this fight no matter how well I could fake hand-to-hand combat. I was down to 58 HP before I had even tried to fight back. I spun around and faced my attacker as he readied the whip again.
I charged at him. When he flicked his wrist, I was already out of position. The air cracked behind me as I pushed his shoulders with both hands, throwing him to the ground. I pounced on top of him, straddling his waist and holding his hands down. We struggled for a while, me trying to pin him in place and him trying to break free for one final lash that would drain me of my last few health points.
My one advantage was that I didn’t need my hands for weaponry. I summoned a cloud of pollen and concentrated it on the space between the two of us. My vision grew yellow as the pollen obscured my enemy’s face. He started to cough lightly, and I did the same. Apparently I wasn’t immune to my own magic.
He raised his knee behind me, but he couldn’t force me off of him. He tried to roll to the side, but I held firm, forcing itchy yellow tree dust into his lungs, down his throat. I turned my head to breathe fresher air.
That’s when he thrust his hips up, bucking against me with enough strength to topple me over. I landed in the dirt. I barely had time to look up before he was on top of me, his whip cord pressed against my neck.
I didn’t have to worry about breathing in any more pollen. I would be lucky to breathe anything at all.
My arms weren’t strong enough to push him off of my neck. I kept churning out a cloud of wispy yellow fog, hoping it would eventually accumulate into some debilitating debuff for the whip fighter, but he didn’t seem any worse off from one moment to the next.
I fumbled in my inventory bag for my knife while I watched my stamina bar hit zero from lack of breathing. Then my HP bar started to dwindle. Oxygen deprivation was stealing my life.
I found the knife and curled my fingers tight around the handle. I brought it up to my neck to cut myself free of the cord held taut against my throat. With a sawing motion I was able to… nothing. His weapon was too strong for my two-inch blade to damage at all.
I’d seen what death in the game looked like. Roy vanished. The curlynxes vanished. I was going to suffocate here and then disappear without leaving a corpse behind. There would be no grave for Nadine to find, no way for her to know she should even grieve.
My attacker’s head collided with my forehead as he slumped forward, relaxing his grip on the whip. I gasped air into my lungs and then forced it out again just as quickly, blowing away the remnants of my ill-fated pollen cloud. Another fast breath in, out.
Vin stood over me, his mace held upright. He had slammed the hilt into the back of the whip fighter’s head, knocking him unconscious. I pushed the guy off of me and Vin thrashed his mace downward at the whip fighter’s supine body. The spiked ball of Vin’s mace sank deep into the man’s chest, splashing blood everywhere and killing my attacker. A few seconds later, he and his blood splatter began to vanish as if he had never been there.
Except for the deep purple bruise across my throat.
Vin reached his hand down to help me up.
“Thank you,” I panted.
“I think it’s over now,” he said.
I put the knife back in my pouch and looked toward the distance. If I had the stamina for it, I could run. Far away from here. I didn’t know where I’d go, but anywhere had to be better than this.
A hand landed on my shoulder. “Your weapon?” a guard said.
The raiders’ bodies were gone. I suspected some of the workers were gone too. A few guards collected weapons and other gear from the battlefield while this one started rounding up all the weapons they had distributed from the plantation’s cache.
I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t take my vitamins before bed and expect the sweet dreams to sustain me. I had to find a way out, or make one.
“I didn’t get one,” I said.
“Everyone got one,” the guard replied, narrowing his eyes at me.
“Not me,” I said. “I’m not a fighter like everyone else.”
“He’s the green mage,” Vin said. “What would he do with a weapon?”
The guard stared at Vin, then at me. “Fine,” he said, “but if I see you with a weapon later I’ll slit your throat with it.”
The guard headed back toward the front gate. After giving me a slight nod, Vin did the same.
12
The first night I skipped lite was the worst. The guards came into the barracks and administered one blissful leaf to each tired worker. One guard came to me and placed the leaf on my tongue, but the second the guards had their backs turned I took it out of my mouth and put it in my inventory bag.
If they caught me with lite in my bag, they’d assume I had pinched it from one of Alonso’s plants and I’d be punished accordingly. I didn’t care. I needed to think through a plan, and I couldn’t do that from the beach with Nadine. I felt guilty at first, missing my nightly visit with her, even though I knew it wasn’t real. It wasn’t her, just a drug-induced flashback. Still, those artificial visits were all that got me through each day.
M
y forehead beaded up with sweat as I lay there, trembling. My body ached for lite. It would be so easy to reach into my bag, place a leaf on my tongue like a communion wafer, and beg my body’s forgiveness for delaying lite’s sweet respite.
I resisted.
I knew I had been Growing plants for the past few weeks at least, if not months, but my skills menu blew me away. I had leveled up nine times.
Focusing on a strategy was a struggle, but I aimed every mote of energy I had on concentrating. If I could poison the lite, I could incapacitate everyone long enough to escape. But how could I poison enough of the lite at once? And was I willing to poison the other workers too?
