Immortality Experiment

by Vic Connor

  Cal moved her jaw like she was rolling an idea around in her mouth. “Niko, go over to Hunk, I want to try something.”

  She brought up a timer app on the floating board.

  Niko shrugged, obeying. He walked over to the corner of the clocktower and stood next to Hunk’s bench. Jeny was leaning against the wall on the opposite side. When he caught her staring at him, she scowled and turned away.

  “All right,” Cal said. “Now run to me, Niko. No abilities, just run over here.”

  “Cal, I know yer real interested in a new Mythic and all,” Jeny groaned, “but shouldn’t we be preparing the level two here for the Hunt tomorrow instead o’ playing around like this?”

  “If you’d prefer to take your attitude outside and run laps, be my guest,” Cal said, cool as anything. Jeny soured, cursed under her breath, and stayed put. “All right, Niko.” Cal started the timer. “Go.”

  Niko jogged from the corner over to Cal at her tablet, making the clocktower’s old floorboards creak. Cal stopped the timer, and it read nine seconds and change. She wrote the number on the tablet screen, then reset the timer. “All right, go back.”

  Niko rubbed his hand across his forehead. “Never thought I’d say this, but I… That is, I’m kinda with Jeny on this one. I mean, we should be training, y’know?”

  Cal sighed, turning away from the screen. “I know you’ve got a lot you want to learn, Niko,” she said, then looked at Jeny. “But we do, too. We have to fight with you, and we can’t do that well if we don’t know your abilities backward and forward. It’s dull, I know, but it’s important. Okay?”

  Jeny and Niko looked at one another, then down at their feet, mumbling agreement.

  “All right, then,” Cal said. “This time, I want you to try and use your first ability to edit your speed. Not change your position—just move faster, as fast as possible.”

  Hunk sat up straight on the bench. “Wait, Cal, do you…do you think ‘value’ means his ability could edit any stat in the world?”

  “No way,” Jeny protested. “That’s daft. An ability that versatile would be way too strong.”

  Cal didn’t blink, just hovered her hand over the timer. “You ready, Niko?” When he nodded, she tapped the timer, and said, “Go.”

  Niko activated his ability, at the same time thinking about going faster—about speed. This time, the weird white text on his UI was different. Instead of X, Y, and Z, the text read more of that weird punctuation. He saw one number change. The words “player.velocity = (25);” scrolled up to “player.velocity = (50);”

  Niko took off in a run, and as he did, he nearly tripped, because his legs were moving inhumanly fast, uncontrollably so. He had to jog to a stop almost immediately, lest he barrel into Cal and her screen. She stepped back, brows up as she tapped the timer to stop. It read just over five seconds.

  “No way!” Jeny gasped.

  “That’s…” Hunk laughed in disbelief. “That’s incredible!”

  Up next to the screen, Cal grinned. “Niko, some day very soon you and me are going to have a real fun time teaching you every Mythic stat in existence.”

  Memorizing facts didn’t sound like much fun to Niko, but if he could change any one of them? He was, at least, hungry to know what options that opened up for him.

  “But, Jeny and Niko were right. There’s a lot more we need to do to prep for tomorrow. Let’s go.” Training resumed, this time exploring more of the possibilities behind Niko’s two abilities. RecursiveFunction, too, seemed to be versatile enough to repeat any kind of action, not just punching. It was useful, and really hard work, but as sun was setting and Phaeton was at its highest point in the sky, Niko still felt unprepared for the battle against Alonso’s team tomorrow.

  “Good work today, all of you,” Cal said. “Let’s do our cooldown. Hunk, we’ll start with you. What did you learn today?”

  Hunk sat up, grinning. “I learned a ton about a Mythic Class I’d never heard of before, heh!”

  “Me too,” Cal said warmly. “Jeny, how about you?”

  Jeny snorted. “I learned that XYZ donnae just mean yer fly is down.”

  Cal grunted out a laugh. “All right, fair enough. Today I learned that it’s important to consider every option at your disposal. And what about you, Niko? You learn anything today?”

  Niko looked between Jeny, Hunk, and the floor. “I, uh…learned a lot, I guess.”

  “Like?”

  “Uh… My first ability can do stuff besides just moving me around?”

  Cal nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Look, I don’t know,” he said. “I hate this cuddly crap, it has nothing to do with actually fighting. The Hunt is tomorrow; why are we wasting time with this?”

  Cal raised her dagger-sharp eyebrows. “You want to work some more?”

  Niko quickly realized that he didn’t—he was exhausted after today. Before he could answer, Cal clapped her hands. “All right, then. Hunk, Jeny, you two go on and enjoy the rest of your evening. Niko and I are going to do some more drills.”

  Jeny shot Hunk a triumphant smirk that he did not return, then the two of them headed for the walkway. Hunk mouthed a “sorry” to Niko on their way out.

  Cal made Niko do drills for three additional hours, fighting duels, timing his punches per minute, testing him on game items and other Mythics and their abilities. Niko had been tired before. Now, he was dead on his feet, physically and mentally spent. He worried he might pass out on the path back to the dorms.

  Cal, on the other hand, seemed relaxed as ever. “All right. You good, or you want to practice some more?”

  “I’m good,” Niko groaned.

  “All right. Just one last thing.”

  “What?” Niko droned. All he wanted to do was sleep.

  Cal capped her digital marker and put her things into her bag. “I want you to know, I don’t expect us to win tomorrow.”

  If she’d hit him, he would be have been less surprised. “What? After all that? Was I—” Niko growled, pounded his fist against the wall, and rubbed the furrow in his brow. “I mean, did I…suck this week or something?”

  Cal put her hand up. “You did fine.”

  “Fine isn’t good,” Niko said. “Is it because I’m level two? Because I’m a ‘noob,’ whatever that stupid word means? I’m not good enough to carry my weight?”

  Cal waited him out coolly, just as she had with Jeny earlier that morning. “Yes.”

  If her words before had felt like a punch, that felt like she’d hit him with a hammer. “Then why…why did you even pick me in the first place? I mean, if you didn’t think I was good enough, why not take Alonso for your team instead, y’know?”

  “Why is it you think I had planned to pick Alonso first?”

  Niko sank onto the bench in the corner of the room. “Because he’s better than me.”

  “No. It’s because you have a bad attitude. When you lost the duel with him, you had yourself a little fit, like a child. I don’t deal with that. In my experience it makes for bad teammates, but even if that wasn’t the case, I’d rather have the worst team on campus than wrangle a bunch of babies. But the other day, at the spire, I saw something different.”

  Niko looked up.

  “You acted cool under pressure,” Cal said. “You made smart decisions. Most importantly, you swallowed your pride and listened to Kiele when she made a call, even though you didn’t want to. And, you didn’t pee in your diaper when you lost.”

  “Because Tim had promised me—”

  “And he broke that promise. So I’m going to ask you again, did you learn anything? Not just during training today, but at the duos last week.”

  Niko sighed in defeat. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “What?”

  “I learned how to use my second ability.”

  “All right, good. What else?”

  Niko dug a little deeper, which was hard because he was tired, and digging deep wasn’t really his thing. “I learned that…if
teammates work against each other, they’re a lot worse off than on their own.”

  Cal smiled and nodded.

  “And I learned…that Erica and Tim and Jacob never actually wanted me on their team. They just picked me because they were forced to.” Niko looked up at Cal. “That’s…why you gave him first choice, instead of just picking me outright, isn’t it?”

  Cal gave him her catlike smile.

  Niko laughed, disbelieving.

  “Anything else?” Cal asked.

  “Is that not enough?”

  “Nope, that’s plenty. I’m just asking.”

  Niko frowned. “I didn’t…before, I didn’t say that stuff because… Look, I didn’t know any of that. I didn’t figure it out like I’m smart or something. Hunk and Kiele explained it all to me.”

  “And what does that tell you?”

  Niko thought on that, but his brain was mush. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that’s okay.” Cal smiled, a real smile, not her knowing smirk. “Listen, Niko. You’re level two. You’re new. You’ve only had a week of practice, and you’re using a Mythic none of us has ever seen before. The odds are against us on this. So yes, we’ll probably lose tomorrow. And that’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not okay. I don’t want to be a loser.”

  “You’re only a loser if you stop trying to be better. That’s why I ask the team what they learned after practice every day. So, even if we lose, you’re going to learn something, right?”

  “Yeah.” Niko took a deep breath. “Yeah, I will.”

  “Good. That’s all that matters. Now go get some rest, you earned it.”

  Niko left the clocktower, brain swimming and muscles aching. He followed the cobblestone road to the amphitheater, past the fork, then the overlook, and finally into the dormitory. He was starting to see why Cal was so universally respected. He’d never had a conversation like that. Lots of people had treated him like he was unquestionably special: Clark, Erica, even his parents. But no one had ever told him it was okay to fail. Everyone treated him like he was special for what he was, not for what he did. His importance had been a universal truth, not a choice.

  When he got to his room, Hunk was already asleep, and as soon as his head hit the pillow, Niko was too. He didn’t even wake up to use the bathroom.

  15

  The Hunt

  “And tonight, with Phaeton on its descent, we open on the Ravenscroft Hunting Season. This is Kiele Maurata, along with Luis Fonseca, here live with the run down on tonight’s games.”

  The camera shot showed two people behind a Territoria-blue desk. On the left sat a young man with pomped black hair and a constellation of black spots on his cheeks, like fat freckles. His red dress shirt popped against his charcoal-black suit. On the right sat a dark girl in an oversized green sweater and dangling jewelry. Her eyes—and her crocodilian teeth—sparkled under the studio lights.

  “We’ve got a lot of great senior teams competing this year,” Kiele said, “but all eyes are on two of the Junior teams, the Sevens and Black Fire. Both of these teams were strong competitors in last year’s games, and both of them lost a DPS that same year.” Kiele turned from the camera to look at the boy with the pomp. A graphic flew in beneath him on the left side of the screen. It showed his name, Luis Fonseca, and listed him as Ravenscroft TV’s junior analyst.

  “That’s right, Kiele,” Luis said, turning to the camera. “Black Fire’s star DPS went on to the vaunted Phaeton League, swiped up early to compete on the professional, interplanetary stage. The story behind the Sevens missing teammate, however, is far more sinister.”

  The camera cut away, showing a panning photograph of a smiling young man with blue hair, his arms around Hunk, Cal, and Jeny. “Toward the end of his sophomore year, the Sevens’ melee DPS vanished from his room, a tragic mystery that haunts the campus to this day. Now, each team has recruited a junior transfer student to fill their ranks.”

  The shot returned to Luis and Kiele, seated at their desk. “Kiele,” Luis said, turning to address her, “there was a bit of a shake-up at the team selections, wasn’t there?”

  “That’s right, Luis, and I should know; I was there in the juniors DPS class where the decision went down.” Kiele mugged for the camera as another nametag graphic flew in, naming her Ravenscroft TV’s senior analyst. “As many of you know from watching right here on RCTV, Sevens captain Calloway Jones won the duel against Black Fire’s captain Tim Sharp, earning her the first choice rights of the new DPS candidates. However, when it came time to make the decision, Jones ceded her hard-earned first choice to the Black Fire captain.”

  “A bizarre move from last year’s second-place finisher,” Luis said. “Do you think Jones will regret her decision, Kiele?”

  “Well, Luis, the DPS that Black Fire picked up, Alonso De Luca, was the winner of the Dueler’s Cup at his last school and is regarded as one of the best young duelers on Cygnus. However, he’s also known for being a bit hard-headed when it comes to working with other players. I wonder if Tim bit off more than he can chew with this one.”

  “And what about the other Ravenscroft newcomer, the Sevens’ Nikolai Somov?” Luis asked. “Am I correct in hearing that he’s wielding a previously unknown Mythic?”

  “That’s right, Luis. Somov may be under-leveled compared to his fellow competitors, but he wields a Mythic never before seen on the Ravenscroft stage or, as far as our research shows, any stage on Cygnus. That means it’s a class that none of our competitors tonight have any experience facing. Here’s all the information we gathered so far on what we’ve come to call…Mythic Zero.”

  A list of Niko’s abilities ran across the screen, listing ABIL_EditValue as “Snap,” and describing it as a mobility move. His second ability was also erroneously dubbed “Multi-punch.” While neither was totally correct, it still made Niko feel exposed. “Are they allowed to do that?” he asked Cal, pointing at the screen mounted up on one wall of the barracks.

  Niko’s team—the Sevens—sat huddled together in the “barracks,” a small room, bare save for a pair of locked double doors, some benches, a holographic tablet, and a projected screen showing the RCTV coverage of the match. It was one of four identical barracks on the map, Hunk had explained, and you didn’t know which one you were starting in until the Hunt began.

  Cal looked up from the tablet screen where she was going over last-minute strategies. “Technically all this information should be in the Mythic Class textbook,” she told Niko.

  Hunk piped up from his seat on one of the benches, a thick tome open on his lap. “Yup! It has a detailed skill tree and ability list for every Mythic in competition, but I haven’t been able to find yours anywhere.” Hunk tapped the open page, as if he was still searching for it right now. “The teachers probably made them do it.”

  “What is this, anyway?” Niko gestured at the screen.

  “Ravenscroft TV. They do the announcing for the school’s Hunts,” Hunk said. “It provides entertainment and game analyzation for people who aren’t in the competition.”

  “Who wouldn’t participate?”

  “Freshmen can’t. Some students don’t make it onto teams or they opt out for other vocations. Luis and Kiele, for example, have a team but they don’t officially participate in the school’s championship because they do this.” Hunk nodded up at the screen. “It’s a good position. An alumni of the school is a shoutcaster for the Phaeton League now.”

  “What’s the Phaeton League?”

  “What’s the Phaeton League?” Jeny squawked indignantly. “Aye, no wonder no one’s heard of yer class. You must have been living under a real wee rock.”

  “Professional Hunters who play on the interplanetary stage,” Cal said. “It’s the big league, comrade. Watched by millions.”

  Niko frowned, prodding at the round earpiece he was wearing. It was uncomfortable. “Do we really have to wear these?”

  “Yes, we do,” Cal said ponderously. “They let us communicate a
cross the Hunting Ground.”

  “Not only that,” Hunk said. “They have an enchantment that masks our voices, so the enemy team can’t hear our calls.”

  The screen with RCTV playing abruptly switched from the broadcast to a 60-second countdown, and the words “Prepare for Battle.”

  “Comms check,” Cal said, touching her small microphone. Her voice fed directly into Niko’s earpiece.

  “Check,” Jeny said, and again he heard it right in his ear.

  “Check!” Hunk said.

  Niko pressed his finger to the comm. “Check,” he said.

  “Comms are green,” Cal said. “All right, Sevens. Remember, you know everything already. You just have to stay calm and do it. Once we know our spawn quadrant, head to your designated areas to farm monsters, but remember, no matter what, don’t stray too far on your own. Any questions?” She looked at Jeny, then Hunk, then finally to Niko. None of them spoke. She nodded. “All right. Let’s show ‘em what we’re made of.”

  The timer showed 30 seconds now. Hunk and Jeny lined up on either side of Cal. Unsure of his position in the group, Niko shuffled up beside Jeny, hands shoved in his pockets. He’d never been this close to her, he realized as he studied her oil-black hair, a perfect sheet hanging down almost over her eyes. Beautiful. The word got into his head before he could will it not to, and when Jeny caught him staring, he quickly looked away.

  “What?” she whispered. Even Jeny’s whispers were pretty loud.

  “Nothing.”

  A cool, businesslike woman’s voice—it reminded him of Oxana back in the penitentiary—began counting down from ten along with the timer.

  “What, ya nervous now that it’s the real thing?” Jeny grinned underneath her hair. For once, it didn’t sound wholly malicious.

  “No!” Niko scowled, rolled his shoulders.

  Jeny’s grin soured and she looked straight ahead again. The timer hit five.

  “Okay, maybe…a little,” he admitted.

  Jeny didn’t answer right away. “Well… Just remember you aren’t alone oot there.”