by Vic Connor
“Well, you know how he is,” Yuri said. “The world must feel real and dangerous.” He waved a hand like he was doing magic, like the guy he was quoting, whoever he was, was a clown. He merged the car onto the highway.
“I guess,” Anna said. “I still don’t agree with the pain receptor levels.”
“Yeah, I don’t either.” Yuri had the tone of defeat. “I don’t like watching animals in these tanks, twitching and crying. They don’t understand.”
“Maybe I…maybe if I just go in and edit the values—”
“Anna—”
“Just tweak the numbers! Just a little bit, each time we push to prod. Like boiling a frog. No one will even notice.”
“You know they do those code change checks, darling.”
“Yes, and it’s insulting that they do it.” Her voice became forceful. “I’m the lead engineer on this product. I shouldn’t have some pimply intern straight out of U-Dub scanning my check-ins.”
“It’s suspicious for the lead engineer to even be doing check-ins, sweetheart.”
“I just… This feels wrong, Yuri. I got into this project because I thought it would do good things, save resources, and give people a little escapism in this messed-up world, but… What’s going to happen when they start running the simulations on people? Isn’t that… I mean, doesn’t that count as torture?”
“Not if they consent to procedure, darling. Is like any other medical testing.”
Up in the front, Anna sank in her seat, shaking her head. “It just seems wrong. I pray for guidance. Sometimes I’m in church, and I feel like I have to ask forgiveness for my own job. Am I the only one? Is everyone else just marching forward, thinking all of this is okay?”
Yuri slammed on the brakes as the car in front of him stopped too fast, then laid on the horn, yelling at the driver in Russian. He sighed, looking into the back seat at Niko. “You okay back there, big man?”
Niko felt himself nod, heart hammering, kicking his legs against the seat. His father gave him a relieved smile, then turned back to Anna. “I don’t think you’re alone, Anna. I think, if you speak out, many voices will join yours. But you’re in a strong position. You may need to be the first one to speak. Then, others will join. You hold them up, they hold you up, you see? But someone strong must speak first.”
Niko’s mother was quiet for a long time after that. “You’d help hold me up…wouldn’t you, Yuri?”
Yuri reached into Anna’s lap, took her hand, lifted it to his lips. “Of course, my sweet love. Always.”
QUEST COMPLETE: COLLECT MEMORY_2
800 EXPERIENCE GAINED
PASSIVE EFFECT: 800*1.5 = 1200 XP
3550/4500 XP
In the space of a gasp, Niko was back in the underground room, with its plastic-grey walls, fake sound, and tile ceiling. It took a moment to realize he was standing. Something was in his hand. It wasn’t the memory orb, light and warm, though the feeling was in the hand he’d grabbed it with, extended out in front of him. Where the memory had been feather-light and warm, this thing was cold and heavy. A pistol, there, almost loose in his grip.
He panicked for a few seconds until he remembered this was Territoria, where guns meant a few lost hit-points rather than a mortal wound or death sentence. But how had it gotten there? Was it a gift of some kind? He searched it for stats, but it was grey, like the default clothing he’d chosen. There was, however, something engraved along the barrel—words and symbol. Niko held the gun closer to his eyes.
It read “LOG OUT.” The symbol Niko hadn’t been able to discern at first was a vertical line with three shorter perpendicular lines going through it.
A Russian Orthodox cross.
Niko squinted at the gun for a moment, then down at his necklace. It had only one stat, a passive with a single-word description: RESPAWN.
It’s just a game, not a real suicide, Niko reminded himself as he looked down at the gun in his hand. He remembered now, it hadn’t been the memory that logged him out the first time—it had been the fall, plummeting off the edge of the world.
Suicide was a sin, a coward’s way out. But this was different. This was a log-out mechanic.
If I’m wrong about this, I’m going to die a complete moron, Niko thought, as he pressed the barrel to his temple. But then, who’ll find me down here? Maybe I’ll just disappear, like Hunk’s roommate did. The thought that this is what happened to him, whoever he was, was at once comforting and worrying. If he never came back, Niko hoped Hunk wouldn’t worry too much.
“Thou shalt not kill,” he murmured. He squeezed his eyes shut, then pulled the trigger.
Niko woke trying to gulp for air, and instead choking on his feeding tube. He gagged and thrashed, sloshing the invisible liquid around in his Vat. His arms found the sides, then he pounded on it until the tank thunked, blue lights came on, and the water started to drain. He pushed and pushed on the name in the lid, SOMOV 000003, until the it unlocked. Niko shoved it open as he sat up, yanking the feeding tube out with a gag. He gasped some air in, feeling for his limbs. They were all there. He was alive and whole in the penitentiary.
This room, however, he’d never seen before. It wasn’t the little closet of the onboarding room that he’d entered into, or the equally small examination room he’d woken up in a week ago. It was a vast, low-ceilinged hall, lined with dozens upon dozens of other Vats.
I’m not supposed to be here, he thought, y’know, like this was the restaurant kitchen, the backstage—a part he wasn’t supposed to see. He shouldn’t have woken up here. He looked down each end of the long, dark room. There was no sign of Clark, Tala, Oxana, no one at all. Just lines and lines of Vats plugged into the wall by a fat cord. Niko climbed out of his Vat, slipping from the viscous goo and landing hard on the floor beside it. His muscles felt sore and weak. Looking down, he noticed how skinny he had become. Was it because he’d lost weight, or because he’d gotten used to his bulkier avatar in the game?
Eventually, by leaning on the Vat, Niko stood, his wet feet sliding on the tile floor of the dark room. The only light came from the Vats, their beeping monitors and glowing consoles. Each one had a name on a screen at the front, with a chart of data displayed on them. Niko quickly realized they were alphabetical—Somogyi, Soltero, Soja… Niko paused.
There was an empty space where the next Vat ought to be, between Soi and Sohal. A fat cord lolled uncoupled on the floor like a slug. The display screen was there, but dark. Niko tapped it. A tiny fan whirred to life, then the screen lit up. It had an array of medical statistics, all labeled “suspended until reconnect.” Down in the corner was a video feed of a bedroom. Niko instantly recognized the bedroom design from the Ravenscroft dorm, with its floating beds and ghost pine floors. The room was empty, even though everyone was supposed to be in bed by 10 p.m. Hunk would have kittens if he saw not one but two students out of bed after ten on a school night.
Then, it came like a choking realization. There was a giant stack of books beside the bed on the left, away from the windows. One bed was messy, but the other was crisply made. Niko searched the monitor for a name, and there it was, in small digital letters: SOHBI, HASSAN. Hunk. This was Hunk’s tank, and he was missing.
Niko’s heart raced, as he thought about how Hunk’s roommate had disappeared last year. Was this how it happened? When you logged out of the game, were you just gone? What had they done with the guy?
Niko was running then, tearing down the row of Vats with his head ducked to keep from knocking it on the low ceiling. At last, he spied what he was searching for, a pale outline of light in the shape of a rectangle—a closed door. He ran to it, then slowed to a jog, realizing it might not be the stealthiest choice to go barreling around the penitentiary. Besides, he was winded—winded! From running just that short burst down the rows. Did he always get this winded so fast?
Once he caught his breath, Niko pressed his ear against the door, listening for anyone outside. Something on wheels—a gurney, maybe?—wobbled
by, then nothing. Slow and careful, Niko pushed the door open. Light flooded his eyes, making him squint, but after a few blinks he saw the hallway was empty. He stuck his head out, looking down in the opposite direction, then emerged once he saw the coast was clear. Right above the door on this side, he noticed a small, black plastic ball of a CCTV camera. His immediate instinct was to run—but he managed to keep himself in check. Instead of running, he froze and waited for full two minutes. Nothing happened. Either the camera was disconnected, or no one monitored it in real time.
The hallway was exactly like the ones he’d walked when Clark had given him his tour, painted with stripes in Territoria’s blue and orange. He had no idea what led where, so he went in the direction he’d heard the gurney going. Maybe there was someone he could follow?
Once the wet liquid from the Vat dripped off, Niko moved in relative silence, even if the toed suit felt weird on his feet. A guy in a lab coat and a baseball cap crossed the hallway intersection in front of him. Niko started, but the guy hadn’t spotted him, too busy hailing someone down the hall. Niko approached the intersection, then stood at the corner, listening to their conversation.
“You’ve got the kid in Experimentation?”
“Yeah, he’s all hooked up…” the voice was a sigh, a woman. Must have been the person the guy in the ballcap was hailing.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, it’s just… I don’t know, Jim. Clark has been testing so aggressively lately. I’m worried we’re going to lose him. Remember the last time? With his roommate.”
Niko’s hair stood on end. Did they mean Hunk?
“We have plenty of subjects, Catherine—” Jim, the ballcap guy, began.
“Not like him,” said the woman. “He’s one of the top competitors in his class. He’s been far more responsive than Jacob, and I…”
Niko spared a peek around the corner. Jim’s broad back was to him, pale hair peeking out from his ballcap. The woman, Catherine, had short hair in twists, and was rubbing at her pink, cat’s-eye glasses. The guy had his hand on her shoulder. Her gaze shifted and Niko ducked back behind the wall.
“Listen. Clark is only pressing harder because of the hackers that infiltrated the Phaeton servers,” Jim said. “They don’t think it’s cheating. I heard the glitches happen because they’re exporting game code. Recording.”
“But what do the immortality experiments have to do with hackers on Phaeton?” Catherine asked. “And…aren’t the shards a closed system anyway? How could hackers even access our servers if the game is being run here locally?”
“Clark thinks the hackers are… They’re on the server.”
Catherine gasped. “They…they uploaded themselves? But how did they transfer their entire consciousness? We’re at the forefront, and we haven’t even—”
“That’s what Clark wants to find out, why he’s pushing so hard. And I heard…” Jim’s voice got low. “I heard they gave him eight months, and if he hasn’t gotten rid of them by then…the government is going to force a rollback.”
“A rollback? To when?”
“Before the hacks started happening, and few months earlier to be certain. The figure I heard was two years.”
“Two years? We can’t roll back two years; do you know how many people we’ve logged in since then? Don’t they know what happens when we roll back pre-login?”
“They know. They don’t care. If any information on phase two gets out, it’ll be way worse in their eyes. I mean, all those kids are supposed to be dead anyway.”
Niko choked. So it was true; everyone in the Vats had been in the queue like him. He couldn’t imagine… Cal? Jeny? Hunk? What could he have possibly done to end up here?
“Listen, we shouldn’t talk about this out in the open,” Jim said. “Let’s run the tests and we’ll talk after, okay?”
“Okay,” Catherine said, sounding unsure. Their footsteps moved away, so Niko peered around the corner again. The pair went into a room down the hall, shutting the door behind them. After a quick look around, Niko followed them. He stopped outside the door, listening again.
It was a lot of medical jargon Niko didn’t understand, quiet enough that he couldn’t hear most of it. Fragments of words and sentences like, “increase the wattage,” and “are you sure, sir?” and “he’s reacting.” He heard a gasp, a groan, and it sounded like Hunk’s voice. Niko blanched, and fueled by a righteous anger, he dared to turn the handle of the door and peer inside.
A blade of light sliced into the dark room, and it instantly caught the attention of the three—no, four people there. Two were the man and woman he’d seen in the hall. The third was a tall, gaunt man with a shorn head. And, though the glimpse was brief, a spare glance at the hospital table, Niko was sure he saw Hunk laid out on a gurney, eyes closed, his body sweat-soaked and convulsed with pain.
“Who is—hey!”
The sharp voice sent Niko flying from the door, letting it shut behind him as he dashed down the corridor, no longer worried about stealth. He turned the first corner he found, nearly barreling into some guy in jean shorts, who hollered after him when he passed. Niko raced back the way he’d come—at least, he hoped it was.
“Call security!” he heard someone yell behind him, but he didn’t turn to look, too focused on his escape.
He was already panting. Run, his mind screamed through his burning lungs and stiff legs. He turned down a familiar corner, noticed a familiar door at the end of the hall, then made for it, praying it hadn’t locked behind him.
He slid to a stop in front of it, anchoring himself by grabbing the handle. He fumbled with it, seeing a doctor and a guard come around the corner. He flew into the room, ducked, nearly blind in the long, dark line of Vats. He spared a moment to check the alphabetization, then followed the letters down, spying the open lid of his tank. He leapt inside, yanking the lid shut just as he heard the door down the hall open. He waited, laying in the water, until he heard a clunk, and whir, and then felt the water starting to rise.
“Oh no,” he gasped, trying to sit up. He banged once on the lid, but it was impossibly loud, and he knew it would attract the people outside. In a horrible moment, when the water rose to his temples, Niko realized what he had to do. He grabbed the combination feeding tube and breathing mask, staring at it in disgust. Then, after a breath, he shoved it down his throat until the mask covered his nose and mouth, just as the viscous liquid filled up to his cheeks, then over his face entirely. With a thunk, the tank went dark.
Niko started awake, shuffling in his sheets, slicked with sweat, gasping for breath. He was in his coat, so he huffed, peeling it off. He felt instantly better. His heart rate slowed, and he gained his bearings. He wasn’t in the basement—he was in his room, his bed in the Ravenscroft dorm. It was comforting until he looked over at the crisply-made, untouched bed at the opposite wall.
“No…” He had to log out, escape the game, get back to the penitentiary and get Hunk out of there. The lab woman had said he might not survive the tests, and Niko had just left him there. Cal was wrong. It wasn’t his instinct to protect people, or attack—just to run away.
But the only times he’d been able to log out were when he’d found one of those glowing orbs—the memories. Maybe he could run out to the edge of the world and find one. Niko slung his coat over his arm and left the room, marching down the hall toward the dorm’s stairwell. When he reached them, he thundered down the winding spiral staircase, then yanked open the door to the dorm’s ground floor.
Someone was right there, and unable to stop his frantic momentum in time, Niko ran right into the person. Water splashed over the front of his tank top. He hissed, flicking the wet off his bare arm.
“Oi, watch where you’re going, ya great oaf!” Jeny looked up, and her face went from annoyed to cross. “Oh, it’s you. Of course it is. What’re ya doin’ out of yer bed at this hour? Hunk’s goan’ to have kittens.”
That’s exactly what I said. Er, well, thought. Niko w
as charmed by this for a moment, then glared to hide it. “I have to go.”
“Go?” Jeny squawked. “Where in the worlds do you plan to go in the middle of the night?” When Niko ignored her, trying to shuffle past, Jeny reached out and grabbed him by the wrist. She was surprisingly strong. “Hey! I’m talking to ya. We have practice tomorrow, you cannae just—”
“Hunk is in trouble. I have to—”
“What?” Jeny’s grip got tighter now. “What do you mean?”
“He’s not in the room, I don’t… I think someone might be hurting him, I need to find somewhere to log out.”
“Log out? Dunnae talk that mince with me right now, ya tell me what’s going on.”
Niko opened his mouth to explain, exasperated, that this was a game and Hunk was in trouble in the real world, but he knew Jeny wouldn’t listen, none of them would. He had to do this alone, and for the first time in a long time, that wasn’t a comforting thought. “Look, he’s not in his room. Go look if you don’t believe me.” Niko started to go, but Jeny’s grip held fast.
“Come on,” she said, dragging him back toward the stairs.
“I have to go look for him—” Niko protested.
“Come. On,” she said through her teeth this time. “I’m not goan’ up to the boy’s dorm alone.” She pulled him into the stairwell, starting her—their—ascent.
“Hunk’s in trouble and that’s seriously what you’re worried about?” It was infuriating but kind of cute.
“I’m not sure I believe you. Donnae think I forgot the time Hunk ran to find me, sayin’ you’d gone from yer bed.”
It wasn’t until her grip softened, just a little, that Niko became aware of the skin-to-skin contact, her spindly fingers brushing his pulse and the heel of his hand.
“Not that I care what you do at night,” Jeny went on, “goan’ out on the skite with Erica or whoever—”
