Glitch Boxset

by Victor Deckard

  “So what?” He said.

  I was thinking hard, trying to think of something.

  “Look,” I said, “you don’t want to discolor your nickname, do you? If you kill me, it’ll turn red. You’ll stain your reputation and become a PK and other players can kill you without their nicknames turning red.”

  “True,” The player said as he lowered his machine gun, the muzzle pointed down.

  I breathed a long sigh of relief. Seemed like I had actually managed to reason with the player. It was a close call.

  “So why are you naked?” Kitson wanted to know. “Got killed recently?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. “Some player killed me. I didn’t have anything stored in the Resurrection Pods so I revived without any items.”

  Kitson nodded his understanding.

  Then the player’s face hardened and he suddenly whipped his machine gun up, aiming it at me again.

  “What the heck?” I blurted out. “Whatcha doing?”

  “I just realized something,” he replied. “Your nickname is red. So you’re a PK yourself. The way I see it someone’s wasted you because you’re a PK. So I can take you out too and my nickname won’t turn red.”

  “Wait!” I screamed.

  I saw the player’s finger closed around the smooth curve of the trigger, taking up the slack. I didn’t waste any more time. As the player started to release a long burst from his gun, I spun around and took off. The sharp report of the machine gun filled the air. The wall to my right suddenly erupted into geysers of plaster, as automatic fire racked the wall, cratering it. Some of the bullets zipped within mere inches of my head, pushing air against my skin.

  Then I felt a burning in my spine as a slug tore into my flesh. Without the HUD, I couldn’t even tell how much damage I took. Dangit! With such a devastating stream of gunfire being pouring in my direction, there was no way I could get away.

  If only I could use my psi-powers! I tried to activate Shield and the bluish semi-transparent energy field appeared around me. As it turned out, even though my HUD was invisible, my skills were still available. There we go!

  I used Acceleration and dashed through the doorway onto the stairway. I raced down the steps, taking them several at a time. The pounding of feet on the floor sounded from above. Then Kitson started firing down the staircase. With my using Acceleration to increase my movement speed, he couldn’t catch up to me so the player decided to open fire, hoping some stray bullets found and kill me. No such luck. The power shield protected me well.

  It wasn’t long before I reached the ground floor and dashed toward the entrance door. Once in the street, I raced away from the building. It was drizzling. I kept to side streets and alleys. Eventually, Acceleration wore off. I came to a stop in an alley between two buildings. I had no idea how much mana I still had. Guessed not much.

  Just to be on the safe side, I activated Invisibility and crept toward the mouth of the alley. Once reached the corner, I peered around it and surveyed the street, looking both ways. Kitson was nowhere in sight. Good. Seemed like I had given him the slip.

  Gunfire erupted around the street. It was midday so there were plenty of players online. Luckily, the crack of fire was muffled by distance, which meant nobody was near my location.

  I kept squatting on my haunches, surveying the street and trying to think of something. Since the Invisibility skill was active and I was immobile, my mana was slowly draining. As I had no way of knowing how much mana I had left, I had to make an assumption that I didn’t have much of that precious energy left so I had to come up with some plan of action ASAP.

  The drizzle turned into a downpour, beating the sidewalk. Dammit! I got drenched in a heartbeat and started to tremble. It was extremely cold. Just what I needed! My situation had just gone from bad to worse. It wouldn’t be long before I froze to death.

  I squinted, straining to see through the wall of rain. The street was plunged into a watery gloom. Sheets of rain lashed the sidewalk and pelted the buildings. The blustering wind blew, whipping my hair.

  I was racking my brain, trying to ignore the stinging cold weather and resisting panic that threatened to overwhelm me. What to do? What the heck to do? If didn’t think of something fast, I would freeze to death. I had to build a fire to get myself warmed up. But I had no resources for that. Moreover, to do that, I would have to bright up the Main Menu and switch to the Crafting Menu. But without the crystal, I couldn’t do that. So I had to somehow find a way to enable myself to see the HUD and bring up the Main Menu. The only way to do so was acquire another crystal. Where to get it?

  A player got a microchip installed at the Training Location at the very beginning of the game. But the Training Location was in the very first location in the game. It was way too far from the Dead City. There was no way I could get there without a vehicle. Moreover, once a player left the Training Location, he or she couldn’t get back. So even if I had somehow made it over to the first location, I couldn’t have gotten to the Training Location anyway.

  Had to think of something else.

  Then it dawned on me. Every player had a crystal inserted in their hand. Sure, one couldn’t extract the microchip on their own. I knew this for sure because I had once tried to do it, to no avail. But what if I could pull a crystal out of another player flesh? Like Jessica had told me, I was capable of interacting with some objects while other players couldn’t do that. So maybe I could take a crystal out of another player’s arm.

  Since I had no other ideas, I decided to try it.

  The rain showed no signs of abating. I stepped from the alley and walked down the street, looking for players. A few minutes later, the Invisibility psi-power wore off and I got visible. It was bad. I could get an easy pickings for some sniper now. Deciding not to push my luck, I dived in the nearest alley between two buildings.

  All of a sudden, gunfire erupted somewhere nearby. I ducked my head and looked around the alley. Yet I wasn’t being fired at. I tried to activate Invisibility, but there was no dice. Either the cooldown of the Invisibility skill wasn’t over yet or I didn’t have enough mana to use the skill again.

  The pounding of booted feet on the blacktop came from the street. I got down on one knee and peeked cautiously around the corner from a low angle. A player ran down the street in the direction of the alley I was in. Due to heavy armor the player wore, she played as a Soldier. Too bad she wasn’t a Warlock. On the other hand, it was a good thing that she wasn’t an Engineer, for she would’ve had lots of drones protecting her.

  When the girl was level with the mouth of the alley, I used Stasis on her. Nothing happened, which meant that I didn’t have enough mana for employing this psi-power. Dammit! The player slackened her pace as she noticed me out of her peripheral vision. Dammit dammit!

  I remembered about another skill of mine, Telekinesis. It required much less mana but it consumed this precious energy over time. I employed the psi-power to immobilize the girl before she could shoot me down. Since I should have little mana left, I had to act very fast before the rest of my mana drained and the girl could move again.

  I dashed from the alley and ran up to the immobile player. The player had blood oozing from numerous bullet wounds all over her body. The player must have been barely alive.

  Due to my Telekinesis holding her in place, the girl couldn’t either move or speak, but her eyes watched me angrily. I took hold of her left hand and pulled her armored glove off her hand to reveal the crystal embedded into the player’s flesh.

  The girl was intently watching every move I made. “What the heck are you doing, moron?” She might be thinking.

  I grasped the girl’s crystal with my right hand while holding her arm with my left. I expected to meet resistance and prepared to exert all my strength to extract the microchip. Contrary to my expectations, the crystal slid out of the girl’s flesh effortlessly.

  Then two things transpired simultaneously. First, I felt the Telekine
sis wore off as my mana drained completely. Second, since the psi-power no longer fixed the girl, she suddenly went limp and crumpled to the ground. The player was dead. The next moment I realized why that had happened.

  Bullets zipped past my head. Then I heard the sounds of fire and saw two players running down the street. Had to be them who had been chasing the girl. One of the slugs slammed into my left shoulder, spinning me around and hurtling me to the ground.

  Grinding my teeth in pain and anger, I leaped to my feet and wasted no time getting back into the alley. Fortunately, the players were more interested in checking the girl’s loot than in chasing me down. As I ran down the alley, I lifted my left hand and tried to insert the crystal into the recess where my own microchip had once been. It snapped into place with a soft click as if my character was made up of plastic.

  Without preamble, the HUD appeared before my eyes. I checked it. As I had expected my mana was almost inexistent. My health bar had been reduced to less than twenty percent. I continued to follow side streets and alleys, putting so much distance between myself and the two players as possible in case they decided to chase me. My stamina was gradually draining.

  Eventually, I came to a stop. Nobody was after me. I found myself on a side street. Off to my right was a dumpster. I checked it to find some dirty clothes. After getting dressed, I lifted my left hand and looked at the crystal.

  > Hunger: 65/100

  > Cold: 35/100

  The player’s HP got restored over time. However, the player’s HP stopped regenerating itself if his or her Hunger attribute got raised past fifty. Which was why my HP no longer restored itself. But I was more interested in Cold than Hunger at the moment. When it reached zero I would die. The clothes I had just found did almost nothing to warm me.

  Then I consulted the map. I had a house or shelter almost in every location in the game. Since there were plenty of buildings in the Dead City, I hadn’t had to build a house in this location. Instead, I had fortified one garage by installing armored windows and doors. I marked the garage on the map and continued on.

  I kept a low profile. When gunfire erupted near me, I activated Acceleration and took off. Or hid myself somewhere. I avoided other players as well as mobs. Without armor and weapons, I couldn’t protect myself. On my way through the city, I checked all dumpsters and trash cans. I chanced on stimulators every now and then and instantly used them to recover my Health Points.

  Eventually, I made it to my garage. Once inside, I closed the door behind me and walked over to one of the chests lining one wall. I opened the nearest chest and took some resources and pieces of cooked meat from it. Then I built a fire and sat by it, eating the food and waiting for my character to warm up.

  Then I checked the other chests, found some armor and weapon, and got dressed in the uncommon––“green”––level 90 armor and armed myself with an uncommon level 95 pistol.

  A message popped up in the log.

  > Attention! The night will fall in 60 minutes!

  I remembered that I had a superior armor outfit and weapon at my place in the neighbor location. If I hurried, I would get there before the night fell. I jumped in the car that sat in the middle of the garage and pulled into the street. Once outside, I floored it, heading for the highway leading toward the way out of the Dead City.

  Sometimes other players tried to take me on, but I didn’t fight them. This car wasn’t too tough and neither did it have a good weapon. It was just a means of transportation. I had a spare car almost in every place of mine in case I didn’t have access to my main vehicle for some reason.

  Finally, I got to the neighbor location. It was a desert. I steered the car across the hard-packed earth, kicking up dust around the tires. I reached the house and pulled in the garage. I stepped from the car, walked to a row of chests, and opened one. Inside lay rare––“blue”––level 95 leather outfit. I changed into it and picked up a rare level 96 revolver. Then I took a few stimulators and vigors from another chest.

  A message emerged in the log.

  > Attention! The night had just fallen!

  I got prepared for the assault of night monsters. I was a bit concerned about the immediate night. Sure, my character level was 97, which meant that I had made it through plenty of night assaults and had long since taught myself to successfully hold out against the night monsters. Yet something was different now. If mobs managed to slay me, I wouldn’t revive in the nearest resurrection Pod. Instead, I would die. Once and for all.

  As it turned out I shouldn’t have worried. I was a very experienced player by that point and sailed through all the ten waves. When I killed the last monster, a message appeared.

  > Congratulations! You’ve survived!

  The night was over. I picked up the loot, patched myself up, repaired the windows and doors the monster crashed through during the night, reloaded my weapons, and then I walked up to the nearest window to look out.

  The sun was already up and high. I continued looking out the window. I was thinking.

  So despite the Alien’s removing my biochip, I had managed to survive by stealing the crystal from another player. But what the heck was I supposed to do next? To continue to play the game? But what was the point? With my having found out that the game wasn’t actually a game, I had no interest in reaching the max level. Even if I reached level 100, nothing would change. I had hoped that when I finished the main missions, my so-called friends––I hadn’t known their names back then––would get me out of the game as they promised. But I knew the truth now. There was no way out of the game––at least not for me––because the game took place in the real world, on the Earth devastated by the war between humans and aliens. The players actually lived in the virtual reality, taking it for real life. But I had never been uploaded into the Virtual Reality Capsule so I couldn’t get in there. Not that there was a point in doing so. For the real world was here.

  So what the heck was I supposed to do now? I had no idea. Still, I knew one thing for certain. The Alien was aware of me and wasn’t going to leave me alone. That was for sure. So if I stayed in the game, the Alien would find me sooner or later, what with its drones scouring the playable zone.

  Then an idea occurred to me. What if I got out of the playable area? Probably if I got as far from the playable zone as possible, the Alien would never find me. But perhaps that was just wishful thinking.

  Not sure what I should do, I just stood on at the window, looking out.

  Then I got a private message from someone. “Hey Max. Are you there?”

  Wondering who that was, I texted back, “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay? I was worried about you.”

  “I’m fine,” I replied. “Who is it? I don’t see your nickname for some reason.”

  “It’s me, Jessica.”

  I suddenly felt a wave of relief wash over me. “I thought the Alien got you.”

  “THEY did. I managed to get away from THEM but my friends didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I paused for a moment and then continued. “Guess as long as there’s still the Resistance, nothing’s over.”

  “There is no the Resistance anymore,” Jessica texted me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked as my heart sank within me.

  “The Alien–– The Alien killed them–– killed them all. THEY spared me because I was the leader of the Resistance and THEY wanted to kill me slowly but I managed to get away.”

  Although I didn’t see her face nor did I hear her voice, I could still tell that she was devastated by the loss of her friends. I felt rage rose inside me. Sure, I had never gotten to know Jessica’s friends, but they had been human creatures and now they were dead at the hands of that alien bloodthirsty creature. I hated it. I hated it very much and was eager to take revenge against it.

  “I’m truly sorry about the loss of your friends,” I texted, paused, and then continued. “What about the device you told me abou
t? Can we still turn the Alien into a Raid Boss so I can deal with it?”

  “Yes. I managed to get away with the device but––”

  “But?”

  “I took some damage that’ll cause some problems. It’s out of control now. I can still turn the Alien into a Raid Boss but I can’t teleport him now wherever I want. Instead, when I use the device, the Alien will appear as a Raid Boss at some random place somewhere outside the playable area. ”

  “Is that a problem? I have a few very fast vehicles. I can get anywhere pretty quickly.”

  “Yes, you can. Unfortunately, other players can’t leave the playable zone. If they try, they’ll be getting damage until they die or get back.”

  I finally realized what bothered Jessica. “So I’ll have to deal with the Alien on my own. I can’t bring my friends along. It sucks. Can’t you fix the device?”

  “Unfortunately, it beyond repair. But if you still have the glitchy pistol I gave you––”

  “I don’t have it anymore,” I intercepted her. “The Alien took away and destroyed all my stuff.”

  I then told her about everything that had happened to me after the Alien caught me.

  “It figures,” Jessica replied. “When the Alien took your biochip away, I lost any contact with you. But when you acquired another one, you popped up on my radar and I was able to communicate with you again.”

  “Why didn’t you talk directly to me before we met?” I wanted to know. “Why would you have to communicate with me via the main mission descriptions?”

  “Because it was a safe bet,” Jessica explained. “This way, the Alien couldn’t know about you and find you. But now that THEY already learned about you, there’s no point in encrypting our messages.”

  “Do you mean that the Alien could get aware of my location when we talk?”

  “Yes. So be careful.”