“Aha,” Kai said, not quite sure what to do with this information.
“We think he wants more, but Lex says he’s too young and immature,” Claudia said in a conspirative tone. “She’s 38 and has a PhD in neuroscience.”
“What level is she?” Kai asked, impressed. Thinking back to the woman with the wild, red hair and vulgar T-shirt, he would never have guessed that.
“None,” Claudia replied. “The operators don’t enter VR and therefore don’t level up.”
“And what about you guys?”
“I’m Level Two,” Claudia said with pride.
“Same,” Francois chimed in.
“I’m almost Level Two,” Josh said, a bit embarrassed.
“I’m just that far away from Three,” Marco made the ‘little bit’ gesture with his thumb and index finger. “I hope to reach it at the next tournament.”
Kai nodded and continued eating. This world was still very strange to him, and he realized that it would take a while to settle in. But so far, he loved everything about his new job.
“Tell us about the squad that saved your ass in-game,” Josh begged. “I can’t believe you witnessed Level Ten Alpha in action!”
“They were pretty impressive,” Kai said, remembering the scary yet exciting event.
“Are you kidding? Those guys are the definition of badass,” Josh said. “They’re damn heroes!”
Everyone nodded in agreement in a sincere way that surprised Kai. The Alpha squad he had met really must be something special.
Then Claudia grinned at Josh. “Especially Rogue, huh, Josh?”
Josh blushed but said nothing.
“Our Josh here has been crushing heavily on Rogue for a while now… same as every other nerd around.”
She rolled her eyes, then added. “In my opinion, she isn’t that special, but apparently I’m lacking something between my legs to fully appreciate her.”
“Who’s Rogue?” Kai asked. Though he had a pretty clear idea who Claudia was referring to. A memory flashed into his mind. The girl with the white hair and black tips, sliding toward him and hacking off the gigantic spider claw just in time before it could impale him. The more he learned about the dangers in VR, the more he was convinced that she had saved his life.
“Rogue’s one of the two girl members of Alpha,” Claudia said. “If Alpha are considered super stars around here, then she’s the supernova among those stars. Probably only exceeded by Raven, who’s their squad leader.”
“Does her avatar have long, white hair?” Kai asked.
“Ha!” Claudia called out. “There goes another admirer!”
For a brief moment, Kai saw a spiteful expression flash over Claudia’s face, then her look turned back to the calm friendliness he had seen so far.
“So, what exactly happened in that game you met Alpha?” Josh wanted to know.
Kai briefly described the events with the giant spider that had gone out of control and how the Cyber Squad had saved the day.
Everyone listened in silence, clinging to Kai’s words.
“I eat my hat, if that was a simple glitch,” Francois finally said in his slight French accent once Kai had finished.
Everyone nodded. Suddenly the whole group had turned dead serious.
“Yeah,” Marco agreed. All his cockiness and happy-go-lucky attitude had vanished from his face and voice. “It’s getting worse out there, if you ask me.”
“What do you mean?” Kai asked. “What’s out there? Topher mentioned something to me earlier but didn’t elaborate.”
“There’s some really scary shit out there on the Net,” Marco answered.
“Like what?”
Marco moved his head closer to Kai. “We don’t know anything official, of course. After all, we’re all low levels and only test games on our internal servers.”
“Technically, we’re all still rookies, not just you,” Josh said.
“Hey, speak for yourself, dude,” Claudia scorned him jokingly.
But the topic had brought an undoubted nervousness into everyone’s attitude, although they tried not to show it. Anxiety, almost.
“What is out there?” Kai kept digging, feeling how the hair on his arms stood up.
“Illegal mods on the Dark Web,” Marco said, lowering his voice. “Malware that can infect your neuro-plant with all kinds of nastiness and totally screw you up. Hackers who specialize in attacking game code, causing mayhem.”
“What kind of hackers?”
“Various kinds. Some act out of maliciousness and the joy of destruction, but they aren’t the worst. Way more dangerous are the organized conglomerates. Some are hired for industrial espionage, others have anarchistic motives. They believe that VR enslaves people and needs to be destroyed, or some bullshit like that.”
“But that’s still nothing compared to rogue AI,” Claudia said.
Kai stared at her. “You gotta be kidding me!”
Yet everyone glanced back at him in deadly seriousness.
“There’s no such thing as rogue AI on the Net… that’s an urban legend,” Kai said, getting more insecure with every word that left his mouth. “Or not?”
“You should ask Viktor about it,” Marco said. “He’ll tell you stories that’ll give you nightmares and make you wonder if you ever want to connect yourself to VR on the Net again.”
“Once he’s ready to talk to you,” Claudia added. “He’s a bit… different. Which is why he rarely spends his lunch break with us.”
“And finally, there are the ghosts,” Francois said.
“The what?” Kai was still hoping his new colleagues were pulling a newbie prank on him, but their serious faces made him doubt that more and more with every second.
“Have you never wondered what happens to people who die while they’re connected to VR?” Marco asked, his voice hardly more than a whisper now. “And especially those who fall into a coma in real life while connected? What happens to their consciousness?”
Kai wasn’t sure what to answer and remained silent. This was getting crazier by the minute!
“There are stories that such people are trapped in VR, or at least digital imprints of them,” Marco said. “And now comes the killer: we don’t know for sure, but we believe that the Level Ten squads aren’t simply game testers like we are. They’re the ones who deal with all the shit out there others believe doesn’t even exist. And Alpha is the most hardcore of them all.”
Everyone remained silent for a moment, and Kai’s hope that all of this was only a prank faded entirely.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he finally said.
“Hey,” Marco lifted his hands. “You asked, we answered.”
The others nodded, and Kai swallowed hard.
“Well, that’s scary,” he finally said.
Marco laughed, and suddenly the mood at the table switched back to normal again, as if the sun was back after hiding behind a thick, black cloud for a moment.
“You said it, man. But don’t worry, you won’t even be sent out into MMOs before you reach Level Four, so you’re good. For now.”
“Yeah, it’s the reason I don’t play online in my spare time anymore,” Josh said.
“What spare time are you talking about?” Francois threw in dryly.
“Ok, I believe it’s time for us to go back,” Claudia said, nodding at the big digital wall clock above the food distribution area. “We don’t want Master and Commander to be upset with us.”
“Right. He should be done with eating ‘lunch’, too, by now,” Marco said, wiggling his eyebrows, and Claudia rolled her eyes.
They returned their trays and empty dishes to the distributor and made their way to the exit. Kai’s head was spinning. During the thirty minutes his lunch break had lasted, he had been bombarded with more information than he had wished to gain. Game glitches and bugs were bad enough, but malicious malware, hackers, rogue AI… ghosts?
Something was telling him that this was only the tip of th
e iceberg. His new friends hadn’t told him all they knew, not at all. And he was more than curious now to hear what the mysterious Viktor had to say.
He got disoriented again once they were outside of the screaming colors of the cafeteria and in the Bowels. Kai was glad he could follow the others as he would never have found his way back to the testing room on his own.
They found Topher standing next to Lex’s she-cave while she was sitting behind her desk, resting her legs on its edge. There was undoubtedly something intimate in the body language of those two, and now that he was aware of it, Kai wondered how he hadn’t noticed it before.
“There you are,” Lex greeted them. “Ready for your baptism of fire, Kai?”
“Ready,” he answered.
“Splendid! I’ll throw you guys into one of the advanced levels on hard mode. Should be fun to watch,” Lex said with a hint of sadism in her voice.
“Hooray,” Francois said in the dry tone typical for him, and they all went to their pods.
Kai noticed that Viktor was already there, waiting in his pod with his arms crossed. His pale blue eyes studied Kai with curiosity, and Kai was stunned when he realized that Viktor was the first person he had ever met who actually looked much better in real life than in VR.
No doubt, this was a very strange guy.
Kai felt a little nervous when he took his place in the pod he had been assigned before. The level he had played with Topher earlier had been more of a beginners mission. He was determined to give a good performance in the campaign Lex was about to throw them into now. It was clear to him that he wanted to reach Level Two as quickly as possible, as that was apparently when the fun really started in this job.
“Place your hands in the depressions, Kai, palms down,” Lex said, approaching him. “Exactly like that, good boy.”
Kai felt a sharp pain for a second as two metal tubes connected to the ports in his wrists. The nurse had done such a good job that he had already forgotten the ports were even in his body.
“Just in case your adrenaline runs amok,” Lex said, petting his cheek. “It can get pretty rough out there.”
“I’ll be fi–”
Before Kai could finish his sentence, the operator had plugged him in and his consciousness was sucked into VR for a ride he wouldn’t forget any time soon.
Chapter Thirteen
Entering game… Please wait… Loading…
Behind Blue Eyes 3. Secure_dev_mode, build 322B.
The infinite space of white vanished and Kai found himself in a room with large windows offering a spectacular view over the same majestic city he had seen before. Seemingly endless rows of glass towers lined up till the horizon, reflecting a blood-red afternoon sun that was about to set in the west. A long way down, several lines of transportation buzzed with traffic. Futuristic aircraft cruised between the high-rises which mile-high facades functioning as oversized billboards.
In close proximity, the gigantic black pyramid stood out with its unique architecture. From the previous installments, Kai remembered that this was the center of power in this world. He wondered how many decades it would take until real-life cities would look like that, if ever.
The room itself was decorated like a lounge, with tasteful, black furniture. It was the game lobby.
Waiting for players to join… Please stand by.
He had been the first one to be uploaded and needed to wait for his team. After a moment, Claudia materialized, then Marco, and then the rest.
“The view is pretty, huh?” Claudia said.
“Yes, it is. I love this game!”
She chuckled. “Give it a couple of weeks and you’ll love to hate it.”
“How long have you been testing it?”
“A bit over three months now,” Claudia said. “We got three more months to go, then it needs to be ready to ship, no matter what.”
“Alright, squad,” they heard Topher’s disembodied voice. “As our veterans here know, the co-op version of the game only allows a team of four. Marco, Claudia, Josh and Kai will team up and play the campaign. Viktor will keep an eye on the code and Francois an eye on Viktor – the usual.”
Kai’s game HUD sprang into action, showing him grouped up with the other three, while his tester HUD below showed the complete squad of six.
“I didn’t even know the game had a co-op modus,” Kai said. “That’s awesome.”
“It’s a new feature that came with this installment,” Marco explained.
Viktor sat in one of the black leather armchairs, his legs crossed and his hands folded. Like all others in the room, his avatar was dressed in the iconic black combat suit, and his eyes had been replaced by the neon-blue cyborg eyes the game series took its name from. He studied Kai attentively without saying anything, and the unnatural eyes gave his stare something eerie.
Kai looked into the large mirror which was attached to the adjacent wall. He too was dressed the same way, and the same unnatural eyes stared from his unfamiliar, generic face. It was about time to exchange this boring avatar for something custom-made to match the others.
Initializing campaign…
Everything froze briefly, then the lobby dissolved and was replaced by a different surrounding.
Kai found himself sitting in a row with the others, strapped to his seat by a safety belt. It was dark, and the slight shaking of the black-walled cabin revealed that this had to be the interior of a plane. His teammates were seated next to him, but there were also at least a dozen NPCs with them, all dressed in the same attire, their eyes glowing an unsettling blue.
A woman stood in the middle of the cabin. Although seemingly dressed the same as everyone else, for some reason she looked way sexier than the rest. Kai recognized the actress who had been playing Nephilim, an important character in the game in the previous installments. Apparently there was an illegal mod on the web that would make her appear naked at all times, but Kai would never dare to try such a thing – besides, it would somehow feel wrong.
“Attention, Angels,” Nephilim began her briefing with her unique voice that was both stern and sensual. “We’re about to enter one of the most challenging and dangerous missions since the founding of our unit. I’ll be honest with you, it’s going to be tough… and many of you will die–”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, can we cut the crap, please?” Claudia sighed. “I know you guys like staring at her bosom but we’ve seen this cutscene how many times now? A thousand?”
“We need to be sure we didn’t miss a bug here,” Marco grinned.
“Actually, it has been only 37 times, but you’re right,” Viktor said, joining the conversation. The console with its holo keyboard and screen sprang into action and his hands flew over it, while his face didn’t change its bored expression.
The cutscene froze and Nephilim disappeared. Suddenly the safety belts were unfastened and the back hatch of the aircraft was open.
“Thanks, Viktor,” Claudia said, getting up. “Who writes such shitty dialogue anyway?”
“Game writers,” Josh answered. “They earn a lot of money.”
“Not as much as us once we hit a high level,” Marco said as he jumped up and hurried toward the open hatch.
Without slowing down, he leaped outside into the darkness – and let out a horrible scream, as if he were falling to his death.
Claudia rolled her eyes. “He’s such a clown.”
“Yes,” Viktor agreed dryly.
“Come on,” the girl addressed Kai. “It’s part of the game mechanic to jump out there and won’t cause any damage.”
They all went to the hatch and let themselves drop into the night. Kai followed and stepped into nothing without hesitation. He felt cold air hitting his face, creating an utterly realistic sensation on his skin, and saw a bright silver full moon on the horizon. Then he hit the ground, 60 feet below.
Impact absorbed. Limbs at 90% nominal capacity.
Quickly, he followed the others’ example and crouched behind a ha
lf-collapsed wall.
“So, what’s the mission about?”
“Go in, kill everyone. It’s a shooter,” Francois said with a shrug and a slight smugness in his voice.
“Smartass,” Claudia replied, then explained to Kai. “You should be able to see the area on your mini-map if you activate scan mode. In front of us is a deserted shopping mall with enemy cyborg units called Wasps hiding inside. They’re tough motherfuckers even on normal mode but Lex sent us straight into hard mode hell, so it’s gonna be brutal. To make it even more nasty, the whole area is one massive ticking bomb. We have less than ten minutes to kill all hostiles and deactivate it or we lose the campaign.”
“Ok,” Kai said. “I’m ready.”
“Luckily we’ve already searched the area for bugs multiple times, so there shouldn’t be any clipping issues or other glitches,” Marco said. “This test is all about AI behavior in combat. Am I right, master?”
“Right,” Topher’s disembodied voice answered. “Kai will team up with Claudia. Josh protects Marco’s ass. Now, move!”
“Yes, master.”
Topher laughed. “One day I’ll simply leave you in VR over the weekend, Marco. You’ll see.”
“This way,” Claudia nudged Kai’s arm, then ran ahead.
New Objective: Eliminate all hostiles.
Time to Detonation: 9:59
His vision changed from night-black to a ghostly blue, which simulated the enhanced vision of his cybernetic eyes. It was a pretty cool effect, similar to night vision and yet unique.
As always when playing this game, he wondered what it would be like to be a mighty cyborg – or any kind of hero. Like the guys from Level Ten Alpha, who apparently almost had a godlike status among the other testers. How did one become someone like that?
Sunken in thoughts, he bumped right into Claudia, who had stopped at the corner of a ruined building that looked a bit like the remains of a former fast-food restaurant. In his blue vision mode, he could now clearly see how desolate the area was. Something horrible must have happened to have left this world so shattered.
“Careful, rookie,” Claudia said, then chuckled. “You know you need to buy me a drink first, don’t you?”
Cyber Squad - Level 1: A Gamelit/LitRPG Lite Cyberpunk Adventure Page 14
