Everything in the jail cell smelled like bleach, dust, and old piss–including the painfully thin mattress Alex was trying to get some sleep on. Sleep was the only thing that helped him pass the time and forget how royally fucked he was. Given how busy and noisy the place was, however, even sleep was a luxury.

“Hey, Rulin!” a voice called from the other side of the bars. A guard. “Wake up. You’ve got a visitor. Your lawyer’s here to see you.”

“Tell him it’s my day off” said Alex, still groggy.

The guard rolled his eyes.

“I’ll just pretend I didn't hear that. Come on, Rulin. I ain’t got all day.”

Alex was no mama’s boy, but jail definitely did not agree with him. The cells were bad, the food worse, and as for the company… Well, it wasn’t exactly the kind of people you’d expect to find at an Ivy League gala.

What annoyed Alex the most, however, was the boredom. The sense that he was just sitting around with nothing to do but piss his days away, wishing he hadn’t been stupid enough to end up in there in the first place.

Well, if wishes were horses.

His legal representation wasn’t much of a ray of hope either. Alex didn’t have two cents to his name to rub together, so he had been assigned a public defender, a sweaty, over-anxious muppet. Alex knew he was screwed the moment he first saw him stumble through the door of the visitors’ room a couple of days earlier.

The guard took Alex to that same room–a depressing affair with worn carpeting, fluorescent lamps, an old table, and a couple of mismatched chairs.

“Your visitor’s already waiting inside, Rulin. I’m going to be right outside this door, so no shenanigans. Don’t make me come in here. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure” said Alex, walked through the door, and took a look at the man sitting across the table.

He wasn’t the same guy as last time.

No.

The man sitting across the table was something else entirely.

He must have been somewhere in his sixties, but still looking surprisingly strong and fit. He had iron-grey hair and a short, well-trimmed beard, and smelled of a rich, woody scent–aromatic pipe smoke.

Alex couldn't help but notice the suit he was wearing. He didn’t know jack about suits, but that one looked expensive. Dignified. Certainly nothing like the off-the-rack kind of monkey suit you’d expect a public lawyer to wear.

The other thing Alex noticed was his sharp eyes, and how the man’s polite half-smile didn’t reach all the way up there. There was something predatory in the way he looked at Alex. Not hostile, not necessarily; it was the look a bored, not-really-hungry-right-now old lion would give a deer at a watering hole.

“Hello, Mr. Rulin.”

“Uh, hi. I… I thought you were someone else.”

“I am someone else,” the man said, and his smile widened to show perfect teeth.

Under normal circumstances, Alex might have laughed. He might even have some wisecrack answer.

Under normal circumstances.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“I’m afraid not. But I know you, and you’re not someone who should be spending his time here paying for an impudent lapse in judgment. My name is Grimm, Mr. Rulin. I want to represent your case in court.”

Alex had no idea what was happening, and his first instinct was to act disinterested and bail out as fast as he could. Still, the man had a kind of magnetism he just couldn’t off-handedly dismiss. He had an accent he couldn’t quite place–British-ish, probably?–and the kind of rich, smooth voice of a professional voice actor or late-night FM radio host.

“Thanks, I guess, but I already have a lawyer.”

“That funny little man?” Grimm said, sounding amused. “Yes, if you can call him that.”

“What is it exactly that you want, mister?”

“Let me cut through the proverbial crap, Mr. Rulin,” the man leaned in closer. “Alex? May I call you Alex?”

“Sure.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Alex, I want you to listen. Really listen, because this is important.”

“I’m listening.”

He really was listening. Why not? It wasn’t like he had anything to lose. As far as the law was concerned, he was already pretty much fucked six ways to Sunday.

“I want to make you an offer. It’s the best one you’ll get in here. In fact, it’s the best one you probably will ever have. It will literally open you a door to a new life.”

“Look, if this is about money, let me stop you right there. I don’t have any.”

Grimm flashed him another amused half-smile.

“Remind me, Alex. Why are you here in the first place?”

“Credit card fraud,” Alex said, more than just a little embarrassed. “I used a stolen credit card number to order a pizza.”

It was sad, really. He’d just lost his job that night, he was feeling blue, and just wanted to munch on some double cheese pepperoni and forget. There was this guy that occasionally gave him stolen credit card numbers in exchange for items and help with elite quests.

Alex knew that using them was stupid, but he still occasionally did so anyway. Food and groceries, mostly, and only when he’d run out of money–small, infrequent charges he hoped nobody would notice. The pizza he got that night turned out to be the straw that finally broke the camel’s back–the charge that finally got him in hot water.

“I’m well aware of the charges you’re facing, Alex,” said Grimm, nodding. “And well aware of the fact that you’re, to put it mildly, flat broke. In fact, I know that that wasn’t the only time you used a stolen credit card number, and I know you only ever used them to buy essentials. The whole thing has a desperate Jean Valjean kind of charm to it, if you ask me–not that it will make any difference in the court of law.”

Alex looked away, suddenly both uneasy and irritated. As if a man who could afford a suit like that would know the first thing about–how had Grimm put it?–the Jean Valjean kind of desperation.

“To return to your initial concern,” the man continued, “no, my proposition won’t cost you a dime. On the contrary, if you play your cards right, you may actually end up making some money. Real money–and a hundred percent legal, too.”

“Go on, then.”

“Here’s what’s going to happen; you’re going to plead guilty to all charges. The court will sentence you to a year or so of jail time–an outrageous sentence, yes, but one you will be allowed to serve in a private penitentiary establishment owned by a party I represent. Minimum security, your own private room, better food, better everything. How does that sound?”

Alex might be a college dropout, but he wasn’t an idiot. His smarts were the one good thing his late father had left him. “You gotta learn how to think, bub,” the old man used to say, and then emphasize that axiom by flicking his young son’s nose. He never won any blue ribbons for parenting, the underachieving, Coors-Light-guzzling asshat, but at least he’d gotten that right.

The other axiom he had lived by was “there’s no such thing as a free lunch," and Alex had taken that one to heart, too. If something sounded too good to be true, it probably was, and Grimm’s proposition so far had sounded like sweet music to his ears.

Suspiciously sweet music.

“What did you say your name was again?” Alex asked, playing for time.

“You can call me Grimm.”

“Like the fairytale guys?”

That made the man chuckle.

“Right–only my offer is no fairytale, Alex. It’s as real as they come.”

“So what’s the catch?”

Because of course there was going to be a catch.

“There’s not much of one,” said Grimm. “What you have to do in return is playtest Elderpyre, an immersive virtual reality experience. A game, if you will, though the marketing folks are strongly against calling it that.”

“And what will I have to do?”

“Experience it in whatever way you like,” Grimm shrugged and smiled, “and let the party I represent collect data and use it to improve immersion. Anonymously, of course.”

“And if I decide to say no?”

“Then I’ll shake your hand, clap you on the back, and wish you good luck.”

“Simple as that?”

“Simple as that.”

Alex had to scoff.

“Come on, man. I’m not stupid. Why me? Why don’t you get some actual playtesters? Hell, you can even call it a beta or an early access version or some other crap and have people pay you for the privilege of testing your–what did you say it was? Immersive virtual reality experience.”

The man pursed his lips and stared at Alex, as if trying to make up his mind about something. Alex tried to keep his poker face up and stare back, but found that he couldn’t–not at those piercing grey eyes, not for longer than a few seconds.

“Good point,” Grimm finally said. “Let me be straight with you. This… experience? It’s special. Unlike anything you’ve seen before. Every aspect of it is kept under wraps. Thing is, playtesters have an unfortunate tendency to blab to the wrong people, non-disclosure agreements notwithstanding. What can you do about it? You can’t keep them under lock and key… or can you?”

Well, damn.

It made a surprising amount of sense, Alex realized. Professional playtesters were paid shit, but they were still paid. And, if history was any indication, nothing spelled “cheap labor, no questions asked” like the prison-industrial complex.

“Okay, I get it. Why me, though?”

Grimm shook his head.

“It’s not just you, Alex. It’s a program.”

“Yeah, but still. Why me?”

“A variety of reasons. Trivial criminal offense, not much of a family, underachiever, college dropout, gaming background, and, to be frank, you’re not going anywhere too fast. No offense.”

“None taken. I’m used to people in fancy suits looking down on me.”

“I’m not looking down on you. Quite the opposite. Would I still be making you this offer if I didn’t recognize your potential value?”

Alex rolled his eyes and said nothing, still trying to act dispassionate. The fluorescent light flooding the depressing little room was making him feel like none of this was real. The smell of dust and old sweat permeated everything, assaulting his nostrils with every breath. There was no air conditioning, of course, and his own sweat was starting to make his jail uniform stick to his body. A couple of rooms down the corridor, someone, - a guard, probably, was shouting at someone else, though Alex couldn’t make out the words. It was as if he was living inside the world’s most depressing still life painting.

“I’m afraid time is of the essence, Alex," said Grimm, not missing a chance to add a hint of scarcity and urgency to what he was peddling. “You have to make up your mind fast. What will it be, in or out?”

Alex let out a tired sigh and rubbed his eyes with his fists.

“It’s not like I have much of a choice, is it?”

Grimm smiled and leaned in a bit closer.

“Son," he said, and for the first time he sounded completely, totally honest. “You always have a choice.”