[Player Log Start!]
[Log Holder: Benedict Carrey]
[Level: 2]
“May I present to you, my new chair.” Lucky flourished towards her completed project. Which she was sitting on. A fully functional wheelchair, with bulky wheels that would be manually operated. All the machinery inside it had been reworked into keeping two pairs of grabber arms tucked under the armrests, included with her flying equipment, which had been folded up and bolted to the back of the chair. She gave a quick twirl, the metal edges of the wheels screeching against the rock floor.
“The rubber tracks are still being made.” She explained with a sheepish smile.
Ben laughed, “I’m sure it’ll turn out okay. Good start, though! Very… hard to make?”
“Literally whipped it up in front of you in two minutes. But keep the flattery coming.” Lucky grinned, propping up her chin with her hand, a leer on her face. Ben flushed deeply, trying to return the look, but there was no way she pulled it off as well as Lucky did.
“So… not to sound weird, but we’re both feeling this, right?” She asked, heart pound in her throat. Lucky, for her benefit, was looking at her in confusion, her head tilted sharply, which was making Ben a lot less confident, “Because I’m half sure you’re flirting with me, but it’s really hard to tell and-”
Lucky was still squinting at her, and yet studiously avoiding eye contact. Frustration bubbled in her gut, “Come on, I’m trying here, and if you’re not willing to put in the effort, too-”
“Ungghhhhhh.” A sleep-numb voice slurred out from behind her, interrupting her speech.
“Benedict, Vera is waking up.” Lucky told her, rolling her chair over to the girl laying in the bed behind Ben, where she had begun shifting for the first time in days, now all in a fervor. Shit… they needed to deal with that. Now.
“Tench, get the fuck in here!” She called up the entrance tunnel, “She’s up!”
“Who’s up? Don’t say- oh, shit, getting in there!” There was a sound of scrambling as he slipped down the ladder, “Get her some water. Food. Rags as well, in case that mild fever gets worse. Try to get some response out of her, like clenching fingers or flickering eyes.”
“On it.” Ben agreed, more used to doing this with furry feet and flailing claws, but gradually she was getting accustomed to human bodies as well. Then something struck her, “Wait, did you not listen to anything I was saying or…?”
“Ben. Is this really the time?” Lucky asked.
“Guess not.” She mumbled, ducking her head down to run her hand over Verity’s hair, trying to soothe her flailing, “Hey, take a breath. It’s alright.”
Verity grimaced, clawing at her eyes, “Blankets. Itchy.” She swore pathetically.
Ben laughed, “Yeah, okay, complain about the threat count, will you?”
“We’ll talk about that other thing later.” Lucky promised her, chair still making the squealing, grinding noises as she pulled herself to the other side of the room.
Ben nodded distractedly and made sure that Verity hadn’t picked up on her split second of bitterness. They could pick that conversation up later. No harm done.
----------------------------------------
One startling conversation later, and Ben had to admit that there had been harm done. A lot of harm done. All stemming from the lies and deceit of one Verity Monroe.
“Oh, and one of my Abilities is Deception. You didn’t know about that, either.” She added, as if purposefully trying to make Ben’s brains boil. Or maybe not purposefully, as the girl reached out a hand to Ben, searching for comfort. Ben stepped further away, and Verity’s eyes shuttered at the unsubtle rejection.
“I can’t do this.” Ben announced, her breath shaky, “I really can’t handle this shit right now. Someone either hold me back, or her, because I don’t trust myself to do something really drastic right now.”
A coil of metal tubing curled around her wrist, the pincers digging into her skin. It was a testament to how serious Ben sounded that Lucky had obeyed the order without any argument or witty retort. In fact, she looked equally furious at Verity. But this fury was lined with perspective. Sympathy. A feeling of kinship, which was ridiculous, because Lucky was the furthest thing from a Harbinger she had ever met. She had been the one to take down two Harbingers with little outside help.
“You are going to have to be more specific with information now.” She said, directing this sentence towards Verity, “I will ask you things that I have asked Harbingers before, and it is in your best interest that you answer truthfully. I will know.”
She was lying a little about that, Ben knew, but if this bluff could work, then it’ll make things so much easier. Verity wasn’t the best at noticing lies.
Verity nodded, looking crestfallen. She’d been quick to proclaim her innocence before, but that meant little to Ben. Or, evidently, Lucky. Because Harbingers were people, as hard as that was to admit. They were ridiculously strong people, who had chosen this life for the benefits that came to them, because they were cruel and spiteful, to the core.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
And if Verity had been aligned with those qualities… perhaps she was like that too, just a little. Which meant that she couldn’t be trusted.
“Shouldn’t we be having a team meeting or something?” Tench asked, trying desperately to derail the conversation, “At least… talk about this? Figure out what happened? Which questions to ask?”
“And expose our backs to her to cleave open?” Lucky sniffed, “No, I believe us better than that. First question.” She barked towards Verity, who straightened up tightly for a moment before sagging back down. She probably couldn’t even walk yet. Hadn’t even gotten a proper meal inside her.
They shouldn’t be interrogating her in this condition, but a delay in getting the information they needed was the worse outcome.
“Why are you telling us this now?” Lucky asked, a harsh demand, “You had all the time in the world, and yet you never thought to warn us until now. What’s coming?”
“Nothing!” Verity replied, a pained whine, “I’m just… I’m just me. I swear. And I don’t- I don’t feel good.”
So, this was because of her conscience. Otherwise they would have lived the fantasy that they were safe, having finally outrun the Harbingers. That was not very comforting. Already, Ben could feel herself inspecting all the other [Party(Main)] members as well. Picking apart their knowledge, their strengths, any unexplained disappearances they might have had.
If one untrustworthy person had slipped into the ranks, who was to say that more had not followed in her lead? Was this entire mission being done by waiting moles working for the Developers? It made her terrified to even consider that as a possibility.
Yet, it could not be disregarded. All she had trust in was herself. And Tench. And… she glanced at Lucky, who was real and true and kind and had been working for Burks and his underlings for years. No, she was not to be trusted either. And judging by that hooded glare the woman sent her way, she had similar thoughts running through her own head.
“I’m not like this because I want to be.” Verity continued to speak, “It’s in my programming. And I think it’s about to take over. Again. And- and-” The waterworks were coming up at this point. Like a crocodile waiting to snap. Well, Ben wasn’t taking the bait.
Lucky, however, seemed to be another story. This was bad. She was the second most proficient fighter in the room (the first was Verity, but she was too weak at the moment to truly fight) and if things got ugly, they needed her on their side.
“What’s this programming?” She asked, choosing her words carefully, “What does it feel like?”
The question was softer, less demanding, yet the Compulsion she applied on it was even stronger, proudly blinking in the middle of the room, like an obituary to the trust they all had held.
[Lucky Paine Has Applied Compulsion!]
“I called it the redsight. Before I knew what was happening to me.” Verity murmured, and whether it was because she didn’t want to put up a fight, or because the Compulsion was just that strong, it was unclear, “But it feels like… this anger. Bubbling underneath my skin ever since the world ended. I was so angry. All the time. It was a… burning kind of anger. Asking me to raze everything to the ground. And I would do it. Just… following along with instructions I wasn’t completely understanding. But then I built connections with actual people, and- and- it got easier to control? Until it wasn’t. And I felt weird again and-” She sighed, looking remarkably relaxed for someone in her position, “I don’t feel like it’s taking over anymore. That’s- that’s good.”
This could be a ploy. It was obviously a ploy. Ben shouldn’t be letting this happen. She shouldn’t let her slump back down and fall asleep again. They needed to shake her awake and restrain her and stop with the games, but…
Verity had looked so relieved when she had finally gone down. As if a long trip through a desert had finally resulted in the discovery of an oasis. Even Lucky, the most cutthroat usually, let her drift back to sleep. But instead of exasperation or concern, she was looking at the armrest of her chair, and the cards which were normally concealed inside it, now laid on top.
She was looking between them and Verity, whipping her head back and forth as if she would solve some great mystery.
“I think it’s the Compulsion.” She announced.
“What?” Tench blinked, a little slow on the uptake, “What’s the Compulsion doing?”
Lucky grimaced, “This is going to sound crazy, right? But the timeline seems to align. Verity’s Harbinger programming got activated at the end of the world. From there, she had no people to form connections with, until she rejoined Jared. At which point the programming stopped in its tracks. And, around then, Jared had taken the Compulsion Card from Burks at the end of the first year.”
The cogs turned in her head, “You think… Jared was able to neutralize the murder instinct by Compelling her to not do that?” Ben guessed.
Tench groaned, “This is so fucked. We’re going to have to ask him when he gets back about this, right? Now… do we tie her down? Just in case we’re wrong about the Compulsion thing and she goes batshit on us. Because I’ve seen her on the field, and we don’t want that against us.”
Ben agreed wholeheartedly. She still remembered the blood-soaked torpedo that had laid waste to Hygeia. Had that been the influence of the Harbinger programming? When had she been subjected to such programming, anyway?
In absence of anything else to do, she reached for the Console Laptop. It opened on the [Party(Main)] members page. Their levels had increased a lot since the beginning of the first Level, but that was not the only discrepancy on the page.
There, at the very end of the roster, was Verity’s headshot, the sclera of her eyes bloodshot instead of the bright white that it had been before. Not only that, but her description was different too.
[Name: Verity Monroe]
[Age: 17]
[Class: Armageddon-Harbinger]
[Level: 13]
[Active Powerup: Arsenal Coat]
[Compress Character Profile→]
[Power Stats:]
[Durability: 9]
[Strength: 17]
[Agility: 11]
[Charisma: 5]
[Deception Lv. 20]
[Sharpshooting Lv. 13]
[Resource Conservation Lv. 13]
[Hand-to-hand Combat Lv. 19]
[Tracking Lv. 16]
[Killer Instinct Lv. 14]
The class shone in the darkness of the cave. Armageddon Harbinger. Her strongest Ability was Deception, and they hadn’t even known that she could do it. Now it was crumbling to the ground.
Something screeched loudly, and it wasn’t Lucky’s wheelchair. It was the entrance to the cove. A pale-haired boy slipped inside, balancing scavenged goods in his arms.
Michael looked around, shifting the crab draped over him, “Did I miss something?”
[Player Log End!]