"….."

"What? How do you know him?"

"Not him. Her. GoulagSlayer13 is a girl."

"A girl? You are mistaken, Piper," Noah scoffed. The bond with his best gamer friend was too strong for him to be off-target about the gender. Or wasn't it?

"I think you are a great gamer, man. Just that- you are dull-witted when it comes to girls. I mean, I am crazy nervous around girls, but you are completely bone-headed. Being a lifelong shut-in does that to you."

"Look who's talking," Noah quipped.

"Hmph-"

"Okay, even if I were to believe for a moment that GoulagSlayer13 is a girl, what else can you tell me? What's her name? Where does she live? Which city?"

"Ah. That's more like it, my oblivious friend. I will tell you everything, but only if you assure me that there will be no more threats of disconnecting calls. I have something important to talk to you about right now. It pains me to use your girlfriend's identity as a bargaining chip to keep this conversation going. However, desperate times, desperate measures."

Noah rolled his eyes. "Fair enough."

"Actually, you have met her-"

"And let me guess- I don't remember that because my memory was wiped?"

"Yep. She was a student in Synergy High school-"

"-Her name?"

"-Eve Trinity."

Noah sat back under his blanket fort. Eve Trinity was a girl who had transferred to Synergy and transferred out the next day. That's all he remembered, apart from the fact that he had found her very pretty.

The boy had paid no attention to Eve's mysterious disappearance until Piper mentioned her just then.

The name triggered something in him.

Noise. Violence. Blood.

Noah broke out in a cold sweat.

"Hey, man, are you still there?"

"I don't-"

"You met her. Umm, I mean, you and I met her. Together, we had a frightening adventure on a tube train. It was nothing short of a movie scene. Do you want the entire story?"

"....."

It took ten minutes for Piper to relate everything missing from Noah's memory. The events from the duo stalking Eve, to the hybrid attacks in the tube train, to Noah's heroic use of the Trinity device and their abduction by Providence.

"If both of our memories were wiped, then why do you remember everything?" Noah asked in the end.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Piper cackled haughtily.

"Because, my dear friend, they overlooked a very simple thing. I back up my data in real-time to the home server. However, that backup is uploaded to a secondary server. They wiped my dedicated memory and the primary one through uplinks. When I returned home and synced my memories, I found an excess on the secondary server. The rest is history."

"How is the rest- history?" Noah posed.

"That's your takeaway? It's just something people say-"

"Yeah, but you did not make any history-"

"Probably we will," Piper said sternly. "Anyway-"

"Tell me, why did you not share everything with me all these months? Why did you come to me now?"

"Like I explained earlier, Noah. Dangerous organizations like Providence and Inferno were involved. It was a reasonable decision on their part to wipe our memories so that there was no risk of us being found by Inferno or leaking the news to the public by accident."

"Hmm. I get that. Then what about now? Have they magically stopped being dangerous? Won't they be listening in to this very conversation?"

"It doesn't matter anymore, man. And that is the important thing that I wanted to talk to you about."

"Why? What happened?"

"You must be familiar with the Trinity network and God Formula by now, right? Anonymity leaks?"

"Yeah. Of course. I don't live under a rock-"

"I got confirmed news that Trinity will open to the public tonight at 12."

"What? That's amazing!" Noah scanned the recent news on the internet. "I can't see it on the internet, though."

"Well, it's more like a test collaboration between the Covenant Government and Providence. They did not make it a declaration, as it was a sudden decision. Besides, only a hundred players will be accepted into the beta testing."

"How did you know about it, then?"

"My dad is in the engineers’ guild, duh! I got into beta testing!" Piper sounded thrilled. "Can you imagine maneuvering the world like in a video game?"

"Hmm. What will the interface be like? And isn't Trinity meant for people with God Formula Affinity?"

"Well, I am yet to see the Heads-on-Display, but you had described it to me as a video-game-like interface with Augmented Reality. But the elements you activate in the HUD are materialized into the real world. And you are right; seventy-eight players, including me, have already been given synthetic God Vaccine. I've reserved a seat for you, man. A gamer like you deserves the first shot."

"Then I have to take it as well? God Vaccine, I mean."

"No, man, you already have the GF factor. You used a Trinity device once, remember? Besides, I remember you telling me that Trinity offered you God Vaccine. The real deal."

"The real one? I don't follow."

"Well, it's like the original thing, but not solely meant to boost the GF factor. It strengthens your physiology to handle Trinity. Or something to that effect. I know little about it. As do the researchers at Providence."

"Hmm. Why didn't I take it?"

"You said you don't like needles?" Piper said mockingly.

"Yeah, that's.. umm.. accurate."

"Okay, man, that's about all the information I had. You seem to have taken it well. Will you do it? Will you join me?"

"No, thanks."

Noah disconnected the call.

ʙʟᴏᴄᴋ ᴘɪᴇᴅᴘɪᴘᴇʀ17

He sighed loudly and looked at the low battery on his gaming device.

The boy was at ease adventuring around in a virtual world. Traveling around in the real world, fighting real monsters, was not something he dared to even consider. All his life, he had nurtured the flight response from danger.

……..

"For someone who likes Knights of Regia, that was unexpected."

Noah gave a start on hearing a stranger's voice in the garage.

Was it his foster father?

No way. It was a younger, more authoritative voice.

Noah peered out of a flap of his blanket fort and saw the silhouette of a man leaning on the Shepherd family-car.

"Who are you?"

"Dr. Jack Chrysalis. Pleased to meet you, Noah. Again."