Mai kept her STREET SMARTS running as often as she could, activating each it time it had refreshed. She’d seen nothing but locals. Presumably, the bounty hunters were still licking their wounds from last night.

She’d taken the time to alter her hair. Usually it was a dark black, but she’d used her nanites to streak it with red to match her suit and had added a couple of facial tattoos. Hopefully, it would give people pause and confuse any cameras they might be using. She’d also added thicker soles to her boots to change her height.

Anything to give me an edge, she thought.

Scanning the crowd, she looked for a ganger. She knew the sort she was looking for now, so it was easy to pick one out. They were mid-level, but still had clothing and other items which were way above the pay grade of the main bulk of gangers.

Keeping at least fifty paces between them, she followed the ganger as they moved along the street. It was clear that they were new to the area as they paused at each and every shop, speaking to the owners and accepting missions from them.

“Who’s going to be a busy boy then?” she muttered to herself as the ganger accepted another mission, this time from a butcher. She hadn’t considered speaking to the butcher herself, but the idea of getting cheaper rations for her people appealed.

Waiting for the ganger to leave, she walked up, spoke to the butcher, and accepted a mission to capture a brood of giant centipedes. Their legs were a delicacy in both cities, and considering they had so many, they were very profitable. All the time she kept an eye on the ganger.

She needn’t have worried about losing him. He was moving at a snail’s pace, stopping, and talking to everyone he could.

As he was talking to yet another shopkeeper, she closed the distance. Activating SNEAK and STEALTH, she circled so that she would be approaching from his direct rear. Everyone knows when they’re being spied upon, it’s a natural instinct. One way to avoid being detected was to look at a point slightly over their shoulder. Mai did so, casually walking over as if she was just another civilian.

“I’d love to get that for you!” the ganger said to the smiling shopkeeper as he stabbed the air.

Mai gritted her teeth and formed a pistol, pressing it into the ganger’s spine, laying her other hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t move. Don’t shout. I just want to talk. Information for a full bottle of bio-mass boost. Clear?”

The ganger’s head nodded in short, sharp, jerks, his chest heaving as though he’d run a mile in a dead sprint.

“Keep calm and I won’t have to blow your spine out through your stomach. You are calm aren’t you?”

“Yes,” his voice quavered, he was clearly anything but calm. A trickle of sweat ran down from his temple. “What do you need to know?”

“Not here,” Mai nodded at the pale-faced shopkeeper who had stepped back with both hands raised. Pushing the pistol deeper into the ganger’s back, making him gasp, Mai guided him towards a darkened alleyway. “Stay calm and you’ll walk away. Make any trouble and you’ll fucking regret it. You know who I am?”

“Yes. Mai Xiao, the culler. The rebel.”

“And you know that I’ve got a bounty on my head?” she pushed him into the alleyway.

“Yeah, one hundred thousand karma,” he tried to turn to face her, stopping as she tutted in his ear.

“Why? Why are they after me?”

“Because you’re a fucking NPC and you’re doing things that should be bloody impossible!”

Mai’s face screwed up in confusion. She hadn’t heard that term before. Not outside of the games she had played back home with Li.

“Is that some sort of ganger speak?”

“What? No? You mean you don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?” she hissed. Anger and fear warred over each other.

“This is a game. A permadeath game. Create a character. Play it. When that character dies you have to create another one as you don’t respawn. All of you are NPCs. Non-player Characters.”

None of what he was saying made sense. She’d played games. Everyone on the planet played games. But how could she be in a game.

“Why am I different?” She pressed the barrel of her weapon deeper into his back, making him gasp.

“I don’t know! I’m new to playing. Just bought a load of loot boxes to give myself a head start. This is my first day!”

Tears ran down Mai’s cheeks as she struggled to take in what the ganger was saying. It had to be a trick. Had to be! Why on earth would someone make up such an obvious lie? Only she knew it wasn’t a lie. Everything she’d thought odd came rushing into her head. All the strange things that had tickled the back of her mind but which she’d pushed to the side. On top of that the other gangers had been certain about her difference, and now there was a bounty on her head.

“Who set the bounty?”

“Guild heads. The top players. They don’t like what you’re doing. Think it’s a challenge that the developers have introduced to mix things up. They’ve pooled their resources.”

Mai’s knees sagged, her grip on the ganger the only thing which kept her standing.

“So me, everyone here, we’re all part of someone’s entertainment?”

“Yes,” the ganger shrugged. “It’s just a game. The rebel council are players too.”

Mai’s world rocked at that. Yen Ching was literally playing her. Not metaphorically, but literally, using her to accelerate his progress in the game. Manipulating her and her friends. For fucking entertainment! She vowed there and then that he would die.

“Well then, guess I won’t feel guilty about this,” Mai pulled the trigger, blasting the ganger’s spine to flinders. His entrails hit the ground in one loud schloop before she let go of his corpse.

KILL!

Mai reeled away from the corpse, then vomited, her legs finally giving way as she sank sobbing to the ground.

I’m a fucking game? All of the people I care about are nothing but fucking entertainment tools?

It was too much. She vomited again, weakly wiped the bile from her lips and then hugged her knees to her chest, rocking back and forwards.

No-one can know, no-one can know until I find out what makes me so different to the others.

She didn’t know how long she spent in that alleyway before she came back to her senses. But one thing she did know was that she was done with playing. If this was a permadeath game, then removing the higher level players would mean that all of the gangers would be coming in at lower levels unless they bought loot boxes to make it easier for themselves.

I’m going to price these fuckers out of the game! She snarled. She was surprised at how quickly she’d accepted the ganger’s words. And then it hit her. All of her memories of her life with her parents and her city were manufactured. She’d suffered the heartbreak of losing her parents, and then losing her sister and Andries, because some programmer thought it made a good story!

But first she had to get that tri-barrelled SMG. She hadn’t seen the stats, but if it was as good as the stealth suit, she’d do anything to get her hands on it

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

She hadn’t expected the crystals to be in a laboratory owned by one of the military factions, although now she actually thought about it made sense. It was natural that such a group would be interested in the production of weapons.

Dammit, not sure if I can do this myself. Still, she was here, and she had a suit which gave her a an additional ten per cent bonus to SNEAK, STEALTH and LARCENY. And the best thing was that it was a passive bonus. All she had to do was activate her skills and the suit would do the rest.

And looking at the skills, they’re all pretty much at the next level. Which will see me get another five per cent each one.

She’d been using them so much in conjunction with each other that they were levelling up at the same rate. With the suit that meant that STEALTH would be at the maximum of twenty-five per cent, the additional ten per cent bringing it to thirty-five per cent, LARCENY at twenty per cent with the additional ten making it thirty per cent and SNEAK was the same with STEALTH and was at thirty-five.

They’ll never see me coming, hear me either, she thought smugly. Creating a drone, she popped it into the air to see if she could spot a way in. The screen glitched, the drone refused to obey her commands, and then the feed went blank.

“Dammit, bastards have got a jammer,” she silently cursed herself for not working that tout sooner. It was obvious that the military faction, the Ghosts according to the glyphs on the base, would be better organised. She made a mental note to get her own jammers in place on the base when she had the chance.

Mai was going to have to do things the hard way. Rising to her feet from her hiding place, she made her way into an alley way which was equidistant along the factory wall between the two guard towers which protected it.

Creating a sniper rifle, she scoped the tower to her left. A glyph appeared above the guard in the tower, marking him as a sniper. Holding her scope on the tower she made sure that there was no-one in there with him.

Satisfied that he was on his own, she took a breath, slowly breathed out and held it. A gentle squeeze on the trigger and a bullet coughed out of the suppressed rifle.

The glass starred as the heavy slug punched through it before blasting the guard’s head from their shoulders, the body dropping out of sight in a shower of gore.

HEADSHOT!

INSTAKILL!

Chambering another round, Mai shifted her aim, laying her reticle onto the other tower. There were two guards. One was a sniper, the other was a normal grunt. This was going to be harder. She’d need to take them out as quickly as possible before they could give the alarm.

Given that they looked pretty relaxed and bored, she hoped that the shock of seeing their friend die would cause them to freeze long enough for her to chamber another round and kill them.

“Grunt first, the sniper’s going to take longer to acquire me as a target with that scope,” she said to herself, more to hear a friendly voice than for any other reason. She knew that Dakota was going to be utterly livid with her for carrying out a mission on her own, but she needed to do this mission before she could go back to her friends.

Concentrating on getting the mission done was pushing the thoughts of what she’d learned to the back of her mind. Letting her settle herself.

“Die,” she fired. The grunt’s head exploded, showering the sniper with gore. Mai chambered another round as quickly as she could, forcing the heavy round into the chamber, laying the sight onto the sniper as she did so. They were still flinching, reacting from the experience of being drenched by the contents of their friend’s skull.

“Boom,” she fired again. The shot wasn’t as clean as the others, blasting into the sniper’s chest, sending them spinning out of sight.

KILL!

Job finished she absorbed the rifle. Activating STEALTH, SNEAK and LARCENY she sprinted across to the wall, Creating a grappling hook, she threw it over, tugged on the rope to make it secure, activated her CLIMB skill and scooted up the wall as quickly as she could.

In less than ten heartbeats she was up and over, crouching down on the wall’s walk way as she scanned to her left and right. No-one moved.

Looking across the factory compound, she saw that it was made up of several linked buildings, pedways joining them together at different levels. It was clean, the builds well maintained and painted in a brilliant white. The lighting was also good, she couldn’t see one that wasn’t lit and doing its job.

Typical, these bastards are damned rich!

Workers and drones moved around the complex, carrying out tasks she couldn’t care less about, let alone understand. A couple of guards ambled along on one of the ground-level roads, no weapons in sight, talking to each other.

They’re clearly banking on the fact that if there’s an attack the alarm will sound, and they’ll have a chance to react and form the weapons they need.

Baring her teeth at their hubris, she stayed where she was for a few extra minutes, scanning the area and mapping out a route. Her skills reset during that time, but it was worth it as no-one was looking up at the wall, just getting on with their daily business.

Reversing the rope, she slowly fed it to the ground on the inside of the complex. It wasn’t far to the ground, about three times her height, but it was too far to risk jumping. No matter how high someone got their skills, they were always limited to ninety-nine per cent, as it was deemed that no-one could be perfect all of the time.

And I’m not risking breaking an ankle in this place.

Shinnying down the rope, she moved swiftly into the lee of a building. There didn’t seem to be any cameras, but there were so many drones and people moving around that they probably weren’t deemed necessary. She wasn’t prepared to take a risk on that though and took yet more time to make sure that the route the guideline had her following wasn’t overlooked by cameras. Not even SPOT HIDDEN helped her.

If I activate my skills, I cross the road in between the guards passing. The drones look passive, probably just carrying tools. The workers are slightly more random.

She decided to wait for a window where there were no workers. Finally, after she was about to scream in frustration, the foot traffic died down. Activating STEALTH, SNEAK and LARCENY she sprinted across the road, throwing herself behind a series of strange-looking potted plants.

From there she belly crawly nearly fifty paces until she was below a pedway. Activating her CLIMB and FREE RUNNING, she scaled the wall, then held onto the beams underneath the pedway, monkeying herself along as more workers and guards walked beneath her.

Arms screaming, she hooked her feet onto a beam and twisted until she was on top of it. It was a squeeze, but it she’d happily swap the pain in her arms for a right fit. As she rested and her skills reset, she watched the inhabitants of the complex go about their business.

Her guideline flashed, showing she was close to the store room she needed to break into. Tiring of its passive aggressive impatience, she moved to the end of the pedway. Squirming, the grabbed hold of its roof and pull herself onto the top, flattening as she did so.

Level with the roof of her target building, she now saw that she was in direct sight of another tower. Fortunately, the guard wasn’t looking in. Keeping herself low, she belly-crawled along the roof, pausing every time she heard someone walking below. Reaching the roof, she tucked herself in behind an air vent.

Shaking her arms to relax them, she made a fist a couple of times. They ached from where she’d been gripping the beam. Scanning the roof she spotted the vent she needed to reach. As with the walls of the building, the roof was white. Spotlessly so. She’d stand out like a fly in the ointment as she made her way across it.

Forming the rifle again, gritting her teeth both at the pain and the amount of bio-mass she was using, she ranged the distance to the next tower. This one had three guards in it. All looking outward. The shot was over four hundred paces, and she didn’t think that her with her SNIPER RIFLE skill it was worth risking a shot which might go absolutely anywhere and serve to do nothing but warn her target.

She shifted her aim, looking at the hatch. It had four clasps on both of the sides she could see, each one secured by what looked like lock. Whether it was operated from within or not, she couldn’t tell.

Absorbing the rifle once more, she scrolled through her menu until she came to one titled THIEVES’ TOOLS.

Let’s hope this one is the one I need. Every minute I spend up here is another minute closer to shift change and those guards being found.

LASER TORCH. Perfect for someone who needs entrance through a door they don’t necessarily have the keys for. The words sprang out at her. Without a second thought she created it, five per cent bio-mass being cheap, activated her STEALTH, SNEAK and LARCENY skills then ran over to the hatch. Shielding her arms against any possible glare, she lit the torch and started burning through the locks.

Mai grinned as the metal melted like butter. Each one of the locks took roughly five seconds to burn through, meaning that she was going to be exposed for up to eighty seconds. Shifting her body, she shielded the glare from the towers opposite her, not wanting the light to reflect on a window and cause one of the guards to turn inwards.

Blowing air out through her cheeks as she cut through the last lock, she absorbed the laser cutter, grabbed hold of the hatch, and slowly lifted it, pushing it away slightly so that she could look down into the room below.

Fighting the urge to just drop down, she forced herself to listen for any signs of alarm. Not hearing any, she formed a suppressed pistol and dropped down into the room below.

She was in a janitor’s closet, the shelves packed with cleaning materials, saving the janitor the effort of having to use nanites to create them as they worked. Moving to the door she placed her ear against it, once more trying to work out what lay beyond.

Her skills were still cooling down, so she took the opportunity to have a break herself, eating a couple of bars and gaining an additional eight per cent bio-mass. She hadn’t brought a bottle with her on this mission as she thought it wasn’t worth the risk if she lost one. A bottle of bio-mass boost in the hands of the wrong faction, such as the Ghosts, would be a nightmare.

Rested, she ate the bar’s bio wrappers, and dusted her hands off on her suit. Placing one hand on the wall and one hand on the door, she twisted the handle, using her foot to make sure she didn’t accidentally open it too far as it opened inward.

No-one moved outside. Kneeling, she pulled the door open slightly wider, using it to shield her body as much as possible. Just in time she caught the blinking red eye of a security camera. Jerking back, she knocked into a shelve, the contents rocking before settling back down.

Blowing out a breath she didn’t know she’d held, Mai wiped the sweat freely running down her brow. Now was not the time to have sweat blinding her, so pulled her suit’s cowl up over her head, drawing it tight so that it would soak up any further sweat.

She hadn’t unlocked any jammers herself, not really thinking she’d need them up until that point, so would have to rely on moving quickly.

Activate my skills. Open the door, roll under the camera, open the vault, leave the way I came.

Open the vault seemed like an easy thing to do. Only it looked as though it was thicker than she was broad.

GET THE CRYSTALS – PHASE TWO

FIND A KEY CARD

Dammit, I need to find someone to help me!