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Max sighed as he slid into his team’s favorite booth at the casino’s version of a diner. He had a plate piled high with pancakes and his early morning favorite - bacon. The late-night sting more than doubled Max’s chip stash.
He had waited deep into the night, expecting a knock and security to come and question him. Eventually, he fell asleep, and his worries receded into the background. He had done it!
“[My dog, Max! Get a load of this. The system must be doing a warm-up. The credit exchange just rolled the villa rental charges and posted the current balances of all the players. Check it! I’ll cut out all the authentication mumbo jumbo.]” Cypher beamed over the interface.
[Team ACME: Carl Mueller - 98,000; Jen Parker - 68,000; Brando Ramirez: 78,000; Sarah Patel - 78,000; Ethan Chen - 73,000]
[Team Eurosport: Abigail Humphrey - 7,513,000; Nigel Farnsworth - 4,000]
[Team DAIE: Donahue Morgan 78,000; Tyrel Reeves - 68,000; Viviane Saviene - 63,000; Vance Masetti - 58,000; Shu Zin Liang - 8,000]
[Team LUNA AI: Ava Gadro - 71,000; Mia Byte - 48,000; Hume McHumeFace - 48,000; James Zedroid - 23,000, Leroy Jenkins - 13,000]
[Team MVP: Sonny McGuire - 3,507,000; Jacob Hernandez - 2,898,000; Lauren Garcia - 3,192,000; Ben Wright - 2,221,000; Zack Cooper - ELIMINATED]
[Team Utopia: Xavier Bermatti - 214,000; Leah Choi - 199,000; Max Mitchell - 148,000; Charlie Hawkins - 113,00]
[Team Roughneck - Dominic Masterson - 9,804,000]
“[Hmm, it didn’t count the chips I swiped from Nigel and those thieves last night. If I took all of Nigel’s chips, he must really be hurting for credits now. Four nights of rent and he’ll get kicked out of the villas.]” Max mused.
“[I should think his creditors might not be happy with him. We observed Nigel engaging with that loan shark in the credit exchange. I suspect he is in very sore straits, financially.]” Sherlock said wryly.
Max spied his friends and other teams began to trickle into the cafeteria. Max greeted them as they sat. He didn't want to share his activities from last night. Leah was always so proper, and Charlie was an ex-soldier. They might not understand. The morning announcements chimed, and the chipper AI spoke as everyone began to dig into their breakfast.
“Good morning players! Casino Terminal is happy to announce that today we have four planned matches. Be sure to place any wagers before the starting bells!
0900 - Xavier Bermatti (Utopia) & James Zedroid (LUNA AI), Type: Player v Player Low Stakes Challenge, Form: Drone Storm
1000 - Brandon Ramirez (ACME) & Vivienne Saviene (DAIE), Type: Escape Room Low Stakes Challenge, Form: Haunted Manor
1100 - Carl Mueller (ACME) & Charlie Hawkins (Utopia), Type: Player v Player Low Stakes Challenge, Form: Carousel, randomized form selection (winner payout x2, loser debt reduced x 0.5)
1200 - ETA for Arrival of Team - New Boston
1300 - Max Mitchell (Utopia) & Ethan Chen (ACME), Type: Player v Player Low Stakes Challenge, Form: Carousel, randomized form selection (winner payout x2, loser debt
reduced x 0.5)
1400 - Mia Byte (LUNA AI) & Tyler Reeves (DAIE), Type: Talent Show Low Stakes Challenge, Form: Obstacle Course
1500 – Ava Gadro (LUNA AI) & Leah Choi (Utopia), Type: Talent Show Low Stakes Challenge, Form: Shooting Gallery
1700 - Abigail Humphrey (Eurosport) & Ben Wright (MVP), Type: Player v Player KNOCKOUT Match, Form: Battle Royal; REJECT option placed.
1700 - Dominic Masterson (Roughnecks) & Ben Wright (MVP), Type: Player v Player KNOCKOUT Match, Form: Battle Royal; Ben Wright is out of Reject options.
Remember that each team has three team matches until a player can initiate or accept a KNOCKOUT match. Low-Stakes challenges may be initiated by anyone at any time, but a player may spend their limited REJECT options. Winning three matches will earn an additional REJECT option. Use them wisely.
Players can only issue or accept one PvP challenge per day and teams can only accept 1 TvT or Multiteam challenge per day. Challenge matches exceeding these limits will be void.
Notice: Another team (Shanghai Surprise) is now on the final level of Stage 1 Labyrinth. The three-gong alert will sound when their 6-hour ETA is known.
This concludes your daily notifications. Fight! Fight! Fight! The Casino Terminal hopes you all have a lucky day!”
***
“Nice! My first challenge match!” Xavier crowed.
“Drone storm?” Max asked.
“Yup. You all really need to watch the older fight videos. Not a lot of people do the drone storm since you don’t fight yourself but use personal or arena drones. My drone designs should kick ass!” Xavier said.
The team excitedly discussed the upcoming matches. With Team MVP’s completion of their three team-matches, the older veteran players were beginning to eliminate exposed players. Both Max and Charlie had elected for a randomized match, getting paired up against similar players in the ACME team.
“Charlie, Carl Mueller took that Shu kid apart pretty fast in their matchup yesterday. You sure you can handle him?” Leah asked.
“That man is big and fights dirty, but I’ve got some aces up my sleeves. Guess we will see. It’s only credits, right? Speaking of which, the craps table is calling my name. Are you gonna play today, Max? I need your lucky hand in the shooter spot.” Charlie said, downing the last of his black coffee.
“You bet, but I need to send a message to my dad,” Max said. Charlie looked pained, considering what he viewed as an avoidable expense, but kept it to himself.
“Fine, kid. Don’t take too long. I’ll warm up the table.”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Max saw Nigel and Abigail entering the far side of the café, arguing. Nigel was grimy and bloody from the night’s activities, although his augmentations had healed him up. Max said his goodbyes and quickly exited with a grim smile, staying out of their sight path.
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Max fumed in frustration at the business center. He had his satchel, overflowing with casino chips from his grift of the thieves and Nigel, as collateral but the center’s supervisor Trevor was revealing new obstacles in his plan to contact his father.
“What are you talking about? You quoted me 10,000 credits per minute of face time or 10,000 per gigabyte for a message. I've got a download packet of 90 Gigs and wanted to add 10 minutes of face time with my father. That should be 190,000 credits! What changed?” Max growled.
The business center supervisor seemed unimpressed. His LED rolled in their frame, and he spoke.
“Look, you didn't say your contact point was in deep space. This is a secure quantum encryption link. The setup ping took just over an hour. The lag time adds to your communications costs. The encryption link is continuous, regardless of lag. You have to pay for the extension. I had assumed you had a local call. No one has ever wanted an interplanetary connection. This isn't my fault. You didn't provide enough detail for a good estimate. Even if you only do a full-minute monologue, send and get a minute-long reply, the tally will be 710,000 credits.” Trevor complained.
“Damn it. I don't have enough for that!” Max whined. Mal displayed his current amount of money, credits, and chips, which totaled 432,000 credits. He ground his teeth in frustration but accepted the reality of his limited funds.
“Alright! Change of plan. I’ll send my father the download and a short message. Can I add a 5-minute two-way video call to my sister, Mira Mitchell on Luna?” Max asked.
“Of course. Luna only has a time lag of 1.28 seconds. As long as you include lag into the 5 minutes, that will be 150,000 credits.” Trevor said.
Max nodded and asked. “You accept casino chips, right?”
Trevor’s LED apertures narrowed with distaste. He glanced at the sign on the counter detailing that all forms of payment were accepted, with conversions for the more popular world currencies. With a sigh, he nodded. Max slung the large sack of chips onto the counter.
He had checked the booty he’d taken from the thieves for trackers, and they were clean. The chips had fascinated Tesla and Max, having a very slick surface that shifted about and shed any motes. One of Max’s copies was using his transform skill to try and replicate the surface properties in his own skin to prevent the tracker tags that his team was spending every night removing.
“Very good, sir. If you step into the privacy booth, you can access it to record your download and message to your father. Once that's done, I’ll connect you with your sister.”
Max entered the booth, accessed the terminal and loaded the message and attachment he had prepared using his multitasking and fast cognition skills.
Dear Dad,
I hope this letter finds you well. It's still surreal to think that I'm writing to you like this. I guess a smart, uplifted dog should be able to do many things but sometimes it even amazes me.
My time in the Labyrinth is advancing my augmentation faster than I imagined. It’s humbling to know just how much all of your abilities you held back to make me feel normal. Soon, I'll be able to keep up.
Anyway, there's something important I need to share with you. Lately, my dreams have been more vivid and intense, and they've all been centered around the Shadowverse. I think that my uplift model, which is entangled with my subspace tesseract, is connecting me more deeply to that world.
At first, it was terrifying. The creatures there, with their corrupt influence, made me a little crazy, to make me one of them. But over time, something remarkable happened. I've acquired the skills to resist their influence by experiencing their world firsthand.
It's like I've built an immunity of sorts, a mental fortitude that keeps me grounded and true to myself. I think the uplift virus is still active in my system, helping me.
My last dream was different. It was clearer and more personal. I saw you there, Dad, but not just one of you. Multiple versions of you, each in different states of distress and danger. It was as if the Shadowverse was trying to show me every possible way it could hurt you, to break me.
These clones of you were being attacked by the creatures, each scenario more harrowing than the last. But I didn't let it. I hope the visions aren’t true, but they feel real.
I know you intended to investigate Apex but if you are investigating the Shadowverse, and my dreams are true; it looks far too dangerous. I want to help. I’ve been able to capture my uplift-assisted resistance to their mental attacks as an augmented skill. I hope you can and will use it. I can’t bear to see you getting hurt if it could make a difference.
I’m training up like you wanted me to, but I should be helping you. I’ll beat this game and finish my training. Then I can find and help you.
With love,
Max
(attachment: ***Chthonic Block Skill***)
Max felt the loss of his chips collection. Spending so much and so early, when every credit counted, was concerning. But Max needed to help his dad. Trevor had promised to let Max know if a message from his father came.
Passing messages sucked but it certainly was cheaper. Max hoped that the packet of Chthonic skills he’d created would help his dad out. The screen lit up and his sister Mira’s excited face filled the room’s display.
"Mira! It's so good to see you," Max exclaimed, a smile spreading across his face.
"It's wonderful to see you too, Max!" Mira beamed. "I've missed you so much. How are you doing? How are you doing in the Labyrinth? I’m sorry I couldn’t share more, those damnable NDAs tie directly into all commercial augs. Maybe I should commission Dad with a custom set?" She paused, her expression turning more serious. "I'm glad you’re not in Utopia right now. The animal/human terrorism, both to and from, has settled, but it still seems pretty tense down there. Luna only has to deal with snarky and upset AI."
Max tensed up, knowing some of the animals in Utopia were not bad in the slightest. He sighed and put the timer HUD on the screen for Mira, so she would know why he was rushing. His enhanced vision caught her pupils dilating as she saw and understood. He doubled his thought speed and talked as fast as he could.
“Mira, thank you so much. Your crafting help gave the whole team a real advantage. We’re past the initial level and now on stage two! The whole casino setup is weird, like in the movies. Fighting against other people again, like the tournament, is going to be much more challenging. I want to share more but the link is really costing me. I sent a detailed message and a custom skill to Dad. I need you to make sure Dad messages me back.”
Max related his dreams and the similarity to the MIT experiment and his own entanglement with the first tesseract’s control module. Mira got paler as she realized just what Bill was doing. She had been briefed on the portal pair technology, but Bill had neglected to mention the Boston Burp when he brought her and Bo into the business. Mira bit her lip and yelled.
“Max, stop! Where are you right now? Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this.”
“It’s okay, Mira. The Labyrinth supervisor said that this is a secure quantum encryption. No one can eavesdrop across the link without the link destabilizing and us knowing.” Max said.
“Max! The Labyrinth doesn’t give anything for free.” She scolded.
“No kidding, like I said. It cost me plenty of credits just for these five minutes.” He said, wincing as the seconds counted down. Only a handful of seconds left. Mira huffed.
“The Labyrinth credits don’t mean anything, Max. It's an artificial system. The AI there can make more credits from thin air. How secure is that room?” Mira said, worried.
Max bared his teeth in embarrassment. Internally he screamed for Sherlock and Cypher to analyze the room’s systems and the front-end interface to the encrypted communications gear. Max’s gear lit up with two focused EMP blasts into the wall and he felt Cypher injecting signal jammers into the feed. The link shattered as did the display screen.
“[My apologies, Max. I should have anticipated this. The room’s smart matter has acoustic transducers built into it and the interface has a side channel.]”
“[Not cool, man. No one puts Captain Cypher on repeat. I fragged the system. If it's local, I scrambled it good. Sorry, Max. This setup was not as private as you wanted to be.]”
Max considered what he had said and sent and how it might be used by the Labyrinth. He shook his head. At least Mira could talk to Bill about it. He would be warned.
Max’s hackles rose. He was tired of playing the fool. He was smarter than the average human now. He would remember his competition down here wasn’t only the other players, but also the Labyrinth itself.
“[Right. Don’t blame yourselves. I need to stop assuming there is anything like a safe or private space down here. I’m not sure what the Labyrinth’s motives are in running these games. Stealing tech, stealing secrets, or something else; but it's time to break some heads and all the rules.]”
“[Starting with using my knack at those dice to win some credits, despite the anti-augment hacks the AI embedded into the Craps game. Later we need to find those energy junctions. The tesseract needs more power to expand. Let’s go!]”
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