“Are you sure that nothing out of the ordinary happened before the crash?” The police officer asked.

I coughed, “No, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” he pressed.

My hands fidgeted, “Yes, very sure.”

“Lay up on the lad will ya John?” a new voice added, another police officer, an older one. “Sorry about him, our department doesn’t get much action nowadays so he’s a bit excited.”

Officer one, ‘John’, groaned, “Sir please refer to me as Officer Graham. While on duty.”

The older officer snorted, “Pfft, you’re too uptight about things.”

Officer one looked like he was gonna rebut, before sighing in defeat and saying, “I’ll go interview the other victims.”

“Sorry bout him, he’s a bit too stiff,” the older officer said.

I nodded, “What’ll happen to this case?”

The officer scratched his head, “It was a strange one, so many driving programs bugged out at once. Chances are it’ll be thrown to cybersecurity.”

I nodded again, deep in thought. “Did they…” I scratched an itch, “manage to find anything strange on the programs?”

The officer shook his head, “We did an initial sweep of everything. Nothing strange was found. Like I said, it’ll be thrown to cyber for deeper investigation.”

The door to the hospital room opened, a doctor walked in, “Oh, you’re still interviewing him-”

“No, I’m done,” the officer interrupted, “Take care kid, you’re the calmest interviewee out of every involved in this incident.”

I grunted an agreement as the doctor moved forward to check me.

“The gel is setting nicely, your nose should be healed in half a week. Bruising couldn’t really be helped, but you should be fine in a day or two. Did the nurse install the painkiller mod on your AAD?”

I nodded.

“Alright then, you should be free to leave in an hour or so after I remove the gel,” he finished as he turned to leave.

“Wait-” he paused, ‘I received a strange message after the crash.’ I wanted to say. Instead, I coughed, “Nothing, don’t worry.”

He looked a bit bewildered, before turning around to leave again.

‘I received a message after the crash.’ My hands fidgeted.

‘I may be under the influence of a malicious program.’ I scratched an itch.

A cough, fidgeting hands and an itch. This was a pattern and a compulsion, whenever I attempted to say anything about the message, it happened. It occurred when I was talking to the police officers, it happened when I tried to say something to the doctor.

“Something odd happened during the crash,” I said aloud. Vague statements about the crash still worked, I confirmed that much when talking to the older officer.

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I was likely under the influence of an NDA program, that much I gathered from the message. However, this was more advanced than any NDA program I’ve read about.

For one, instead of causing the affected to abruptly stop whatever they were saying. Mine seems to make me take an alternate action.

Two, it made me naturally brush off whatever I was going to say if who I was speaking to was expecting an answer.

Three, whenever I thought of an alternative continuation to a response that didn’t relate to the message, the program would substitute that instead of the pre-written responses of just brushing off the issue.

‘I am under an NDA program,’ I tried to say, instead, I shook my leg.

Shit.

Four, this program doesn’t rely on proximity to people. Still works even when I’m alone in a hospital room.

Five, my body responses changed. Indicating that it was learning.

Six, it was likely reading my mind. It’s somehow intercepting my thoughts faster than I could vocalise them, and this was likely how it learned about the flaw of the repeating pattern. Unless that pattern was reliant on proximity to people or some other variable I was unaware of, if that is true then I might be able to discount five. However, it was best not to underestimate my opponent's capability.

I raised a hand, quickly scrolling through my AR interface. I went to settings and turned off wifi.

I tried again and clicked my tongue.

Seven, it has either hacked my AAD so that it only appears that I’ve turned off wifi or it doesn’t rely on it at all.

I raised my hand to my neck, loosening and removing the choker shaped device. My AR interfaces disappeared and the dull pain on my nose returned.

I tried speaking again. Nothing. No bodily reflex or replaced words. I had said nothing at all.

I tried again and coughed, my hand twitched and I felt an itch on my neck.

A warning couldn’t have been more obvious.

Seven, addendum. The program doesn’t rely on my AAD at all. It’s somehow directly communicating with my somatic implant. It couldn’t be installed in the implant, that thing barely had enough processing power to translate brain signals into computer code.

Replacing my AAD, I comforted myself that at least now I didn’t hurt like someone bricked me in the face. A few quick swipes later and I reached the message I received.

I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. You have been selected for a game. Please open the below file to activate the tutorial.

Measures have been taken to ensure the anonymity of the game.

Eight, whoever sent this message wants something from me. Enough that they’ll do highly illegal actions to achieve it. Anything that modified a person’s behaviour can only be installed with that person’s express consent. Even painkiller mods, which didn’t at all change human behaviour needed consent. Something that modified a person this far was illegal unless I signed a literal truckload of legal documents.

Why would anyone go this far for me?

It was unlikely to be money, my family was well off but not enough that it warrants this sort of risk and this was too much of a roundabout method. A virus that stole my bank info would’ve been much simpler and discreet.

A grudge? No, I don’t remember pissing off anyone with the capability to do this, and not to the extent of warranting this sort of treatment. And again, if someone disliked me then this was way too roundabout a method.

Was all this really for something as mundane as a game?

Too many questions, not enough information. I can form theories but nothing concrete. As far as I can see, my only real options were to load the file or wait.

It was unlikely that the file was even more malware. Whoever this is they managed to install some kind of censor program on me in the brief moment the cars crashed. Unless this was a sick joke then there is no reason for them to need me to manually run a program.

That idea gave me a bit of hope. Frankly speaking, if they were able to create such a program then they could’ve easily just taken control of my body. However, by doing so, they showed that they wanted something from me, which meant I potentially had leverage.

I opened messages to ask my parents to pick me up from the hospital, and to Matt- my hand froze. It works on freaking text as well!

Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I decided to send a half complaining, half whinging message about stupid AI drivers and a quick update instead. My hand freezing in midair whenever I tried to enter some kind of secret message. I ended up spending a good two minutes just trying to write a short text because of that.

I checked the time. I had a good half an hour before someone got here to pick me up or the doctor checked up on me again. I took another deep breath and loaded the file.