Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS. It was a disease that was rarely lethal by itself. Just a slight fever during the initial infection, and then nothing for a long time, in most cases. Years at a time, with the patient none the wiser. And all this while, the virus was destroying your immune system.
What killed an AIDS-afflicted patient were other diseases. Opportunistic infections, cancer. The kind of diseases that you either wouldn't get normally, or could fight off easily. But because your immune system was in shambles, even a simple cold could be fatal.
And Ran and Yuuki had AIDS. It probably wasn't a coincidence that both twins suffered from it. They had probably contracted it from their mother. When they were still in the womb, during childbirth, or breastfeeding. Whatever it was, it was early on, which meant Ran and Yuuki had been living with the disease for 14 years.
Drifter was no expert, but he knew that was an abnormally long time for someone born with AIDS to survive. He remembered seeing in one of the many AIDS prevention campaigns that the mortality rate for children afflicted with AIDS below 2 years old was more than 50%. And that was only if they received the best antiviral treatments from early on. Those who didn't get treatment didn't make it that far.
Raising his head, Drifter looked around. Most of the Reavers were looking lost and hurt. Some probably knew better what the disease was, others just the basics. The majority of them, Drifter included, were too young to remember a time when AIDS and HIV weren't at least somewhat controlled in Japan. Agil's face showed he knew just how scary the disease was.
"Shit, Ran, Yuuki. I'm sorry. When were you...?"
"Infected?"
"...Yeah."
Maybe it was insensitive of Agil to ask such a straightforward question. Rude, even. But the twins looked open to answer. Almost eager. Just like Merida, they didn't want pity. Probably had received enough of that in the real world already.
Ran smiled ruefully. The shock of losing Merida was washing away. Even if it was by replacing it with a topic just as grim.
"The day we were born. There was a complication, and they had to do a cesarean to get me and Yuuki out. More things went wrong, and they had to do a blood transfusion. It was contaminated with HIV."
"Fuck, I thought this kind of thing was dealt with after that scandal in the eighties. We heard about it even back in the US."
Agil rubbed his face. Drifter vaguely remembered studying this in school, but it was one of those topics that the teachers didn't spend a lot of time on, since it was a black mark in the country's history.
It was before knowledge about HIV, it's transmission methods and prevention became mainstream. Lots of hemophiliac patients had contracted AIDS due to contaminated blood, and, in the late 80s, filed a massive lawsuit against the government. Apparently it had been a topic even in international media, if Agil heard of it before he came to Japan.
Ran and Yuuki were too young for that, obviously, but the same thing had happened to them. Poor girls.
"How bad is it?"
Again, the same smile. The curl of the lips of someone who was resigned to their fate.
"We can't move. Pretty much the only part of us that's still functional is our brains. That's why we turned to virtual reality. It's the only place we can do anything. Live."
No one said anything. They just stared at Ran, but the older twin simply smiled, and Yuuki took over. At some moment Sinon had pulled the younger girl to her lap, and now had her head buried in Yuuki's back. If she was crying, nobody mentioned it.
"FullDive technology was a blessing for us. The first game we played was called Serene Garden. More than a game, it was a meeting place for people in the same situation as us. Not necessarily HIV-positive, but terminally ill patients."
"SereGa was meant to be a virtual hospice, and there were always caretakers and we had to be careful of strenuous activities - even if it was VR - but for us who hadn't been able to go outside since we were born, and who hadn't been able to leave the bed since we were 8, it was paradise. We could talk to other people, our bodies didn't hurt all the time, and we could meet our families without it having to be through a window so they didn't hurt us by mistake. We couldn't experience the real world on our own, so virtual reality became our real world."
"It was also where we met Merida! And also a lot of other people. We were even thinking of forming a guild. The Sleeping Knights. Because we never left the bed, haha!"
The sisters took turns speaking, and it hurt to hear them. Because no matter how cheerful they tried to sound, the undercurrent of sadness was too strong.
"Merida wasn't the first friend you lost, was she?"
Surprising everyone, even herself, Sachi was the one who spoke. The girl was mortified when she realized it, and opened her mouth to speak again... Then stopped. Somehow, apologizing seemed wrong. Ran nodded gratefully.
"Sometimes people would log out of Serene Garden, and just never come back. Some of them moved elsewhere to get treatment, some just didn't like virtual reality. And some died."
Stolen novel; please report.
She was so casual about it. She sounded exactly like a frontliner. Only, she had been fighting a battle bigger than SAO, and for much longer. Nautilus gave up all pretenses and hugged Ran.
"How did you come to Sword Art Online from this Serene Garden?"
"We call it SereGa for short. And we played a bunch of games. Really, anything we could convince the doctors to let us try. There was an ancient kingdoms one where we were generals. Oh, and that weird one where we were bugs, remember, sis?"
"Urgh... I didn't want to, Yuuki. Playing that was the worst decision we ever made. Even more than SAO."
"Aww! But you were the cutest caterpillar, Ran!"
Drifter couldn't help himself. He snorted, and then coughed, trying to hide his laughter. But the others were also struggling to hold it in when they imagined the stoic swordswoman that was Ran as a chubby purple caterpillar. Yuna looked green at the idea of a game all about bugs.
Argo was the first to break. The info-broker broke out in mad giggles, and the dam burst. Maybe it was because all the tension bled out in a single moment, but it took much longer than it should have for the Reavers to get themselves under control.
No one mentioned Merida's death or the sisters' illness again. In an unspoken agreement, they moved on to safer, happier topics.
Of course, the notion that at any moment Ran or Yuuki could drop dead still hang over their heads. It wouldn't ever go away. And it was bound to happen someday, they all knew it.
There was no cure for AIDS. Clearly Ran and Yuuki were already receiving the best care they could in the real world. They certainly couldn't do anything from inside the game. So they did as the SAO players had already learned: if you couldn't control it, move on.
Until a certain member of the Reavers whom they had all forgotten about raised her hand. Kizmel tilted her head.
"What's this 'real world' you were talking about?"
--------------------------
Kayaba turned away from what was certain to be a very interesting discussion. Cardinal was recording everything, and he would go through it later. For sure, he did not envy the Reavers who had to explain to the dark elf Kizmel, the former NPC and now an unclassified mix of a player and virtual entity, what the real world was, or that Aincrad was simply a virtual creation, and that she wasn't 'real'. Except of course she was real.
Good luck to them. They should have been more careful when talking in front of her if they didn't want to go down that path.
For now, Kayaba had bigger worries. The internet was in a frenzy following Merida's death. Drifter's trip to the << Monument of Life >> and the subsequent discovery of how the girl perished had many around the world clamoring to know who had pulled the NerveGear off her head.
The true cause of Merida's death and the sisters Ran and Yuuki's disease was still a secret. For obvious reasons, the hot spring was considered a private location, so the transmissions had cut off when they entered the building.
The netizens were left hanging, and they didn't like that. Kayaba couldn't care less. What he did care about was that one of his players had died due to external influences. That had been acceptable on the first day of SAO, when the world didn't know the rules yet. Now it wasn't.
"Cardinal, I want a thorough research of the background of every player. All of them. If there are any others in similar situations to players Ran and Yuuki, where they could die for reasons outside of Sword Art Online, I want to know immediately."
"Understood, sir."
The system answered, but Kayaba was already getting up. He walked around the neatly organized room, opened the door, and climbed the stairs.
This was the first time in weeks that he paused his 24/7 overarching of Sword Art Online. The first time in weeks he left the room. The light hurt his eyes.
"Aki? Is this... No, it's still early, isn't it? They just got to floor 16."
The scientist looked up. A petite woman was sitting on a couch, nursing a cup of coffee. She had short, straight black hair, and was in her mid-twenties.
Koujiro Rinko. The only one who stood by him despite everything. His lover, who held his hand even through all his selfish pursuits.
Kayaba kept the same blank expression he always had. He didn't know how to smile.
"Rinko. How are the Medicuboid prototypes coming along?"
Short and straight to the point, that was Akihiko Kayaba. Her lover had never put any pretenses, and Rinko was used to it, and she loved him anyway. Despite everything he did. She knew he was wrong, a monster, and that she was the same for aiding him. But he needed her, more desperately than he would ever know.
"Well... We are nearing the end of the first testing phase. We'll need to get in touch with hospitals soon to enter the practical testing phase."
"Do it soon."
"Got it. But why the hurry now? Shouldn't you be getting ready to enter SAO soon? There are only 4 more floors."
"Cardinal will take care of everything. And a player just died due to health issues. A brain tumor. There are at least two more. Cardinal will fill you in on the details. No external factors are allowed to influence SAO."
Only Kayaba would have the gall to talk about terminal diseases as if they were something he could look down upon and squash under his feet.
Rinko just nodded. She knew Kayaba hated lengthy talks when he could avoid it by delegating to his AI. Furthermore, Sword Art Online was Kayaba's project, the Medicuboid was hers. Rinko was the more interested party in this development, so of course it was up to her to chase after it.
"I'll contact them using the foundation, your name won't be mentioned. That probably wouldn't go very well at the moment. But Aki, you know the Medicuboid is still being developed, there are a lot of things I have to fix before it's done. And even then, it can't stop death, only delay it while making it less agonizing."
Rinko spoke, already procuring a tablet to search for news about the dead player. Cardinal had a whole document ready and already delivered to her, but Merida's death was first-page news around the world, even if the details were obscured.
There were plenty of theories being flung around, some close to the truth, while others couldn't be further. Kayaba featured in quite a few, which said he had disconnected Merida himself for a myriad of reasons.
When Rinko looked up again, Kayaba was already going back to his room. In response to her last statement, he lifted his hand and waved without looking back.
"I'm already working on something."
Simple like that. As if Kayaba just had to sit down, type a code, and stop the sick players from dying.
The weirdest thing was, Rinko believed him. Because her lover was many things, but not a liar nor a quitter. If he said he was working on something, then he was. And he would continue trying until he made it work. He never gave up. That was one of the reasons she loved him.