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Author’s note: Enjoy! Please Rate this fiction and comment. Helps me to keep motivated if people are enjoying the story as it evolves.
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I woke up to a world of pain. Quite simply, everything hurt but particularly my insides. Things just didn’t feel right inside my chest and even small movements made some muscles in my back clench hard.
I opened my eyes to see my three enemies around me. The shooter, that I now recognized as a Sniper, was leaning against the cave wall. I could see her more clearly now that she was not fully wrapped in a Ghillie suit. 5ft 5, long black hair, brown skin. She looked like she was of Indian descent and in her 30s. She was standing over the Tracker with a concerned look on her face. The Tracker was laying down with his throat heavily bandaged. Some kind of tiny machine attached to his neck blinked with a blue light. The Tracker was older than I had originally thought. A touch of grey in his hair and he had a lean wiry build and looked like he was in his late forties.
Lastly the Marine stood just in front of me with Qi Xing Long in his hand as he made practice swipes through the air in an awkward manner. He was around 6ft tall and his body was thick and stocky formed from a solid mass of muscle. He had washed the blood of his face but I could still see the criss-cross of wounds on his face from the eels.
“He’s awake.” I heard the raspy voice of the Tracker say and saw the other two instantly tense. The Marine sheathed my sword and they gathered around me.
“If we didn’t have to take you alive I would have slaughtered you.” The Sniper said her eyes filled with a deep resentment. The mental image of that knife heading towards her face must have left a deep impression.
Her hand rested on her side-arm and twitched, flipping off the safety. Our eyes locked and I was certain she was about to draw down on me and blow my head off.
“Debasmita Calvin, please stand down.” The Tracker said softly. “You know Victor demands him alive.”
She didn’t react to his voice at all as she continued to stare me down.
“He almost killed you Bobby.” She said her voice thick with emotion. I began to put two and two together, they must be related in real life or they were together as a couple. No wonder she wanted to bury me.
After a long moment she stopped being so tense and flipped the safety back on and moved her hand away from her gun.
“There is a debt between us Nakamura, and when Victor is finished with you I will collect.”
“You’re welcome to try.” I said flatly. “Bobby might not be so lucky next time. He might end up with more souvenirs like that big idiots face.”
“Fuck you!” the Marine exploded and stepped forward and punched me in the face.
You have recieved 40 points of damage
My head rebounded off the floor and my vision spun. I still wasn’t recovered from injuries.
“Ray, stop!” Bobby yelled.
“I’m sick of this smug bastard.” Ray muttered.
“For the love of god you need to grow up. You almost got me killed me with this shit when we were tracking him. You know that right? I know you’re a kid but if you pull this shit again I will put a bullet in you myself.”
“Yeah well ‘this kid’ was the one that caught him.” Ray shot back, but without much heat.
My gaze was moving between them as the conversation played out with a confused look on my face. Seeing my weird expression Ray grew angry.
“So what if I am 12 years old? You got a problem with that as well? He said.
“You’re 12?” I blurted out. “You look like a 40 year old man!”
“You’re such a noob.” He sneered. “Don’t you know that there are thousands of children in the Great Game? You think the Warden gives a fuck what age you are? If you have the DNA Markers you have to play. Shit man, there are newborn babies that have to log in.”
“That’s insane.” I whispered.
“Yeah well all I did before was play video games so can’t say much has changed.”
“But why don’t you look like a kid then? Don’t tell me you look like this in real life from some tech mod?”
“Nah, it’s a Marine Class bonus, Enhanced Physique. Makes me big and strong. Ooh Rah.”
Some of the ridiculousness of Ray started to make sense.
“So what’s the story, you all work for Victor?” I asked as they all went silent.
“That’s none of your business.” Calvin said.
“Ahh what does it matter Calvo, poor bastards toast anyway.” Ray said. “Simple fact, no one works for Victor. You get owned by Victor. Dude’s got some major mojo with some unique technopathy. Once he gets the bugs into you there is no way to get em out.”
“So you are slaves?”
“Disposables.” Bobby rasped. “A tool to use and discard, not that there is anything we can do about. We have only been in the game a few months longer than you have. Higher levels and those with specific skills can resist Victor’s nannites, but the lower rung like us become the solider ants for Wolf Corp. If you had killed us all today then another squad with higher levels would have been dispatched.”
“Yup no matter which way you look at it you’re fucked.” Ray said then his eyes began to glaze over and roll back into his head as his body jerked.
What was going on?
I saw Bobby and Calvin instantly straighten up and adopt a respectful posture.
Ray’s body finally returned to normal, but the eyes that looked at me were glowing purple and his face had an arrogant expression spread across it. He breathed in deeply twice and then flexed his hands a few times before looking down at me.
“Nakamura.” He whispered in a soft velvety voice laced with hatred. “I don’t believe we have ever had the chance to meet in person.”
“Wolf” I said instinctively. “I’d shake your hand but as you can see I am a bit indisposed at the moment.”
Strangely this made him laugh.
“You have no idea how much I want to simply rip your body to pieces right now. But I will reserve that event for when I am not controlling a disposable. The sensation of anothers body is just not the same.”
I just stared at him flatly as if his words did not bother me, though I had to admit he was scaring the shit out of me. I accepted the fear then conquered it and set it to one side.
“So you think my fate is sealed then?” I asked.
“This is naturally so. In my own life I am an advocate of the concept of free will. I am neither a fatalist nor a determinist and unconstrained by fate. But for my growing army of slaves, and you in particular, I am afraid the thread of your life is locked. Our relationship was forged by your evil deeds and can only have a singular resolution. I cannot kill the hand that moved you yet, but I can and I will take my pound of flesh from you.”
“I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in Karma. Whoever sows injustice reaps calamity, and the rod they wield in fury will be broken.” I replied.
He looked at me strangely then, his eyes full of a questioning intent.
“What injustice?” he whispered, his purple eyes glowing. “What seed of karma did I ever sow with Fujibayashi Nagato?”
“I do not know this Fujibayashi Nagato that you speak of.” I said confused.
“Don’t play games that have no purpose Nakamura. He is your Uncle!” he spat. Then seeing the genuine confusion on my face a whole series of complex emotions flitted across his face.
“You don’t know who your Uncle really is do you?” he whispered in shock as if thinking to himself.
Misiki had said something similar when I first arrived in the game. I had only ever called him Uncle, in all these years I never used a first or a last name. Everyone called him Uncle as far as I could tell.
“My god, I have spent all these years vesting such a hatred in you. I had such a high opinion of your capabilities but it appears you are nothing more than a complete fool. Fujibayashi Nagato is the boss of every mafia organisation on Earth. To most he is only known as the Uncle.”
My thoughts reeled as I took this in. Uncle was the head of the Mafia?
“All this time I assumed you had been specifically recruited and trained to be a killer by Nagato to commit the ultimate crime. Your unique disability that prevented you from interfacing with tech made you the only person to ever successfully kill people protected by a bio shield. But clearly, you had no clue. Tell me what reason did Nagato give you when he ordered you to kill my family?”
“I…I…he never ordered anything.” I blurted out in shock. “I exacted revenge for him after you assaulted his daughter. She killed herself you know, you caused her death!”
Roaring in pain and anger Victor surged forward and dragged me off the ground and held in me the air with his hand around my throat.
“You stupid little fool! Nagato doesn’t have a daughter! And even if he did just think, how the hell would I get around her bio shield? Even the Wolf Corporation would not be so brazen as to compromise propriety technology of the United Earth government!” Hurling me to the ground I groaned as I tried to sit up.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
I couldn’t think…..I couldn’t feel. Victor stood their heaving as tears streamed out of his purple eyes.
“You have been played by a Master. He groomed you, manipulated you. Gave you the skills and the mentality you would need to execute the greatest crime in a 100 years. He fucking programmed you with just his words, let you see what he wanted you to see. Because of your disability you don’t really understand tech, you don’t know how stupidly impossible it is to re-route a bio shield. Any normal person would never believe such an obvious lie, but you with your trash disability, you ate it up like candy.”
It felt like my heart and mind were being ripped apart by razors.
“No, I won’t let you fuck with me, you’re lying. You covered it all up. You tried to have me killed by requesting my DNA get scanned for the Great Game so they would finish me off when I tried to load in.”
“God you just don’t get it do you. I never requested that scan. I was a week away from having you killed inside your prison. Compromising a bio shield i cannot do as it would cause mass panic. Killing a murder in prison? Well within my capabilities. It only took so long because the Uncle protected you. SO knowing that i was about to kill you anyway, who do you think randomly requested your DNA to be scanned for compatibility?”
“NOOOOOO!” I screamed as things began connecting together in my head. Logic spirals in my mind formed and broke and reformed again as I tried to refute his arguments.
Lies….lies….lies….lies….lies….lies….lies….lies…..lies….lies
I repeated my thoughts like a mantra to ward out the truth, but it kept breaking down.
Victor’s words, his expression, the genuine pain in his eyes. I could not deny his words, they were truth.
True…..true….true….true…..true…..true…..true……..TRUE!
I murdered his family for no reason. I was a cold-blooded killer. I killed innocents. Every part of my identity was called into question, everything that made me who and what I was snapped and broke and fell to pieces. I was the evil one and Victor had been the victim.
“Yaararrrgghhhhh!” I wailed as I held my head in my hands as I felt the most intense pain I had ever experienced penetrate my brain like a scalding hot knife.
It was then at that moment of torture, buried in pain and consumed by despair that I felt it calling me again.
The abyss.
That endless blackness.
Without a thought I threw my mind and soul into its depths.
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Victor Wolf
Nakamura screamed all of sudden. To call it a scream did not do it justice. It was like some primordial sound scraped from the very depths of his soul. As his scream faded his body began to convulse and collapse and he dropped to the floor unmoving. One of the disposables bent over him and felt for a pulse. Then rolled him over and dragged his eyelid up.
“He is still breathing, he has a pulse but he appears to be in some kind of comatose state Mr Wolf.” Calvin said.
I didn’t know what to say. Years of emotional build up and planning had formed an image in my mind of who I thought Nakamura was. For that image to crumble so quickly and so permanately had unhinged my mental and emotional state as much as Nakamura.
I had focused too much on the hammer, and not enough on the hand holding it. Of course I had my own path plotted for the Uncle, but I had thought Nakamura an important tool.
Why had he not discarded him though after the killing? Why keep protecting him? What purpose did he have to kill my family to begin with? None of it made any sense.
I believed that Nakamura would lead me to the Uncle, one way or another. I wasn’t strong enough yet to destroy the Uncle. I was still weak and my level relatively low. My power base was not consolidated properly in either the Great Game or Earth. Not enough to survive a direct confrontation. Though I was still relatively low level that was because all my efforts had gone to raising the skill level of my nannites.
Even though Nakamura was just a patsy I would still make him suffer for what he did. I wouldn’t bother with the degree of torture I had originally planned but I would still kill him every single day of his life in the Great Game with my own hands until he begged me for forgiveness.
“You two. Transport Nakamura back to District 6. I expected him there within the month. If he proves resistant do what you have to do. Just make sure you bring him back alive.”
With that I released my nannite control of the disposable and opened my eyes back in my body in District 6.
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Debasmita Calvin
Victor Wolf’s purple eyes faded and Ray dropped to the ground his whole body convulsing and blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth, his ears and his eyes. Bobby gingerly moved over and helped hold him down while Ray went into a full-blown fit.
“Don’t let him bite his tongue.” Bobby said.
I managed to work some cloth into Ray’s mouth as he convulsed. He convulsed so I hard I heard three of his ribs snap.
“Jesus, they are getting worse.” Bobby said grimly. The negative aftermaths of the possession from Victor were definitely increasing. This was the real reason Bobby and I put up with Ray. Not because we liked him or felt sorry for him because he was 12. Simply put, as a Marine class his body had higher vitality and endurance and he was usually Victor’s disposable of choice when he needed to take possession of someone in our team.
We needed Ray to stay alive otherwise one of us would be convulsing on the floor instead of this young fool.
“What did you make of what we heard?” Bobby finally asked.
“Well like everyone else I knew Nakamura murdered Wolf’s family. It was all over the media after all, but as to the rest of it. Stinks of secrets which worries me.” I said.
“Agreed. Victor might not have thought about it just then because he needs us to transport Nakamura back to District 6, but do you think he will be fine with us knowing what we know? He will do a wipe on us and make us into Zombies.” Bobby said with a shudder.
I shuddered too. Anyone who had heard information too sensitive was mind wiped by Wolf. It turned them into a mindless zombie under Wolf’s complete control. I’d heard that the Users wiped like this didn’t ever log out of the game again. They just wandered the world in mindless packs until Wolf directed them for some purpose.
“Nakamura has to be taken back or Wolf will hunt us down immediately. I suggest we just disappear before Ray recovers. Ray will take him back and hopefully Wolf will forget about us for the time being. I heard the Red Sun can get the nannites out. We aren’t too far from their Spawn Node. If Wolf is too distracted with Nakamura it might gives us a chance.” Bobby said.
“Ok let’s do it.” I agreed. We stopped holding down Ray as his convulsions had mostly stopped.
“One quick thing though.” I said. “We can’t have Nakamura coming out of this coma and getting away before Ray wakes up.” I pulled out my energy knife and approached Nakamura. Thumbing the blade to life I started to cut through both of his legs just above the knee.
“Jesus.” Bobby said falling onto his knees and throwing up.
I expected the knife to just slice through his muscle and sinew like a laser, but instead I had to saw it through with great effort. What kind of body did this guy have?
Once I had cut off both of his legs, I used a heat box to cauterize the wounds. Satisfied the job was done and he wouldn’t die, I stood up and went to the river to wash the blood off me.
“Ok let’s bug out.” I said as I saw Bobby looking at me like I was some kind of alien. I stared back at my soft-hearted lover with dangerous edged protective expression.
“I told him I would collect the debt he owed me.”
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Braizo Nakamura
I floated in a darkness so deep it had no name and yet it was familiar. We had met before, the darkness and I.
The last time I had fought the darkness as it tore apart my soul and I had screamed defiance and survived.
This time it was different.
This time when the abyss reached out to me…….............................. I reached back.
Abnormal State Detected…..
Core Purpose Compromised......