Chapter 4: Choosing Violence

They told us we were the lucky ones. Born into an era without war, poverty or pain. I was beginning to wonder about that. Without ever experiencing pain, could one ever know true pleasure?

I lunged from behind the soft trunk of a fungal tree and swatted another Gosporian Drone to the dirt. It went down so easy, barely making a sound. In a flash I had it pinned and bashed it over and over with the rock in my hand, almost in time with the beat of the music that still screamed in my ears. The stone split, crumbled, and I was painted in yellow. My fourth victim, and yet the pleasure of a level up still eluded me.

I sucked the corpse into my inventory, pried another stone from the dirt and set off running.

The forest was lousy with the flying bastards, these Gosporian Drones. They flitted about aimlessly, almost as though they weren’t really sentient, like they lacked some driving command. It made me think of the bees of my home world, they had drones right? Didn’t you need a queen to give directions to the drones?

I thumbed at the inch wide hole my second victim had torn into my forearm, and felt my thumb crunch and bend. I must have broken the damn thing when bludgeoning the drone to death and not even noticed.

The next drone was still perhaps 50 feet from me, it flew in lazy circles so I slowed then stopped. The infra-vision of my Hatchling Predator perk allowed me to see it through the trees that separated us, so it still couldn’t see me. My inventory appeared with a thought and I inspected the Red Ball item again. The injuries I had sustained from killing had accumulated, my HP bar now sitting at about 2/3rds and as much as I wanted to run headlong towards my next victim, I still knew it would be foolish to fight with a broken hand. It was time to see how these healing ball things worked.

I mentally clicked the Red Ball icon and an error message appeared.

“Nope! No healing while you’re on a rampage! Deactivate the Hatchling Predator perk.”

The voice was back to its chipper, school teacher persona.

Casting a look about to make sure nothing had approached while I was fiddling with my inventory, I deactivated the perk.

The drums and guitar faded away, my vision turned back to normal, and I freaked the fuck out.

Pain came in a wave as blood streamed from my many wounds, but worse than that was my mind. It was as though all the fear, the horror and anxiety I should have felt over the past half hour of murdering giant sentient bugs hit me in a wave.

I dropped to the dirt, cradling my head in my hands and whimpered. What the fuck was happening? Where was my implant to dull the, the… everything?

I clicked the Red Ball, that at least should heal my physical wounds and remove much of the physical pain. And screamed as liquid fire flooded my body. Every cut and scrape sizzling closed with the smell of cooked lab-pork, my broken bones twisting and popping back into place. I screamed and screamed, it was too much.

“Uh oh! Looks like Allan here is learning a valuable lesson!” Came the voice in my head, sounding pleased. “Healing from a level up is a reward, healing by other means comes with a punishment.”

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The pain faded just enough for me to regain awareness.

The sound of a blender spinning too fast gave me the moments warning I needed and I threw myself aside, just as two forelimbs scythed into the dirt where my face had been. My body still spasmed, I could barely control my arms. The Gosporian Drone withdrew its claws and propelled itself at me. My inventory was still up and I clicked reflexively, a dead drone corpse appearing between us to be impaled by the attacking drone’s strike.

The thing ripped its dead comrade apart in a spray of yellow and came at me again. Each strike made a hissing veep veep noise as it cut the air. I screamed and swung my scarred fist in a haymaker to meet it in mid-air, but it was a pathetic strike and the drone simply snatched the offered limb and started eating me, mandibles crunching on my fingers, popping digits free.

The pain was unbelievable and I dropped to my knees. I tried to wrest myself free but its barbed arms were around mine and hooked on tight. I swung the thing into a tree, releasing a gout of milky sap from the fungal trunk, but the drone kept chewing, it was up to my damn wrist.

I'd kept flowers in my garden, the UE said that tending to nature encouraged mindfulness and deducted part of my salary to ensure I always had plants. In springtime the blooms drew bees and butterflies, and mantids to hunt them. I’d watched one once as it snatched a flying insect from the air and ate the whole damn thing, chewing down a leg before gobbling up the body. My implant had made me impassive to the spectacle, now, as I watched my forearm disappear I wish I had helped the poor thing.

Sirens blared, my HP bar was but a sliver and both blood loss and a crippled icon flashed.

My arm was gone to the elbow and I was in deep shock, unable to do much but stare. My blood was so bright, so red.

All I could hear was the heavy panting of my breath and the clicking of mandibles as I slumped to my side, the strength flowing from me.

I wished I could have lived longer, done more, had a family and seen them grow.

It all seemed so pointless, what had I done with the 26 years given to me? Where had the time gone?

A great CRACK shook me as the Gosporian bit through the thick bone of my humerus, startling me to awareness.

In that moment I saw the Hatchling Predator icon in my HUD, blinking red, and without thought, I clicked it.

Music began.

A roaring guitar riff screamed in my mind, distorted and wild. Drums followed, thundering and uneven like my labouring heart.

My eyes opened wide as I realised the thing was almost to my shoulder, it stared back into my eyes, compound lenses sparkling. I saw joy in those glittering dark depths.

With a thought my inventory blinked open and I clicked to withdraw the corpse of a Gosporian drone, imagining its forelimb appearing in my fist. It appeared in my grip like a natural dagger. I rammed the forelimb’s point right into one of the things joyous fucking compound eyes and twisted savagely to scramble whatever was inside its skull. It spasmed once then went still.

Clambering to my knees, I stared at it. The drone that had eaten my arm was still clamped onto me, hanging there, the pressure of its bite pinching blood vessels and preventing me from bleeding out.

My heart thrashed in my chest in an uneven rhythm. The sense of calm that had momentarily filled me was gone and I was utterly terrified. I’d lost so much blood. This thing was stuck to me. What the fuck do I do?

The music roared onwards, and once again it was almost drowned out by cheering.

I looked up, hopeful. Would this be enough to level up?

But no fireworks began.

Instead, as I looked around with the infra-vision of my Hatchling Predator perk active, I saw a shape through the trees, flying right at me.