Alex hugged him in the server room the second he materialized. “I saw you were struggling.”
Rick went slack in her arms and she lowered him to the false ground of the black server room.
The floor was neither hard nor soft, it simply was. “If I sleep in the simulation, what happens?”
“Nothing, but you’ll be able to dream in private if you unhook. People probably aren’t tracking you, but if they are, it could get weird.”
He nodded and she helped him back up. He put his hand against the server wall, which had become a sign displaying his placing.
Your admirable victory has secured a place in tomorrow’s official Ruckus Online Rank One Tournament! Your placement allows you to select… 1 boost or skill from those collected today.
Which do you choose?
As useful as Flying Kick and Monkeyshine had been, as had been the stat boosts, there was only one skill valuable enough to take with him. Jammin’ was irreplaceable for allowing him to string Roamin’ Cancels back to back, and if he found more, he could build on it.
He selected the skill, then summoned the red balloon to take him out. He had to lean on Alex to stay on his feet until it lifted him from the ground and everything faded.
***********************************
He came to in the chair in his living room, but his body was so heavy, he wasn’t sure he could move. The sun shone through the high-set windows. Rick guessed it was early afternoon, but he couldn’t be sure. He strained to remove the cable from his implant and winced out of habit, though there was no pain there.
He was so hungry, simply turning his head to look in the direction of the kitchen was a chore. If I fall asleep in the chair, I’m going to hurt when I wake. He forced himself up and hobbled to bed. He felt the pillowcase against his cheek, but shortly after, he was out.
***********************************
Rick never knew when they were coming for him, so after a week or so, he stopped trying to guess.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
For his first three days of consciousness after the surgery, he had a headache he thought would kill him. He’d certainly wished he was dead.
They’d refused to give him painkillers. Told him to think of it as part of his sentence. A three-day headache with no sleep and the fear of being abandoned to die of neurological trauma was bad enough, but what had come next put it in the rearview mirror rather quickly.
“Hands against the wall, Prophet.” The voice was muffled through the door, but Rick’s hearing was still much more sensitive since the surgery. In passing, he’d overheard one reCon tell another that was normal as they passed by in the hallway. Word was it diminished after the first week. If it didn’t, it was simply considered another part of the punishment.
Rick put his hands on the back wall and the door buzzed open. They shackled his hands and pulled him backward through the door. There were two, though Rick wasn’t dumb enough to attack armed guards in a locked down facility. Killing the man in the bar had been dumb enough.
He tried to keep calm, but they were pushing him in the direction from which he’d heard screams nearly every waking minute for a week. It wasn’t hard to guess he’d soon be screaming too.
He hadn’t been able to talk to anyone. What little he knew about reCon was that half didn’t survive the process, and very few went home to wives or kids. Jesus. Kristina-Anne. Had she moved back in with her parents? They’d always hated him; this was surely justification to leave. The thought of her going back to that toxic machine who called herself his mother-in-law had haunted him through the entire process. He deserved death for that alone. Baby. I’m so sorry, baby.
The walk seemed to take forever. Was that part of the psychological pre-treatment? Nothing done in a reCon was purposeless, though without a manual or decoder ring, there was no way to know for sure what grade of fuck-with-him anything was. The isolation he’d anticipated. His lawyer had told him what little the man knew about it to prepare Rick. Nothing prepares you for this.
They got to a door. One of the guards opened it and the other pushed him through to a dark room. The darkness didn’t seem to impede the guards at all. Maybe the ocular implants that made their eyes glow obviated the gloom. They sat him roughly in a chair he hadn’t seen in the pitch blackness.
“If you struggle, that headache you had will seem like heavy petting,” one of the guards said. Rick couldn’t see anything in the dark, but he didn’t want to. He wasn’t afraid of the dark yet. That came later.
They unshackled his wrists, but re-shackled them with the restraints attached to the arm of the chair.
“First time is easy.” The reassurance came from one set of glowing eyes, but Rick would have guessed there was a cruel smile beneath those radiant orbs, one he couldn’t see in the dark, but heard in the man’s voice. “We’ll fix you right up. Don’t you worry.”
They weren’t gentle when they plugged the cable into his implant, and Rick hadn’t expected them to be. His stomach tightened. He thought it was because he didn’t know what was coming, and uncertainty is hard for a man used to having some say in his fate. Maybe that first time, that’s what it was. After that, panic and nausea gripped him whenever the door buzzed. For years afterward, anything that buzzed had that effect on him, but he didn’t know that yet. He didn’t know anything.
The green glow of the guards’ eyes receded. The door clicked shut with remarkably less noise than he’d expected, seeming civil in its politeness. Everything about reCon had a purpose. Between sessions, he’d distract himself from the fear by trying to figure out what those purposes were.
When the guards came back a lifetime and a half later, Rick was hoarse from screaming and too shaky to stand.