Codename: Freedom - Book 4 - Chapter 1

Note: Chapters 1 and 2 will probably be merged into one as an introductory chapter.

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“Lucius,” a woman’s voice called, oozing sweetness.

Turning my head and opening my eyes, I saw the holographic projection of Destiny’s familiar face looking down at me from the side of my bed in the darkness of my room. Her smile was shameless, and insistent.

“I’m not asleep, so why do you sound like you’re trying to wake me up?” I said, narrowing my gaze.

Crossing her arms across her purple nightrobe patterned with yellow stars, her smile shrank slowly like she was about to give me a piece of her mind. “Of course I know you’re awake, silly. I monitor your brain waves if you’ve forgotten. Since the doctor that helped you with your Freedom debriefing seems to be wrong about you needing more sleep, I just thought I’d wake you up anyways to give you a dose of my cuteness.”

As dark as it was in the room, I knew she’d have no problem monitoring me so I gave her an exaggerated eyeroll but couldn’t help but to crack a smile. “Thank you, then.”

She shook her head, tossing her messy, shoulder-length blonde hair until it was bouncing back and forth. “It’s only your first day back and I’m still figuring out the best way to gain your attention without interrupting your thought patterns. This time I waited until you had one of those guy moments where you’re lazing around in a mindless daze. I won’t always be able to wait, though.”

Sitting up and scooting back against my headboard, I looked her in the eye. They glowed blue in the night. “Since when are you waiting to gain my attention?”

“Since you’re mind became your own.”

Glancing down and away, I immediately felt what we both knew. For more than a decade she was the voice in my head. She’d basically taken the place of my father who worked so much that he was barely home. A year in Freedom had changed that. It had changed me, and our relationship would never be the same.

Leaning forward, she gave me a blank expression, scoffing playfully. “It’s not a bad thing. You’ve grown up. It was always my objective to get you to the point where you needed me less and less. With no small thanks to the experience you’ve accumulated over the last year, and Master Achilles’ form of focused meditation, I’m not needed like I once was. This should be something to celebrate. And it’s not like I’m going anywhere. Now I can focus more on the things you can’t do, like processing the massive amounts of data necessary to become the most outstanding combat AI in the history of the world.”

Sticking my face right in hers as if rising up to her challenge, I complimented her instead. “For you it’s going to be easy. The Ekseliksi should just give up now.”

“I appreciate the flattery, really. It makes my artificial heart flutter.” She crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself tight. In the next instant, she was giving me a serious look. “So over the coming days, I’ll be addressing you at odd times to collect the required data to know when best to interrupt your thought processes and when to hold back. You’ll hear from me far less than you used to when you were my little Lucius, but I’ll still be constantly observing you and available when you need me. You can be a little sappy, so let me say this. You haven’t lost me in any way. Instead, you’ve leveled up.”

I just shook my head. “You’re amazing, Destiny. If you weren’t an AI I’d marry you.”

“Don’t go all St3alth on me now. Besides, are you saying you’d give up Victoria for little old me?”

I was in the middle of a chuckle when I started to say something but found myself tongue tied. There were half a dozen witty comebacks I had ready, but not one of them made its way out.

Victoria had started out as just another pretty face that I happened to party up with on the first day of Freedom. But then the reality of Freedom came stampeding toward us out of the starter city’s forest in the form of a giant hobgoblin that wielded a tree as a club. I saved her by pushing her out of the way and ended up handicapping the monster only to catch its club with my back. Over six to eight hours, pain wrecked my body and she knelt with me the entire time in tears. It welded us together in a way that little else could. It was only later that I learned she had the psionic ability to heal and didn’t save me from the pain because it would give away that she was Ekseliksi royalty. Helping me at that point in time could have put her and her mission in danger. Instead of hating her, I joined her. She intended on saving the Earth from a real war against the Ekseliksi, not just a virtual one, but the kind where when people die, they stay dead. Despite the desires of her own father, the Teleios, she desired peace and she was willing to fight her own people to have it.

At first, I was more intrigued by her, than interested. She was engaged, so despite the attraction, we were friends that ended up sneaking out at night, looking for trouble together. But more and more of what she was capable of was revealed over those early weeks and months. As she built her guild from the ground up, I had front stage access to her genius. She built one of the strongest guilds in the game, and an economic powerhouse that likely outdid the rest of the guilds combined. Her genius wasn’t just the intellectual kind, but she was about to convince many other guilds to partner with her, and those under her leadership loved her. If that were all, she’d seem more like a figurehead than a real person, but I was privy to the girl behind guild Prodos’ warrior queen.

In many ways, she was just another teenager. She could be rather silly when she wanted to. She was fond of teasing me and being teased. She also had a real mischievous streak, but… Every one of her people’s lives mattered to her, and when they suffered the pain of death or injury on the battlefield under her command, she felt it. She second guessed her every decision and didn’t sleep, going over her plans again and again to prevent as much suffering as possible. She bore the weight of the world on her shoulders, and never once did she complain or want to balk at her impossible task.

The more I learned about her, the more I realized that it was impossible for us to be together. She wasn’t engaged by choice, for she was of the Epithumia, the Ekseliksi’s spiritual leader, who was also her mother. She would marry for her people, not of her own free will. I was determined to be a friend to her, despite my feelings, because I learned that friendship wasn’t something she’d have the privilege of having much of with her status in life. But then, over the months, out of all the people she had gathered around her that she might consider friends, I was the one she revealed her true self to time and again. I knew she cared for me, even though she mustn’t, but only in our latter days in Freedom did her walls completely crumble and she could no longer hold back. Unless I could somehow overcome the limits of the human body and push my psionics past that limit many times over, there was nothing I could do about it. But how could I let the impossible stop me? A year ago I would’ve sworn that psionics shouldn’t even exist. If things continued as they were, Victoria’s heart would belong to me, but her body would belong to another. I couldn’t let that stand.

Lifting my hands from my lap, I looked upon them as if they weren’t mine, but belonged to someone else. Before entering Freedom, I had been a fairly athletic seventeen year old that only exercised to keep my mind and body as sharp as possible for the highest levels of competitive gaming. The thick wrist and veiny forearms staring up at me weren't that of a kid, but of a veteran athlete.

Getting hit with the hobgoblin’s tree-club on my first day in Freedom had more than just forced me to question my every motivation. It had forced my infant stage psionics to convert the little energy I had into Therapeia, its healing form. Only a handful of humans had unlocked the same ability in the ten years since psionics were discovered, and I had done in on the first day, but not because of my own talent. It had been forced out of me. However, it was a blessing in disguise. With it, my body recovered far faster than anyone else, and with the addition of the steroid and nutrient tonics the government was pumping into us through nanobot tech, I was able to undergo nearly ten years of physical training in the span of a year. By the end of my time in Freedom, I was able to do a full workout seven times a day, allowing my body to recover in the down time, while sleeping only two to three hours. Out of the 100,000 professional athletes and gamers that participated in Codename: Freedom, I started out average, but by the end, I was at the top of the list. And if it came to a fight… I was the best.

“Speaking of St3alth,” Destiny said, looking at me with her head cocked to the side.

It was then I realized Enischyo, my psionic aura, was filling the room with its red gleam. I cut it immediately and loosened my fists.

She straightened and beam down at me happily. “He’s currently at the guild hall entertaining many of Nexus’s new recruits.”

I gave her a sideways glance, knowing she had something in mind.

“Why don’t you go surprise him?”

“You know I can’t,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest, and mimicking the look she was so fond of giving me. “Already tried it, and—”

“Yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t feel real because it’s too smooth. I’m more concerned about your psionics interfering with your headset. Even a deep dive probably isn’t safe because your psionic energy is too closely tied in to your mind. Go to use a forcefield on your old Spellsword character and pop. One push of your energy and your headset will shoot off your head and smack against the wall or the ceiling. There are too many metals used in its construction. That’s why you’re going to use a minimalistic MR doohickey your father uses for special occasions. Even then, no psionics. You’re just making an appearance.”

Nodding my head, I’d thought a lot about St3alth and the original guild Nexus in my last days of Freedom. Chewme had in many ways forced the issue by creating an arena where players could fight to the death over and over again despite the one hundred percent pain threshold. That alone wasn’t the worst part. He’d required people to kill other players in order to join his guild, and even used the Nexus name. Since then, Chewme, or Timur as he’d gone by in Freedom, had been removed from the original guild. “How’s St3alth doing. I’m sure it’s been a mess for him.”

“You won’t believe it even if I told you,” she said, almost begging me to ask more.

“What has he done now?”

“It’s not what you think. He’s done well for himself over the last year.”

Uncrossing my arms to show her I was serious, I addressed her again. “Destiny. Tell me already.”

She seemed satisfied with my response. “As the person closest to Nexus’s white knight, that’s you, and crazed barbarian, that’s Chewme, he’s been doing paid interviews where he speculates on what is really going on in your heads. He doesn’t even spend much time in Gravel anymore. It’s become his full time job, and Lucius. He’s made a killing.”

I found it hard to breathe. Not because I was upset, but because I was laughing too hard. “So not only has St3alth become a commentator, but he’s gotten lazy.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

I waited for a moment, letting myself catch my breath before I responded. “What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you go see for yourself?”

Her expression betrayed nothing.

“Fine. I’m going already.”

“Good,” she said with a nod of finality. “By the time you get done, the samples of all-in-one nutrition shakes should’ve arrived. It should be easy to get your twelve thousand daily calories over the next couple weeks as you’re trying them all.”

“How many did you order?”

“One thousand nine hundred and eighty seven different brands and flavors.”

I leaned forward, blinking in protest. “How can we possibly afford that? I haven’t decided on any sponsors yet.”

“You think we had to pay for them?” She leaned over and laughed in my face like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “I know you’re new to this, but Lucius, you’re one of the most popular gamer/athletes on the planet right now. Companies jump at opportunities for people like you to want to sample their products. If you’re seen using something in public, on the Metaverse, or drop a name in an interview, that’s like cryptos falling from the sky to them. I contacted all the companies with the highest rated products, and they begged for the privilege of sending us their entire line. They even tried to send things I wasn’t asking for. I fear you may be getting a year’s supply of hygiene products along with all the nutrition shakes. On a positive note, there are over a hundred flavors that we’re to receive that aren’t even on the market yet. Exciting, right?”

Overwhelming would be more accurate. Building my fanbase had once been at the top of my list of priorities, but, as what was important to me changed, it had become easy to ignore my fans and the media while still in Freedom. That was now a thing of the past.

Destiny left me to my thoughts for a few minutes, letting it settle in. It wasn’t all bad. No, that was the wrong way of thinking about it. In a little more than a week I’d be attending Vector and Drool’s wedding. They were gamer royalty, and I had the honor of calling them friends. I’d likely see Cornelius, a combat master and living legend, at the same event. They were only the first names that popped into my head. There were dozens, hundreds of people, that I’d gotten to know in the refiner’s furnace of Codename: Freedom. People I could trust with my life… Why did it seem that Freedom had been more real than the real world, and that here, outside of my giant cube, that this was the game?

I shook my head, trying to rid my mind of the sober edge that Freedom had given me. Using Achilles’ replacement principle, I replaced my weighty thoughts with absurd ones. It wasn’t long before I had an idea.

“I’m ready to give St3alth a visit. Do me a favor and log me in in privacy mode so he doesn’t know it’s me. You said I should surprise him, so let’s make it good.”

She didn’t say anything, responding with nothing but a teethy grin.