SOO2 - ch 16

Merry Christmas!

-------

The training program generated two opponents.  Trent quickly killed them both and they slowly faded to nothing.  He moved his wrist, dipping the tip of his rapier and rolled his neck.  It felt good to be training again.

This was a fencing program that Trent had used when he’d just started playing SOO.  He could adjust the difficulty and number of his enemies, their weapons, the terrain, and other environmental hazards.

It’d been a long time since he’d decided to Dive into this training program, not least of which because most of his Dive time for almost a year had been spent in either school or SOO.  Hell, nowadays all he did was play SOO.  In the training program, the settings for his reaction, speed, and strength were actually keyed to his body in real life for this session, not his stats in SOO.  Even though he wasn’t working out his body, he could develop refined muscle memory.

He was both a little startled by and very proud of how good he seemed to be now.  Trent had always viewed himself as a decent fencer, but not Olympic level.  He was solid, but that was it.

All the practice and constant fighting SOO had changed things.  It must have.

The same opponents that used to press him, even kill him a year ago were laughably easy to defeat now.  Maybe he was an Olympic level fencer now, or could be if he trained for it.  Fencing for points with a foil was different than trying to kill with a steel rapier.

Actually, maybe the Olympians were all playing SOO and had gotten better too.  That was a weird realization.  Trent tried to focus on the training, but his mind kept wandering now.  Instead of the random thought disappearing, it kept lingering.

He keyed up a new set of opponents.  One was a man with a bushy beard and a wide bladed hanger.  The other was thin and bald with a spear.

Trent kept both at bay through a combination of footwork, light, exploratory strikes, and stance changes.

Suddenly, one of his virtual enemies committed.  He came in low with a nasty upward cut aimed at Trent’s elbow.  Trent dipped his hand, catching the hanger’s blade on his guard and accurately skewered his attacker through the armpit with a lunge.

The spear user tried to catch him unaware but Trent was not caught off guard.  When the spear user thrust, Trent was able to retreat and flick out a parry at the last second.  His rapier drew a glittering trail of blood from the man he’d just killed.

Then he snapped his guard up, staying light on the balls of his feet.  Retreating from a spearman would be a great way to eventually die.  Trent advanced.  The spearman made a few quick, jabbing attacks that Trent mostly ignored.  When his enemy finally went for a kill, going for a shot at Trent’s head, he explosively countered.

He parried the strike, allowing his opponent’s spear to whiff past his face.  With his free hand he grabbed the spear shaft and took two quick steps forward.  His enemy couldn’t keep up and was pulled off balance by Trent’s grip on the spear.

This time the kill wasn’t pretty–Trent just kept stabbing until the other man wasn’t moving anymore.  The spearman had tried to defend himself with his arms, even tried to grab Trent’s rapier blade, but it hadn’t worked.

That done, it was time for another try of Trent had actually opened this training program for.

He stepped back and concentrated, then slashed his sword blade.  This time he even said the name of the ability out loud that he was trying to use.  “Wind slash!”  Nothing.  Now he felt silly and kind of cartoonish.  He’d been trying to use wind magic from SOO in different VR training programs for over an hour but nothing was working.  Maybe I’m losing my mind, he thought.  But he trusted his memory.  There had to be an explanation for what he’d seen…what he’d done.

At least the fight itself hadn’t been bad.  It last one wasn’t his cleanest kill, but he was still satisfied.  Both of his opponents this time had been at maximum difficulty.

As the bodies faded, he thought about queuing up some more bad guys but decided not to.  Instead, he sat on the simulated rocky ground of his fighting area and thought for a while.

Something other than his attempts to use wind magic was stressing him out.  What else was bothering him so much?

He was…anxious.  Like the feeling right before a storm hits.  That was the best analogy he could come up with.  A few things had been nagging at him for a while, but they hadn’t actually weighed on him like this.  He tried to pinpoint when it’d started.  Ever since he’d gone into the Chaos Maze, he just hadn’t felt…at peace ever since.

With a grunt of frustration, he stood up and commanded his persocom to Surface.

Trent woke up in his body and grabbed the bottle of water he’d set nearby.  It was still a little cool.  He chugged the entire thing, hit the bathroom, and went to the kitchen to make tea.  There was a hot water dispenser that was always kept topped off, so he’d actually begun experimenting with tea and found he liked it.

It was relaxing and he needed it.

The entire team was taking half of the day off, but Trent didn’t see anyone else right now.  That suited him just fine.

He wandered outside to a sitting area and sat at a park bench.  If he wasn’t familiar with what the facility was used for, he might think it was some sort of office park with strangely tight security.  Its nickname, “Rainbow Ranch,” was actually kind of funny.  The entire Vermillion compound was surrounded with a very serious looking fence.  Guards patrolled the outside.

If Trent couldn’t leave whenever he wanted, it might have felt like a prison.  A comfortable prison, but still a prison.

Vermillion wanted them all to have a guard with them if they left, too.  A year ago, that would have bothered Trent.  But after being shot at on a college campus, he just felt grateful.

He ran through the shooting again in his mind.  The noises.  Using cars for cover as he followed Rich and Stace to the van.

Why the hell were people shooting at gamers?  He’d accepted it as a fact of reality for a while now, and it made sense why big streaming companies might want to make competition go away, permanently, but how were they getting away with it?

Trent started to get a headache.

He’d tried following up with the police about someone trying to murder him and about the threats made against his family.  Vermillion Entertainment had kept track of it, too.  Nothing had happened yet.  No leads, no names, nothing.

In the distant past, the police never did anything about small crimes like…petty theft, but Trent figured someone, somewhere might care that a student was almost gunned down by a hitman in the college parking lot!

Over the last week, Trent had been watching the news, paying special attention to reports of violence against streamers and other mysterious disappearances.  He’d done research and found that almost nobody ever got caught and charged for murders or dissapearances lately despite the number of weird stories actually increasing.  What was stranger was how nobody was really talking about it online other than a throwaway comment here or there.

It felt like everyone online was just acting like the entire world was a third world country now, but it didn’t make sense!  Technology was at an all time high.  Hell, the entire world was playing a deep dive VR game!

“Hello.”  Trent was jerked out of his thoughts by a voice and looked up to see Katya.  As usual, the way Katya looked exactly like her character Minerva made his brain stutter for a moment.  It was like he needed a second to remember where he was.  Right now he was Trent, not Vale.  It helped that Katya was wearing jeans, not Minerva’s armor.

She was holding a mug of her own.

“Hi.”  The two of them just looked at each other for a few seconds before Trent awkwardly gestured at the table in front of him.  “Want to sit?”

“Yes.”  Katya gracefully took a seat and put both of her hands around the outside of her mug.

There were a few more moments of silence, but Trent decided not to break it.  He’d never talked to Katya one-on-one like this, especially not outside the game.  As usual, she was so beautiful that seeing her in person felt a little surreal, like he’d been transported to a movie where people were just better looking than in real life.

But strangely enough, he wasn’t nervous or overly awkward-feeling.  If anything, he actually felt fairly at ease.

Katya moved her mug around a few times, took a sip of her tea, and finally said, “Thank you.”

Trent blinked.  “For what?”

“When I first met you, I waz angry.  Scared.  At first I did not want to join thiz group, but I have…found peace.  Routine.  It has been good for me.”

“Uh, you’re welcome.”  Trent wasn’t sure what else to say and he didn’t really understand what she was talking about.  He actually had wondered what was going on with her and her brother, so he blurted out, “I still don’t understand why you were hiding in a video game, though.  Not really.”

Katya took a sip of tea and scratched her neck.  She looked down at her hands long enough to be noticeable.  Trent definitely felt tension.  Both in and out of SOO, Katya was usually direct and confident.  This was not normal behavior for her.

She tapped the table with her index finger slowly and said, “I should start from the beginning.  Bear with me.  I almost never talk about thiz.”  She paused.  “My father iz a powerful man.  I believe in English you might call him a ‘crime boss.’  My brother Pavlo and I have different mothers.  He and I are the only two children who have not been…devoured by my father’s business.  We are still free, at least our minds.

“You might have noticed my accent.  I know it iz strange.  When I was young, I had to move many times.  My father had many enemies and I could be used against him.  My accent has no real home.  My childhood was neverending fear and rules, all in many places.

“One of the only ways I had to rebel when I waz a girl was with martial arts.  My tutors hated it, which just made me embrace it more.  Cutting targets with a sword made my mind sharp.  Working out in the gym hurt, but it made me feel free.  Powerful.  Once I was almost forced to stop but I lied that I wanted to be a gymnast.”

She smiled but it fell quickly.  “Pavlo escaped wiz friends years ago and worked abroad.  He was always…decisive.  But he also had a different situation.  His life was more, how should I say, controlled, and he had more reason to leave it.  I was in a gilded cage for a long time.  It waz more…tolerable.

“But things changed.  The world changed.  My skills could suddenly make more money.  I waz more valuable.” She smirked without humor.

Trent thought he might understand.  First it was persocoms.  Then VR had exploded exponentially over the last few years. “Tech?  Gaming?” he asked.

She waved a hand in acknowledgement.  “Both.  Being more valuable changed my life and opened my eyes. The part of my father’s business doing the best was suddenly something I could help with.  I did not get a choice.  They moved me from the countryside to the city.  I was given new handlers.  None of my time was my own anymore.  I waz pushed hard, exposed to things I didn’t know about, some I pretended I did not see before. So I planned and I escaped.  Then I was chased.  Just like Pavlo, I knew too much.  I betrayed my family.  Waz a loose end.”  She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.  “I am lucky that I waz able to escape with all the money I earned.  It was enough until I got here.”

Trent nodded.  “What about hiding in the game, in the Great Maze?  Worried about tracking?  That’s what I figured.”

“Yes.  Many businesses have agents in SOO and my father’s people are the same.  Some of them have the in-game artifact to track players.  It tells them where the target is playing from, at least down to the city.”  She laughed grimly.  “That damn artifact iz still in the game even after players complained about privacy.  It makes no sense.  Haz no reason to even exist.  If my father found out what city I was in, he would likely find me eventually.”

“I see.  So that’s probably why it took your brother a while to help you move here, right?  Maybe you were living somewhere remote?”

“Yes.”

Trent’s eyebrows scrunched together.  “But if all this is the case, why did you fight me when we first met?  Like, you were hiding in the Great Maze to get a Legendary Class, right?  But your family was looking for you, so you had to be trying to be a streamer, right?  Maybe as a way to make money in the future?”

She shook her head.  “No.  I was just in hiding.”

Something tickled Trent’s mind.  It was like looking at an optical illusion where he knew something was wrong, or something was deeper, but couldn’t put his finger on it.  He squeezed his eyes shut and gently shook his head.  Then before he could actually think about them, the words tumbled out of his mouth.  “If you were hiding from your father and they could track you in the game, and you didn’t need money, why didn’t you just stop playing the game, then?”

Katya’s expression changed several times over the course of a few seconds, and she looked like she was going to speak but fell silent instead.  Finally she said, “I just wanted to play.  But that does not make sense, does it?”

“Not really, no.”  Trent sat still and watched Katya frown.  Normally he would have dismissed this conversation as just quirky, and written off Katya as an obsessed gamer.  But he was starting to think there might be more to it than that.  “Katya, remember when persocoms first came out and all those religious groups were saying it was mind control, or the ‘Antichrist’ or whatever?  Lots of people hated the idea.”

“Yes.  Most of that iz gone now after persocoms are proven safe.”

Trent looked Katya in the eyes and debated with himself whether he should tell her what he’d been investigating lately.  Finally, decision made, he glanced around furtively before gesturing for her to lean closer over the table.  With a puzzled look, she moved nearer.  Trent quietly said, “I’ve used SOO wind spells, like from my Legendary Class, in other programs twice now.  Once in a college class.  I keep thinking about it, and the most likely reason I can think of that makes sense is that my persocom is messing with my head.”

“What?!  You used magic in school VR?”

“Yes.  At least I think so.  If I’m crazy I won’t know that I am, right?

“That iz true.  Hmm.  I will not ask if you are sure, or at least sure of what you thought you saw or you would not tell me.  And you said you are looking into it?  Ah, yes.  There have been other suspicious news storiez lately too, no?  How odd to think about this.”

He nodded.  “If the problem is the persocoms, it’s too late now,” Trent laughed.  “We all have them in our heads.”  He pointed to his temple.

“No, not necessarily too late.  Awareness can help.  Upgrades are software, not hardware.  Maybe it’z a bug, or maybe only a few people have a bug.  But…let us continue thiz conversation later.  Your words ring true and I find myself curious.  I will use my contacts to ask questions.”

“Contacts, eh?  You have good ones?”

“Very good, yes.”

“Then you should also find out more about Yggdrasil Entertainment,” said Trent.  “With everything going on, I’ve realized that there are a lot of big questions with no answers.  Even what happened to us in the Chaos Maze just…doesn’t make sense.  It’s one thing to feel pain in the game, but I really felt like if I’d looked at that thing, whatever it was, I would die.  Maybe I would have just died in  the game and had to play again as a bandit or whatever, but…it felt serious.  I still sweat when I think about it.”

She shuddered.  “Yes.  Alright. I will do what I can.”

Trent suddenly got a crazy idea out of nowhere and once again, the words sort of just flew from his mouth.  “Maybe we can start having lunch or dinner together and compare notes about things that don’t make sense?  I mean, I’m not a conspiracy theorist and I hope nothing is super wrong with my persocom, but maybe it might be good to talk about it.  And, oh, ah, don’t tell anyone else about this, okay?   I’ve only told Steve about this stuff.  Probably only talking about this stuff in person is good too.  No emails.”

Katya laughed, and the sound was carefree, earthy.  Trent thought Katya’s laugh sounded like a steel drum.  She asked, “Not a conspiracy theorist?”  Trent opened his mouth but Katya beat him to the punch.  “Paranoia has been my way of life for years, and you make sense.”  Her eyes twinkled.  “I did not like you much when we first met, Trent Noguero.  But you are not weak, and you are not a fool.”

“So it’s not a problem that I’m a little paranoid?”

She stood and booped him on the nose with her index finger.  “Perhaps I like paranoid men.  A little bit of danger iz the spice of life, no?”  Then she turned and walked away without looking back.

Trent felt like he’d just been hit between the eyes.  What the hell just happened?  He took his time to finish his tea.

He walked back into the main building with so much on his mind, it felt like his thoughts were covered in wool.  Halfway through the den area, Florinia suddenly appeared across the room and smiled.  “Oh Trent, do you you think you can help me with–”

Trent didn’t even make eye contact with her, didn’t respond.  He just kept walking back to his room.  There was already too much to think about without adding more shit about Florinia.

He didn’t hear anything behind him.  Ghosting the woman had left her speechless.  As Trent closed his door behind him, he thought, Let her choke on that.

Despite his headache and heavy thoughts, he was actually in a great mood when he laid down for a nap and fell asleep.