Chapter 4: Choosing Violence

  They said 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 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, in time with the beat of the music that still screamed in my ears.

  The stone crumbled. I was painted in yellow gore. My fourth victim, and yet the sublime 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. The bugs 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 latest 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 Predator perk was funny like that.

  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, but 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 had accumulated, my HP bar now showing about 2/3rds. As much as I wanted to run headlong towards my next victim, I was rational enough to know 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 but an error message appeared.

  The Showrunner's giggling, candy-floss voice read it aloud.

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

  She was back to her chipper, school teacher persona. I preferred that to the deep, ASMR, heavy breathing variant.

  I cast a look about to make sure nothing had approached while I was fiddling with my inventory, and 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 all at once.

  I dropped to the dirt, writhing and rolling until I hit a tree, cradling my head in my hands.

  What the fuck was happening?

  My implant.

  Where was my implant to dull the, the… everything?

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I remembered breaking my arm as a child, I’d jumped from the jungle-gym. Not the action though, not the place. Just the pain. All I could remember was the pain.

  My dad had comforted me, picked me up and cradled me while we waited for the ambulance. Why couldn’t I remember that? Why could I only remember pain?

  I groaned, pulling in tight against myself. Clenching so hard I could hear my spine groan.

  More memories flooded me.

  Moments suppressed by implant, but never truly erased.

  The worst moments of my life, the ones the UE didn’t want me to remember slammed into me over and over.

  Elena.

  Her blue eyes.

  Fire.

  Even the implant had never been able to fully erase that memory. But now it was as fresh as the day it happened.

  The Red Ball activated with a haptic *pop*.

  A flicker of hope broke through.

  It might heal my physical wounds, and remove the physical pain.

  I screamed as liquid fire flooded my body.

  Every cut and scrape sizzled closed with the smell of roasting lab-grown pork.

  My broken bones made audible grinding sounds as they twisted and popped 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 absurdly pleased.

  “Healing from a level up is a reward. Healing by other means comes with a punishment.”

  The pain had now faded, slightly, just enough for me to regain awareness of my surroundings.

  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 limbs still cramped and spasmed, I could barely control my arms. The Gosporian Drone withdrew its claws from the dirt 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 shredded its dead comrade in a spray of yellow gore, then lunged. 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.

  I’d have thought myself numbed from the agony moments before, but no, the pain of having my hand eaten was unbelievable.

  I dropped to my knees.

  Flailed my arm.

  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.

  My mind detached from the pain as I slipped into deep shock.

  I'd kept flowers in my garden.

  The UE said that tending to nature encouraged mindfulness. They 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; but now, as I watched my forearm disappear into a bugs maw, I wished I had helped the poor thing.

  Sirens blared. My HP was a sliver, my HUD flashing with icons: BLOOD LOSS. CRIPPLED.

  My arm was gone to the elbow, and my shock was so profound that I was unable to do much but stare.

  My blood was so bright, so red.

  All I could hear was the heavy panting of my breath, the clicking of mandibles and crunching of bone.

  I slumped to my side, the strength flowing from me as a strange calm took its place.

  My vision dimmed, narrowed to a tunnel.

  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 twenty six 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. It startled me to awareness.

  The Hatchling Predator icon in my HUD had expanded to fill my vision. It was blinking a baleful 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 mine, compound lenses sparkling.

  I saw joy in those glittering dark depths.

  Joy? Fucking joy?!

  NO.

  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, and I rammed the forelimb’s point right into one of the drone's joyous fucking compound eyes and twisted savagely to scramble whatever was inside its skull.

  It shrieked, spasmed violently... then went limp, twitching on my bleeding stump like a broken toy.

  Clambering to my knees, I stared at it.

  The drone’s mandibles were still clamped onto my stump, hanging there. It was only the pressure of its bite pinching blood vessels that prevented 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 could I do?

  The music roared onwards.

  It was almost drowned out by cheering of a billion sociopathic voices.

  I wiped the vomit from my mouth, and tears from my eyes. 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, and through the trees, a new shape—a blur of wings—was flying straight at me.