Frederick just shrugged. “Look, Sang, you have two options here. Option A: you can be a team player and go in there willingly, and in the process hopefully prove to my superiors that the ‘Alfred Incident’ was just an anomaly. Or, option B… you can refuse, pack your things, and go home. For good.”
Sang sighed. Frederick was right that she didn’t have a lot of options here. If she quit the CIA, it would be a disgrace, and she’d probably have to go into the private sector, working for security companies. That kind of work was boring and unrewarding. She had joined the CIA so she could make a difference. If this was going to get back up to the top... she had no choice.
“Alright... fine, but I’m going to warn you now: I don’t game. I’ve never really gamed before, and I’m going to be terrible at it.”
“That’s where these two come in,” Frederick said, waving to the other agents. “O’Hara is on information detail; she’ll be the one responsible for pulling as much information about the game as she can find, as well as for keeping a line of communication going in between all of us. Neil is going to be responsible for handling your guide.”
“I can handle a game guide just fine,” Sang said. “They aren’t that complicated.”
“Nah, he means your actual, bona-fide, in-game guide!” Neil said, bringing up a picture of a tall warrior wielding a sword.
“Come again?”
“We recognize that you aren’t familiar with games, and certainly aren’t the type to... well, blend in with gamers... so we’re going to need to make sure that you’re able to navigate the land properly, as well as interact with the locals.”
“Navigate? Locals? Land? It’s a video game. Little pixels run around blasting at other pixels and suggest that they’ve had sex with those other pixels’ moms,” Sang said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Hah. Things have changed a lot since the old days of gaming,” Neil said. “Well, except for the mom jokes—those are pretty much the exact same.”
“Who is this guy anyway, who you want as my guide? Is he an agent?”
“Nah, just a private contractor,” Neil said. “Don’t worry about him; it’s my job to make sure that he’s as cooperative as ever.”
“Gamers aren’t really… the kind of people I get along with,” Sang grumbled. “It’s tough being a woman and working with computers. They tend to be a little… uncomfortable.”
“Look, I don’t have all day. Are you in or not? I’m doing you a favor here, Sang,” Frederick said as he started to stand.
“I don’t have much of a choice,” she said. “I’m not leaving the CIA. I want to move past the incident. I’ll do it. I just hope this guide isn’t like all of the other gamers I’ve met...”
“He’s pretty good at the game, if that’s what you’re worried about,” O’Hara said.
“The better they are,” Sang mumbled, “the creepier they can get.”
Chapter Three
“And so then I said, that’s not what your mom said last night!” Sivlander joked. Everyone in the party laughed as they sat around the fire, and Sivlander sighed deeply as he looked up at the beautiful night sky.
For all of the adventuring, the pulse-pounding battles, and the stabbing of Orcs, his favorite experience truly was this feeling of being outdoors—of camping. The crackle of the fire, the warmth that warded off the bitter cold... all of this was the perfect experience. A gentle joy even washed over him as he soaked in the scene, hearing the laughter from all of his good friends as they told story after story of how they’d mocked their foes. As he gazed up into the air, though, he also heard a strange shuffling noise in the woods.
Instinctively, he reached for his bow as he heard the snuffling sounds of an animal of some sort. Perhaps he could kill it and feast upon its delicious meat. Sivlander knocked an arrow onto the bow and stepped forward lightly, but as he went to walk forward, he heard the deep, throaty roar of a bear.
“Ah, crap! Grizzly!” he shouted as a massive bear emerged from the woods and charged at Sivlander. He loosed a few arrows at the creature, but it seemed to ignore the attack. The bear leapt at him and knocked him to the ground, and he heard the shouting and screaming of his allies as they rushed to gather their own weapons, but it was too late. Sivlander was on his own, and he was locked in a titanic struggle with this horrid creature. He grabbed his dagger, but realized something was wrong. He couldn’t feel his left hand at all! It was odd, and took him out of the current fight for just a moment as he considered it—perhaps it was something wrong with the haptic VR system he was using. It was cheap crap, after all.
Suddenly, he bear brought him back to the scene by slamming down on him hard and pressing its jaws right up against Sivlander’s head, so that he felt the intense pressure of the jaws as he began to stab at the creature’s face over and over again.
“Gahhhhh!” he screamed out then, as he felt a sudden jolting sensation run through his entire body. He was reeling... one moment, he had been fighting against the bear, and now he was sitting back in his crappy little apartment.
“Told you that would wake him up,” said a gruff, tall man in a suit. The man was holding the VR goggles in one hand.
“Hey! They’re mine!”
“Shut up, Van,” said a woman behind him. He spun around in his chair to see a red-haired woman staring at him. She wore a badge of some sort on her hip.
“How do you know my name?” Van demanded. He was still feeling startled from the jarring transition out of virtual reality and into his regular hellhole of a life.
“My God, this place is awful,” the man said as he grabbed a box of food. “Gamer chow? You actually eat this stuff? Smells worse than dog food.”
“Hey, stop that!” Van said as he leapt up to stop the stranger from pouring out the brown protein pellets all over the floor. The woman grabbed him by the back of the head, though, and slammed him against the wall.
“Take it easy, Van,” she said, emphasizing his name. He felt the painful pressure of her hand shoving him against the wall.
“W-what do you want from me?”
“Look at this place—it’s filthy. Absolute pigsty. Your mom’s gotta be so proud of what you’re doing with your life,” the man said as he walked over to a poster of a buxom, animated woman and shook his head. “Filthy.”
“Who are you?” Van stammered. His heart was pounding. Was this some kind of robbery? That didn’t make any sense, given that he was poor as dirt.
“I’m Agent O’Hara and this is my good friend, Agent Neil,” the woman said, relaxing her grip on Van’s head. She stepped back and kicked some of the haptic gear on the ground. “You play these virtual games, right?”
“Yeah... agent? What kind of an agent?”
“Secret Agents!” Neil said, pulling out his pistol suddenly.
“Knock it off, Neil, I told you not to flash your gun,” O’Hara said sharply, eliciting a shrug from the man.
“We’re with the CIA, Van,” Neil said as he put his gun away. “And we’re here to have a little chat.”
“Look, you guys have no business being in here. I’m no one special, okay?”
“First off, kid, let me you ask you something—your last name? Is that real? Not some kind of pseudonym?” O’Hara asked.
Van sighed heavily, giving up on his own questions for the moment. “Yes, my legal name is Van Vanyushin.”
“Hah, I love those kinds of names,” Neil said. “Well, Van Vanyushin, you are in luck. Today is your lucky, lucky day!”
“How so?”
“Because you won! You’re the brand new owner of an exciting new business opportunity to do what you love the best, get paid for it, and best of all, expunge your criminal record!” Neil answered as he stopped to inspect Van’s computer. The red and blue lights were flickering as it continued to run the game at full speed.