Chapter 1

I was trapped in a box.

A simple brick room with a metal table at its center, the metal chair with which I sat, and another that held my captor. Interrogation room c was the writing on the glass door behind him. It also held my freedom a few feet away out of reach. Blocked by a sweaty old man that smelled of old cheeseburgers and stale smoke. His name was Detective Tracey.

In his hands held files that he stared at intently while subconsciously rubbing his balding pate. He wasn’t disheveled by any means. He wore a light blue shirt that was crisped from being pressed. Cinched at his throat was a cornflower blue tie. A simple silver timepiece adorned his harry pale arms. His facial expression remained intent, but there was an underlying sense of confusion. As I was the prisoner in this situation, I wasn’t going start talking first. It wasn’t that I enjoyed his frustration, but that it was necessary to what would come next. I’d already broken the Invitro terms of service in coming this far. I needed allies and they needed to understand…at least as much I could make them understand. No one was ready for this, not even me. But I had to do something, because, in 6 days, the world would end.

“So you’ve gone through a lot to get my attention Ms. Washington is it?”

“Call me Mystral,” I said.

He seemed to blink at that. He sat back and loosened his tie a bit to weigh me his full attention finally. I must be the sight for him. I’m a thin, bony really, young African American girl. I’m not sure if others would call me beautiful and mean it. I call myself beautiful every day, and that’s what matters to me. As it stands I may have caused him a great deal of trouble trying to get his attention. I told him I was a hitman sent to kill someone and would only speak to him. I guess I don’t look like much here, books and covers and all that.

 As with all systems, there are hiccups in timing and inflection. Sounding normal to me isn’t the same as normal to others. There’s mainly issues of how sound travels through mediums. There are ways to compensate for this of course. My favorite is a mind to mind interface. It can be set for desired differences and directions of sound and force. Knowing air density is key and I’m very good a gauging differences. There’s just the slight problem when taking into account vision and nonverbal cues. There is always a possible delay between these under normal circumstances.

So when he refocused I wasn’t sure why.

“Okay, Mystral. How old are you?”

I pointed at the file in his hand.

“I know what it says. I want to hear you say it.”

Damn. I’d tweaked the file too much maybe? I never liked nudging. I wasn’t a nudge, but I was as good as any nudge. I pooled my confidence and decided to trust my coding skills.

“I’m 18 like it says.” And I exhaled just slightly enough to sound like a sigh. It was always best to appear emotional in certain manners of deception. Sometimes the best way to prove your humanity is to show some weakness. If only to give them something to look at other a possible, lag issue. I’d have to have Wrex look at that when I had a chance.

Wait, this may be a bit far out to start with. Let me start over with where it began.

The date was 2077 May 15th   Monday almost 2 weeks ago.

The school day was almost over and I couldn’t wait for my last class, Quantum Coding Physics. Not that I enjoyed the class very much. It was not very interesting and I was already a month ahead in my studies. Most gamers awaited this class hour cause of one thing, Batroyx.

It was an obvious play on words based off the 20th-century cult film Japanese film ‘Battle Royale’. A film largely assumed as the basis for the later American blockbuster ‘The Hunger Games Series’. I had seen both and I could see the comparisons. Anyway, name aside, that was not what Batroyx was. It was the underground gaming phenomenon of the month. A live action first person shooter that people played in AR^[1] at the exact same time every month. Being a student, we weren’t supposed to be playing in school, but that was part of the excitement. Being in AR as it was you could see the real world around you but at the same time, you were under attack all around you. There were hundreds of gamers in the school that played like I did. And we had our own rules.

Rule One: Don’t die.

This was pretty obvious as it was a kill or be killed kind of game. Your battlefield became where ever you are. And you had to use your own environment as your cover. Spawn^[2] points were tricky because of this. You spawn where you are and if you’ve got a room full of gamers all around you, well hasta la vista baby, you’re officially toast. So how do you do it? Well, let’s say you don’t let the games rules hinder you if you’re worth your salt in a Batroyx. That’s why it was underground.

I’ll try to explain the difference. Regular games or games where the rules were a hindrance was for regular gamers. Which is fine for Sunday, or Thursday interactive esports^[3] on the vid. You enter those and you’re up against elite who basically had the money, clout, or sponsors to buy a victory with special advantageous others couldn’t afford or had access to. Some guys had been playing so long they had items that were so powerful they weren’t offered anymore. Yet they received special dispensation and grandfather status likely due to somebody’s ass kissing somewhere. A regular or newer gamer couldn’t compete anymore. So the esports was really interactive in terms of providing cannon fodder for the Champs who had so much money, that no one knew what their real ident was. Information is free nowadays but privacy and anonymity cost you a premium. So this led to the underground, where rules were options and hacks to the system were not allowed so much as an expected necessity. Which is a good a lead-in to:

Rule Two: Don’t get caught.

When you’re in AR you have to keep others from knowing you’re playing. Especially your instructors. Batroyx was not a secret. Because of implants and disguised mods, people could play with an unnoticed device. This was part of the challenge and excitement because you had to be traveling throughout the room, through the hallways, in the streets and still keep your body sitting still in your seat. You might even be leaping to other cities if you were really good. Some teachers knew you played and didn’t care as long as you kept part of your attention in class. If you couldn’t mentally partition the two, well you had no business even trying but that my own opinion. It’s historically not the easiest thing to exist in multiple places at once, but gene therapies in the 2060’s have expanded this concept. My mom works three 40 hour jobs to support this education. It makes downtime a challenge but not everyone can afford to only work 60 hours a week. What a luxury, even with this fancy education I’d be lucky if I get a workweek less than 100 hours.

Anyway, the teachers, if they think you’re not engaged in the present space they had the had the right to nuke you. Basically, a jamming gun that blocks your outside signal processing. It didn’t hurt physically, but in Batroyx it was auto-death and you were out. Some clever nudge’s even found ways to alert the teacher that were pretty slick. Like a shot that would evoke body spasms if you couldn’t shield against it. Which leads to the most important rule.

Rule Three: Your ident^[4] was your safety.

So everyone who was anyone good, hacked Ident and spawning point first. This was not exactly done the same way universally and was so unique, it’s actually the basis of our community cliques. This is a school so cliques are as common as the air I guess.

Here’s the lowdown. In the game, you have Breakers, usually fighter classes bulky like tanks but the break part is how they handle code. They’re simple, they break it. Break armor code weapon code, even position if they can. I met a guy once who tried to unclip me and send me into a wall once. They are the epitome of brute force hack. Then there are your Nudge’s. Slick like I said, they don’t break code if they can help it. Instead, they change it in subtle ways, hoping you can’t defend against it. Most clip and paste premade codes in-between your code while they attack or as an attack. And most play shifty rogue-like characters because it fits their shifty tactics. And then there are Spawns, usually mage classes. They can conjure the craziest shit into the game. From mini gun’s in fantasy games to Excalibur in an fps. If you’re on solid ground a Spawn will turn it to quicksand to trip you up and get an easier headshot. Oh and monsters, shit they love their fucking monsters. Then there’s me, sort of a Hodge podge of all. Jill of all trades if you will. However, I have a code, keep secret, that’s why people refer to my character Mystral as “Mystral the Mask”. I lead the board and my ident is never ever known. Privacy is power and I wield it with a knife’s edge.

Game time brought me into to the game at my seat in my power armor, a modest 10-foot model slim and feminine as a war mech can be. A quick code shift and I created a duplicate of myself and went invisible 3 feet left of start. A nudge in bulky 16 ft tank mech took the bait first and tried a boomerang blast at the dup. It shattered upon impact and I retaliated with a speed slash while still invis. Shooting in their direction, my trusty claymore was red with blood thirst, I sliced up hard, splitting the nudge in half lengthwise. Compensating for speed I turned 180 degrees in a backward skid. Careful to stay within the rows of the auditorium.

Meanwhile, the teacher was beginning the lecture on quantum coding. Something about entanglement physics and how to apply backward compatible line coding into a quantum vertices and vice versa. It was old news to me. My father had taught me that trick when I was 11 but I maintained an outward appearance of studious enrapture. My physical body taking the time to punch in notes on my desk surface while looking up and occasionally making eye contact. Mystral the mask zero defects.

I surveyed the room quickly and noticed no obvious challengers, but that meant nothing. Cheap tricks like my invisibility were common so there was no telling what lurked. Echoing my thought, proximity warnings blared and I had to flip around again to see a huge worm like thing with rows of razor sharp teeth rotating in its circular maw like a chainsaw. A spawn was near, and likely invisible. The worm may have been over 20 ft as it tried to rise to its full height, however, the ceilings were not as high and it crashed into it, bouncing off in my direction. I quick shifted to the uppermost row. My back against the wall, I sent out a heat net looking for the spawn. Nothing, no invisibles to be found. I was confused at first then I started to think like a spawn. They were flashy sons a bitches on most days, so it was likely they were trying a new spell out thinking to innovate if not outsmart the competition. Which meant…realization dawned quickly and I was in motion, flipping into the air while I was upside down I heat scanned the wall but it was unnecessary, arms began reaching out from the wall I just had my back to. Once the head of the Nautilus 12 foot mech came into view (expensive gear), I aimed my claymore blade and called up shotgun mode. The blade split lengthwise, exposing if cannon within and I fired, once, twice, three times from the lady. Decapitating his wannabe sneaky ass before finishing the flip. Now as cool as this was, the physics of Batroyx were not dumb. The recoil of the blasts effectively prolonged my ability to land. Even compensating to hit my target wasn’t going to help land with grace. So upside down, I flew like a ragdoll in midair towards the front of the class. Not wanting to crash, I entered hover and fired retro jets to slow my momentum. The result was I phased into the instructor which was quite a sight.

I watched myself superimposed within the professor while walked us through the steps of strengthening the crystalline matrix and how the steps of the building process could affect the final outcome of the total program. Apparently, he was working with a block type method. Easy enough, beginner level really. Start talking Icosahedron and you could get my interest peaked. Also, I took a moment to look at myself. I was pretty enough I guess. I really like the outfit I picked out today. The orange cardigan matched the tint on the side of my glasses and both complimented my dark brown skin tone. And yes, glasses were very very retro nowadays with implants and cyber eye technology. I had my reasons trust me, and maybe I was sort of a hipster.  

Devoid of enemies in the immediate vicinity, I called up the rankings. With two kills in 2 minutes, I ranked 1st in Meroux College at that moment. But I was not about to keep it if I didn’t switch to offense. And of the total tourney, I was rank twenty-six, fuck. Time to make the donuts I told myself, old school talk for it’s time to get to work. I shifted to the street quadrant and did just that.

An hour and a half later, the class was done and Mystral Mask was top of the food chain once again. One kid in class got his ident compromised when a nudge trapped him with an apoplectic mine. The noises he made almost caused me to bite it cause my laughter bleed through my partition. Strong emotions did that sometimes. The teacher was no novice and nuked him without missing a beat. There were 15 minutes left in class but that’s a lot of time to have your ident exposed. He twitched nervously in the lecture knowing that the net was disseminating his info to the world. Once you’re outed there’s no going back. His mech, gear, moves, and account were likely up for dibbs in seconds of the nuke. Account safeguards could keep out the thrash for a bit, but a connection between your avatar and you real name, oh boy, you’d be lucky if you could keep your account information safe. There was a cautionary tale told once about a kid who had a part-time job at a bank, but also had a passion for Batroyx. He got outed because he was a mensch and not only that but uber-mensch enough to keep the data keys to his work account on his system. 5 minutes and his accounts were wiped and a large portion of the banks was as well. The kid went down for years and the investigation that followed was called one of the biggest cyber-heist in history. The Mensch job it was referred to in certain circles. 7 million bitcoin went missing that day, and the authorities have been down the throats of underground gamers ever since.

I went home after class via automated car. It was a nice luxury I afforded after a hard fought win. Being able to relax alone with no interference in just one mindset. I enjoyed looking out the window on days like that and just absorbing our perfect utopia. Free was what the world was about nowadays. At least that’s what the pristine world would try to tell you. Affordable was the other lie told most often. High wages, job opportunity, land of the free to pay what was necessary is what I called it privately.

Once home, I saw that mom was not home and that was typical so I went straight to my room. I dropped my bag on my bed and went to the mirror as I always did after school. I looked at my reflection and sighed, then began the process of taking off my mask.

When I was little, I had a learning disability that my parents needed to account for. Knowing I was smart at the time, they decided to entrust me with a Neurotech facility researching technologies that could reverse my condition. As was more common than our media would tell you is that poor families being guinea pigs were the new normal. The trials were torture. A new form of nanotechnology that was introduced within the epidermis and would create a metal lattice around the skull. Holes were made to allow the lattice to interact with the brain and stimulate the desired regions. It changed me in ways, I still haven’t caught up with. Widely considered a success, the side effects, however, made it not viable for commercial use. That’s corporate speech for saying because we killed a few hundred poor kids, we won’t roll out this to the rich public. As a result, I lost motor control for years, and had to study in bed rest for years, but my mind, well my mind was sharp. Sharper than ever before. My father taught me, after the incident. He quit all his jobs at Neurotech the day I grew ill. He stayed home with me from that moment forward, until his death just a year ago. My teacher and my physical therapist, he taught me to relearn how my brain worked with motion and movement. However, the skin effects were the greatest challenge. The technology triggered a melanin response in my epidermis. So my skin changed to patch like spots on my face. The ancient term is vitiligo I’m told. For this, my father created my greatest weapon. My mask. Prosthetic patches that covered the bright pink patches on my face. Within them, the circuitry to interact with the neural network that I had inherited in my years of suffering. So when I refer to my mask, I refer to these patches, my rig interface for lack of a better term. The rich kids had implants that became the norm after my trials proved too difficult to reproduce. That I lived was a rarity. Of 1000 kids only 10 survived. Every day after school I strip myself bare like my mother told me to do. I look in the mirror, and tell myself, spots and all, “You are beautiful”. And I mean it.

After my ritual was complete, I plopped onto my bed and switched the vid on. Even without the mask, I can manage short burst transmits up to about 3 feet in any direction. Not strong enough to do more than act as a remote. Mentally I scrolled through the channels, thoroughly uninspired by the choices on television. If you think we’d outgrown reality TV, boy are you in for a shock. Scripted programming is even rarer nowadays. The best I could find was a game reel of one of my favorite RPG^[5] shows. I didn’t feel like interacting so I pulled up Kiddie to play through for me so I could sit back and watch. If my mask was the weapon my father gave me. Then kiddie was the masterpiece I created on my own. Kiddie was short for ‘Script kiddie” named after some ancient slang for lazy coder which fit her perfectly. She’s my AI clone sister who I created and continue to teach daily and also, she allows me to take a break once in a while. For an hour I watched as Kidde fought diligently making choices I would make, mostly. I only yelled at the scream a few times, but that was expected. Then there was a pause.

“Mystral, you have a message,” Kiddie interrupted the RPG feed to display the email I’d just received. The fact that it was text piqued my interest.

“Kiddie is out immunization record up to date?”

“Affirmative”

“0kay you can open it Kiddie, but keep the anti-virus protocol with backlash on standby”, I dare a dick head to try to hack me.

The message turned out to be clean fortunately, and surprisingly it was a beta^[6] test invite.

You Are Invited to the beta of the

Next greatest game

Invitro

Battle through history and protect your timeline.

It came with a link that I was wary of but curious. At the time I figured I had my homework done, and the RPG was getting boring to watch, what the hell. Something new sounded fun.

“Kiddie, shadow mode, full anti-virus and eject in case of non-response time of two minutes.”

“Compliance”, Kiddie replied.

Viruses were nasty nowadays. You couldn’t be too careful but I was not a novice. And with kiddie as my shadow I was all but impervious. Quickly I donned my mask in the mirror again. My armor in place, I told my reflection, “You’re beautiful, and intelligent.” I blew myself a kiss before I lay down on my bed. Finding the email link in my mind’s eye, I went full dive. If only I’d have thought about exactly how that email made passed my spam filters, I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m currently in.