CyberWorld

In this world, you can fight for anything

Anything can be power

Anyone can rise

Michael Leong could never forget that old proverb. He never thought he’d ever be involved in a scuffle of his own. Should he be terrified that his current plight would be as normal as it got in this strange new world?

Under the night sky, he made his way down the alley, lit only by the faint glow of street lamps. Return to your room and die a peaceful death, his head screamed, yet he blocked the voices out, focusing on finding the bakery to satisfy his hunger. It could have been a figment of his imagination, but he saw faces in every nook and cranny and where they shouldn’t be, all of them scattered across the walls of European-inspired buildings and other alleys leading back to the Town Square.

Michael thought, Find that bakery before you start going crazy. In his peripheral vision, the alley behind him radiated red-hot, even brighter than energized kinergy. If he were shot that night, would his last sight be a smoking wound reaching from his spine to his abdomen?

What was that glow in his peripheral vision anyway? He remembered the street lamps glowing orange, not red. Unable to put aside the crimson bleeding into his eyeballs, Michael turned to see a ghoulish luminescence lighting up the alley, clear as day.

His footprints were glowing on the pavement, ready to attract any stalkers.

Realizing he was being followed, he made a mad dash for his life, his starvation dissipating from the appalling revelation. Adrenaline pumped hard through his veins.

While Michael navigated the brick labyrinth, a pair of footsteps chased after him in the darkness. Michael yanked the TRIN-12 Shotgun Pistol from his hip and fired behind him twice. His pursuer responded with a blast of his own, and the kinergy bolt streaked beside Michael’s forearm and rammed into a brick wall, leaving a singed black hole in the building’s architecture.

Michael thought, My footprints are losing their glow. Maybe I can lose him after a while—

A shock of pain surged along Michael’s arm as the pursuer’s kinergy bolt struck his left shoulder and burned his skin. He dropped and writhed on the ground, his cries of agony ringing through the alley.

The pursuer sheathed his sidearm—the POS-15 Point-Sight Pistol with the laser sight Michael now regretted not buying at the store. He took a gleeful stride toward Michael’s battered form as his white robes came into his view under the street lamps.

It was the Apostle with the machine gun that Michael had seen at the Town Square. He shrugged at Michael.

“You know, the boss didn’t care much for that blue light you made,” he said. “Oh well. Looks like my solo investigation paid off.”

Michael aimed the TRIN-12 Trinity Shotgun Pistol at his face, but the Apostle barely flinched. He stopped Michael’s attack by slamming his foot onto his arm, forcing him to waste his final shot on an unsuspecting abyssket trash can nearby.

“That blue light.” The Apostle’s tone turned serious as he rested one knee on Michael’s gaping wound and the other on his chest. Michael yelled out in pain, a vocalization so loud it would have scared off Yunon’s Robocrows to find new nesting grounds in another Region of CyberWorld. Vortex, perhaps? The cybernetic birds would fit right into an apocalyptic wasteland like Arndeayd.

The Apostle said, “You have the Skill, don’t you?” He ignored his robes getting soaked by blood. Michael’s blood.

Michael’s nails clawed into the pavement below him as he struggled to pull away from the Apostle’s knee. “What are you talking about?” he grunted.

The Apostle shrugged. “No matter,” he said. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

He pulled out his kineswitch, a butterfly knife crackling with lightning as red as the footprints Michael had seen earlier.

As the blade’s radiance flickered across Michael’s face, he watched in horror as the Apostle creased his face into a sadistic grin—grotesque lines formed along his cheeks.

The Apostle proclaimed, “All hail the First.”

Michael squeezed his eyes shut.

ThiscantbehappeningthiscantberealIhaventevenfinishedhighschoolyetIhaventsaidbyetoMomWhatamIWhatIshouldhavestayedintheroomIshouldhaveturnedthoseblinds

AARRRRGGGGGHHHHELPMEEEE

Long locks of dark hair familiar to Michael swept through the air as its owner kicked the Apostle’s pistol from his hands. As Michael and the Apostle spun around to see who had joined the fight, the girl jumped between the two and tackled the Apostle to the ground. They tussled as they both struggled to gain the upper hand.

Michael panted for air while his eyes began to see straight. He lifted his head from the ground just enough to verify his savior’s identity.

Mere inches from Michael’s boots, Kim Yoon-ah had hooked her arm across the Apostle’s neck and wrestled him to the ground. Chasing Michael earlier had drained the Apostle’s stamina, giving Yoona a substantial advantage in the brawl. Despite this, Michael didn’t think Yoona could hold out much longer. Fatigue would set in soon, and the scarf around her neck was loosening. One of its ends was being crushed under the Apostle’s back and getting pulled loose from its knot.

An idea Michael didn’t have time to think through popped into his head. He lurched over to Yoona and the Apostle on all fours, snatching the loose end of her scarf. Then, he tossed it around the Apostle’s neck and tugged it across his throat. As the Apostle let go of Yoona, she took Michael’s hint and undid her scarf from her body. They pulled it across the Apostle’s chin together, stomping onto his shoulders for leverage.

The Apostle roared in pain. He attempted to pull the scarf off his chin and push their legs off his body. Still high on adrenaline, Michael drove both feet into the Apostle’s shoulder in a last-ditch effort to finish him off.

Snap.

The sound didn’t come from the scarf.

The Apostle’s arm continued to flail above his head until it finally eased to a stop. The same went for his fingers around the scarf. His grip on the cloth loosened until his hand slipped and dropped onto the pavement.

Michael coughed and tilted his head to check on Yoona. Other than a few scratches on her face, she seemed relatively unscathed. On the outside, anyway. Who knew what else she had been through before their second meeting?

Yoona wheezed into the crook of her arm and kept her gaze up. “Found you,” she said to him.

Michael let his head drop, wincing as his skull scratched the stone-studded ground. He lay next to Yoona, both teenagers panting for air as reality set in and crushed their souls to dust.

If you died in the game, you died in real life.