As I wake up I feel something over me, and as I open my eyes I see Jane with her arm over my stomach and her face on my shoulder, drooling.
Really Jane? As I sigh I carefully get up unwrapping her arm from around me and sitting up. As soon as I stand up I feel a sharp pain in my neck. Fuck I slept on my neck the wrong way.
I carefully position my jaw to the right getting ready to pop my neck. Okay now push. ‘CRACK’ fuck!! oww. I look around to see if Jane woke up from the noise, and thankfully she didn’t.
Why was it so loud, fuck. Oh. Wait I forgot. Lucy probably never popped her neck…
With a shaky breath I walk to the bathroom, splash water on my face and look into the mirror and I see a smile on an unfamiliar face. Just smile. Just… keep smiling.
As I walk away from the bathroom I walk to the kitchen and look in the fridge to see… nothing. “dang” Well guess I have to get something to eat somewhere. What about that cookie place? No. I can go later, cookies are more of a snack. Alright then. Lets go out and hopefully find something.
As I put on David’s boots again I grab my gun from my room and walk to the couch to see Jane sleeping. “uh… Jane. Jane… come on wake up”
"mhmm…five more minutes”
Alright then. Well time to find some food. As I walk out of the apartment I take the stairs. Its more progress towards my xp and less chance to be stuck in an elevator.
"okay now what to eat” I look around the street packed with people and food stalls. Lets just go to a random stall and hope they have something good. As I walk up to a stall I see an old man behind the stall.
"what can I get you?”
"uhh… whatever you think is best”
“number 2 coming up!”
alright, cant wait for a ‘number two’. as I walk to stand next to the street I hear
“number two is up!!”
I look around to see the old man looking at me. Seriously? Hes already done?
“come on! I don’t have all day!”
“I’m coming. Are you already done?”
“Here. 5 eddies”
I look down to see a skewer of green and blue meat and… vegetables?
“okay…”
After paying, I'm down to 21 eddies. Not to bad… I think.
Walking down the street, I start eating. Just Don’t think about it, don’t think about it. As I take a bite its not to bad. Actually its pretty good, it just looks gross.
Huh? Whats that noise? and suddenly all hell broke loose as soon as a bang rang out in the street. Shit! As soon as I heard the shot I ducked behind a car. After the first bang rang out another went off until it was the only noise in the street. Some sounding louder then others and some being so loud I have to cover my ears. Fuck! what the fuck!! After a minute, everything goes quiet, completely quiet. I look over the car and see… people on the floor. Blood covering them and pooling around them…
And other men, holding a gun over some of the already dead, people. After a second of realizing they were aiming at dead people, I saw them shoot. “what the fuck”
Oh... shit. I was to loud.
As he looks at me, he aims and fires.
And its as if it was all in slow motion.
The moment he noticed me.
The moment he aimed.
The moment he fired.
And the moment I thought.
Beautiful.
What? what? I slowly look around to see, I'm standing on top of the guy and the other people with guns are on the floor and have… holes in them. No. no no. NO! I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this. I… I didn’t…
I should step off of him. Its rude to step on people.
One step at a time.
As I step off of him, I step in something wet. Don’t look, don’t look, its nothing. Just keep walking. As I walk I'm smiling. Just smile Lucy just smile. Smiling makes everything better. While walking I feel something heavy in my hand, I look down and see my gun covered in... blood.
Oh no... its dirty. And it cost almost all my money… I should clean it.
And wasn’t I eating? What happened to…
oh yeah. Keep smiling Lucy just… keep smiling.
As I enter the apartment I'm still smiling. I look at my hands and see their red… I should shower, yeah… that sounds nice. As I pass the couch I look at Jane sleeping, so peacefully. Cute. As I walk to my room and get some clothes from my drawer being careful of getting blood on the clothes, I wince a bit at a sharp pain in my side. As I walk into the bathroom I looked into the mirror… I shouldn’t have done that. Don’t lose the smile Lucy just take a shower and it will all be over. As I get in the shower I turn on the shower, making sure I don’t look down. As I wash my body, I wince when I wash
the side of my stomach, I push myself to look down and see a hole pouring blood slowly from my front going out the back…
Oh… I was shot. ow. I look away from the hole that is pouring blood and almost lose my smile but I keep it... I have too.
I close my eyes as I wash my hair making sure to keep my smile even when I feel something squishy in my hair
As I get out I see my clothes… red. I put on fresh clothes, pink pajamas, after looking under the sink and putting on bandages, pretty poorly. It has to be tight, right? I have to throw away my clothes, I don’t want David seeing them, or Jane. I pick them up, very carefully, making sure to pick them up in the little spots that are not red. And I walked to the trash outside, wincing at the pain that I somehow didn’t feel until now. Taking the elevator, I came back inside. As I enter the apartment I look down and see red footprints going from the front door, to my room, to the bathroom. “fuck” smile just smile
I walked to the bathroom and looked under the sink. Nothing, great. Maybe the kitchen? As I look under the kitchen sink, I find some cleaners… I think? They look like cleaners but just a little different, no time to think about it, I have to clean before Jane wakes up, David should be at work and I’m pretty sure he works for a long time. I grabbed the little bucket and the cleaners, with the sponge next to the bucket and for the next hour, after mixing some of the cleaners making sure to be quiet, I cleaned up after an hour of scrubbing. After I finished, the house smelled like bleach and cleaners but there was no more blood.
Exhausted I sit down on the couch not paying attention and accidentally sitting on Jane’s legs.
“ugh wh… heeeey my legs Lucy, your on them. Whoa your pale… wait why are you smiling?”
“yeah... sorry just give me a minute to… relax”
“seriously are you okay?”
“Jane just give me a minute As I sit back against the couch I think back to what happened… I killed. Really killed. I took someones life… he was young, too. About the same age as David. I didn’t even know what happened, one moment I was almost shot, the next I was on top of him. I have to get used to this… used to living in this world. As I think all of this I feel something going down my cheek and feel I'm gonna puke
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I walk to the bathroom, hoping Jane doesn’t see me crying. When I reach the bathroom, I puke, sadly not much. I still haven’t eaten anything right? I was, until… that train of thought ended with me puking nothing but the air in my lungs.
“hey Lucy are you okay?”
I hear this from the other side of the door. she doesn’t need to know what happened.
“yeah I'm… I'm okay”
“really? You don’t sound okay”
“Jane. I'm fine.”
“okay…”
after a second of calming down, I get up off the floor and wipe my face with my sleeves getting rid of the tears and the puke. And before I leave, smile Lucy, and it will all be okay. As I open the bathroom door, Jane almost falls forward but I just catch her before she fall face first onto the floor
“whoa... thanks choom, now, you good?”
“Jane, I told you I'm fine. And I’m smiling so everything will be... okay”
“smiling? Okay… but if you are never okay, come to your best choom”
“...okay”
“okay now that all that emotion stuff Is out of the way I have to ask, why does it smell like a chemical factory in here?”
damn did I use to much cleaner?
“it was dirty and… I wanted to clean up a bit”
“okay. Well I got to go. Family’s probably real mad I’ve been gone this long”
“alright… choom”
“bye”
as I watch her leave, I go to lay in my bed.
As I crawl in bed I wince at the pain shooting through my stomach.
I lay down staring at the ceiling. I need to do something to get my mind off of everything. Now. Maybe Lucy had something to do in her room.
As I painfully get up I walk to her nightstand and open it trying to look past the panther stickers.
Okay lets see what is here. As I look in I see nail polish, what I think are weird sim cards and a crumpled pack of smokes. Wow Lucy, you smoked? And… collected sim cards?
I didn’t even think there were phones that take sim cards here. Even the phone Jane showed me was different from any phone I’ve seen. As I look at the sim cards I instinctively touch my neck. There’s no way… right? No harm in trying. Hopefully. As I picked one of them up and put it in front of one of the holes, its sucked out of my hand before I could put it in, all the way. “whoa, What?” before I got to confused or worried, an app popped up at the bottom of all the other apps. Okay… so its a new app? As I enter the app, messages appear at the bottom left of my vision, saying its installing something called *ScriptKiddie+* I watch as the percentage goes from 0% to 100% in less then a minute. And then… nothing. What? As I open the app again, it immediately disorients me and I fall ass first on the ground. As I look up I feel like I see a white expanse. I press my hand against my stomach wincing.
*We will start learning the basics of programming}:{No_nAme}*
okay, whats happening?
When it stops talking I'm suddenly in a chair with a desk attached like the ones in high school. and there’s a blue humanoid figure next to a white board
“whats this?”
I say under my breath
*hello*
“who are you?”
*I am an AI created by ‘Quantiq Systems’. We Don’t Upgrade You. We Complete You*
the fu…
“okay… and what is Quantiq systems”
*Quantiq systems are a mega-corparation. They sell everything from cybernetics to netrunning gear. Everything anybody might need*
Okay so I'm just gonna make an educated guess, and say this thing was made by them. Wait? Netrunning? Isnt that some fucking game... light novel, thing? I'm almost 100% sure.
“wait wait. What is netrunning?”
*Netrunning: Direct neural interfacing with the global dataweb. The runner’s mind connects to the Net, navigating systems as visualized constructs*
That explained… nothing. Jack shit. As I'm getting more irritated from the pain in my side and not getting answers I hear a familiar ding.
DING
100 XP: INTELLIGENCE
Well that improved my mood. I wince as immediately after thinking that, my side hurts. Okay… so ill level by doing this? That makes sense.
“okay then. So that means you will teach me?”
*affirmative*
“alright then lets get going”
as I'm getting impatient the blue figure starts moving around and writing things on the white board.
*okay so first...*
Leo
holy shit! holy shit!! that was fucking brutal!!
I cant believe I got that camera haha!! I'm gonna be famous for releasing this fucking video!!
“hahah!”
“be quiet in there!!”
“sorry ma!”
I seriously cant believe my luck. people love this kind of brutal shit. That lady fucked them up! She wasn’t even involved until they tried shooting her. It was like a movie if movies were actually not CGI, shitty actor, garbage nowadays. First she was hiding behind the car then boom! She killed them all, even when she was shot not a reaction or anything! And that smile… it even gave me the chills, and I watch XBD’s!! she isn’t even that old maybe a teenager, that’s just preem!! oh hoo I cant wait to edit this! It will be so nice to see this again! I cant I cant… I have to edit it now. I'm too excited. This can get my name out there! I mean sure its not a xbd of getting killed, or even the one killing but that was still gruesome enough… hopefully.
Lucy
After what had to have been hours of sitting and listening, I made progress.
100 XP INTELLIGENCE
100 XP INTELLIGENCE
100 XP INTELLIGENCE
100 XP INT…
LEVEL UP: INTELLIGENCE
I was happy. I leveled up… yeah that didn’t last when only after a second of the sound ending I had the worst migraine I've ever had. It was so bad that I had to sit down to not fall on my ass, for the second time today. And the hole I had in my stomach, didn’t help.
I left the weird expanse of that place and was back in my room, sitting on the floor. Did I not leave? Fuck that was disorienting. As I look down to my stomach, should I change the bandages? I should right? Fuck!… No lucy don’t get mad just, change the bandages. As I stand to walk I'm light headed. As I walk to the bathroom I'm holding my side thanking god that somehow blood hasn’t stained my clothes yet again. As I shake my head to help my dizziness. I walk into the bathroom and stumble through the bathroom and into the sink, opening it and looking for bandages. As I'm looking, I somehow cant find the fucking bandages, but I found a little red thing.
I look in and see a… inhaler? With a mouth cup? No way... Its practically one of those things passengers use when airplanes go down for oxygen, at least it looks like that. But fuck… dying beggars aren’t choosers.
As I grab the inhaler, almost dropping It, I read the label on the very untrustworthy looking inhaler. ‘T2’. T2 huh? Okay then lets hope this can be used instead of bandages. If people can have fucking huge robotic arms, I cant say this wont help me. As I put the mouth cup on my face I squeeze and breathe in. The moment I did, everything felt fine. No pain. Nothing. Maybe a little weird but nothing besides that.
As I stand up off the floor and look in the mirror… I am pale as paper. And now… my stomach. Okay… moment of truth. As I unzip my pajamas and look in, I see bandages red from my blood wrapped around me. I don’t see blood pouring out… I also don’t feel it pouring out. I don’t feel much actually. Weird… but as long as it helps, whatever.
I look down at the T2 on the floor.
Guess I shouldn’t have judged from appearance. Feeling tired, I put the inhaler back in the sink and walk to my room feeling exhausted, and collapse on my bed.
“should I check my levels?, maybe it will make me feel better”
______________________
BODY LEVEL: 1
INTELLIGENCE: 2
REFLEX: 2
CRUEL: 1
_____________
SKILL POINTS: 2
*skills*
*handguns level 1*
*blades level 2*
*throwing level 1*
------------
*none*
______________
Alright… I was right. It Made me feel better. As I'm looking over everything I see a point in a level I didn’t do. Cruel? I don’t remember leveling it though. That’s when I thought back to earlier today… oh yeah, okay maybe lets not bring this up for a bit. As I close my eyes I still see it. Ugh stupid. I close out of the app the normal way and rest my head on some of the pillows. As I lay down fully, I do my best not to think about what happened and to just sleep. After a few minutes I finally fell asleep.
