Chapter 017

  Patty Melt Conspiracy

  Ethan sat in the restaurant with Jason eating greasy patty melts. The food was amazing and the conversation even better.

  The guy said he'd had good conversations with five other players since starting, two of them he didn't care for. He named the five players, but Ethan didn't recognize any of them.

  He sheepishly admitted to Jason he hadn't socialized that much, preferring to stick more to himself.

  "I get it," Jason said, taking a sip of coffee. "I've always been an extrovert, though. I love talking to people. What you gotta remember is we can help each other out! You know? Watch each other's backs and stuff!"

  He nodded, feeling a little guilty for being so antisocial. Truth was, Jason had just mentioned something he'd already been thinking about too much, and it was part of why he hadn't been looking for other players.

  "Problem is all the backstabbing," he explained. "Players treat this like a reality show, because there's real money and fame on the line. You watched the previous events, right? You can’t trust anyone. Even the people you really think are your friends.”

  Jason shrugged. "Kinda, but that’s just how things are. Back in New York I didn't have much time for watching streams. Dad owns a couple burger joints. Makes me work there, you know what I'm saying? Since I was like ten. If I wasn't in school that's what I was doing. No time for games and shows and stuff. It's an all-the-time thing. If the joint's not open, we're doing prep, and if we ain't doing that, we ain't making money."

  He frowned, thinking what a horrible childhood it sounded like. His parents had given him plenty of free time to enjoy games and shows and explore the neighborhood outside, but he'd also grown up in a small town.

  After high school he'd moved out and started working at Mall-Mart. It was all downhill from there. Still, he couldn't imagine having to work as a young teenager. He'd had plenty of long relaxing summers not doing anything.

  "That sucks," Ethan said after a minute.

  "Yeah, no kidding, bro!"

  Looking at Jason again, he considered their chance meetup. They were about the same age, but the other player was maybe a few years younger.

  He guessed most of the players would be younger than him, but he wasn’t that old either. It was simply the gamer demographic in general. Plenty of people older than him played games, but not very many of them made it into the NexaTechNeuro live events.

  Out of curiosity, he asked, "How old are you?"

  "Me?" the guy asked, "I'm twenty two, and if I never gotta make another burger in my whole life, I'm in heaven. That's why I bought fifty tickets, bro. I guess I got lucky. What about you?"

  Ethan shook his head and laughed. They were twenty dollars each, so with some quick math he knew Jason had dropped five hundred on the lottery. If asked before hand he would have said that was stupid, but luck had obviously been on Jason's side.

  "Bought one ticket on the way home from work one night, almost forgot about it until a few days before the deadline."

  "What!?" Jason blurted. "That's insane! What are the odds of that?"

  "About the same as your odds, actually."

  The guy gave him a disbelieving scowl. "No way!

  Ethan didn't feel like getting into a conversation about the statistical probabilities of winning a raffle with billions of participants. Especially when most of those people had bought multiple tickets, just like Jason.

  They had all got in by random chance, leaving out the possibility of a few exceptions. Rumors of manipulation and inside placements had become normal, but nothing substantiated. Everyone in the game had won their place to compete, and they all had financial incentive to be there.

  "The point is," Ethan said returning to the topic he'd started, "all these players have one goal in mind."

  Jason answered him, already understanding. "Hitting all the best metrics to get the biggest payout!"

  He nodded, "Well… That, too! Also, knocking other players out of the game. You know the last three events have been ninety days, so that's how long we have in the first round most likely."

  "I heard that mentioned, actually. Is there a countdown somewhere in the screens?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Jason nodded. “There's probably a stupid talent for that, meant to distract point investments away from the good ones.”

  “Agreed."

  The same game designers had built systems like that in previous events. It convinced players to dump their points into unnecessary skills. He wondered if it was the same this time around, and decided it was like that without having anything to confirm it.

  Knowing how much time was left until the first break at ninety days wasn't completely useless, but it didn't seem that important right at the start. They still had eighty eight days to go.

  “But what you said is valid," Jason considered. "It’s going to get ugly real quick once we’re all fighting for our lives. I already feel nervous as hell out there."

  "And I don’t know about you, Ethan added, “but I feel like I got off to a slow start. I don't usually play with a speed-running min-max attitude, but we both know it's just the way things are going to be."

  “True…”

  Ethan nodded again, relieved that Jason had a good understanding of the previous games, despite saying otherwise. All the other players were going to be trying to kill each other and move up the ranks in their own respective organizations.

  It was just a natural element of human behavior and the game designers knew it. Real world fame and money cranked that behavior up a few notches. Players would naturally gravitate towards playing in overly cautious or aggressive styles.

  Jason agreed. "What are you usually into, strategies and sandboxes?"

  "Yes, actually."

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  The guy laughed. "Makes sense. I don't even usually play games that much, too busy and all, but when I do it's brawlers, fighters, and Creed of the Assassinators type games. I love sneaking around in shadows so much, bro! I've been having a blast, except that I'm having to watch my back every five seconds now that I'm level three."

  "Oh, right," Ethan said, pulling up his friend's profile screen for a second. Nothing had changed since he looked earlier. "What talent options did you get? Oh, and did you get a fighting talent?"

  Jason nodded. "I got Scrappy."

  He thought about the name and it didn't immediately scream the obvious to him. "Is that just brawling or punching or something?"

  "Nah. It's more like improvised weapon or unorthodox weapon or something like that from other games. I can use almost anything as a weapon." The player held up his drink. "Like this coffee cup or Emma's cleaning rag. I guess the system generates stats based on my level and how many points I have in the talent."

  "So you can see the stats on that coffee cup?" Ethan asked. He tried to identify it and got a prompt reminding him he couldn't use it to inflict damage upon NPCs or players.

  "Yeah, bro, but don't get too excited. It's still not like a full stat block or something. It's more like a rating system. Everything I've tried looking at just tells me the grade is Poor. I think it has more to do with my one point in the talent than with the actual item."

  Ethan tried making sense of it. "So there's no numbers? Like it doesn't say it does ten damage or something?"

  "Nope. Just gives me a name, a short description, and then it says Poor grade. I'm pretty sure this game won't show us all the raw numbers. Well, except for the experience points I guess. There's an asterisk thing on the Scrappy talent description that basically says I get better with each point."

  He accepted the information, not really sure how to feel about it. In a way, it made sense. Not knowing how much health someone had was realistic. And knowing exactly how much damage each hit or attack could inflict on someone felt more realistic as well.

  Maybe there was a talent for that.

  But Ethan couldn't help feel a little let down by the psychological aspect of it all. It was a video game. Getting bigger, more badass weapons, and seeing numbers go up always felt great.

  In a game like this he could see where it might feel silly to have bullets that caused more or less damage based on some player stats unrelated to the bullets themselves. But it just wasn’t as cool.

  "What talents did you turn down?"

  "Pockets and Driving at level three. I saw Occult, Nocturnal, and History at the other levels. Some choices are easy and some not so much. You know what I mean, buddy?"

  He'd already made a couple of tough talent choices himself like also turning down Occult and Driving. "Yeah. What does Pockets do? More inventory space?"

  "Yep. Two extra slots with each point investment. Really wanted it, but had to pick Scrappy so I could fight. I see knives and guns and baseball bats everywhere, and I can use them, but I'm guessing I'd do more damage with this coffee cup because of the silly talent.”

  He laughed, thinking about the rogue player killing people with a little ceramic mug.

  Emma chimed in. “I heard that! Don’t be taking my coffee cups now, darling! I need those! To serve coffee in!”

  They both snapped their heads towards the owner. She was still smiling, but it was clear she meant business.

  Jason set the cup down and gulped. “Yes, ma’am.”

  He smirked at his friend’s reaction, but he knew he would have done the same. Emma deserved respect. It was cooked into her role as a helpful NPC.

  “How about Nocturnal?” Ethan asked, “does that include dark vision by any chance?”

  “Oh, yeah. For sure. I wanted it, but instead I put an extra point into my Stealth.”

  He nodded, contemplating the other talents that were possible. Knowing about them early on would prove beneficial once it came time to pick one later on.

  They talked for a little while longer, covering all manner of topics from talents to money. Of course, Jason did most of the talking, but Ethan was okay with that.

  He learned from the guy that missions generally didn’t provide much money, at least for low levels. Apparently Samuel had been quite generous with the fat stack of cash he’d handed out, because Jason only had seven dollars to his name and hadn’t spent much, but he’d finished several more missions than Ethan had.

  It made him question why the detective had paid him so much money. Then again, passing along the information that The Bleeker Building was a trap intended to deal a heavy blow to the entire gang might just be the answer. Samuel must have been very pleased with the intel, even if he hadn't loudly vocalized it.

  Ethan didn’t mention the big payout to Jason. Not because he was purposely hiding anything or because he didn’t think he could trust the guy, but because it didn’t matter.

  They also discussed their immediate goals. Ethan was eager to learn more about vampires while Jason simply said he was looking forward to level five.

  “What happens at five?”

  The other player shrugged. “Don’t know, really. Just seems like a good goal. Maybe we can start hunting vampires.”

  Ethan nodded. “Maybe. Five might be a good time to go visit Ms. Harmon again, too.”

  “The old lady?” Jason laughed. “You got a thing for her?”

  He shook his head, grinning. “Remember she said to come back when we were higher level and she might point us towards some old timers.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. Wouldn’t hurt to have some masters show us the way or something.”

  Ethan nodded again. “Probably a good idea. So what are you doing tomorrow? Want to make this a regular thing for a while? We meet up here for lunch or supper each day and talk about what we learned."

  “Yeah, bro, I like that. For right now… I need to finish this mission for Samuel, then I might do whatever he has next for me. Other than that, I'm all for it. This game is going to get depressing real quick, so I want to get my stuff done and go home before it gets dark."

  Ethan joked. "I thought you liked the shadows."

  "Not when you can see what's in them!" Jason said.

  He couldn't tell if the player was being serious or not, which made him believe it was at least partially true. In any case he figured he would find out himself soon enough.

  "Alright, then," Ethan held out his hand. "We have a gentleman's agreement to share information and not fight each other. What do you say?"

  Jason did a horrible performance of pretending to cry. "Awww, bro… you finally trust me?"

  He laughed. "I do. And I know it’s a gamble, but you are a risk I'm willing to go all in with. I assume you're in? We work together to stay alive when we need each other?"

  Jason looked at his hand, then back to his face. The guy didn't think about it for long before shaking. Ethan didn't see any signs of deception, and everything Jason had done and said since he'd met the guy indicated he wouldn't turn on him.

  "Deal," the other player said. "But I do need to clear the air a little bit."

  This piqued Ethan's interest. "Oh, yeah?"

  "Yeah, bro. I've been keeping something from you. If we're gonna work together and all, it wouldn't be right of me to keep secrets. So let me tell you something I didn't before. Okay. You know how I said before that I barely escaped from a warehouse basement full of vampires?"

  Ethan nodded, vaguely remembering the story Jason had told him outside Ms. Harmon's place.

  "Well, that might have been slightly exaggerated for dramatic effect. You see. In the mission I had to be in the basement, and when I was there I saw two vampires. Not a bunch of them. And I only saw them for like one second. I noped the hell out of there before anything bad could happen and then I invented the part about there being tons of vampires and how awesome and courageous I was standing there like I wasn't scared or something."

  "Okay," Ethan answered, probably a bit too quickly.

  The other guy looked confused. "That's it?"

  "Yeah."

  "And you're not mad at me?"

  "Why would I be mad about that? We all exaggerate things sometimes. You told me yourself before, you like to talk, and I already figured that telling exciting stories was part of that. It's cool. It was part of the reason why it took me a bit to trust you. But I do. You're cool… Bro."

  Jason laughed.

  "Now…" he said, changing his tone so he sounded a bit more serious. "I have something to tell you, and this is one of those things you can't just run around blabbering about because it actually matters if we both want to stay out of trouble."

  "Okay."

  “Well…"

  “Spit it out, bro!”

  Ethan smiled, letting the tension draw out for a few more seconds.

  "Well... I have two immediate goals I think I'm going to work towards, and I'm telling you because it might take both of us. Maybe even more people. But I need people I can trust."

  "Yeah, bro! Anything." Jason answered quickly, "look, I'm grateful you convinced me to join The Greenies. I'm getting some good experience right now, so I feel like I owe you! Plus, you're a good listener!"

  He smirked. "Short term, I want to get to level five and try to convince Ms. Harmon to point me towards somebody with actual knowledge of the system."

  "Yeah, yeah. That sounds good. And what's the other goal?"

  Ethan paused, still deciding whether he should tell the guy or not. Ultimately, he figured it didn't matter. It shouldn't trigger Langen's Honor unless or until he actually does something to trigger it.

  "I don't want to just kill vampires," he said, "when the time is right, I want to own this district, and that means wiping out all the other gangs."

  Jason's eyes grew wide. "Bro… you're insane… but I like the way you think."

  They talked for a little while longer, and he reminded his new friend not to tell anyone. That particular plan would be a while in the making, and he only told him because he knew he wouldn't be able to pull it off alone.