Changing World Draft 1, CH 4 (Patreon)

Richard enjoyed the weight of Jackson on his crotch, of holding the man there as they panted, spent. This session of sex hadn’t been planned. Richard I’d left Jackson on the bed to sit on the porch and enjoy the rising sun, as he did every morning. Then, with the sun was above the tree line, Jackson had joined him, straddled him, gotten him hard, and proceeded to bring them both to climax over the next couple of hours.

Jackson grinned like he tended to do after he initiated the sex. Richard suspected his handler felt like he’d put one over on him by it. Like he was maintaining control of the killer by deciding, this time, when they had sex, and how long it lasted. As if Richard didn’t enjoy it regardless of how it happened. For a psychologist, Jackson was sometimes quite clueless.

“Did I bore you?” Jackson asked.

“Not today.”

“I guess that means I get to live.”

Richard chuckled. “Of course you do. The day you bore me, you won’t have the chance to ask the question.”

Jackson stood and stretched. “God, I’m grimy.”

Richard nodded to the side of the cabin. “You know where the shower is.” He had an outdoor setup.

Jackson headed inside and returned with his gun harness over his shoulder, gun in hand, checking the chamber, before taking the magazine out and looking through the window in the side.

Richard laughed. “Really? After all this time, you still don’t trust me? Or yourself? You wake up anytime I get out of bed to take a piss.”

“And each time, you might have come up with a way to slip past and get to my gun.”

Richard rolled his eyes. “What do I have to gain by tampering with your gun?” he motioned around them at the empty clearing, the tree line. “It’s not like I have a horde of followers waiting for a signal to attack.”

Satisfied Jackson put the magazine back in the gun and holstered it. “That’s the problem with someone like you, Richard. I can only make guesses as to what you will and won’t do. Or why. You might decide to remove one bullet, just to see what happens. If you’re curious about something, you attempt it without a care for the consequences to me.” He stepped toward the corner.

“The perks of lacking empathy,” Richard stated, watching the ass move away. Once it was around the corner he stood and followed.

Jackson stood under the plastic shower head, pumping the water from the rain barrel with the foot pedal. His harness was on a hook in front of him. To reach it Richard would have to step around the man. He didn’t need the gun if he decided to dispose of his handler, but waiting for him to grow lax was part of his list of criteria for Jackson becoming boring.

“Don’t join me,” Jackson said as Richard took a step toward him.

“I could wash your back.”

“You could get your hands on my gun.”

“I thought you trusted me after all these years.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Richard.”

Richard leaned against the wall while waiting for Jackson to be done, then he took his place. When he was finished and heading to the door. Jackson stepped out, dressed.

“You could stay, you know,” Richard offered.

Jackson didn’t answer immediately, looking away. The silence was longer each time Richard made the offer. He suspected his handler was falling for him, ever so slowly. The intimacy they shared every week building until, eventually, he’d control the man completely without him even realizing it.

But not today.

“I can’t. Got to get into the office, you know that. If I’m not in before ten they get bitchy.”

The office could be code, or an outright lie. “I can’t believe the firm forces you to work on a Saturday.”

Jackson smiled, the sun casting his shadow into the cabin. “It’s when I leave you. They need me to file the report on your state of mind before time blurs the edges.”

“You mean they need to know when I can’t live without you anymore?” that report could be filed over the phone, so it was possible ‘the office’ was where ever cell signal started. His cabin was in a dead zone to prevent him from getting in contact with allies he might still have in the world. The firm was nothing if not paranoid.

Jackson laughed. “You’re incapable of needing anyone, Richard. That’s something I established that first time we—”

The flash of light over the tree line stopped him. Richard straightened, more interested in the complete silence that had fallen than the sky turning red. His clearing had few sounds that weren’t that of nature, but one that he was always aware of was the whir of the ancient fridge and freezer.

It had gone silent.

“Jackson, go start the generator. Now!” he added when the man didn’t move. With Jackson heading to the back of the cabin. Richard hurried inside. He opened the laptop. It wouldn’t come on.

Electromagnetic Pulse? As far as he knew only a nuclear explosion could cause those, and there hadn’t been a mushroom accompanying the flash. He looked at his watch on the bedside table. Also not working.

The generator started and Richard hurried to the freezer, knowing it still wasn’t working since it remained silent, but opening the door anyone. The light in it remained off.

“Stay there!” Richard yelled, running to the pantry he’d turned into a storage closet. With Jackson bringing his groceries every week, there was no need to stockpile food. The inside of the cabin gained a red tint as he opened the door.

System Initiation

Richard swiped at the words but they remained, so he ignored them. He pulled the extension cord from the closet and ran to the back window, opening it and dropping one end. Next to the window the display that should give him the information on the batteries the solar panels and the generator were connected to was off.

“Plug it directly into the generator.” Richard returned to the fridge with the rest of the cord.

“Richard, I think we have more important—”

“Plug it in!” he yelled. “I’m not losing my ice cream!” He grabbed the side of the fridge as the words vanished to be replaced by a sheet with information on it and a timer rolling down from fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds. With a curse, he swiped at he sheet and it slid out of his view, leaving a small box on the right side of his vision. He’d deal with that once this emergency was dealt with.

He pulled on the fridge and it barely moved. He cursed, panting. What was the point of cutting all that wood if he couldn’t save his ice cream?

“Grab your side,” Jackson said, standing to the left of the fridge and reaching to grab the back.

“The plug?” Richard asked, doing the same on his side.

“In the generator as requested.” With a nod, they pulled the fridge out from between the counter. When Richard could slip behind he unplugged it and plugged it into the extension. The compressor on the old fridge started, stuttered, and kicked in. Richard rested against the counter, panting.

“What the fuck is going on?” Jackson said, hand swiping before him.

Richard turned and ‘touched’ the square on the right side of his vision. His finger felt something, even if it went through it, like tissue paper that didn’t break. The sheet expanded before him.

Name: Richard Benoit O’Keeffe
Race: Human
Class: Assassin
Level: 1

Attributes
Strength 11
Dexterity 12
Endurance 9
Intelligence 12
Aether 10
Charisma 11
Health 9

Debuff: Old

Hit Point: 90
Mana: 100
Lift: 110 Kilo
Stamina: 90

Abilities
Unselected

Skills
Firearm Level 2
Stealth level 5
Knife level 4
Manipulation Level 5

Spells
None

“Interesting,” Richard whispered to himself.

“Do you know what this is?” Jackson asked, an edge of hysteria in his tone.

“It looks like a character sheet for who we are.” Richard looked at his handler. The sheet became translucent as he shifted his focus. “Does yours represent you?”

Jackson seemed to look at what was there for the first time. “I guess? But how is that there? Floating. It’s like we’re in VR or something?”

Virtual reality? Richard supposed that was a possibility. “Would the firm put you in one without you knowing? The point would be to observe me and evaluate, so you’d need to know what is going on.”

Jackson swallowed. “Maybe me acting like I don’t know what they’re doing is part of the test.”

“You’re a good actor, Jackson, but you aren’t that good. Right now you look like someone who’s just realizing the company he works for has no problem considering him expendable.”

“You seem fucking at ease with whatever this is?” the man snapped.

Richard smiled. “I’ve known I was expandable from the moment the firm caught me after my third kill and offered for me to work for them, or go to prison for the murders I committed. Why do you think I worked so hard to escape and remain unnoticed for almost twenty years?”

“This isn’t the firm!”

“How do you know”

“We don’t have that kind of technology. You’ve seen what VR looks like on Youtube. This level of realism is decades away.”

Richard nodded. While he couldn’t interact with people live, the firm had let him access just about everything online though a hard line running to somewhere outside the jamming bubble, but not MMOs, unfortunately. Richard had to content with offline games when it came to killing virtual people. The kind of delays needed to monitor whatever conversation he’d have on an MMO would render it unplayable anyway.

“Then it’s someone else.”

“That’s impossible, Richard. This place is supervised, we aren’t just making sure you couldn’t leave, we made damned sure no one could reach you either. Do you have any idea the extent some government would go to, to capture you, and pick your brains? If not just torture you as punishment for their people you killed?”

Richard didn’t think any government cared who he’d killed. They’d be more interested in who gave him his orders, so interrogation was the more likely scenario. And he couldn’t imagine any individuals having the resources needed to pull this off.

“If it isn’t the firm, it’s someone else. So you need to set your hurt feelings that you’ve been captured and put into this and go along.” He glanced at the timer. “We have just over fifty minutes to complete this sheet.”

“You can’t seriously be thinking of doing this.”

“Jackson, whatever this is, I don’t want to find out what will happen if we don’t play along. Feel free to ignore it if you want. I intend to play and win.” He sat on the counter and focused on the sheet, which turned opaque. Jackson grumbled and stepped away. First, he needed to know how things worked.

He tapped his name, and it highlighted. He tapped his middle name and it became the only highlighted thing. Without a keyboard to make changes he thought ‘delete’ and it vanished. He didn’t need a middle name in a game.

He considered the rest. Should he change it? If he had been captured and placed in some science fiction level virtual reality, they knew who he was. If this was real, did it matter? He decided it didn’t and kept his name.

He tapped ‘Human’ and got a list of races, which he dismissed. Tapping assassin gave him a list, which he scrolled through until he came across ‘apiarist’, then ‘cook’. If the list included every possible job in the world, and not only those usually available in games, Richard would lose himself in trying to find the most efficient one. Forty-eight minutes and change was not enough time. He dismissed that list too. Being an assassin was plenty for him.

He didn’t like his stats, but the Old debuff needed to be addressed first.

Old: You are old. In spite of all the effort you have put in remaining physically in shape, your body has deteriorated. Strength is reduced by 3, Endurance by 2, Health by 2, Intelligence, by 1.

So is strength had been fourteen. Health and endurance eleven. He supposed that had been true enough. He’d always counted on his strength and accuracy for his kills and didn’t engage in protracted combat when he could avoid it. That he’d lost a point of intelligence bothered him more than the physical deterioration. If his mind was going. How long could he continue to outwit Jackson?

Tapping it again didn’t bring up an options menu or a list of alternate debuffs. This was something he couldn’t change at this stage. Hopefully, something in this game would let him counteract the debuff at some point.

He went back to the stats and tapped ‘strength’. As he’d hoped it brought up information on it.

Strength: this is the attribute representing your physical prowess. How much damage you can do with your fist, your feet, or any weapons depend on your physical strength, how you can lift, how much you can carry. Your maximum lift is ten times your strength. Your personal inventory space increases for every five full points of strength. Your base damage is your strength.

With his ninety hit-points, he’d have to strike himself nine times to bring that to zero. Richard hoped there would be ways to increase that, otherwise he’d have to abandon the close kill entirely.

Dexterity: This is the attribute representing your aptitude for precision. How accurate your throws are, how precise your strikes, how good is your aim. In conjunction with health, it governs how fast you can run. In conjunction with your intelligence, it governs how good you are at precision work.

At least his dexterity hadn’t been affected by his age, yet. The implication was that he could still plant a knife in a man’s heart, which should be an instant kill if this game didn’t cheat.

Endurance: this is the attribute indicating how tough you are. How much pain can you endure? How much damage can you take? How quickly do you regain your breath? Your endurance subtracts from any blunt damage your take and reduces the sensation of pain by a percentage equal to it. You regain your endurance in stamina per minute of rest, modified by how complete that rest is.

So in a hand to hand fight, he could expect to last against an opponent equal to him, that was good. The indication it was against blunt damage implied it wouldn’t work against cuts of stabs. Pain was also something he’d have to deal with. He had experience, but either there wasn’t a skill, or it hadn’t translated.

“How many skills do you have?” he asked without looking at Jackson.

“Four.”

So it was possible there was a limited of slots for the start. He’d see if they could be changed when he got to them.

Intelligence: this is the attribute showing how bright you are. How quickly can you resolve a puzzle, find a clue, notice a detail? It governs a multitude of intellectual skills and abilities.

There was little there, other than the implication there were other skills.

Aether: this is the attribute indicating your connection to the aether, the force that connects everything an everyone, the power that binds what you call the laws of physics. The attribute governs how much mana you have to power your magic.

Magic? Those spells he didn’t have, yet.

Charisma: This is the attribute that indicates how adept you are at social interaction. It governs how well you can get others to do what you want through cajoling or intimidation. How well you can defuse a conflict, of bed the person you are interested in.

Richard chuckled. This felt targeted at him. Was there someone in control injecting their commentary? His manipulation skill implied the charisma could be added to, which made sense. Richard didn’t consider himself someone who drew others to him unless he made an effort.

Health: this is the attribute that indicates how easy or not you are to kill. It’s that simple. You might not die when your hit-points drop to zero, but the further below that you go the more difficult it will be to keep you alive. You regain your health in hit-points every hour.

Armor. He was going to have to ensure he wore armor and kept a packed first aid kit on hand at all times. Hopefully, he’d be able to acquire health potions along the way.

Hit points, Lift, mana and stamina were self-explanatory

Abilities

Chose an ability
Vanish (Shadow killer, level 1)
Poison (Poisoner, Level 1)
Long sight (Gunman level 1)

Vanish: you have the ability to simply vanish out of people’s sight. All it takes is a distraction and you’ve moved out of sight. Stealth increases twice as fast. This ability is countered by perception and perception-based abilities. Cool down, ten minutes.

Poison: you can turn anything into a poison, be it the blood on your blade, a glass of water. You can coat any one object you can hold in one hand with poison that will do ten points of damage plus ten per level for 10 seconds plus one per level, or turn 250 milliliters of liquid into a poison able to inflict a hundred point of damage to one person if ingested. Each level increases the damage the liquid does, adding an extra 100 point. Cool Down 10 minutes.

Long sight: You like to do your killing at a distance. Each level doubles the effective range of the ranged weapons as well as allows you to see the target as if they were at the maximum normal range.

He dismissed Long Sight. Sniping was a worthwhile way to kill, but even at his age, Richard preferred his kills up close and personal. That left poison and Vanish. Poisons had their use, but the ability seemed designed to be better against multiple people rather than one. Richard had no more problems killing a hundred people at once, rather than one, but there was a neatness to killing only the target that always appealed to him. And he had always enjoyed being about to walk about unnoticed.

He picked Vanish.

He tapped firearm

Firearm: load, point, and pull the trigger. It’s that easy, isn’t it?

Richard narrowed his eyes. That read very much like sarcasm. He didn’t get a list to pick from. So whatever this system was, it had decided those were his skills. He considered them and decided they would do to start. He’d have to figure out how to gain more once this game began.

Do you wish to accept the changes made to Richard O’Keeffe? Yes/No?

He tapped yes.

He glanced at the timer. Thirteen minutes left.

He looked at Jackson, who was still swiping and scrolling.

Thirteen minutes for his used to be handler to finish, and then Richard would test which of the two had the best build.