As Long as It Isn't Me
"Hey, is it really okay coming this deep?"
"Brat, worrying's a luxury. Don't you know every convict they dump in this sector comes looking for this place? Even grabbing a handful of random electronics or research gear here pays decent."
"First time here, so how would I know?"
"Then file it away right now. Compared to the other sectors, this place is straight-up honey. Honey."
"This gloomy dump is honey...?"
One of the convicts felt a flicker of doubt at the words of the partner leading the way. The fact that they were whispering at all, the fact that they had entered as a two-man team when four was the usual standard — wasn't all of that because they couldn't afford to stir the "something" sleeping inside this facility?
Which meant the risk wasn't small. Was "honey" really the right word?
Even so, he kept his eyes on his partner's back and followed. One way or another, they had already pushed as deep as any other team. The closer you stayed to the facility's only entrance, the more thoroughly the early birds stripped it and bailed. Latecomers who wanted to recoup even their stake had no choice but to press deeper still.
And any team arriving later than them would have to go deeper than they had — maybe all the way into the innermost heart of the Central Research Facility, a place even seasoned veteran convicts preferred not to enter.
"This ought to be worth something."
What his partner pulled from a ransacked cabinet was an electronic device not unlike a tablet. The battery was long dead — pressing the power button did nothing — but finished products like that usually fetched a decent price at the valuation screening.
"You dig through those drawers. This looks like an office. There's bound to be a piece of electronics or an intel file or two worth taking."
"Can't we just haul the whole computer?"
"Desktops and laptops are a bust more often than you'd think. You bust your ass lugging them out and it's wasted effort. Run them through valuation and most of the time the internal circuits are completely fried or the storage is wrecked, so they pay you scrap."
"The people who used to work here... they were people, right? Anyway, looks like those folks were thorough about their data-wipe protocols."
"Sure looks like something went wrong. Might even have something to do with the 'things' sleeping in this facility..."
And right then, the vision of the two men rummaging through the office like petty thieves was suddenly drowned in bright light. Power had begun flooding a facility that had been wrapped in complete silence and darkness, without so much as a single emergency light burning.
"Wh-what the hell?!"
"Ugh! Why are the lights coming on all of a sudden?!"
The strangeness did not stop there. The unidentified fog that had been pooling up to their knees was suddenly being swept clean by the facility's ventilation system. The enormous noise and vibration that came with it, and the abrupt shift in airflow, were thrown in for free.
"......"
"......"
...Thud.
They could hear it.
...Thud. ...Thud.
...Thud. Thud. Thud!
Louder. Faster. Closer.
From the direction of the Central Research Facility's innermost depths — a place they had been certain they would never have to go — came a noise that could not be ignored.
"...No way."
Abandoning the cabinet mid-search, his partner bolted out of the office and scanned left and right down a corridor now blazing with light.
KRAAAANG!
In a single instant the ceiling panels caved in, and severed wiring and shattered light fixtures spilled down like a man's guts. What squeezed through that gap, riding a cloud of dust in place of the fog that was no longer there, was — of course — not human.
It was the existence known to every convict farming this facility as the unspoken rule: the thing you must never, ever wake.
"Fuck!"
He swung his spike-studded club in a hurry, but he was a step too late. The thing that had dropped from the ceiling lunged and tore into the nape of his neck. Then it buried its face in the wound and greedily sucked down flesh and blood.
"Grlk, grrrlk...!"
The convict who had followed late out of the office stood before the atrocity and had a choice to make. He could pour everything into running while the ravenous monster took its time savoring his partner, or he could take the utility knife in his hand and try to take the thing's head off in one stroke.
In truth, the choice barely mattered. More of the creatures were already shouldering their way through the collapsed ceiling, one after another.
I knew we shouldn't have come this deep...!
CRUNCH!
Faster than regret of the mind, faster than despair of the heart, came the pain of the flesh.
"You messed with the facility's power system in that short a time?"
If every living thing inside this facility is going to feel the noise and vibration and begin to move regardless, I judged it preferable to intervene so that Prisoner might find the way more easily.
"Not bad! Not bad, but... this makes it look like I'm trolling on purpose!"
I had planned to farm a reasonable amount and slip out quietly — that plan had already been toast the moment I woke "that thing" — but I never expected it to blow up this big.
It had never been my intention, but if there were other convicts dropped into the same Dark Zone as me, I had just wrecked their entire farming run. Granted, I had been chasing the lofty goals of acquiring high-value assets, eliminating the source of the contaminating fog, and, beyond that, seizing the facility's control system. Having blown things this wide open, though, I couldn't claim I had no responsibility at all.
The only people they dropped into the Dark Zone were convicts like me, so the guilt wasn't exactly crushing — but I do have a conscience.
"Oh. Something tasty."
...Did the word conscience even exist in my vocabulary? Seemed like I was just stuffed to the gills with greed.
Anyway. The electronics and suspicious vials I was stuffing into my pack as I passed were a trivial matter. What mattered more was a safe escape.
KRAAAANG!
From the harmony of walls and fixtures bursting apart behind me yet again, I was starting to feel something like fondness. Bracing myself to drain the exo-suit's battery dry, I threw my body forward with everything I had. True to the strength-augmentation built into it, the suit stretched me out like an athlete, driving me on in long, devouring strides.
This, right here, was the fundamental difference between implanted cybernetics and mounted gear. Implanted cybernetics connected directly to the human body, so the circuits were extremely sensitive and overloaded at the drop of a hat. Mounted gear, on the other hand, you could hammer as hard as you wanted — so long as you could live with the battery drain and the wear on the parts.
This is Lee Sena's work. No way it craps out over something this small.
I trusted her craftsmanship and creativity, which didn't take a back seat even to Ted Chan's cutting-edge tech. I trusted the artisan's spirit she had poured in, staying up night after night for a week, crafting it stitch by stitch!
Exo-suit battery has fallen to 30%.
"Don't give me that shit! I haven't even been using it properly for an hour!"
Nevertheless, it is a fact. Should you wish to dispute this, please formally publish a paper in the ■■■ Corporation archives.
"Argh!"
I was the moron for trusting a human being who slaps the name Cutie on gear she built herself. Next time I was just going to Borscht and buying standard-issue equipment.
Multiple life signs approaching. Advance 65 meters, then take the right fork.
"Is that the fastest route?"
The life signs approaching that location are the fewest.
Right. I never trusted you from the start.
Paying no mind to the violent destruction roaring at my back, I reversed my grip on the jungle machete. Sixty-five meters forward, I took the corner — and what filled my vision were three Primordials that had smashed through a vent and crawled up from underground.
The instant they registered me, they poured out the same kind of bizarre shriek elementary-school boys were so fond of. They had identified me immediately in a Wave, so the aggro snapped on without a single second of delay. Their frames were genuinely elementary-school sized. Slap a backpack on them and you'd have had a hard time telling them apart.
Goblins that have just woken from hibernation have a consistent opening attack pattern.
First they register the enemy. If the enemy is within five meters, they frog-leap and latch on. Then they either tear into a nape unprotected by a gas mask, or claw the gas mask itself to pieces.
As expected, the closest one was already going for a "Hug Me."
"Get lost."
I swept the reverse-gripped jungle machete horizontally, and its small, thin neck came clean off the torso. Trash-mob Primordials of this type mostly became a one-hit cut if you wrecked the head, so clearing volume wasn't hard. When you were being hunted like this, it was just worse than not bothering.
KYEEEK!
Once numbers two and three confirmed that the first free-hug applicant's head had come off clean, they abruptly yawned their huge maws wide.
This was the second pattern.
Like a Screamer, they shot out a single long, sharp-tipped tentacle at tremendous speed. It was an attack they used when the distance to the target was either somewhat open, or, conversely, far too close. The sharp stinger at the tentacle's tip carried a neurotoxin; take a hit and temporary muscle paralysis would slow your movement speed.
That was exactly why I had never wanted to wake these things.
The second they all come to, they always start hitting the line like this!
SHNK!
I slashed through the tentacle lashing toward me and caught the other one in my hand, yanking hard. Goblins were small and not that strong; with an adult man's power, you could seize the advantage this easily.
KREEEEEK?!
The one that had been dragged to me by its own tentacle died with the machete's hilt driven into the crown of its skull. True to creatures you could kill with your eyes closed so long as they didn't swarm you, their physical durability was pathetic too.
I didn't stop there. I lunged forward and kicked the remaining one as hard as I could — the one stunned from having its tentacle severed.
WHAM!
"Ah, for fuck's sake!"
A creeping dread I couldn't even wait out made me duck on reflex, and debris flung from behind grazed just over my head. I finally got the thing that had thrown it into my field of view, and clicked my tongue.
One phrase was enough to describe that thing.
The Newbie Cutter. EFD's first Wall of Lament — the line that separated newbies from veteran players.
Big Bob.
Musculature that didn't lose to a Growler's, and a frame a full size larger.
The real thing is way more disgusting than what I saw in the game.
Almost every part of its body below the neck was sheathed in repulsive green spore masses, and every time a sac large or small burst, it scattered sticky fluid and fog. And it didn't even die if you blew its head off. You either had to pop every last spore mass covering its body, or just blow away about half the torso with overwhelming firepower.
Newbies who didn't know that charged in blindly trying to smash the head first and got wiped, over and over — so of course it earned the glorious title of Newbie Cutter.
By a truly remarkable coincidence, I was a newbie myself right now.
And one more thing. It, too, sacrificed a spore mass to spit out a tentacle.
"Shit!"
A tentacle so thick and burly it didn't even compare to the Goblins rolling around on the floor grazed past my shoulder. I was going to need about fifty rounds of soap on this shoulder today.
Will you continue farming even at the cost of that risk?
Or will you escape as you are?
"Obviously......!"
I turned and ran again, and even so I couldn't readily answer Crazy Clock's shameless question.
Prisoners entered the Dark Zone to live and die by money. And to someday escape a prison you could never escape. And last, to see the ending of EFD I had never managed to see even after investing ten years.
Of course, those were my own extremely personal circumstances — but the other convicts wouldn't be all that different. They, too, had thrown themselves into the Dark Zone with their lives on the line, each for their own reasons.
In that case, it was only right that we all shoulder this heavy burden together. Of course it was.
Now I see why communism failed.
For that reason, today — that thing, or me, or some poor convict unlucky enough to get swept up in this — one of the three was definitely getting fucked.
As long as it isn't me!
Today I was going to trade one second of staying alive for one second of item farming, at a golden ratio so inspired it might as well have been divine.