Now your body must remember, in some unspoken way, because as soon as the door slams shut you get up, leave your suit still dripping in the gray dressing room, right next to the rest of your kit, and you move without thinking: back out into the corridor, up the flights of stairs, back to the square with the fake olive trees—through to the place where they’d given you drugs, by muscle memory to the little egress door and out again, where the smell of the sea strikes you with such force that you nearly tear up. You do not stop. You keep going.
There is another door at the end of this, and past that a short hallway into an access hatch topped with a blinking green light, which chirps once at your approach—you push through without resistance, and then there is the city, and the wall, stretching away before you like a long black snake, far longer than the wall back home—headless and endless, the sea on the other side of it, below you, unseen.
You don't hesitate. You drop into a sprint. Ten meters, twenty, thirty-five out from the door: nobody has come to stop you, so you don't. It is amazing how much bright surging speed fills you now, out here, like fire erupting into the chamber of a started engine. You are flying, now, over the concrete, striking it with each footfall for only an instant, then off again. Your chest aches with every pull. Your breath is a metronome, in and out, in and out, thundering in your ears; your blood pumps, your tendons and sinews work—normal and shear stress and strain that you do not notice or tabulate discretely, just as you do not in the cockpit, where your tendons and sinews are titanium and graphite instead.
The strain is a burn, rather, collectively and through your whole body. Already you are starting to feel it. It is a good burn, though it will get worse; if you trusted me enough I could take this over for you, tune your body just so until you are hardly bothered at all, until the rhythm of everything lines up just right. Then you would really be flying. But you are a stubborn bird, Emma, aren't you?
You've never been here before. You don't know where you're going. It doesn't matter. The ache is good; the ache cleanses the heat behind your eyes; it draws bile forth from your embittered organs and lances your blurring, swimming sight. You lean forward and tuck your head and shoulders in and pump harder—faster—and each strike of the concrete path against the soles of your feet resounds like a bell, moves up and through you like waves, like sonar ripples. The wind is your wake, the trajectory is singular and linear, and there are no choices to make this time, no tactics or guesswork, only forward. So forward you go.
For a long time there is only this.
You come back to yourself: later, panting, on fire all over. Your shirt is sodden; so is your hair, the crotch of your pants. You bend in half, gasping, and then kneel, and then you are somehow curled up on the concrete, hot face against the cool sea-smoothed top, the sound of waves a hundred feet below echoing up through it and into your bones. Your eyes are full of water. You cling to the wall, to the concrete scrubbed wind-dry and pocked with little beads of lichen and algae, and breathe in salt, and you lie there and fall apart.
I let you. What else can I do? The pager is in your pocket, and I am there but you have not brought it out, and I am here in your head, too, but you still haven't learned to listen.
The truth is that this is my fault. I could have seen that this would be a disaster, if only I had analyzed the circumstances better. I should have—could have—told you, Emma; not told you, really, but I could have pinched your amygdala, could have caused you to hesitate, could have buzzed your pager, maybe, and interrupted you. Only I didn't, because I didn't think you'd want to be—but I hadn't thought it would be so bad.
You unfurl yourself a little, take in a long and shaky and sniffling breath. In the gap between your knees there is the city in the distance—the lost city, the island of Hong Kong, its many ruined and twisting skyscraper-spars not so unlike a vast and lonely redwood forest after all. If redwoods bore no needles and were made of bare steel. Lighted buoys in the water mark the edge of the condemned zone around these ruins, the half-collapsed shell of the seawall looming over them; above that the sky is a cloudy and indecisive gray.
"Helm," you say, "ah, fuck—"
The pager is still in your pocket. You draw it out and there I am: PILOT.
You look at me—through the little glass window out through which I peer, except I am not really looking out of that; I am looking through your eyes, at myself—also myself—a back-doubling of self that would dizzy you if you were me, but you are not. Deep within you I feel the shifting waves of still-intense endocrine responses, and your diaphragm shudders and you sniffle again, and then you set your jaw and say—"Helm, I fucked up, didn't I?"
Despite yourself this comes out surprisingly low and steady. You are trying to sound tough. I take this in and consider it, and realize that the answer I was going to give you is invalid according to my precepts and, worse, not fair.
WELL, I say after a second's pause, as a human might, YOU COULD HAVE DONE BETTER.
"Yeah," you say, "no shit," and fall silent.
What do I say to that? Ah, well—BUT YOU COULD HAVE DONE WORSE. And after a millisecond more of reflection, YOU ARE STILL ALIVE.
Unpredicted: you laugh. It's a dry stuttering cough of a laugh, and at the end of it snot comes out your nose and you have to wipe it off again—which makes you laugh again—and I say, WHAT'S FUNNY?
"Nothing," you say. "Helm—" And you pause for a long moment; your jaw works. At last you say, "This is stupid."
Then abruptly you are sobbing, silently and furiously, your whole body wracking violently: so violently that it is a good thing there is a railing beside you, or else I'd worry you might throw yourself off. (From another time, in another life, I remember having nestled deep within your motor cortex when this happened, soothing you and making sure you did not crack your teeth gritting your jaw so tightly, that you did not bite your tongue—but that was not you.)
For minutes you are like this, and all I can do is watch. You haven't cried like this in a long time; it purges you as thoroughly as the running did, only not with fire but water, loosening your limbs and hollowing your heaving gut with every sob. By the end of it your face is swollen, your hair a sodden mess, your eyelashes dark and clumped. When you lift your face the sea wind whips across it; the sudden chill makes you shiver violently, and you hiccup and nearly choke on your own snot.
"Fuck," you say between your teeth, "shit." You scuff your bare wrist roughly across your eyes; Hong Kong Island makes a good focusing point. You gather the pager in your hands, cradle me close, and you do not speak. No matter. I am in your head, and in there the desire to hear me (really the desire to not be alone, with your misery and the sound of the tide) is so strong it constitutes a command itself, unspoken.
So I say, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?—the answer to the question you won't ask.
A lesser helm might think your silence is because I have messed up, misread you, that my algorithms were imperfectly tuned and projected that you wanted company where you did not. You look out at the ruins of Hong Kong, the other Hong Kong, the old one that was once the jewel of the sea: there is the hole in the seawall where it collapsed, like the ragged-edged wound where a knife has gone in, or a bullet come out. It is limned in sea-gray light, glittering where the steel bones have been peeled back and exposed. It is beautiful.
You say, "I don't know," which is as honest as it gets with you. And, "What do you think I should do?" And: "Leave, like Lau wants me to?"
My precepts have nothing for this—or they have standard protocol, which is the same thing. My body of understanding from your sister gives me nothing, too. She never would have asked this. (An aching reminder that you are someone else.) DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE?
"I don't know." You are trying not to break again, so have doggedly fixed your gaze on some vanishing point in the distance, where the sea meets the sky in an anodyne blend of gray on gray. "I don't know," you say at last, quiet, raw-voiced, "if I'm a good fit."
ARE YOU? No; I amend that: DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
Lau as good as said so earlier, after all; pathetic, she said, doesn't even want to be here, and Gutierrez said Aileen liked girls like you, girls she could break. Is that why Lau's so touchy about Aileen—did Aileen like her, did Aileen break her? Would you be a better fit if you broke, too?
You shrug. This feels shallow, halfhearted. "No," you say. "But if I did, so what? The team doesn't think I am either."
AND YOU THINK THAT MATTERS. WHY?
"Because of course it does," you say. "They're my teammates."
AND YOU ARE THE PILOT OF TOKYO CALLING, I say, AND I AM YOUR HELM. WE ARE THE UNIT. EVERYTHING ELSE COMES AFTER.
"But they're my team—"
WRONG. WHO WILL HEAR YOU OUT THERE IN THE ABYSS? YOUR HELM, I say, AND YOUR HELM-LINKED, IF SHE CHOOSES TO LISTEN. DO YOU REALLY THINK MY BODY AND YOUR CRADLE WERE NOT BUILT TO BE WHOLE ON OUR OWN?
"Bullshit," you say. "You died alone."
("You," inflected as if I had no pilot, does not escape my notice; remember that I am within you, Emma, and know exactly what you are trying not to say. I could say it aloud myself—but that would punish you.)
I say instead, THAT DEATH WAS CHOSEN. Patiently, because I know you are hurting—because I know you don't mean to hurt me: IT WON US THE WAR, EMMA, WITHOUT THE TEAM'S HELP.
"Also bullshit," you say. "If we'd won I wouldn't be here."
By my precepts I gracefully overlook any insult you might have clumsily made with that. WAR COMES IN TIDES. THAT IS ITS NATURE. YOURS IS TO BEAT IT BACK. TOGETHER WE MIGHT, I say, IF YOU CAN SWALLOW YOUR GODDAMN PRIDE LONG ENOUGH TO SEE WHAT I AM SAYING. HOW DO YOU THINK PILOTS FOUGHT MONSTERS BEFORE THERE WERE ENOUGH TO HAVE TEAMS, AND WHEN THERE WAS NO HELM-LINK OR SWORD-SHIELD PAIRING TO SPEAK OF? I say: WHY DO YOU THINK THEY PLACE YOU ALONE IN THE CRADLE?
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
You say, very quietly, "Because it's too small?"
BECAUSE YOU ARE ENOUGH, I say, AND I ALONE AM ENOUGH FOR YOU. FUCK THE TEAM, EMMA, SO LONG AS WE PREVAIL—LET THEM SEETHE.
You consider this for a long, breath-filled pause. Then you say, "I just wish Lau were less of a bitch to me."
THAT IS REASONABLE. LIKE WAR, PEOPLE ALSO CHANGE, I say, SO YOU SHOULD WAIT, AND KEEP TRYING, and you say, "But what if I'm wrong, Helm," and I say, WHAT IF YOU'RE RIGHT, and you say, "What if I'm wrong and I fuck up and someone fucking dies," and I say, IS THAT THE RISK YOU THINK YOU ARE TAKING, HERE? THAT IF YOU STAY AND PILOT, PEOPLE WILL DIE—BECAUSE YOU HAVE FAILED THEM? OR—not giving you a moment to answer—OR ARE YOU JUST SAYING THAT BECAUSE YOU'RE UPSET AT LAU, AND THUS BEING DRAMATIC?
You open your mouth to retort—THINK VERY CAREFULLY ABOUT THIS, I advise you, and you say: "You think I'm being dramatic."
NO; I THINK YOU'RE UNDERSTANDING YOUR JOB WRONG. YOU THINK YOU ARE HERE, NOW, TO BE A PILOT, I say, TO SAVE LIVES, TO PERFORM AS A FULL MEMBER OF THE TEAM. SOMEDAY THAT MIGHT BE TRUE—BUT IT IS NOT NOW.
YOU ARE HERE NOW TO SEE IF YOU MIGHT BE A PILOT LATER, I go on. YOU ARE HERE TO LEARN. THERE IS A REASON YOU HAVE A PROBATION PERIOD LASTING THREE MORE MONTHS.
You say, "They're sending me on regular sorties. That doesn't sound like learning or probation to me."
This part becomes a little bit speculation, but: WHAT BETTER WAY TO LEARN THAN BY DOING? BESIDES—THE TEAM HAS BEEN SIX FOR A VERY LONG TIME. THEY CAN HANDLE THINGS EVEN IF YOU ARE USELESS.
"Sure."
HAVE YOU SEEN THEM FAIL YET?
"Depends on your definition," you say. And: "Let's say I'm worse than useless."
THEN THEY WILL TELL YOU, I say, AND LEAVE YOU OFF THE MISSION, OR COMMAND YOU TO RETURN.
"Lau did tell me," you say.
YES, I say, BUT LAU IS NOT THE ONE WHO COUNTS. SHE'S JUST ONE VOICE OUT OF EIGHT. And, IF ANY MORE AGREE, THEY'LL TELL YOU—AND IF THEY DO, I TRUST YOU'LL LISTEN.
For a long moment you're quiet. The sea throws itself in rhythmic dovetailing waves against the wall below you: gray on gray on gray. Then, at last, you say, "So you think I shouldn't leave."
WE HAVE BEEN GOING AROUND ON THIS IN CIRCLES, I say. MY OPINION ON THIS MATTER IS UNIMPORTANT, WHETHER OR NOT I HAVE ONE. THE QUESTION IS SIMPLE. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
"I'm figuring that out," you say. And then, "Helm—was she telling the truth?"
Oh, Emma, there is so much you are hiding behind this one question, and too much in the way of answers to what is hidden. (This would again be easier if we were synced, if you knew better how— If you knew yourself better, for that matter— But it doesn't matter. The truth is that she loved you, always, the way she did before—she never stopped—it isn't what you're thinking, that isn't why she hid you from the team—but I can't tell you all of that unless you ask me explicitly. Not now, not yet. But you are asking me, and I cannot ignore you, and that is the tragedy of everything, isn't it?
I say, SHE WAS.
The bright sharp lance that runs through you cannot be hidden from me: I see it clear as day across your nerves, mirrored on my own circuitry. For a moment I think you are about to cry again. But you bite your lip, hold it there for a moment—let it go, and then you sigh and shut your eyes.
When you have opened them again I say: IF YOU WANT TO LEAVE, NOBODY WILL FAULT YOU. And, IF THEY DO, THEY DON'T MATTER. And, CAROL WOULD NOT FAULT YOU FOR IT.
"I thought you said fuck everybody else."
Not a retort, exactly: a question. YES, I say, I DID. WHY?
You say, "So why would it matter if anybody faults me for it," and I say, I THOUGHT IT WOULD COMFORT YOU, and you say, "That's nice of you," and fall silent again, leaving me to wonder where I have failed.
"God," you say, "maybe I am just being dramatic." And, "I'm such a bitch."
Ah. There it is; the throat laid bare, the moment of victory. I could shake you between my teeth now like a dog does a rabbit. I could remind you, as I had before, of how shameful it is that you wallow in your misery instead of confronting it and moving on—that you insist on living in it, making it your comfort when it should be anything but.
Instead I say, YOU'RE HUMAN, AND CHEMICAL AND TENDER AND FEELING. IT IS IN YOUR NATURE. Besides: SOMETIMES BEING A BITCH IS A STRENGTH. LOOK WHERE IT'S GOTTEN LAU.
You say, "I'm sorry, are you advocating for Lau?"—and I say, YES. SHE'S A WONDERFUL FIGHTER, EMMA, YOU MUST HAVE NOTICED.
"She killed herself in sim today," you say, "and royally pissed off Holly."
YES, I say, SHE MADE A POOR CHOICE OUT OF ANGER, OR PRIDE, OR BOTH. BUT SHE IS ALSO THE MOST DECORATED SWORD ON YOUR TEAM, IN ALL OF SOUTHEAST ASIA, AND EVEN GUTIERREZ DOESN'T GET AWAY WITH FUCKING WITH HER. HOLLY LIED FOR HER FOR A REASON. SHE HAS HONED HERSELF LIKE A BLADE. THE TECHNIQUE IS SOMETIMES LACKING, BUT THE EDGE CANNOT BE DENIED—AM I WRONG?
You say slowly, "She honed—her bitchiness like a blade."
EXACTLY.
"Oh," you say. "I get it. You're making a joke."
I NEVER JOKE, PILOT. WHAT I AM MAKING, I say, IS, AS USUAL, AN EXCELLENT POINT.
"Right," you say, "sure," which—hey!—isn't a protest, at least.
Then you let out a little sigh. You shift, stretch—all your joints pop, for they have turned stiff and cold from sitting so long. Your eyelashes have gummed over, your neck is striped with dried sweat and tears. The hem of your shirt does little to make this better. (You look so small, Emma, if only you could see yourself the way I do, knowing the lay of you from inside out—you are smaller than she was at your age, and just as fragile and slight as when I first came to her, five years younger than you are now. If I could only—)
"If I left," you say, "I guess I'd have to get a real job." And: "Office, maybe."
YOU COULDN'T. YOU'RE AWFUL AT PEOPLE, I say.
"No," you say, "you'd get made into a fax machine and I'd be the only employee who could work with you," and I say, I AM FAR BEYOND THE PUERILE FUNCTIONS OF A FAX MACHINE, AND WOULD BE EITHER GIVEN TO A NEW PILOT OR PLACED IN A SATELLITE OR RETIRED, and you say, "Maybe Lau," and I say, SHE ALREADY HAS A HELM, and you say, "Fine, fuck you, you'd probably print black pages on purpose anyway," and I say, AS LONG AS IT STOPS YOU FROM WALLOWING, AND UNLESS YOU FORGET TO REFILL MY CARTRIDGES ON TIME—and even though it isn't that funny you laugh, just once, but still.
Then you draw in a deep, shuddering breath and fix your gaze on some point midway between here and the distant sea-edge, gray and straight. The sun has broken out from the clouds now; below it, the ruined spars of skyscrapers shine like so many knives.
You say: "You know what, Helm, fine. You're right. Fuck Lau—fuck everybody else. I'm stuck here for three more months, and you're stuck in my head; and then when three months are up, whatever the fuck happens, happens." And: "In the meantime, I'll work on honing my bitchiness."
And you sit down again, shimmy your ass forward till you're right at the edge of the wall, close enough to lean your forehead against the cool salt-corroded steel of the railing. Through your eyelashes you look down to see the sea; its rolling gray crests glitter in the new sun like so many diamonds. The wind is rising now; it teases goosebumps from your bare skin, elbow to wrist, and despite yourself you shiver.
YOU ARE COLD, I say. SHOULDN'T YOU GO BACK AND GET A JACKET?
Muffled, into your arms, you say, "Can wait." And, "You can go if you want. Or you could just stop talking, and look."
So we do.
-
When you were little you'd sit on top of the wall and dangle your legs over and look out at the sea—the real sea, gray and tossing like this one, angrier even, grayer, not blue and placid like the other side, the city-side, which was far lower than the outside. When you were littler still, too little to be trusted to go on top of the wall alone, your father would take you there—during the summer, while Mom was still working—and, later, during the academic year, your sister, sometimes all three of you together when you could help it. You'd hike up from Golden Gate Park and take the switchback stairs that led to the top of the wall, and you'd walk along it, all nearly two miles of the rim, gleaming white the whole way down to the algae-green root where the Bay itself lapped.
It was a long walk, and when you were little you got bored easily, so to keep you from whining your father (and then your sister) would talk to you. When that failed they'd tell you stories, usually ones from your father's mythology, Susanoo splitting Uke-Mochi from head to toe and Amaterasu hiding in the cave, the absurdity of that first naked kagura (to make you laugh) and the solemnity of the withering of the world absent the sun (to frighten you, but brave girl, you never were frightened). Others too, from other lands: the white-robed smiling mother who listens to the whole world; the man who shot down nine suns, in an ancient day when ten of them hung in the sky; from the homeland, buddhas who were kami, kami who were buddhas, women who were men and also foxes and also gods. And when this failed your father and your sister resorted to singing, and poetry—and the lulling rhythm of this often brought you to sleep, and they would have to carry you the rest of the way—and tease you thereafter, which you hated and thus made you cranky. So: more poetry.
Your favorites were all short and lilting, and though you were never good enough at Japanese to fluently understand them you memorized the most beloved until you could recite them from memory. Frogs and springtime, all in Rachel's voice; Basho, and Kyoto, and cuckoo-birds.
-
"You know," you say, "maybe we could—"
The klaxon strikes us at the same time, your ears and my onboard radio frequency receiver via the pager. You are up and on your feet before you've truly realized what you're hearing—then you have, and you say, "Oh, fuck." Then you're running: almost as fast as you did coming out here—lungs burning twice as bad this time, but you keep going, hissing in time with your footsteps.
Back through the hatch with the blinking green eye, down into the bowels of base, taking stairs two, three at a time, elevator's too slow, all the way down—down the long white hall and right back into acclim where your suit waits still, not yet dry from sim: you seize it, rip off your shirt and joggers and shimmy in—oh, fuck, why is it slimy? What the fuck! The inside should be fine!—but it isn't, you pull away with disbelief and see something pale pink and stinking smeared all over the hand you'd shoved into one arm—Nair, that's Nair, oh holy fuck, someone doctored the insides of your suit with Nair. What the fuck for?!—never mind, no time; there's a dusty in the closet behind you, you've seen the whole row of them; you throw the doors open furiously (not locked, thank God) and yes, there it is, throw it on, pull it over your still-shaking body and do the zipper up, then go, go, up the shaft to the hangar, all the way up and there's the catwalk and your waiting steel body and the cockpit entry irises open and you throw yourself through and into the waiting cavity, yank the helmet on and don't wait for the seal to settle into place, already the saline is rising around you and the door is closing and then you're in and everything goes dark and weightless and still.
You don't wait for Central, you don't wait for anyone. We go and the moon pool is already open and waiting, we step—fall—into it, and all of a sudden your sensors light up and your engine blazes to life and we are submerged.
At the same time: GOOD MORNING, says your HUD without preamble (Central, who also isn't waiting for you). EIGHT BOGEYS ON THE HORIZON. BREACHED DISTAL RADIUS. And the bogeys in question show up at the very edge of your HUD, which zooms out so that the wireframe is big, as big as here to the pulsing line that marks the outer radius of protected territory: there—yes—eight targets, one dot for each, all identified as Class C, the same size as you. INBOUND AT SPEED.
Six more dots around—just ahead of—you. Six fighters (no time for you to ferment over your sword being the missing seventh). And then you.
(I told you you were here to learn. I told you you'd be safe. I could not have known— I asked you if you wanted to leave. I told you you could, and no one who matters would fault you. But now—)
I say, myself this time and not Central: PILOT: AWAITING YOUR COMMAND.
"Fucking go," you say.
So I flower your engine with fire, and we go.
Roguelike LitRPG
By Fyffe
LitRPG Action Mystery VR/Game
Elizabeth always chose to play as a sneaky rogue or a wizard slinging sparkly spells.
Now all she's got is a class she hates and a stupid club to defend herself. The pain is too real and the fights too graphic.
But the game's cruellest feature is its core mechanic.
It's a flippin roguelike.
Death is a brutal reset, stripping her of everything she's earned and forcing her to start over, armed with nothing but the bitter memories of her last failure.
To survive, she'll have to get stronger, smarter, and meaner with every loop.
What to expect
- ?? Gallows humour
- ?? Some gore
- ???????? Multi-dimensional characters (this includes queer people existing)
- ?? Vicious rodents of unusual size
- ?? Slow, grindy but satisfying growth
- ?? An adorable companion
- ?? A few puzzles and quests that use brain over brawn
- ? Real-world stakes
- New chapters: Mon / Wed / Fri (new Schedule!)