Mistrunner 2 a cyberpunk.., p.47
Mistrunner 2: A Cyberpunk LitRPG, page 47
I shrugged. “Directly? Thousands,” I said without hesitation or remorse. “Indirectly? A lot more.”
“H-how do you live with that?” he asked.
“Because most of them are barely even living, Patrick,” I stated. “Men and women who spend every waking hour in virtual reality. The addicts. The ones who’ve just given up on everything. The people who trudge back and forth to the factories or the Silos, working shifts so long they can’t do anything but spend their off time sleeping, all so they can get up and do it again the next day. The Enforcers who think that just because they have a little power, they matter. The Operators who don’t even know they’re part of the system of oppression that hangs over everything in the city. And then there are the ones at the top. The aristocrats. The rich. The powerful. The ones who could make a difference if they wanted to but choose to keep their thumbs on everyone else. I’m willing to let them all die because they just don’t matter. In most cases, when they die, it’s a mercy.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?” he asked.
“I do,” I said. “And do you want to know the worst part? Even if everyone somehow came together for the common good, if everything was magically fixed, it would all still be pointless.”
“How so?”
“Because in a few years, the aliens are going to come and enslave us all,” I stated. “They’ve already started. All those people who look down on us from Lakeview or whatever, they’re slaves just like all the rest of us. They’ve just deluded themselves into believing the little bit of slack they’ve been given is actual freedom. Instead, they’re wearing leashes, just like everyone else.”
I sighed. “You don’t see it because you don’t want to,” I said. “My uncle did. He knew what was coming, and everything he did was so I’d have a chance to escape the aliens’ grasp. So I could be free.”
“And how is that working out for you?” he asked.
I didn’t answer because, deep down, I knew it was all a lie. A justification for my single-minded pursuit of vengeance. Sure, things were bad, but that wasn’t new. If I looked closely enough and twisted the facts the way I wanted, I suspected that I’d see the same sort of problems. Oppression was just a part of human nature. Perhaps it was part of being sapient, to exploit other people for your own gain.
It wasn’t everyone. It probably wasn’t even most. But there would always be people—or aliens—who were willing to enslave and oppress the population in the pursuit of power.
I’d just chosen to latch on to all the worst parts of human—and alien—nature so that I didn’t have to confront the high cost of my revenge. If I thought everyone was terrible, doomed, or enslaved, what did it matter if a few thousand innocents were killed? It was easier to think of it as a mercy than to admit that I was just as selfish as anyone else. Maybe more, considering the lengths to which I would go just to feel marginally better.
“I don’t know,” I admitted quietly.
“Then why? Why do it?” he asked, kneeling beside me when I didn’t immediately answer. He reached out, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Listen—I’m not going to tell you to stop. If this is what you think you need to do, I’ll support you every step of the way. If I’m being honest, I don’t care so much about all those other people. But I do care about you, about what this is doing to you.”
“I’m fine.”
He cupped my chin and gently raised my face so that we were looking each other in the eye. “No. You’re not,” he said, his voice clear and strong. “Once, when I was really young. Before my mom died, we had a house. A real home. Remy had set it all up, you know? It was on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. It was … It was nice. Cozy. I don’t remember a lot about it, but I do remember the garden. Mom loved working in it, digging and planting and all that. I don’t know if she had a skill or whatever, but it didn’t really matter. I don’t think it was about results. It was about the act itself.”
“That … That sounds nice …”
“It was,” he agreed, pulling away. “What I can remember of it, I mean. But then, one day when Remy was making a run, some men found us. They … They did … horrible things. I hid in a closet, so I didn’t … I didn’t see everything. But when I got out, Mom was … She was different. The whole house was trashed, and her garden had been destroyed. I can’t know for sure, and at the time, it never even crossed my mind—but looking back, it’s obvious what they did to her. Especially after how Remy reacted.
“He just went cold. Like … It was like all the happiness or joy or whatever just got sucked out of him,” Patrick explained, his eyes welling up with tears. “I could see it in his eyes. Even as young as I was, I knew what it was, too. Murder. And after he got Mom settled … That night, after she was finally asleep, he left the house. I couldn’t sleep, and I stayed up all night. When he got home just before dawn, he was covered in blood.
“It took me a while to work up the courage to go to him, to ask what he’d done,” he went on, turning away so I couldn’t see the wetness of his cheeks. “I found him in the kitchen, patching himself up. He still had blood all over his face. I’ll never forget what he said when I asked him what had happened.”
Patrick sighed. “He told me, ‘This is something you’re gonna have to learn sooner or later, kid. Some people deserve to die. Ain’t nothin’ else to it, either. The world is a better place without ’em. Those men, they deserved to die. Worse, really. But I’ll tell you right now—that’s a dark road, killin’ everyone who deserves it. It stains your soul. Do it enough, and killin’ starts to look like the answer to every problem. Most of the time, it is. That’s the problem with it, boy. Killin’ is effective. But even when it’s right, it ain’t. One day, you’ll have to do it, too. That’s the way the world is now. But it always has a price. Sometimes, it’s as simple as pissin’ off the wrong person. Other times, it’s up here.’ He tapped his head, then. ‘But no matter what, the biggest effect is here.’ He slapped a bloody hand on his chest, leaving a red handprint.”
Shaking his head, Patrick went on. “Despite what happened on that battlefield, I’m not really worried about you dying. It was shocking, but I’ve always known that it was a possibility. And if it happens, I probably won’t take it that well. But what I’m really worried about is here,” he said, reaching out and tapping a finger against my chest. “I think what Remy was talking about was that every time you kill somebody, it gets a little bit easier. And Mira, you’ve killed a lot of people. I just don’t want it to get too easy for you.”
Even though my first impulse was to react defensively, it only took me a moment to recognize what he was trying to say. Ever since I’d begun walking the path of revenge, killing had become progressively easier. Before my uncle’s death, I would have blanched at the thought of killing even one innocent person. But now? Hundreds had died in my attacks on the Silos, and exponentially more had been killed during the war I’d started.
Certainly, I truly believed everything I had said. Most of the people in Nova City were living hollow existences that barely even qualified as lives. I felt that right down to the very core of who I was. However, claiming that their deaths were acts of mercy was an absolute falsehood. It was just an excuse so I wouldn’t have to take responsibility for all the collateral damage I had left in my wake.
And it was effective, too.
It wasn’t that surprising, though. For months, I’d looked at my revenge as the most important facet of my existence. In the throes of righteous vengeance, I had pushed everything else aside. Not only had I looked the other way when it came to all those people who’d died, but I had also pushed Heather’s fate to the back of mind, and in doing so, I’d condemned her to something worse than death.
Finally, I had to ask the question that had been marinating in the back of my mind for weeks. Maybe even months. I looked up and into Patrick’s eyes, asking, “Am I the bad guy?”
It was a valid question, even the potential answer terrified me. My actions weren’t those of a hero. I didn’t save people. I didn’t make the world a better place. Instead, the only things I’d left in my wake were death and destruction.
“No,” Patrick said, though that wasn’t unexpected. After all, he cared about me, and the way I saw it, his bias was always going to shine through. Plus, even if he did think I was the sum of my evil actions, it would be the height of idiocy to admit it. Telling that kind of truth to someone with my track record was a good way to get killed.
Of course, I wasn’t the type of person who would do that, even if the facts of my actions suggested otherwise. I hoped Patrick knew that.
“You’re just a little lost right now,” he said. “We all go through it. What happened to you … It … Conventional ideas of good and evil don’t really apply. I’m not telling you to stop doing what you’ve been doing. I know how much you need it. But I just think you need to be cognizant of the cost. And more than anything, I want you to know that I’m here for you. No matter what you do or how you choose to do it, I’ll be here to support you. Because we’re in this together, Mira.”
“And if it turns out that I end up being the bad guy?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Then we’ll be bad guys together,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “I trust you. You kill somebody, I believe they probably deserved it.”
It was a vote of confidence I sorely needed, and not for the first time, I found myself thankful that our paths had crossed.
“Don’t think I won’t tell you when I think you’re making a mistake, though,” he said. “I will. So, I might not always tell you what you want to hear. But at the end of the day, I’ll be right there with you, through thick or thin.”
I let out a sigh. “Thanks,” I said. “That … That means a lot to me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
PURPOSE
Money. Power. I wonder what any of it even means when I’m surrounded by so much hate.
—Nora Lancaster
The next day, Patrick and I continued our trek through the wilderness. Thankfully, we weren’t assaulted by any new threats, and we even shared a pleasant meal on a cliff overlooking a series of wide ravines that looked like some enormous giant had raked its claws across the landscape. Perhaps they had, but if that was the case, it had happened long ago, considering the thick vines snaking down the edges of the cliffs. Flitting around the small ponds that had formed at the bottom of the ravines were flashing blue lights that I recognized as Mistflies. Overcast as it was, the sight was strangely comforting, and it reminded me of the advice Jorge had given me what felt like a lifetime before.
Back then, when faced with a similar scene, he’d told me to enjoy what beauty I could find in the world. At the time, he’d probably meant it to counterbalance all the horrors I would see, but after everything I’d been through, it served a different purpose. It was so easy to look at the Mist as evil, but the reality wasn’t quite so simple. Certainly, the onset of the Mist had resulted in billions of deaths, and it had irrevocably changed the world. However, it wasn’t malicious. It was more like a force of nature, and blaming it for the transformation of the Earth and its inhabitants was akin to hating a hurricane for flooding a city.
That wasn’t to say that the situation wasn’t frustrating. It was. But it wasn’t evil.
Never was that more obvious than when confronted by the beauty that came with it. Like the Mistflies. Or the skills I’d been given. Even the more daunting wildlife had a certain allure.
Thinking about it did beg the question of what I would have been doing if the world hadn’t been upended. What would I have become if I’d lived in a world like the one my uncle had known? The few stories he’d shared told me just how different things were back then, so it was difficult to know. However, one thing he’d made clear was that it was a far safer and more peaceful place, so I probably wouldn’t have been a fighter.
Without that, what was I? I’d once cultivated a variety of interests, but ever since my training had begun, I’d steadily left them behind. And then, when my world was torn into a million pieces, I hadn’t even considered focusing on anything else. When I wasn’t actively working toward achieving my goals, I was training. Or sleeping. There really wasn’t anything else in my life.
Except Patrick, but that was complicated enough without it becoming some kind of defining characteristic. I liked him well enough, and our relationship had grown closer than ever before. He was there for me in a way nobody else ever had been—except maybe Jo, but the two situations were so different that it was hard to even compare them.
That night, Patrick and I were forced to make camp under an old bridge. It seemed structurally sound, and below it, I saw evidence of old train tracks. It wasn’t perfect, but given the distinct lack of standing buildings in the area, it was the best we could hope to find. And I wasn’t willing to camp out in the open, mostly because, before night fell, I had seen dark clouds on the horizon.
Sure enough, only twenty minutes after we’d made camp, a thunderstorm began. The rain fell in sheets even as furious bolts of lightning filled the air, followed by deafening claps of thunder.
Growing up in Nova, I didn’t experience a real thunderstorm until I’d left the city. Certainly, Nova had its share of rain, but it wasn’t a natural phenomenon. Instead, it was a product of the city’s climate-control system, and the rain was intended to wash the streets clean. Outside, though, things were very different and much more dangerous.
Once, after seeing a bolt of lightning leave a melted crater almost five yards wide, I’d asked my uncle how people had survived such storms before the Initialization. That’s when I’d discovered that, like most everything else, thunderstorms fed off of ambient Mist, which made them far more potent. In the first few months after the Initialization, such storms had killed almost as many people as the mutating wildlife. However, the discovery of Mist shields had served to cut those numbers down considerably; still, in some of the less-protected settlements, the dangers of such storms were still very real.
Thankfully, hiding under a bridge or in a fallen building was often enough protection. That wasn’t always the case, though.
“Storms are much worse south of here,” Patrick said, unwrapping a ration bar as he sat on his portable cot. The pair we’d brought weren’t that comfortable, but sleeping on even a thin mattress was much better than doing so on the hard ground.
His statement drew me from my thoughts, and I asked, “How so?”
“More common,” he said. “If you don’t have a decent Mist shield, you’re probably going to die, too. I asked Remy about it once, and he said it was because of ambient Mist levels. The more there is, the worse things get.”
“Kind of like a Dead Zone,” I said.
He shrugged. “A few hundred miles south, and everything’s a Dead Zone,” he said. “There are still areas that are even worse, too. Apparently, that’s why there are more cities up here. The Mist is mostly tame. But in other parts of the world, things start getting really weird. There’s an area across the ocean where nobody lives. Like, it’s a whole continent of wildlings and mutated beasts.”
“Really?” I asked.
“A lot of Rifts there, too,” he stated. “Remy only went there once, and it was to transport some heavy hitters as close to the Rift as he could. He said these were the best of the best. As strong as your uncle, from what he told me. But they never came out. After that, he came back here and settled down with my mom. Said it was a lot safer to do local runs.”
“Interesting,” I said.
And it was. An entire continent of unexplored Rifts? It sounded incredibly dangerous, but it also sounded kind of exciting. What else was out there? I often thought about the wider galaxy, but I rarely even considered the fact that I’d only explored the tiniest portion of my own world.
It was such a shame, too. Sure, there was plenty of danger out there, but it was also exciting. And that danger was often accompanied by commensurate beauty. I thought back to the dragon’s skeleton I’d seen in the center of the battlefield where I’d faced off against the onslaught of mutated wildlings. What would it be like to face something like that? To see it in all its glory?
And maybe to fight it?
I wasn’t some unrepentant battle junkie, but I couldn’t deny that there was a certain joy in facing a terribly strong opponent and coming out on top. I’d felt it after fighting my first beast, even if it had been nestled in heart-pounding terror, and I’d felt it during the battle against the mutated wildlings, as well. Perhaps I was going insane. Or maybe I’d just latched on to the one thing I could point to as a defining characteristic.
After all, being good at something tended to bring a joy all its own. And I was very good at fighting. Not the best, mind you, but very good nonetheless.
“What do you like to do?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“I mean, like, for fun,” I said, the addendum to the previous question punctuated by another flash of lightning followed by a thunderclap.
He shrugged, saying, “I don’t know. Not much room for fun lately.”
“Before, then,” I prompted, leaning forward. Our cots were arranged parallel to each other, with the Mist lamp between us.
For a moment, he didn’t respond, but after a couple of seconds, he said, “I used to like to draw. My mom used to get me real sketchbooks. Like, with paper and everything. I would draw birds and other animals around the house. But that was before she … before she died. I kept a couple of those sketchbooks, but they were destroyed along with The Jitterbug. I … I didn’t bother trying to replace them.”
“Oh.”
I knew I’d brought up a sensitive subject. Not surprising, considering his past. But wasn’t that the case with everyone? I had my issues, and so did he. So did everybody. Either way, I was a little surprised that his mother would give him something as valuable as a sketchbook with real paper. Such things weren’t common, not only because the materials were expensive to come by, but also because they just didn’t serve much purpose. Anything that could be done on paper could be accomplished on a tablet or a screen. Using actual paper was a luxury that most people neither wanted nor could afford.
