Sadistic Developers

In a room somewhere far away, a notification popped up on a female operators screen. The operator pursed her lips. 'It's just one shot fired? Ignore it.' 99 times out of a hundred, one shot fired meant that some child had gotten curious and decided to explore outside the line, The operator deleted the notification from her record, if she left a record she'd have to do a personal inquiry as well as submit a report. Her huge, meaty fingers pressed play to resume her program and she picked up her weight and continued her bicep curls.

When I reached the front of the queue, another door greeted me. After a few seconds, the door lifted up off the ground. It was filled with black nothingness but it was a choice between this or dying if I tried to go anywhere other than the black door so I chose the black door. As I stepped in, the door fell in behind me. A red light washed over me quickly before another beep sounded out and with no warning, I was lifted off the floor by a cold metal claw which grabbed me from behind in a vice grip and hoisted me into the air. A tube was shoved down my throat, suddenly and in complete darkness. It really hurt, it was making my throat expand forcing it to go well beyond what I thought was its limit, it made its way down, deep inside me. Nothing happened at first before I felt something huge and round forced its way past my jaw, like a gobstopper designed so you can't swallow it, but you try to anyway. It hurt so bad, and it just kept on being forced down, down through my throat, and into my chest, but once it reached my chest it stopped hurting so much.

The tube retreated from me and what was holding me up let go of me, letting me drop to the floor. I landed on my knees letting a cold pain pass through my body before settling in to live in my knees. I curled up gasping, my throat and mouth were on fire, in aching pain. Every time my heart beat it hurt, shaking my body and moving around my raw insides. I felt a pinprick in my arm, randomly like a thin needle, and I held it close to my face in retaliation and I hissed in anger. I hadn't even figured out how to log out yet otherwise, I would have done so when I was first swarmed by my fellow birth mates. After the pinprick the pain washed away quickly.

I got up and patted down my still naked body. Being in someone else's body made walking around everywhere naked feel much more relaxing, like it was happening to someone else.

When I faced the wall ahead of me, the one which I hadn't come through, a section of the wall slid up, revealing a lit room, but the same size as this one. I walked in, hoping someone would tell me how to log out before I either starved to death irl which wouldn't happen for a month irl or more than six months in-game or went crazy from being tortured. I like being challenged, but dislike being forced to complete a challenge and this was barely a challenge.

The wall ahead of me dropped. So I walked in and prepared myself. The wall slid down behind me. I closed my eyes and stiffened my muscles so any impact would hurt less. I felt a wet, warm, refreshing sensation stream across my body. I smiled, it was my second shower that day. I kept my eyes closed until I felt the shower stop, in case of soap. It was a point of shame that I'd never properly got used to washing with real shampoo, due to my lack of parental support, so I still used 'dry eyes shampoo'. After the water fizzled away, a blast of hot air came from every direction.

Feeling refreshed as the door slid up, I happily walked forward and stood in the center of the room. This time a white blob of something fell from the ceiling and landed on my head. I did what any sane person would do and tried to pull it off with my hand. When I grabbed it though and pulled, it just stretched like melted cheese. As I stood there with the cheese all over me and looking quite ridiculous, I felt a jolt of vibration from the blob. Suddenly it spread out in an instant quickly covering everything from the neck down. It had stopped short of covering my hands, head and feet. I was covered in a seamless layer of white stuff, which quickly transformed to the texture of cotton when I ran my hands over it. I wouldn't be able to take it off unless I tore a hole somewhere, I could tell. I marveled at the game creators minds, I still disliked them but I had an admiration for their work or their creative minds, at the very least I wanted the name of their synthesizer. Whatever they'd been smoking was much stronger than mine.

As the texture of my suit finished transforming from cheese to cotton the door in front of me slid up. I walked out of the darkness into blinding light, I squinted as I found myself in a white room as opposed to the black I'd seen so far. There was something already in there, waiting for me.

A small, narrow pedestal. There was a pill on top, which was white, not red or blue and there was no black man waiting for me. I did the expected action and took the pill. I knew something was going to happen slowly because it was a pill but still cursed the developers for putting all these long breaks in.

I woke up I could see a red bar and a blue bar in the bottom right corner of my vision with a number in both which read 100. A blinking exclamation mark inside a translucent white box had appeared in front of me, an Alert. When I tapped onto it a notification popped up.

'Initiate knowledge transfer?' A knowledge transfer. Risky. Invented by the government it revolutionized education but was scrapped by almost everyone as the fact that 1 in a thousand people who used it went insane as the previous owner's memories were attached in some rare cases. Now only ridiculously old people were the only surviving people of that generation. Apparently, though the Pegasus Corporation had discovered the underlying problem. Errors only occurred in cases where people already had some prior knowledge in what they were using the knowledge transfer for. This also explained why they'd banned almost all knowledge, news and videos about the game from leaking.

I tapped on the 'yes' and collapsed to the floor having convulsions. As I woke up I realized my Skin (The gooey white stuff which covered my body right now) had formed a pillow under my head which retracted back into the main body as I got up. Instead of heading to the next door to be removed like I would do if the knowledge transfer had failed, I faced the blank door to my left and spoke an eight digit password in the new language that I had just learned. A section of the wall slid down sinking into the floor revealing another transport tube. I backed into it and kept my body loose and relaxed, so the rapid movement wouldn't hurt my body.

Even if I wasn't aware of it the first time, I'd been subjecting my body to too much pressure, every time that I went around a corner, the joints on my body had been stiffening and taking the brunt of the impact. A couple more times of traveling in the tube could have caused serious damage.

As I came to a stop, I braced my ankles and knees for the impact. As I walked out, I met my group that I would be training with as well as our Instructor. There were a thousand (-1, my fault) of us with me being the 222nd member, and only roughly half of us would survive this. We stood in lines of 50 facing the Instructor, a grey-bearded but still heavily muscled man who seemed to look past all of us as if we didn't exist. I joined the fifth row. I wanted to defiantly stare at him but I knew the Instructor could kill me with a thought. I waited there in a sort of zen, time seemed to pass very quickly around me, before I knew it I fell out of my zen and all 999 of us were assembled. The developers probably put in a feature which allowed a person's perception of time to speed up to prevent a very boring scene from taking place. I think I'd noticed something when I was traveling in my large crowd earlier.

"Pair off!" With no warning, the instructor bellowed out a couple of words. Everyone rotated 90 degrees in unison, myself included and raised their arms in front of me in a fighting stance. It was weird, I didn't know what was going on but apparently, my body did.

"Begin!" The person facing me, a boy who looked about 10, just like me swung his fist at my head, I took a small step back, just ducking back out of reflex while also being aware that there were similar brawls going on all around me, this was a slugfest, not a real fight which made it more deadly, most people were focused on their own fights but I just knew that even though nobody here had formed a personality yet having just been born, it was human nature to seize an opportunity. The boy pressed forward his charge and taking advantage of the fact that he was half a head taller than me he lowered his arms and released two quick jabs to my head and stomach, I reeled back my arms spread wide. I bumped into a back behind me which propped me up and prevented me from falling. I lowered my body and twisted my body before releasing a killer jab to the boy's crotch. I felt awkward about punching a ten-year-old boy in the dick but I didn't want to die yet. He backed up, half stumbling and someone's body fell into the gap between us with a girl pushing her fingers into his eyes. I stood on guard against any attacks, I didn't want to kill a ten-year-old. Or anyone else here.

The girl in between us tore her hands out of the boys head forming trails of blood in the air before turning and looking at me. She knew how to fight, we all did thanks to that handy knowledge transfer and she knew that I was stronger than her so she'd try to be faster. She flicked her soaked hands at my face hitting my closed eyelids with blood. I kept them closed though if I opened them my vision would be ruined and pain would come. I lowered my body into a ball and protecting my vital parts in the process. She went for the obvious route unfortunately, my ears were unprotected so she tried to slam her palms on either side of my head to disorient me and make me lose my sense of balance. I counted and estimated the time, taking into account her distance as well as her height. I struck up, catching her off guard and off balance, catching her on the bottom of her chin. I followed it up with a weak jab to her throat, toppling her. She was still breathing but she was weak. I straddled her with my hands around her head. She looked up at me. I've never seen anything with such desire to kill me, in all the games I've played. She didn't hate me but she did desire power with such a burning intensity it frightened me.

I had lines, lines I didn't cross. I only killed those who had a chance of fighting back and I didn't kill kids. I wasn't a good person, but these game developers were truly sick. I couldn't get up or she'd kill me. If I just stayed like this somebody would come along and kill both of us. I couldn't knock her out, that knowledge transfer included fighting techniques but only lethal ones.

I grasped her head in both hands and pretended I was making an omelette. I smashed her head down onto the ground, she grunted in pain but I tried to drown it out and brought her head up and down, up and down drowning out everything else and just focusing on that repetitive motion. I stood up after a while with my hands covered in blood. I just stood there and dared anyone to fight me in my head.

After a couple of minutes, the instructor called for us to stop. I was still dripping in the blood of the girl who'd leaped at me after finishing off her first victim. She reminded me of Alice. My original opponent had been finished off by someone else as he lay there defenseless. Above my head there floated the number 2.5, I knew it meant I'd killed one person and half killed another. I also must have absorbed the girl's record after I killed her. The corpses sank into the floor and my Skin slowly absorbed the blood returning me to my previously spotless appearance. I joined the new group in lining up. I knew that we had to stand in order of those who'd killed the most. I was surprised to find I was only in the second row, in the first row there was a tiny red-headed girl who'd managed to kill 6 people and a big black boy who looked 18 but was 12 like the rest of us, he'd managed to kill 13 people. The Instructor gave something to him and the girl, before nodding at everyone who'd managed to kill at least one person.

'Ding'

'Instructors Acknowledgement - Hidden quest completed'

'Reward - +12 to all Stats'

I was happy although the quest was hardly hidden, that pill I was given earlier told me that I would get higher rewards the more people I killed. Even so, there were still almost 700 of us still here. The vast majority of people had not managed to kill anybody. After taking away the boy who'd managed to kill 13 people, the Instructor started our Training.