The Henhouse

June 10th, 2019 - 7:48

Testing room #7 was silent. No greetings, no instructions – just the blood panel, the treadmill, and the helmet.

There were no options. Justin had accepted this as soon as the door slid shut behind him. What he wouldn't have given now to surrender the stipend and walk away.... Yet for all his nerves, all his uncertainty, the inevitability of his next move was - in its own, odd way - relaxing. He approached the panel, gently placing his lesser-pierced right arm in the braces and shivering a bit at the chill of the metal.

This draw was the longest he'd endured. Again he felt the dizziness, the weakness in his legs, but this time he stood silent, waiting patiently as he could manage for the buzz of the vacuum to cease.

"Okay..." a shaky voice rang. Justin jumped at the noise then shook his shoulders a bit, embarassed by the reflex.

"Test number... 16..." it continued. "Get that helmet on, and we'll, ah, start up, here...."

The voice sounded... young, Justin realized. Like it wasn't quite sure what it was doing. The thought wasn't comforting. Nor was mounting the EEG helmet - but he did so, braced himself for the suction cups, then waited for his test to begin.

A virtual landscape appeared before him, but it was no longer the neat dojo he'd seen yesterday. This was an apartment, fashionably furnished, with a view over an attractive city skyline. There was a comfy-looking armchair just beside him; out of curiosity he side-stepped, and just as his calf bumped into its frame, an odd, painful sensation radiated from his helmet – not a shock like yesterday so much as a buzz: more generalized, but just as disorienting.

"Okay. No walking through stuff." The young voice added nothing. A knife soon materialized on a coffeetable before him. It was small, balanced - to the point, quite literally... a dagger, close combat. Justin's chest felt hollow. Picking it up with fingers still trembling, he supposed no further explanation could be needed. He could only prepare. Taking a deep breath, he tried to tense and untense his muscles, one by one....

Left arm, right arm, left shoulder, right....

Wave 1 appeared before him. A man stood across the coffeetable, facing him. Justin stared in awe. This wasn't an abstract figure like last time; it was vividly realistic. Justin watched this man's pupils constrict, watched his sweaty jaw tense as he drew a knife of his own from the back pocket of some kind of assassin's suit and lunged forward.

Freeze.

Justin held up a weak, knife-less arm protectively and watched the man skip across the coffeetable and sink his knife into the flesh under Justin's elbow. He and the weapon disappeared while a ruthless shock pulsed at Justin's forehead. He grabbed at the helmet - felt its smooth plastic outer coating - and suddenly considered ripping the contraption off....

But this wasn't a game, and the helmet wasn't all. He was trapped in the room, and in the House. Willing himself to focus, he scrambled up off the floor and steeled himself before his foe could respawn. He stood as he'd seen in the movies: feet shoulder-width, knees slightly bent, and the dagger crossed over his chest, clutched backhand. A shaky breath or two calmed his spinning head before the man reappeared.

Justin made his play. Blocking the man's downward strike with a forearm, he awkwardly swung out his right arm from his chest and spun the blade around in his palm, switching from backhand to overhand. The man lobbed his dagger at Justin's head, but the latter ducked while burying his own knife deep in the left abdomen. Eyes widening, pupils dilating, the simulation cluched at his wound before disintegrating in a gentle grey haze.

Justin felt no familiar rush of dopamine. Only his fear of the second wave, bordering on nausea.

His mind turned to Ivy's theory for the first time. Interpersonal. What does that even mean?

Wave 2 offered three new assilants. Lost in thoughts, Justin could hardly react before each bolted forward and stabbed him in the most convenient place – head, shoulder, kneecap.

The helmet shocks were additive. Justin collapsed on the floor a second time, crying out with the pain, which rippled from the head through body like a violent shiver.

Come to think of it, the room was growing quite cold....

"W- wait!" he pleaded. "Gimme... just, gimme a minute...."

But the voice was still silent. Wave 2 was restarting.

Did they forget me?

Determined not to panic, Justin felt his brain kick into overdrive while he scrambled upright, quickly cataloging modes of attack. He'd always hated strategy. It was too stop-and-go– plenty of dying and respawning - and an unwelcome mental workout, when all he wanted was turn his brain off a while.

But damn if he wasn't good at it.

The men approached once more, and Justin improvized. He ducked into an unsteady roll, popping up again behind a kitchen counter. Objects here weren't real to him, but they were real to them, he'd figured... so it made sense that he could use the countertop as a form of cover while he formulated an extension to his plan.

Which is....?

One man jumped on the countertops above him, ready to strike. Justin hopped away, backing up towards the kitchen walls. The wall hit his back prematurely, and felt solid, with no buzzes.... He realized this was the real wall, a wall of testing room #7. He wondered if anyone could hear him stumbling about the testing area. He hoped so.

In the apartment-scape, trapped, Justin held his knife out at arm's length as though holding a torch, expecting it to scare the lot away like wild animals. He wondered where countertop-man's buddies had gotten to... then he had an idea....

Justin swung an open hand at his right, just out of his periphery. The other two had had plenty of time to flank him... as predicted, his hand landed square on another enemy's chest. The move took this man by surprise, well enough that Justin could rip the dagger from his gloved hand while pulling on his suit. Aligning himself behind his new human shield, Justin quickly tossed the new dagger to his left hand, holding it up to his shield's neck, while pointing the other defensively at the other two.

The pair stared, then their faces went slack. Arms dropped to sides. Feet stood strictly shoulder-width apart. Justin waited for something to happen, and spent the pause catching his breath. Then, he noticed: there was an odd shimmering around the two men, a warping of their features – some hair, some skin, flickering in and out. Justin suddenly realized they were glitching.... Something in the design of the test, its code, had not prepared them for this scenario.

Staring was his mistake. His makeshift hostage - arms free - slapped away the knife holding him, yanked it out of Justin's hand, and sliced him across the neck with it. The sight of the knife lobbing for his throat made Justin's heart double over and his head go woozy, let alone the brutal helmet shock to follow.

After that shock he felt something in his chest shut down... or maybe it was waking up, he couldn't tell. The room was beginning to spin, and his skin felt both too hot and too cold, simultaneously.

"Sto-stop...."

Justin could only eke out the one word before he collapsed a third time. He couldn't so much as kneel on the floor. Instead he lay prone on it, curled up and shivering. His eyesight was leaving him. He was sure he'd vomit, but his gut didn't seem to have the energy.

It's okay, It's okay.... They're watching.... They'll help you....

Trying to regulate his breathing, he waited patiently for the sound of the door opening and paramedics rushing in, but not came. He waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Then the world slipped into darkness all around him.