Speed Run (a X33N and Alien: Isolation fanfiction)

Chapter 4

"Well, here goes nothing," I said, grabbing Gwen's hand and running at the elevator door.

"What are you doing?!" Gwen whisper yelled, pulling back. She lowered her voice when we heard another NPC scream and the Alien screech triumphantly. "You're not going to break down a steel door by ramming into it!"

"I'm not trying to. We're going to door clip. Unless you want to play with the xenomorph, that is. I'm sure it just wants to give you a big hug." There was another scream. "A big, scary hug."

Gwen looked extremely skeptical, but let me pull her along when I moved again. Doing the crouch sprint while in VR was a bit weird, but sure enough, my hand started to phase through the door. "Ha!" I said quietly. Gwen stared in amazement as I continued to work my way through the door. Pins and needles traveled along my arm then chest as I went further. I almost got stuck between the elevator's inner and outer doors, but Gwen gave me a push. I was about to thank her when I heard her yell through the metal, "The Alien's coming back! It sees us!" I hurriedly got myself through the rest of the way, one hand still clamped onto Gwen's, and started pulling her through. I had her about halfway through the inner door when she suddenly got yanked back. I strained as Gwen screwed her eyes shut in pain and stammered, "It's got my ankle!" My eyes widened as I saw a health bar flicker into existence next to her player model and start dropping.

"No you don't" I growled. I kicked the door, startling the Alien just enough that it let go of Gwen with a screech. Both of us fell over as Gwen made it the rest of the way into the elevator. Another ripple ran through the game as we hit the floor. I chuckled, still running on adrenaline as I stood up and hit the elevator button. "Well, that could have gone a lot worse...ohhhh g*d, your ankle!"

The Alien's claws had gone clean through her pants leg into the skin, leaving deep gouges that still bled. Glancing up, I saw Gwen's health bar was still slowly dropping as well. I started making a quick medkit while Gwen rolled her shredded pant leg up to expose the wound. I grew worried when she hissed in pain. "Hey, you alright?"

"No, actually. This hurts a lot," Gwen said shakily. "What I don't get is why it hurts in the first place," She added, meeting my eyes with a worried expression.

I frowned and moved her hands away from the wound, jabbing the medkit's needle into a patch of undamaged skin before asking a question, "The VR isn't supposed to do pain, is it?"

Gwen winced and shook her head as her health bar stabilized at half health. The bleeding slowed, but we both agreed it needed bandaging, just to be safe. Gwen sacrificed her blazer to tear into strips for the purpose, leaving her in a short sleeved blouse and ¾ of a pair of pants. It wasn't a pretty bandage by any means, but it did the job. We kept the remains of the blazer for later use, though I hoped we wouldn't need to.

"So, why can we feel pain in here, and why can we smell the Alien? Why can we actually feel items in game?!" I asked, shaking the empty medkit before tossing it aside. "You designed this VR system. So what the f*cking hell is going on here?!" I yelled at the ceiling, intending the question for Gwen as well as Devon and Michael.

"I'll explain, but we should keep moving," Gwen sighed and motioned for me to help her up as the elevator doors opened. She insisted on limping forward on her own, grimacing every few steps, and I stayed close, just in case she needed help. When we reached the room with the motion detector, she slid into a chair to rest. "My tech can do some amazing things, but what makes it exceptional isn't the graphics per se. It's the neural interface." When she saw me looking at her like she'd suddenly grown a second head, she elaborated. "The helmet interacts with the wearer's brain. It uses your own imagination to enhance the world it projects, adding all the small things that wouldn't normally be there, the things that make a world more real. That's why our player models look exactly like us," She said, motioning to herself.