9.53 – Glitch

So very last second I know, I barely managed this one in time

Warning: There are lot of image credits I could give out, but due to the sheer amount, if you’re wondering about something in particular you’ll have to ask me.

Warningx2: BIG CHAPTER

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I had a lot of fun with this one, and I worked real hard on it (pulled out them artistic talents). Hope you enjoy!

 

Nikolas’ POV

I pressed the confirm button and moments later the white landscape began to change and morph into something with a lot more color.

A waft of salty air brushed past my face and I heard the sounds of critters and birds. It felt a little too real. For a game that can be a little scary. Game overs must hurt like hell if I can feel something like a breeze.

I felt different. Taller…stronger….shirtless?

I looked at my hands, which had black markings traveling alongside my arm, and – well my skin is purple.

Something else feels different…I can’t put my finger on it. But it feels like I might be able to use my astral power here. The game might’ve copied it for my avatar.

I looked up and noticed an information box. It held the basic rules and goals of the game. Turns out the program decided to put me on defense with one other team member, whose code name is Ice Queen.

I think I have a small idea of who that might be, heh.

From what I understand, I have to get to the fortress where my teammate was spawned at before the attack team does. We have to defend it till the day ends. Hopefully time passes faster than in real life, or else this could be a long day.

The info box also elaborated on my special ability. Or more specifically the weapon I could summon. The instructions told me to-

A shrieky laugh suddenly resounded over the sound of a nearby waterfall, followed by a roar and a slight shake of the earth. Like something big had just stomped its foot.

I swerved around, searching for the source as the info box flickered off.

In between the trees I spotted something big, red, and with large pointy teeth.

I gulped.

Nobody told me we had to fight monsters.

What am I saying this is a video game. I’ve played my fair share of rpgs.

I pinched myself and felt the pain in my forearm.

Wonder how much it would hurt to get eaten? Wonder if I’d respawn?

Eh I’m not that keen to jump into a battle.

Just as I was thinking that, the dragon wavered and faded away, like a mirage in a desert.

Sure it might’ve been up there for only a few moments, but it was big enough to be spotted all over the island, I’m sure.

Shoot, did someone go and kill it? Is that why it disappeared? Some people have already adapted pretty quickly. I better do the same.

I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. A map would be wonderfully convenient.

The thought crossed my mind and an info box appeared, with a map on it. Convenient.

“Huh. I’m literally at the other end of where I’m supposed to be.” I grimaced. Hey, maybe I could just short cut through the small body of water.

Huh, guess they can’t show me where the other three volunteers are. Just me and my teammate – well Sal.

I glanced around until I finally caught sight of the tip of the ‘fortress’ I was supposed to reach.

A quick swim! This should be easy peasy.

Oh shit, that’s steep. I’m going to break something trying to get down.

Ah but wait! I’m in a video game aren’t I? I’ve had games where I’d needed to jump from way higher.

Even with my self-applied assurance, I was still hesitant, tapping my feet on the edge and inching closer. I leaned over the edge, wondering if I could just slide down on my ass or something, when the ledge I was leaning over became a mini dirt avalanche and dragged me down with it.

I tumbled down the hill, feeling the scrapes on my skin, and tasting the dirt in my mouth.

My tumble became a free fall, at which point I was way past panicking as I had a clear view of the ground coming to me fast. Head first was probably not going to end well for me.

On instinct I tried to activate my astral power. If only I could just stop time! Gather time to think! Find some away to get the fuck out of this situation.

I felt my power strain, and my surroundings flickered slightly towards the familiar bleak landscape. For a moment I seemed to manage to enter my astral world, my body suddenly falling faster than I was, before I zapped back to it, and hit the ground with a painful crunch.

FUCK

That hurt!

I respawned back to my starting point, my neck and back still remembering with painful reality how they’d just been broken.

Well there’s one thing I can tell the people who made this game. Lower the damn pain level.

I gave my shoulders a roll and glanced at the map again. I think I’m going to go with the long way round.

God that really hurt, jeesus.

I walked down the laid out jungle path. It seemed pretty straight forward…which is why I got a bad feeling. It was too easy. This is a video game…there’s got to be some kind of obstacle. Apart from the painful death I’d just experienced.

“Hey!” Somebody called out. I glanced around as I kept walking, before I spotted someone orange on a rock. Their username offered over their head momentarily. “I’d watch out if I were you, the place is filled with-”

My foot suddenly slipped out from underneath me, a rope tying around my ankle and flipping me upside down in a sharp movement.

“-traps.”

The rope – which was actually a vine from one of the nearby trees – seemed to grow exponentially around my legs and wrists.

In a matter of seconds I was so effectively tied upside down that I couldn’t move any of my limbs. My head was the only one allowed any kind of movement.

Jeesus I’m bad at this game so far.

I nevertheless attempted to struggle against my restraints. I couldn’t summon my weapon or anything to cut these down too. That kind of required my hand to be free.

The other player, most likely from team offense (her name wasn’t Ice queen, and she certainly doesn’t look like one), hopped off from her spot on the rock. Probably to come gloat at the situation.

I tried to lift myself up, but with no luck. How was I going to play the game if I was stuck like this for the entirety of it?

She stopped a few feet away.

“I did warn you. And it was on the map.” She said trying to keep a deadpan face. Her bright eyes were amused though. Well I think. Kind of hard to tell upside down.

“The map wasn’t clear on that.” I gave a slightly embarassed smile. “I know we’re on opposite teams and all, but do you mind helping me out?”

She considered me for a few seconds before nodding. “I can see what I can do.” She took out some thick looking piece of wood (this isn’t easy to decipher upside down! I can’t feel my toes.). She squeezed it and light suddenly erupted from both sides, curling and extending out to form a bow.

She took an arrow from her quiver then, notching it as it lit up as well, and aiming it right at me.

“Woah! That’s a bit extreme! We don’t need to go there! I just died, I don’t want to relive the experience! And it was really painful, my neck still aches. Serious, I fell off that cliff over there. Unstable rocks I wouldn’t go there if I were you. It’s prone to random avalanches, must be in the code…” I rambled off. Doesn’t she have a pocket knife? Or something?

“I know. I saw you slip.” She said with a slight smirk.

“Well that’s humiliating.” I cleared my throat, nearly choking on my saliva as it followed the rules of gravity. “I’m sure there’s a better quicker way-”

“Nope.” She said, and she let go of the arrow.

In the neck!?

At this point my head is just going to roll right off!

After a quick shake off, I headed back towards the path. This time I headed for the trees on the side, from where Firefly had come from.

I weaved through the shrubbery and the hanging vines, extremely glad when the traps all turned out to be on the path. At some point a vine passed through my arm, but I didn’t think much of it. This is a game after all.

It’s when I got stuck in a tree that I started to get annoyed.

Yep. My avatar glitched in a tree.

And that’s another feedback I’ll have to comment on when this ends. I struggled, half of my body outside of the tree, and my legs so glitched I couldn’t feel them. I’ve truly become a tree man. I let my upper half hang loose in exasperation.

“Ok, would not mind another arrow in the neck right now. Doesn’t feel like this glitch is going to fix itself any time soon.” I glanced around a little hopefully, but I was alone.

Shit. I might have to take drastic measures. I willed my info box to appear again and looked for a respawn button. When I was unsuccessful, I went into the tutorial to find out how to summon my weapon.

The black markings on my arms were apparently the key to doing that.

A mini scythe. Guess it goes with the pseudo Reaper the game chose for me. Still…I wish it would’ve been a katana or a sword. That’d be cooler. And easier to handle.

I groaned. There are so many things wrong with my thought process right now.

I can’t believe I have to kill myself to get out of this glitch.

This game is turning dark quickly.

But hey, at least there’s an instant death by poison option on this weapon.

Boring, but the quicker the better I guess.

I respawned again – seriously done with dying – and I was mentally reliving my death again as a mini info box popped up.

Ice Queen built an Ice wall

Sounds like my team mate has been a lot more productive.

I jogged towards the cliff. My first death, such good times.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t go too close to the edge. I just wanted to get a good look at the icy barrier, not tumble down to my death again.

It was definitely impressive and looked like it would do the job. I might not have to even do anything!

Then again it’s pretty warm out. Wonder how long this ice wall is going to last.

The thought crossed my mind and an info box popped up. Well seems I have two hours before the wall melts.

I eyed the jungle and the path skeptically. Get caught in a trap again…or risk getting glitched again?

My eyes caught on something bright and orange. Wasn’t hard to guess who it was.

She was fun.

From what I could see, she was jogging along a bridge. A bridge that didn’t seem to be glitching. Or filled with traps for that matter. I pulled up my map just to confirm there wasn’t anything wrong with the bridge.

Let’s go see her again.

I started to head through the shrubbery again to reach the bridge, but when my foot went through a rock, I decided this really wouldn’t work. There had to be some other way. Wait! Didn’t I see something…

I pulled up the tutorial for my summoning my weapon again, scrolling past the basics until I found it. Teleporting! I had the ability to throw my scythe somewhere and teleport to it.

On second thought, maybe this would’ve worked better to get me out of that glitch. I’m surprised I skipped past it and went straight to killing…

Bah, there are so little games where you can kill yourself with your own weapon. Can’t pass that up!

I frowned.

Was that-?

I didn’t-?

I did think that, but I didn’t-?

On top of weird masochist thoughts I’m getting a headache now.

I summoned my weapon, aimed and threw it down towards the bridge.

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I managed to teleport all the way to Sal – er cough – I mean Firefly.

But I mean come on, it’s pretty obvious. I just assumed she’d be Ice Queen, but thinking on it she never liked the nickname so it was probably the other girl. Or one of the guys, who knows?

Maybe that’s why her avatar has a fire theme. The fact that she doesn’t like the term Ice Queen I mean. Blue suits her better than red though.

She was waving at two specs in the distance – the rest of team offense I assume – before she noticed me.

“How did you get here so fast!?”

“I even glitched in a tree before I got here.” I hmphed proudly. “Turns out I can teleport, pretty neat huh?”

“That’s chea-”

Info boxes appeared for both of us with a big flashing warning sign: METEOR

We both looked up to see a big flaming rock going straight for the rest of team offense.

One of the two spread out his hands and a huge stop sign appeared. Somehow assuming the meteor could read.

Unsurprisingly the meteor didn’t care for it. Suprisingly, when the meteor touched it, it just vanished like a mirage. Just like the dragon. It was just an illusion?

Once the first kid’s plan had failed, the other one stepped out, and when he spread out his hands, strings shot out of them.

That was a lot more effective. The strings wove together to form a net that somehow withstood the flaming meteor.

Right, can’t forget this is a video game after all.

The Puppeteer then pulled the strings close to his chest, making the huge net straighten and propell the meteor back up, before they disappeared themselves. The meteor landed in the ocean several miles away.

The two boys cheered, high fived and ran in circles.

I didn’t have much doubt about who they were.

I turned back to Firefly, passing my hand through my hair.

I let out a short laugh. “Now that’s cheating.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard to win with that on my side.” She said with a slight smirk.

“Hey now! Have you seen the wall my teammate made?”

She grew serious. “The sooner this gam-”

The ground completely disappeared underneath us, without any warning info box whatsoever, and swallowed us whole into pure darkness.

The fall lasted about 2 seconds before I felt myself get respawned again.

You know, psychologically, dying over and over again – because my brain sure seems convinced of this – is really horrible. This aspect of the game really needs to be looked over.

I opened up my fancy menu info box again, hoping to find a way to turn off the pain setting. It’s disturbingly obvious how much of a beta version this game is.

I jogged towards the cliff, summoning my weapon as I did.

As I reached it, I noticed a rope had appeared going from the waterfall to the shore, right beside the ice wall. The kid who’d stopped the meteor had created a mini bridge for Sal – I mean Firefly to cross over.

I watched as she hoped off the bridge and onto the strings, sliding down the shortcut her teammate had made for her.

Well I can’t let her reach the shore before I do! I took a step back. Let’s see how far I can throw my scythe… I brought my arm back, and with a huff I threw as hard as I could towards the shore.

Considering the amount of glitching I’d been doing so far, I suppose I’d kind of hoped for my scythe to at least glitch right through the strings.

But nope! It hit the rope straight on and cut it in half, before continuing its journey to shore.

Sal stumbled into free fall.

I panicked. After I got past the oh shit I went straight to fuck, Sal!.

It maybe should’ve occurred to me earlier that technically she’d be fine. She’d respawn like we’d just done and that would be that.

But in the moment I got really scared for her – especially considering she was falling to her death by my fault – and on reflex I tried to switch to my astral mode again.

That got wonky and didn’t work again, and Sal hit the water only to respawn a few moments later.

God, I feel horrible. I really didn’t mean to kill her!

My scythe reached the shore and I teleported to it, still grimacing from guilt.

Ugh, I don’t feel so good.

A strange unease had been creeping on me for the last few moments, leading up to painful headaches again and an uncomfortable squeeze of my chest.

It faded as quickly as it had appeared and I suddenly realized I’d at some point stood up and dismissed my weapon.

The rest of team offense, Chicken boy and Puppeteer, were standing in front of me, holding the strings and looking at me like I’d just killed their dog.

Pssh! Not like a dog dying is that sad.

“You killed them.” Puppeteer said.

“You should be ashamed.” Chicken boy added with a sad shake of his head.

“It’s just a piece of string. We can get you guys a new one at the pet store.” My mouth said condescendingly.

I didn’t say that. I swear I didn’t! I frowned, bringing my hand up to my mouth. The words had come out on their own. Involuntarily. I DIDN’T say them.

Before I could dwell (…panic) any further, a flaming arrow suddenly found itself between my feet, making me jump.

I looked up at the bridge, where a fuming Firefly had her bow still aimed at me.

“I didn’t mean to-” I started to shout at her. My attempt at an apology was cut short-

-by an explosion. The arrow she’d shot at me blew up between my feet, effectively kiling me enough to respawn me.

Okay, so I guess I kind of deserved that – for killing her.

“Oh well played!” I exclaimed – no not me. Who is controlling my mouth right now!? Not just my mouth, my arms, my legs, even my head are moving randomnly! “Let’s go find a creative way to kill her in kind.”

“What the fuck!?” I shouted as the panic built up in my chest. For a moment, I felt like I had complete control again. This game is not funny.

Then I lost control of my limbs again. “Come onnnn, it’s my turn now!”

I tried to shout again, do something that didn’t involve me being only able to look through my own eyes, but I was stuck. Frozen in place while I felt my body move against my will.

There was still something I had control over at least.

I tried flipping on my astral mode and it sort of worked. It was still incredibly wonky, and the headache I got this time made me squint.

My astral form popped (yes popped, it was fucking weird) out of my body and hung in the air like I was swimming in jell-o. I felt a connection to my body, like a rope tying me down. My avatar body continued to move on its own, this time looking deflated.

“Don’t be mad I just want to try things out. Sitting and doing nothing is so damn darn hard! I’ll be nice though.” It said looking down at it’s feet with a shrug.

Just give me back my body already. Whatever kind of game glitch you are. I reached for my avatar and got pulled out of astral mode.

I stood still for several moments. Waiting.

Whatever had happened was over. I still had complete control over my own body. There were no weird thoughts in my head.

Still…I had the odd feeling I wasn’t completely alone. Plus I now had a mild headache that wouldn’t leave.

I heard team offense on the shore and jogged to the cliff in time to see them grouped up and trying to figure out a way to get past the ice wall.

I can’t shake this dreadful feeling of being watched, like something is right behind me, whispering in my ear. Doesn’t matter how many times I look, there’s still nothing. We really need to finish this game.

***

No one’s POV

“What are you doing napping!? You were supposed to watch the monitors!” She sighed and took a sip of her coffee, gravitating towards the screens to watch how their test subjects were faring.

She nearly spit her coffee onto the computers. She picked up an eraser and she chucked it at her superior.

“W-what? What’s going on?” Mr.Hans grumbled as he woke up.

“You were supposed to watch the monitors.” She hissed under her breath.

“I was, I was, I just closed my eyes for a second.”

“You should’ve spotted this from the very beginning.” She snapped.

“Hey, someone’s in the orange.” He mumbled as he gravitated towards the monitors.

“Yes. He’s not faring well. He’s stressed.”

“Who-? Oh!” The man said, suddenly quite interested. “I knew accepting him was a good idea. We’re getting good results now aren’t we.”

“Good resul-something is wrong. The program sent us a message and you missed it. There was a glitch, it found two subjects in one.”

“Two? Multiple personnalities shouldn’t affect the game.” He said. “Oh wait…Could he be one of the ‘special’ Whitelights? Did we hit jackpot?”

“Your reputation isn’t important right now. The game is registering his avatar as glitched, but it can’t fix the problem. His body suffered a panic attack three times and you missed it because you were napping. We need to pull him out now before it gets worse.”

“No!” He exclaimed, grabbing her arm. “No, it’s fine now. See his vitals are stable.”

“Stable as in his stress levels haven’t changed. They’re still at a worrisome level.” She said reaching for the controls again.

“Don’t wake him.” He snapped, radiating that classic intimidating Hans aura. “My family is going to want to see these results.”

She bit her cheek, but did as she was told.

***

Nikolas’ POV

I reached the shore before they’d come up with an effective solution. As I approached I overheard them chatting about maybe slinging one of Puppeteer’s ropes over or using Firefly’s arrows to climb over it.

To be honest even I had no idea how I was going to get through. The thing was huge, thick, strong, and there was still a lot of time before it melted away.

Being on team defense, I should have some kind of special access.

As I got close enough to the wall to touch it, an info box appeared.

No, not an info box, a chat box from my teammate.

Ice Queen: Use your key. It’s meant for the door, but it should work with the wall.

My key? Since when do I have a—

Oh! Of course! The thing around my neck I kept dismissing as a random accessory.

I got closer to the wall, taking the key from my neck and holding it up.

Part of the wall lit up and melted to form a small door. I hurried through just as the others noticed me and the wall closed behind me.

I stuck my tongue out at them as they all crowded to the now once again smooth ice wall.

“Good luck you’re going to need it!”

I blinked and realized I was back on the other side of the wall. Or maybe I’d never gone through the first time? I frowned, another glitch?

Chicken boy started to walk towards me with an eye on the key around my neck, so I quickly used it to pass through the wall again – or I guess for the first time?

It’s once I passed through that I realized I’d been tricked. And by the smirk on the kid’s face I bet he was behind it. His ability was something along the lines of creating an illusion, like that random stop sign.

He’d just made me think I hadn’t gone through the wall, but what I thought was me going through a second time, was actually me leaving the safety of the ice wall.

“We’d like to borrow your key please and thank you.” Chicken boy said as his friend leaned up against his back. A second later strings shot out from his fingers heading straight for me.

Damn I got duped pretty easily. I glanced at Sal who was watching with slight amusement.

Well if we win or they win, the game’s going to finish one or way another. I know when I’m beat.

Just as I was expecting the inevitable loss of my key, my hand came up and summoned my weapon.

 

“It’s not going to be THAT easy.” My mouth smirked as the strings wrapped around to restrain me.

My hand brought my scythe up to my neck and I realized what was about to happen.

“Fucking powdered donuts.” Puppeteer said, shaking his head as my own hand slit my throat.

I respawned with absolutely no control over my body again. I couldn’t take being stuck in my brain, so I risked my astral mode again, knowing full well I’d get a headache again after this.

My body let out a nervous sigh and threw its arms around.

“Ahh I know I said I’d play nice, but I did my best, I really did. It’s hard not to want to play.” It said. My astral continued to flicker worriedly.

“I don’t really care.” I said, standing in front of my avatar. “Just, whatever you are, whoever, please leave me alone and go bother someone else. I sure hope this isn’t actually part of the game.”

“I’m assuming you can hear me.” My body stated as if I hadn’t said anything.

Oh. The fact the he can’t hear me and hasn’t established any kind of eye contact…must mean he can’t see me. Just like with anyone else while I’m in astral mode.

“Cause I can hear you when you’re playing. So you can probably hear me. Look, don’t hate me, but I’m going to keep playing okay? Just for a little while.” He declared.

“No, no, I’m not okay with this. Give me back my body.” I insisted fruitlessly. “Or avatar or whatever!”

“Awesome! You’re a great guy I can tell!” He exclaimed and I groaned as I watched him rush for the cliff. “The map said there was a giant shrimp monster in the lake! We gotta go tame it!”

What is this? Is this what the game meant by two avatars? A bug in the game?

How do I reverse this?

“Oh, action seems to be brewing. Firefly’s got the right idea!” Said the being controlling my avatar.

I floated over, peering down at the scene.

Sal was shooting the wall up with explosive arrows…and it was working!

The wall was steadily melting as she shot arrow after arrow, her teammates cheering her on.

“We better go defend the wall!” My avatar exclaimed, summoning the scythe to teleport to shore.

The quicker team offense wins, the quicker this game ends and I get out of this unsettling situation. So, I put all the effort and concentration I had into controlling that arm. Just that arm, so he couldn’t throw the weapon. And it worked! His arm was – I mean my arm was frozen mid swing and my avatar was casting confused glances at it.

“Ok, ok, I get it. We can see how this works out! Our teammate is coming out to help defend anyway!” He exclaimed, and I let go of my control. Good thing he kept his word and because my head was starting to swim and I’d quickly gotten dizzy and disoriented. It had taken everything out of me just to stay in astral mode and control that arm. I didn’t want to turn off my astral mode. I didn’t want to risk being stuck permanently.

Ice Queen left the fortress, a waft of cold leaking out of it before the door shut behind her.

Sal stopped shooting explosive arrows long enough for the smoke to clear and the thinning ice to become apparent.

The two stood still, representing each other’s opposites, and for a moment it seemed like this scene was more than just a game for them. Even though I’m pretty sure they’ve never met. Maybe this was purely based on appearances and avatars.

Ice Queen brought her hand up and summoned her magic, the ice thickening around the wall, fortifying it.

Firefly notched another sparking arrow. She said something I couldn’t hear, which made her teammates whoop with a renewed vigor.

Then she began shooting arrow after arrow again, each explosion seeming bigger than the last, and as the ice melted Ice Queen refroze it.

Being on her team however, I could see her stats going down. She wouldn’t be able to keep fueling the ice wall forever. My guess was Sal probably didn’t have an unlimited amount of ammo too. It was just a matter of who ran out first. Meanwhile, I could set about trying to regain control of this glitch…

“Eek! Our teammate’s in trouble!” My body exclaimed. “We need to go help her!”

“We don’t need to. Sal’s also probably almost out of juice.” I said to thin air. “And I mean, if Ice Queen loses it’s not a bad thing…”

“I’m going to help her out.” My body declared and I went to try and control the arm again, but he must’ve assumed I’d go for it because he summoned the scythe in the other hand and threw it before I could react.

When he teleported to it – I was still on the cliff –  he had the scythe drawn back and ready to strike his opponent down – Firefly.

Nope, nope, nope, killing Sal is not only not reccomended, but extremely counter productive.

I charged at him, made my way over from the cliff in a fraction of a second and clapsed his shoulders and tried to pull him out of my body. I tried to do what I do to Zac when I’m not in a video game. Extract his astral form I guess you could say.

In the real world I kind of need my body to do that, since it casts a spell, but at this point I was ready to try anything to gain back some control.

He lost movement and hit the ground instead.

I had no idea what I was pulling at, or whether this trick really working at all, considering my astral mode was still glitchy and weird – had been from the start. It was clearly not meant to be used inside a video game.

Whatever I was really doing though, seemed to be working. My avatar was immobilized on the ground.

But the game started to glitch. The whole world began shifting or zapping. The other players started to freak out, and I attempted to stop using my astral mode, because clearly the game wasn’t meant to handle it. But I couldn’t, I was stuck mid process trying to remove the glitch from my avatar, with the world about to lag itself into oblivion.

“Oh I’m so excited!”

***

No one’s POV

“The magic levels in the room are rising…and they’re coming from him. This is why we have a rule against supernaturals Hans.” She hissed as her subject’s levels started to spike.

“They said he couldn’t use magic without a wand, and even then it’s weak.”

“I don’t care what they said, he’s trying to use magic right now, with or without a wand.” She snapped.

“His body can’t do it. It can’t channel magic without a wand. Yet, it’s still trying to. This is unbelievable! Look at it, we can see the magic trying to form in the air!”

“Yes and it’s messing with our equipement! We need to terminate this now before something blows up.”

“Nothing is going to blow up.” He scoffed.

She gestured impatiently at the monitors and with a roll of his eyes he set about terminating the program from there, while she went and completed the process on each of the volunteer’s machines, starting with the troublesome subject.

Entering the room felt toxic to her.

She hadn’t been able to see the magical fog forming, only the trained eye could do that, but she could smell magic. And the boy stank of it. Not your normal magic either. This was foul smelling magic, a smell that reminded her of choking on toxic gas.

She reached the machine and started initializing a shut down just as part of the fog concentrated enough to let out a sharp spark of magic. It bounced onto her hands, giving her a temporary electric tingling feeling, and on two of the machines, momentarily shocking the two systems. One of those had been the boy’s machine, the other was the closest, one of the girl’s.

The researcher managed to enter the final commands and shut the over taxed game off. Instantly the magic in the room stilled, and as the woman went to each station to completely electronically unplug everyone, the magic slowly dissipated into the air. The levels in the room were back to normal, now only composed of the artificial magic illegally used in the experiment.

The woman made it back to the Whitelight boy’s side as he slowly opened his eyes. He cast a glance around, before pushing himself up to a sitting position, moving his limbs as if testing if they still worked.

She glanced back at the window, where her superior merely shrugged at her.

“How are you feeling?” She asked him as he got up, his back facing her. “Any headaches? Dizziness? Nauseous? Do you feel tired? Maybe a little drained?” Her hands inched towards him as if expecting him to faint.

She eyed him, waiting an answer.

“I’m great! Thank you.”