The first thing Zheus felt when he regained consciousness was a lingering pain to the head.
He wasn't a whiner, in his time in the military they trained him to endure torture without making a sound. He had been shot, stabbed and electrocuted without letting out a single word of complaint.
However, none of that could even hold a candle to the pain he was feeling in this moment.
It was like something was trying to tear him apart from the inside, shredding his very brain from within.
No matter how much he tried to restrain himself, in the end a woeful howl came out of his lips.
He tried to wrap his hands around his head, almost as to attempt to contain the agony that he was feeling.
A confused look appeared in his eyes when his hands completely missed his target, falling flat on his face. Zheus knew that pain could muddle thinking processes and coordination, but this was exaggerated.
- What the fuck... ???
The lamentation stopped halfway through while his eyes burst wide open in surprise.
A long cold shiver ran down his spine: the voice that just came out his mouth wasn't even vaguely similar to his.
His fingers ran all over his face, finding features that didn't belong to him.
First, there was confusion. Then rage began to build up in his eyes, as he begun to scream.
- I have rights! You can't put me in a simulation without my consent you fucking bastards!
The excruciating pain was almost all gone, but Zheus expected no less now that he understood what it was happening.
Simulation. They put him a fucking simulation.
This was bleeding edge technology that not many people had access to. The capital necessary to build a simulated environment was in the order of dozens of billions.
However, rich people didn't even go close to the thing: they weren't realistic enough and the transmission method was incredibly painful.
Even if most of the procedure was done under anesthesia, the last part couldn't be done under the use of drogues and it was so incredibly painful that even trained soldiers couldn't bear it.
Plus, the longer one stayed in a simulation the higher was the risk of brain damage. Staying inside for more than a few days would lead to certain death.
So, while the technology was incredible, very few people used it.
Yet Zheus knew that governments surely already started to used it to circumvent those human right legislation that they loved to champion so much.
Torturing somebody's avatar inside a simulation was still not technically torturing him, as their body was safe and sound in the real world.
Zheus didn't think that it was here to be tortured: not because he trusted the police or the country, but because he wasn't that of a big deal in the criminal world.
The who and why did put him inside a ten billion euro dream machine.?
Not even for a second he thought that it could be the handiwork of his people. Those morons had forgotten who he was the moment he was arrested and now they were probably already killing each other to take over his position.
So who did it?
Puzzled, Zheus tried to stand up. It wasn't hard as he thought: he didn't fell or stumble down. He didn't need to learn how to move, it was just very weird.
He was feeling constricted as if he was wearing clothes that were too much small for his body.
Once on his feet, his eyes ran all around the room he was in.
The first image he registered was the open skull of a child, his brain slowly dripping from the fissure in the form of sticky grey liquid.
He mustn't even have had ten years: he was thin and incredibly pale. His facial features screamed "Japan", but he also had long white dreads decored with silver beads and tied up in a man bun.
A terrified look could still be seen in his grey eyes. The child was seated on the same metal bench on which Zheus was laying when he woke up, his neck reclined in an unnatural fashion.
- Are they trying to scare me with this? I guess they're not the government... or they haven't read my file...
Zheus thought while chuckling.
Other than the dead child, there wasn't anything else in what seemed to be some kind of little metal booth. The light came from a crystal shaped light-bulbs, near a small door that seemed to be the only way to enter and exit the structure.
Without granting the corpse a second glance, Zheus got to the door and tried to open it: it wasn't locked but it was blocked by something.
After using a bit of force, he managed to open it a bit. It turned out that there were meny merchandise boxes that blocked the door.
A strong smell of blood and death immediately filled his lungs. He recognized it: it was the smell of the battlefield and a very bloody one.
He peeked in what he thought was another room and saw that it was some sort of roofless carriage instead.
There were many closed wooden boxes, probably merchandise of some sort, nicely packed on all its surface. A headless group of camels was bind to the carriage.
He forced his way out with another couple of pushes, then started suspiciously looking around.
After a couple of seconds, he realized that all this time he had been inside a metallic booth that was located on the very front of the carriage.
Long black leather reins connected the dead camels and a headless man seated on the roof of the metal cubicle, hands still tightened around them.
Zheus was very surprised at the complexity and attention to details of this simulation. He always thought that inside one of these things the world would have been some weird form of pixel graphics mess.
Instead, the realism here was incredible.
All around him, as far as the eyes could see, there were numerous other carriages. Some were similar to that he woke up in, while others were way bigger or way smaller.
Sand filled the spaces between the carriages, golden most times, except for the many traces of red leading to shredded bodies, probably attacked by some kind of big wild animal.
They went so far as to create the sun, and it was insanely realistic. Its scorching rays blinded Zheus for a few seconds when he dared to look at it directly.
Zheus was now completely bewildered: why the hell would someone create a simulation so amazing only to put a small mafia boss inside it, giving him the body of a teenager?
He tried to call out for the developer a couple of time, but no one responded.
Then, when his irritation was starting to mount anew, he saw a weird looking young man appear from behind some carriages.
It almost seemed that he wouldn't stop at all, but he suddenly made a feint and turned over to face Zheus while also taking out a blue blade and spouting something vaguely sounding Japanise.
Not actual Japanise, just something that vaguely resembled it, at least from the perspective of someone who didn't talk it. Too bad for him that Zheus could talk actual decent Japanise.
- You got to be kidding me... wait... isn't that a Suna headband? Jesus Christ...
Thought Zheus. While inside he was cringing, on the outside he gave the man a big smile and started to get close to him.
- Listen buddy, I don't want to break your immersion but I'm not into ninja. Care to explain what am I doing here?