"Get ripped off by three orphans! Bet on the shell game!" Henry, wiry Mediterranean boy, strutted in front of a small stand and shouted to the passerby.
Mia set behind a fold-up table, slowly shuffling three cups in front of her.
Her brown bangs fell over her eyes, and she hid inside an oversized, shabby hoody. Next to her, Tom lounged lazily on a folding chair. The chair seemed comically small compared to his massive body. At the age of twelve, he had already passed the 6 feet mark. A sign leaned against him. "Support the Local Youth Center"
"Get your good deed of the day over with. Play with some orphans." Henry yelled.
An elderly woman strolled by, her eyes glued to Mia's Table.
"Oh, I love old school cons!" She exclaimed and stopped. "This is the old army game, where you have to guess under which cup the coin sits, right?"
"Yes, Ma'am. Indeed, take your chance for only one Euro. If you guess right, you get two bucks back. If you get it wrong, you can leave with the good feeling of having supported a worthy cause!" Henry said.
"Great! But aren't the cups usually the same color?" The salt and pepper-haired lady stared at the three mismatched mugs. "You shouldn't make it too obvious that you are going to switch the coin around. Or maybe this is a new approach in which everybody knows the trick, but you still have to execute it perfectly? How exciting!"
"Yes, Ma'am. We are the most honest swindlers around."
The woman laughed but secured her toaster-shaped handbag after she pulled out a fiver.
Mia showed her a dried white bean and put it under the red cup. Then the hands of the girl began to blur while the woman gaped.
Suddenly she stopped and lifted the blue cup. The bean was under it.
The woman clapped. "Excellent! Haven't seen a thing."
Mia started again and went even faster.
"Red, blue, green. Where is the bean?" Henry sang.
On the last note, Mia stopped and looked up.
"Uhm… green!" The woman guessed.
Mia lifted the cup, and the bean was under it.
"You are a natural, Ma'am! Congratulations on winning one Euro. Do you want to go double or nothing?" Henry asked.
"No, thank you, dear. I'll leave with a win, and you keep the five Euros. It's been a pleasure. Good luck with your fundraising."
"Thank you, Ma'am. Have a splendid day!" Henry waved after her.
When she had left, he counted their money again.
"Lady and Gentleman, we have enough to start our career in crime!" Henry grinned.
Mia shook her head. "We are earning all right, mate. Let's just keep this up a while longer."
"You'll be fifteen years soon. If the pigs catch us then, you would have to do real time. Now is the best chance for taking risks. We can do whatever we want and get away with only a slap on the wrist." Henry chirped. "What's your opinion, Tom?"
Tom shrugged.
"Mia?"
She sighed but nodded.
"It will be fun. We will be like Robin Hood, stealing from the mean rich and giving it to the poor orphans."
Only two days later, Henry had a plan, and Mia a new set of lock picks.
Their first target was Hazy Harry, a sleazy businessman and the owner of the gambling joint Gold Spring.
Tom knew a clerk who was working there from his MMA Gym. Gross G had bragged about how much money Harry made while he pummeled Tom to pulp. His loose lips gave the teens additional information to exploit like Harry used to sleep Tuesday nights with his mistress and delayed depositing the daily income for pleasure.
Wednesday morning, Henry spammed the social media of Harry's wife with pictures of him and the Tuesday Lady.
As soon as the boss left the venue, Tom entered.
"Hey, kiddo. Aren't you a bit young to join the club?" Gross G hollered.
"Oh come on, G. After the beating last week, you owe me at least a few chips to have a bit of fun." Tom approached the desk.
Mia and Henry arrived, wearing a blond wig and a fake beard respectively. Tom's impressive statue blocked the line of sight between the entrance and the first row of machines, and they used his distraction to vanish behind the one-armed bandits.
"Don't gamble away your future. You are young, you have talent, all you have to do is train hard and keep your nose clean, and the future is yours." Gross G didn't hide the envy in his voice. "Just looking at your potential makes me want to smash you to the ground."
"Sure, smash away." Tom glared at him.
Henry showed Mia his upturned thumb and pointed at the corridor to the backroom. The two teens sneaked around the corner.
"Tom is doing great!" Henry whispered, giggling.
"Shut up." Mia hissed. She checked the first door, and a broom closet was behind it. The second door led to a loo, but the last one was locked. Mia fetched her instruments, and a few seconds later, the lock clicked.
Henry flashed her another thumbs up. His head flicked from Mia to the fighting sounds coming out of the gambling hall, back and forth, but he was grinning like a maniac.
They entered the small office. It contained a desk with a laptop, two chairs, and a painting of a naked woman bathing in a golden spring.
While Mia searched the drawers, Henry glanced under the picture.
"Found the safe." He smirked and took the painting of the wall.
"Good, let me handle it."
Meanwhile, Gross G had Tom in a headlock. The teen struggled, but when his vision turned black, he tapped on the biceps of the older guy.
Gross G let him go, and Tom slumped to the ground.
"Crawl home, kiddo." Gross G emphasized the statement with a kick to Tom's side.
"The fuck I will." Tom picked himself up, but his knees wobbled, and he had to lean on the desk to support his weight.
"You lost. Do you want to lose again?" Gross G sneered at him but froze when his gaze caught the display of the security footage. The door to Harry's office had opened, a head poked out, and then it closed again.
"You dumb shit." He yelled and flattened Tom with a haymaker before he ran to the office.
Mia concentrated on cracking the safe when the door slammed open.
Without warning, Gross G lunged at Henry and took him down.
"Help!" Henry yelled from under the bigger man.
Mia lifted the safe and dropped it on Gross G.
Later, she wouldn't remember how it happened or what gave her the strength. However, the next scene was etched into her memory for eternity: Henry gaping at the blood… on top of him Gross G… on top of Gross G's head the steel safe.
Henry scrambled free.
"We have to go. Shit. Now." He urged, but Mia was frozen, staring at the fallen form of the big man.
"Mia! Fuck. Snap out of it." Henry tucked on Mia's arm and dragged her out of the office.
Tom stumbled toward them. "Sorry I couldn't buy more time." His swollen, bloody nose muffled his voice.
"Help me with Mia. We have to flee."
A few streets later, Mia found her footing again.
"We have to call an ambulance for Gross G," Mia demanded.
"We can't, they'll trace the call back to us," Henry looked back.
"What about the security footage?" She asked. "Tom's blood?"
The teenagers stopped.
"Shit," Tom said.
"You do the call, Tom. Just stick to the original plan. You don't know us, just visiting a training mate and seeing some shit going down." Henry said.
Gross G didn't make it.
The flimsy story of the teenager didn't survive their first police interrogation.
Henry and Tom were too young for full legal culpability and received eighty hours of community service. Mia took responsibility and spent her 15th birthday in jail. No one paid the bail for orphans.
The court ruled attempted theft and negligent homicide under duress, four years in a juvenile detention facility.
The detention facility was a fancy name for a floor located inside a women's prison. The twenty girls had their own showers, a community room, and a separate timeslot for their one hour in the yard. Mia was the youngest inmate, but living in an orphanage had prepared her well for prison. She was used to the powerplays of her inmates and undebatable rules.
Free time was Mia's enemy. Whenever she had nothing to do, her mind came back to the still form of Gross G. Therefore, she loaded up her schedule with free electives.
The inmates attended schools via virtual reality helmets from 8-12 o'clock. Mia chose further courses from 13-16 o'clock. She couldn't get around the one hour she had to spend in the yard, so she pushed her body to exhaustion with running laps. Being physically drained made the therapy session afterward easier. The hours until curfew were the hardest to pass until Mia discovered the library.
One month into her sentence, the guidance counselor called Mia into her office.
The woman browsed through her files while Mia watched her impassively. Then she answered a string of questions with monosyllabic answers. Was she settling in all right? Yes. How were the relationships with the other inmates? Good. Was she bullied? No. Did the school work go well? Yes.
"Very good, Mia. I received positive feedback all around from your handlers. If this continues, you can expect to get out sooner due to good conduct."
Mia said nothing. She didn't want to think about her life after prison. Who would give a college scholarship to a murderer? Who would hire a murderer?
"The virtual reality company that runs our school system contacted us. They are interested in test data for their full-time immersion pod."
The woman supplied her with leaflets and gave her a day to think it over.
Browsing the leaflets, Mia discovered an answer to one of her unasked questions. Who would provide a full college scholarship to a murderer? CentralTank, the parent company of their education system.
Mia just glanced over the rest, her decision already certain. Now, she just had to stuff seven years of education into a four year prison sentence.
For the first few months, only the virtual campus and her lair were open. Besides locations for the classes, the campus had a common room, study areas for small groups, a library, and an outdoor area. Her lair contained a couch and nothing more, but she could spend her VirDias on commodities like a bed or desk or even more space.
Central Tank gave Mia 10 000 VirEP per week, the internal currency for the education system, for completing a survey. Only two noneducational items could be purchased with it: A t-shirt with the school logo and the standard menu of the cafeteria. Additionally, she received a one time payment of 10 000 VirDias as a welcoming gift. Because you could exchange VirDias to VirEP, she used them only sparingly.
Mia settled into the rhythm of 8 hours of coursework, 6 hours preparation for the courses and homework, one hour of jogging, one hour of eating and administrative stuff she couldn't skip like her weekly meetings with her shrink, and 8 hours of sleep. Now and then, she had to cut back her sleep for additional cramming for tests, essays, or real-life things like doctors' appointments.
In the next few months, the campus grew− new buildings, new outdoor areas, gyms, and teleportation circles for faster travel.
When Mia received her Hauptschul-Abschluss, she registered for further studies. In the real world, she would have to do three more years to get an Abitur. Only then she would be qualified to attend all colleges.
Planning out all the necessary credits and loading up her schedule, as only a severe workaholic or a person fleeing from free time could, she reduced the estimated time to one and a half years. She would be faster if her guidance counselor permitted her to attend school on Sundays and not demanded at least two courses of physical education per week.
In an aggressive mood because of the bad news, Mia selected martial arts and archery. To Mia's chagrin, not only her guidance counselor but also her shrink approved her choices. At least she could spend her Sundays with tournaments or workshops. Now and then, she was even allowed to attend a more educational workshop like crafting or robotics.
Over time, she had to admit that the sport and contact with other teens preserved her sanity. She stayed in the same MMA class but changed up her second P.E. class every three months.
The whole of 2049, Mia spent grinding away. She barely noticed her 16th birthday. Even when CentralTank announced they would consolidate all their different virtual reality worlds into one big system, the CentralTank Virtual Worlds or Cetviwos, she took no notice.
The grand opening fell in the final test week for her graduation. Messages piled into her HUD about attributes and achievements, but she clicked them away because she needed every second she got to prepare for that ugly geometry test.
After she finished graduation, she noticed a few changes. Her lair now had a door. She exited it only once to discover she was in a kind of highrise settlement. The messages said it was in a server called "Metaworld". She shrugged and carried on.
With a bit over two years left on her sentence, Mia started college. Fitting a three-year education into two years was doable. She planned on finishing it in one and a half years because she feared getting kicked out of prison for good behavior.
Because of her excellent grades, she qualified for an advanced program that condensed the best possible education with a focus on technology into 1,5 years. Although it was expensive and took all her VirEDs and most of her VirDias to book it, it only demanded a dedicated level of work and not a superhuman level like her previous load.
Now, she had free time and didn't know what to do with it until one of her fellow students mentioned that you could earn money in the virtual world, and you could transfer this money called "VirDos" into the real world.
Any kind of regular employment was out of the question because she was underaged and needed the guidance counselor's signature. However, there was a game on one server with yet another currency, credits, and you could exchange the credits to VirDos.
Mia entered the game.