With a singular, deep slash across her torso, she fell down to the white-tiled floor. Her eyes widened with the need to scream, yet she could muster up nothing. A shivering hand held tightly onto the torn-open stomach of the woman below them. Tears erupted from her violet eyes as she desperately moved her free hand around the floor in search of something, anything, to defend herself. Through cloudy vision, she noticed a candlestick lying just in front of the ripped tablecloth to her left. With willpower alone, she forced herself over to the item. Heavy, breathy grunts left her mouth with each simple movement. The pain seemed to dig deeper into her body, now seeping its way into her shoulders. They cramped up and gave out. She was left struggling just a stretch away from a weapon, but she could not manage to reach.
How could this happen? She was a background character, written and coded to do nothing more than exist and compliment the ordinary life of the protagonist. She worked as an average fruit vendor. All she was ever able to do was smile and pass out merchandise. When players sprinted past her, there wasn't even an option to speak. The only thing she had to her name was her name itself, branded in bold white letters above her head. And when the sky turned dark she would disappear, returning when the marketplace was set to open again. Doiza's life was insignificant, she knew, but she desired for nothing greater. In being so complacent, she couldn't begin to understand her circumstance.
Slowly, her vision faltered from blurry to obsolete, rendering everything around her to darkness. Still barely clinging to her digital world, her hearing soon left as well. On the ground, in a pool of red pixelated liquid, she was left to die.
And she did just that. The title screen of her home game, Dead Alias, flickered in the back of her mind. The game, for her, was over.
Soon, her created consciousness quieted down. While the world around her was still black, she could feel slight flickers of heat on whatever remained of her. Her ears, which she had previously believed to have stopped functioning, listened as faint whispers slipped by. Suddenly, a falling sensation took over her senses. For what felt like just a few seconds, she plummeted towards something or nothing, for all she knew. Eventually, the sensation stopped, and Doiza felt herself hit a hard soft surface.
She could hardly make it out through her closed eyelids, but there must have been a tremendously bright light flashing in front of her. Doiza sat up straight, still getting used to the peculiar feeling, pushing up on her elbows. The environment around her felt changed in some way. The stagnation she once felt in her home game no longer tensed her up. She grudgingly opened her eyes, a sizable rectangular box with letters in front catching her view.
"Is this...am I still...I'm...talking?"
Slowly, her eyes trailed down to her lower half. The roughness of her hands shocked the woman, albeit less than the fact that she had the free will to look at them. What was going on? Where did the stands go? The merchants, the players, the things she knew— they were all gone. And to think she'd gained a voice so suddenly? It was all too confusing. Purple illuminated her face as the unfamiliar box flickered, a loading screen appearing in the center.
"Welcome to your PC...", Doiza repeated the words showing up on the screen, amazed by her newly found voice. "Entering the Transcendence Bionics Engine...host...Yusa Rui." The pop-up window transitioned into a pixelated face, animated to smile. It flashed Doiza a grin before leaving the screen, reappearing to her left as a holographic image. Soon, it was bouncing off of the walls around her, letting out a whirring sound. Her eyes darted around the room, trying to follow the icon. In the same fraction of a second, it stretched to form a new holographic window.
She'd seen things like this before. Players would regularly open "menus" of the sort to complete various tasks. But being an NPC, she'd never gotten the chance to interact with them. With the slight ring of a chime, words faded into view.
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[TBE System started]
-- [User: Doiza, Host: Yusa Rui]
-- [Level: 0]
[The following statistics are indicative of the user's characteristics.]
⬚ [Intelligence: 5] > No additional info to be checked.
⬚ [Charisma: 1] > Click here to open info.
⬚ [Physical Strength: 2] > Click here to open info.
⬚ [Fortitude: 10] > No additional info to be checked.
⬚ [Health: 5] > Click here to open info.
-- [Continue to general menu] >>
-- [Close this window] <<
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"Ah...this is too much..." Doiza sighed and placed her head in her hands. Not only was she supposed to be dead, but she now had a so-called "system" showing her stats which essentially called her useless in most regards. Not to mention, she'd come to the realization that this in fact was not her body at all. "What should I do?", she looked back towards the system.
In curiosity, (and somewhat involuntarily), she reached to continue to the general menu. The screen then changed to a web branch of different choices with the name of the system plastered in the center. A crease formed on her forehead as her eyebrows furrowed. As to what anything in front of her meant, she did not know. But the fascination of it all attracted her towards it. While Doiza was engrossed, a notification appeared in the upper right corner of the holograph.
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-- [Core memories uploaded: 1]
-- [Binding to the user > 54% complete]
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"Okay...I guess I should figure this out first. Not much else to do". She then made the decision to close the window, her eyes forced to look about as the holographic screen vanished. She was seated in a small room, about average in size. It was stuffed to the brim with cute plush toys and the rare scary one. The room was decorated with posters of various characters, and there were many pieces of technology lying around, including several laptops, a massive PC, a television, a cellphone, and headphones. The floor was covered with blankets and pillows that had been spread out to cover food and beverage spillage. Bottles and takeout containers were hurled haphazardly in all directions.
Suddenly, the door slammed open with feverish force.
"Yusa Rui! Look at this room!" A middle aged woman with white, smooth hair braided to reveal a wrinkled, saggy face, entered the room. Bulging brown eyes set tightly within their sockets stared down at the girl sitting on the floor.
"Twenty years old! Twenty! Two whole decades! And still, you choose to live like this? The adult in me says to kick you out! But the mother in me thinks otherwise" The woman's mood shifted almost immediately to that of disappointment. "And get some sunlight in here...breakfast is downstairs if you're not already running on energy drinks and chips this morning...whatever. Just do something productive! You're wasting my space!" The door slammed once again, this time shut.
"And fix that hair of yours before birds start perching in it." With the real final slam, she left.
"It is kind of filthy," Doiza groaned. She quickly stood up, gathering up whatever she could manage, and tossing it into a trash can in the corner. She arranged the pillows and blankets on a big bed, folding them as neatly as she could. On the computer desk, the electronics were now arranged nicely. Finally, she threw open a set of purple curtains to reveal blaring sunlight into the room. "Now, about this hair".
She found herself in a predicament— she never had to groom her hair before. In Dead Alias, it was coded to just be how it was, and there was never a time that she even had to think about it. Ignoring the hair issue, Doiza went downstairs to join the woman who'd confronted her earlier about it. The woman was staring intently at her cellphone with her back to the door.
"Yusa, there you are."
"Yeah, hey...?"
"Hey what?" The woman looked up from her device.
"Hey...uhm..." Doiza rubbed her head in a last ditch effort to remember who was in front of her, though she knew she had recollection at all.
"I'm your mother. All that digital brain rot must be getting to you. How could you have forgotten that?"
"I'm sorry," she apologized, not knowing exactly what for.
"I'm your mother".
"I know, I know". Doiza threw up her hands in defense before going to take a seat at the table. It was nice— finally having a place to rest her legs as she wanted.
"I'm your mother".
"Yes, I heard you. I'm sorry, okay?"
"Yusa..." For no immediate reason, it seemed, the woman's teeth gritted against one another as her eyebrows started to furrow. They made a horrifying, mind-numbing noise that became louder by the second. She grabbed at the hem of her shirt, twisting it until the very threads that held it together snapped apart, revealing her pale stomach. Rapidly, her chest rose. Sweat accumulated on her wrinkly face, from which her icy eyes glared at the girl in front of her with malice. Ringing at a strangely high frequency threw her off balance as she dropped to her knees. Breaths could be heard exiting her nose at high volumes as she looked around the room in a panic. "I'm...your..."
In less than a moment, the heavy breathing stopped. She grabbed at her stomach. In pain, the writhing woman let out a cry far beyond what one could imagine. A small being tore out of the skin on her back, its limbs clawing at what little skin remained there. Pieces of flesh flew in every direction of the kitchen floor, a bright red chunk landing in front of Doiza. Her spine, now cracked, protruded from her severed back. Thick blood trickled slowly down to the floor. The room now adorned the scene of what appeared to be a rampant massacre.
The small creature had short antennae and glowed different colors in sequence. Its eyes were white and oval shaped, with a pixelated outline. Binary code flashed at intervals on its body. Doiza had no time to think.
The system holograph appeared in front of her.
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--[Initiating Game > 98%]
--[Game started > 100%]
--[Enter: Astrodoom Online]
--[Enemy: Dot-com Devils ---> Level 2 ---> Number of Targets: 24]
-----[Task 1 ---> Assigned: Eliminate all traces of the Dot-com Devils]
----------[Sub-task ---> Assigned: Debug the game]
[Time allotted: 2 hours]
[Good luck, player]
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The screen disappeared.
"What? What?!" Eye to eye, the creature from across the room and Doiza stared at each other. She got up, knocking over the chair in the process. With a loud thud, it fell to the ground. It was silly that something so insignificant could spark her current chain of events. In that moment, the room around them distorted.
The walls fell with a trail of chromatic colors behind them. The items in the kitchen dematerialized one by one, visually glitching out of existence. The floor, splattered with blood, cracked beneath her. Once again, a falling sensation over took her senses, the enemy following behind.
'I hope I'm actually dying this time,' she thought, as she continued to plummet.
'What kind of afterlife is this?'