Hunter scrambled up, leaves flying, and got a hand on the nearest solid thing: a boulder about chest-high, furred with moss and cold as a fridge door.
Forest, two moons, a soul that still ached where it had been rewired.
He had it all back in half a second.
Downhill, the shouting and crashing went on.
It wasn’t close yet, but it wasn’t getting any farther away.
“System?” He kept his voice low.
“Hello, is anybody in there?”
[SYSTEM] ONLINE.
HOW MAY I ASSIST, MASTER?
The clipped voice made him flinch.
Master was new, and he decided not to think about it.
“I want to go home,” he said, and then, because nine hours a day of habit didn’t switch off just because the world had, he added, “I’d like to file a claim.”
[SYSTEM] CLAIM: RETURN_USER_HOME
STATUS: DENIED
REASON: HOST IS NOT DANIEL
Of course it was.
He wanted a customer service number so badly it hurt.
Press one to scream.
Press two to cry.
Press three to speak to a manager about being kidnapped by a malfunctioning app and deposited in a murder forest.
“Then tell me where I am and what you want.”
[SYSTEM] GEOLOCATION: NORTHERN WILDERNESS
USER-MODIFIED GOAL: HERO_SYSTEM → BANDIT_SYSTEM (CONFIRMED)
OBJECTIVE: ASSIST HOST IN BECOMING “BANDIT KING”
“Bandit King.” He tasted the words.
“Sure, because nothing says royal destiny like denying claims for leaky roofs.
I work in insurance, you glitchy piece of cosmic junk.”
Somewhere below him a branch cracked, loud as a gunshot, and the gasping and cursing were suddenly much nearer.
Something heavy was coming up the slope, fast.
[SYSTEM] MISSION ISSUED: M-0042
OBJECTIVE: ELIMINATE THE BANDIT LEADER
REWARD: +3 BANDIT RECRUITS; REALM UPGRADE: FOUNDATION
PENALTY (FAILURE): HOST TERMINATION
“Kill, recruits, Foundation, whatever that is.” He was whispering, and his voice had gone numb.
“I can’t kill anyone.
My résumé says proficient in Excel, right above avoids confrontation at all costs.”
He had never been in a real fight.
Once in middle school, maybe, and he’d cried afterward.
[SYSTEM] NOTE: HOST MAY REFUSE MISSION
“Oh, thank God,” he breathed.
“A choice that doesn’t end in my untimely demise.”
[SYSTEM] CONSEQUENCE OF REFUSAL: DEATH (TIME: SHORT)
The relief died in his throat.
A man burst out of the undergrowth ten yards downhill and stopped dead at the sight of him.
He was tall, with a potbelly that heaved as he panted, a tangled mane of brown hair, and a robe that might once have been white.
In his fist was a sword gone orange with rust.
Hunter backed up until the boulder was against his shoulder blades.
“Wait, wait, we can talk about this, like civilized people who don’t swing rusty tetanus sticks—”
The man didn’t waste a word.
He came up the slope in three strides, much faster than a man that shape had any right to move, and the sword went up over his head.
Hunter dropped.
His dress shoes skidded out from under him on the leaves, and the blade hissed through the air where his skull had been.
The man’s momentum carried him on, straight into the boulder.
The sound was wet and crunchy, and Hunter knew he would hear it for the rest of his life.
The sword clanged off the stone and skittered across the ground, and it came to rest against Hunter’s knee.
He picked it up without deciding to.
It was heavier than he expected.
Real.
The man had slid down the face of the rock onto his knees.
Blood ran from his hairline into one eye, and he was swaying, but he was already trying to get up.
Hunter looked at the sword, and then at the dark trees behind him, and chose.
No.
He wasn’t going to do this.
The System could run its clock.
Whatever time: short meant, he would spend it running, and he would die as a man who hadn’t murdered anybody.
He turned his back on the clearing and took two steps uphill.
Behind him, someone else crashed out of the brush.
Hunter looked back and saw a kid stumble into the clearing, lanky, with a long black ponytail.
He couldn’t have been more than seventeen.
He froze when he saw the man at the boulder.
The leader saw him too.
His face twisted with rage.
“I told you,” he slurred.
“Slow me down and I’ll cut you all down myself.”
He lurched forward, caught the kid by the ponytail, dragged him to his knees, and pulled a knife from his belt.
Hunter could still run.
The trees were right there.
He turned around.
He crossed the clearing in four strides and swung the sword two-handed into the man’s side, below the ribs, as hard as he could.
The resistance was nothing like the movies.
The blade went in too easily at first, then caught on something and didn’t want to go any further, and he had to lean on it.
Warmth flooded over his knuckles.
Blood.
The knife dropped from the leader’s fingers.
The kid scrambled away on his hands and heels.
The leader turned his head.
His eyes found Hunter’s, wide and almost puzzled, and red came up over his lip.
“You killed me.”
Then his weight came off the blade all at once, and he went down in the leaves and didn’t move.
Hunter waited for triumph, or adrenaline, or anything that would make sense of it.
What came was nausea, rising from his stomach in a slow, sour wave.
His legs wanted to fold.
He stood there with the sword hanging from both hands and blood running down his wrists into his sleeves, and he couldn’t look away from it.
It hadn’t been an accident.
It hadn’t been self-defense either.
He’d had the trees at his back and a way out he had already chosen, and he had turned around and put a sword into a man.
He knew exactly what to call that.
Murder.
[SYSTEM] STATUS: MISSION_COMPLETE (M-0042)
REWARD: +3 BANDIT RECRUITS; REALM UPGRADE: FOUNDATION
The chime rang softly in his skull, cheerful and horrible, just as two more men stumbled out of the trees and saw the body at his feet.