SOTF: Cyber: Prologue — "School's Out Forever"

#1

7:45 AM (PST) — 04/17/2023
SITE A: HAMMERSMITH (SUNSET RIDGE COMMERCE PARK), SAN JOSÉ, CALIFORNIA

[KENNEDY] stood motionless, staring idly out of the wide-open second-story glass pane window of a small office space (rented out under the name of a make-believe organization) in the Sunset Ridge Commerce Park, deep in the bleeding silicon heart of San José's business district. From his mouth, a white Lucky Strike cigarette hanged. For a moment, he just stood and stared, looking out across the bitumen gulag of the city.

He took a breath. Then, his right hand drew out something from the same side pocket of his slacks. It was a quaint, silvery-looking metal lighter that his father had given him. His fingers fumbled with it for a moment, thumb turning the flint repeatedly, never entirely lighting right, until, with aplomb and sudden gout of rushing flame, it did. He held it to the end of the cigarette in his mouth, the ritual of the first smoke of a brand new day.

In his logical mind, the twisting gears and cogs that made up his brain, there were a million reasons for [KENNEDY]'s nerves to work themselves into a frenzied tizzy. A million threats, a million dangers, a million ways that his life could end on this one morning alone—a million different, awful universes possibly existing for want of a nail, divergences determining his today and tomorrow—prophecies of an ominous future not yet come.

Four years ago, [KENNEDY] recalled, he was selected for this operation, deliberately chosen. And from that day forth, he had set out on his goal. He had assembled his team, picking names from vetted and pruned lists of individuals with nothing in common but their suitability for a particular position. And—all at the enigmatic whim of their mysterious benefactor—they would commit an act of terrorism that would shake the world.

After all, today was the big day, built on four years of careful planning. As he knew from that awful learning experience so many years ago, operations like this one lived and died on their preparation. Had they planned enough, accounting for every possible twist of fate? Were they confident beyond certainty that their predictions were realistic and realizable? Had he made the right choices? Was he the right choice?

As he smoked the tobacco away, though, he felt nothing—no uncertainty, no fear. I cast that die a long, long time ago, he thought. How would his story end? That decision came before his time; he was just another puppet dancing on his strings. Whether he found his end in a shallow grave today, a prison cell tomorrow, or in the privacy of his own home however many years from now, it was out of his hands. He let it go.

He had done everything he could, everything that was in his power.

Even now, his presence in this building was a mere formality. His team knew their orders and roles, practiced them to a veritable science, and polished them like diamonds in the rough, all playing their parts like trained thespians. If anything unexpected were to happen, his team had many contingency plans, and contingency plans for those contingency plans, many overlapping emergency protocols spiraled out into infinity.

[KENNEDY], nonetheless, still intended to stay, even long beyond the end of his purpose here. The keys to the nondescript black Hyundai Sonata in the parking lot sat dormant in his pocket, lost amongst the clutter. As easy as it would be to take his leave—to ride quietly into the night—it wasn't his style. He had crossed the Rubicon already. You can't cross the same river twice, he thought, quoting a song he'd heard on the radio.

These were the fruits of his labor. He intended to witness them bloom.

With one last misty look out across the business park, counting the cars driving across the highway in the distance as they passed by, [KENNEDY] turned, shutting the window. He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it into a bin—after making sure there was nothing flammable inside of that bin—then slipped his hands into his slack pockets, taking in the room's tense ambiance, cold eyes scanning from place to place.

After their organization's slight renovations, the office building resembled the archetypal crisis room in some cheap, low-budget disaster flick. Rows and rows of monitors stretched across the cubicles, each manned like a battle station. People stood hunched over at their desks, vigilant. The click and clack of keys on a keyboard was inescapable. Occasionally, someone would stand, leave the room, and return with some coffee.

If one squinted their eyes a little, they could be mistaken for thinking the tired-eyed men and women were a group of AAA game developers racing against their next deadline, crunching like their lives depended on it. Thinking about it, [KENNEDY] realized it wasn't even that far from the truth, a lie only made such by the—admittedly many—omissions in the statement, glaring holes in the fabric of the story. He chuckled to himself.

A short, sickly-looking woman sat at the desk closest to [KENNEDY], her skin visibly pale, eyes adorned and framed by want for sleep. He took a step, then another, towards her, leaning over her, spying on her screen. On the monitor, he saw three dozen identical Avatars—something like gray crash-test dummies in appearance—suddenly massacred in a hailstorm of bullets, gore spewing outwards. Calculations ran beside.

"So," [KENNEDY] said to the woman, [EISENHOWER], their resident medical expert. "Everything's working?"

If [EISENHOWER] was surprised by him suddenly standing behind her, she didn't show it.

"I'm doing a last-minute stress test, you know, making sure the physics are up to code—that our servers can handle the pressure of the medical engine." She raised a cup of coffee, motioning at the disturbing scene as she sipped like nothing was out of the ordinary. "I'm getting the same results as the last twenty tests we ran. The code on the gore physics is sound, the servers can take it. It's as realistic as you can get, too."

She hit a key on the keyboard. All of a sudden, the hailstorm of bullets had stopped. A few Avatars were still alive, squirming like worms, as various pop-up windows continued to spit out data related to their exact injuries, calculations on the precise amount of blood left inside their bodies. Unfortunately for them, unfeeling automatons as they were, their fate came soon enough, the word DECEASED in vivid, crimson red text.

"No problems on my end."

"Good," [KENNEDY] responded, his head tilting with an affirming nod as he slid his hands behind his back. Before he turned away, his eyes caught on the monitor again. [EISENHOWER] loaded up the following test: this time, it was double the amount of Avatars and different parameters on the bullets shot at them. He whistled briefly before turning away from her, quietly stepping out of view. "I wouldn't want anything less than the best."

As [KENNEDY] walked through the room, surveilling his underlings, he did not bother to talk with most of them. At the very least, aside from [EISENHOWER]. That said, he did take note of the one of them whose noises were the most furious, her typing fast and erratic, seeming to be on the verge of slamming her head through the computer screen at any moment, body tightened up onto itself like a coiled spring ready to leap.

His eyes darted down to her. "How many of them did we manage to get?"

The slender-bodied woman in the oversized clothing, who looked almost like one of the teenagers they were targeting, barely deigned to look at him. "We've just hit two dozen and counting," [ARTHUR] said quickly. "At the rate things are going, we'll have the whole class booked for our little get-together. As soon as I secure the last few stragglers, I'll route their connections to the server at Site B, and we'll have the game afoot."

Initiative Earth's behind-the-scenes work happened at a location they codenamed Hammersmith—and dubbed Site A—at the Sunset Ridge Commerce Park in the middle of San José. However, to reduce the risk of tracking and throwing law enforcement off their scent, a skeleton crew was posted at a second site, a bunker somewhere in the Diablo Range of the San Antonio Valley. Its codename was Querida; they called it Site B.

At Site B, the actual game—if one could call it that—would take place. It housed their servers, actively monitored by their resident expert; with her, they had also stationed their resident arms expert and a getaway driver should things go awry. However, as far as [KENNEDY] was concerned, it was their fault if they failed. After all, everything at their site, Site A, was working as intended. Site B was no different; it shouldn't have been.

[KENNEDY] smirked at the news. At first, they'd expected a far less impressive total—a skosh more than a baker's dozen victims to tally—but it seemed they'd done rather well for their modest expectations. The entire class, just about? More than he'd expected. Suddenly, he was glad they'd gone all-out on their armory, adding more weapons than needed, even if their resident armorer was an obnoxious git at the time.

His smirk quickly faded, however, when his gaze wandered to a small single office at the back of the room, its transparent glass walls revealing an empty bed. An official Interface™ Cyber Reality Device (CRD) sat on the bed, currently unused, its wires twisting their way directly toward a computer to ensure its connection was as stable as possible. He turned his head and barked to the people amassed, "Where's [LINCOLN]?"

7:55 AM (PST) — 04/17/2023
SITE A: HAMMERSMITH (SUNSET RIDGE COMMERCE PARK), SAN JOSÉ, CALIFORNIA

There was a tension in the air of the office building's meeting room, where only five chairs remained—the rest having been taken out of the room to bring into the cubicles elsewhere. The five people inside the room eyed one another, gazes shifting face to face to face as the game concluded. The last card on the table flipped over to reveal their final hands of fate.

The community cards were the Four of Spades, Five of Hearts, Six of Spades, Seven of Hearts, and Ten of Clubs.

"...High Card..." the first one at the table—a screen monitor, [TYLER]—said mournfully. Sinking into the cushioned office chair, he seemed to deflate a little, glasses sliding down his face. A low whine escaped him as he forked over the money, seemingly trying to keep himself from whinging openly at his misfortune. He laid his cards out on the table. Nothing good.

"Two Pair," a man with greasy black hair and an unsightly, yellowed smirk said. His codename was [NIXON], and he was the second-in-command of their finance division. As it stood, though, he was off-duty; everything else was in the careful hands of his supervisor at the moment, so he was here, gambling calmly. He laid a Four of Clubs and a Five of Clubs down.

"Two Pair," a short, squat man said, his hairline wilting away early, though he was only in his thirties. He was [POLK], one of the group's coders, but as his specialization was in weapons design, he had already achieved his primary goal for the operation. As a result, he was free to lose his hard-earned money, laying down his cards, Six of Hearts, Seven of Diamonds.

"Three of a Kind," the only woman at the table said, smirking. As it stood, she was in the best position, as she had predicted. Her codename was [COOLIDGE], and her job—running the imminent live stream of the game itself—hadn't started yet, so, as far as she was concerned, she had carte blanche. She laid down her Ten of Spades and Ten of Diamonds.

"—hm," the fifth person said, a young man. He stared at the cards in his hands, seemingly unsure what to do with them. After a moment of silence, one of the other players, [NIXON], interrupted his contemplation with laughter. "Come on, man," he said, raising an eyebrow. "Tell us what you got so we can pay her—" he motioned to [COOLIDGE] "—already."

"...oh, nothing good, you know," he said casually, his round blue eyes pivoting downwards as he slid his cash towards the center of the table, a little bit of melodrama. Then, he laid his cards on the table face-down, only to turn them over swiftly, revealing a Three of Spades and an Eight of Diamonds as a grin ran roughshod on his face. "Just a Straight."

The room was silent for several seconds, save for an extraordinarily smug [LINCOLN] cleaning them out.

"Damn," [POLK] said. "You know, for a second there, you almost had me believing the bullshit you said."

"Now, how many times does that make?" [NIXON] rolled his eyes. "It's not very sportsmanlike of you—"

Before the discussion could begin in earnest, [KENNEDY] burst into the break room, an aggravated expression on his face. "Hey," he said, curtly addressing [LINCOLN]. "The show's about to start. You don't wanna miss your grand performance, do you?" [LINCOLN] shook his head. "Yeah, I thought so. Now, get ready, get your shit in gear, we're live in five."

[LINCOLN] sighed, rolling his eyes melodramatically as he dragged himself out of the office chair, pouting like a little kid who didn't get what they wanted from the candy store. "Unfortunately, it looks like I'll have to drop out of our little game for one that's, how should I put it—ah, ah—a little more important. I'll grace you all with my presence again later."

"Sure, whatever," [TYLER] responded bitterly, still trying to lick his wounds, before grumbling discontented under his breath. Nobody in the room seemed unhappy with his sudden leave—in fact, [NIXON] went so far as to crack a smile at the thought. So, as a result, nobody reacted when [LINCOLN] left the room, and no one returned his wave goodbye.

7:56 AM (PST) — 04/17/2023
SITE A: HAMMERSMITH (SUNSET RIDGE COMMERCE PARK), SAN JOSÉ, CALIFORNIA

"Christ. For your own sake, I hope you're prepared enough to warrant the leeway we've given you," [KENNEDY] barked, scowling daggers, as they speed-walked back to the command center. "I'm not coming up with excuses for your behavior so you can waste more of our time conning those saps out of their money. Now, I expect—or, I hope, at least—that you'd have everything memorized, but please, let's go over it again."

"Mm," [LINCOLN] sounded, smirking. "You'd be down shit's creek if I didn't memorize it. So be glad I bothered with the script." [KENNEDY] rolled his eyes. "Fine, whatever. I remember. Get everyone's attention, shoot the teacher, yadda-yadda, talk about the kill switch, the Avatars, the backpacks, dee-zees, announcements, livestream, blah-blah-blah. Then, I send the signal, and you all send them out."

[KENNEDY] gave a curt nod. "Good luck, then."

"I don't need luck," [LINCOLN] answered back.

"After all," he said, with a theatrical flair, "it won't be the first time I've talked to my dear classmates."

8:00 AM (PST) — 04/17/2023
"SYCAMORE HIGH SCHOOL"
███.█.███.█

The first response was confusion; the second was dread; the last was fear.

As they had done so many times before, Sycamore High School's Class 12-B students activated their school-assigned Cyber Reality Devices (CRDs). As usual, they intended to log into the school's server. Before they strapped into the devices, plunging themselves into their induced unconsciousness, none of them could recall tinkering with their device's settings. By the time, then, that they awoke, the sight must have been frightening, waking up somewhere entirely alien to their senses.

Instead of the school, they awoke within a sterile, pure white room, its walls blank and stretching into a large cube. Each was seated in their usual arrangement, equidistant from one another, unable to stand up from their seats due to the invisible restraints that held them. That, at least, proved this place—whatever it was—to be a virtual one. Even the figure in charge of their homeroom, Social Studies teacher Mr. Franklin, sat in his chair, the expression on his face betraying that he was as baffled as them.

Typically, this—joining the wrong server—would be something easily fixed. All you had to do was open your Heads-Up Display (HUD) and disconnect, and you were back within the realm of the familiar. Unfortunately, for now, that feature was entirely disabled, meeting no reaction. As far as could be seen, they were trapped in this empty virtual room, double-ironed with chains they couldn't see. It wasn't long before some of them started to put words to their emotions. Many chimed in.

"Everyone, please, calm down," Mr. Franklin reasoned, clearly just as uncertain as they were about the situation. "I've heard that the school district wanted to launch their latest patch during our Spring Break, so this might just be some bug. It's likely that the other classes at the school are experiencing the same issues as us and that the problem's getting worked out now. Let's all just take a minute to breathe and cool down." The teacher's words, tense as they were, managed to calm most of them.

Most—the key-word—except for one boy, who sat directly in the middle of the second row. "That's a good theory," the boy said, "but I'm afraid to say you're dead wrong." It was Zeph Newman. His brown hair tumbled out in locks across his head, glasses-clad green eyes menacing his peers as he rose from his chair. Others tried to do the same but found themselves unable, still confined to their chairs as he leisurely made his way to the front of the class, coming to a halt next to Mr. Franklin.

"So," he said, with a clap of his hands. "May I have everyone's attention for a bit?"

The sight of someone who—apparently—knew more about this situation than they did and who was willing to explain it to them did a decent job of silencing the class, at least for the moment. "Good," Zeph said, looking across his peers with a smile that, for a moment, they thought was supposed to be friendly; it was full of teeth. "Then, give me just a moment of your time, and I'll explain the mess you've all gotten yourselves into. Sound fun? I sure hope so because you're about to listen to it. Strap in."

They were way ahead of him.

"At the start of senior year, I entered this school—Sycamore High School—under the express orders of Initiative Earth, an organization I am a member of. My mission, if you can call it that, was to evaluate every single one of you and determine if this class would suit our intentions. As a result of my investigation—as well as other factors—your class was selected from among several to be the first participants of a little game of ours. Congratulations, everyone. It's a privilege afforded to very few."

With that, he began to clap; it was too slow to be anything but mockery, betraying his seemingly happy demeanor. He smiled at them momentarily, the cloth of his yellow shirt and white hoodie swaying lightly. "Zeph, please! What in God's name are you talking about?" Mr. Franklin started. He looked horrified by the rogue student's sudden, seemingly mad ramblings. For his part, Zeph ignored his teacher, electing to continue his grand speech. He clapped his hands together again to ask for silence.

"As the more astute among you may have guessed already, we aren't exactly in Kansas—or Sycamore High School—anymore. I'll tell you what happened: our organization hacked into all of your Cyber Reality Devices during the previous week's vacation. When you tried to log into the school's server this morning, we re-routed your connection to one controlled by my organization. That's the one we're on right now! Furthermore, we've taken the liberty of disabling your ability to leave."

Zeph took a breath. "In layman's terms, you're hostages. And, until the end of our little game, so you will remain."

His smile looked cruel.

"Now, before you get too comfortable with this arrangement, let's introduce the stakes of this game of ours." Suddenly, the wall behind Zeph turned into a screen. On the screen was footage of a seemingly random living room, cramped due to the arrays of large bookshelves on the visible walls. One prominently featured a display case highlighting a familiar book: a signed copy of Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman. Suddenly, the message he intended to send became explicit.

A man was lying on a couch in the center of the room, within the focus of the ceiling camera. A currently-activated Cyber Reality Device obscured his face. Still, his identity was nonetheless made clear by his apparel and appearance: without a doubt, the man on the couch was their teacher, one Mr. Samson Franklin of Room 308. The virtual version of the teacher had to twist his head to see the feed, but as he did so, his prior confusion turned to dread, to fear, as a bead of sweat rolled down his pale face.

"Wh—" he sputtered incoherent, "—why is there a camera in my house? Zeph, for the love of God, what were you thinking? This—whatever this even is—is insane, not to mention illegal, do you even know how many laws this violates, have you lost your mind—!" Again, Zeph ignored him, cutting him off with his own words. "An object lesson: please give your rapt attention to what happens to the real Samson Franklin in a moment," he ordered, drawing an object out from the pocket of his hoodie.

It was a gun.

Nobody had time to speak—much less warn their panicking teacher—before Zeph placed the gun barrel to his temple and pulled the trigger, painting the white walls of the room red and pink with the virtual matter of his virtual brain. A few seconds later, the man on the screen began to spasm wildly, thrashing on the couch for about twenty seconds before coming to an abrupt stop in a position that looked as uncomfortable as it felt to witness a puppet with its strings cut. Blood ran from the helmet.

"That scene, of which you have just born witness, is both the pride of our organization's greatest minds and a reminder of the danger you are currently under," he explained calmly, placing the gun on the desk before him. "If you die here, you die in real life. I won't deign to give you the blood-and-guts of how it works, but rest assured, it doesn't matter. All you need to know is that, if you die here, you'll get a lethal tonic-clonic seizure, courtesy of those devices you like to wear on your little heads."

He smiled again.

Long past was the time for confusion; fear had set in with the gravity of the situation, crushing with its weight. Screams mixed with shouts and mingled with sobs. After allowing the class to vent their emotions for a few moments, Zeph Newman, almost innocently, raised his hands as if to ask the rest of them to hear him out politely. "Hey, hey. I get it. You're all mourning Mr. Franklin. I understand. Grief's hard to process. But if you don't let me do my job, I'll have to make another example."

He dropped the friendly act.

"And, to be completely honest with you insufferable louts? After suffering through your annoying high school drama for months—God, I can barely stomach the thought of it, even now!—I'd love to. So maybe don't tempt me, because my trigger finger's starting to feel mighty itchy. Capiche?" Now, with that threat made, the students were well and truly silent. "Good," he nodded, seemingly appeased by his audience. "Then, with all that said and done, we'll move onto our main event: the game itself."

He paused, speaking slowly and deliberately. "All of you will participate in something we at Initiative Earth call 'Survival of the Fittest.' The rules are very, very simple, so all of you should be able to understand them. Still, I'll try to keep it easy. After this meeting, you'll find yourselves in a virtual arena that I hope you will all find very familiar. After all, it's where we had all our good times together!" As Zeph spoke, the chalkboard behind him cleaned itself, revealing a top-down view of Sycamore High School.

"Your mission in this game is pretty straightforward. We want you—all of you, and, yes, I do mean you in particular—to fight to the death until only one of you remains. The sole survivor of our little game will get given our express permission to log out, living to tell the tale of our little game. Oh, and everyone else? Well, you all saw what happened to our teacher." He grinned, taking a step forward and looking away for a moment, then walking back to where he was before and looking back to the students.

"We at Initiative Earth took great pains to ensure that our game—aside from some silly details here and there—is as realistic and life-like as possible. You can be hurt; you can feel pain; you can die. Just like in the Real World. You will also need to eat, drink, and sleep to ward off exhaustion. Just like in the Real World. Be glad we aren't making you use the bathroom. Now, you want my advice? I recommend you treat this game as being real. Let me tell you, the danger certainly is."

He paused.

"Don't worry too much. To aid in your ventures, you will each receive a backpack with four days' worth of rations, medical supplies, and a pillow for comfortable sleeping. However, to spice things up, we're giving you two randomly assigned items: one weapon and one utility. What happens if you feel unhappy with your starting gear, you ask? Loot a corpse. What happens if you can't find a corpse, you ask? Make a new corpse. What if I don't want to do that, you ask? Well, that's your problem." He shrugged.

"Every twelve hours or so, I will make an announcement: in these regular announcements, I will inform you of the latest and greatest casualties and who was responsible for them. Take notes. To weed out the cowards among you, I will also declare portions of the arena as 'Danger Zones.' We will kill you if you remain in a Danger Zone for longer than ten minutes. Citation: Mr. Franklin. So, if you want to live, steer clear. Your HUD's map includes the current Danger Zones. There's no excuse for getting lost."

He paused again.

"Oh, and if you try and enter a Danger Zone of your own volition or do anything we don't want you to do, you will hear a rather ominous beeping noise in your head. After a while, it starts to hurt. So, I'll clue you in; that's the sign you are doing something we don't like. It's your warning to stop. If you don't? Three guesses; the first two don't count. If you think we're bluffing, go ahead. Try us. I promise you that our hand of cards is much better than yours. With the push of a button, your brain is a fried egg."

He took a step away. "Now, I'm no psychic, but I'm sure I can guess what some of you are thinking. You might be thinking that someone will save you—the fuzz, some gay vigilante hacktivist, your uncle who works at Interface, whoever. I'm sorry to burst your bubble. That won't happen. If anyone tries to interfere with our operation, we won't hesitate to kill every one of you. Remember, I called you 'hostages' earlier. I wasn't kidding." He stepped back, glancing upwards at the ceiling, then back down.

"And, lastly, to give you some additional motivation to make this all go a little quicker, this game has a time limit. Four days. If there is more than one of you still alive after ninety-six hours, we will kill all of you. And that'd be a real shame because we put a lot of time and effort into this game. I'd hate to see it wasted. Now, your HUD will show you a time counting down to the deadline, so you always know how long you've got left on your doomsday clocks—no excuses for tardiness, my friends."

He smiled at them again. "Any questions? Knowledge is power."

Nobody dared to take the bait. Most of the students weren't even in the mental state to reply. "Well, that's just dandy," Zeph said, shaking his head. "Well, whatever, it's no skin off my back." Then, Zeph raised his left hand and pressed a button that only he could see. Slowly, the room's lighting started to dim, like at the start of a movie, and the students began to feel themselves growing sleepy. Before finally losing consciousness, some students thought they heard one last comment.

"Ah, wait, hold on—!" Zeph said, "I haven't mentioned the live stream yet, ha—"

Too late.