Peter stood up. His ghoul body didn’t feel very different from the ordinary player somatics.

“Are you… I know there are some other players in the beta. Are you human?”

The Hunter ghoul smiled, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth in a mouth that sizzled with radioactive heat.

“Something like that. Beta testing. Is that the line they gave you?”

It snorted and scanned the wreckage around them, like it was looking for something. For a moment it seemed to forget that he was there.

But there were things Peter needed to know.

“What do you mean? They’re not testing a new player class? What are we doing here?”

The creature’s long, lumpy shoulders rolled in a sinuous wave that might have been a shrug.

“Who knows? It doesn’t matter to me any more. I keep myself entertained.”

It burst out in a shrieking laugh that made Peter cringe. It sounded insane and dangerous.

He took a step backward.

It advanced on him in unison.

“Relax, I’m not a threat,” it said.

Peter didn’t want to provoke it so he stayed where he was, but he was uncomfortably aware that he was still in range of those long arms and razor-sharp talons.

Hang on, why am I even worried?

He’d started treating this like a player talking to a dangerous mob. He was a mob now too.

He stopped and held up his hand to the thing.

“Wait, wait. I met with the VPIC from Axiom. Paul Weller. Signed an agreement. Is that what you did?”

He wanted to get all the information he could from this guy, but something seemed very off about him.

He seems nuts.

It snorted.

“I think I met with those assholes yeah. It’s all scrambled now. They’ll promise you whatever you want to hear.”

It shook its head and grinned again.

Peter spoke slowly and clearly.

“I was told this is a beta test of a new game mode.” He held up his ragged arms. “Obviously ghouls are a playable class now, right? Is that what they told you?”

The creature shuddered and sniffed at the air. It didn’t seem to be paying attention to the thread of the conversation Peter was trying to have with it.

“Wish I could help you kid. But I can’t. Get used to it. No help for anyone out here.”

“Okay, look,” Peter said. He was getting frustrated with the thing. It if got pissed off and lopped his head off it didn’t seem like he was going to lose much. “You said I screwed up. Why? What’s really going on?”

It leaned in and showed him a mouthful of teeth.

“We’re stuck, that’s all. If I knew any way out do you think I’d be hanging around here with you?”

Then it straightened up and shrugged again.

“Maybe you’ll get lucky. Someone has to.”

“Sorry, can you be a little clearer? I don’t want to be a jerk but I just got dumped into this blind. Where are the…”

Without any warning it grabbed Peter’s shoulders and picked him up off the ground.

“Hey!” he yelped.

“Quiet!” the Hunter ghoul growled. It bounded over to the nearest shattered concrete wall and leaped over it, landing with a crunch in the debris.

“Smell Raiders,” it hissed. “Good chance for you.”

It pushed him down so that he was crouching beside it.

“What are you going to do?” he whispered.

The creature gave him a crazy grin.

“Tear them apart! You too!”

“That’s what we do? Just spend our time killing each other?”

It stared at him blankly then looked away again.

“Nothing stopping you from teaming up. But these guys are practice. Time to learn. Look!”

Something was moving. A couple of heads were bobbing towards them, down a torn and shattered road.

Just Raiders. He couldn’t get a read on their levels yet.

Wait, what are my stats?

He was doing this all backwards. Put it down to shock, but the way he was acting wouldn’t have impressed Major Carnage one bit.

He flicked his default HUD.

Level 1. Like the man said.

It wasn’t a promising start. He had literally nothing. Slightly enhanced strength, and a one-handed +1 bonus, same with sneak. It was something at least, but that was about it. Literally everything else was base level.

“These stats are shit.”

The Hunter growled and sniffed at the air again, whipping it’s head left and right, then looked at him again and smiled a big, twisted grin.

“You’re newb fodder. You want to get better, you’ll have to survive.”

“I don’t even have a weapon!”

The creature pulled something out of the rags it wore.

It was a bent piece of rebar.

Peter grimaced and took the thing.

“You don’t have anything better?” he said. He didn’t want to be ungrateful, but part of him resented having such garbage starting gear.

The Hunter ghoul didn’t respond. It was watching the two Raiders approaching with eager eyes.

The Raider Free Tribes were remnants of the people who’d managed to scrape through the dark years by a combination of merciless warfare and cannibalism. They existed outside of normal human society. Most of them lived short, brutal lives in loose groups scattered throughout the world, collecting scrap to forge into weapons and armor. They were always at war with other tribes, and jumping players for their gear when they thought they could get away with it. Keeping them away from settlements was pretty standard work for low-level players. There were lots of quest chains that involved things like rescuing hostages and recovering tech upgrades from them.

Of course there were other Raider subtypes - Wildmen, for instance, who were purely animalistic and dangerous. Killing them on site was SOP, or else they would do the same to you. But what you really had to watch out for were the Warlords and their bands. They were much more organized, and camped out in fortified settlements far out in the wild lands. Cleaning one of those out could net you some nice gear, but it wasn’t easy.

There were even a couple of loose kingdoms, much further out in the scrubland between the cities. Peter hadn’t spent much time out there, but you could forge alliances with some of them, and acting as mercenaries in their own wars was a legitimate playstyle, with its own dedicated guilds.

But these two were clearly just generic Free Tribesmen. They weren’t high level, but they were higher than him. One was level 2, the other was level 3.

They were talking to each other. He could understand them.

Raiders usually only spoke to one another in garbled phrases that weren’t in any known language, though they could stumble through broken standard English (or Mandarin, or French, or Japanese, depending on your server) when they needed to communicate with players.

“I smell Horde,” one said.

“Just stay away from the ruins,” said the other. “Find the crystals and get out of here.”

“Better be worth our time.”

“Gronak has plans. He’s smart.”

They stopped just a few meters away. One of them consulted a battered handheld computer.

“Supposed to be around here.”

“You want to…”

The Hunter ghoul leaped up and bounded across the rubble towards them without any warning.

“Shit!” yelled one of the Raiders. “Look out!”

They raised their rusty rifles and fired without aiming. Neither shot connected with the Hunter at all and it swiped at the level 3 with claws like daggers. The Raider screamed and went flying backwards, its health bar dropped down to 25%.

I guess I should help.

Peter jumped up and ran forward. Neither of the Raiders paid him any attention. The Hunter savaged the level 2, ripping his rifle away and decapitating him in one smooth flurry of claws.

The second raider looked up and finally saw Peter just as he brought the rebar down on his head.

He dropped to 15% and pulled out a knife, stabbing Peter in the leg.

Pain arced through him like electricity.

God damn! That hurts!

It was way worse than usual somatics. Axiom needed to tone that down. He grabbed the knife and twisted away, pulling it from the Raider’s hand. His health dropped to 40%.

From one knife wound. I really suck.

The pain flared again, worse, and he screamed. But at the same time he turned the knife on the Raider and stabbed him through the eye with all his strength.

The mob’s health went to zero and he dropped to the ground.

Peter’s leg pulsed with arcs of pain, and he flopped down beside his kill.

That was when he noticed that his health bar was sickly yellow.

“I’m poisoned,” he gasped.

The Hunter nodded and pocketed the computer, then started pawing through the other Raider’s inventory.

“No surprise,” it said without looking at him.

Peter’s health was dropping alarmingly fast. It was already down to 25%.

“You have anything I can use for that?” Peter said.

The Hunter ghoul seemed to have forgotten all about him and just shook its head no. It was pulling the Raider’s armor off, and piling it up.

Twenty percent.

I guess I get to find out how rezzing works after all.

But he wasn’t going to give up that fast. He pulled open his kill’s inventory. Three clips for the Raider’s rifle. Plus two glass vials.

He flicked them both quickly, expecting they would probably be too high-level for him to even identify right now. But instead they both popped up with bright text.

SPEED TIER 1 33% SKILLSPEED INCREASE 30 SECONDS You can use this to gain an advantage in a fight, but be careful! Multiple doses in a short time are increasingly toxic. You can’t fight if you’re busy puking. BASIC ANTIDOTE LEVEL 4

CURE POISONING INSTANT Will instantly cure anything up to a Level 4 toxin, with effectiveness dropping greatly at every tier above that. Then again, something is better than nothing.

“No way,” he muttered, and drank the antidote without hesitation, then watched his health.

Fifteen percent, still yellow.

Nope, I’m probably boned.

He looked over at the Hunter ghoul. It was stuffing things from the other raider into its own inventory. It didn’t seem interested in Peter at all now.

Ten percent.

But then his health turned green.

“Damn,” he muttered.

That was one Raider at 25% health. Two at full health would have killed him without breaking a sweat.

Status updates started rolling in front of him.

Receive 80XP LEVEL 2 UPGRADE Weapon and armor level cap +1 Now Level 3 Kill something, level up. Nice. I promise you it won't stay that easy, though.

Passive Skills One-Handed (Melee) +1 Now Level 3 You're slightly better than you were at one-handed weapons. Very slightly. Concealment +1 Now Level 3 All your fearful and cowardly sneaking has resulted in a small skill increase. Congrats. Poison Resistance 10% Maximum Tier 4 Having survived a poisoning, your body has adapted a bit to toxins. What doesn’t kill you etc. All poisons below Tier 4 and below have 10% reduced DOT. You have two character points to allocate.

The Hunter ghoul finally stood up and looked at him.

“Lucky you,” it said.

Peter’s health was climbing. Slowly. He was at 12% now.

“Did you leave the level 3 for me to take care of?”

It nodded.

“Call it a welcome gift.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

He decided he could worry about allocating points when he had a moment free to think about it carefully.

He looked through the Raider’s inventory. All of the gear was level 3.

Surprisingly, it all showed up solid green.

“I can wear this stuff?” he said. He was pretty sure he’d never seen a ghoul wearing anything but rags.

Though come to think of it, there had been the Aberrant that had led him into a trap. It was wearing some kind of blue outfit. He hadn’t recognized the Horde type at all, though he didn’t have a lot of time to examine it.

The Hunter grinned a toothy grin.

“Not for free, but yeah,” it said and giggled.

He took the Raider’s leather jacket and put it on.

Added RAIDER LEVEL 3 SIMPLE LEATHER JACKET ARMOR +20 (Condition 95%) ARMOR TOTAL 29 BONUS TRANSCENDENT TECHNOLOGY ACCESSIBILITY +10 Now Level 10 REPUTATION HORDE REPUTATION -50% Now -50%; Hostile REPUTATION RAIDER REPUTATION -100% Now -100%; Enemy REPUTATION BIOMORPH REPUTATION +5% Now +5%; Neutral Nobody is going to call it quality gear, but it’s decent leather and the bloodstains are hardly noticeable.

“Yikes. Raiders are going to hate me on sight?”

“They don’t like it when you steal their stuff.”

"Ghouls will be pretty pissed off too.”

“They’re not bright. They just attack anything that doesn’t look like a ghoul.”

"What about you? You're Horde."

"Please. Don't lump me in with those peasants. I'm not an NPC."

Given his low level he didn’t feel like he could afford to just throw away good armor. He could always see about upgrades later.

He put on the rest of it.

Added RAIDER LEVEL 3 SIMPLE LEATHER PANTS ARMOR +10 (Condition 95%) ARMOR TOTAL 38 REPUTATION HORDE REPUTATION -5% Now -55%; Hostile REPUTATION RAIDER REPUTATION -10% Now -110%; Enemy Leather pants match the jacket. You have an ensemble going. Added RAIDER LEVEL 3 COMBAT BOOTS

ARMOR +10 (Condition 95%) ARMOR TOTAL 47 REPUTATION HORDE REPUTATION -5% Now -60%; Hostile REPUTATION RAIDER REPUTATION -10% Now -120%; Enemy Muddy old boots, but they’re strong enough to keep your toes safe..

Which meant he was running a baseline 120% hate from Raiders and 60% extra hate from other ghouls.

I guess I’m not going to be Mr. Popular with anybody just yet.

So be it. Nearly fifty armor wasn’t amazing, but it was a hell of a lot better than ghoul rags.

He pocketed the skillspeed med as well, and picked up the rifle.

When he flicked ID on it, it was solid red.

“No joy,” he said. “I guess I’m stuck with pointed sticks and things for now?”

“Find a Biomorph creche. They can fix you up. For a price.”

The Hunter ghoul took the rifle and ammunition from him, and Peter wasn’t going to argue about it.

He tried standing up. His leg didn’t hurt any more, and he could stand without wobbling.

Health: 16%

I need some kind of home base to hide out and recuperate in.

His new Aberrant ghoul friend must have one somewhere, but its body language had changed. It didn’t seem very interested in him any more.

But it also seemed a lot more relaxed now than it had been.

Killing things makes it calm and happy, I guess.

“Listen, thanks again,” he said to it. “I’m Peter.”

He flicked his menu.

“And I don’t even have a ghoul name yet. There’s no place to set it.”

"Ghouls don’t pick their own names. They give you one.”

“Who?”

“Your clan,” it said. It had packed away everything it wanted from the Raiders and Peter got the feeling that it wasn’t planning on sticking around much longer.

But there was so much more he needed to know.

“Wait, hang on. Axiom. Can we talk about Axiom? They just threw me in here. No explanations. What am I supposed to even do?”

The Hunter ghoul made another long, sinuous shrug.

“I’m not the guy to ask. I think they messed with my memories. I don’t remember much any more.”

“They’ve altered your memories?”

That was way, way outside of any user agreement. For the first time Peter felt some fear. He brought up his interface and there was still a logout button at least. He was a little afraid to try hitting it.

“Glad I could get you started Peter. Let me know when you get a real name,” the Hunter said. It was definitely ready to head out.

“Wait, how many other players are there who are… like us now? Do you know the number?”

He’d never seen an Aberrant actually sigh before, but the creature did it. A shimmer of heat drifted out of the thing’s glowing mouth.

“You should probably find her highness, the ghoul bitch queen. They call her Flame Lady. She might know more about that kind of stuff. I don’t worry about it any more.”

“They have a queen?”

“No, that’s just my name for her. She heads a big clan up that way.”

He pointed north, towards a cluster of tall ruins. “She’s pretty strong. Learned about Player kills and went nuts. She might turn into a real queen, who knows?”

“Player kills?”

“You’ll see. You should take out a player as soon as you’re able. I’m sure you can figure it out from there.”

The Hunter grinned.

“I’m John, by the way. I’m pretty sure that was my name. The ghouls call me Shrieker.”

It started walking away without another word.

“Wait!” Peter said. “What should I do now?”

“Find a clan,” Shrieker said. He stopped and looked back. “They’re not picky.”

“How do I become the leader?’

“You’re clan head if the ghouls decide you are”

“So get better stats and kill the leader?”

The Hunter ghoul tapped a clawed finger against its temple.

“Shouldn’t be too hard. Most ghoul clans are crap anyway. They’re meant to be that way. Long as you don’t run into any of her highness’s minions.”

“Okay,” Peter said, “But…”

The creature cut him off.

“I need to head out, but listen. Remember this. Don’t trust them. They’re…”

He grimaced and shook his head.

“I wish I could remember! This, all of this,” - he gestured around at the ruined city - “this is just one level of things. But you’re not getting out again. They’ll blow smoke like crazy, but don’t believe it. Be careful who you trust.”

He gave Peter a pained look, waved a very definite goodbye, then turned his back and disappeared into the ruins.

Peter looked around at the broken concrete and the bodies of the two Raiders. It was starting to get dark.

To hell with this.

He brought up his menu, stared at the logout button for a moment, and then tapped it.

It bleeped and a message appeared.

NEXT LOGOUT ALLOWANCE: 5 HOURS 43 MINUTES (2 HOURS BANKED)

“Logout allowance?” he said out loud. “What the fuck is a logout allowance?”

He stared at the panel blankly.

It seemed to be saying that in about six hours, he could log out for two hours.

“The hell you say,” he muttered, and tapped the Customer Support button.

PLEASE ENTER YOUR SUPPORT REQUEST (256 CHARACTERS LEFT)

“This is bullshit. Ridiculous bullshit.”

But he remembered Weller’s bearing. All hardass businessman one moment and understanding buddy the next. He had a feeling he knew which one was closer to the truth. But Weller was the one name out there he knew at the moment, and it was his one connection who had the power to do something about this situation.

He wanted to type something really, really rude to vent his frustration. And his fear.

But that’s not going to move the dial one bit on fixing things.

He sighed, and started typing carefully.

TO: PAUL WELLER. SUBJECT: PLAYER TEST. HELLO PAUL I AM CONFUSED. I WAS DROPPED IN HERE WITH NO INSTRUCTIONS, NO TUTORIAL, NOT A THING. I HAVE MANY QUESTIONS AND BADLY NEED TO SEE YOU (OR SOMEONE) IN PERSON TO DISCUSS. CAN YOU PLEASE ARRANGE THIS AS SO

The message bleeped. That was his 256, so he edited the final part to ARRANGE THIS? then hit send.

He hit Customer Support again. It bleeped.

SUPPORT REQEUEST QUEUED

“That’s it?” he said. “I can have one active damn request?”

So he was at the mercy of whomever was processing support. He hoped they were actually on the job. Of course regular player assistance was supposed to be 24/7 but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to be sending messages to the same schlubs who handled lag and griefers now. He had no idea at all of the day and time in the real world, and flicked his way through the display.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 8 2031 15:47 CST

So about quarter to four on a Friday afternoon. Not great. Let’s hope they aren’t just queuing everything up to deal with after the weekend.

He checked his status again. Five hours and thirty-two minutes left.

“Bastards,” he muttered, and scanned the horizon.