Chapter 5

As I stared at the reward, I knew the system had me. If it was anything other than cold, hard cash, I might have ignored it. But that didn’t change the fact there were several things to be concerned about.

<Local User Notification:>

Rogue bounty at 1403 Vinewood Drive, due north.

Threat Level: Low

Time Limit: Until a condition is met.

Conditions: Neutralize or Terminate.

Reward: EXP (S), $10,000

<Notification End.>

The first obvious issue: I had no idea what the target was or how to identify them. The low threat level was reassuring, but what was that relative to? The SWAT officer could have easily killed me in the hospital garage, and my first quest didn’t even have a threat level.

Also, the local user notification didn’t necessarily imply I was the only one who received the message. In fact, it inferred almost the opposite. Enough users that the system limited the alert to those of us in a small radius, either to make sure we didn’t pile into one section of the city, or because it didn’t want us to all kill each other. Moreover, this was only the second quest I’d received after waking up and escaping the hospital. I had to account for the possibility that there were other users who had been grinding for the last two days. Users who actually knew what a bounty was.

Of course, there was the whole issue of how to complete the quest. If I took it seriously, I was hunting a person and might have to hurt them. I stuffed that away to deal with later. It was just easier to treat all this as theoretical. A game I was playing in my head to distract myself from the unpleasant truths that had recently come to the surface. And the cash reward was the perfect carrot.

I had other reservations. It wasn’t a stretch to conclude I had to be one of the weakest early on. No direct attacks, weak Strength and Toughness. I was a glass cannon without the cannon. There were potentially feats I could take to counter this, but that would have to wait for the next level. I didn’t regret the decision to take Double-Blind, that still tracked.

I told myself that this was a one-time thing. I’d go, try to take a look at the bounty from a safe distance. Maybe use the opportunity to level up Probability Spiral a few times. And if it was easy, and there was no direct competitor, I’d try to snake the bounty. But only if. Afterwards, I’d reevaluate and decide if I was losing my damn mind or if there was something to this.

But first, I had stats to distribute.

<Stats:>

Strength: 3

Toughness: 4

Agility: 5

Intelligence: 8

Perception: 5

Will: 6

Companionship: 1

<>

I knew from what little information I could find that the Ordinator’s main governing stat was Intelligence. That made it a safe investment. There was an argument to be made that I should wait until I understood the system better to level, but there was a better argument to be made that a fool often dies laden with resources.

So, screw it. I raised Intelligence to thirteen.

Then I immediately lowered it back down to 10 with a sigh. Again, the glass cannon-less cannon dilemma. I wasn’t sure what Will did. But Strength would serve as an excellent litmus test for the delusion. I’d maintained the same level of strength—read: not much—since my early teens. If there was a sudden increase, I would notice it.

I raised Strength to 5, bumped Agility to 6, and kept Intelligence at 10. As much as I wanted to increase Perception, it would have to wait for the next level.

<Confirm Allocation.>

I focused on the prompt.

And my body screamed. It was like every single muscle cramped up at once and started crawling, detaching themselves from my bones and swelling larger. I crumbled to the ground. My right knee—an old soccer injury, raised the level of pain from excruciating to unbearable. I could feel the cartilage shifting, the joint reshaping. And then something happened to my mind. I had clarity. I could detach myself from the pain, and tell myself it was just temporary. I could lie to myself so convincingly that I began to believe it.

Memories previously locked away came flooding back. I remembered small details of books I’d read when I was learning to read. Pictures I’d drawn in crayon. Notes I’d scrawled down during my first lectures in high school.

Then, the headache. A wild, ravenous migraine that felt like it would never stop until every neuron I had was burned out in the impossible wave of agony.

I thought that my mind would break, like I’d suffered a stroke, and it would never be quite the same again. That I’d ruined the only advantage that life had ever given me.

And then… it faded. All at once. The pain was so complete it left me feeling hollow, aching, like I was a vessel drained of vitality and was now nothing more than a vacant shell.

I pushed myself up and staggered. There was someone looking back at me in the mirror I barely recognized. Dissociative disorder is a topic I studied for the MCAT, but I only understood it in theory. I think you can only truly understand it when you’ve experienced it, a kind of out of body experience in your own skin. Everything looked slightly more distinct and defined. There were round muscles where my shoulders had once been flat, defined mass in my forearms, biceps, and triceps I’d never had before. My clothing fit differently, felt stretched.

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A sudden thrill took me. I flexed in front of the mirror and grinned. Improvements that would have taken months of working out and stuffing in calories I couldn’t afford had been implemented in minutes. Painful minutes, but minutes nonetheless.

And then the smile faded as I thought about the implications. If the changes were noticeable to me immediately, they would likely be more than obvious to other people. I needed to be careful. If a couple points increase in Strength had changed me this much, I could only imagine how big the change would be if I had put all five points into Strength.

Users who invested heavily in Strength would be incredibly obvious to anyone that knew them. And the stronger I looked, the less I would blend in.

So, yeah, I wasn’t touching Strength again any time soon. I’d try Toughness next, see if the changes it brought were any less extreme.