Play 2 Wage: Linked

The armored dwarv was hard to read behind his stoney mask as we circled each other. I watched him closely over the top of my shield, keeping it braced against shoulder and shin between him and myself. He feigned a step to the side, then rushed forward and slammed his shield into mine. Max’s red warning flash helped me recognize the feint and I managed to position myself to squarely block his blow.

The clash of shields pushed me a couple of inches back on the stone floor, but I kept my footing and stopped his charge. I was unprepared when the dwarv kicked the bottom of our locked shields and then slid his own down and to the side, using his short stature to his advantage and cracking the edge of his shield into my knee, causing it to buckle out to the side. He then hopped to the side a step further and charged into me at an awkward angle, bowling me over and trampling me as I laid there.

I groaned and laid there for a moment, then pushed myself up and pulled one of my gauntlets off to wipe at the sooty bootprint on my face. The armored dwarv had already walked around me and stared silently from his edge of our sparring circle again.

I walked over to my own side to reset the match, and caught glances of the rest of my row having nearly identical experiences around me. We all had been assigned as sparring partners to one of the veteran Rows who were relentlessly throwing us around like ragdolled training dummies.

There was a dark tension that hung over the courtyard. Where it was normally filled with enthusiastic shouts, challenges, and the clashing of training; the hushed audience now gave a wide berth as my Row rode out the rest of our punishment. Some simply stood and watched, while others called out insults and aired their disappointment in the youngest generation.

I also had learned what the Pillar was, and it turned out to be pretty self explanatory. In the center of the courtyard, surrounded by the carved sparring circles where our whole Row was getting the training-dummy treatment, they had raised a 40 ft tall cast pillar of bronze. Carved glyphs spiraled up from the bottom, but only for a few feet, leaving the majority of the rough unpolished surface unmarked.

Korfook lay on top of the pole, his chest balanced on a platform only a few feet square at the top with his arms and legs hanging limply down to the sides. He had looked up and around a few times, his face obviously strained and emotional even from a distance.

None of us had the time to give him much thought though, as the vets had taken a professional interest in showing all of our Row just how unprepared we were. None of us had managed to best our current instructors, not even Jozoic, who trained relentlessly and was widely regarded as the best fighter amongst our Row.

I pulled my gauntlet back on and buckled it to my vambrace, and raised my shield to ready myself for the next sparring match with the silent masked veteran who had been beating me into the dirt for the last hour and a half. Just as my opponent nodded and stepped forward to start the next match, my attention was pulled away by the sight of a human standing with crossed arms at the edge of the courtyard.

I met her eyes from across the yard, but her face was unreadable. She wore boxy and rough looking work clothes and had long braided brown hair, coppery tanned skin, and an ovalish shaped face with striking features that were currently pulled into a tight-lipped and hard expression.

She was far enough away that it was hard to make out much more detail, but I could have sworn I saw the corner of her mouth twitch into a smile as I stared at her. I started to smile back, but my vision flashed red a split second before the veteran smashed into me again, pushing me flat out of the circle and onto my back with hardly a fight.

“Ga-rah. Useless. Get up, beardless.” The vet cursed at me.

I peeled myself off of the floor, and shook off the complaints of my abused muscles. I’d taken my time resetting for the next match, and tried to get another glimpse of the woman I had seen, but she was gone by the time I had managed to pick myself up and look for her.

I closed my eyes for a few long seconds, centered myself with a sigh, and prepared myself to get run over again.

We spent the rest of the training session as the B-ranked Row’s punching bags, all of us repeatedly getting thrown to the ground, trampled upon, and battered with the heavy shields that the dwarves used. Chane prowled around the group as a whole, encouraging our veteran sparring instructors and occasionally shouting at one of the initiates when they were unable to stand to face the next match.

Up on his pillar, Korfook was mostly ignored, only called out by Chane and a number of passersby who spoke derisively of him in the past tense, their voices raised loud enough to carry up to him.

When the end of the training day finally came, the only word Chane had for us as a group was a gruff “Dismissed!” before he stomped his way to the House Patriarchs building at the end of the yard.

Too exhausted to think and barely able to stand, I staggered off to the side of the courtyard and slid down to the floor against the wall of a building. I pulled a bottle of some sports drink Tevin had recommended to me from my inventory and cracked it open in the shelter of the covered walkway.

I drained half the bottle and dropped my arm with the bottle limply into my lap, needing to take a few moments to recover before porting back to the Hub and heading home.

Someone with a pleasant voice pulled me out of my exhausted slump. “They are a hard people, but you have done well.”

I rolled my head over to see who was speaking, and saw the woman from earlier standing in the middle of the walkway with her arms once again crossed over her chest. She was strikingly pretty, with pronounced cheekbones and expressive brown eyes. She held her lips in a controlled line, leaving me unsure what she was thinking or why she had stopped to talk to me.

“I’m picking up on that. It kind of sucked, but it is what it is, and I’m through it now.” I brushed off the comment. While today had been one of the rougher days of my life, I’d survived and knew our treatment was not truly malicious, only another hardship that would pass.

“I’m Nick Spenser, by the way. I’m still pretty new here.”

“Mhmm, I know who you are.” Her mouth twitched into a lopsided grin for a moment. “Welcome to the clan, Nick.”

Without a wave or any further words, she spun around and walked away, leaving me where I sat against the wall. I looked after her, trying to think of something to call out to her, but she ducked into the short doorway of one of the buildings before my wit could be revived and prodded into saying something that wouldn’t make me sound like an idiot. Probably for the best.

“C’mon! There’s this awesome little shop next to the food court just full of art and stuff! They do a monthly live concert that's coming up in a few days too!” Tevin said through his massive grin as he practically skipped along next to me.

Since we had canceled our range training sessions, he had talked me into exploring our new apartment tower a little instead. “Get out of the apartment for awhile” he said, “Taking part in the community is important” he claimed. I was exhausted to my core, but I had a few hours to recover, and a short walk to eat out would probably do my sore muscles more good than laying like a puddle in my apartment.

I felt a little more comfortable in my new suit as we made our way through the crowd of well-to-do residents of the tower, and found myself smiling when I saw rare sights like children playing, or an elderly pair of grandmotherly types sitting at a table and slapping down game-tiles. The contrast between the people within the tower and the people who lived in the normal pre-link buildings surrounding it was night and day.

We took a long elevator ride to the 10th floor, and walked out into something like a mall, or maybe an airport. I limped along next to Tevin down sparsely decorated hallways lined with storefronts and broken up into areas of public seating or automated entertainment. We passed a small arcade crammed with kids and teens, and Tevin proudly pointed out his initials at the top of the leaderboard on the biggest and fanciest of the shooting-sim style games.

I was too exhausted to do much beyond stumbling after Tevin like a zombie and grunting in reply to his enthusiasm. He led me through a number of shops where he seemed to already be on first name terms with all the owners or workers. My enthusiasm was less apparent, but that didn't seem to matter to Tevin who treated the whole trip like he was going from group to group at a party he had thrown himself.

After our meandering walk, we finally stopped at the BBQ place Tevin had convinced me to come out for, saying they had the best sauce he had ever tasted and used actual hickory wood for their in-house smoker. The place was rather small and cramped, and absolutely packed with well dressed professionals and their families eating out.

We waited to be seated for a few minutes, before a chipper teenager in an outdated uniform seated us at a small table in a cordoned off patio-esque area out front and gave us our menus.

“You should totally try the ribs, or brisket! Their bread is great too, they make it themselves and use real wheat flour.” Tevin said excitedly over his menu.

I blinked a few times to focus my eyes and nodded along. “Sounds good…” I scanned the menu and looked over the pictures, which did look pretty amazing. It all looked great until I started glancing over the prices.

“40 creds for a half-rack of pork ribs? 50 for a pound of brisket and sides? These dusted prices are ridiculous, Tev. We used to spend this much on food for a week.”

Tevin laughed a little and shrugged. “Heh, you’re starting to talk like one of your dwarv buddies. Don’t worry about the price though man, it’s a drop in the bucket.” He made a weird face and affected a snooty accent reminiscent of Dalls. “You are nobility, and should carry yourself as such.”

I grinned, but didn't quite have a laugh in me. “Yeah… I guess, as long as it doesn't become a habit it should be okay.” I activated my earwigs UI and glanced at my Bank roll, which was still nearly 40k and always gave me a bit of a pick-me up.

The server showed up a moment later and laid out a pair of actual glass cups filled with filtered water. The server asked Tevin if he wanted “his usual”, which he did, and I ordered the sampler platter to try a little bit of everything. After some polite banter with the server, they nimbly danced their way through the crowded tables and back towards the kitchen.

“So, what's the deal? You’re normally not this spacey after you get back from your underground adventures. What went down?” Tevin asked as he fiddled with a bendy straw from a bank of condiments and other restaurant paraphernalia in the center of the small table.

I leaned my elbows on the table and rubbed my tired eyes for a moment before replying. “One of the other guys in my Row messed up big time today, so he got some big punishment and the rest of us all got the most brutal training day of our lives. They had the others literally hanging from a metal bar by their teeth, for hours. I don’t even know, man.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Oooh-ho-ho, that's the first time you got smoked as a group? Hah. How’d your squad take it? Any plans of a blanket party to convince the guy to not fuck things up for everyone again?”

“Blanket party?” I asked, confused.

He laughed and shook his head. “You know, cornering him and teaching him a lesson? They’re pretty common in the training racks.”

I shook my head. “No, I guess. I didn’t hear about anything like that at least. Everyone was mad, but the class seemed split on what to do about it.”

Tevin shrugged. “I guess it’s a little different for you, when I was in training we all spent every moment together. I didn’t think about it before, but it’s weird that they let you all scatter for the nights.”

I shrugged as well, and the conversation transitioned over to something more benign once our food arrived. Tevin told me that he and Sindree had broken up, and that he was seeing someone new who lived in one of the lower floors of the building. Some girl named Kaylee who worked in admin that Tev had met in one of the shops nearby. Then we bantered about his gaming habits and he told me about a new game he had picked up, a meme-heavy alien knock-off of a hugely popular human game from before the Link had arrived.

Eventually, maybe inevitably, the conversation wound back around to the underhome and the hive of dwarves.

“So, do you think you’re ready for the trials? They’re only a few days away. I know it has Rin all worked up, he’s been glued to his screens all week, haven't seen him go this hard since we moved into the new place.”

I took my time answering, enjoying the bite of pork loin I was chewing on too much to cut it short and answer him immediately. “Only two more training days, actually, and I think so, everyone keeps telling me I’ll be fine anyways. I’m still not sure what the trials will really be like, other than a marathon. They said it takes a whole 5 days, so I’ll be locked into the Link for awhile. Shit… that reminds me, I’ll have my next payment day coming up soon, probably.” I heard Max chuckle a little, and for some reason this time it seemed to come from somewhere external, like a few feet behind me and to my left.

I ignored it and listened to Tevin as he replied. “It’ll be boring around here with you gone that long. Kinda sucks you can’t even use your fancy rig-free setup so you can get some time out of the saddle though. Oh… You’re gonna have to turn on the waste reclaimer system, heh. Good luck with that.”

Not wanting to talk about bathroom solutions over dinner, I changed the subject.

“Forget that for a minute, have you guys made any headway on how I got doxxed?”

Tevin’s grin died down and he looked unsure. “Not really. Rin is working with some other wonks from IIS that tracked the download to the Admin HQ in Memphis, I guess it all happened Hub-side after that though.”

“What all got leaked anyways?” I asked, before scooping up a spoonful of chunky baked beans, then rethinking and setting it back down to opt for a scoop of coleslaw instead.

Tevin looked down at his own food, and mumbled out a sheepish, “We’re not entirely sure. Your whole file was downloaded, but we only found out when Rin picked up bits and pieces of your info making the rounds in the gray market in the Hub. We know your name and new Title got out, as well as your ties to two alien Factions and our old address, who knows what else got put out there though. It’s a good thing Katie moved us into this fortress of a tower, security would have been a nightmare at the old place.”

I nodded along, sobered at the thought of myself being important enough that my information was being bought, sold, and tracked by the Internal Intelligence Service.

After a few seconds of contemplative quiet as we thought over the situation, our conversation soon turned back to casual banter and joking around as Tevin sensed my unease and tried to cheer me up. We finished our meal and packed up what was leftover in cheap containers before we paid our server and left a hefty tip.

As we departed and Tevin thanked the host and waved at our server, neither of us noticed the man sitting a few tables down. His jaw tense, and his eyes carefully angled away from us as he tucked the discrete directional microphone he had been using to record our conversation back up his sleeve.