CHAPTER TWO

I opened my eyes to a white room- I gasped, sucking in a long, dragging breath. How long had it been? What had happened? Why couldn't I remember? There was the bike- and the truck- and then...nothing. A lot of nothing- and pain.

I spun around me. I was sitting on a cold ground, smooth, although I couldn't tell what It was made of. Ceramic? Tile? Metal maybe? I rapped my knuckles against it, but the sound told me nothing more than that It was hard, and firmly secured to whatever subfloor lay beneath it. I glanced up at the light, holding up a hand to block my eyes. My vision felt- weird. I could see- and I could see fairly clearly, but everything seemed...distorted, around the edges of my vision. Warped, almost. I turned around me, and saw, finally, a desk. I stood, surprised at how unballanced I felt, how uneven the ground seemed to me, despite the fact that I could see -plainly- that it was very flat, without a single imperfection in the pristine white surface.

I set a hand on the desk, noticing a single piece of paper, with some writing in a language I didn't understand.

"Ah, mierda." I muttered, glancing at the two chairs on either side of the desk. Was someone else coming? Someone who could explain this to me?

I glanced around me, but didn't see anyone else.

"Hello?" I called out, my voice echoing into the hollow, white expanse.

I looked to see where someone might come into the room, but soon realized that there was no door- no opening of any kind.

I hesitated, then slid one of the simple metal chairs away from the desk, running a hand along the polished wood again before folding my arms, staring at the piece of paper as if that would magically make it legible to me.

"What on earth is going on…" I muttered to myself, before checking the desk for a pen, or some other writing utensil to pass the time until someone entered the room.

When my search failed, I sighed, humming to myself.

"Can, anybody hear me? At all? Hello?"

There was a shimmer in the corner of the room, and my eyes widened as blue rays of light gradually materialized into the form of a man, surprisingly thin, with dark hair and an obviously bureaucratic air about him. He removed a pair of dark sunglasses from his eyes, straightened his suit, and grinned at me, stretching out his arms to greet me.

"So this is our watchdog! A pleasure to meet you son, the name is Senator Burns."

I raised an eyebrow.

"You seem..young, to be a senator, especially these days."

He grinned wider, to my surprise. "I took advantage of the high levels of distaste the administration has obtained over the past five years or so to wrestle a spot for myself on the senate. However, we are not here to discuss my political career- we're here to discuss an opportunity for you!"

I frowned. Glancing around me again.

"Forgive me for asking, but, where are we, and how did you...appear, like you did?"

The man paused, and then chuckled.

"Oh, right, you're recently conscious- and according to your paperwork-" The man swiped his hand through the air aggressively, and a manilla folder appeared from no-where, dropping into his waiting palm, "you don't have previous full-dive experience- unfortunate, but everyone who does have experience is, sadly, not contactable at this moment, and are in fact part of the problem we are encountering."

I raised an eyebrow again.

"And to answer my question…"

"You, dear boy-" He pulled out the chair on his side of the table, sitting down as he spoke "are currently in a simulation- a full-dive virtual environment, provided to you by the means of Nerve-Gear. Cursed be the thing."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Do you remember the crash?"

I nodded.

"Good- memory loss isn't as bad as the medics had feared." He brushed some greying hairs back on his head, although none of them had fallen out of place. "Look, son, there's no way to break this nicely. You essentially didn't make it."

"What? What do you mean? I'm right here!"

"Yes- in a manner of speaking. You were hit while riding your bike to work two weeks ago- and were promptly run over by a semi truck."

"Run over? Two weeks ago? But I feel fine?"

He chuckled. "Well, of course you do. The nerve gear is intercepting all signals from your brain and is replacing them with, well, all of the signals that would tell you that you are in a white room, talking to a middle aged senator with an ulterior motive to saving your life."

I froze. "What do you mean?"

He lifted a box- a box bearing cover art that I had become very familiar with.

"You've heard of this game, I imagine. Sword Art Online."

"It's the biggest news since they created a vaccine for the virus, of course I'm familiar with it."

Well… He paused. "There's been… a snag. The game is rigged. The inventor triggered some obscure line of code once everyone had logged on, and set it so that the game is in the truest sense, a death game."

He swiped his finger again, and a screen suddenly lit up on the featureless wall to the side of us. News reals began playing- announcing death after death.

"All family members are encouraged not to remove the Nerve-Gear device, as this has been shown to trigger the fatal injuries reported by over two hundred families in Japan and the western seaboard."

News reports of deaths- apparently by microwaves cooking the brains of the wearers, flashed across the screen. Some I understood- most were, naturally, in Japanese.

"If you die in the game, the equipment fries your brain, and, well, game over, for good."

The senator was actually frowning when he said that, which did raise my opinion of him slightly.

"Ok...That's...bad."

I thought of Ben, of the promise I had made to him as I left the door. Maybe in the end it was a good thing that we were poor enough that the game had been so far out of our reach.

"Which, is why we need you."

I stood, confused. "Me? What do you need Me for? I'm just a linguistics student, nothing special about me!"

"Ah, but there are a few things very strongly in your favor. First- you are, officially, legally- Dead, and largely insignificant and not terribly missed by non-family members. The second? You actually have some real-life experience with martial arts, which would be very helpful to someone trapped in this game. And lastly, well, you were interested in the game, even before your accident. You would likely had bought it, and been trapped inside, if you'd had the opportunity.."

I sat back down in shock.

"Your body was all but destroyed. You were very nearly bisected- the doctors did a wonderful job of keeping you alive for a matter of hours- and they were just about to call it when we arrived, needing, well, someone who might even accept this offer in the first place and enter what we had just barely discovered to be a death game."

"Enter the game?"

"We need someone to go inside, and investigate for us. We need to know how Akihiko Kayaba did this- and we need to find a way to either counter it, or to duplicate it. At the least, we need to see how the code for the game works- be able to make some games of our own, and try and get out of this recession that has the nation by the throat."

"Why would i do that for you? Enter a game that is rigged to kill anyone who loses? It would be insane!"

He nodded. "Yes- yes it would be, normally. Right now, Mr. Draen, you are a mess of internal organs and scar tissue strapped into a series of machines in a hospital bed. Your family knows that you had your accident, but do not know that you are in fact..well, conscious. You're not breathing. Your brain is being supplied with oxygen and nutrients artificially."

He sighed, folding his hands on the desk, before waving his hand to mark his point.

"This is effectively a chance for you to have a life- any kind of life. If we take you off the machines, you die, and we're the only ones who could finance your perpetual existence. Your eyes are ruined, your limbs destroyed and your spinal column ruptured in three places. You might be able to blink- but I doubt you would be able to see."

I sat in silence for a long time, thinking.

"A last chance at life, huh?"

He nodded. "Do whatever you want while you're in that game- think of it as your own life. We'll be able to track you, and extract a tiny amount of code as you go. You are our window to that world, and we hate not being able to spy on our neighbors- even accidental ones."

I glanced at the piece of paper.

"Isn't the only operational server Japanese though? I speak Spanish- and to a lesser extent italian- I know nothing of Japanese."

He smiled. Pulling out a pen from within his pocket and clicking it.

I glanced at him, eyebrow raised, and then back down at the paper.

Opportunity

I blinked, glancing up at him, and back down at the piece of paper.

It still read opportunity- written in bright red ink- and clearly in english.

"We've taken care of that. It is twenty twenty-two, after all, and real-time translation was invented back in 2019 for public use. We've naturally improved it since then, since this algorithm was intended for military spy purposes, but, well, I think it will come in handy. There's a bit of a Lag, but you'll understand them, and they will plainly understand you- in Japanese, the language the server is set to."

"You really have tried to think of everything haven't you?"

"Well, my maintaining my position depends on a very sudden surge to the local economy, and I hope that you will be a part of that."

"What about my brothers? I want them to know what's happened to me, and where I am."

"I don't think we can do that, Mr. Draen, legally you are-"

I held up a hand, stopping him.

"I would be consigning myself to a life of constant and perpetual risk- this is my one request, if what you say is true. My family needs to know where I am. They can keep secrets- they've done it before, and if you give them an official story they can tell others, they'll know to use that if anyone asks after me- which I Highly doubt. But they need to know that I am living- in a way."

He sighed, thinking.

"Done. That much, I can convince the others on the board of."

I nodded, fidgeting.

"So...when do we start?"

He smiled, leaning in close to me.

"We start now, Mr. John Draen- we start now."

He glanced up at the roof above us, and then suddenly my vision exploded into a burst of iridescent lights, as menu screen after menu screen whipped by around me. My feet suddenly settling under me on soft, dark earth, simple leather boots fitted comfortably around my feet, as a strange blue light dispersed from around me. My stomach lurched, and I fell to my knees, gasping, gulping for air after the sudden sense of motion.

There was a ding, in my ears, and a strange menu floated in front of me.

New Item Acquired - Note from Senator Burns

I tapped on the menu, and a small folded square of parchment fell into my palm. I unfolded it cautiously, seeing a neat, crisp handwriting scrawled across the page.

"Good Luck - You are our virus, our bug in the system. Your promise will be kept."

I groaned, standing, and looked around me at the trees and fields that covered a large expanse. Floor one, I imagined, I looked out ahead of me, and saw the walls of a town in the distance.

"Well…" I muttered to myself. "Let's see what we've gotten ourselves into now."