The room was in chaos. The corpses of the three players were laid out neatly on a large table. All around them, people were screaming, shouting, and cursing.
Finally, the voice of Mr. Anderson, the president and CEO of the video game company, boomed out over all the others. "Everybody, QUIET! We need to find out what the fuck just happened." He turned to a man in a white lab coat. "Dr. Carrington. Have you completed your examinations of the bodies?"
"Yes," said the doctor. He pointed to the first corpse. "Player One. Shot with this crossbow bolt here. The bow that fired it must have been tremendously powerful. It went right through three layers of body armor. The razor-sharp arrowhead and the thickness of the bolt did massive damage to his internal organs. He didn't stand a chance."
"Player Two. Impaled through the heart with this spear here. Went through three layers of body armor in the front, then came out the back going through three more layers on the way. Judging by the depth it penetrated, it would be almost impossible for a human being to throw that hard."
"And finally, Player Three. This one is pretty self-explanatory. Decapitated. His hands have also been cut off."
"But how is that possible?" demanded Mr. Anderson. "None of the enemies in the game are supposed to have real weapons of any kind. It's all supposed to be virtual reality!" He turned to another man in the room. "Mr. Walsh. You're the head of IT. Do you have an explanation for why the video feed went out right before those guys were killed?"
Walsh looked up from his laptop. "No, sir. But I'm working on recovering the video. I've almost got it."
"Let me know the second you do." Anderson turned back to the center of the room. As his gaze passed over the bodies, he couldn't help shuddering.
"What'll we tell the money men..." said one of the executives.
"Yeah, if they find out about this, they'll..." began another.
"I will deal with the investors," said Mr. Anderson. "Now you've all worked here long enough to know the mottos I live by. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. If it is broken, fix it before anyone on the outside finds out. And that's exactly what we're going to do. We WILL fix this game, we will NOT give the investors any reason to panic and pull out, and we WILL market it successfully so you all can get your bonuses."
"Sir, I have the video feed," said Mr. Walsh. "Visual only, no audio."
"That'll do. Put it up on the big screen."
Everyone watched as the three players finished off the "regular" enemies and made their way into the large, dark room. When Maitreya appeared on the screen for the first time, everyone reacted with gasps of shock, but none more strongly than a young man in the corner named Rodney.
Rodney was 23 years old, a computer expert, and a self-proclaimed video game super-geek. When he had landed this dream job helping design this new virtual reality game, he had been overjoyed. Though he loved helping Mr. Thomas, the lead designer of the game, on the project, he also wanted to eventually design a game on his own. So during his spare time, he worked on his own little project, just for fun - or so he had thought.
As a stereotypical nerd who was short, skinny, and unathletic, Rodney, ever since puberty, had had a fetish for strong, muscular, yet feminine women who could do all the "manly" stuff that he couldn't do, and still look sexy doing it. He especially had a thing for villainesses and bad girls, women who used their skills to do whatever the fuck they wanted. It was he who had created the character of Maitreya as a potential villainess in a future game of his.
As Rodney continued to watch Maitreya effortlessly slaughter her male opponents on the big screen, he found himself shaking. None of this was supposed to have happened! Not only was Maitreya supposed to be a secret that stayed on his computer and his computer alone, but she was never supposed to be real and capable of killing real human beings. She was supposed to be a fantasy, nothing more. How could she have jumped into the other game? And how could she have become a real killer?
As the video ended with Player Three being brutally beheaded, everyone in the room had an expression of uncertainty and fear. There was dead silence for several moments until Mr. Anderson finally spoke. "Who was that woman? Has anybody seen her before?"
He received only negative responses. Rodney found himself sweating like a whore in church as he spoke his denial.
"Mr. Thomas. You're the lead designer of this game. Do you have an explanation?"
"No, sir! I have no idea who she is. She's certainly not one of the characters we created. I don't know how she got into the game! And I don't know how she could kill..."
Mr. Anderson nodded. "Here's what we're going to do. Mr. Thomas, I want you to work with Mr. Walsh and Rodney. I want the three of you to go through every line of code in that game. Look for anything that doesn't belong. If she's appearing in the game there must be some trace of her. When you find it, delete it. We'll do a test run on the game to make sure she's gone. Then we can move on from this mess."
"What about those three poor saps on the table?" asked Dr. Carrington. "Compensation for their families..."
Anderson sighed. "I'll have to pay. God willing, the sales from the game will make up for that."
SEVEN HOURS LATER
Rodney took a bite of his cold slice of pizza, then pushed the plate away. Across the table, Mr. Thomas looked at the pizza box, began reaching for a slice, then changed his mind, clearly having no appetite either. On the other side, Mr. Walsh halfheartedly drank his coffee as he stared at his laptop.
"Nothing!" said Walsh. "How about you guys?"
Rodney and Mr. Thomas looked up from their own laptops, surrounded by crumpled pieces of paper and empty soda cans. "Not a damn thing," said Thomas. "We've gone through the whole game and there's no trace of her. You didn't see anything, did you, Rodney?"
"No, sir." Rodney felt mixed emotions. On one hand, he was glad that he hadn't gotten caught. On the other hand, if they could find no trace of Maitreya in the game code, what were they going to do?
"What'll we tell Mr. Anderson?" asked Thomas.
"The only thing we can tell him. The truth," said Walsh. He reached for the phone and dialed the CEO's extension. After explaining the situation, he listened to the firm, decisive voice on the other end.
"Very well. In that case, there's only one thing we can do."
In the big conference room. Mr. Anderson stood up. "Unfortunately, we have been unable to locate this mystery woman in our lines of code. So since we can't remove her electronically, we'll have to remove her physically. We will send a team into the game to destroy her once and for all."
Rodney gulped. What would that mean? If Maitreya was killed in the game, would she be removed from his computer as well? Would his creation be destroyed forever?
"Do you think that's a good idea?" asked Dr. Carrington. "We saw what she did to those three guys..."
"Those poor saps had no idea what they were up against. We do. They were just video game geeks. We'll be sending in trained soldiers. A full squadron, not just three guys."
"Walsh, Thomas, Rodney. I want you three to go to the control room right now and start up the game," continued the CEO. "I'll brief our security team and meet you there in five minutes."
