January 23 2073. Old York. Alan Walker.
For the past three years, I have not lived.
I have only merely survived.
The turning wheel of this hell keeps spinning, like the machine that outputs drugs the "better"-men abuse.
Another cycle. Another thousand vials of 'Valor' for some Westernian, who's probably never even seen a real fight in his life. The same stuff they probably give the bastards who put this scar on my face. The machine keeps turning.
At first, my Controller demanded that I tend to all of his needs.
Those days are foggy—Chunks missing in my memories. Probably for the better.
It's not the first time. The scar proves that.
I try to remember the day it happened. The day I went from Adept to this. My 15th birthday three years ago, All I can pull from the haze is the smell of death and the message burned inside my mind.
My mother. My father. 19 HWs. All killed by me.
That's what my Controller, Kade, tells me every damn night. Says I'm lucky not to have became a Scarred war slave. That he saved me.
The other Scarred look at me like I'm a monster. Even the Passer supervisors are scared of me. They punish me for it.
I miss my mother more than words can express. After her illness left her bedridden, I became her caretaker-feeding her, bathing her, holding her hand through sleepless nights. Her smile kept me going. her faith in me fueled my drive for the sigil I once cherished. Now, without her, everything feels hollow.
Everything I have ever loved, lost in a day I cant even remember.
No, that's not right.
Upon forced recollection, my mind sometimes flashes with an image—beautiful blue eyes like the skies of yesterday, a bloodied room—but it's gone before I can grasp it.
Too many gaps, Too many missing pieces.
Just another cycle. Just another vial. Eight hours down, Eight more to go. I rub my knuckles, raw and scraped from a fight I don't remember having. It's easier not to think about it.
"Walker!" a Passer calls out to me.
"Sir?"
"Where the hell is Kade, your Controller?"
"Uh, I-I don't know sir."
Sixth time I've been asked today.
He clinches his fists—I wince, preparing for a strike. He doesn't go through with it. Rare.
"If he isn't here soon, we're going to check the damn place, so fess up if you know something."
I stay silent. He walks off, pissed.
"They're scared, ya know." an old Scarred man, Hitch, tells me, the only one who doesn't peer at me like a caged beast.
"I don't get it. Its not like its the first time. Just why take it out on me."
"Shit its been hours, id assume he's just high on Delphine, but he's never been gone this long."
"So?"
"So the Pisser's got no protector, Alan. Shit weren't you an Adept? Why so slow, a Null could connect the dots faster, haha!"
He's right. In our nation where mandated aptitude tests designate your place and worth within society, AHM's 'Relinquishment' partially invalidated the societal separation. Causing those without such mental prowess to gain strength through vigorous training or sheer luck; they've gained power by becoming Players or potential Olympians. Given my feats the day of reckoning, I suppose I'm one of the latter.
"Sorry, mind's been preoccupied"
"Yeah I bet. Oh wait! Here." he reaches in his pocket and pulls out a ballpoint pen.
"It ain't much, but it's got a little ink left. Enough to write down a good last word, maybe." He says sarcastically.
He sneaks it to me behind his back so the watchers don't see.
"Happy birthday kiddo." He fails to wink—looking more like a wince than anything.
"Adulto now." I say with an awkward half-grin and a chuckle resembling more of a whimper. "Thank y—"
"New toy, ladies!" A Passer supervisor announces, dragging someone by the collar. "Hitch, you lead 'em!" he throws the man down, he looks up revealing his young, newly scarred face. He's just a boy. Younger than me even.
***
Hours pass. Same grueling hours as always. My body is in more pain today than usual. Muscles on the verge of tearing, joints clattering with every movement and tendons feeling like giving out. Though they always push me especially harshly, thinking me to have been gifted in the 'Relinquishing.' Hitch says they envy me for my strength, I say they wear me down out of fear. I'm truly not as strong as they think. The day of reckoning I believe my body to not have been inhabited by me. Perhaps that's my cope.
The newbie Scarred is fumbling around, dropping faulty vials of 'Valor.' He's got the easy job of disposing the bad batches. Hitch tells him to pocket some, for extra strength on the job. We all do. It doesn't grow me any taller as most men still look down on me. Even the boy is an inch or two taller. It only really makes lifting the ton weighing tanks of 'Valor' slightly easier.
"You'll need an antibiotic" I say to the boy, he tenses thinking me to be a Passer catching him sneaking a vial.
"W-why is that?" he turns to see me, relieved not yet knowing my history.
"You're infected. Your scar."
"Oh."
"You'll have trouble getting access to any as a Scarred, but for the time being take this." I pull from my front pocket a cream to hold off the infection. I use it for my many scrapes and scratches gained from underground player tests. The ones where you aren't scanned with INJ-ID. The ones where people fight to live first, win later.
"You're better off finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow than some damn antibiotic, boy." Hitch says.
"So what'd you do?" I ask handing him the ointment.
"I s-stole. W-well, I had too many like infractions—third strike and I guess I was out... at first it was coffee. I had always wanted to try it. It wasn't even good. It was bitter. Then it was pizza, now that one was actually good. And then it was just crackers. God damn crackers. We were just hungry. Me and my sister."
"Damn... Yeah, well I also stole" hitch says.
"Rather they'd chop my damn hand off like old times! Or, well, no—that's my jerking hand so shit id rather have died honestly."
He said the same thing to me too. Does he tell everyone that?
The boy manages a chuckle at hitch's words.
Above a metallic scream tears through the air. One of the overhead conveyor belts, the one hauling the 'Valor' tanks, groans under the strain and shudders to a halt. The boy, still half-smiling, is standing directly underneath it.
"Move, Kid!" Hitch screams.
A ton of polished steel teeters on the edge, balanced between gravity and a failing gear.
Both the boy and I are in the fall line. There's no time to think. I try to grab the boy to dash out the path of the tank... but he's frozen. A voice echoes within my mind as my presence hazes.
[Live!]
The tank crashes down with the force of a meteor.
My mind comes to. I scan my surroundings while glued to the ground.
The boy is completely pinned; everything below his chest is crushed. I act immediately. Calling out for the passer's as they trek over so slowly... dragging their feet as if a life is not on the damn line.
I lift the tank off his body and hold the boy.
"Can you all be any slower! Move your feet, damn it!" Hitch yells.
"P-please... j-just... just let me die," the boy says, as the last bit of life slips from his eyes.
"God damn it, Walker! Look at this mess! You've halted the line and now we've lost an asset. This is coming out of your check."
The Passers don't give a damn. You'd think they were Westerners, the way the power of their role has morphed them.
I could have saved him.
I sit there. Like Ivan holding his son.
Shocked from the events but mostly from my grief and temperament towards this boy I had just met and had not even known the name of.
Perhaps I see myself in him.
The lights shut off, and the conveyor belts halt. Power has gone out.
"Great one thing after the next. Hitch help clean this shit up!"
Light bends around my face from vibrant bright Halo-screen displays blaring up-beat music outside the factory.
"Are you a Nulled tired of the way society treats you? Are you a Scarred tired of the endless days of labor? Are you a high sigil bored of your meaningless lives and want to truly truly live? Why are you just waiting! We have a timer on our lives ladies and gents! so live damn it! Fame, Fortune, You can have it all in the All Inclusive Player Test! No matter your sigil, you can win the big bucks and be marked a Player Tester! Now go out there and participate in 'Little Olympia!' and Live!"
The Scarred look entranced. The Passers captivated as well.
the bubbly corporate voice continues explaining the rules and requirements like INJ-ID. About the only requirement.
"Shit, it was today?!" a Scarred man says.
Of course it was today. That's why I rushed first thing in the morning to get my Inject-ID.
Hurried to the damn place faster than a bullet. The only one open to the Scarred in a 10 mile radius. Rushed in so fast I didn't even get a look at the man who injected me.
The second I got out of here I knew my destination. The day I turned 18. The day I got my INJ-ID.
I've known for months my destination.
I would become a Player Tester.
Interrupting our dazed state—the power flickers back on. A Passer barges in the front entrance. Looking like he'd just seen a massacre, he points towards me with HWs surrounding him.
"Its him! He ___"
What? I did what?
His words escape me. No. they never enter me.
Hitch looks at me, His expression jarring. He looks at me with... with hope.
"Go." he mouths to me.
The haze of the morning, The exhaustion in my body, The scrapes on my knuckles. I know what I have done. Now I know what I must do.
I lay the boy down gently, Closing his eyes and letting him rest.
I run.
I go.
To reclaim the future stolen from me. To fight for those abandoned by this system, left to die for merely wanting to live.
To become a Player Tester.
To enter the Player Exams.
To become a Player.
No.
To become an Olympian.