After what felt like a grueling day, Mith and I finally made it back to the apartment.

  Gena met us by the door. "You're finally back!" She gave me a crushing hug. I endured, while keeping a sense of polite reserve. Then she gave Mith a hug as well, he leaned into to it with dogged enthusiasm. Heh.

  "Things didn't go as planned, and a few unrelated complications sprang up." I shook my head, "It doesn't matter right now, is everything ready for the calibration runs?" My gaze was shifting from one batch of equipment to another trying to determine the readiness of our plans. Lacie was typing away on a Modified Runner's Deck with a bizarrely truncated keyboard. Evie was puttering around with the medical gear. I didn't see Ricky or Mark.

  Gena gave Mith a few extra head pats, "Yeah, as far as I understand it, we're good to go."

  Mark and her, had a little reception desk that was behind the door when it opened, meaning they could decide to shoot anyone who walked in, before they'd gotten spotted. The desk itself was heavy and thick, made of some hardened modern alloy. It would be able to take a few rounds from most common firearms. I noticed Gena had a Defender LMG resting on the desk and already pointed at the door. I approved. Better safety through overwhelming firepower than dead.

  "Did you all decide who's going first?" I made my way over to the fridge and grabbed a juice pack. Since I was in here, I got Mith a snack as well. I tossed him a meat stick, made from "totally real meat, we promise". I say stick, but it was more like a small summer sausage. Mith leapt up and snatched it out of the air lickety-split. He snarffed it down in three or four bites. Gena eyed the fate of the meat and smiled. She'd a strange sense of humor.

  "Ricky's up first. Then me, Evie, Mark and Lacie goes last." She shrugged. She didn't care about any of this, she was just hoping to get to flatline a few gonks. In the name of "Self-defense", of course.

  "Alright, let's get started as soon as Ricky's ready." I sat on the couch and watched some show about a cybersamurai getting revenge for the death of their gerbil or something. The quick cuts of the scenes made it practically unfollowable. Though the action included plenty of very realistic looking violence. Mith hopped up on the couch and laid his head in my lap. I absently stroked his fur, while trying to veg out.

  Gena had sat back down at her desk where she was watching her own show on a monitor there. Unlike me, she was captivated by whatever dreck she was watching.

  I let my brain shut down, it wasn't quite sleep, but it wasn't full awareness either. While I was in my daze, Ricky woke up from his rest, then put himself together. Once he was ready, he came out into the main room. Evie hooked him up to a battery of sensors and took a complete reading of his current baseline. Once he was fully scanned she administered a series of meds and nanites designed to cleanse then heal his body. The whole time the sensors kept collecting data on how his body reacted to the treatment. They gave it about 15 minutes, roughly the length of time the meds take to run their course, then called me over.

  My mind returned to the present. I gently shifted Mith's head over and let him continue to sleep. "You ready Ricky?" I gave him a smile and offered my hand.

  "Sure, Longears!" Everyone thought my ears where ridiculous, including me. He chuckled and I snorted at the unserious insult. I mean my ears were fucking stupidly long. He took my hand, and I started running a low level mana current through him.

  "Whoa!" He barked. We stayed like that for a while, letting the machines take their measurements.

  "What's it like?" Evie asked in a business like tone. She tried to keep a detached demeaner when it came to her work.

  "It's like an unfiltered XBD, where you're having really, really good sex. Except it doesn't vary." Well, that was certainly an interesting description.

  "Can you increase the "mana" output?" Evie sent my way.

  "Sure. There's a lot more power available." I said not really thinking about it. Honestly, I was kind of bored. I up my mana flow.

  "Uh." Ricky sounded kind of panicked. I'd doubled the flow of mana into him from before. "Holy shit!" Ricky grunted. I'm pretty sure I knew why, so I hit him with a Purify. I would prefer not to smell the result of his excitement. My new primal nature really didn't react well to male rivals, I was half-way convinced smelling man-fluid would send me into a rage.

  We kept this up for another hour, Evie asking him questions, me upping the mana and then Purifying him. Everything on my end was so automatic I was very, very drained mentally. Still had plenty of mana left in the tank, though.

  "I c-can barely think... this is fucking dangerous. It will surely lead to psychological dependence, if not outright physical addiction." He was gritting his teeth, trying to fight through the pleasure.

  Evie had no mercy, "Can you continue to increase the mana?"

  "Sure. Though at this point, it's probably not doing too much healing for him." I answered.

  She checked her readings, and nodded. "Let's stop the current experiment." She was already typing more notes into her tablet. I ceased pouring mana into Ricky. He was sweating and having a hard time catching his breath. I performed another Purify. Then sat back down on the couch, letting some sadistic gameshow numb my brain again.

  After a short while to go over her data and consult with Lacie, Evie called Gena over. Mark had woken up a short while before and took over the reception desk. I called a time out to fix every one and myself a meal. I managed to pull off a mac and cheese and sausage dish with BBQ baked beans and some simple cornbread. Once again, it came out almost right. Once again, my roommates were stunned by my simple cooking. Some part of me really enjoyed feeding people. There was a visceral satisfaction to their simple joy at having some good fucking food. I thought it strange that I liked to take care of people. I'd never seemed to before this world got stuck with me.

  Once we finished, Gena got hooked up and we repeated the process. Slowly upping the mana flowing into her, while Evie recorded her responses. Her reactions were much more interesting to me, than Ricky's had been. For one thing, she didn't even try to resist the pleasure. She rode it like a Cowgirl might ride a bull. She was more coherently vocal even at levels where everyone else I'd healed crumbled into a drooling senseless mess. Embrace the pleasures in life, that was her philosophy.

  Then it was Evie's turn while Ricky ran the equipment. Her body jerked and twitched, but her face never changed in the slightest. Terribly dull, no fun at all.

  Mark was utterly stoic during his turn, barely responding at all. Though again with a guy that didn't bother me.

  Lacie, on the other hand, went fucking nuts. Screaming snippets of code and operating perimeters. Then it was quiet again.

  After cleaning up, I felt a bit awkward, so I decided to take Mith for a walk.

  The next morning saw many awkward glances between the Moxes, only Gena fully retained her composure. When their eyes fell upon me, they hastened to find anything else to look at. It annoyed me.

  "You're all being silly. It's not as if we had an orgy." I finally snapped in exasperation over a breakfast of scrabbled eggs and bacon. The food was unpleasant enough without them adding to it. Whatever process Biotechnica used to create synth eggs was way off the mark, though the bacon was only slightly odd.

  "An orgy would have been less awkward, " Mark was the least affected, after his lover. "We've all done that before."

  "It's about control." Ricky began, "We've all had, all kinds of fun, but we've never felt so out of control." I found that to be an odd statement, until I really hashed it out. Gena and Mark were the only two here that had ever been Dolls. Dolls, at least the types they had been, almost never got to choose anything about their encounters.

  That realization made me feel somewhat conflicted. I didn't want to make them uncomfortable, but they'd agreed to this, and I hadn't hidden what it would do to them. "Ah. Then I apologize." Words are often poor mortar for smoothing over emotional issues, but it at least showed one was willing to try to correct any growing problems between us.

  "No, no. You don't have to apologize choom, we consented, it's just we had no way of understanding how intense that would be." Ricky shook his head in denial. His grin was weak, not quite his usual devil may care expression.

  "It was nova!" Lacie chirped her face flushed, "But scary." She was eating and tapping away at a tablet, her attention split a dozen different ways. I was surprised she heard us at all.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  "We obtained very useful data." Evie added. She wouldn't look at anyone and her demeaner was more cold than awkward.

  "We'll get over it. It'll just take some time." Ricky was probably the most messed up. My few interaction with psychologists in the past, indicated that they like ordered interaction. This was definitely not very orderly.

  They gave me a bunch of denials about it being a problem. But that all seemed flat to me.

  "Alright, I'll try to give you guys some time." I gave up on my food. I started clearing my mess up. I could just use Purify, but I liked washing dishes after I cooked, it always gave me a sense of closure to the meal.

  Ricky cleared his throat, "Your cooking is great, but you never really seem satisfied when you are eating. Why is that?" Trust a shrink to notice that.

  "It never tastes right, I grew up with better food." I gave a short answer.

  "Where are you from?\ Ricky pushed a little again, his psych senses must have been tingling.

  "Nope, I'm not going to talk about that right now. Maybe someday, but not today." I went back to scrubbing dishes. A clear indication that this conversation was over. They handed me their dishes as they finished and went back to their tasks. My family used to have a rule; if you cooked you didn't clean. I'd never liked that rule, I believed that if you made a mess, you cleaned it up. I never understood where my attitude on that came from, but it was yet another small point of tension with my parents. I sighed, no use thinking about it now. I'd never see them again. I finished the dishes and went back to ruminating on what to do next.

  The next day my Hub was available to visit. I could sense its condition in a small part of the back of my mind. Easy to call up, but also easy to ignore. Since it would still be a couple of days before the first volunteer showed up, I decided to hop into my new mini pseudo world.

  Letting the Moxes know I'd be gone for a while, I called up the gate in my bedroom. No, I wasn't going to explain it to them. They could wonder about it.

  The Hub was mostly as I left it. The only immediately noticeable difference was that the Pylon floating high over the center of the space was now glowing much brighter. The blue tinted light played oddly over the structures, casting stark shadows. This made the space feel haunted, which I supposed made me the ghost. Heh.

  My first impulse was to go into the Value Tree and buy a whole bunch of food for my personal use back in NC. I would certainly do that, but first, I figured it would be prudent to explore the half-sized Megabuilding. After all what good was such a thing when there were no people to house. Very suspicious.

  MB Treeside was much like MB 4, except the parking structure was under the building. I didn't see a need to explore downward right now. Again left wondering what use the parking structure might serve. As I entered the lobby, I felt the blast of negative pressure. Always a startling experience if you weren't expecting it. There was a reception desk in front of two more classic style elevators, otherwise the room was relatively small for the building. I noticed you could walk around the elevators. Back there was a hallway with doors. A sign above them read "Battle Arena".

  Slightly opening one of the doors to the Arena, I looked inside. It was a combination of a Colosseum, and a Basketball court style rec center. There was a central sand floored depression and stacked bleacher style seating. It was large enough that I thought it took up most of the foot print of the building. It extended upward three stories with entry doors to the higher levels' seating on those floors. To get into the arena itself would likely require going down to the first or perhaps even the second subfloor. Why would I need this? What did having an Arena in my personal world say about me.

  I used the elevator to head up to the fourth floor. I noticed only the top floor was distinctly labeled on the elevator's control panel. It read "Master Floor, Living Area". Very strangely worded. Like everything else here, it seemed slightly off.

  On the fourth floor, other than the lobby, was the Gallery. The walls were glossy white and yet didn't reflect as much light as you would expect. The overhead lighting there looked like old florescent tube lights. The lights neither made that slight annoying humming sound, nor threw out unpleasantly harsh light. Interesting.

  The first room of the Gallery held glowing marble statues of my people and even other folk that I had met. Dakota, Rogue both young and old, Nolan, Amanda, Both Sally, Megan and their doubles. All the Moxes I had met, and several others. There was rather bland music playing from an unknown source.

  At the end of the first room, there was a door, labeled Victories and Defeats. That room was full of screens showing the fights I had been in, from dozens of different angles. This included ones directly from my perspective. The music here was more energetic but still wrong for the space.

  The Victory and Defeats, area was followed by a room called The Memorial for the Fallen, Scuff and Fix, Chuck and Barry, Huskler and Keighvus, Lumi, Sinn and others. Here the music had a somber quality, yet also held a sinister undertone.

  Then there was the Rogue's Gallery. The statues here were done in black marble that seemed to absorb the light. The music here hit those creepy chords that hummed in your spine. Carver's statue was first, though I didn't recognize him at first. His was followed by statues of several other people, who I'd not the slightest clue who they were. Various members of the Maelstrom, Tyger Claws and Scavs. Some obvious Corpo Types. The last statue was covered by shifting black fog, I had a feeling this represented my Case Worker.

  A deep and terrible snarl tore itself from me, before I managed to tear myself away. I spent a few moments collecting myself. Deep Breaths.

  Heading back to the elevators, I was still very confused as to what possible purpose all of this might serve. A sense of dread was growing.

  It finally occurred to me that the label in the elevator was a clue. I'd no excuse for not thinking of it sooner. Though some mistrust of this place was warranted, I'd a deep itching feeling that nothing was as it seemed here. My supposedly personal world, wasn't feeling very personal to me. More like it was taunting me.

  So to the top floor I went, softly humming a song to myself about falling into the darkness. A song many mistakenly thought was about dying, which was really about the creeping shadow of memory loss from Alzheimer's. That part of me, that always whispers the worst things to say or do, thought that was damned funny. The rest of me thought it was funny too, in that sick to my stomach kind of way.

  The ride up took a few minutes. The eeriness of a place for living being so quiet, so still, had plenty of time to sink in deep. Even the elevator itself was silent. If I hadn't felt its motion I would have sworn I was not going anywhere at all.

  Being left alone with my thoughts, had never been a good place for me. My thoughts went all twisty, and often turned negatively upon myself. It was why I liked working with my hands, I could maintain focus on something that wasn't in my head. Since I'd been in this new world this'd rarely been a problem, there was always something to do, always something else to distract me.

  Those few minutes in that metal box felt like hours. All the ammunition that the more devilish part of me had been storing up, got used in a burst of rapid fire recriminations. All the doubts, failures and flaws, real and imagined were written large across my mind. My inner troll had shaped and crafted them into far more cutting tools, than they should have been.

  If they could, tears would have been flowing down my cheeks as I saw my inability to save people, played out again and again. My lack of of meaningful action in the face of this broken society. Every person I'd let down or lost stood as specters in my heart. Casting countless aspersions. The weight of corrupted events fell on my shoulders, every action I'd taken was rewritten into a monstrous deed. Me, cast as the Villain. Every word I'd ever said bitter and biting, weapons tearing the hearts of others to pieces. Under the canopy of the Valley there was peace, but all I could see was that the trees there burning. Then it was thousands of troops rallying to my cause only to be thrown into the meat grinder of battle.

  This wasn't right. This wasn't the way it was, but it was growing harder to see it any other way. then I recall John's words, "Success breeds failure". As true for myself as anyone and anything else.

  And there it was, the thing whispering into my ear. I could finally feel it, a twisted version of me. I turned to look at it, and it grinned at me. Faint and shadowy it spewed its assaults deep into my psyche. In its supposed moment of victory, it'd stopped hiding.

  Seeing that everything I was experiencing had an instigator brought burning rage to the forefront of my mind. The time for thinking was done. Now it was my turn.

  My Aura flared a rich deep green, and my shadow clone was well within its range. I felt it there, a greasy oil bubble filled with vitriol, it wasn't alive, nor was it dead. The shadow was some form of sentient mana given a purpose.

  Like any bubble, it would be easily crushed by my greater "mass" of energy. I gripped it with my mana and squeezed. In its final moment, I saw it struggle. I was pleased, the shadow was aware, it could be hurt. I wanted the darkling being to suffer.

  It popped with the stink of burning tar and raw sewage. I reflexively cast Purify to remove the odor, and heard a further scream, sounding like a steam whistle. Just rupturing its form, hadn't finish it off, I supposed. I swept the area with tendrils of my mana, the only way I could think of to search for more of those gloomy things. Nothing. The area seemed to be clear.

  Perhaps, I should figure out some way to passively scan for these types of threats. Yup, that goes right on the priority list.

  Was this shadow thing normal here? Or was it shaped and sent by someone else? My gut said it was the latter. The rest of me wasn't so sure. The thought that anyone could send something here into what seemed to be a private space was disturbing. Unless it was the Company, but it'd seemed too tame by their standards. Too small, too weak. The gears were cranking away at max speed, in my mind. I smacked my head.

  I had come in first, when the Company snatched me up. Which implied there were others like me. If there were others, not all of them would be decent folks. There was bound to be someone who thought that power meant that they could act as they wanted, with no regard for others. I was in danger of falling into that trap myself. Others might go even further.

  What kind of power would be able to create one of those shadows? What kind of mind would be behind that creation? I didn't like the profile I was building. There were enough troubles in this world, I didn't need a new enemy. But I apparently had one.

  The "Master Floor, Living Area" was one quarter of the footprint of the building, or about a couple dozen times the size of my apartment in MB 4. You could play professional football easily within it, with plenty of room left over.

  The floor was done in a cherry stained teak hardwood. I could feel the spring in my step that comes with having a cork underlayer, which pleasantly muffled the sound of my steps as well. The walls were covered in grey wooden slats with the occasional outlet. The rest of the space was remarkable only in the fact that it was empty. No furniture of any kind. The outer wall had 9 huge windows looking down upon the space of my Hub. The view wasn't much, just the field I woke up in, the roof of the Value Tree and the roof of the Storage Tree, then the other field of purple grass.

  Surely there was some way to change things here. This view was depressing. Maybe something in one of the other sections of this floor would help with that.

  I sighed, not liking the mystery of this place, and I could only grimace at the idea that I would have to manually haul things up here. Without something like the storage space of my former class, that was going to be quite the challenge.

  You never really appreciate the things you have, until some demented being rips them out of you.