Max dismissed the floating window and adjusted his posture as the two men stepped into the room.
He immediately increased his guard. Yet, as he scrutinized them, an odd intuition washed over him, he could somehow tell they weren’t much of a threat to him.
It wasn’t that they were weaker than him physically, but rather that they carried no malicious intent toward him.
Max couldn’t quite explain how he knew that, but he shelved the thought for later.
"Max 79UG03?" the older of the two men asked, holding up a silver badge as he approached the bed. "The name’s Adam. That’s Smith. We’re from the Investigation Bureau of Player Related Affairs."
Max sat up straighter, squaring his shoulders to project strength and confidence.
If there was one thing Max was exceptionally good at, it was bluffing. It was his primary defense mechanism against being bullied, a habit that always allowed him to make his presence known regardless of the situation.
"Hmm, the Investigation Bureau... I didn’t know they had an interest in every minor awakening incident," Max commented while sizing them up.
Adam offered a faint smile. "You’re quite the observant one. My deductions were correct."
Max offered no response, letting a brief silence stretch between them before Adam walked forward and unceremoniously sat down right beside the bed without being invited.
"How are you feeling?" Adam asked.
"Well, I’m really hungry," Max responded.
"...Right."
"I’m serious, though. The nurse spilled the food she was supposed to get me, so the only thing holding me now is the breakfast I had this morning. What was it again? Oh yeah, it was just nutrient paste. My fridge was empty anyway..."
Both Adam and Smith were intelligent enough to catch onto what Max was doing.
He was trying to steer them away from their main reason for arriving by feeding them information that wasn’t relevant to them. But they weren’t going to buy it.
"It’s enough," Smith interrupted from behind, stepping forward with a pad in his hands to stand before him. "Now please cooperate with us. We’re going to ask you some questions."
Max smiled wryly, then eventually shrugged. "Go on, then."
They ran him through it properly after that. When did he arrive at the lab, who authorized the specimen, what was in the catalyst, what did the readouts say, who triggered containment, where was he standing when the clamps failed.
Max answered all of it, and he answered it well, because for the first time in his life somebody with authority was asking him detailed questions about his own research, and he was not going to waste it.
He got about ninety seconds into explaining why a core bled below one percent shouldn’t have been able to re-densify at all, complete with the two competing models and why he thought both of them were wrong, before Adam raised a hand.
"Son."
"There’s a third possibility, though, and it’s actually the interesting one—"
"Son."
Max stopped after seeing Smith write something down, before turning back to them.
"Just so we’re clear. Am I in trouble?"
Adam frowned. "For what?"
"For..." Max gestured broadly at the entire concept of himself. "It was my grant. My catalyst. My protocol, my calibration, my execution key. A man died in a room I set up. In what world am I not in a cell right now?"
The two of them exchanged a look, and it was Smith who answered, sounding almost apologetic about it.
"You’re a Player."
"That’s it?"
"There’s a review, but it will clear. Nobody’s charging a registered Player over a lab accident."
’...Huh.’
Max sat with that. He genuinely hadn’t seen it coming, and he prided himself on seeing things coming.
Some hours ago he’d been a research assistant, and a research assistant who got a colleague killed would have spent the next four years being slowly eaten by a hearing.
Now he was a Player, and the exact same set of facts had quietly become paperwork.
The country hadn’t changed its opinion of what happened in that room. It had changed its opinion of him.
’Perks of being a Player, I guess.’
Max grinned in thought.
He shouldn’t have, though, which he realized a second too late, because Adam had just started saying something in a much gentler voice about the technician, and about how the Academy kept counselors on staff, and about how nobody expected him to be fine after watching that.
And Max was sitting there grinning like a man who’d found money.
Adam stopped talking and exchanged looks with Smith.
Max, who was excellent at reading a room, watched the entire silent conversation happen in front of him and correctly identified the conclusion they’d arrived at:
The kid’s far too far gone. He’s broken with trauma.
They stopped being curious about him right then.
’Oh, good. Much easier for me,’ Max thought.
"There’s one more thing." Adam’s voice had gone careful now. "It’s not required. You understand that? It’s not required."
"You want to know my class?"
"Yeah, we’d like to note it. That’s all."
And there it was.
Disclosure was voluntary. It was written into the Player Charter in plain text:
<A Player’s class is the property of the Player. The state could register you, rank you, test you, tax you, and call you up in a national emergency, but it could not open your mouth.>
Guilds required it in contracts. Government field commissions required it. Sponsors required it.
And so, in practice, roughly everybody handed it over one day, because a class you kept secret was a class nobody would hire.
But they had to ask.
’And they’re asking,’ Max thought in relief.
He thought about the panel and how broken his class was.
"I’d rather not," Max replied.
Smith was a bit irritated. "You’d rather not?"
"Yeah, mystery. I mean it’s a whole thing. I’ve been ugly and poor my entire life, let me have this."
Adam almost smiled. Then he nodded at Smith, and Smith wrote it down, and neither of them pushed further.
"Two things before we go," Adam said as he stood up. "One. You’re cleared, so get down to the Association and register. Get your card. Without it you don’t legally set foot in a Gate, and the fine for trying is more than you make in a year."
"And two?"
"Now that you’re registered, Academy tuition is waived. Take the classes. Take all of them if you can."
Adam noticed that Max lacked the excitement he would expect from someone who couldn’t afford Academy courses, so he added:
"Listen to me, kid, because I’ve said this to about a hundred kids and I’ve lost 40% of them anyway. Resurgence saves you once. Whatever you think you did in that room, you didn’t do it. Something did it for you and then left."
"The country loses more first-year Players to confidence than it does to monsters. Don’t make me come to a second one of these this month."
They both took their leave after Adam finished speaking.
Click.
’...Fair enough,’ Max thought after seeing the door shut.
Luckily for him, they hadn’t come for trouble and had even given him some advice at the end.
He waited until their footsteps were gone from the corridor, then brought the window back up and went straight to the line he’d been reaching for when they interrupted.
’Now where were we?’
[Devoured Experiences:...