Datagene: Code Trinity

Chapter 1

Rhea POV

"Hey Rhea, have you heard of that new VR game that came out like, a month ago by that huge gaming company?" Kris asked, fiddling with the ID bands around his wrist. "Apparently there are still people who are dying while playing it recently." I sighed. We were in the middle of a city called Petra, one of the newer and more populated cities in the United States. Gaming central for others. Home for me. But in the winter at dusk it was freezing. Not good weather to forget your bus pass in. "Isn't that weird?" 

"That happens every time a gaming company releases a game." I said, pulling my scarf up against the chilly wind blowing down the snowy street. My snow jacket didn't help much since the cold just cut through it. I guess it was my fault for getting a cheap one. "Some poor guy doesn't fill up before gaming and his friends don't notice and he dies because he's too into the game." I looked around the street as we walked towards the arcade, where the VR booths were. 

The holographic billboards and ads lit up the streets of downtown, turning the falling snow greens, blue, pinks, and the millions of other colors there. Most normal people took their cars or had a bus and metro pass. I had left mine at where I had part time job, a small bakery near home. Since I was simply a poor college student, I didn't have a car. I was already going to have to spend a good chunk of my life paying for my college and med school so I didn't want to add to my debts for now.

"No Rhea, those only happen within the first two weeks max. Not over a month after the game release." Kris said, pulling his beanie down over his platinum blonde hair. "That's really weird though. right?" I sighed and pressed a button on my ID band. My holo opened in front of me, displaying a search browser. I typed into the keyboard with a hand as we continued to walk down the street. A few more minutes until we reached the arcade. 

The results scrolled up in front of me, and I clicked on the first article that came up. I lowered the holo panel's opacity so I could see where I was going while I was reading. 

At least a hundred people dead since Halfbyte Institution have released Datagene: Code Trinity. People say that the data chip that is in their ID bands cannot disconnect from the machines, and those whose family or friends attempted to do so, an unfortunate fate results for the one playing. 

I paused reading for a few minutes as we waited to cross the street. I could see the lights of the arcade from where it was a few more blocks down. People were out surprisingly late. Most of them were crowded on the buses that were still out, some on cars. Some people walked like us, but it didn't look like they were having any more fun than we were to walk through the snowy streets. After we crossed the street, Kris took my hand. I continued to read. 

A dose of sodium cyanide ends up in the victim's system, killing them quite quickly. People have been warned not to attempt to pull their loved ones from the VR booth's grasp. After engineers picked apart all of the known VR booths, they saw that they all had multiple vials of cyanide ready to use. Nothing has been confirmed about the newest version of the VR booth Halfbyte plans to release next month. 

"Are you sure you want to go and play VR? That article looks bad." Kris said. We entered the arcade, and I shook my head. 

"We'll be fine. I heard that they have Genesis VR booths here too. They aren't as good as Halfbyte, but they'll do the job. Besides, this could be a fake article."

"Did you read about it?" He asked. I nodded and tapped my ID band. The holo shrank and disappeared, and I took some change out of my pocket and fed it to the machine. It spat out a VR pass, which I put around my wrist with my ID band. "Well, that aside. What game do you want to play? Bioforce?" 

"Sure," I said. "Let's go and play some VR." I said. We walked to a pair of Genesis VR booths in a relatively quiet part of the arcade. I saw some new looking Halfbyte VR booths that had an extremely long line in front of them. They must have been preview models that Halfbyte released for the VIP arcade goers. Granted, this was one of the Halfbyte sponsored arcades. I stepped inside the Genesis booth and Kris into the other next to mine. The VR booths were pretty simple. Step inside and scan your VR band in the credits scanner. You scan in your ID band and then step back into the player wall, where you are injected with something that allowed you to access the game. Then you watch as the virtual world formed around you. Everything feels real, but your physical body is still in the player rest. It's just that your brain was now only running necessary organs in your physical body while focusing the rest of your senses into the VR system. The gamers and engineers came up with it ages ago, but it was fine. It was mandatory to replace the VR doses daily, even if they weren't used. Mom had used these and she was fine. 

I typed in my VR username and password in the provided keyboard, and then selected Bioforce in the games menu. I looked at myself in the virtual mirror to see my avatar. It looked like me in real life. I didn't like changing myself to someone completely unfamiliar. The same long dark brown hair, color contact eyes and freckles across my face. My favorite sweatshirt and black ripped jeans. Mom's old baby blue shoes that she let me have. I think they were called Converse. The screen transitioned to the game's opening menu. It was a familiar game screen. Two tall doors, one smaller one with vines filling the spaces between them. The game's welcoming npc, a little kitten who I called Tabs meowed and jumped into my arms. Suddenly bold red letters flashed in front of me, saying Code error 96579. Redirecting.... Tabs yowled and jumped out of my arms. 

The game doors to Bioforce suddenly faded and were replaced with a new game screen. Then I remembered that Genesis was a branch corporation of Halfbyte and that they went through the same building processes. Huge metal letters gleamed above me, spelling out a new game title. Datagene: Code Trinity. I opened my holo, trying to access the logout button. Panic expanded exponentially in me with every second that I unsuccessfully tried to access the logout button. I finally opened the game options and I felt my heart plummet. There was only a menu of empty buttons.

A/N:

Hello again! Good morning/evening/afternoon/whatever time of day you're in. Wow I posted two days in a row. Anyways, this is the beginning of a dream that I had last night, and I'm basically going to write it into a story because it was a really interesting dream. I hope you like it! 

PS The characters are OCs I had designed yesterday so yea maybe that's why I dreamed of them. 

I'mma pull a Lauren and say "See ya!"