“You can shove your questions up your ass, Eleven! My bonus job was simple: wake you up, get you standing, and bring you to the hallway. It’s done. I got my reward. The only reason I’m still here is out of the goodness of my heart. Get it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. One more piece of advice for you: don’t trust anyone! And don’t agree to anything. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Never lend anyone money, not even one sol! Not one!”
“What’s a sol?”
“It’s money! Currency! The absolute most important thing for all of us here is to earn our sol day in, day out! You have to pay four sol every day just to rent your set!”
“Set? What the hell does that mean?” I burst out. At least I still had emotions — I had almost started to worry I was a robot. But no.
“This,” she reached out with her one arm to touch each of my arms and legs in succession. “Is your set. Every day, the system takes one sol for each limb. Four total for the set. No discounts.” She stood up, smiling bitterly.
“Hold on...” my mind was grasping at whatever it could just to stay focused. “What about you? Do you pay three sol every day? Because of...”
She glanced at the cleanly cut-off stump by her shoulder and grinned again.
“I pay for four, too. Since it was my own fault I lost this arm. And that means they take one sol from me every day for jack shit. One last piece of advice for you, new guy: don’t forget about the GC.”
“About the what?”
“You’ll understand later. Keep an eye out for your number — eleven — on the screens. If you see it on one of them, be quick. You only have а minute, then it’s the next player’s turn. And stay alert, make sure you don’t get jumped — games are rare, and everyone wants to play. They won’t think twice about tripping you up or even knocking you out.”
“What the — ”
“Just be careful! And watch the screens. They’re only on in the evenings, since there are jobs to do during the day.”
“I don’t — ”
“You’ll figure it out. Good luck!” She bent down and clasped me on the shoulder. “Be strong. Survive. That’s what matters. See ya!”
She left, leaving me slumped against the wall.
I was in pain, serious pain. The throbbing in my back was more or less tolerable, but my head and my left elbow... the longer I sat there, the more I wanted to gnaw off my left arm and smash my head into a pulp against the wall. I had to distract myself somehow...
What had Ninety-Five said? No, it was Ninety-One. Ninety-One... I had to remember. Judging by the others’ overall lack of any reaction to my pain-contorted body lying against the wall, Ninety-One was the nicest person around.
Ninety-One.
“The new guy is a dead man.”
“Yeah. Someone’s gonna get three extra sol for his interment.”
“Lucky bastard...”
What did I need right then?
The answer was obvious — water. I needed water, and as much as possible. I remembered one of the lines that had flashed before my eyes:
Hydration — complete.
Something dry was successfully made wet. Or at least slightly moist, if my theory was right, and the text was referring to my body. It made sense so far.
Assembly — complete.
My rented limbs, as horrific as that sounded.
Resuscitation — complete.
No explanation needed.
If I put two and two together... my dry body was successfully saturated with water, then given the first available limbs, and finally reanimated, bringing me back to some miserable form of existence. Then I found myself in some kind of storeroom, where the one-armed Ninety-One had shaken me awake.
My head was pounding, distracting me from my attempts to think rationally. Everything inside me felt like it was about to give out. The wrinkled skin on my stomach started to shrivel again. I felt tightness in my cheeks and forehead, and my eyes could hardly move in their sockets, like they were stuck.
