Chương 164: After-After-After-Party

The kick felt good, and Meno did not regret it. If anything, the impact finally knocked enough Honeyjuice out of his brain for the situation to start fitting together. Morlando had sold him on the fake simulation story, used him to pilot real KKF hardware, dragged him into restricted corporate nonsense he had never signed up for, and then apparently decided the reasonable follow-up was turning a Streamline party into another test. Morlando had it coming.

Unfortunately, the [ASSESSMENT COMPLETE] message made the rest click too, and Meno did not like where his thoughts were going. The weak fake security, the abandoned equipment, the blocked network, and a route built around adaptation instead of raw firepower all looked much less random now.

"Don't worry, we'll bring him back," Meno said while Morlando remained unconscious beside the chair.

"Then we sort this out with the upper hand." Kestrel looked from Morlando's body to Meno.

"I am worried. You just kicked a trillionaire in the face. We are finished." Patro finally reached Floor 35 with his attention split between the room and the drone controls in his hands.

"Nobody else. That's it. Do we get a reward?" He looked toward Morlando, more interested in the man's face than his current condition.

"Morlando Felt looks way younger in real life than in pictures. Is he like forty?" BrineSaint ignored him.

"This was a total setup. I didn't sign up to pass anything."

"That's why I kicked him." Meno gestured toward the unconscious man.

"This guy loves this stuff. They left the bag on purpose to bait me into recruiting you, and now they have footage, AR data, who knows what else, of us running through Streamline Tower zapping security."

"Are you saying he's trying to blackmail us? For what? Unbelievable." Kestrel pulled the AR-11 off his shoulder and threw it against the wall.

"Everything was going so well. I just want to focus on Crownfall."

"To work for the real Feltforge," Meno said.

"Not the one running Veyrath. Solar handles that. Feltforge doesn't touch it or tell the AI what to do. Veyrath is used to train it." BrineSaint's attention sharpened.

"How do you know this?"

"Because I work for them." That finally shut the room up. Kestrel, BrineSaint, and Patro all needed a moment to process what Meno meant by work. Patro recovered first.

"Work? Like beta test? I don't get it." Meno looked between the three of them. The obvious call was to stop talking, wake Morlando, and let Feltforge handle its own mess.

"Are you sure you want to know? If I tell you, they'll never let you walk."

"Too late for that," BrineSaint said.

"I had no idea about any of this. I really thought there was a crisis." Meno rubbed the side of his face, trying to keep the explanation in order.

"Morlando wanted to talk to me before the party, but I blew him off, so he must've gotten creative. The bags weren't even supposed to be brought. That happened because of what I told the guards at the airport. So this wasn't all pre-planned." Kestrel buried his face in one palm.

"Just tell us everything." Meno did. It started with the XUltra capsule and the supposed AI-training contract. Feltforge had approached him because his VR data was freakish enough for somebody to notice, then offered one million credits per session to test Mach 9 drone jets in what Meno had been told was a simulation. That had sounded weird but believable at the time. Feltforge needed uncommon control data for a new AI, and players with extreme VR response times were rare enough that the money almost made sense.

Then Meno learned Feltforge had not been searching for good gamers because gaming mattered. They were using capsule data to find people whose response time, spatial control, adaptability, and ability to process high-speed VR movement pushed into the borderline-superhuman range. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Those people were useful outside VR. Very useful.

Fast drones, remote robots, high-speed vehicles, combat machines, and any other expensive nightmare that stopped working once the operator became the bottleneck. The best candidates were hard to recruit quietly because most people with that kind of training already belonged to governments, militaries, aerospace companies, or corporations buried under enough oversight to ruin discreet hiring. Streamers and VR players were different. Nobody questioned why a gaming company wanted their data.

Meno explained the KKF mission too, and how harmless-looking testing eventually turned into him controlling real equipment for operations he had never knowingly agreed to join. He told them about the hidden research, the private facilities, and the quiet corporate war running behind the world everyone else saw. Feltforge was not alone. Senfestra was doing the same thing, and Meno assumed there were others he had never heard about.

The largest companies sabotaged one another, stole research, infiltrated projects, and fought over technology that officially did not exist. The government either had no idea or was pretending very hard. At least one investigator had been involved with Sorell, but whether that meant one compromised official, an entire agency, or something sanctioned from higher up was impossible to know.

By the end of the explanation, the fake security encounter made more sense because Feltforge had never been looking for people who could point a weapon at a target. It needed pilots.

"They weren't testing whether we could win a real fight," Meno said.

"They were testing our brains. Real pressure, no HP bars, no resurrection, everything messy and moving at once. Would you freeze, panic, or adapt? That's why those guys were weak enough for four drunk idiots to beat them." Kestrel grimaced.

"Fantastic." Patro leaned against the edge of Morlando's desk.

"I could use that million. My stream isn't that big."

"We don't have a choice," BrineSaint said.

"If they wanted to blackmail us, they already could. Better to negotiate while we're cooperating than after we refuse." Kestrel turned on him.

"Are you seriously going along with this? You? The most risk-averse person in the room?"

"I want to try the XUltra capsule."

"That's the reason?" Kestrel pointed at Meno next.

"You and him are both lunatics." Patro lifted one hand.

"I'm in. The Solo King can control any kind of army, virtual or otherwise." He shifted toward Kestrel.

"Are you going to chicken out?"

"Chicken? Of course not. I have never chickened out of anything ever."

"What about the university?" Meno asked.

"Getting accepted was the hard part. I cleared that easy," Kestrel said. Meno almost laughed, then remembered one more detail that might make the whole situation sound slightly less insane.

"Look, guys, it's not all bad. Carl Sorell kidnapped me off the street, and Feltforge blew up his penthouse to get me back."

"You were kidnapped?" Patro asked.

"That's serious, man. This is why I don't go outside. The capsule is safe."

"Yeah. Feltforge called him small fries. Haven't heard from him since." BrineSaint looked down at Morlando.

"Let's revive him. The first-aid kit should contain a Neurostim injector." That gave Meno something useful to do. He headed back downstairs and found one of the first-aid cases near Patro's abandoned equipment. Inside, between sealant patches and compact medical tools, sat several preloaded injectors. One was clearly labeled Neurostim-R9, with bright fluid visible through a narrow strip in the casing. Meno returned to Floor 35 and pressed the injector against Morlando's upper arm.

It hissed, and for several seconds, nothing happened. Then Morlando sucked in a deep breath, opened his eyes, brushed his shoulder-length hair out of his face, and checked the damage to his suit. Meno decided to get ahead of the obvious complaint.

"I am so sorry about that. I thought you were an impostor. Your reaction to being rescued was way off, considering the situation." Morlando touched his bruised cheek.

"Do you think I am buying this shit?"

"I don't really care, but the mission is done, so I guess you win anyway." Meno nodded toward the others.

"Just tell me, did you come up with the bag bait because I blew off your meeting?"

"Smart, right?" Morlando said.

"You were never in any real danger, the broken window was your fault, and the test was going perfectly well until you kicked me in the face. I am deducting the treatment from your paycheck."

"Yeah, well, maybe next time set it up so the participants are sober." Meno gestured toward BrineSaint, Kestrel, and Patro.

"So what now? They agree to join if you don't go overboard and treat them like trash. We also want five million each, every time we climb into a capsule for whatever you're planning. Success or fail."

"Five million is fine. There will be no contract," Morlando said, finally giving the other three his full attention.

"You will all receive a subdermal stamp for tracking, and you will all move to Vernova since we have already set things up there. When you are called, you arrive at the location. The money will be wired through a sponsor cover." The fact that he had accepted a fivefold pay increase without even blinking made Meno suspicious he had still asked for too little.

Morlando's expression had settled back into the same calm confidence Meno remembered from the earlier Feltforge meetings, although the purple mark spreading across one side of his face hurt the effect.

"We are almost done with our XUltra LinkSync technology. Once it is finished, you will be notified. If you leak anything, you don't have to worry about me. Senfestra will find you within 24 hours, so I recommend against it." Morlando stood and spread both arms, presenting the four of them like he was announcing a major product launch instead of recruiting drunk streamers into a hidden corporate arms race.

"Welcome to Feltforge Systems!"