Shaking off the nightmare, Kurt rolled over and swiped at his phone, shutting off the alarm and checking his messages. They were empty for a change, and he got up to shower and find some breakfast. His bad dream was forgotten before he made it to the kitchen. The house was empty, and he found a note on the counter from his parents. “Went for brunch.” He nodded, somewhat grumpy, and had a bowl of granola before plugging in at his couch.

  He loaded in to the familiar rattle of his safehouse on the tracks, his perception swaying with gentle movement. When his eyes opened onto the game, he was shocked to notice a stranger in his safehouse, smiling gently at him from the seat in front of him. She wore a red dress and held a small weapon case in her hands, resting on her lap. Kurt reached for his Coonan, but came away empty handed, forgetting he had dropped it in the boss fight the night before. He cringed, looking at the AI representative in front of him.

  “Why does every player do that?” She scowled slightly, still smiling. “I find it somewhat rude.”

  Kurt squinted at her. “Stop referring to yourself as ‘I.’ It’s creepy. In fact, less personality in general, please.”

  “Very well.” The woman’s gaze became less friendly, her expression going slack as she averted her eyes from Kurt’s face. “Message for Mr. Kurtis.”

  “Go ahead.” Kurt swiped up his phone, pulling up the shop menu to find a replacement for his Coonan. He had become accustomed to having the firepower and was annoyed at its loss.

  Looking to the left of Kurt’s chin, the AI representative raised the case towards him. “Blacklight Industries would like to thank you for your creative contribution to The Life of Crime. Your character is rewarded a unique item to commemorate your contribution, which has ensured that the dynamic of power on the Illusion server will never be the same.”

  Kurt had been only half paying attention, focused on his phone, when realization came over him. His jaw slackened slightly as his eyes went wide, looking at the case being offered to him. The case was made of jet black metal, with a cross-work of small bones etched into the lid. It snapped open at his touch, revealing a handgun sunk into a black, silk-covered cushion. The silk was rotted and patchy, with corroded holes in the cloth.

  While it looked at its core like his lost Coonan .357 magnum pistol, the gun in the case was significantly modified. It was matte black all over, with tiny, charred, intertwined skeletons carved into the frame, handle, and slide. Two larger skeletal figures dominated the sides of the grip, their arms reaching down the barrel to join at the end of the gun in a bone compensator. A tarnished bronze plaque in the lid of the case read: The Messenger.

  Kurt scanned the gun.

  The Messenger

  Unique Pistol. Unique quality weapons do not drop upon death and respawn with the player.

  Caliber: .357 Magnum.

  Rate of Fire: Semi-Automatic.

  Capacity: 7 round magazine.

  The Messenger is a Coonan .357 magnum handgun and is able to use all .357 magnum ammunition types. This item is not eligible for any modifications, but Unique items are capable of growing alongside their owners. When fired, no report is pinged to the map. When equipped, player’s map presence is reduced by 25%.

  Kurt took the pistol and stood up slowly, feeling the heft of his new weapon. “Holy . . .”

  “Thank you, Mr. Kurtis. This message from Blacklight Industries is now complete. Have a lovely day.” He looked up to see the AI representative collapse into dust, fading away quickly and leaving the case for The Messenger in her place on the seat. Kurt slipped the gun into his old magnum’s holster. It fit perfectly.

  Grabbing the case, Kurt turned to set it into the bottom of his weapons storage cabinet. Still in the throes of his excitement, he pulled up his phone and sent a text to Jimmy. “Have you logged in yet?”

  A lack of response had him scratching his head. Jimmy always responded immediately. Frowning with a shrug, Kurt decided to do a little grinding at his skills while waiting for his friends to log in. He pulled up his skill menu to take a quick look.

  Specialist: Ambush, rank 2. Big Bore, rank 1. Obfuscation, rank 5. Small Bore, rank 1.

  Secondary: Combat Driving, rank 1. Gunslinger, rank 10. Sneak Attack, rank 5. Strategist, rank 4. Street Sweeper, rank 1. Underhanded, rank 7.

  Primary: Armor, rank 5. Cartography, rank 7. Disguise, rank 12. Driving, rank 1. Liar, rank 10. Perception, rank 3. Planning, rank 6. Small Arms, rank 12. Stealth, rank 7.

  His Ghost class added an additional ten ranks to Cartography, Disguise, Gunslinger, Liar, Planning, Small Arms, Sneak Attack, Stealth, and Underhanded. This raised his effective percentage boosts a great deal and combining his new Unique weapon with his class bonus of reduced map presence was a powerful tool for a stealth build.

  Looking things over, he realized his driving skill set was woefully inadequate for his masterplan. Stealing the buyout would almost certainly require driving the large amount of dirty cash somewhere, and with a war looming, that was a skill set he could no longer ignore.

  He exited his safehouse and, walking up to street level, got in the Testarossa, which was conveniently parked beside the station. Pulling up the new Lace Hub on his map, he set it as his respawn location and headed towards it. Kurt kept his driving skill up on his phone and watched the bar creep upwards, far too slowly for his liking. His attention was pulled sharply from his phone as an M1 Abrams tank rumbled across the intersection ahead of him. Bogged down in a line of cars at the light, Kurt went unnoticed by the behemoth with the blue digital camo paint, but its presence alone was enough to create panic in the road.

  Speeding past it, along with a crowd of NPCs, he glanced back at his phone to see a bigger spike in the driving skill. Kurt shook his head with a sigh, before hauling on the steering wheel and turning back to follow the tank. He crept around the corner behind it and started driving closer, glancing at his skill and frowning to see it rising at the same glacial level it had been before. Distracted by his confusion, the tank’s driver noticed him, and its turret began to swing around.

  Kurt floored the accelerator and sped past the Abrams, swerving around a corner as the turret tracked him. It blew a corner out of the building and moved to follow him. As the tracks crushed a parked car behind him, Kurt sped around another corner and realized that, if he was smart about it, this tank was not actually all that threatening. With a shrug, he turned the wheel to make another pass. This time the Abrams cut across the road in an attempt to crush him. He neatly dodged the clumsy tank, but his car was lifted physically by the follow-up blast of the cannon, which shot into the road behind him. White smoke poured from his hood and Kurt decided a hasty retreat was in order.

  Glancing at his wrist, he was pleased to note a level up in his Combat Driving skill and a solid two level ups in Driving. It seemed that high-risk encounters were worth significantly more exp. His musings were interrupted by a second Abrams tank cutting into the roadway in front him, its turret swinging towards him. Kurt’s cut into an alley as a shell went off a lane over from him. The white smoke became black, and the Testarossa belched flames from its exhaust as the engine stalled momentarily.

  He sped out of the alley, cutting through panicked civilians as he moved to place large concrete buildings between him and the two tanks hunting him. Taking a moment to recover, Kurt flicked his map up onto the windshield, causing his eyes to go wide again. Several oversized dots were converging on his location. He charted a quick path through the dots and gunned his smoking engine. Escaping the Downtown Cluster and its resident tanks, Kurt set a waypoint at the new Hub and made his way there.

  His car sputtered and died as he stopped outside of the warehouse, and he got out while coughing from the smoke. Checking his equipment screen did little to help his attitude, as it showed the vehicle was destroyed. He moved around to the entrance and was let in by Tigg, but he ignored her as he swiped through his menus in an attempt to find repairs for his car. Sitting in the common area, Kurt frowned at his lack of options. He had discovered a mobile repair operation, but it was absurdly expensive. There were several garages he realized he should have gone to instead of coming to the Hub, but that ship had sailed when his Testarossa had sputtered to death in the parking lot.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Kurt scowled, looking around the warehouse as an idea formed. He pulled up The Lace faction menu and started looking through the small handful of buildings they owned. The Hub in the Downtown Cluster was marked as usable, but it had a notification claiming that only Gadot could make modifications to it, and turf was marked as inaccessible as long as GoonStorm had a presence there. This Hub, however, had an upgrade tab. Kurt swiped to it and was confronted with several options. If he upgraded the building, a closed-off section would be opened, and he could assign what it was used for, from a list of unlocked options. One of the options was a vehicle workshop, and he instantly swiped to it. The upgrade would cost him most of his remaining fortune, with a price tag of ten million dollars. Kurt felt it would be worth the price.

  He took a moment to ensure his respawn was set to this Hub, and stripped his Walther from the holster, leaving it in the common room after getting assurances from Tigg that it would stay there. Mentally berating himself for being forgetful, Kurt texted his attaché about getting his armor repaired, and left it on the table beside the Walther for pickup. He equipped his Glock in his sidearm slot and started walking, moving through a handful of doors to the garage.

  The sound of a large diesel engine could be heard as Kurt got closer. His Ferrari was being towed into the building by a hulking tow truck. A sliding metal door embedded in the ceiling closed on its own as the vehicles came to a stop in a cramped but lengthy garage, walls slathered in tools. A tall, lanky man with long, dark hair stepped down from the tow truck, giving Kurt a nod as he moved to unhook the Ferrari. He wore a deep forest green mechanic’s jumpsuit, and Kurt was surprised to see a graphic of unfurled leather wings with heavy scales on the back of it.

  “Uh, hi?” Kurt said. He waved at the man’s back, getting only a raised eyebrow over a shoulder for his efforts. Kurt moved closer, leaning in to inspect the process of unhooking his car from the tow truck. After the mechanic had finished, he stood and turned to finally face Kurt.

  “Afternoon. I’m Drake. Good to meet you.” He clasped Kurt’s hand in a quick but crushing shake. “You want her fixed up, I gather. Any mods?” He pulled a small, metal case from his pocket and drew out a hand-rolled cigarette, firing it up with the click of a metal lighter. When he parted his lips in a toothy grin, a cloud of fragrant smoke curled around his face with the exhale.

  Kurt shook his head. “Not right now. I’m working on getting my skill up first.” He paused. “Actually, what kinds of armor can I get?”

  Drake sniffed, rubbing his nose against a sleeve. “Well, I could slap a little anti-ballistic armor plating on there for cheap. Cheaper when I’m doing a full repair like this, actually.”

  His eyebrow raising, Kurt paused in thought. “Any chance I can make that blast plating instead?”

  “Oh yeah, sure. Nothing good, mind, but the cheap stuff I could throw on there, no problem.” Drake reached into a pocket, pulling out a block of plastic that it took Kurt a second to recognize as an old cellular phone. He swiped at its screen, before reaching out for Kurt to tap his wrist against it. “Here’s your options right now. Not exactly thrilling, but I can build on some of these as we go.” He took a moment to run his hand along the warped frame of the Testarossa. “This is a really nice ride. What’d you do to it?”

  Kurt happily accepted the mods file and began swiping through his options. “Oh nothing, really. Just crossed paths with a couple of Abrams tanks.” His options were somewhat varied, separated by sections. ‘Armor’ was at the top, but beneath that option several more waited. ‘Cosmetics’ did nothing for him, so he skipped it and went straight to ‘Performance,’ before realizing he needed a much higher rank in the Driving skill before he could get anything worth having. At the top of the page the upgrades menu had a dual tab, similar to a weapons scan screen. It read ‘Standard’ and ‘Custom.’

  When Kurt swiped to ‘Custom,’ the screen changed entirely, and a holographic display of the vehicle started floating in front of him. He moved his finger to touch the hood, and a tool tip screen opened. It showed the various ways he could customize the vehicle, using his own designs. In his initial bumbling attempts to navigate the system, he managed to create a large wedge of armor across the hood that extended into a sharp point at the front of the car. He scowled and was about to swipe it away when he paused, a pensive expression coming across his face.

  “Hey, Drake, can you work with me on some custom builds?” Kurt raised his eyes to see Drake release another cloud of smoke from between his clenched teeth.

  He nodded, spreading the sweet smelling tobacco smoke around his head as he did so. “Of course. You have something in mind?”

  Kurt waved him off, saving the work in progress on his phone and moving to leave the garage. “Not right now, but I’ll need your help with something soon.” He turned back at the doorway. “How long for a full repair?”

  Drake shrugged, turning his back. “Twenty minutes. Longer if you stay to watch.”

  With a nod, Kurt left the garage and went looking for Tigg. He had her set him up on a training course and ran through it with his Glock a few times before sitting down in an exhausted huff on the couch. He was pleased to see a level up in his Small Arms skill, in spite of the slower EXP gain in the shooting range. More important than that, working closely with Tigg and paying attention to everything she taught him was helping his personal skill with the Glock. No longer was it merely a tool for spray and pray tactics — he was actually getting good with the machine pistol, able to navigate an assault course with an increasing score each time.

  A chime on his wrist notified him of the Testarossa’s repair completion, and he moved into the garage again to collect his car. Drake gave him a quick run-down of the blast plating he had added, informing him it would reduce explosive damage taken by five percent, and then deducted the cost of the repair and upgrade from Kurt’s clean money account. The full repair had cost just over a hundred thousand, and the upgrades were a mere ten thousand.

  Kurt sighed at the cost, knowing it was going to happen a handful more times before he was finished. As he sat in the driver’s seat, he scowled and pulled up his reputation with The Lace. Disappointingly, it had actually degraded by a quarter of a level since he had last checked it. “Hey, Drake. How can I get some rep up with the crew? Is it just by pulling jobs?”

  After exhaling another blast of smoke through his nostrils, Drake shook his head. “Naw, there’s all kinds of ways. Selling goods for us when we have them, even bringing me cars to scrap would get you a little bump. You can always help the war effort too. As of last night, we’re at war with GoonStorm and Ursa, so any of their forces you take out will get you some respect around here.”

  Kurt drove out of the garage with an appreciative nod, his eyes narrowed in thought. Sitting in front of the warehouse for a few moments, Kurt pulled up his phone and did a little shopping online. He found a website called The Mad Bomber and purchased a case of grenades, having them delivered to the Hub. His attaché text him, giving him a time when she would return with his order and repaired armor.

  Those chores seen to, Kurt set his driving skills to the border of his map, then threw it up onto the windshield, before swiping it to the side. He drove towards the border of the Pirates turf, noticing a buildup of dots on both sides as he approached. Sounds of war reached him before the visuals, the city echoing with the deep rumbles of an explosive onslaught. Peeking the Testarossa around a corner Kurt was witness to the front line of the Pirates’ defensive tactics. They had set up a mortar line, and were bombarding anyone who came too close, including Kurt. As he sped away from the explosions in his rear view mirror, he scowled at the puny five percent upgrade to his explosives resistance, his car already pouring white smoke.

  Kurt spent the next half hour looking for trouble, then running away from it. He actively sought out GoonStorm patrols and teased them with his far speedier and more maneuverable vehicle, drawing their fire and then fleeing throughout the city. His game of cat and mouse eventually drew too much attention, and an Abrams was waiting for him around a corner. He had just enough time to blink at the tank barrel swiveling in his direction before everything went black in a roar of flame and smoke. He opened his eyes on the Hub and blinked off the tank blast that had finished his foray.

  Tigg walked past, gracing him with a raised eyebrow. “That seems to have gone well,” she lightly mocked him, a hint of scorn in her voice. Kurt stood, tilting his head at the lack of weight he felt. His gear was off somehow, and he patted down his pockets and holsters. The holsters themselves had respawned with him, but all of his special gear holders were gone. The patch of grenades at his back, along with his Ratshot ammunition holder, and even his flares and smoke sticks were gone. It appeared he had overlooked the respawn capabilities of his clothing, and he sighed in mild frustration. He pulled up his phone and ordered replacements for each item, making a mental note of what could and couldn’t be taken into a losing fight without threat of loss.

  Swiping up his skills, Kurt was pleased to see a significant raise in their levels. Driving had gone up two further levels, and Combat Driving had risen a rank as well. “Getting the job done,” he replied to Tig. “Set up the assault course, please. I’m running it with the magnum this time.”

  She nodded and walked away, leaving Kurt to go check on the garage. As he peeked through the doorway, Drake was pulling in with the tow truck again, the charred husk of his Testarossa attached to the back end. The roof had been caved in by the tank’s shell strike, and the entire back end of the car was blown out, twisted strips of metal dangling along the ground.

  “That looks rough. How long for a complete repair?” Kurt said.

  Drake turned to look at him as he climbed down from the cab, a fresh hand-rolled cigarette in his lips. He took a long, slow drag, savoring the smoke before speaking. “Eh. Twenty minutes? More if you stay to watch.”

  Kurt smiled and backed up, letting the door close. He went to the assault course and found Tigg finishing her setup. She swiped at the tablet in her hand and turned to face him. “Ready? Good. Get to work. Remember what I told you about recoil management.” He drew The Messenger and grinned, stepping up to the start line and giving Tigg a nod.