"VersaDEATH"

Game: Deus Ex (2000)

“VersaDEATH”

I.
The huge LED sign, portraying the letters “VL” in red and white overlaying the earth, loomed in the wet darkness. Bin rubbed the cold water out of her eyes and continued leaning against the concrete wall, staring upwards. The brightness of the sign hurt her eyes, but simultaneously pulled her to be lost in its light. It seemed like it had only been days since VersaLife took over Hong Kong, everything happened so quickly. On the other hand, the far-reaching hand of control they seemed to have over everything made their occupation of a few decades feel as though it must have been hundreds of years. Bin could hardly remember what the city-state had been like before the monopolizing technology-centered mega-corporation had taken over commerce, politics, and the general population’s awe. She had been working as a top researcher at VersaLife’s competitor, Zymo Technologies, during the mid-20s. Now her former employer was so far in the dust of VersaLife that most people struggled to recall its name or existence at all. In the decades following its bankruptcy, all people really remembered was the scandal surrounding the name “Zymo” that had surely been staged by VersaLife. That scandal, which preyed upon the remnants of ethics left in the technology industry, had left any former employees without viable jobs. Bin had spent her years since working mostly odd-jobs or as a middle-woman for the black market.

Resourceful, she had worked these less-than-legal jobs hard to keep a roof over her head for most of her life. But after botching a job for the Luminous Path triad a week ago, she found her apartment completely looted and destroyed. Too afraid to stick around in the case of their return, she’d ended up on the streets with no money or possessions and trying hard to conceal her identity. They must not have cared enough to come after her further, because she couldn’t have done that well a job concealing herself—the Red Arrow had sent a young messenger to offer her a job for protection two days ago. The triads were at bitter war, even under the nose of VersaLife, and it seemed that the Red Arrow wanted to steal some advantages from the mega-corporation to defeat their enemy. Bin was too old for this kind of job—sneaking in the headquarters to steal nanotech—but she didn’t have a choice. She looked younger than her years and moved like it, too. But her instincts raged that this was a terrible idea and could only end horribly. It was likely that Yuen Kong had assigned this mission to her explicitly to scout the facility’s security or as a decoy. She was just a tool operating under the threat of losing her life to either of the triads. What else could she do?

Her contact with the Red Arrow had provided her a fake visitor ID badge, a power-suit disguise, and the little knowledge that the triad had of the building’s layout. This knowledge included one security code: 6512. He also gave her a camera. “Take as many pictures as you can,” he instructed, “They will all stream to our computers and we can see what is happening to you.” Bin knew it was about getting a look inside VersaLife, not assuring her safety, but she appreciated the messenger’s sentiment nonetheless. The camera was the only electronic device given to her. She had a pocket full of lock picks but wasn’t sure how well that would get her around.

It was 6:32 AM. The darkness of the morning streets made it seem like it was the middle of the night. But no, there was no forestalling any longer. She had to act today, and now, or the Red Arrow would be out for her life even harder than the Luminous Path. Pulling the plastic poncho off and throwing it near a trash bag, she walked out of the alley and up to the VersaLife sliding doors.

II.

Harsh fluorescents filled the reception area and administrative offices of VersaLife. The lights seemed to expose Bin’s falsity immediately and she had to force herself to cease trembling as she approached the reception counter. “May I see your badge?” the secretary asked with an easy smile. Bin held it out for her to see. “It’s delightful to have visitors. I see you have a level B security clearance. Here’s a map of the areas you may visit.” Bin’s hand was even as she took the paper and bowed to the secretary.

The office seemed eerily empty. While she explored, she passed few security guards and was able to take many more pictures than she had expected. But these were all just administrative floors. The headquarters was not the tallest building, and she felt like she had been able to get to every floor on the open staircase which spiraled around the main reception area. The employees even seemed to feel comfortable complaining to her about their jobs and didn’t bother asking why she was there or who she worked for. Fortunate, since her only prepared story was weak—she was an interested investor. After two hours of looking around, she found another office on the top floor littered with cubicles. “I’ve been in here already,” she thought, but the layout seemed different. These offices all looked the same. Whether she had been there before or not, the elevator in the back was new to her. She tried to be inconspicuous as she walked toward it and the adjacent “No Unauthorized Personnel” sign. A security officer was standing nearby, holding an assault rifle. He was very tall and had gaunt, pale skin. Was it even skin?—it seemed too taut and plastic to be skin, but as he turned his head to look at her she shuddered and looked away. His gaze was disguised by dark sunglasses and he stood still aside from the turn of his head. Next to him was a security panel in which one must enter a code to call the elevator. As she racked her brain for the four-digit code the messenger had given her, Bin noticed there was also a security camera behind her. After a pause, Bin pushed the buttons for 6-5-1-2 and waited in silence. All the while the security officer’s gaze weighed on her. She felt smothered and struggled to breathe steadily, horrified of drawing attention to herself. She wished she could take this man’s photo and send it to the Red Arrow. Something about him, unrelated to his weapon, filled her with terror.

When the doors slide open and she stepped inside, she felt a rush of relief. There were only three buttons—door, up, and down. She tried both, but only the down worked. After she felt the force of movement, she leaned against the wall and gripped the metal handlebars. Her wet palms left a steamed impression on the metal for a few seconds when she removed them. The “ding” from her arrival seemed longer than normal for an elevator. These moments felt drawn out. The doors opened again and she was faced with a very strange image. As she walked out of the elevator into a dark, red-lit room, a giant stone hand hung across the room, reaching for a globe of significantly smaller scale. The hand was supported by a large base, but the earth hung precariously in mid-air, making her feel it could fall and roll right over her. She saw two figures far off, close to the statue, but she risked taking a photo anyway, overwhelmed by the image.

Her shoes clicked along the reflective marble floor as she walked down the long room. The ceiling reminded her of a cathedral, lined with round, arching buttresses. Red light poured from the indentions between each. As she neared the statue, Bin felt herself nearly choke out a yelp, seeing that the figures were indeed more machine than man. Armor too integrated to be worn replaced their limbs and torsos, and each had some kind of gun for a hand. Turning slowly around, she saw that behind her, at the opposite end of the room where she’d entered, there stood two more security officers like the one she’d left on the upper floor next to the elevator. She swallowed. Maybe she should have been thinking that the triads weren’t so bad after all, but Bin’s mind had been emptied of her outside worries since she’d fallen under the gaze of that plastic-skinned officer. She had to find a way to finish this mission and get the hell out of here.

While making herself appear to be studying the statue for some minutes, she noticed there were two doors behind the statue. They were on the two enclosing walls opposite one another. She decided to head right first. After she climbed a staircase, a security officer that seemed much more human greeted her. “Are you a visitor? You shouldn’t be back here.”

“I’m—sorry,” she faltered, “I was looking for the restroom.”

“Oh, okay,” he replied, smiling. “It’s here to the right, around this corner. Just be sure to head straight back downstairs when you’re finished. The scientists are pretty ornery about their meetings getting interrupted.”

His friendly manner eased the tensions that had been growing in Bin since the elevator for a moment. But when she saw his plasma flame-thrower she felt worse. The contrast of his nicety with the terror that the plastic-skinned man caused her seemed grotesque. In the seconds she walked to the bathroom, she saw some scientists arguing in a conference room, some other officers sitting in a dark briefing room, and a well-lit break room. While the conference room surely had some important data on its screens, Bin didn’t have the courage to take pictures in front of the friendly officer. As she left the bathroom and headed down the stairs, he called, “Have a nice day!” She felt like hurling.

Walking as quickly as she could without drawing attention to herself, she passed behind the statue to the other door. A very bright red alarm sounder was mounted on the wall next to the door. There was no staircase, but instead a long hallway with a 90-degree left turn. Bin felt the terror mounting as she turned. The floor changed from tiles to glass, and she could see the several floors beneath.

Below her appeared to be a huge laboratory. Small testing rooms were sectioned out between a catwalk where more security officers walked. Bin could see through the glass that several of these officers were identical to the plastic-skinned man, and others seemed to be female versions of him. One or two of them had guns, some were unarmed, and one carried what looked like a sword with a bright blade. The blade shone so intensely that it seemed to be emitting light. Bin got on her knees and started to take photos. Her hands were shaking so much that the pictures couldn’t have been any good, but she kept trying. She lay flat on her stomach, holding the lens against the flat floor to try to get a steady shot. Through the viewfinder, she could zoom in and see what kinds of tests were going on in the sectioned off labs. Several scientists flurried around each room, where tables were set up with various test subjects. The figures seemed to grow more frightening as her eye flicked from one to the next—a dog, a man, some unrecognizable animal, and a humanoid gray shape with bulbous eyes. Bin pulled herself off the glass floor and sat against the gray wall breathing heavily. After a moment she looked back down, trying to take more photos of the labs. One of the guards from the floor below was staring up at her through her sunglasses, and Bin felt a jolt. She tripped getting up off the floor and ran down the hall. There was another elevator, unguarded, after another left turn. She pressed the button to call it nine times until it opened. As she rushed inside, she thought she heard the distance beat of a low-pitched alarm. She frantically looked all over the elevator for a way out. Was that a hatch in the ceiling? The elevator arrived and the door opened more quickly than she expected. Another plastic-skinned guard stood in the doorway, and seemed startled.

“I don’t recall being informed of any visitors,” he said with a strange inhuman voice, gripping his assault rifle. He paused and looked down at the floor, touching his ear as if he could hear someone speaking to him. In the same moment, he looked up at Bin and she pushed past him to start running. But she was running into the dead end of a room overlooking the giant red-lit hall. As the sound of the alarm burst through her ears, she felt herself thrown against the window facing the statue. The officer’s strength was impossible. He pushed her face against the glass harshly, and she felt a sharp pain as some kind of needle entered the back of her arm. Before the darkness, the last thing she could recall was that enormous stone hand, reaching to capture and crush the helpless globe of earth.

III.

Hours later, Bin awoke frantically to find herself strapped to a table like subjects she’d seen before. She couldn’t tell if she was below the glass corridor she’d looked through before. Her vision was terribly blurry, and she could only see the glaring fluorescent of lamps surrounding her like tentacles. She felt her body shaking with anxiety and could hear mumbled voices, perhaps of scientists, but the effect of whatever had been injected into her bloodstream made her head a tempestuous sea. She was drowning in her senses—harsh lights, low but plentiful sounds, musty smells, the unbearably cold table, and some metallic taste. She tried to struggle against her bindings, but was resisted by the scientists and drugged again.

Whether the experiences which followed were states of consciousness or drug-induced dreams and hallucinations, Bin was never sure. She moved in and out of each scene as if she were a puppet being conducted by someone else, awakening to see flashes of what was happening to her body. She did not feel that the intermittent periods between scenes were sleep, because she felt incredibly tired no matter what. They were just heavy blank voids, which she gasped up out of to experience increasingly horrific moments. From the table scene, she opened her eyes to a room full of short green animals—ones like she’d seen before—which screeched angrily and shot some painful liquid from their mouths upon her legs. She passed out from the pain and awoke to find herself on a table again, naked, strapped down, and covered in some strange gel. Her right leg was raw, the skin nearly burnt off. But on the arm above she could see green flecks of something growing out of her wrist. As soon as she saw that, her wrist burned with itching. She fainted again. She woke up this time standing, looking around a strange room with a low roof and many pillars. Yellow balls of light were being pushed from some corner toward her. She felt her body violently reacting to some unseen force. She started to throw up all over the white floor and saw her limbs in the process. Her right arm was completely covered in green scales. Taking a step in surprise, she slipped on the vomit and slid into one of the pillars. She held it as if she were hugging a lover, and lost consciousness.

If she had been able to think anymore, Bin would have known her body was dying in agony. As her DNA broke down from the radiation her eyes rolled and her body shook through further experimentation. Before the sweet release of death was granted her, she awoke with something like consciousness one more time. She was nearly blind, but could see the scientists hovering above her, talking in loud voices.

“Some triad asshole broke in, that’s right. Stole one of the swords,” a man said, touching Bin’s left arm, perhaps studying her skin.

“But I heard Maggie Chow is taking care of it. She’s always in control, that one,” a female voice responded.

A garbled, robotic voice spoke from a little further across the room. It was the voice of the man who had caught her in the room overlooking the statue. “There is nothing to worry about. Please carry on.”

The words meant nothing to Bin as she closed clouded eyes. The voice rang in her ears, terrorizing her in the void where she existed outside of consciousness until finally all breath passed out of her destroyed body.

Links---
Project Aeneid on Deviantart
"VersaDEATH" on PA's DeviantArt
Deus Ex on Wikipedia
Deus Ex Wiki
Fan Site

Projects in the Works

I plan to work on a short story for each game I play in the next few months. Recently, I've been stuck in the mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s, playing PC games I missed out on while I was a kid. Until I get through those, the planned projects are stories based on the following games:

Half-Life 2 (2004)
Bioshock  (2007)
Crisis Core: FFVII (2007)