Chương 109: Performance Mode

The day had started with Oxy at his door, a naked hoodie reveal, and the kind of morning Meno had once assumed only happened to better-looking people with bigger apartments. Now he stood in a secret lab with red capsule fluid running down his VR jumpsuit while Grandpa admitted the simulation had been real. Meno stared at him, his mind still half in the Phantom, still feeling the missing arm that had never belonged to his real body.

Morning sex and corporate black ops had ended up on the same day somehow, and his brain had not caught up. Grandpa raised both hands.

"I can see you are about to explode, so calm down." Meno climbed out of the capsule.

"Before you demand to know everything," Grandpa continued, "you must understand we do not know much beyond the base mission objectives. It is honestly a miracle you succeeded. We put it at around ten percent." Teacher checked a monitor and nodded.

"Spectacular performance." Meno shifted his attention to her, still dripping red capsule fluid onto the lab floor.

"You also need to understand we were not told to lie to you," she said.

"It was a purely scientific decision based on your psychological profile."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Meno asked. Grandpa folded his arms.

"It means that if you knew it was real beforehand, you would have hesitated and second-guessed yourself. Our models showed a significant drop in your success chance."

"Sounds like more bullshit," Meno said, then laughed once, empty.

"You should know I usually perform better when the stakes are higher."

"That is true," Teacher said.

"But that changes when collateral damage enters the model. We had no map of the base interior, no confidence about personnel distribution, and no guarantee you would prioritize mission completion over hesitation."

"Collateral like human engineers?" Meno asked, his voice cold. Teacher said nothing.

"Yes," Meno said.

"You're right. I would worry about that. How is it that you aren't?" Grandpa's face tightened.

"Meno, you are not trained for this. We are. The mission was time-sensitive because Senfestra could not be allowed to extract proprietary AI research from Katlyn Zent. She was kidnapped yesterday during a Senfestra raid on one of our hidden facilities." Meno grabbed his head with both hands.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" He paced two steps, then stopped because his legs were still vibrating from the capsule exit.

"Why not notify the authorities?"

"Because Katlyn Zent does not exist officially," Teacher said, voice level.

"Neither does her research. Neither does the facility they took her from."

"She is an extremely valuable asset," Grandpa added.

"A young genius nurtured by Feltforge. Previous identity scrubbed."

"That is just great." Meno turned in place, looking for a sane object to focus on and finding only cables, fluid pumps, screens, and two liars.

"So big corpo guys just do whatever they want. I know the real world is complicated, but this is insane. If you want to do this crap, get someone qualified. I am a gamer. That's all. I agreed to test things in VR, as in simulations, not participate in your shadow war." He pointed at Grandpa.

"One million does not cover this kind of risk."

"False," Grandpa said.

"If we could get someone of equivalent ability, we would absolutely not bother with you."

"Lucky me."

"Do you think we are morons who want to deal with someone with no relevant training? You can only blame yourself for being uniquely good at VR control." Teacher glanced at Meno's readings again.

"Also, you cannot be paid more right now. It would blow your cover almost immediately. One million is a lot of money. Do not be ungrateful." Meno stared at her, one hand braced on the capsule rim.

"If you want to earn more," she said, "you need unrelated income streams first. Sponsorships, public contracts, appearances. Cover matters." Meno's anger rose again, then something crawled under his skin. Heat spread across his arms, moved into his chest, and climbed his neck. He stripped out of the VR suit fast enough to nearly trip over it. Red patches had flushed across his chest, arms, and ribs, and the heat kept building. Every nerve ending felt full of sparks.

"Shit. Shit. Something is wrong." Teacher's eyes snapped to the monitor.

"My body is burning up," Meno said, panicked. Grandpa moved quicker than Meno expected, snatching an auto-injector from the counter.

"Mild sedative." He stabbed it into Meno's arm before Meno could object. Cold spread through him in a smooth wave, but the heat only backed off for half a second before returning under his skin. Meno patted himself down like the sensation was something he could knock loose.

"Not good," he said.

"Not good." Teacher had already opened a pill bottle. She shook one pill into her palm, and it glowed yellow from inside. Meno almost laughed because medicine was not supposed to look like a legendary drop.

"Take this fast," Teacher said.

"The performance fluid overtaxed your body. You are out of VR transfer, but your nervous system is still locked in elevated firing mode." Meno bounced on his feet naked, unable to stand still.

"What is it? Speak fast."

"There is no time for the full explanation," Teacher said.

"It is a low-radiance neural reset supplement. It will scramble the elevated firing pattern and let your nervous system return to baseline."

"Are you crazy?" Meno stared at the glowing pill in her palm.

"Radiation? That cannot be healthy."

"If it were dangerous, I would not be holding it barehanded."

"Holding it is one thing. Eating it is another."

"It is safe," Teacher said.

"People who can afford it use it as part of lifespan extension therapy." Meno did not believe her. He also felt like his nerves were trying to climb out of his body, so he snatched the pill and swallowed it. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. The effect hit immediately. His stomach cramped hard enough to fold him forward, and for one awful second, sensation vanished from his limbs as the pill melted inside him. His whole body went numb and freezing.

Then everything restarted from his stomach outward. Feeling crawled back into his arms, legs, throat, and skull. The burn was gone, replaced by a warm drunken tilt that made the room feel soft at the edges. Meno put one hand on the capsule to steady himself.

"Lifespan my ass," he said.

"You dosed me."

"Yes," Teacher said, capping the bottle.

"It has a low psychoactive effect. Don't worry about it. It will fade soon. Dress yourself." Meno laughed, because his anger was still there but packed in cotton.

"Very worried right now. About everything." He pulled his clothes off the floor and started dressing. His fingers missed a button, then missed it again, and for one second that was funny enough to make him laugh harder. Then it made him angrier, because none of this was funny.

"I want to speak to Morlando," he said.

"You can't basically kidnap me whenever you feel like it with no warning. Your goons scared my girlfriend. There was zero reason to barge into my apartment." Grandpa rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"You are right. It could have been handled better. We were rushed, and we cannot directly instruct the security people on every detail of approach."

"You can't do this, you can't do that, you don't know anything, but somehow you still have a rule for everything," Meno said.

"Getting sick of it."

"You also cannot discuss this with him on the phone."

"Of course. I would also like to tell him to go fuck himself and that I am not doing this anymore, but I guess that is not an option now because I know too much." Grandpa said nothing. Meno's smile twisted.

"Then if I am truly irreplaceable, he better figure out how to treat me better and pay me more."

"We will relay your concerns," Teacher said, her expression calm.

"Go back the way you came. Security will take you home." Meno turned toward the elevator and tried to storm away. The glowing pill had stolen the clean edge from his anger, turning the storm-off into an unsteady walk. Even his justified fury had been chemically blurred. Meno stepped into the elevator and watched the lab doors close. The silence made it harder to dodge the obvious. He was in over his head, with nobody safe to tell. Oxy, his mother, and Lysa could not know.

Jonas might understand parts of the pressure, but not enough to make dragging him near it anything but insane. The secret had already grown from AI testing into real-world extractions, corporate facilities, stolen researchers, and fifteen-foot kill frames. Meno just wanted to go home and log into Veyrath to farm Essencefruit. That made sense. Compared to this, Veyrath made perfect sense. Lightning fruit, winged calamities, murderous champions. The real world kept smiling while moving the walls.

The two mute security idiots dropped Meno two blocks from his apartment. The van pulled away before he finished asking why, leaving him on the sidewalk with his shirt wrinkled, his head still floating from the pill. He walked home with his hands in his pockets, wondering if Oxy had left with his key. If she had, he would have to go to her place and ask for it, which sounded like taking a raid wipe and then voluntarily entering the recap meeting. When he reached his door, he stopped.

For a moment, he wondered if he had come to the wrong apartment. A large yellow paper had been taped to the door. EVICTION NOTICE Two days to leave the premises due to unpaid rent. If the premises are not vacated, forced proceedings will be initiated by the authorities. Meno stared until he remembered rent. He had been late before Veyrath launched. Then launch happened, then rank one, then rent had been forgotten.

Soon, he would have more than two and a half million credits in his bank account, and he was about to get evicted from the shoebox. He could probably overpay and make the nuisance vanish, but he needed to move anyway. A better capsule would not fit here. His current place barely fit his life before the life mutated. Meno tried the door, and when it opened, relief came first. Then he saw Oxy sitting at his computer, fully dressed in the teal hoodie and watching a stream, and relief lost most of its HP immediately.

She closed the stream when he entered and stood, putting her hands on her hips. Meno knew that posture. Lysa used it when he had disappointed her in a way that required a whole sentence before the yelling.

"Hey," he said.

"I'm back."

"Finally." Oxy looked him up and down.

"I have a million questions, but I can already see the big lies forming all over your face." Meno closed the door behind him.

"Yeah, well, I had to take care of something." He heard how bad it sounded while saying it and kept going anyway, which proved he had learned nothing.

"I'm also not fully in the know on what you do in your spare time, so let's not pretend I did something wrong. Okay?" Oxy closed her eyes for a long moment, and Meno almost winced. The response was crap. He was still lightheaded from the pill, still angry, still scared, and bad at this even when sober. Technically, he had done nothing wrong to her, but technically was where relationships went to die.

"Meno, pleeease." Her voice softened, which somehow made it hit harder.

"I have been looking into hiring private security recently. We are kind of too big now to just walk around like nobody knows us. Those guys were legit high-tier. The kind that works for large corporations." She gestured toward the door.

"They came in and dragged you out of your apartment like they owned you. What am I supposed to do with that?"

"They definitely don't own me. It was an emergency, and they are idiots with no subtlety."

"What kind of emergency needs you to handle it?" Oxy asked.

"I thought you went from being broke to unemployed rich streamer, not whatever this is." Meno opened his mouth, closed it, then grabbed his head with both hands.

"Well… I mean… whatever. I can't even make up anything that remotely makes sense. So I am not saying. That's all. You can either handle it or not." Oxy's face changed.

"Menooo." The drawn-out version of his name usually landed playful. This one did not.

"That makes me sad," she said.

"If you put it like that, I am feeling big 'I can't handle it' energy. I really like you when you go into gamer mode. Even your IRL mess was cute. But this goes beyond that." Meno caught the genuine regret on her face.

"I need to feel safe," she said.

"And I need to focus on my career."

"That's it?" Meno asked.

"Do you really need to know everything? I thought you would be more okay with crazy things."

"I like crazy Meno." She stepped closer, but only a little.

"This is not how you build anything serious. I told you I want serious. If we keep dating and you keep doing the mysterious bit, this is not something I want to deal with." Meno understood that part. Nobody should want to deal with this.

"If it was charming mysterious, the kind of content I love, I could handle it," Oxy said.

"This is not that. This is mythic-tier ex-military security and 'work' you can't talk about."

"Fine." Meno shrugged and started toward the bathroom.

"I won't bother you anymore." It came out hollow, but he walked into the bathroom anyway and closed the door most of the way. Cold water helped his face without touching the pressure behind his eyes. He gripped the sink, stared at himself, and watched a few small tears gather before they slipped down his cheeks without permission. He really liked Oxy, which was the stupid part. She fit into his life in ways few people did.

Streams, raids, audience pressure, content brain, bad sleep, the strange need to turn pain into a clip before it became private. She understood all of it. They liked the same world, the same grind, the same stupid arguments about builds, and when she was with him, he did not feel like he had to perform every second just to be tolerated. His real life now contained things that could not become content, and that weight had nowhere to go. It sat inside him, sealed and heavy, contaminating everything normal it touched.

Morlando had pushed malware into his life, and Meno had clicked accept because the first million looked like salvation. Now the corrupted save file had no clean rollback. Life had been simpler when he was just a broke loser. Having little to lose made having nothing except gaming feel normal. Then success had delivered everything he used to think would fix him. Money, rank, viewers, attention, a path out.

His bank account was stacked, and somehow the important parts of his life kept slipping through his fingers as soon as they became real. Maybe he wanted more than rich and famous. Maybe he should stop pretending he wanted normal. The anger about being used was still there, and it was fair, but something uglier sat underneath it. The extraction mission had been awful, dangerous, and morally rotten, yet piloting the KKF-Phantom had lit up the same part of him Veyrath did.

It had been a real challenge, with no room for doubt and no time for shame. Only movement, pattern reading, bad mechanics, and the next impossible path through something built to kill him. When Meno faced impossible tasks, his mind stopped chewing itself apart. For those moments, life became tolerable. He washed his face again, and when he stepped out, the apartment was empty. Oxy had left.

His life felt stripped down to what remained: the X7, the eviction notice on the door, and the stale air of a place he suddenly did not want to defend. Meno changed into comfortable clothes and climbed into the capsule, sealed himself inside, and started the login sequence. Veyrath opened like a wound he understood. Before full immersion caught him, he turned on the stream. Essencefruits were not going to farm themselves.

Jonas had warned him about exploits, reputation, and making other players resent him, but those concerns felt small now. They belonged to a version of Meno who lived in an alternate fake version of reality. His mind rejected holding back with a force that left no debate. If he had to break Veyrath into pieces to feel alive, he would. It had never been about money, reputation, or fame. Not really. It had always been about becoming undeniably the best.