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Two hints appeared in the death screen simultaneously.
[Hint: The game's NPCs operate on advanced AI with self-directed behavior. Try to treat them as real people. The dialogue box is a supplementary reference, not a script.]
[Hint: Suggestion is not hypnosis. When using the Suggestion ability, combine it with actual speech for best results.]
Maverick read both of them.
He sat with them for a moment.
"The game," he said carefully, "is talking to me like I'm an idiot."
[Chat]: it's talking to you like someone who tried to hypnotize an elderly priest by thinking really hard at him
[Chat]: which you did
[Chat]: so
The hints weren't wrong, technically. They were accurate, helpful, and delivered with the patient tone of a system that had watched him make the same mistake twice and decided to try a different approach. The problem was that two hints appearing at once, back to back, each one addressing a specific error he'd made, felt less like a tutorial and more like a very polite roast.
Max hadn't intended it that way. He'd built the hint system to give players useful information at the moment they were most likely to need it, which was immediately after dying. The logic was clean: you made a mistake, you died, here's why, try again. It was good design.
Maverick, from inside the game, experienced it as the game clearing its throat and saying specifically you, specifically this.
"Fine," he said. "Fine. I get it. Use actual words."
[Supportive]: we believe in you
[Realistic]: we believe in your eventual improvement
He started again. Back through the church, back to the white-haired elder, back to the dialogue box. Third option — coat flip, walk out — and then the airport materialized around him with its familiar ambient noise and security checkpoint.
This time, when the guard asked him to place his bag on the belt, Maverick held eye contact and activated Suggestion simultaneously with speaking.
"My bag's already been through," he said, keeping his voice easy and conversational. "You waved me over from the other line."
The guard's expression shifted — a subtle softening, the micro-expression of a person recalling something that hadn't actually happened but felt like it had.
"Right," the guard said. "Go ahead."
[Stunned]: IT WORKED
[Losing_It]: IT ACTUALLY WORKED
[Science]: the eye contact plus verbal command, BOTH at once, that's what it needed
[Impressed]: Maverick figured it out
[Maverick_Fan]: I KNEW HE WOULD
"Rounds one through four," Maverick said, with the composure of a man who had absolutely intended this outcome, "were research."
[Chat]: they were not research
[Chat]: they were catastrophic failures
[Chat]: but we're proud of you
He wasn't done. The guard had turned back to the checkpoint, attention elsewhere, and Maverick — because he was Maverick and this was what Maverick did — tapped him on the shoulder.
The guard turned back.
"You're off duty," Maverick said, eye contact locked, Suggestion active. "Hand me your sidearm."
A beat. The guard's eyes went slightly glassy.
"...Sure," he said. And handed over the Glock.
[Screaming]: HE STOLE THE GUN
[Screaming2]: MAVERICK JUST MUGGED AN NPC
[Analysis]: okay the Suggestion skill is genuinely broken if you use it correctly
[Worried]: can you Suggest the NPCs to do literally anything?
[Testing_Limits]: someone in chat is asking if you can suggest inappropriate things and I'm going to pretend I didn't read that
[Going_To_Play]: I cannot keep watching, I have to experience this myself
[Also_Going]: same, downloading right now
Maverick holstered the extra pistol with the practiced ease of a character who'd been doing this for years — and felt it. The weight of it settling against his side, the slight resistance of the holster, the physical reality of an item that now existed in the space around him. Not a UI indicator. Not a visual effect. Actual weight.
He stopped moving for a second.
This was the thing that kept getting him. Every interaction that should have been abstract — a dialogue option, an item pickup, a skill activation — kept resolving into something physical instead. He'd expected a game. What he kept getting was presence.
The boarding process was unremarkable by game standards and remarkable by every other standard. The gate, the jetway, the cabin — all rendered with the specificity of somewhere that actually existed. Maverick settled into a first-class seat and a flight attendant appeared at his elbow with a small cup of water, the kind you get on any flight, paper cup, room temperature, nothing special.
She offered it. He took it. And when he drank it—
He could feel the water.
Not the action of drinking. Not the animation. The actual sensation of liquid, cool against his throat.
[Quiet]: did he just...
[Watching]: he's not moving again
[Understanding]: he felt the water, didn't he
[Also_Understanding]: yeah he felt the water
[Moved]: I don't know why this is the thing that's getting to me but it's getting to me
Maverick set the cup down slowly.
"Chat," he said. "I've been gaming for fifteen years. I've played every major VR title on the market. Guns with recoil, terrain with weight, wind with temperature — I've experienced all of it, at various levels of quality." He paused. "I have never, in fifteen years, felt a cup of water."
[Silence]: ...
[Silence2]: ...
[Breaking_Silence]: Forest Studio built what
[Response]: apparently THIS
[Downloading]: I am downloading this game so fast right now
[Question]: is this game really made by a small studio? How?
[No_Answer]: nobody knows, that's the thing
The flight — accelerated, the world outside the window cycling through day and night at fast-forward speed — deposited Maverick at his destination via a mobile staircase and a shuttle bus across the tarmac. A detail, nothing more. The kind of thing that got cut in games to save time. Here it was just... there. Present. Because airports work that way.
Maverick stepped off the bus.
The night air hit him — colder than the airport interior, carrying the specific quality of a city he hadn't been to before. He had one step on the ground and was orienting himself, taking in the landscape, starting to think about what came next—
The bullet went through his head.
One shot. Clean. Instant black screen.
[Chat]: ...
[Chat]: ...
[Fishing_Guy]: thirty pound bass
[Helpless]: he didn't even see it coming
[Honest]: nobody could have seen that coming
[Analyzing]: okay whoever did that was already positioned and waiting — they knew where the arrival point was
[Impressed_By_Opponent]: that's actually terrifying, they scouted the landing zone
Maverick sat in the dark.
"Brothers," he said.
He didn't finish the sentence. Just sat there.
[Chat]: MAVERICK
[Chat]: it's okay
[Chat]: we believe in your wisdom
[Quiet_Support]: (we really, genuinely don't, but we're here)
"...Again."
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