Making Game to Save Humanity Chapter 12 12 – A Chain of Suffering

Maree humd to herself as she dried her hair with a silent, wireless blow dryer. Fresh from her milk bath, she padded into her twin sister's room, a playful grin on her face. "Why are you still doing salted baths? Are you secretly a Kalamoran?" she teased. "Hehehehe."

She stopped dead in her tracks. Mala was sitting on her bed, hugging her heliopad to her chest, her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.

"Huuuww..." Mala cried softly to herself. "When would a boy ever sing a song like this to ?"

Maree's teasing deanor vanished, replaced by alarm. "Mala! What are you doing?"

Startled, Mala tried to hide the heliopad under her pillow. "Nothing!"

"You are literally crying," Maree said, walking closer to the bed.

Mala's voice rose, her embarrassnt turning to anger. "I said it is nothing!" She grabbed a decorative pillow and threw it at her sister. Maree easily dodged it.

"Mala, what is it?" Maree insisted, now determined to find out. She lunged for the heliopad, but Mala twisted away, clutching it tightly.

"Let see!"

"Noo! Mind your own business!"

A brief, undignified scuffle ensued, ending with Maree getting her hand on the device. "No!" Mala cried, but it was too late. Maree looked at the screen.

"You are watching a boy playing a holo-piano on Stellarcast?" she said, her voice a mixture of confusion and disappointnt.

"He is good," Mala said defensively, her face flushed red.

"Is he?" Maree said, her skepticism clear. She tapped the play button.

The simple, honest piano lody filled the room once more. Maree listened, her expression slowly shifting from doubt to curiosity, and then to a quiet, captivated focus. The final, gentle chords of the song faded into silence.

"I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind... That I put down in words... How wonderful life is... While you're in the world."

A single, crystalline tear escaped Maree's eye and traced a path down her cheek. She looked at the screen, at the shadowed perforr, and whispered with absolute conviction.

"He is mine."

"What?" Mala choked out, stunned.

Suddenly, Maree's face broke into a radiant, determined smile. "Kyaa!" she shouted, a girlish squeal of pure excitent. "He is so good! I have decided! My future husband must be able to sing and write a song for just like this!"

"You are delusional!" Mala shot back, scrambling to her feet. "I found him first! I was literally the first viewer!"

Maree looked down at Mala's heliopad, then back at her sister with a wicked, triumphant grin. "But not the first comnter."

Before Mala could react, Maree spun around and sprinted out of the room, Mala's heliopad clutched in her hand. Mala watched in horror as her sister disappeared into her own bedroom, a room with its own heliopad, making it impossible for Mala to type a comnt first.

"MAREE!" Mala shouted, running after her. "GIVE BACK MY HELIOPAD!"

…

The savory aroma of simple fried rice filled the small apartnt. Dorian worked at the stove, stretching a tiny portion of synth-at and a single, precious egg across three servings. As he cooked, his mind was miles away, in a pixelated world of his own creation. He could not wait for the Stardew Valley banner to be unlocked. He imagined pulling a renewable food source from the Gacha, or maybe so rare minerals he could sell. Anything to make this al, this rare treat, a daily reality.

He plated the food, the ager portions looking deceptively plentiful on the small plates. "Dinner!" he shouted.

Lyra and Marcus ca rushing to the table, their chairs scraping against the floor in their excitent.

Dorian chuckled, the tension of the day lting away. "Calm down. Sit, you little troublemakers."

They were just about to take their first bites when a sound vibrated through the floor, through the very walls of the apartnt.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

It was not a knock. It was a heavy, forceful banging, the sound of military precision and absolute authority.

Lyra and Marcus froze, their forks halfway to their mouths, their eyes wide with fear.

"Stay calm," Dorian said, his voice a low, steady command that he did not feel. He moved silently to the front door and looked through the digital peephole. His blood ran cold.

Three figures in the sterile white armor of the Accord Legion stood outside, their impersonal, black-visored helts staring directly at his door. Their presence was an overwhelming violation. They held blaster rifles at a low ready, their posture radiating a quiet, lethal nace.

"Who is it?" he called out, his voice miraculously even.

A muffled, tallic voice answered, filtered through a helt's speaker. "Open the door. Accord business."

He took a deep breath, his mind racing. He opened the door. The soldier in the middle, a captain distinguished by a black pauldron on his shoulder, stepped forward.

"Do you have a Compadre, model BF-A7-LIO, registered to this residence?" the captain asked, his voice devoid of any human inflection.

They knew Leo's full model number. This was not a random check. A cold sweat prickled Dorian's skin.

"Yeah," he managed to say, his throat suddenly dry. "He's here." He turned his head. "Leo. Co here for a second."

While the Compadre floated silently from its charging dock, Dorian faced the captain. "What is all this about?"

"A routine inspection," the captain said, the words a clear lie. "A possible insurgency has been detected around your block."

'Insurgency?' Dorian's heart hamred against his ribs. He tried to keep his face a neutral mask. 'Did they know? Did they find the jailbreak on Leo? The producer's desk? The firewall spoofers?'

Leo arrived at the doorway. The captain addressed the Compadre directly. "State your model and manufacturer."

"BF-A7-LIO," Leo replied, its voice clear and calm. "Manufactured twenty years ago in the Vatch Primary shipyards."

The captain raised a handheld scanner, a harsh red light emitting from its lens. "Prepare for a full diagnostic scan."

This was it. The scanner would tear through his custom code in seconds. They would find everything. He was done.

Just as the captain's finger tightened on the scanner's activation stud, an explosive CRASH of tal echoed from down the corridor, followed by shouting. The Legion troopers instantly snapped their rifles up, turning towards the commotion.

The captain lowered his scanner, his helt turning towards the sound with an audible sigh of annoyance. He looked back at Dorian. "Close your door, kid."

He and his soldiers turned and ran towards the noise, their heavy boots thudding against the tal walkway.

Dorian did not rember closing the door. He only heard the final, soft click of the lock. The strength drained from his body in a sudden, violent rush. His knees gave out, and he collapsed against the door, sliding down to the floor.

'What the fuck,' he thought, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. 'Was he about to be caught?'

Dorian stayed on the floor, his back pressed against the cold tal of the door, listening. The sounds from the corridor were a chaotic symphony of oppression. He heard the sharp, concussive CRACK of a mag-lock being breached, followed by the terrified, chittering shrieks of a language he did not recognize. There was a woman's scream, a child's cry, and then the cold, barking orders of the Legion troopers.

He had to see.

Forcing his trembling legs to obey, he pushed himself up and peered through the digital peephole. The distorted, wide-angle view showed the apartnt directly across the hall, its door blasted open and hanging from a single, sparking hinge.

The Legion troopers had dragged the family out into the corridor. They were Kalamorans, a tall, slender-limbed alien race with iridescent, scale-like skin. The father was trying to reason with the captain, holding up a pair of glowing Accord identification chits.

"We are citizens!" the Kalamoran father insisted, his voice a high-pitched, lodic warble strained with panic. "Our chits are valid! We have done nothing wrong!"

"Possession of unregistered long-range communication equipnt is a direct violation of the Accord Security Mandate," the captain droned, his voice a chilling, inhuman monotone. One of the other troopers erged from the apartnt holding the "equipnt", a rusty, ancient-looking deep-space transmitter, clearly decades old and long deactivated. It looked like a piece of junk soone might find in a scrapyard.

"That is an antique!" the mother cried, clutching her small child, who was hiding its face in her leg. "It has not worked in fifty years! It is a family heirloom!"

"Possession constitutes intent," the captain stated, his words a death sentence. "You are under arrest for suspicion of harboring seditious sentint and conspiring with Outer Rim insurgents."

"Insurgents?" the father pleaded, his voice breaking. "We are rchants! We have never even been to the Rims!"

The captain ignored him, turning to his soldiers. "Secure the prisoners."

The troopers moved in, their movents efficient and brutal. When the Kalamoran father tried to stand his ground, to shield his family with his own body, one of the troopers did not even hesitate. He swung the butt of his blaster rifle in a short, vicious arc, slamming it into the alien's chest. The Kalamoran crumpled to the ground, gasping for air, a dark blue liquid trickling from his mouth. The mother scread as the other trooper grabbed her arm, dragging her and the crying child towards the transport lift.

Dorian watched, his breath catching in his throat, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of his door. This was not justice. This was not keeping the peace. This was a purge. A brutal, calculated act of terror designed to remind everyone in the lower levels of their place. The "insurgency" was just an excuse, a blank check for the Accord to eliminate anyone they deed undesirable.

He watched as they hauled the father to his feet and dragged the entire family away. He saw the other doors in the corridor, all of them shut tight, their peepholes dark. No one had co out. No one had helped. They were all just like him: silent, terrified witnesses.

The silence that descended on the corridor after the Legion left was heavier and more suffocating than the chaos that had preceded it.

Dorian stumbled back from the door, a profound, soul-deep cold settling into his bones. He was not safe. The close call was not a lucky break. It was a warning. Today, it was the Kalamoran family. Tomorrow, it could be his. All it would take was one anonymous tip, one disgruntled neighbor, one random data flag, and those white-armored monsters would be at his door again, and this ti, they would not be interrupted.

He walked back to his room, the half-eaten plate of fried rice on the table a sick reminder of the simple peace that had been shattered. He sat down at his desk, the glow of his monitors illuminating his pale, grim face. He looked at the pixelated farmhouse of Stardew Valley. He looked at the audio waveforms of "Your Song."

These were not just creative projects anymore. They were not just a way to make money.

They were his weapons. They were his armor. They were his only way out.

…

Another week passed, but the vibrant, creative energy that had filled Dorian's room was gone, replaced by a tense, paranoid focus. He had not touched the Stardew Valley project.

He had not checked the view count on his Stellarcast video, nor the streaming numbers for his song on Echoflow. The Legion's sudden, brutal inspection had spooked him, badly. His mind was now tunneled on a single, obsessive task: improving his digital defenses.

He slept in short, fitful bursts, his dreams haunted by the sa nightmare on a loop. The Legion at the door, but this ti, the scanner going off. This ti, Leo's jailbroken code flashing on their screens. This ti, his family being dragged away, their faces a mask of terror.

For a week, he worked, fueled by fear and cups of brewka. He rebuilt his firewalls, wrote cloaking software that would mask his custom firmware as a standard Accord OS update, and created a dead man's switch that would wipe all his illegal data in a nanosecond if he did not log in every twelve hours. He knew this was his own undoing. If he had not jailbroken his tech, he would have nothing to hide. But it was what it was. This was the path he had chosen.

Finally, at the end of the week, it was done. He leaned back in his chair, a satisfying, bone-deep exhaustion settling over him. A tired but triumphant smile touched his lips.

"Dorian," Leo's soft voice ca from the side. "I think it is enough. Your health should also be the focus."

Dorian looked down at his arms. They were thin, his skin pale from the lack of real nutrients and the constant glow of his monitors. He was running on fus.

"It is okay," he said, his voice a little rough. "Give two more months. I will end our food block routine for good."

"What do you an?" Leo asked, its optical sensor blinking with curiosity. "Are you going to rob a market of its fresh food?"

Dorian laughed, a dry, cracked sound. "No. Better. I am going to gacha fresh food."

"What is... gacha?" the Compadre asked, its internal database finding no relevant entries.

Dorian's eyes were already half-closed, the wave of exhaustion finally overwhelming him. "It is our way out," he mumbled, and then he was asleep, slumped right there in his chair.

Leo floated over, silently nudging a spare blanket off the bed. It gently draped the cover over Dorian's sleeping form.

"Good night, Dorian," the Compadre whispered.

Then it returned to its charging dock, its blue light a solitary, watchful presence in the quiet, sleeping room.

⋘ 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎... ⋙

🎮: Stardwey Valley: █████▒▒▒▒▒ 52%

🎬: -

♬: - Your Na – Elton John (ch.9)

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