Congratulations! You have been targeted with a bounty courtesy of the Trust Foundation Corporation. Your bounty is 25,000 credits. Anyone that kills you can claim the bounty!

  Note: You cannot claim the bounty if you kill yourself.

  I could feel my heart rate quicken. I turned to look at Trix. She looked back at me and her psy points didn’t drop.

  TRIX: You don’t have anything to worry about with me. If they’re offering that many credits, it means teleport is hard coded to stay inside barriers.

  I was glad to hear it, but not comforted by Trix’s logic. It left room for the possibility that she would kill me if it gave her an advantage. Then I noticed that Trix had a 25,000 credit bounty hovering over her head too.

  The very next thing I noticed was that Ron had a six shooter in his hand. The weapon looked like it belonged in a Clint Eastwood movie, not in the hands of a bum that smelled like fish.

  “Sorry,” Ron said. “Have you seen what 50,000 credits can get you in there?”

  “That equipment’s good,” I said. “But the only chance we’ve got is working together.”

  Ron pumped the gun at me. “Idiot!” He laughed. “You think you’re so great cause of that ring. My ring now. Welcome to the prison yard, Will.” He pulled the trigger and nothing happened. He pulled it a second time. Still nothing. I raised an eyebrow as he pulled the trigger a third time. “Agggh!” Ron yelled, looking at the gun with consternation.

  While he was distracted, I pulled out my bat out and took a swing.

  I put in as much force as I could muster and connected with his skull, shattering my bat. As Ron fell, he fired off a panic shot that went wide right. Blood spilled from the side of his head. His gun clattered against the sidewalk. Ron looked up at me, dazed, as I drew my hunting knife.

  “Wait!” Ron said.

  But I’d had enough. “Welcome to the prison yard, Ron,” I said, as I knelt and stabbed the traitor right through the heart. His health bar wasn’t even in the red yet.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Ron screamed and felt for his gun.

  “How are you not dead?” I raised the hunting knife again and stabbed harder this time, puncturing a lung. Now Ron’s health bar did drop into the red, but he was still hanging on.

  Ron found his gun and cackled. He tried to say something, but I stabbed him a third time, and he finally stopped moving.

  Nice work! You killed another player! This is turning into a nasty little habit.

  Reward: Normally that would have merited a silver loot box. But for killing Ron? We both know silver would be undeserved. The bronze box you’re getting is still stretching it. Oh, and you get to choose an ability from the fallen. Want me to select it for you? Yes/No.

  I selected No.

  Trix retrieved the gun and looked down at Ron’s body.

  TRIX: Turns out I was smelling a rat, not tuna. You want the gun?

  WILL: You keep it.

  Trix looked at me.

  TRIX: Five kills. People are going to start paying more attention to you.

  WILL: But I had to kill them.

  She put a finger to the 3 at her temple. “You don’t have to convince me.”

  I sighed. Something told me that if I stayed in BioZone City any length of time, these numbers were only going to rise.

  I looked through Ron’s inventory and wasn’t surprised that it was all junk. He did have about two hundred credits. I tried to give all of it to Trix, but she insisted we split it. The best thing Ron had was the gun: Dirty Cheater’s Russian Roulette, but it wasn’t exactly good. It had unlimited bullets but each bullet had only a 15% chance to load, meaning that he shouldn’t have been so surprised when it hadn’t fired.

  I opened my bronze loot box to see a bobblehead doll of Ron holding a broken bat. I dropped it beside Ron.

  Ever since I’d killed Ron, a glowing star had appeared by my abilities tab. I clicked on it and was given the option to add one of Ron’s abilities to my own. I wondered if this benefit from player killing was widely known, and then recalled all the muggings I’d seen when I’d first gotten here. It was definitely known.

  Ron had two abilities—Vamp and Tunalicous. I already knew what I’d pick based on the titles, but I studied them both anyway. Vamp was a passive ability that healed your health in proportion to the damage you dealt. Tunalicious let the caster create tuna sandwiches that boosted health by 10% for 24 hours. They could be stacked. They also made you smell like a walking tuna fish factory. I was shaking slightly as I selected Vamp, slightly afraid that I’d somehow mess up during the selection process and choose the tuna skill instead of Vamp. I selected Vamp on my interface.

  Please confirm Vamp as your ability selection.

  I confirmed and got a shot of dopamine when I saw Vamp drop into my list of passive skills.

  For funsies, I showed Trix the tunalicious ability.

  WILL: Turn’s out you were smelling a rat with a thing for tuna.

  TRIX: I’m relieved we don’t have to be around that guy anymore. He smelled so bad.

  WILL: You think these bounties are what Dag meant by amping things up?

  TRIX: No clue. But they’re making it difficult to make new friends.