Harry Potter and the Cyberpunk Nightmare

Chapter Three. The Training and Baptism by Fire.

We're supposed to start with these operation programs first, but that's major boring shit, so let's start with something more interesting, like... Combat training! - Tank, "The Matrix".

Harry was right, as it, indeed, turned out to be a long night.

"Alright, let's revise. The colours are..." Newmark started.

"Blue, green, orange, red and black," Harry replied.

"Blue is for..." Newmark asked.

"Just stopping anyone from entering," said Hermione.

"Green..."

"...stops anyone from entering and sets off the alarm if things go bad," said Harry.

"Orange..."

"...tries to disconnect you," Hermione replied, yawning.

"Red..."

"...traces your location and either sends you a bad package - a virus or something in that mood, or sends the law on you," Harry replied, glancing at the clock on the wall.

"And black..."

"...Fries your brain," Hermione concluded.

"Great. The things I taught you in the cyberspace are to be practiced intensively, and you'll prevail over anything. Now you're free," said Newmark, yawning as well, but as the two teenagers shot up merrily he added "And make sure you attend the combat trainings, starting from tomorrow!"

"Yeah, right!" Harry yelled as the door closed behind him.

*****

"So, what do you think?" she asked.

"What?" Harry asked in reply as he tore himself away from his food (if that was actually food).

"About all this," Hermione explained, her eyes making a full circle as if she was referring to her surroundings.

"Well, we're in uncommon circumstances. We're being used, and unfortunately we can do nothing about it," Harry replied grimly, "Yet," he added so quietly that Hermione first thought that this was her imagination, but when she shot him a questioning look, he replied with an affirmative nod.

*****

The tall black-haired man dressed in a camouflage-painted set of combat armour was waiting for them in yet another computer-filled room. The room itself would probably be classified by Harry as a true hacker's paradise (if he knew what a hacker dreams about, of course), for it was filled with complex hardware that was running even more complex software.

"My name is Joshua," the man said, "Just Joshua," he added before Hermione could even voice the question she just opened her mouth for, "I'm your combat training man. Jack in and we'll be off."

"Jack in? We'll be learning in the matrix?" Harry asked, sounding somewhat surprised.

"Of course. This is the same to your mind and reflexes and saves us a hell of a lot of guns and ammo," Joshua replied with a grin, "And medical supplies," he added swiftly.

"All right then," said Harry, sitting down into one of the offered chairs and plugging himself into the cyberdeck that was made into the wall.

*****

"The concept is fairly simple. We copy the data on weapon statistics, handling, tricks and concepts into your head computers, thus giving you virtually unlimited capabilities. Then we spend several hours on practice, thus making you fit for quickly powering up the necessary subportions of your brain to do the necessary jobs," Joshua explained with a monotonous voice.

"Er... can I ask one thing?" Hermione asked. After getting an affirmative nod from Joshua, she went on. "How should that help us?"

"Simple. Outside, your magic is weak. Inside, you need your wands. That means you have to utilise additional means of self-defence. Such as weapons. You see, we could implant the capabilities of martial arts into your minds as well, but it would require some heavy-duty hacking to correct your physiometric data within the matrix and a lot of surgery - outside of it - to make you able to use those skills. So we settled with guns. Sorry."

*****

About five hours later, they finally jacked out.

"Is it my imagination," Harry started, "Or we spent five hours in there?" he added, pointing at the clock hanging on the wall.

"Your imagination," Hermione replied cheerfully, "It's only four hours fifty-five minutes actually."

"As if that makes a major difference," Harry replied down-heartedly as he opened the door with a weary sigh, "And I feel like a squeezed-out lemon."

"Only that?" Hermione asked, "I feel as if I'm that lemon that was squeezed out, ran over by a truck and then had Malfoy wipe his feet on me..." she said, shuddering as she imagined that happening in her mind's eye.

"You like to have feet wiped on you?" Harry asked with a nasty grin.

She swatted him on the arm playfully.

"Well, that depends on whose feet those are!" she replied as she kissed him on his cheek.

*****

They were sitting in the makeshift briefing room of this compound (the REAL briefing room was occupied by some evil-looking militant men hunched over plans of finding some place called Tanelorn or whatnot). One way or the other, Armitage steered Harry and Hermione into this room, which was promptly redecorated using several large maps of something that appeared to be a vast city.

"Chiba. That's where we are right now," Armitage said, pointing at the map.

"Looks ruined," said Harry absent-mindedly.

"Most of it actually is," Armitage replied, "But some places are intact enough. The War left us in a strange position... Anyway, we think that since you're not having problems with er... acclimatisation, we might just as well have you do a couple of simple errand-type jobs. You know, to get used to this place."

"Alright. What do you want us to do?" Hermione asked with a serious-beyond-measure face.

"Harry. You get to go here," Armitage pointed on the map, "and take this with you," he added as he handed Harry a suspicious-looking package that seemed to weigh a ton at least.

"And me?" Hermione asked in a mixture of envy and disappointment.

"And you go through here," he said, plotting the path on the map, "and to the same destination. Meet up there. Along the way - make sure you're on the lookout for people in uniforms bearing this sign," he stopped here to demonstrate a torn cloth (obviously a part of a uniform sleeve torn off for the purpose of obtaining a sample of its armpatch) that bore a strangely-looking crest comprising the letters M, N and S.

"Merry Nagger Service?" Harry asked with a grin. Armitage did not see this to be funny at any rate, it seemed.

"Maas-Neotek Sentry. They're the soldiers of the MN, and if you run into them..." Armitage stopped again, handing each of them a handgun. Hermione got an ancient Beretta, while Harry's was an H&K Mk23 that looked a bit less ancient, although still quite old. That, of course, they realized automatically, as the information loaded into their brains showed itself instantly.

"Do those museum relics still work now?" Harry asked suspiciously as Armitage handed them several back-up clips each.

Armitage nodded affirmatively as he took Harry's gun and unloaded its entire clip into the city map, making a nice smiling face in the destination of their journey. He then reloaded the gun and handed it back to Harry. The boy accepted the gun with a grin of a child that just got a brand new toy. Actually, it was not too far from the truth.

"Okay. When do we go?" Hermione asked.

*****

Harry was slowly walking down the ruined street, his left arm around the package, his right - in his jacket's pocket, gripping the gun's handle. He knew that he probably could not kill someone intentionally, even if it was a life or death situation, but this world was different from the one he grew up in, and rules were different here as well.

He turned into an alleyway, following Armitage's plan to the last letter, and was stopped dead in his tracks by the sight of two quite armed and dangerous-looking men, one of which was wearing a military-type uniform bearing the MNS crest. Harry tried to retreat at once, but found himself cornered as a heavily armoured truck stopped itself in such a way that it turned the alley into a dead end. And Harry was in it.

*****

"Hello there, Harry. Thought you could escape us?" one of them asked as he stepped out into the light. Harry frowned as he saw the face of one Draco Malfoy, clad in a leather jacket and black jeans and already bearing some complex-looking tattoo on his left cheek.

"Hello there, Draco," Harry replied, copying the sneering remark of his adversary to the last note, "I see realspace did not treat you as well as cyberspace did," he said calmly, "Although cyberspace wasn't ever nice to you too. I still am shocked how it so happened that you still live."

"Look at yourself!" Malfoy replied as he pushed the old-but-reliably-looking sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun onto his shoulder, "A servant of the OS! Is it the best way to serve the Dark Lord that even his most hated enemy is with him?"

"I have no idea of what you're talking about. OS? Dark Lord? Voldemort is a freelancer; he works for no-one!" Harry protested as he looked Malfoy's shotgun over and considered that he had a huge chance of winning a gunfight.

"The Ono-Sendai, Harry," the second shadow said, stepping forth. A certain Ron Weasley, an advanced-looking SMG (Japanese model, Harry's inner database reacted instantly) in his hands, was now exchanging stares of hatred with Harry.

"Hello, Ron. What are you doing in the same league with this--" here Harry nodded at Malfoy, "--loser? And on the MNS side, I must add."

The three boys-yesterday-men-of-war-today exchanged hateful glances for several more long minutes, until Ron took one more step towards Harry.

"And you took... took... her... with you!" he hissed as he directed his gun at Harry, "I can't understand you, Harry, I simply refuse to!"

"Why? Why are you with the ones that enslaved us?" Harry hissed in reply, obviously not noticing the controversy of his words with Ron's and Malfoy's.

"I'm afraid we're here to kill you, Mister Potter," Malfoy drawled, "so as not to give our enemies any advantage over us in the further race of recruitment. Especially if their side is the evil one," he added, more for Ron then Harry, it seemed.

The following events took place in a matter of seconds as Harry fell to the floor, Draco letting off both barrels of his shotgun towards the place Harry was in a second ago as Harry whipped his gun hand out, sending three shots at the ex-Slytherin as he moved his gun arm towards Ron. They were frozen in time for the next second or two, just staring deep into each other's eyes, right until Ron squeezed the trigger, sending a short burst into Harry's leg. The old Heckler and Koch weapon worked flawlessly as two rounds sent by the Mk23 entered Ron's chest as well.

Harry pushed himself up onto his feet as his (ex) best friend's body fell onto the ground. Without looking at anything else, Harry swiftly pocketed the Mk23, grabbed the SMG and rushed off towards his goal, although limping heavily, and wincing every time he stepped on the hurt foot.

*****

"You're late!" was the first thing Hermione said as she saw Harry, while the second was "Harry! Are you hurt? What happened?"

Several people clad in white and bearing red crosses of medics ran up to him immediately.

"I've had a run-in with the MNS. Are you alright?" he asked as he winced when someone pulled off the boot from his wounded foot.

"I'm alright, Harry," she replied with a suddenly serious face. "Are you?"

"Not really. Take this to Joshua, say I sent a gift," he said as he handed the Japanese SMG to one of the medics. The man nodded and hurried off at once, "The ones I ran into... were Malfoy and... well... Ron."

"Ron?" Hermione was shocked. Even worse, she looked as if she was on the verge of falling unconscious and weeping over Harry. One way or the other, she clung onto his neck, sobbing. "But why?"

"Either I'm not getting the entire picture, or they were told the same bullshit as us - that they're doing the right job and saving the wizard population from the matrix enslavement. One way or the other, the two were with the MNS, and tried to kill me. Apparently, Joshua is a good teacher, or being a good Quidditch player means something even in this world."

"You killed them?" she asked in shock. The medics finished bandaging Harry's foot.

"You will have to come with us, we need to clean the wound and remove the bullets," one of them said as he motioned over towards a hallway.

"I'll be right over!" Harry assured him and turned back to Hermione, "I'm not entirely sure if I even wounded them. Ron had pretty good battle armour on, and Malfoy... well, he was always a git and all, but I'm not a murderer, Hermione, and his guts might not kill him off... kill him off fast, anyway."

Having said that, he leaned onto the medic and hobbled off towards the hospital area.

*****

"So, you say that the MNS know where we hide? That's bad..." Armitage said thoughtfully.

"You did not answer my question," Harry said sternly, "Who is guilty of this experiment, and who is the saviour?"

"Well..." Armitage sighed as he sat down into his chair, "To tell you the truth, none are the saviours, for all are guilty. The experiment was a joint project between the Ono-Sendai - we represent them, and the Maas-Neotek, but they backed out of the guarantees for the participants via a loophole in the laws, while we lost the right time to do so."

"So this... this all, is simply vengeance?" Harry asked, his arms raised above his head, signifying the utmost anger one could show with such a pain in his foot.

"Not exactly. Several participants were killed off by the Maas operatives, because they accidentally found out the truth about the experiment, and wanted to get out. Glitches in the program were ever-present, but now we have enough of our men among the Aurors and, more specifically, Obliviators, to ensure that no-one knows too much."

"If you have so many agents, then why did you need us in the first place?"

"You see, Harry, there's this little nuance..." Armitage said as he put his face into his hands for a moment or two, as if thinking if this was worth being told, or if he was unsure of how to word this. Once he raised his face again, it looked different. More assured of himself. "There is a war going on, Harry. A war for control of the world. Chiba is some sort of a battleground... and wizards on our side would be an important asset, but it seems that the MNS thought the same, as they are already recruiting people from within this virtual reality. Aiming for teenagers, of course, as they are not yet burdened with the common sense of this virtual world and can be easily adapted to this one and its unjust laws. You must understand us, Harry, we needed help."

"You needed it so desperately that pulling us out and convincing us we're the saviours of wizardkind looked affordable?" Harry yelled as his fists banged on the top of Armitage's table.

"Yes."

After this short reply, Harry did what he should've done a long time ago.

"Put us back in. NOW!"

"Are you sure--" was all Armitage could say before Harry yelled out again.

"This instant! I was forced to shoot my best friend for some obscure war of yours, and not enough of justification backing this all up!"

"Fine, but will you--"

"NO WAY!" Harry yelled, his gun pointed at Armitage.

"If that's the idea you wish to convey, then have it your way."

*****

They were loaded back into the matrix, strapped up to the beds and all.

"I want you to put us back to where you took us, and never interfere!" Harry repeated through gritted teeth as he was loaded up.

"No pro..." was all he heard before blacking out.

*****

There was sweat, and there was motion. There was the smell of a female body, and there was movement. There was ecstasy and there was pain. His mind return to fully-functional stage as it slowly realized that all those feelings and emotions came from one single action. Sex.

However, his body refused to follow any yells of his mind as the action went on, finally making his world explode as he felt the female (he was even unsure of the age, let alone the name) he was having this with reach orgasm and very soon it all was over.

It was dark in here, and his eyes were adapting slowly to the non-light, especially after all of that. But when they did...

"Harry?"

"Hermione?"