Sometime after.

“Where… am I?” I blinked a few times, but my vision remained groggy. I tried to raise my arm to rub my eyes, but I quickly found that I’d been strapped down to a bed of some sort. A hospital gurney, perhaps? 

As time passed, my vision slowly cleared - it seemed that my blurry vision had been a side effect of whatever they’d shot into me.

What I saw, though, didn’t inspire confidence in my situation. The first thing I noticed was the roof. It was concrete, with metal piping. As my gaze turned to the side, I noticed that I was in the corner of a gigantic, windowless room.

Was I underground?

As my gaze lowered further, I saw rows and rows of gurneys, each with a person strapped to it.

Just what the goddamn hell had I gotten myself into?

I tried to open my mouth to speak, but for some reason, my mouth wouldn’t open. This in itself was strange, as I couldn’t feel anything physically binding my jaw shut. 

Wait - I wasn’t even wearing my own clothes. I was wearing some sort of combat uniform. Now that I noticed it, everyone else was wearing the uniform, as well. Christ, really, what was going on? The more I saw, the more apprehensive I grew.

But, all I could do was lie there and wait. As the hours passed, a few more people were wheeled into the room, unconscious.

Finally, just when I’d given up on staying awake and was trying to calm down enough to fall asleep, my restraints suddenly burst open.

A jolt of adrenaline surged through my body, and I immediately jumped off of the gurney.

A flurry of sounds assaulted my eardrums. Compared to the stifling silence that had engulfed the room previously, hundreds of voices rang their way into my head like a battering ram.

Clearly, whatever method they’d been using to keep us all quiet was no longer in effect.

As the chaos around me ensued, I heard a very welcome message.

Reboot Successful: System Online.

“Oh, S! You’re fine! Quick, where are we?”

Updating System.

…

Combat Systems successfully downloaded. Ready for combat.

“Wait, what? S, what’s going on? Combat systems??”

Suddenly a mocking voice rang out from loudspeakers hidden in the room’s ceiling. “Hello everyone, I hope you’ve all had a wonderful time at our facilities.”

“Fuck you!”

“Get me out of here, or my father will see to it that your heads will roll!”

Similar shouts rang through the room, but the speaker only laughed. “Haha, say all you want, but there is only one way out of the room you are currently in.

“You see, there are exactly four hundred of you in the room, and we only need a hundred… Well, I’ll give you all twenty minutes to sort it out, how about that?”

At the same time, I received a comment from S. 

Mission: Remove hostiles in the vicinity. To maximize chances of survival, please procure a weapon. 399 hostiles remaining. Deadline, 20 minutes.

Oh… so that’s how it was. 

Thankfully, I’d been placed in a corner — despite a furious melee erupting in the middle of the room, most of the people around me hadn’t quite come around to what was happening just yet.

What could I do to increase my chances of surviving? Could I get a weapon to arm myself with? Perhaps, but, how would I procure such a weapon?

I looked back at the gurney I’d just hopped off of. The base of the gurney looked solid, but the top of the gurney had some bars on the end that were secured only by some ninety-degree angle connectors. Normally, these were there to make sure that patients didn't accidentally roll off, somehow.

Without a second of hesitation, I ripped a bar out from its connectors and made a few slashing motions with it. It had good weight, and it wasn’t too long to be unwieldy; for someone like me, it would suffice as a bat.

Brandishing my newfound weapon, I stood with my back to the wall and glared at those closest to me.

I wasn’t quite ready to kill others yet, but who knew if they felt the same way? After all, the brawl in the center of the room showed that at least a good number of those in the room hadn’t had any qualms.

Better safe than sorry.

But really, what the hell. Just a simple command from some stranger over the intercom, and people were ripping each other apart.

I shook my head.

At that moment, I’d resolved - I wouldn’t kill anyone if I could help it.

The mocking voice sounded over the intercom again. “For those of you trying to avoid the fighting, I have some bad news for you. Anyone who hasn’t killed another by the time a hundred of you are left, will be killed as well. We don’t need pacifists here.”

Even S backed up the man’s claims. 

New Mission: Kill a hostile. Failure will result in death.

For crying out loud.

Well, kill or be killed, I guess. To my right, two average-looking guys were having a go at each other, while on my left, there was a rather buff-looking guy chasing a smaller asian girl.

It looked like my days of being a keyboard social justice warrior were going to haunt me.

I ran towards the buff-looking guy, metal bar in hand. Fortunately, his focus was completely on his prey, and I was behind him.

As I neared, I leaped into the air, raised the metal bar high above my head, and brought it crashing down onto the guy’s head.

His head didn’t cave in or anything; I wasn’t strong enough for that. But he did instantly drop to the ground, and S confirmed the deed.

One hostile terminated. Mission success.

Well, at least I wasn’t going to be killed by some nameless overlord anymore.

“Hey, are you okay?” I turned toward the girl I’d just saved with a smile.

And… I was promptly met with a kick to the groin, followed up by a fist to the nose.

“!@&!^@!(&@& What the hell!”

Fortunately, despite all my hours of lounging about on couches, chairs, beds, and the thousands of burgers, fries, chicken nuggets, and other wonderful cuisines I’d happily poured into my gullet, my reflexes were still far faster than most humans - when I was on edge, at least.

Alas, there’s nothing quite like a kick in the acorns to jolt one’s system.