Welcome @DerrickMoore6 to the Blue Light Ultra Experience. Your Jason Bourne (based on the movies and not the books) fanfiction will begin momentarily.

Neuro-link begins in three, two, one...

A cold wind ripped through the city, but I didn't feel it. I suspected neither did he—the man pointing the gun at me. But to fair, my weapon was trained on him too. Up until a month ago, I'd never heard the name Jason Bourne, now it haunted me everywhere; even to the top of NxtGEN where we now held our Mexican Standoff.

My encounter with Bourne actually began years ago when I was about 15. My mother decided that everyone in the family should do one of those DNA tests. Big surprise, we were all related and our family came from Africa. Just looking at my family you could tell that. What I didn't know was that these DNA tests were all part of a CIA program. The CIA kept the results of everyone's test and analyzed it. They were looking for the next super-soldier. I was one of them. But, that wasn't enough for them. After the temporary success with Bourne, they wanted more like him. And so began them sneaking a DNA modification cocktail into my flu shots and doctor visits. Every time I went in for a shot, they pumped me full of a serum based on Bourne's DNA. Since, I was still going through puberty, my body took to the modifications better than an adult.

As Bourne's DNA mixed with my own, I became taller—topping out at 5 feet 10 inches. I also became lean and muscular. But the biggest surprise was my aptitude for the martial arts, such as Krav Maga, Muay Thai, and Systema. I could also hit just about anything I aimed at with just about any weapon. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't suddenly wake up one day and was a martial art master, it took years of study and discipline—I just was a fast learner.

Eventually, the CIA came for me. I'm not entirely sure how it happened. One day, I was just in their employ. There were some memory gaps. I could remember my family somewhat, like what they looked like, but not who they were. I couldn't remember my name either. All I knew was my codename: Phoenix.

For years, I'd been one of their best, almost reaching Bourne status, but it all went wrong once Bourne decided to go against the Company. Soon after he went rouge, the CIA began shutting down all their other projects. And by shutting down, I mean eliminate the assets involved. A squad came knocking at my door one day, it turned out to be a bad day for them. I've been on the run since.

"Listen," said Bourne, "I don't want to hurt you, but you're not the first stooge I've taken down."

"You're not my first either, Bourne," I said. "You ruined my life."

"If anyone ruined your life, it was the Company."

"Don't give me that. You are the one to go rouge. You were the one to expose their secrets."

"I just wanted to know who I was and be left alone."

"That's what I wanted to," I said. The wind bit at my black slacks and white long sleeve shirt. We'd been standing out here so long I was actually starting to feel a chill. "I wanted a family. But you had to take it away with your insane quest."

Bourne twirled his pistol skyward in a show of a truce. He didn't drop it, but he wasn't pointing it at me anymore. "Listen, Phoenix, we can work together on this. They took everything I cared about; just like they did with you. I warned them to leave me alone, but they wouldn't. If we work together, we both could get what we want. You know that it wasn't me that did this to you."

I sighed. "You're right. But that doesn't fix things."

"According to my contact, they've transferred all their classified files here. If we get to those, we can expose everything."

I lowered my weapon. "Fine, Bourne, we'll work on this together...for now."

I reached towards his hand as he reached towards mine. A second before they connected, Bourne's hand dissolved into blocks of pixels. I stepped back in stunned shock as the world around me collapsed into pixels.

***

Flashing red lights and blaring alarms greeted me as I woke. The virtual reality visor detached from my face as the sensor wires retracted from the second skin virtual reality suit. The pod's clear cockpit-like window rippled away like water. My first thoughts were that the ride couldn't be over already. Then a face peered down at me; it was Jason Bourne.

"Glad to see you made it, Phoenix," he said. "Let's get out of here."

I went limp as he pulled me out of the virtual reality pod. My mind was too frazzled to do much else. "How is this possible? You're...a fictional character."

"That's what they wanted you to think," said Bourne. "After we took down NxtGEN, we realized what a good team we made. So did they. They came after you and brought you to this training-slash-brainwashing base. Here they used advanced virtual reality simulations to make you think that your life was merely an amusement park ride."

Upon exiting the ride area, we were greeted by a team of guards. Bourne quickly dispatched them with a few shots from his glock revolver. As we continued down the hallway, he explained how the CIA has been abducting people and training them to be merciless soldier-assassins through these virtual simulations. The agents in charge of this place planted the theme park idea into me to trap me here forever. I found Bourne's claim hard to believe at first until he showed me the rows upon rows of imprisoned people.

Doors then opened and a swarm of guards entered. Fortunately, I'd recovered enough to put up a fight. One of the guards came at me with a strike, but I parried and followed up with a right cross and an uppercut elbow strike. Another tried to take me down with a leg strike, but I avoided it with ease and returned the favor with a half-shin half-knee kick to the guard's side. The blow dazed him enough for me to deliver a slap trust kick that sent him stumbling back towards Bourne who finished him off.

Once the area was cleared of guards, I turned back to the rows of abducted innocents.

"How did they make it seem so real?" I asked.

"You know how in a game objects can seem to collide with each other? It is the same here; but when the code collides, it also activates a function. The pods act like a web browser streaming a video from the central system. If you pick up a daisy, the code not only allows you to interact with the code of the daisy but searches for the daisy_touch function within the central system database. Once it finds the function, a series of impulses are sent into the second skin suit which sends impulses into the body and to the brain telling the brain that you touched a daisy. It basically operates the same way as if you touched a daisy in the real world, but instead of chemical stimulus, it's a coded stimulus."

Bourne's stream of exposition bothered me. How would Jason Bourne know all of this and why would he spout it off like like some digital assistant answering my question? "That seems too advanced for our world."

"It did take a long time for them to replicate the stimulus code for millions of different situations. Not only did they need to figure out how the brain reacts to a daisy's touch but how it smells and tastes and so on. And then multiply that by the billions of things we encounter on a daily basis. They had years of time to do all this. It still isn't a perfect system but it's getting better."

I heard enough. I approached Bourne and patted him on the back like I was thanking him for rescuing me; but while doing this, I quickly slipped my hand into Bourne's jacket to retrieve his backup gun. I stepped back, pointing it at him. "Jason Bourne wouldn't speak like that. And he wouldn't have allowed me to steal his gun."

The fake Bourne smiled slyly. Everything around us then seemed to freeze. The alarm sounds stopped, and the pile of unconscious guards seemed to suddenly vanish. The bogus Bourne then broke into a blast of bytes only to reconstitute into another Jason Bourne and the owner of FurryLand, Mr. Gadget.

"I told you he wouldn't fall for it," Bourne said.

"I didn't have enough time to replicate your mannerisms and speech," said Mr. Gadget.

"The good news is his resourcefulness makes me think he'd be perfect for an upcoming mission of mine. That is if he wants to try."

"Wait," I said. "Mission? You mean...Jason Bourne actually exists."

"Of course I do," said Bourne. "I owed Mr. Gadget a favor from that time he helped me fend off waves of covert agents trying to raid one of my safe houses."

"There wasn't enough data to simulate Bourne," said Mr. Gadget, "so I needed to have the real one come help. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to get him just right."

"But your deduction and fighting skills—along with your background—showed me that you have great potential. I could really use someone like you in the real world." Jason Bourne held his hand out to me. "What do you say...Phoenix?"

"Heck, yeah!" I said and grabbed his hand.

Ending simulation. I hope you enjoyed your ride. If you did, don't forget to leave a comment and a vote. If you didn't, you can still leave a comment and a vote. Ha, ha, ha...

Have a nice day and thank you for choosing BLUE for your virtual reality needs.

Don't forget to visit the gift shop (chapter 3) before leaving.