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It was a normal Monday morning, I'd just woken up and I was ready to open Team Fortress 2 to see if there were any open Mann vs Machine servers that I could go on with a ticket I had bought the night before, to my surprise, there was what appeared to be a new map.

This new map was nothing like I'd seen before for Mann vs Machine, in fact, it didn't fit Team Fortress 2's art style whatsoever - the textures for all of the geometry were as realistic as you would see in Half-Life 2 or Left 4 Dead, it seemed too weird to not have kept the same art style, so, curiously, I went to the Team Fortress 2 blog and looked to see if there were any recent updates, and there were none...

The puzzling thing about this is that I was sure that this map wasn't available online yesterday, or any other time before that, and instead of the skill level being "Expert", it said "Hellish", which would probably have been in Valve's nature to give it such a name, but the same surely couldn't have been said for the art style.

Another odd thing is that the map didn't have a name, like Mannhattan or Rottenburg, it was simply named as if the input was a string of spaces, in my curiosity, I clicked on the mission and went to join a server, the server finder only found one server however which I had poor connection to, nonetheless, my computer managed the almost impossible and secured my place on the one-of-a-kind server, my ping rating was three-hundred and eight, a large difference from my usual fourty to eighty.

It appeared that I was the first one on the server, the chat did however mention that other players were joining, and in the time that they were joining, I explored what there was of the map; it was a small little place, about half the size of Mannhattan, and it was formed like a maze consisting of dark walls with some quite reasonably convincing textures put on them, most of which were metal panels or brick, and other barriers consisted of static props such as a chainlink fence, which had appeared to have been taken straight from Half-Life 2, and crates from Counter Strike: Source.

Finally, after about eight minutes, we had a fully assembled team of one Medic, one Engineer, two Soldiers, a Heavy, and me, a Demoman... there were no upgrade stations, to our surprise, and even worse was the fact that the mission progress counter said we were on wave one of ten, despite this, we all pressed F4 to vote to start the round and the game began, the announcer counted down, five, four, three, two, one, and out of the center of the map spawned a halloween Skeleton King, no robots were to be seen, only the Skeleton King.

Everyone tried their hardest to kill the Skeleton, we were all equally puzzled and confused as to why this was our enemy, but we kept firing at it regardless, I fired pill after pill at it with my grenade launcher, a Loch-N-Load, I took about two thousand and sixty health off the Skeleton King, which had a base health of one hundred thousand; the heavy (who was being ubered by the Kritzkrieg medic) did the most damage however, ultimately being credited for the whole kill.

After this, the mission progress counter skipped to eleven out of ten, without any kind of reasoning behind it, at least, none that I know of, and then the map changed to Upward, a payload map, we all spawned in the red spawn and immediately, we were welcomed by the announcer complaining "A tank has entered the area!", we were immediately allowed to leave the spawn room and did so, the tank was outlined in a light blue stencil as it climbed from the Blu spawn door, across the payload tracks and towards the Red team's pit.

The team, which had not changed in numbers or classes, me included charged to the tank and attempted to do as much damage to it as possible, we luckily destroyed it only a few meters away from the final terminus and the announcer then yelled "Get to an upgrade station!", something we couldn't do because there were no upgrade stations on the map.

In the chat, all six of us were asking questions to one another; "What the fuck is going on?! this makes no sense...", this is only one of few sentences of confusion thrown around by us in that server chat, then the next wave, wave 12 started... out of the Blu spawn rolled a Major Crits soldier, aided by fifthteen robot medics, we approached it, ready to fire, but as it got closer, it began to slow down to the point where it stopped still dead on the Payload track.

We waited for a good ten seconds to see what would happen, and suddenly, the Major Crits soldier began laughing in the Horseless Headless Horsemann's voice and it then exploded using the Payload's particle effect and blast radius, killing all six of us, and then the round was officially over, and so was the mission.

The loot dialogue came up with each player's avatar in a row, ready to show what loot we had recieved, there was only one reward given to the first player, the medic; the dynamite-covered box exploded to show a shiny red spy's Black Rose knife, it was named "m_strPlaceholder", as in a kind of code-based string to signify that the weapon had no name, and we different weapons with the same red australium-like shine and name, I recieved a strange m_strPlaceholder huntsman, which already had seven kills oddly attached to it for some reason.

We were all surprised by our loot, I was going to type a message in to the chat, but by that point, the server had gone back to the lobby screen and most people had left, so I left too, mainly to test out my new weapon.

I joined a payload race server and the map was Hightower, so I quickly chose my Sniper class with my strange m_strPlaceholder huntsman and rushed to the sniping tower, I saw two snipers aiming at me, one had a Hitman's Heatmaker and another had the Machina, I quickly fired my glitched huntsman in their direction, sure I would miss, and I almost did, but... the arrow seemed to... home in on the Machina sniper's head, and it instantly headshot him, I was astounded, so much so that I was standing idle in confusion for so long that the Heatmaker Sniper got a headshot on me.

I was in the spawn, and outside, past the window were a friendly Blu heavy on low health and an attacking Red pyro, interested to see what would happen, I aimed at the pyro through the window, and fired, the arrow ignored any collision with the wall or window and headshot the pyro, causing his body to explode as if hit by the classic.

In curiosity, I exited the game and went to Google Chrome to search for m_strPlaceholder, hoping that something TF2 related would show up, but nothing did, nothing at all, and I was about to go back to my game adter closing Google Chrome, but I saw on my desktop that two new txt files had been created, their names, the names of players that I had killed with the bugged huntsman, in extreme curiosity, I opened them, and I saw things that made me question the weapon even further.

Inside these two files were the player's Steam IDs, joined groups, friends, blocked users, account balances, passwords, usernames, and everything else you could ask to know about these people, even their chat histories from a few days previously, all presented and seperated in a way that would make you assume that a human had written it, very neat and well-presented.

I scrolled to the twenty-thousandth line of the file, and there, in capital letters was the user's bank account data, PIN number, bank statements, balances and everything you would need to use his bank account in conjunction with your own Steam account to buy anything... and it didn't just stop at Steam data... I exited the txt to see that the TF2 item in the taskbar had a slowly-moving green line migrating across it, as if it was saving or downloading something, I looked to my desktop to see that there was a folder named after the sniper who I shot, interested, I opened it and saw hundreds of folders full of videos, music, images, text files, app data, even text files containing his internet search history.

It was as if Team Fortress 2 was downloading everything off the other players' computers and dumping the files on to my desktop, I quickly aborted, closed TF2 and went to check on my C drive capacity, the bar was red, and it was only about a quarter full when I had first launched the game... I was in absolute awe, shocked to no end, I had downloaded the digital contents of a person's life, and it was someone I didn't even know... the weapon handed to me from Mann vs Machine could transfer an entire computer's data directly to me, and I was unstoppable.

I quickly rushed to type the names of the players in to Google, and the sniper who I had killed, his profile had been seemingly banned, I then went to check on the pyro's account, and he too was banned, I could do anything with this weapon... I've never been one to act selfish, but that was all of the private data of every person I killed in TF2 with the bugged huntsman... I was a God, and so were the people that won that MvM game with me... it felt so wrong, but so right.

I closed the game and searched through the folder on my desktop, I checked the images folder and found nothing surprising, just selfies of whoever owned the computer, and images of his pets and whatnot, his music folder was filled with Daft Punk and Pink Floyd, and that was about it, then I looked on the sub folder for his desktop, I found multiple txt files, upon opening the first one, it said "Email", followed by his email, and then "Password", followed by his password, I quickly went back in to Google Chrome and typed both of these entries in to their required fields.

After waiting for a few seconds, I had successfully signed in to Patrick Jones' email, I had everything, draft messages, sent messages, even spam, and I even had his home address... I knew almost all I could and more than I should know about him... I was so overwhealmed that I quickly closed the browser and the folder, I could do this to absoultely anybody... and most of it would be accounted to Valve, it would be doubtful I'd be traced back to it unless I made it strictly obvious.

I experimented, and surely enough, the next day, I had managed to use Patrick's bank data to fuel my Steam account, a good hundred pounds Steam credit was added to my person, and I went to the Steam market to see what I could buy... I got a good few unusual hats, a few Australium weapons, and just as I was about to search for something else, I had a crazy idea, what would happen if I typed "m_strPlaceholder" in to the Steam market search? I tried it, and sure enough, a placeholder festive Black Box was being sold by the man who played the heavy in our MvM match, it was up for the highest price, aroun+d 200 pounds, so I quickly went to the man's profile and added him.

His name was "Iggie", clearly his Steam name, and not his real name, but we engaged in a conversation, I started by saying "Hi..." and he responded rather quickly; "Hello, who are you?", I told him that I was the demoman from our MvM game and I told him about the power of that black box, he didn't believe me, but I encouraged him to join any server he could and just try it.

Twelve minutes later, he replied to me, he was frantic, he hadn't used the weapon on human players, only bots, but after testing it, he confirmed that it did exactly as I said; "Oh my GOD! IT WORKS!" he exclaimed, but he had doubts about the ethicality of using it, he said to me: "But this could destroy lives, this can ruin people's reputations, we should report this...", I disagreed strongly, I knew it's capabilities exactly, but my mind didn't know any bounds, I was ready to fuck up some people's lives if it meant increasing the quality of my own... I joined the server he was on and I spotted him, rocket jumping as the soldier with his placeholder black box, he hadn't noticed me, and he'd stopped to type a message in the team chat when suddenly, I tauntkilled him with my placeholder huntsman, he was instantly banned from Steam and our chat was disconnected immediately.

He failed to comply, so I wiped him out of the picture too, it was funny how I was so corrupted at the time and saw nothing wrong with it, but now I could be paying the price... more on that later however.

By the end of the day, I had around six hundred pounds of Steam credit, all from around seventeen kills or more, it was a gold mine in disguise there was even more open for me in their actual bank accounts too, this had become a habit to me, a strong one at that, I had installed many hard drives to account for all of the different players' computer data that most of them would not even fit inside of the computer, I had to house them in external compartments, but it got the job done, I was easily the richest person in terms of Steam's economic standing, I could buy tons of unusuals and australiums and still have the money to open a hundred crates, and even then, my credit balance was increasing with each kill, and it was too easy to give up on.

After about a month of using this weapon to harvest around thirt-thousand pounds, I joined what would be my last server, a payload game on Upward again, I was farming kill after kill, snatching people's accounts and their precious money from their heads with each headshot, when suddenly, a familiar name was mentioned in the chat, Spark_10 has joined the game, he picked the opposite team, Blu, as I was Red.

I remembered the name Spark_10 from the MvM match, and I remembered that he was the Medic who recieved the placeholder black rose, only this time, he was doing just as I was, testing out his little toy, he had chosen the Spy class... I was now hysterical, he could steal my life in one stab... and he knew it, and I could do the same to him, but with much more effort, and like the fool I was, I stayed on the server to test my luck on him.

I heard an uncloak sound from behind me, and I turned to see him there, his glitch knife in his hand, ready to peel my life away, I pressed q, swiftly drawing my Kukri and I went to hit his head, but he swung his blade and I jumped to the side, he was clearly a skilled Spy, as he went to jump over me to my back to stab me as I tried to retreat, but he luckily missed... that time, I drew my crossbow and instantly shot a forced arrow through the air, striking a demoman behind the chasing Spy, I had killed him, but I was unsuccessful at killing my rival, in a panic, I forgot to not turn around when a Spy is chasing me, and I turned to run to my spawn.

He had missed the chance to backstab me while we were running and he cloaked and vanished before my eyes; I ran to the Red spawn door and saw a dozen corpses scattered about, all from players who had long since been banned, I held down my tab key to inspect the leaderboard, and alas, I and the Spy were the only ones left, as I had banned and killed all of his allies, as he did my own, we were alone, and this battle really would decide who died and who lived, there I was, in front of my spawn door, looking down the wooden staircase, and in front of me, Spark uncloaked, disguised as me.

We both stared at eachother for some time, until I held down my left mouse button and readied an arrow, and he then recloaked, as I released the arrow, it hit the ground and I instantly turned around to see if Spark was behind me, which he wasn't, I then looked in to a dark corner, no closer than a meter away, and out he jumped with his corrupted blade, stabbing me in the face, but not killing me, he had me on low health, I readied another arrow and packed it directly in to the bastard's foot, there he was, and there I was, I readied a final arrow, and as I fired it, Spark jumped on to my head, turned around swiftly, and delivered a deathly jab directly to the back of my player's neck, I was dead, beaten by the same person I had helped to earn the weapons, he now had all of my account funding, private information and everything I knew about my other victims.

My Team Fortress 2 window closed, and alas, my Steam account was suspended indefinitely... I could never use it, and worst of all, my bank account was under heavy threat; I quickly called my bank to try and cancel my card and everything related to my account, but already, my password was invalidated, the Spy had officially stolen my life, all the money I would have used to pay my bills was gone, my house would be soon taken from me, and I could do nothing.

So, about two months had passed and I was forced to leave my house, I found myself wandering the streets in the last good clothing I could wear, I would have moved in with my parents, but they moved abroad to Spain, and I was stuck in England with no money to board a plane, and the majority of my friends never kept in contact with me... I was wandering the streets, night after night, I got more and more used to sleeping in the same spot, next to a bus stop, in front of an electronics shop, nobody else minded, so I naturally turned it in to my makeshift home.

And one day in what I think was October, I heard on the radio, the presenter, a woman in around her thirties began to speak; "And this morning, we have another report, just twelve hours ago, policemen enterred the house of a twenty-seven year old Patrick Jones, only to discover that he had committed suicide by impaling his throat with a swiss army knife, this is only one of a few suicides around the country that appear to have been related to the popular video-game related desktop application called Steam, it is evident from each case that the user was banned from the service indefinitely and that their suicide notes contain messages regarding a loss of money from their bank accounts, the game Team Fortress 2 is quoted to have been the stem of this issue on almost all occasions in which a suicide message is left, the FBI will investigate further."

It was that moment, I was sure that I had caused people's lives to end, and I was lucky to have the strength to keep moving forward... I'm a monster, and it's all because of a fucking computer game.