POV Seth

He didn’t see where the creature had gone. He knew he hadn’t killed it. It was somewhere out there, digesting the energy it had stolen from his rifle. He felt it in his bones. If that thing could fly, he didn’t stand a chance of reaching his squad before it did.

“Lights on,” Seth commanded. It was their only line of defense against it. He didn’t give them more to go on, not wanting to scare them into a state of panic.

He refused to use the appropriate term for the ‘thing’. If it was his exhaustion manifesting hallucinations, no one would get hurt. He was imagining things.

His instincts screamed ‘Run!’ And he obeyed.

Seth took to the stairs two at a time. His readout squawked urgently. The perimeter boundaries were flying up the stairs as fast as he could run, nipping at his heels.

“Perimeter coming in fast! What floor are you on?” Seth’s chest tightened, worried that he’d fall outside of the game zone with the same irrational fear of a child leaping onto their bed in the dark. “Where are you?” He should have caught up with them by now.

“Thirty-three,” Gemma replied.

Seth tripped at the revelation, recovering as the boundary engulfed his lower leg, numbing it. He’d never reach them before the ‘thing’ got to them.

“Just smash the next door!” Erick spat. “Like I told you to do from the beginning!”

Smashing the door to the wrong floor might cost them the game, but it might save their lives if the upper floors had access to sunlight. Was victory worth their lives?

“Do it!” Seth ordered. “Barricade the door behind you. I’ll find another way in.” He ignored the pins and needles shooting up his leg. He knew now that the game parameter was an active element of the game, not just a guideline with minor consequences. But why stun the players?

He forced the tangent from his mind. The result was if the game stunned him, then he’d be defenseless against that ‘thing’. He couldn’t afford to give up, but neither could his team. He didn’t know what to do; what to tell them.

Seth counted the floors. Five. Six. Seven.

“Entering floor thirty-five,” Gemma reported, his voice fading out as he added an observation Seth didn’t quite catch. No screams. That was good, right? It meant they hadn’t found the ‘thing’ chasing after them. They might be high enough that they might avoid the consequences of the game’s roaming borders.

Eight.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Nothing else came through the squad channel. “Good luck,” Seth said to the silence.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

His lungs complained, but he dared not slow down. He dared not think what the silence meant.

Twelve.

Thirteen.

He collided painfully with a wall, falling backwards with the impact. He caught his panic before it called to the other world. He scrambled to his feet, noting that the virtual interface in his helmet had cracked, fracturing the readout’s details. In a daze, Seth uttered through his squad channel, “I’m on thirteen.” The readout flashed, no longer squawking its desperate warning. The boundary had slowed to a stop, swallowing the twelfth floor whole.

Vertigo overwhelmed him. His legs threatened to buckle beneath him. Shutting his eyes made it worse.

The only option was to keep going. There was no time to catch his breath, to center himself, to think…

He felt along the wall, searching desperately for a door. The texture of the wall shifted from the cool painted cement blocks to the cold metal door. He searched for a handle, pulled it open, and entered the room beyond.

The door slammed shut behind him with such finality that it startled him. He jiggled the handle, finding the door locked. His panic triggered, cracking his reality. He fought back tears and gave up on the door. ‘There’s no way back anyway,’ he reasoned. They trapped him.

Nothing about this whole scenario was right. It was like the building itself was possessed.

He leaned against the door and pounded his fist one last time against it. The building had singled him out and isolated him from his herd. Anytime now, it would come for the kill.

He hoped his team would make it out safely. They didn’t need to win. They needed to get out alive.

Darkness returned to his shattered reality, masking the long hall ahead of him. He was emotionally drained, exhausted, and perhaps a little too accepting of his inevitable demise. He wouldn’t give up without a fight, he knew that much. Facing the beast was an excellent opportunity to see if he had what it took to survive the Killing Fields.

Arms extended, his fingertips brushed the walls on either side of him as he walked into the darkness, ready to meet his fate.

*****

Seth stopped his story. The terror of that moment had caught up with him. He had survived at the expense of twelve other people. People whom the Gaming Commission wasn’t even looking for.

He mourned for them, even if they weren’t his people.

Councilman Daamon stopped his note taking, his piercing gray eyes judging Seth’s abrupt pause. “We don’t have the time to postpone this testimony, Mr. Wright. This is your only chance to say your piece. I must urge you to press on.”

“Twelve people died and the G.C. said they saw nothing unusual,” Seth said.

The Councilman reviewed his report, skimming through the customary technical keywords, searching for supporting evidence to Seth’s claim. “The G.C. have reported no abnormal activity. They have reported no disruption to your feed. They have reported no deaths. Of course, a cursory review is not the same as reading the full report.”

“So all of it, I’m just making it up?” Seth heard the pitch in his voice crack.

“I wouldn’t be here if I thought you were a liar, Mr. Wright,” the Councilman said. “Please continue.”

“I want to know what’s being done. I want to know that they didn’t die for nothing,” Seth said.

Councilman Daamon frowned. “We are doing something. The first step is to determine if a problem exists, and the extent of it. Given what we have of your testimony, we can confirm that there is a problem. Now it’s determining if it’s a systemic issue, a reporting issue, or poor timing. I will make the details of our finding public upon completion of our review. However, I can affirm that the Council has never allowed off-site activities. That is all I can say on the matter.”

The Councilman finished with, “If you will, Mr. Wright, please continue.”