60,000-year countdown has ended

Nemesis 1 released

Please acknowledge

James blinked blearily and swiped his gloved hand at the glowing letters. They didn’t disappear. He frowned, turned away, and they tracked with his line of sight, bright green against a subtly darker rectangle, hovering in mid-air at a distance of some three feet from his face.

He tried to turn away again, but the center arms on the wooden bench were designed to keep people like him from getting too comfortable.

Didn’t stop him from trying, though.

“Damn it,” he hissed at last, and sat up. It was cold. His breath misted in the air. He looked around. The subway platform was empty. The fluorescent bulbs in their long casings filled the air with toxic white light. The tracks on either side of the platform were endless black strips of rusted rails, old wooden ties, and the shifting, scurrying form of New York City’s truest citizens, the rats.

He was all alone down here.

“What the hell?” James rubbed at his eyes and then frowned at the green lettering. His head swam from the last effects of the wine he’d finished earlier that night. But the green letters were crisp and clear.

And they weren’t going anywhere.

Too steady and weird to be a hallucination. Some form of new advertising? Who the fuck would bother marketing to him, though? And this wasn’t selling anything. It was threatening.

Nemesis 1?

Had the government implanted something in his head? Some sort of ocular overlay? He’d been in the hospital six months ago when that asshole had swerved to hit him on purpose. Concussion, broken left leg, broken ribs. Had the hospital staff realized he’d never pay, and installed something to keep track of him?

James screwed up his face in annoyance. Didn’t make sense. The message would be about hospital bills if so.

Again, he waved his hand before his face, then stopped. The lettering disappeared when his hand interposed itself. If it was an ocular projection, they’d simply ripple over his palm.

But no. He could block them out.

Which meant they weren’t originating from him.

James sat up a little more.

Again, he looked up and down the platform. Nobody. Were there cameras? Was he on a reality show?

Hell, was he still asleep?

James slapped his bearded cheek. Slapped himself harder.

The words remained in the air before him.

Fully awake now, he read them again. 60,000 year count down. What was that about? Humans had discovered agriculture twelve thousand years ago. What had started fifty thousand years before that? And who’d been around to start a count down? Aliens?

Nah.

Nemesis 1 released. Code for some sort of virus? Military operation? Some kind of crazy gamer thing?

No idea.

The last line though was a question.

“Acknowledged,” he rasped and the words disappeared abruptly.

James jerked back, surprised, and looked up and down the platform again. Silence. The trains ran twice an hour this deep into the night. The white lights blared down onto the bright yellow stippled strips on the platform’s edges. The white tiles on the walls beyond the tracks seemed to glow. The tunnel mouths at either end were cavernous and hungry.

Ominous, somehow.

Had he activated something?

Instincts honed by five years living on the streets told him it was time to go.

He rose, slung his grubby backpack over one shoulder, and started making his way toward the broad staircase that led up to the station and then the street.

Panicked squeaks.

All the rats were suddenly pouring down the tracks, dozens of them, racing in unison away from the left tunnel mouth just beyond the stairs.

James froze.

He’d seen New York rats ignore trains, empty cans thrown at them, flaunting their ownership of the city.

Nothing scared a big city rat.

He squinted into the darkness. The bright lights ruined his dark vision. He shielded his eyes. The darkness was almost impenetrable.

Almost.

Was that movement?

Yes.

Something was approaching. Small. Walking. Drawing closer to the light from the depths.

James felt his gut clench. A child?

He knew it was no child, but he couldn’t shake a lifetime of being raised in the normal world that easily.

“Hey, you a kid?” It was a ridiculous thing to shout out. “Hey. You all right in there?”

The small, shadowed shape paused. Then it made a hissing sound that caused the hairs on James’ arms to prickle, his mouth to dry up, and for him to take an involuntary step backward.

Not a hiss. An inhuman giggle.

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“Fuck this,” he whispered, and ran the last dozen yards over the gray tiles to the base of the steps. His left leg twinged with pain as he hauled himself up the stairs, breathing harshly.

The ticket station was closed. The magazine kiosk had its roller metal awning pulled all the way down and padlocked. Turnstiles gleamed; their arms endlessly polished by passengers pushing through. Movie posters on the walls, trash kicked across the floor.

Still nobody.

He went to leg it up the final flight of stairs to the street but paused to glance back down to the platform. He couldn’t help it.

The small figure had stepped into view.

It weren’t no kid.

Small, wiry, two feet tall, it looked like one of the gremlins from the 80’s movie. Batwing ears, triangular face, mouth filled with needle-like teeth, eyes like twin rubies with vertical black pupils shoved into its head. Naked and sexless, it was covered in black, scaly skin like an iguana, and each finger ended in inch-long talons. Even from the top of the stairs James could tell they were wickedly sharp.

“What the fuck,” he croaked.

The… gremlin? It grinned at him. There was no mistaking the malice behind its widening smile, the intelligence gleaming in its red eyes.

It crouched as if about to leap up the stairs at him.

James ran.

Didn’t even feel his left leg. He burst through the exit turnstile, pounded across the station, took the next set of steps three at a time.

Once he’d been in great shape. For a second he felt as if his old body had been returned to him. He flew up the stairs and burst out onto the street, gasping and panting.

The irrational fear that he’d emerge into a deserted world was immediately dispelled. Cars rolled down the street, even at this hour. The bar across the way blared a Journey song into the bitter cold night. The restaurants and shops were closed, sure, but here and there people were still out. A small group of college kids, drunk and laughing and making their way to their next destination. Another homeless dude in a doorway, layered up in old sleeping bags and blankets, barely visible.

The sounds of the city washed over him. The distant rumble of a train. Honks from the Flushing Avenue a few blocks away. A crowd singing to the Journey song with raucous abandon.

Reality.

James passed his hand over his sweaty brow. His heart was pounding. A dream. No, a hallucination. Something wrong with him. A bad trip, though he’d not taken anything.

Trembling with the excess of adrenaline, he took a deep breath and looked down into the subway station, confident that he’d see nothing, that the bad juju was over. Nothing like some cold February night air to wash the madness out of your system.

The gremlin was making its way up the stairs, eyes locked on him.

James let out a cry and stumbled back. Ran into the street. A car slammed on its horn as it swerved around him. James nearly fell, his backpack sliding down to the crook of his elbow. He ran across both lanes to the bar. Paddy’s Luck. Big windows revealed the crowded interior. TV screens high above the bar, the last of the crowd around cocktail tables or bellied up. A galaxy of bottles gleaming from the backlighting.

Three guys stood by the front door, two smoking, one clearly working.

“Hey, whoa,” said the bouncer. “You all right there, brother?”

James couldn’t go in. Places like Paddy’s Luck weren’t for the likes of him. But he ignored the bouncer, looked back, saw the gremlin emerge into the open, its manner hesitant.

“There,” he said, pointing. “You see that?”

The three men looked at the subway entrance. Their expressions were blank. Mystified.

“The 43rd street station?” asked the bouncer.

James thrust his finger back at the gremlin. “No! That thing! The… the gremlin thing, there, right there!”

The gremlin crouched upon the sidewalk, glanced back and forth as if learning how the cars moved, then grinned and began to lope across the street toward them when traffic died.

“Don’t see nothing, brother man,” said the bouncer. “Look, you want me to call someone? Friendship House is only a dozen blocks away…”

James felt his mind warp under the stress. The gremlin was there. The way the city lights played off its wiry body, the animal-like manner with which it ran across the lanes, he couldn’t be making that up.

But the three guys didn’t see it.

Was this it? Had he finally cracked? It wasn’t textbook. But perhaps schizophrenia? A brain tumor? Lewy body dementia? Charles Bonnet syndrome?

But his instincts told him no.

That thing was no hallucination. Hallucinations weren’t introduced by floating green text.

Regardless, basic survival instincts told him to keep it the hell away. Hallucination or not, he wasn’t going to let it get close.

James darted into Paddy’s.

“Hey!” shouted the bouncer angrily. “You can’t -”

The air became warm, filled with the smells of sweat, cologne, booze. People mostly ignored him, which forced him to shove past, earning angry words that turned into recoil and shock.

Party kids didn’t like seeing homeless dudes in their bar.

James glanced back. The bouncer was surging after him, all kindness gone, expression like a closed fist. But the gremlin had also entered the bar. James caught a flash of its black scaled form as it slid ahead of the bouncer, fast and nimble in the crowd.

“Get out of the way!” hollered James, abandoning his backpack as it became entangled in the press. He’d never make the rear of the place. He needed high ground.

He shoved his way up to the bar. Drinks spilled, people shouted, and one of the bartenders scowled at him, a huge dude with tattoo sleeves up both arms.

Where was it? Where was it?

James had to get out of the press of bodies. He slammed a filthy hand on the glowing white bar and heaved himself up.

There was still some of that old strength in him. Up he hoisted himself, knocking more bottles and glasses over, onto his knees, to turn and stare down at the ground.

The whole bar was staring at him now, ignoring the ending to the song, the singing having died down. The bouncer was there, reaching up for him, and he felt a strong hand grab his pants by the knee.

But the gremlin. There. Eyes burning like twin embers in the gloom by the floor. It grinned up at him and then, like a flea, it leaped.

James screamed as it latched onto his chest, talons cutting through his thick army jacket, weirdly light but viciously strong. It was all ropy muscle and sinew.

James tried to wrest it away, but it jerked forward and bit into the side of his neck.

He didn’t feel much pain, or, there was pain, but it was clinical. Sheer adrenaline kept him going. He grasped the gremlin by the throat and shoved it away.

It came off with a chunk of flesh in its mouth.

Blood splattered over the white bar, over the upturned faces, over the bouncer’s outstretched arms.

The music was blaring, but a moment later screams filled the air as college kids turned to each other, wide eyed with horror and panic, blood running down their cheeks.

The bouncer froze.

The gremlin squirmed in James’ grip. But he wasn’t going to let it get away. It lacerated the sleeves of his thick coat, shredding the stiff canvas material. James shook it, but this was going nowhere.

He needed to kill it.

With a shout he dropped to the bar and slammed the gremlin as hard as he could against its white glowing surface.

The thick plexiglass cracked as the gremlin’s head bounced off it.

Still, it hissed and scratched, tearing at his arms now. Blood was pouring from James’ neck, stark and crimson on the luminous bar, smearing as the gremlin wrenched this way and that.

But James was bigger.

Fear, doubt, panic, all of it went away.

Leaving only cold fury.

His old fury, his truest companion. A fury that was always with him, but always undirected, or pointed at himself.

Finally, though, in this moment, he had something to take it out on.

He grabbed a bottle by the neck. Liquid flowed out the open top as he raised it up on high and clubbed the gremlin’s hideous face.

Again. And again. And again.

The bartender had him by the waist, was trying to pull him off the bar. But James was rigid. He smashed the bottle till the gremlin’s skull split, till black blood poured out to mix with his red, till brains oozed out and its arms and legs ceased twitching.

The crowd was shoving away, making it hard for the other bouncers to get to him, but the bartender was bigger than all of them put together and finally heaved James down onto the rubber mat that covered the floor behind the bar.

The guy was shouting something down at him, but James had ceased struggling. He knew he had to apply pressure to his wound, that somebody needed to call 911, that he was entering shock, that depending on how much blood he’d lost he didn’t have much time.

But he stared past the bartender’s pale smear of a face at where new words had appeared, somehow precise and legible even as the rest of the world grew blurry and then faded away:

Nemesis 1 Defeated

Personal Statistics Unlocked

You are #2,789 to survive Global First Wave Nemesis 1 Incursion

Title Earned: Vanguard

4 Days till Nemesis 2 Released

90 Days till Pits Open

Dawn of the Void has begun