Valeria stood at the entrance of Hiro’s fallout shelter, hands on her hips as she took a look around. “Not as bad as I expected, and it doesn’t smell too bad in here. Not great, but not too bad. I should have found a fallout shelter. I’ve seen those signs all over the city.”

“They exist. And it smells alright-enough because of the air fresheners.” Hiro gestured to a couple pine tree air fresheners in the corner, two of which were still halfway in their plastic packaging. “Humans stink,” Hiro said, a statement that could be interpreted multiple ways. He approached the collection of maps on the wall and shined a wind-up lantern onto them. “Where did you say your Hunter was? Battery Park, right?”

“Yup. Lower Manhattan. I don’t know why it’s called that. Bowery, Battery. Lots of similar sounding words here in New York.”

“You’re from where again?” he asked.

“Chicago.”

“The Windy City.”

“It can be that, yes.”

“I’ve only been to the airport there,” Hiro told Valeria as he found Battery Park, which was located along the harbor with water views of Brooklyn, New Jersey, and the Statue of Liberty. Hiro traced his finger along the map until he came to the nearest subway line, a passage from which happened to connect to his fallout shelter. “Have you spent much time underground?”

“Too much time underground,” she said. “It was making Rena sick, the lack of sun. But I’m cool with taking the subway line and just popping up to get the Kali Hunter. It’ll be much safer than heading across Lower Manhattan. I can’t fly like you, either.”

“I can’t fly. I can bounce.”

“Maybe the Doom System will give me that power next Interim. I’d love to bounce my ass right out of here,” Valeria said with a chuckle. “Only thing is, I have no idea where I’d go.”

“Every place is equally fucked.”

“Or more fucked than us. I’ve been wondering what it’s like for some folks just out in the middle-of-nowhere. No telling. The city is hard. Hard as hell. But you get used to it.”

“Preppers might have a chance.”

“You mean some of those fuckers in the Midwest? Maybe. But their weapons didn’t work either after the Doom System did away with all things projectile. Then it dealt with vehicles, combustion engines. Then the military stuff.”

Hiro recalled all the checkpoints around the city that weren’t the same after weapons no longer worked. “Ever feel like this is just a prolonged nightmare that we’ll one day wake up from?”

“Nah, bro. I know it’s real.” A disgusted look traced across Valeria’s face. “And I’ve come to accept that. I guess that’s my inspiration. I mean, maybe. It’s sort of like the movies, this desire to fight back. I always thought that shit was trite, that it was just for entertainment, but no, there really are crazy-ass people like us.”

“For the streets.”

“You said it.”

“Sometimes, I don’t know if I’m fighting back, or simply going along with it. Speaking of movies, I fought Kung Fu Panda, or his equivalent, like an hour ago. I thought I should mention that. It was… weird.”

Valeria looked at him skeptically. “For real?”

“For real.”

“Wild.”

Hiro didn’t say anything for a moment. He just stared at Valeria, the two letting the silence fade away. “Anyway, eat if you’re hungry—I got a few things, Survivor Tendors with peanut butter is good—drink if you’d like, and let’s go.”

“Into the subway system? Gonna need me a bit of this.” She produced a small plastic bottle of whiskey. “Did I say Rena hated being underground? I meant me. Her too, but especially me. It’s creepy down there.”

“It can be for sure. I got used to the dark, though.”

Valeria took a pull from the bottle and handed it to Hiro, who brought the bottle to his lips and drank just a little.

“Whew. Thanks,” he said as he wiped his mouth and handed the bottle back to her. “Let’s deal with these Hunters.”

“Lead the way.”

They set off, Hiro easily finding the right line that would lead them to Lower Manhattan. Later, when they were nearing the subway exit for The Battery, they came across a former homeless encampment on one of the platforms.

Valeria trained her weapon on one of the tents. “Careful. Could be a mimic.”

“I fought a trash can mimic.”

“Before or after Kung Fu Panda?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Directly after.”

She shook her head. “These fucking mimics. I fought one that had taken shelter in a discarded golf back. The damn thing got away. Scared the shit out of me too.”

“How did it get away?”

“It grew legs and took off. I was already fighting this other thing—rat thing, maybe you know what I’m referring to—and the mimic just sprung an attack on me.”

Hiro eyed the holster she now had for her crossbow. “In the clothing goods store.”

“Yeah, sort of. Actually, it was at Macy’s in Midtown. I figured no one would have stolen a holster for a crossbow, and I was right. Everything else was gone.”

“Aside from the golf bag mimic.”

“Aside from that, yeah. People don’t have time to golf with the Doom System breathing down our necks. Did you kill yours?”

“I did. Pharmaceuticals really do work wonders.”

“You drugged it?”

“Like a Sackler, I merely provided the medicine. The mimic ate it, thus drugging itself.”

“Dark, but not inaccurate,” she said as they moved on. “Speaking of which, I don’t know where the system gets its ideas, but the challenges it has given us so far tell me that it’s…” Her voice lowered.

“It’s what?” Hiro asked as they started up a set of subway stairs, both with their weapons at the ready.

“This is going to sound off, but it reminds me of both a spasdic teenager and an AI.”

“AI as in Artificial Intelligence?”

“Is there another kind of AI. It’s sort of like a merger of the two, which makes me think that—and just hear me out—the Doom System is an AI having hallucinations. Something alien about it, for sure, but that’s what it is. Anyway, it’s a theory,” she said, as if she’d had the argument before with her significant other before.

“Huh.”

“Think about it. The things that it throws at us, and how it tries to fix humanity’s problems with blanket solutions, like taking away all the guns, or bringing religious figures back. That sort of shit. And now, it mocks us in a pseudo-historical way with these increasingly batshit descriptions. Clearly some sort of hallucination, like its cobbling together info. I don’t know.” She waited for Hiro to protest. “Well?”

“I don’t know what the Doom System is, to be honest.”

“You haven’t thought about what it is or why it’s doing this?”

“Not as much as I should,” he told her was he was reminded of his father’s words, ask the right questions. He decided not to delve to deep into that with her. “I have just sort of accepted it, and have decided to survive.” Hiro brought his mask down over his face. “Ready?”

She snorted. “That mask looks demented.”

“When it works, it works like a charm. If we’re lucky, your Hunter will just laugh at us. If we’re not lucky…”

“Just let me know if you plan to become a werewolf. I’ll get out of the area and provide support. And if I didn’t already tell you—I don’t think I did—my Roulette Skill is called Wrecking Ball. I can use it once per day, and I’d gladly use it against this fucker. But you need to be cleared out if I do. The power allows me to drop a huge Wrecking Ball from the sky. Like high up.”

“Really?”

“It’ll crush the Hunter, but it will also crush you if you are anywhere within ten feet of her. Seriously, it’s that big. If you come across a crater in Midtown, that was me. Or, that was this Roulette Skill. If I use it, get out of the way. It’ll splatter you.”

“Got it.”

“I know you’re thinking we should just kick things off with my Roulette Skill, but we shouldn’t.”

“I never said that.”

“It’s sort of a Hail Mary. And it hurts for me to use it.”

“Hurts?” Hiro asked. “Why?”

She gave him a disturbed look. “You don’t want to know.”

“What about your vanishing power? How do you step into the shadows?” he asked almost as an afterthought. “I’ve seen you do it a few times now.”

“Oh, that? It’s some bonus that came with my Roulette Skill. It works intuitively. Too bad we don’t have time to play hide and go seek. You’d never find me.”

****

Hiro remembered watching a YouTube video about Battery Park, which was originally a Dutch fort built on land taken from the Lenape, the fort later run by the British, who filled it with artillery to protect the lower part of the island. Later, the New York elite turned it into a park for the ‘disorderly classes’ and to show how refined they were in doing so.

Now, it was home to a Hunter nearly as tall as some of the trees, a woman with four arms and blue skin, her face obscured by a hood attached to her sleeveless chainmail armor tucked into golden faulds.

And we are the disorderly class, Hiro thought. Survivors.

“Fucking big, right?” Valeria asked from their position behind a partially crumbled wall.

Hiro peeked around the edge to see their opponent again. A health bar appeared, rimmed in gold, indicating she was at a much higher level than him. There was a skull above her as well, indicating her Hunter status.

Valeria spoke again: “If we take her down, one less Hunter running around the city. That’s the way I see it. I tried to find a kink in her armor last time. All her vitals are protected. I was able to fire a few arrows into her exposed arm, and those hit. But she’s healed now.”

“I have my cats attack.”

“One option, distraction, good. We might need to hit her a bunch of times.”

“I have a vape cartridge that could help with that. Bleed will make her wounds worse.”

“Shit, yeah. Bleed is a good idea. Let’s do that. But you’ll have to get in closer to her to use the vape pen.”

“Distractions from my cats and distractions from you, in that case.”

Valeria hesitated. “That will work. One last thing. She’s faster than she looks, and her steps are huge.”

Hiro took another look at the towering Hunter. “Anything I should do if she gets you?” He didn’t mean to be so forthright, but this was the kind of situation they were in, and he could tell by her expression that she didn’t take it that way.

Valeria gave him quick directions to her shelter, a grim look on her face as she did so. “Rena’s there. Knock to the tune of We Will Rock You. Boom, boom, clap. You know the one. What about you? You got any people?”

“In New York City? No. In the world? Who knows? But raid my stash if I die. Take whatever you two need.”

Valeria reached her fist out to Hiro and he bumped it. “We’ve got this, bro,” she said. “We just need to make this bitch bleed.”