[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Verity Monroe]

[Level: 1, Sub-Level: 3]

Verity eyed Lucky Paine as unsubtly as she could over the shining expanse of copper that separated them. The woman certainly didn’t miss her unwavering gaze, but that was alright. She wanted her to feel afraid because Verity didn’t trust her one bit.

“I thought you were here to help me, you little sneak.” The woman frowned, continuing to tinker away at her contraptions. She did that a lot, from what Verity could gather. Guess she wasn’t an engineer for nothing.

“I am.” She confirmed, stepping back from the sheet of metal as Lucky pulled out a giant blaster of some kind. Aimed it at the edge, charged, pulled the trigger, and a shot of controlled, super-heated fire burst out of the muzzle, its center a brilliant blue and the heat noticeable even from how far away she was standing. Not that it would hurt her. Verity was reasonably certain that she could walk through the fire, and not sustain any damage.

Not that she was planning to test that theory out. She hadn’t completely lost it yet.

“And have any suspicious people caught your attention?” She pressed, gaze fixed on the metal as it melted under the fury of her blowtorch, “I take my freedom very seriously, child, and I do not like the idea of someone manipulating me as easily as you imply that this Player has been.”

“I don’t know if this will make you feel better, but that other Player definitely wasn’t the first time something like this has happened.” Verity told her, all for the sake of honesty. There wasn’t anything to come out of lying to her about this little tidbit, so why even bother? It wasn’t any skin off her back if this put Lucky off Jared more than she already was.

Instantly, the change in demeanor was marked. Lucky straightened up, her hands tensing, and the legs of her chair shrinking under her in response, giving her a couple more inches of height. She took a sharp breath and forcefully put the blowtorch to the side.

“If you keep dropping bombshells in that manner, I will be forced to think that you want me to lose my hand, too.” She finally said, and the humor was clearly evident in her tone, but so was the anger laced through it, “I must insist you tell me what you mean by that.”

Verity shrugged and went the whole nine yards, “Jared said he Compelled you too, in his debriefing.” She explained, “Said you had a good sense for these things. And an iron steel will, with how fast you shook it off.” She wasn’t entirely sure how Jared knew what was expected and unusual for a Compulsion, but she had eventually decided that he must have simply run tests on it while in the cell and had simply skipped over that bit for the sake of brevity. Understandable, given that she didn’t want to hear about the constant hours he spent painstakingly putting together the bits and pieces of his plan. Tell her what to expect, and the parts that could potentially blow up later, and she was good to go.

“That simply is not possible, when could he-” Her eyes shadowed in grim realization, “When he asked to take a look around. There was no reason for me to agree. Why did I do that?”

“Because that’s what Compulsion does.” Verity stressed, standing up perhaps a tad too aggressively, “It sneaks into your head and makes you believe that all of this is fine and normal, even though the second you manage to leave its influence, it’s obviously wrong.”

Thick and clotted blood had wormed its way under her fingernails again. She didn’t know whether it had leaked out of her own body, or was stubbornly lingering detritus from the last attack, when she had walked away from the hapless victim elbow deep in viscera, and only remembered to mourn three hours later.

The worst of it was that it hadn’t even been necessary. She had knives. Guns. Less brutal ways to go about it. Yet, it had never even occurred to her to go that route. Rolling back her sleeves, baring her teeth, and simply going to town had been the only acceptable thing to her.

“Do you have water?” She asked, standing up briskly, “I need to go… wash my hands.”

“Sure, basin in that corner over there. I have rigged the water to be cool at all times.” Lucky bragged, and Verity had the sneaking suspicion that this was considered the height of fantasy for these people. Even though she’d seen the flying city suspended above the smog. Michael wasn’t kidding about the inconsistent levels of technology.

Still, she walked over silently and began to scrub at her hands, lye soap sharp and stinging at the little abrasions she had gathered on her palms over the days that had yet to close. There was no actual viscera there, she was aware. That didn’t stop the hot, slimy feeling creeping up her hands, getting worse with every run through her hands.

It was stupid to be letting something so inconsequential weigh her down. That incident had been months ago. She couldn’t start building a conscience now.

“You asked if I saw anything.” She spoke up, once she pulled herself back from the basin, “I… might have some clues as to where the creep might be holed up.”

“Tell me.” The woman leaned up, her hands twitching in a way that Verity associated with pulling a trigger on a gun. Knowing Lucky, though, she had much more painful things in mind for the perpetrator.

“Dunno what to tell to tell you.” Verity shrugged, “Bet you’ve already considered the fact that they’re in that hoity toity building where your bosses live.”

“They do not live there.” Lucky corrected, “Personal estates for them have been made smog-free, and they live there for the time being. Except for Genevieve. I believe she does live there. Highly improper of me to ask, though.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve established this guy is basically Gen-woman’s bitch, so it’s a safe bet that they’re in that spire.” Verity insisted, “You can’t say I’m wrong on that end. I just sneak in and do my expert sleuthing, and an hour later you can have their head on a pike!”

“No pikes.” Lucky denied, “I want them alive.”

Surprisingly ruthless for an engineer. Verity was beginning to really like her.

“Sure can do!” She agreed, trying to pretend that the excitement in her veins was only the thrill of a new project to set her mind on, and not the expectation of a hunt with a kill at the end.

“I’ll sneak in there, find the guy, and drag him out. Easy as pie.” Verity decided, pulling out some of her more used weapons to check them. Knives were quickly running to their sharpening limit, but the guns were holding up well.

“Anything you think I should know?” She asked, clicking the safety off and then on. Not as smooth as she would’ve liked, and who knew when she would get the chance to oil it properly next? So, she plucked out a canister of gun oil left on a high shelf to begin oiling it as she continued to speak, “Would hate to get involved in some shit when it’s too late.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Uh… there will be some difficulty getting into the building itself. Security is tight, and guards are many.” Lucky cautioned, “I know you will insist that you are capable of it, and I will not challenge you on that. But there is one way I can help alleviate some of the challenge.” She tucked her hand into one of the numerous compartments built into her chair and pulled out a small, yet thick card.

Verity took it tentatively, turning it over. Faded blue in color, and covered in stringy circuitry at the back, the front had a simple portrait of Lucky Paine, with a few sparse details embossed into it.

“Lucy Paine – Head Engineer. Security Level: Gamma.”

“A security access card?” She blinked in confusion.

“We call them light reflective flat keys.” Lucky replied, “But access cards… yes, that is very accurate.”

“Think it can get me into the maintenance entrances of the ventilation system?” Verity pressed, a plan clicking into place.

“I made it, so… yeah.” She confirmed, “Will it do much good?”

Verity laughed, sharp and hysteric, “Haven’t you ever watched a heist movie before?” Silence followed as Lucky stared at her blankly.

“Oh, right. I guess you haven’t.” Verity coughed, “Don’t worry about it. I just meant that it’s a well-known trope that ventilation shafts are good for sneaking around.”

“Ahh, alright.” Lucky nodded, “I don’t think that will work with my system. I put razor blades and weak spots all over it. Made especially to be an impenetrable area.”

That immediately put a damper on her excitement, “Are you mental?” She asked, “Why would you do that?”

“It is considered the norm here to guard the ventilation systems in case of sabotage!” Lucky replied with a frown, “I was paid to do a job, and I put everything I have into that job.”

“Impressive work ethic. But I still hate it.” Verity groaned, “Please tell me that you’re going to be putting everything you have into working on that chlorophyll power source you were describing.”

Once she had been dropped into the world and been handed her goal, she knew that Lucky Paine was her only hope. Verity wasn’t a scientist in any sense of the word. She didn’t even know how batteries worked at all. Even before the world ended when she was eleven, she had been homeschooled by a person with no authority to be doing so. This engineer was all she could think of.

Would it even count as her own victory if she sat back and let another person do all the work in her own Sub-Level Objective?

Her mouth was running before she could even properly consider that possibility, “When I get back, anything I might be able to help with in the power source side of things?”

“No, my calculations estimate that I will already be done by the time you come back around.” Lucky refuted, cool as ice, “I just need to find someplace where sunlight can be found.”

“Which is…?” Verity blinked. She had spent a good amount of time in the outdoors of the Tracklands, and it’s endless smog seemed to stretch in every direction, a terrifying contrast after the lush greenery of the Zombie World. She couldn’t imagine anywhere being doused in bright, warm sunlight in this world. She had no idea what the sky even looked like here, given the multicolored nature of the skies in the worlds they had been to so far.

Lucky, to her benefit, had none of these conjunctions. She reached for a lever underneath the left armrest of her chair, and pulled it sharply. Two legs stood taut, and a sail sprung up between them, even as the chair rocked back and forth to make room for a pair of thrusters in the back.

“Up, of course.” She gave Verity a winning smile. This woman was going to be the death of her. Verity forced herself to smile and nod, securing her knives and guns all over again with methodical efficiency. The woman could fly. She shouldn’t be surprised by that. Lucky Paine gave off the vibe of someone who would conquer the clouds, even when the rest of her world struggled to comprehend the idea.

A finger scraped over an empty belt loop. An ammo pack was missing, and there was only one person who could have feasibly taken it.

She turned to glare at Lucky, who was holding the small box full of shot up to her face, mouth contorted into an ‘O’ shape as she considered it.

“How did you make it?” She asked, “I was under the impression you people didn’t have a weapons master on hand.”

“We don’t.” Verity confirmed, “All my stuff is scavenged, stolen, or sourced by Jared’s network.”

And by ‘network’, they meant that the Gunnersons back home in Wayside had made them, but now wasn’t the time to explain the whole thing to Lucky. It was best to move on and let her make her own assumptions. Verity simply sternly held out her hand until Lucky laughed and handed it back over.

The elevator was a little ways off from the factory floor, but still very much part of the same building. It was a hulking column of stainless steel and tempered glass, running off a unique arrangement of gears that raised a platform high above the ground using only the hand crank of the lift operator. He barely even gave her any mind when she stepped in, oxygen tank strapped to her back, and face obscured by the mask and its pipe.

When he opened the door to the ground level of the Sanctuary, that was when things got dicey. Clearly he expected her to get off, even though she was trying to get to a higher floor. She’d tried this last time, too, with similarly futile results. Push anymore and he might reach the end of his rope and call upper management.

So, under the lift operator’s watchful eye, she stepped out onto the tiled floor. Looked around innocently, and then made an immediate beeline to the nearest maintenance shaft.

The Sanctuary had an almost dome-like structure, with the compact, flat city in the midway point, and the higher authority quarters built into the central spire, with a non-permeable membrane wrapped around the whole thing. Ironically, however, the inclusion of the elevator shaft leading back to the Earth made the whole thing look almost like a tree. It almost was enough to make her laugh.

Good thing about the structure of the building, however, was that the way it was designed to all revolve around the central spire made it simple to find maintenance entrances for the ventilation system. The card reader was thick and clunky, old-fashioned enough to make her cringe, even though a lot of technology still functional in Wayside was the older, sturdier models.

Still, when she stuck the card in, it whirred like a microwave with metal inside it, and then popped open the door with enough force to accidentally knock her out.

Swearing up a storm, she ducked inside and secured the door shut behind her. It was a cramped closet, with a window leading into an air vent that split off into every direction imaginable. Not that Verity cared about that. All she needed was to go up. Grabbing onto the rusty ladder, she made quick work of scampering up it, making incredible time.

At first she wanted to scoff at Lucky Paine’s warning about the dangers of the vent shafts. And then a circular saw blade sprung out of the wall two inches in front of her nose and… this was going to be a mess.

She didn’t even notice as red came up to cloud her vision, and a jolt of adrenalin burst through her system, letting her climb up and up and up. There were traps, sure, a shit ton of traps, but none were going to grab her by surprise. At some point she let go of the ladder entirely, after it gave way under the increasing levels of rust and fragility it had been put through. Instead she made it through on her own strength, wedged inside the tubes, blades and trap doors coming in from every direction. A whirring sound caught her attention, along with the sharp pull of air being sucked into something.

She noticed the giant fan a little too late. It had already gotten its hooks into her, sucking her along to certain death in those powerful fins. There was no use fighting it, she couldn’t afford to panic right now. Take deep breaths, keep seeing red, and time it just right…

Not entirely sure what her subconscious had planned, Verity jumped, tucking in her arms and legs as her small body was sucked in by the roar and grind of the fan. Nothing snapped. No pain came. Well, no sharp, cutting pain came. The way she crashed directly into the wall on the other side of the vent was pretty painful. She gritted her teeth as wind rushed into her face, making her tear up. She’d made it through the tiny gaps between the rotors, and now a small window shone in front of her, a sliver of escape.

So intense was her brush with death that she didn’t even think twice about climbing out of that grate, gasping for air as she lay down on the cool marble floor, looking up at a high vaulted ceiling, and… a ridiculously familiar face, with a goatee and a cruel, cutting smile.

Burks from Wayside leered down at her, as if his presence in this other dimension was in any way possible.

“Hello, Vera.” He drawled, “Now, whatever are you doing in the Tracklands of all places?”

Her head was spinning from confusion as well as the suffocation. She couldn’t think straight. What was he doing here? They’d beaten him and left him behind!

“Her feeble mind can’t seem to keep up with this.” Burks turned around to say to someone out of her sight, “Maybe some time in captivity will help her. C’mon girl, up you get.”

[Burks Used Compulsion Lv. 12!]

Despite herself, she found herself heaving to her feet. Every muscle quivered, yet did not fight. Still, she made sure to give her most venomous glare to Burks.

But no such glare came to her.

Because everything. Was. Fine.

[Player Log End!]