[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Verity Monroe]

[Level: 1]

Not even three hours into Ben and Asadullah leaving, everything went wrong.

Okay, it wasn’t the worst-case scenario. There weren’t any rabid Apocalypse Harbingers breaching the wall and murdering everyone in Hygeia. But it was still bad.

Here’s what actually happened: Terry went missing.

Now, was it really that big of a deal if their newest, smallest, most timid and prone to hiding in small spaces at the first sign of unwelcome attention member vanished from sight? Not in her opinion, no. He must have gotten spooked or something. They just had to find him and coax him out.

But then she remembered that the only reason [Party(Main)] was allowed inside Hygeia was because they had had Terry with them. And now… they were in trouble.

By sundown, they had them in a detainment center. Which just meant that they locked them into another caravan. This one with a wall covered in bars for easy communication. She didn’t really give a shit, as long as she could lounge about in the background and sharpen her knives menacingly.

“Stop it, Vera, you’re scaring our watchers.” Jared hissed, forcing her hand down. Okay, so she couldn’t do that, either. That made an annoying amount of sense.

“What now?” She asked, “What’re they planning to do with us?”

“Their running theory is that we took the boy hostage to grant us asylum and now he’s made a run for it.” Jared explained.

Tench looked up from where he was fretting himself into hysterics in the corner, “How’d you know that?” He asked in confusion.

“Been talking to the guards for a bit.” He pointed towards the wall covered with bars and open to the elements, “Got them singing like a canary. But then they switched, and I don’t really feel like repeating the same tricks too many times. Or else it’ll get repetitive.”

“Repetitive?” Tench repeated slowly, “Shouldn’t you be focused on other things other than your most used tricks? Like the fact that our Cure-Maker is so vanished that they’ve put us in lockup?”

“You know what’s weird?” Michael asked, looking up at the ceiling and clearly not paying any attention to what the healer was saying, “Despite it all, I still feel like we’re all alone here.”

“Fucking thank you!” Jared burst out, “It’s really creepy, right? This is more people than we’ve ever had the pleasure to interact with in years, and it’s so lonely? Like we’re the only real people here? No one was saying anything, and then I started thinking that I was the crazy one.”

Everyone cast looks at each other, trying to gauge each other’s reaction to this rant. Who was disbelieving, who was sympathetic, and most importantly: who understood what he was talking about.

“I feel it.” Verity announced, trying to help her friend, even though the truth was that any large group of people immediately turned into a mass of hazy blood-tinged targets in her mind. Which was… technically not people, so the point still stood.

“Yeah, same.” Michael agreed, his hands typing out a frantic cacophony on the keyboard of his laptop. Everyone’s eyes swiveled around to fix on Tench, who had yet to speak.

Tench shrunk under the collective attention, “That’s… not normal, you know?” He pointed out, uncomfortably, “You guys are just badly socialized and are having trouble consolidating the fact that this is real and happening.”

“You sure are psychoanalyzing us for some who isn’t a psychologist. Or even a general physician.” Jared jabbed.

“No ad hominem arguments. Give me something real.” Tench replied. And his eyes flickered to the side with a look of guilt that Verity saw through in an instant. He believed them. There was something afoot in the people of Hygeia.

As Michael and Jared started going off about the ‘vibes’ and assorted strange behavior they had observed from them, she found herself tiring of the argument. Her eyes drifted off to the guards outside the barred wall of the caravan. It was time for another switch. A different set of guards, not the first set Jared had charmed. But then, the ones that were leaving turned around, just for a second.

Dark hair flew over the face of the one on the left, who had a heart-stoppingly familiar bone structure. It was Marc, the boy from the desert.

Yes, she still knew that guy’s facial bone structure. It wasn’t weird!

What was weird was that the guy was here. Now. A person connected to the Console was here, after claiming to be commanded by only the programming in his head. In a city that was strangely like being surrounded by not-quite-humans.

Yeah, it didn’t take a genius to figure out where to get answers on this. Now, how was she supposed to get out of this cage to shake the answers out of him?

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That answer was simple enough. Skylight in the kitchen area could be pried open with the skillful use of a mop, and she could easily jump from the counter and onto the roof. Easy peasy.

“I just think you’re being paranoid. You kids have been through a lot and-”

“We’re not crazy! You’re crazy!”

“Let’s not pull out the crazy word, alright?”

“You’re blind to reality!”

The argument was still roaring on once she had made her route to freedom. Verity rolled, shaking out her shoes and pulling herself onto the counter of the skylight. The boys could continue wasting time if they wanted to, she was going to get her own shit done. This could at least be a decent distraction.

One handspring later, and she was crouched on top of the caravan. There were people all around her, but no one seemed to notice. Best not to make this easier on them. Maximum stealth employed.

Just after she finished humming this saboteur movie theme music.

She rolled off the caravan, landing in the corner that was the least populated. That was also coincidentally where the laundry lines were kept, and she put on a floral robe over her regular grim clothes to blend in.

The thing about imprisoning a person that was new to the community was that no one noticed when they began walking amongst you, because there was simply no way to tell who was the prisoner, and who was just a newcomer. She wove through the crowd, keeping her head down. Only one thing on her mind.

[Applying Tracking!]

A filter of monochromatic dullness and bright red fell over her sight. A trail of red footsteps carved through the old tar road, and she followed it intently. The urge to pull out her knives was real. But it was the easiest way to give herself away, so she restrained herself.

In the end, it was much more satisfying to march up to Marc, who had his back turned to her as he carelessly read a book, leaving him wide open for her to wrap her arm around his neck and squeeze the life out of him.

He choked, scrabbling uselessly at her iron grip on his airway.

“Tell me what’s going on.” She demanded, shaking him back and forth, pouring all her pent up frustration into scaring him, “What’s your game? I know you know what’s going on.”

“I don’t know!” He choked, “Just let me go, because I’m only following my programming.”

Verity reluctantly let him go, because he was starting to turn blue in the face and she really couldn’t have him fainting on her.

“Again with the programming.” She grumbled, “What does that mean? Who’s programming you?”

“Anyone with a Console.” Marc replied plainly, massaging his neck, “Not my problem what their purposes are and what side of this weird ass fight I’m on. They were kinda mad at me for going along with the protocols set up by Eleanor Monroe, but even they could tell it wasn’t really my fault. Perks of not having any free will, you know?”

“What?” Verity blinked, her mind still stuck on that last portion, unable to properly analyze what had been revealed to her.

Marc sighed derisively, having the audacity to even raise his hand to cover his eyes, “This is why you should really be assigning Tutorial Mobs to explain it to you. Me? I’m dress setting. Not an official classification, but look around, that’s what I am.”

“Alright, okay, so you don’t know how to answer things.” Verity surmised, “That’s- that’s okay. Burks, the Harbinger, he mentioned a Developer’s Lab. You gotta at least know what those are, right? Because he seemed really dead set on dragging me there and…” She took a breath and confessed something she had never felt secure enough to outside of this, “I wanna know if they can fix me.”

This was not what Marc had expected him to ask though, and his eyebrows scrunched up, “Fix you? The developers? I mean, sure. They could do that. Your code is all corrupted and stuff, from what I understand. They’ve been known to sort things like that out without a problem. Could have you back to your original self in hours.”

“My original self?” She asked, burgeoning hope filling her voice to a shameless degree. Who was she before this? Verity had always been so certain about who she was, what she liked to do, and the fact that she had inexplicable murderous tendencies. The fact that there would be an explanation for all that? She needed to know immediately.

The urge to squeeze Marc again was hard, but that would not help her get information anytime soon. He was not a toothpaste tube.

Marc nodded, his eyes wide as if he couldn’t believe he was having to explain this, “Woah, they must have really done a number on you. You are- or well, you used to be a Harbinger in the making. I think you still are? But admin functions have transferred, before you even became a Player. And now you are, but mods still can’t control you, because the Console you have – which I pointed you towards, yes I understand that that was my fault – is also corrupted.”

“Cool story, but you haven’t said anything.” Verity tapped her foot, “All I know is that there are some people working this system, which I knew, because the Harbingers already told me this. Tell me what really matters.”

“How am I supposed to know what matters to you?”

“Tell me-!” She bit back the urge to start screaming, and let out a deep breath, “Tell me what I would be doing, if I kept to my purpose?”

Marc fidgeted, “You would be a Harbinger.” He answered, “Just like Roiland, Ciera, and Burks, and all the others. Serving the Developers to keep their Game going.”

“Eleanor’s Game was to save the world.” Verity remembered, “So, what is their Game meant to be?”

“Changes a bit from Level to Level.” Marc responded, “But… you know. Extinction. Apocalypse. They want to destroy the world. Every world out there. They are rewarded for it, encouraged to do it. Have it magically and technologically lasered into their brains, even. It’s all they know. And all you would have known.”

Verity mulled that over. She didn’t like that thought. She didn’t want to be that. Even if her body wasn’t quite in her own hands, and she was scared every passing day in this town, and she was never sure whether she could trust herself, she would rather be here in Hygeia than roving the wastelands, deriving pleasure from the extermination of humanity.

“I think I like me better.” She decided.

Marc cracked a smile, “I think I like you better, too.”

“No one asked you.” She sniped back, before narrowing her eyes, “Wait. You said you’re background setting. And you’re working for the people running the Apocalypse Game. Then why’re you here? Why would they support Hygeia?”

Marc shrugged, “I don’t get a debrief. Just programmed to do things. But, guessing from all the other Safe Cities I’ve been put in, I can guess they want us to make this look like a thriving society for any people passing through. So that, when it falls, it’s even more of a tragedy.”

Blood drained from her face, “No.”

“Yeah.” Marc nodded, the least bit concerned, “Don’t worry, it might not happen for a while.”

A chime, and a panel popped up that was facing him, so she couldn’t read it. What she did read was his drawn face, “Oh. So, We’re all being discharged in the week. You should… be worried.”

Verity shoved him to the ground, marching off back to the caravan. This was bad, bad, bad.

[Player Log End!]