Finn’s arm swung, but there was no longer a broken pole in his hand.
What?!
He was so surprised by that, more than anything else, that he staggered to one side, over balanced and fell once more. This time, his knees hit something soft.
Kano?
He looked around frantically. It wasn’t Kano. And neither was it any of the other motorcycle gang lackeys that had been hunting his sister. In fact, his knees hadn’t even hit the concrete floor of the warehouse. Instead, Finn was kneeling in a patch of moss, and it appeared to be nighttime. Everything was gloomy and dark.
“Uh. What the—?” Finn blinked, shook his head, and looked first one way, then the other.
Something was very wrong. He was no longer in the warehouse at all. It appeared he was outside. On a mossy hillside. There were even some straggly trees to his right and left. He was on the downslope of a hill that was steeply sided and covered in tree roots, thick, dark blankets of a bluish-green moss, and the occasional boulder.
Where am I?! Finn turned around, spinning to one side, then the other.
There was no Kano. There was no gang.
And there was clearly no Esther, either.
“Esther! Es!” he shouted.
There was no answer whatsoever.
Did Kano hit me really, really hard on the head?! That was Finn’s next thought as he looked up and saw that the hill continued going upward behind him, and it descended before him until it broke into what looked like rocky cliffs. Yep, there was the sound of crashing water and the boom of the spray seen through the dark. As he looked, he saw that there was a darker strip of land cutting out across the water, with white frothy waves at its base. A low causeway, ending in a low island.
“Okay, so maybe I’m having an aneurysm or something,” Finn thought aloud as he reached up to gingerly touch the back of his head. It appeared fine.
“Esther!” he called again. “I don’t know what is doing, but if you did this, I swear to God you will never, ever, get a birthday present from me again!”
Still, no response.
>
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> [You have joined the Celestial Engine. Begin your Ascension.]
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> Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
What?!
There was a sudden flash of light across his vision and words appeared. They somehow scrolled directly over his surroundings but were also faintly transparent so he could still see past them. They were there, and then in the next moment, they faded until they disappeared.
Okay. He was clearly losing his mind, Finn was totally sure of that. He reached out and swept his hands in the air where the words had been.
Suddenly, a box—if that was the word for it—appeared in the air to overlay his vision once again in a faintly transparent way, just as before. This time, it hung for a little while longer, allowing him to read it before it started to fade.
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> Name: Finn Callahan
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> Level: ??? [Calculating...]
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> Profession: ??? [Calculating...]
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> Health: 210 / 210
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> Mana: 210 / 210
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> Stamina: 210 / 210
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> Agility: 11
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> Charisma: 8
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> Durability: 10
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> Intelligence: 9
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> Strength: 10
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> Vitality: 11
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> Wisdom: 8
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> View: Inventory? Titles? Renown? Skills?
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Are you kidding me?! What is this?! Finn stumbled back as he thrust one hand forward into the air. He succeeded in falling onto his butt, luckily hitting a heavy patch of moss and not one of the boulders.
That was his name displayed with the list of stats. Did that mean that it was him, somehow?
Finn shook his head, still not seeing what any of this had to do with Kano or his sister—or even, why on earth someone had thought that he would have such a low Charisma.
I’m a likable guy. A really likable guy…unless you were some drug-running gangbanger like Kano, Finn thought.
Apparently street smarts didn’t count much for Intelligence or Wisdom, either.
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> [Celestial Engine Error!]
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> [Advancement Failed...]
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Before Finn could get back to his feet, he felt a sudden flare of what could only be electricity running through his body.
He screamed, or he would have if his jaw hadn’t been locked. Bolts of purple and white lightning appeared to run across the land, forming an electric threadwork as they jolted straight into him.
“Ahhhh!”
Suddenly, the lights went out. Now, he could scream, and he did.
“What in the heck was that?!” Finn gasped, feeling like his whole body had just been put through a meat grinder. He groaned, fell to one side, then lurched to his feet.
Something was really, really wrong. That much was obvious. Maybe something had happened to just him, or maybe it had happened to the whole world. Finn had no idea, but whatever it was, it really wasn’t good at all.
I have to find Esther. I have to get back to the pier…
Finn knew that he wasn’t exactly making much sense, but right then there wasn’t much of anything that was making any sense.
Maybe it was a massive hallucination? Hadn’t he seen some documentary down some online rabbit hole, saying that this kind of stuff happened? Air-borne psychedelics were supposedly used to cover-up military experiments, or they were the first act of a land war.
Yeah, that has to be it. This is all gonna wear off pretty soon and I will be back in the warehouse. Finn was sure. Which meant that he was probably still in the warehouse, and that crashing sea, rocky coastline was probably Elsport beach, right?
“Wait, that means that causeway and island over there…” Finn looked across the curve of dark land to where the small causeway connected their coast to the tiny island.
That had to be the pier, didn’t it? Seen through the eyes of some weird, chemical-induced, covert government experiment . . .
“Yeah, that’s it,” Finn said. He started limping in that direction. Esther would be at the pier, and she was probably terrified out of her wits.