Walt had a decision to make.

The Georgia State University campus was only about three and a half miles from his current location near Atlantic Station. He wondered if MARTA, Atlanta’s public transit system, was even still working. It was a partial subway system and he wondered if any of the destruction had reached the tracks and tunnels. For a fleeting moment, he thought about leaving his van here and taking a MARTA train to the campus, but then he thought better of the idea.

Being on an underground train would be like using an elevator. Sure, it saved time. But the chances of getting trapped or fucked over inside one were too risky.

He considered travelling by foot and then coming back up to get his van, but he would be risking the inner-city roads getting destroyed while he was making his trek. So, he did something he should have done while he was still on the ninth floor.

Getting up high and trying to get a view of the streets to the south before he made his view. He made the climb back up to the ninth floor via the stairs, working up a good sweat by the time he reached the top. He went to the southern end and gazed out at the city below.

The air was filled with the sound of sirens and smoke rose into the sky from various areas of fire and rubble. To the east and west he saw flares of light and he heard screams and the roars of monsters, signifying duels in progress. But the two streets he needed, Northside Drive and Marietta Street, seemed intact as far as he could tell.

That was it then, he’d take those streets to reach the GSU campus.

#

Walt pulled out of the parking garage, the wheels of his van crunching over the brittle bones of the burnt bird carcass that had collided into the blue battleboard grid, immolating itself.

He pulled onto Northside Drive and headed south, away from the destruction of the two high-rise buildings behind him. He hoped that the Psycho Slinger that was in the building across the street was already long gone.

His goal was to avoid conflict until it was absolutely necessary. He needed to get to Nashville unscathed so he could work on protecting his sister and mother.

The Atlanta streets were eerie. The sky still held a strange light, even after the moon had passed over the sun, as if the earth was still caught between the world of shadows and the world of light. There was an amber and crimson hue to everything, and save for the sirens and sounds of dueling in the distance, the road was silent. Everyone seemed to be staying inside, save for the other occupied cars heading for the Interstate, looking to get out of the city.

Walt was sure rural areas were probably safer than urban. He wondered if the Psycho Slingers purposefully targeted areas with higher populations, or if their points of arrival were all random. He wondered if he should just go ahead, get on the Interstate and keep to back roads all the way to Nashville.

No. He needed the Internet to make contact with his family and to see if he could research the current state of routes from Atlanta to Nashville. Who knows how long the Internet or even their communications infrastructure would be intact.

Although it didn’t seem like the Psycho Slingers were intentionally targeting infrastructure. From what he had seen, the destruction was random and based on the whims of the duelists. Most of it just seemed to be collateral damage from their matches.

But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be. Maybe there were Psycho Slingers out there who had the specific goal to weaken the world’s governments and systems. It was too early to tell so it was best to assume the worst and make decisions based off the shittiest scenarios.

The way Walt saw it, this was still an invasion, even if it was entertainment for another world.

He was stopped at a red light, awaiting his turn, when a cop on the corner started yelling at him.

“You’re going the wrong way!” the cop said.

Walt lowered his window so he could hear him better. He lowered his gauntleted arm, so the cop couldn’t see it.

“You don’t want to go in that direction,” the cop said. “Turn around and go back home. It’s safer inside.”

“Why?” Walt said. “What’s happening this way?”

The cop shook his head, sweat beaded on his upper lip. “It’s dangerous. Just trust me.”

“Any word on the roads? Do you know if 285 is clear?”

The cop paused for a moment, listening to chatter on his radio. Walt couldn’t make out what the voice was saying, but the tone was panicked. The cop yelled at his partner down the street. “Yo! We gotta head to Atlantic Station! Join the others!”

His partner nodded and started to head in that direction.

The cop looked back at Walt. “If you need somewhere safe, there’s a shelter popping up at Truist Park. Lots of people there already. There’s food, water and safety in numbers.”

Truist Park was the baseball stadium where the Atlanta Braves played. The machinations of the city response to the invasion were already in motion. It was a total disaster relief response.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Thanks,” Walt said. “But what about 285? How is the Interstate?”

The cop was listening to his radio again, distracted. “Stay away from the connector. Cars are piled up, it’s a total mess. 285 is clear, for now. But if I was you, I’d get off the streets and find shelter inside until this thing is under control.”

“Do you know if they’ll have Internet?”

That’s when the cop noticed Walt’s eyes. His face changed, curious. He stepped closer until he realized there was something different with Walt’s eyes. He was also looking at the strangely colored streak in his hair. “Put your hands up so I can see them.”

“What?”

The cop pulled his gun out and pointed it at Walt. “I said put up your hands! Slowly!”

Walt, caught off-guard by the sudden aggression, slowly raised his hands. The cop’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the Slaynami card gauntlet. He swallowed, fear rippling across his face. His expression said it all. It’s one of them.

The cop stepped back. “Don’t fucking move…keep your hands up…” And he slowly backed away, keeping his gun on Walt. When he put considerable distance between him and Walt, he turned and ran towards his partner. He had definitely seen what the Psycho Slingers were capable of. He didn’t want anything to do with Walt.

Walt gunned the gas pedal and got out of there.

#

Walt parked on the side of the street in front of one of the university buildings. All of the campus department buildings covered these few blocks downtown. Strangely enough, all the university dorms were in a different part of town, located in the old Olympic village built for the 1996 Olympics. He knew because those dorm buildings overlooked the interstate and they were also across the street from the Georgia Tech campus, which he was super familiar with.

He checked his phone and there was still no cell signal. But he got a Wi-Fi network reading. It was the university Wi-Fi and it required a password.

“Well, shit,” he said.

He looked around. He was in front of the Arts & Humanities building. Maybe there was someone inside who could give help him out and share the password. He got out of the van and headed towards the building.

He pushed his way through the double-doors and was immediately brought back to his days as a thirteen and fourteen-year old when his mother would drive him to Georgia Tech and he would attend his lectures and labs. His education was free because he attended on the Stamps President’s Scholarship. He was kind of a novelty at the university, but he wasn’t the only prodigy studying math there.

There were always others, and he wasn’t so much looked at by the normal students as a freak but more of an anomaly that irritated others. He was sensitive to their feelings of jealousy.

He was good at recognizing and discovering patterns, which he would rather use for card games than encrypted telecommunications which is what some Think Tanks seemed to be interested in him for.

All the pressure from always having watchful eyes amped up his anxiety. The problems started when the doctor first prescribed him Librium. It had become a crutch for him and then something else entirely. Something all devouring.

But he pushed the thoughts out of his head and focused on the task at hand. There were the usual bulletin boards filled with flyers and ads. Vinyl flooring that made shoes squeak, the smell of books, cigarettes and cleaning chemicals and the echo of doors clicking shut.

So, there were definitely others in here.

“Hello?” Walt said. “Can somebody help me?”

He walked down the hallway, taking a glimpse through the windows of the doors. He saw empty lecture halls and classrooms. He heard a shuffling and saw a person pulling away from a set of double doors. They clicked shut and the person hurried outside.

“Hey!” Walt said. “Wait!”

He followed through the doors and found himself outside in a courtyard in the center of four or five other buildings. It was a quad or common ground of sorts. There were benches and ledges to sit on, but the place that was probably usually bustling with students was a ghost town. He saw a girl in the middle hurrying away from him.

“Hey!” Walt said. “I’m just looking for the Wi-Fi password!”

As Walt hurried after her and reached the middle of the quad, the scene he stumbled upon stopped him in his tracks. He stood there, mouth open, his blood running cold.

There was blood everywhere and maybe, by what he could tell, two dozen bodies or more arranged in sitting positions on the ground, their backs against one of the building walls.

They looked to be students, college age and all of their dead eyes were open, manipulated to face the center of the courtyard but seeing nothing. The corpses looked like a collection of dolls, as if someone painstakingly positioned them this way.

Walt couldn’t see any visible wounds on them or sign of mutilation, but there was blood smeared all over the concrete ground. Blood trails from the bodies being dragged into position.

He also saw that one of the corpses, a boy who couldn’t be older than eighteen, had a card gauntlet on his lifeless arm. It was imbued with a cold blue light, signifying its dormancy.

Walt couldn’t explain it, but he just knew it was someone like him, someone who had found a Starter Deck. But unlike Walt, this kid had lost his Duel.

The girl he had been following turned around. Then that’s when Walt could discern her features as the amber and crimson light of the sun post-eclipse made its way into the quad. She couldn’t be older than fourteen and she was wearing a Slaynami card gauntlet.

She smiled at the sight of Walt’s own gauntlet.

Flames burned above her ears. Walt saw she had open wounds on her face, neck and shoulders. But there was a design to them that denoted surgical art. Kind of a form of tattooing or scarification except these scars were more fresh.

She wore black vestments that looked like they could be holy, but on her, they were unholy. Her eyes glowed in that Psycho Slinger way and their color was red. She looked like some creepy child that had wandered out of some ritual diabolique.

His system interface dinged as he examined her. Flashing words came back at him.

Name: Beth Simmons

AKA: Noobhunter13

Psycho Slinger

Record: 1 - 0 - 0

Previous Tournament History: Top 500 Last Year's World Championships, Top 12 Teen Psycho Trials

Class: Hellpriest

A Hellpriest? That certainly explained her class-look of aesthetic modifications.

“You finally got here,” Beth the Hellpriest said.

“What does that mean?” Walt said. “You’ve been tracking me?”

She ignored him and turned to the congregation of corpses. “See? I told you he would get here. We just had to be patient.”

He got another system interface message.

[Noobhunter13 wants to Duel You]

[Accept Y/N?]

Walt could walk away from this. Did he really want to Duel a child? He didn’t have to accept the Duel. He could maybe go find some other source of Wi-Fi. Just leave this place and avoid this fight.

But he couldn’t stop staring at the blood on the ground. She slaughtered a bunch of innocent college students. Someone had to stop her from doing this again.

Walt accepted the Duel and that’s when the blue grid shot into the sky.