The darkness of Jack’s hotel room was broken only by the light of his laptop. His eyes squinted to stop themselves from burning. The clacking of his keyboard fills the room. Wires were strewn across the circular wooden desk. He sat cross-legged on the leather lounge chair the hotel gave him. His long black hair was blocking his vision, but he couldn’t be bothered to move it out of the way. He had lazily thrown on a baggy white shirt and black shorts after showering and was relying on glasses to see.
He checks the clock. 1:42 AM. It had only been one hour since he started cracking the cartridge Vanessa gave him, but it felt like an eternity. And it didn’t feel like it would end any time soon. Every line of code he wrote stung his brain more. Eventually, it gets to a point where he goes numb, and he doesn’t even process what he’s typing. Despite that, he keeps going, going, and going, like a machine. The bags under his eyes tell him he should stop, but he doesn’t listen. He didn’t deserve a break. He owed it to Vanessa.
After hours of effort, the fruits of his labor appear as a heavenly white light. The file explorer window with all the recordings and data from the cartridge. He sighs. Dizziness seems to take over his head. The last thing he hears is his head slumping onto his keyboard as the world turns black.
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Jack’s eyes open. He found himself standing in a dilapidated apartment hallway that seemed to extend forever, with wooden doors on each side. There was a leak on the ceiling, somewhere, whose dripping echoed across the world. The lights only flicker occasionally in a sudden flash of white. Using the light as his guide, Jack slowly begins to walk across the hall.
A chill ran down his spine each time the water dripped. His breaths were short and restless. He could hear his heart beating in his chest. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. He hates the sound of it. He hates the feeling. He knows he’s been here before. The sound of the water dripping was like nails on a chalkboard. The pounding of his heart had only made this rhythm once. Something bad happened here. Something terrible. But maybe he'd find solstice at the end of the hallway’s eternity. So Jack kept walking.
Ka-chunk.
A mechanical noise breaks the silence behind him. Something slams into the ground with a one-thousand-pound thud. An engine rumbles. Each groan and hiss of the hydraulics invoked an overwhelming dread from the back of his mind. The air was filled with the engine’s fan spinning in patterns as if whatever was behind him was breathing. As if it were alive.
He takes another step.
Ka-chunk.
He stands, trying his best to stay still. He takes one short breath. Maybe if he didn’t move, whatever was behind him wouldn’t see him.
Ka-chunk.
Ka-chunk.
The breath of the machine sends a chill down the back of his neck.
Ka-chunk.
Jack turns around. His fist turns around with him, as he desperately tries to rebel against the machine behind him. He didn’t even know what it looked like, or what he was trying to accomplish by striking something made of metal. But he knew he couldn’t just let it chase him around or kill him. He had to put an end to it no matter the cost. He closes his eyes--
Slice.
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Seven years earlier…
“Do you think we’ll be this close after we graduate?”
A young, dark-skinned man in a green letterman jacket and jeans looks at Jack. His thick, rectangular black glasses clash with facial hair and a buzz cut that makes him look like an action star. His voice was deep with a hint of concern.
“Huh?”
Jack turns his head back to him, in sunglasses so deeply black that you can’t make out his eyes. But Sam knew where his eyes were, anyway. He wore a white windbreaker and black, baggy sweatpants.
“You heard what I said.”
Jack had this habit where he would pretend he didn’t hear what the person said, trying to dispel any social interaction with people he didn’t know. But, it blended into his actual social life and his friends always teased him about it.
“...Where’s this coming from?”
Sam had always been looking towards the future, but he always seemed so sure of how it would go. He’d carry the football team for two more years, graduate with a GPA just above 3.5, join the college that gave him the best scholarship, and then play in the NFL. Jack had heard his plan a thousand times. Why is he backtracking now?
The wind blows, rustling the leaves on the tree behind their park bench.
“I don’t know, honestly. The thought just popped in my head. Maybe I’m just… Well, honestly, what’s the point of achieving something great if all the people you wanted to show off to are gone?”
He turns back to face the park in front of them. Jack snickers. “What’s so funny about that?” Sam asks.
“You aren’t getting rid of me no matter how hard you try. You’re stuck with me for life!” Jack teased him, but he meant what he said.
Sam laughs. Once he’s done, he lets out a sigh. “I guess you’re right.” His eyes glance back to Jack, who’s too busy looking at the clouds. The sun beams down onto his sunglasses and reflects into Sam’s eyes. He squints a little, before asking another question to break the awkward silence. “What do you think everyone’s gonna be like when we’re that old? Think Ash’s still gonna be single?”
“Pfft. Yeah. I swear, that girl is gonna find the cure to cancer before she finds the courage to ask someone out.” Ashley always got the short end of the stick whenever it came to their jokes. She didn’t mind, though. Or at least it didn’t seem like she did.
“Speaking of asking someone out…” Sam’s tone was playful but composed like he was about to segway into an advertisement on TV.
“Oh, come on, dude!” Jack looked back at him with a frown. The sun finally stopped reflecting off his sunglasses, giving Sam a break from squinting.
“She’s the only thing you’ve been talking about for weeks! Just ask her out already!”
“What if I ruin it, though? I still want her to see me as a friend.” He crossed his legs and put his arms around the bench.
“Vanessa isn’t the type to reject you and never talk to you again. You’ve known her since 7th grade, you know this!”
“...Ugh, fine! I’ll do it this Friday.” He slumps his head backward against the bench and looks up to the sky.
“You better.”
Sam’s eyes wander off to the side.
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Jack opens his eyes, slowly. He didn’t feel anything except some resistance against the punch he threw. His hand feels heavier. Maybe he broke it.
He looks down at his hand to see something else in place of it-- a grey robotic claw. Its fingers were sharp like blades and long enough to wrap around his head. A malevolent crimson oozed off of them, flowing to the ground with a deafening drip.
His eyes wander upwards, only to see Sam with a sliced open throat standing in front of him, eyes wide. Blood was spilling down his shirt. His mouth was open, gasping for air that would never come. They don’t even make eye contact before Sam falls to the ground, lifeless, never to be seen again.
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Jack’s eyes grow wide and flicker around in confusion. His heart beats louder and louder and louder until it’s the only thing he can hear. What had happened? Wasn’t the thing behind him a machine? What happened to his hand? He drops to his knees and tries to cradle Sam in his arms in grief, but his metal hands felt too heavy to carry. He looks back at his hands to look at the blood on them. He had just killed a man. He had just killed his best friend. He had just killed Sam.
Ka-chunk.
A claw grips into his shoulder with a rancorous grip. Its blade-like fingers cut into him. His own blood spills down his shirt. Or was it the blood of others that the machine had slain, lathering their remains onto its chassis? The pain in his heart won’t even let him move to look back at it.
With a blink, Jack stands in front of a burning house. The home of people whom he still loved, but hadn’t mustered up the courage to talk to. Embers and cinder fly into the air. The roaring of the flame completely overwhelms any screams that could have been heard. The moon and the stars stare down at him like a thousand eyes judging him for his crimes. Sam’s corpse still lay there, bleeding out slowly.
“Look up.” A deep, groaning voice commands him. It was evil to its very core, yet an angelic reverb repeated its words. Despite that, Jack continues to look down in his grief.
“Look up.” The grip of the claw tightens. Jack obeys, seeing the eternal flame in front of him.
“This is all your fault.”
“This is all my fault.”
“Sam loved you and you killed him.”
“Sam loved me and I killed him.”
“Ashley loved you and you killed her.”
“Ashley loved me and I killed her.”
“Vanessa loved you and you killed her.”
“Vanessa loved me and I killed her.”
The world blinks once more. A deep, black void appeared, with nothing but a light cast over them and a mirror in front of them. The machinery on Jackson had gone to his arms and chest, crawling up his neck and face like a skin infection. He looked up, nauseous and on his knees, seeing the machine behind him in the mirror. It was humanoid, but not at all human. Too thin and lanky to be. Wires covered its skeletal body like moss. It didn’t have a face, only matte gray metal in its place. Like some sort of sick joke, there was a metal halo propped up by wire on top of its head and giant skeletal wings on its back. Like a cruel mockery of an angel.
“Vanessa was right. You do owe her.”
His head slumps down, tired, heavy, and sick. But the angel tightens its grip even harder. He groans in pain and looks back up to the mirror.
“What made you think this would ever be over? I’m attached to you. A part of you. You ensured that when you tried to interfere in natural order.”
“...Shut up--” A poor choice of words, but he was barely conscious enough to think about it. The metal infection on his skin moves up to his eyes and burns them. He yelps in pain as his vision starts to blacken.
“If you want your life back, listen; I won’t repeat myself.”
“...What?...”
As if it was telling some sort of riddle, the angel whispers to him:
“Follow the phantom whose lies fool only herself,
Beyond the dragon tamers and the seven enslaved,
Into the tundra, on the search for Greed,
And face down the Siren with all the courage you can muster,
And see if you can find it in your heart,
To acknowledge what you did to her.”
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Jack’s eyes slowly open as he wakes. The melody coming from his phone nags him to wake up, and he abides, having no choice. He takes his face off the keyboard of his laptop and sits straight on his chair. He looks at the curtains to the side. Sunlight was seeping in. His eyes hurt just looking at the crack of light that reached the room. He looked back to his laptop. 10:01 AM. He’d have to leave the hotel soon.
He’d had a lot of dreams like that, but not recently. And even then, this one was different. What the hell was that? He hadn’t heard of any of those terms in any previous dreams. ‘Dragon tamers?’ ‘Siren?’ The words that the angel spoke were carved into his memories. It all felt so surreal. He wanted to just say he was being delusional, and this dream was just a result of Vanessa’s barging back into his life. But if that were the case, he wouldn’t remember the dream so vividly.
The screen on his laptop catches his eye. He looks over to see a video play button in the middle of the screen, surrounded by a black void. He doesn’t have a clue what it could be. He slides his finger across the trackpad and clicks on the grey button.
The video shows the inside of a hotel. He recognizes it, but can’t exactly put a finger on which hotel it is. The person who the video was in the point of view of was on a penthouse couch, playing video games with his friends. These definitely didn’t seem like the kind of guys who could afford a penthouse, at least to Jack.
He suddenly hears someone yell something, but he can’t make out what they said. Suddenly, there’s more yelling, followed by the sounds of gunfire. He started to question where this was taking place. The man in the video gets off of the couch and pulls out some sort of handgun. In the corner of the man’s eye, Jack sees a figure in black, flying into the room like a vulture to corpses. In its hands, he sees a machete and something that seems to be a part of a human body. Jack’s eyes widen.
The men open fire on the phantom, and, for a solid thirty seconds, there’s nothing but gunfire and smoke taking up the screen. Jack almost wants to root for these guys at this point. But, after a moment, the phantom rips towards them like it hadn’t been shot at all. Red overtakes the screen, as the monster on the screen tears through those men like they were animals to slaughter. Gore and blood fly into the air like confetti. Jack puts his hands on his mouth. A feeling in his chest makes its way up his throat.
The video ends with a glance at the figure, picking up what appeared to be the disembodied head of the cartridge’s owner. The monster responsible for this senseless slaughter wore nothing but a black motorcycle helmet. It was clearly meant to hide the figure’s identity. Although the visor was dark, it was not dark enough to hide the assailant’s identity. So Jack gazes past the monster’s mask and sees an inky black void that stares back at him. A void that filled him with nostalgia and disgust at the same time. A void that makes him want to throw up and run away.
Vanessa’s eyes.
His palms go to his forehead, his elbows on the table. The video turns black, but his eyes stay fixed on the screen. He presses the left arrow button. He sees her eyes again.
He was right from the start. That person at Del Frisco’s last night wasn’t Vanessa. Vanessa couldn’t hurt a fly, let alone kill someone. Vanessa, who couldn’t watch horror movies without screaming? Vanessa, who always went all out with birthday gifts, no matter who it was? Was the person on the screen, the person at the restaurant last night, the person in the hotel room a few levels down really the same person he used to be in love with?
Did he do this? Was he responsible for her killings? When he thought about it, he was the reason she’d been targeted by that cult in the first place. He was the one who made her a survivor, the one who gave her the motive for vengeance. He was responsible for everything that happened in that video. His breathing quickens. His heart beats louder. As the revelation comes to him, he lets out a moan, too
This was attached to him. This was a part of him. What made him think this would ever be over?
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It was under a blue sky, and over autumn leaves that had fallen to the ground. A boy in a purple jacket stands in front of a girl in a yellow cardigan. The girl’s voice lets out a single, final verdict:
“I’m sorry… But I don’t feel the same way.”
The screen turns black and the credits begin to roll.
Vanessa stares at the screen for a moment, dumbfounded. After completely processing what had happened, she yelled, “WHAT!?” So loud that, if it were not for the soundproofing in the hotel room, would have awoken everyone in the building.
She didn’t end up sleeping. She just didn’t feel tired. She was never tired in the first place. So, she picked up the remote and binge-watched a romance anime. It followed a boy, initially brash, self-centered and egotistical, who meets a pretty, quiet girl who showed him basic kindness. He ended up changing across the course of the series because of her and eventually mustered up the courage to confess to her. The series had never put much of a focus on how the girl felt, though. Vanessa understood that they were trying to foreshadow the outcome through this, but it still pissed her off. The boy had changed so much, so drastically, all for her. All that and for what? Her only hope was that there were still episodes coming out. Maybe the girl would change her mind.
Her phone, which was on the other side of the room, buzzed. It hasn’t done that much ever since she died. She groans, getting out of bed. Her bangs were covering both her eyes. She was wearing a plain black shirt and red plaid pajamas. The blackened scars on her forearms were more prominent than ever. The phone buzzes once more, and her hands finally make their way to it. It’s Jack. A warm feeling overcomes her as she smiles and picks up.
“Hey, Jackie.” Her voice was deep and tired, but it still had a cheerful tinge to it.
“I told you to stop calling me that.” His voice was deep and tired and nothing else.
“...Sorry.”
“Meet me at La Cucina del Mercato. Now.”
“Huh?” She didn’t know what he was talking about. She thought it might’ve been one of those phrases in Tagalog he used to use randomly that only he and Ashley understood.
“The Italian place. Downstairs.”
“Oh. Are you paying?”
“Wh- Huh? What does that matter, just get over here! This is important!” He sounded like he didn’t intend on even eating there in the first place.
“Alright! Alright, give me a second.”
She lazily throws on a jacket she’d bought last night, zips it up, grabs her phone and room key, and walks out the door.
After a few minutes spent navigating the signs on the roof, Vanessa finally makes her way to the Italian place Jack was talking about. She was expecting just one restaurant, but it was instead a bunch of small markets that sold Italian cuisine. One that served mainly Nutella caught her eye. The sun shone down through the glass roof, and onto the table which Jack was sitting on. He didn’t have any food. Instead, he was just sitting there with his elbows on the table and his hands holding up his head.
She sits down in front of him and waits for a second for him to start speaking. But he doesn’t. He just sits there, his hands casting a shadow onto his face that made his expression invisible. She doesn’t take it as anything serious, though, so she just asks him: “What’s up?”
“What did you do to get that cartridge?”
A straightforward and to-the-point question. There was a hint of disgust in his voice.
“I tore it out of the guy’s head.”
An even blunter response.
Jack’s palms enveloped his face. He doesn’t say anything. Vanessa looked at him for a moment, trying to understand what he felt. But then, she finally understood it. Jack didn’t understand ‘justice’ like she did. So, she taught him,
“Oh, I get it. You think I’m a murderer!” A warm smile on her face caught Jack off-guard. He looked back up at her. Luckily, there wasn’t anyone close enough to hear this.
“So, let me assure you–” She looks off to the side. “Those were not people.”
Jack looks up at her, horrified. His eyes were wide and his mouth agape. But she doesn’t understand what he didn’t get about that. “H-How can you say that?--” He was on the verge of tears
“They’re Salvage Worshippers, Jackie. They took away our lives. They took away Ash. They took away Sam. They’re less than sub-humans. They don’t just deserve to die, they’re meant to die.” She said it with such immense certainty that you’d think she was a preacher.
Jack was unresponsive.
“That’s why I’m here. I was meant to die in that fire, but the world knew I couldn’t die like that. It wouldn’t let me. So it brought me back from the ashes and made me into justice incarnate, meant to tear down the sinners of the world.” She smiled warmly.
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Jack looked at the table. He wanted to speak, but there was nothing to say to her. What could he do? Vanessa was delirious, insane. She needed help and not the kind she was getting from him. But he knew he couldn’t talk her out of this. The words she spoke said enough about his chances. She would kill without hesitation and use that as her excuse.
The worst part about it was that it was his fault. All those years ago, he’d convinced everyone to come around and try and find some cryptid he’d found on the news that he was convinced killed his father. He’d done it in a moment of desperation, and he was still convinced it was true– but it was that night when he learned he should just keep his problems to himself. Otherwise, people get hurt. They get their necks slashed open by the claws of an uncaring machine. They get their homes burnt down by cultists.
He owed it to her, to let her eradicate everything in her path like wildfire. It was his fault she wanted to.
“...I found one of their leaders.” He looks back up at her. His tears were dried on the sleeves of his sweater.
“Really?”
“California. Runs a Twitch account called Arcade. They called her a ‘Captain’ or something in the groupchats.”
“Sounds great. When do we leave?”
“Now. The police are probably looking for you.”