Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to. Hell, most of the time they don’t. One day you’re walking home from a late night at an unpaid internship for a job you don’t want and you realize that literally everything you’ve been working towards is leading you straight down the quick path with a long end.
Then you just start looking for change. Doesn’t matter if it's good or bad–’cause you just want to feel something. Some people go straight for booze, girls, or something even harder. A lucky few actually make something work, and maybe they don’t end up following their dreams, but at least they get to sleep soundly and happily at night.
Me? I’m not that far gone yet, but I’m really close to pulling the pin on the grenade labeled ‘no turning back’. Failure hangs around me like the rank aura of an eighty year old pack-a-day smoker. But I’ve been covering it up with the perfumes of socially acceptable success for years now, so people have gotten used to my own brand of not-quite-failure. Not everyone would consider a PHD student at a middling university a failure, but when that student wanted to be an artist, then a musician, and a whole myriad of other non-job jobs?
Well, call me little miss failure. ‘Cause that’s what I see in the mirror when a crisp suit and perfectly styled hair stare mockingly back at me.
I look up at the station clock, then down at my phone. One of them reads eight fifteen and the other eight twenty-one. Overtime’s a slow and insidious killer, and it’s been sneaking up on me ever since the boss whose face I’ve never seen decided I needed to prove my worth. For all the zero dollars he’s paying me.
Giant letters scroll by alerting us of some apocalypse-tainted train holding everything up a few stations back. Another scrolling thing tries to calm us by shoving Preservation propaganda down our throats, and for a lot of people, it works. Hell, it works to some level on me since I’m not freaking out about a train-monster bursting through the tunnel and biting my head off. In fact, there’s only one thing about the entire ordeal that bothers me.
The damn train’s late again. Not like it had ever been punctual in the first place, but ever since those electrical flare-ups a few years back, it’s gotten so much worse. It used to be a few extra minutes between stops. Now I’m waiting twenty minutes after the scheduled time for my ride back.
“Late again, huh?” The guy next to me says awkwardly with his face still half-buried in his phone. “Whoever’s in charge of running this thing should definitely be fired. Or shot. Depending on how useless they are.”
I ignore him, pull out my headphones, and make a show of putting on a video. He shifts awkwardly, but seems to get the message. Normally I’d at least tell him I was too tired for polite conversation, but the guy has been constantly annoying me for the last two months. No matter how many times I tell him to screw off he just keeps crawling back.
Nobody else even looks up. Maybe someone would if he actually decided to touch me, but everyone is too busy staring at their own little private sanctuaries to notice. A bigger crowd than usual, too; almost looks like the train before this one didn’t come either. Parents with strollers bounce kids on their knees to try and get them to calm down, other workers check their watches and sigh loud enough to make their displeasure known, and everyone else is doing their own thing. Whatever the hell that is.
A loud noise crackles to life. It shrieks through the enclosed space, ripping through my ears like a tsunami of noise to crash violently against the back of my head. I grunt in pain and rip my headphones out, but the noise is only worse with them off. The guy next to me collapses into a twitching pile of uselessness. Then someone else follows. Before long, people are dropping like flies. Some are smart enough to get on the ground beforehand. Some heads slam against the concrete hard enough that I don’t want to think about it.
Kids stop crying. Some start crying way louder. I look over my shoulder as the noise eats away at my mind from the inside-out. It’s still indescribable–just the sound of raw pain and agony echoing over and over again as it gets louder and louder. My lunch knocks at the top of my stomach, and if I’d had supper, it would be knocking right alongside it.
“What the hell is happening?”
Footsteps cut through everything. Quiet, soft, and only as echoing as a normal sound can be. I instantly snap to the source–fully expecting an apocalypse-touched monster that attacked every now and again–but it’s just people. A skinny man and a muscular woman to be precise, both in pinstriped suits like the ones from old black and white mafia movies.
She’s carrying her jacket in one hand over her shoulder, and the other’s clenched around the handle of a briefcase that looks like it costs about as much as everything I own. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, exposing a whole bunch of vivid blue tattoos that I can’t really make out, and her hands are covered in white gloves that shimmer like they’ve got a sheen of black ice on ‘em.
Comparatively, the guy isn’t much to look at. His suit fits nice and all, but he’s got the physique of a crack addict and a face that’s a little too angular and handsome to be on that frame. Messy hair tops the mess of a man, and the entire bundle is capped off with a brilliant golden flower sticking out from his breast pocket.
They calmly walk down the stairs as people fall around them. I don’t need a fortune teller to know that they’re trouble, but they could be one of many kinds of dangerous. The woman steps over a fallen man without even looking down at him, and the guy goes out of his way to avoid treading on the fingers of an old woman who might not have survived the fall.
So not pure evil. Cold comfort in the presence of the noise that’s trying to eat my brain.
What now? There’s only one way in and out of this place, unless I’m willing to run down a dark tunnel that could possibly be filled with trains. If they’ve got Classes, then running could just piss them off. Shit.
As I’m worrying about the fate of my mortal being, another sound cuts through the cacophony. A wet, sloppy tearing that starts with a bead of dripping red over the tracks, then extends quickly and violently to form a bloody gash. Before I have a chance to be disgusted by the display of horrific magic, a charred corpse falls free from the wound and crunches against the tracks, accompanied by a single flash of silver that almost stops my heart.
A Coin. Right here? Right now?
I look over my shoulder, fully expecting to see the pair rush the coin. But they don’t even speed up. The man throws his hair out of his eyes, then exposes all of his perfectly white teeth in a grin that sends a chill down my spine.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Well, aren’t you going to go for it?” He half-asks, half-states. “This could be your only chance, you know. Coins don’t just fall from the skies all that often.”
His words take hold like a rabid beast, and suddenly they’re all I can think about. If it’s actually a Class Coin, then it’s priceless beyond compare. Unused ones sell for hundreds of thousands–some even going for close to a billion if they were for the right class. That kind of money could set me up for the rest of my life.
Or it could kill me outright. It wasn’t well known what happened to someone that got their hands on a Class Coin, but less than a quarter of them were ever seen again. No matter if they used them, sold them, or tried to destroy them.
“You’ve got about a minute to make up your mind before we take it for ourselves.” The woman chimes in. “Oh, and fair warning–if you try to run away with it, we’re gonna take it off your corpse. No hard feelings, yeah?”
The man elbows her in the side. “A corpse can’t curse you, remember? She doesn’t have a class.”
“Right, right.” The woman laughs. “I take back my premature apology.”
I’m moving before I make a decision. Everything rational screams at me to let the Coin go–that I’m not good enough to survive whatever happens to people when they get their classes. But listening to my rational mind’s what got me here in the first place. My suit closes in around my neck as I try to run, and the heels my manager insisted I wear make it so much harder to get my footing. One of them snaps off mid-step, and I stumble as I kick it off into the distance. Someone grunts in pain a second later.
“Sorry!” I call out as I kick the other one off. Which is followed by another grunt. “Sorry again!”
I reach the edge of the platform in a few seconds. A quick check confirms that the train’s still running extremely late, and I quickly scramble to throw my legs over the edge to drop down. It’s not too far down–just a few feet–and all the impact’s absorbed through bent knees and proper landing posture.
Guess those parkour classes weren’t such a waste after all.
The sound of the pair’s footsteps somehow grows even louder now that I’m further down. A chill seeps into my legs starting from my feet, and for a second, I wish that I’d bothered to bring a purse. Or any kind of a bag at all, really. Then I’d have some flats or sneakers to change into.
But I don’t have time to think. The body is already crumbling away, exposing a molten inner core that seeps down into the stony underside of the tracks, and the Coin is shining brilliantly in the light it gives off. My only chance at getting out of this boring everyday life.
Cold metal presses into my feet. Stones jab at them for the few seconds it takes me to loom over the body. I can’t tell if it's a man, woman, or even one of those other species that apparently exist somewhere out there. It’s just a lump of carbonized flesh and oozing liquid innards.
“Sorry for whatever happened to you buddy, but I’m taking this.”
I kneel down and swipe the coin before the smell really hits me. It’s warm in my hand, almost like it’d been in someone’s mitten all day, and little sparks of something otherworldly nip at my skin as I bring it close to my face to try and make out the engraving. If it’s one of the powerful classes, then I could be wasting billions of dollars on a massive gamble. Or it could be one of the weak ones–those that show up on the news more than any other class–and I’d effectively be throwing my life away for nothing.
Before I even see the class inside, I know what I’m going to do. I’ve played it safe my entire life. Now I hate it. Besides, is it even a gamble when you’re wagering something worthless to you?
Suddenly, I can see. Engraved in the metal is a simple symbol–an ace of spades. I flip the coin over, and on the other side is the ace of hearts. Understanding cuts through the noise like a sharpened knife, bringing with it relief that almost gets me teary-eyed. And a description that I’d never seen, but just… know, somehow.
Class Coin - Gambler.
Primary stats: Worth and Fate.
Ownership Status: Unused.
My fingers close around the coin. The metal pushes against my skin, and I can feel the power inside of it. There’s no turning back.
I pull it close to my heart as the world shifts around me. Where there was nothing before now stands an ornate marble pillar decorated with golden filigree that writhes and slithers around the pillar like a thousand snakes. It shifts away from the top of the pillar, revealing a simple slot that’s so dark and empty that it feels wrong to look at.
It’s the perfect shape for my Coin, and somehow, it feels like I’m meant to put it in there. Like it fulfills the entire purpose of the thing existing in the first place. As if by magic my Coin shifts until I’m holding it between my thumb and forefinger, pulling along my arm and body with an unstoppable force.
The coin nestles against the opening. My mind tells me that I’m making a terrible mistake. For the first time in years I ignore it and press the coin into the darkness.
A series of clinks like a gumball falling down a metal machine echo from inside the pillar. I watch with confused disbelief as the most valuable thing I ever held falls and rebounds against what I thought was a stone pillar but sounds like cheap aluminum. After a while the impacts stop, and more simple text thoughts appear in my mind.
Human registered: ‘Shelby Thestalos’.
Admission paid: one Class Coin.
Clearance level One issued.
Class ‘Gambler’ assigned at level 1.
Base stats and starting Worth generated.
Issuing Class Card and initiating transfer.
The pillar shakes as the filigree surrounding it slithers towards a single point directly under the coin slot. It fits together like puzzle pieces, locking together to create a single rectangle the size of my palm that falls off the stone and clatters to the ground. I blink twice, then bend down to pick up what I assume is the ‘Class Card’.
“Looks like she made a choice. Good for her.” The man says from the edge of the platform. “Wonder if she’s going to make it. Haven’t had a Gambler live for more than a week in years.”
The woman snorts in amusement and offers me a salute. I’m not sure if it was meant to be sarcastic or not.
“Good luck. You’ll need a whole lot of it if you want to make it back alive.”
Before I can get a word out, the card burns molten hot. I yelp in surprise and try to drop it, only to find that the damn thing unwound itself and is now in the process of climbing up my arm with burning hot metal.
I bite back a scream of pain and claw at my arms in a fruitless attempt to pry the molten metal from my skin. Sweat cascades down my face as my lip starts to bleed, but as quickly as it came, it stops. My breaths come hard and ragged for a few seconds, and I fall back on the soft sand to stare up at a deep cerulean sky with raggedy silver clouds that look like they’re laced with blackened steel.
A blood curdling scream splits the air. The gold that holds my arm prisoner flushes with warmth, and text superimposes itself on top of the scenery. I have to roll over and shift to my knees to get a good read on it.
Welcome to the Seasky Shores.
The exit will appear in exactly fifteen days.
Your clear conditions are as follows:
Accumulate 1,000 Worth: 25/1000.
Arrive at the exit location: 0/1.
If either of these conditions are not met, you will be disposed of.