Farrah leaned against the wall on the left side of the heavy blast door the other two had gone through. She already had two cigarette buds in her pocket, and she knew she needed to go in and join the other two, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do so.
What would happen when she walked over that threshold and found OBELISK? What would happen when her last quest resolved?
What would she become?
She slowly exhaled the smoke, before taking another drag. Being left alone with her thoughts and feelings for the first time in weeks was strange. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t have asked for space, or walked some distance ahead of or behind the duo to think. It wasn’t as if she was staling now, too afraid of the inevitable that she refused to accept.
She opened her tin and looked at the two cigarettes inside. She clicked it shut with her thumb and ran her finger over the weathered paint on its front. It depicted a two-headed lion, above a gold ribbon that ran around the tin, proudly displaying its original brand. Farrah had always meant to get the paint off, and she’d even scavenged the correct solvent for the job. But she’d never found the time, somehow.
She’d never found the time to stop in this hunt for quests and breathe; wonder why she was doing it and how it would end. Farrah chuckled at the irony of it all. She wasn’t afraid of death, as it was a natural part of human life. She’d never been afraid of what came after. That was one of the few certainties she had in life. And yet, she wasn’t embracing her path. She wasn’t turning the last page of her story.
She looked up, into the mess of cables and textured metal that made up her only escape. She knew where OBELISK was now. She’d known for a few weeks. All its bases were marked on her map, and she could go years – hell, the rest of her life – without ever setting foot in one.
Following a silent command, her screen appeared before her.
Stats
Skills
Goals
Other
Goals
· Find the OBELISK
Give Up
She knew it said ‘the’ and not ‘a’. Not an OBELISK facility; she’d already found one of those before either way. So there was still hope that nothing would happen if she crossed the threshold. But that wasn’t what she wanted either. She didn’t want to spend her life running from some arbitrarily-assigned goal. She wanted to live goddammit!
With those thoughts, and with a freshly-lit cigarette between her lips, she entered the facility.
Domain entered: Technology
Farrah didn’t have time to swear as code flashed before her eyes, promptly followed by another message.
Domain entered: Warren
Hello
This is Dan
Found the servers
Go find Vega
Please
Burning cigarette between her fingers, she ran down the corridor, following the trail of dead orbs, whose bodies no longer shone with the light of their souls. The smoke created a trail behind her, that vanished into the silent darkness after being briefly illuminated by her flashlight.
Got mensphaera info
No codes
Farrah wondered just how far Dan’s skills extended for him to send messages like this through the System.
“Vega!” She shouted as she lept over the stairs’ guardrail using a skill to drop onto the landing some three meters below.
This is insane
This whole thing – the System
This changes what we are
“Daniel!” She yelled again. He was clearly having a moment, and if she was going to have to jump into combat, she couldn’t have those screens randomly pop up and block her field of view.
It redefines our understanding of reality
“Amazing,” Farrah muttered with sarcasm, as she tried to open the single blast door marked with a ‘1’. It didn’t give in, and she rammed into it.
Strength
Increases the user strength without altering the physical form for up to 25 minutes.
Expert
Cost: 1P per up to 4,905N. 2P for 4,905N after 402,210 N. Free to cancel.
Domain benefit: Not applicable.
The door caved inwards, as it bent where Farrah’s shoulder hit it, before its upper edge dislodged from the rail which housed it. Farrah grabbed its handle before it could hit the floor, and jammed it into the dedicated space in the wall, just enough so that it wouldn’t fall on its own.
Stolen novel; please report.
She took a drag of her cigarette, before extinguishing it and throwing it into a bin.
“Vega?” She called out, as she made her way down the administrative-looking hallway.
Doing this blindly was nerve-wracking. The dim red light that only created deeper shadows at the centre of the hallways did nothing to ease her nerves. And after taking a turn into a deserted corridor, Farrah decided to turn back. If Vega was here, nothing betrayed her presence.
I need to tell you this in person
Come down
Farrah
Just you
The screen startled the woman, and her finger moved too close to the trigger of her Steyr AUG for her liking. A shadow moved at the edge of her vision, and she snapped around, pressing her back against the wall, as she squinted, trying to make out if it’s been just a trick of the light.
It moved again, too fluid to be one of the mutated armoured guards. Farrah cautiously advanced, as the shadow travelled again along a predefined path once more. Just as it began its fourth journey along the floor, Farrah’s flashlight drowned it out.
Before her, a woman swung from a ceiling lamp. The neon had caved in, but not fully given in under her weight. She looked like she’d passed no earlier than yesterday, as her skin hadn’t decomposed or dried out, and the makings on her neck were a bright purple. When she swayed from side to side again, she turned her head, and her eyes locked on Farrah.
She groaned, almost phrasing it as a question, before agitating her arms, as she tried to get down. Farrah took a step back, and hastily ran back down the hallway, cursing her hiking boots with each deafening step.
She took a right, then another right, then a left, but the stairway wasn’t there. Instead the doors of ‘meeting room 19c’ greeted her. Someone had taped the doors, in messy overlapping black, brown, and transparent X’s, unable to get the horizontal handles locked in any other way.
Farrah took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and mentally retraced her steps. A loud noise came from where she’d just been. It couldn’t have been anything other than a walking corpse falling off a ceiling lamp. Curious moans and scratches came from within the meeting room. Farrah forced herself to regain focus and retrace her steps again.
She nodded to herself, and ran back, this time unbothered by the noises she was making.
The hanged woman ambushed her from behind a corner. She lept at Farrah, shoving her to the ground. She’d raised her rifle just in time to use it as a shield, but the woman still managed to get her claws into Farrah’s face, scratching her cheeks, and very nearly avoiding her piercings. Farrah rolled to the side, before moving an arm to cover her face, and ramming the butt of her Steyr AUG into the woman’s stomach.
The zombie groaned and moved aside just enough for Farrah to get back on her feet. She stomped over the woman’s ankles. No crack came, and she swore under her breath as the creature grabbed her shoes. Vega had made this seem so easy.
A symphony of hungry moans came from where the tape had given in to the dozens of bodies pushing against it from within the conference room.
Farrah hurry
The Collector could have really done without the extra pressure. She ran to the stairway, activating her ‘Ammo Efficiency’ skill.
A silent rocket brought down the ceiling of the hallway behind her, as she dashed to the second underground floor.
“Vega?” She yelled, breaking through the door, and stumbling to regain balance.
The red hallway lights seemed to be full of disapproval, but Farrah had passed the point of feeling guilty for property damage.
“Vega!” She yelled again.
Knocking and scratching came within the walls as a response, quickly followed by a swarm of orbs pouring out from every vent and every lamp. Another rocket brought down the hallway a good twenty meters ahead. But more than three dozen of the mutated things had already slipped through. They latched onto Farrah, and she struggled to shove them off. They couldn’t quite burn through the leather or denim, but one had attached itself to her cheek, delivering an electric shock before being yanked off. Several tried to slip through the tears in her sleeve, and Farrah realised that her best bet at this point was finding Vega.
She stumbled down the stairs. The balls hummed and synchronised tiny shocks rippled over Farrah’s body. It wasn’t the unbearable kind of painful, but she missed a step and landed on her wounded arm. Only fear of getting totally overrun helped her to get up as quickly as she did.
“Vega!” She yelled, covering her mouth with a gloved hand.
Another fuzzing followed by another shock came. This time she braced herself against the wall. The fuckers were fast, and even without attaching themselves to her skin, they created an electrical envelope around her.
The door on this stairway was open and groans and the unmistakable sound of tearing into flesh came from behind it. Farrah didn’t hesitate as she ran in, towards the sound.
She ran past the dozens of disfigured corpses that lined the hallway. She almost fell over again under a synchronised attack of the swarm and an incontinently placed severed leg. But she couldn’t slow down. She needed to get those things off before they fully synced to her heartbeat. She had zero faith in either of her companions resuscitating her, and she hadn’t seen a single defibrillator yet, not that she’d been looking.
“Vega!” She called out, almost pleading when she spotted the white and black suit of the woman.
White, black, and red.
She let go of the corpse she’d been using as a shield against an onslaught on zombies, and stepped into the hallway, from within a large holding cell. More zombies rushed towards her, from the part of the facility that she hadn’t had the time to clear. Time seemed to stop once more, as her blood-red eyes looked through Farrah, seeing something that wasn’t there, perhaps even seeing her fate as one of the many dismembered zombies on the floor and walls.
Another message from Dan popped before her, but she couldn’t look away from the woman. There was something wrong in that gaze of hers, it was as if her soul was perpetually bleeding from a wound that tried but ever-failed to close itself, and everyone but her could see it.
Then a shock came, and Farrah grabbed her chest, falling to her knees. That one had been too close, too well-timed. Black dots overtook the red and brown around her, as she tried to force herself to focus on the present; on how to get out of this alive by herself because she’d miscalculated.
The next thing she knew, she was pulled up to her feet and pushed back with a speed too quick to keep track of. She crashed into a wall, and her heavy rucksack did nothing to lighten the blow on her back. She groaned in pain, as she rubbed her eyes.
Farrah got a hold of herself just in time to see Vega knock the balls of energy to the ground with a sweeping kick.
When Vega looked up at Farrah, it was as if they were back at that road by Lowborne Cemetery. Except this time Farrah didn’t have the time to unpack if it was weariness, fear, or rage hiding behind the woman’s expression, or whom those emotions were directed towards. She levelled her rifle and shot down the four of the creatures that’d crept the closest to Vega.
“We need to get out of here,” She ordered, before nodding to the hallway she’d come from.
Blood ran down the walls, slowly bringing small bits of flesh down to the hallway. The mixture of Farrah’s yellow and the ambient emergency-red lights gave the place an all too uncanny feel. She gave Vega another directional nod before leading the way.
----------------------------------------
“Took you long enough-”
“What are those things?” Farrah interrupted the man, as she pointed one of the knots of nerves and tissue that faintly spasmed over a conference table at the centre of the room.
“They were the admins,” Vega replied. “I think they couldn’t leave so they evolved. Not in the same way those monsters were made, but how the System was designed to make the, umm, them evolve. Through skills merging and, umm,-”
“Are you back to normal now? Whatever your normal is-”
“Did you record everything you found? We need to leave.” Farrah cut both of them off, satisfied enough with Vega’s explanation.
“Yes, but you need to hear this, like, right now. There is a higher dimension above this one, that can be tapped into to change the rules of the universe. But OBELISK, those fuckers, they locked access to it so I can’t edit my code-”
A deafening crash came from somewhere far, far above.
“Amazing…” Farrah muttered with almost venomous sarcasm. It couldn’t have been anything but something getting through the helipad. “What exactly did you fiddle with?”
“Nothing!” Dan exclaimed, making a dramatic hand gesture.
The second he took his hands off the workstation keyboard, an alarm rang, and the sound of a mechanism activating came from the control room door. Neons turned off, replaced by the same emergency red ones as on the upper floors, and the large blast doors collapsed on the ground, as something tried and failed to keep them close.
Metallic scratching came from within the doorframe, and two of the mutated walkers crawled out of it. Four more soon followed, their footsteps dampened by the film of dry skin and deformed organs covering the floor of the hallway.
Farrah nodded. She doubted this cavalry would have turned up for anything other than a serious security breach. Her suspicion was fully confirmed when a roar – a sound between a war cry and a hand break being pulled in a car dashing on a highway – came from down the hall, followed by heavy stomps.
“The heck is that?” Dan’s voice shook as he pointed his crossbow at the structure of concrete and plates shambling towards them.
Farrah scoffed.
“Tech heavy. They hit hard, but there’s a lot of real estate to shoot at.”
None of the zombies dared to cross into the part of the control room that wasn’t covered in flesh and nerves.
“How – who – how did they become those, umm, monsters?” Vega asked.
Grey energy formed around her fists, and a thin could of white enveloped her body. She was getting ready, but it was clear she had no idea what she was up against, and Farrah didn’t have the time to explain.
“They can’t leap like the derelict heavies, but are extremely fast,” She gave the best rundown she could, before glancing back at Dan.
A transparent blue screen had appeared before him, and he held his crossbow like a man who’d try his darn hardest to use it.
“On my mark, we move up. Vega and I will clear the way, take cover if you need, but don’t trail behind. We don’t want to be surrounded.”
“Sir.”
“I did not – I guess it’s expected. I’m ready,” Dan replied.
Farrah quickly checked how much Power she had.
Last Stand
- Self
- Stacked: 5
Farrah didn’t open her ‘Stats’ window again to the updated Power and Luck values. If her math was correct, she was at 3415 Power. And her Luck had dropped to 1 for the next 24 hours.
“Go,” She opened fire.