Nanaimo, Victoria, British Columbia - May 30, 2043, 12:17 PM
- - - - -
Director Adam Smith’s back wouldn’t pop anymore.
He turned his back on the empty ferry slip where the Nanaimo ferry to Vancouver was supposed to be. The rest of the SHOCKS Victoria/Vancouver Island team hadn’t been in touch with him in almost twenty-one hours; he didn’t know if it was because they’d evacuated somewhere else, made it back to Headquarters, or ran into something they couldn’t handle.
At least he’d found a few packs of cigarettes. He lit one, letting the smoke waft around his head as it hung from his lower lip. If evacuation wasn’t going to work, he needed a different plan, but he was too tired to think of anything useful.
He put the cigarette into the crook of his finger, yawned, and climbed into the armored truck’s cab. The radio was on, but as usual, it wasn’t playing anything except for a looping Emergency Warning about an outbreak in Sooke. He ignored it; it wasn’t an outbreak. It was a merge—one of dozens he hadn’t been able to stop, or even slow down.
The radio crackled, and for a moment, he could hear L4-5’s voice asking for information. He cursed. Those dumbass RST troopers weren’t supposed to be broadcasting, not with Merge Prime ramping up and 0-G-4/U1-Beta looking for any hole in SHOCKS’s cybersecurity to exploit. Then the radio went silent. Not back to the Emergency Warning or the police messages he’d been listening to, but silent. All he could hear was a thin siren in the distance—the city’s tsunami warnings blaring to warn people about the ongoing emergency.
He started up the truck’s engine; it turned over once, then twice, before coughing faster and faster as the diesel engine roared to life. A pile of documents, a locked-down tablet, and a pair of flash drives sat on the passenger seat—the sum total of SHOCKS VVI’s research on the ongoing disaster.
It was worse to the southwest. Sooke wasn’t just a plague zone. It was sliding into the sea as something in the water slowly dragged buildings under. Closer to home, all of Esquimalt was either on fire, about to be on fire, or already burned to the ground. He recognized that anomaly as Event - 1209-L-5/P13—a nasty biopyro anomaly that fed on flames and created the flames it fed on. Qishi-Danger for sure, but stuck on the wrong side of a few bridges for now.
Whatever Clarice Alora Pendleton, aka VI 5389-4, aka Subject - 573-V-1/IO Alpha, had done in Albert Head, SHOCKS had declared it a must-hold area. He had declared it a must-hold area. Merge Prime had started there, and that school had the best on-site information about how it had happened.
Director Smith revved the engine and started driving back toward Victoria. He held the first print-out up against the steering wheel as he barrelled down the highway. He couldn’t leave, and the shroud the Supernatural/Hidden Object Control and Knowledge Service had always operated under was shredded and frayed, but he could try to do something about this mess. He read through 573-V-1IO Alpha’s records as he drove.
By the time he got back to Victoria’s outskirts, smoke had filled the truck’s cab, and he couldn’t read the words on the print-outs. God, he was so tired.
----------------------------------------
Location Unknown, Time Unknown
- - - - -
Space my shots. One every two seconds. Slither away from the blade. It grazes my hoodie's pulls. Fire again. Bullet Time. Three shots, right of center. They fire. The thing screeches—higher pitched than you’d expect. Strauss’s gun’s going off. Use Smoke Form to dodge another blow. The Revolver’s hot in my hand. The air smells like gunpowder, copper, and lilacs. The Revolver clicks empty. Its cylinder’s dull. I use Slither again. Strauss is still shooting. Brick dust fills the air.
The Scythestalker turns. I know what it’s about to do. But I can’t stop it.
It lunges toward Strauss. It’s bleeding from dozens of bullet impacts. My Revolver’s destroyed its chest. It shouldn’t be able to move like that. But it does anyway. Strauss lifts his rifle arm to block, but the blade slices through the gun into his arm. It cuts deep. His blood splatters onto the maze’s floor.
The Revolver’s cylinder glows again.
I open fire, using Bullet Time. This time, I aim all the shots at the thing’s blade arm, at the shoulder and elbow. The shots fire at the same time, and the whole arm disintegrates. All that’s left is black bone. It screeches again, twisting around to face me. The entire hall smells like burning flesh now, not gunpowder or copper. The lilac scent is overpowering, too.
[Skill Learned: Revolver Mastery 9]
As it twists, the arm sags and snaps off at the shoulder. I fire four more times, as fast as possible, and the shots punch into its chest. Below the neck. Center-left. And two right in the sternum. Its screech is a lot weaker now, and it slumps down against the maze wall between Strauss and me.
The Revolver’s out again. I have to wait, but I can’t, so I use Smoke Form and Slither together to throw myself through the monster’s reach toward Strauss. I land next to him, materializing by his shattered rifle. I kick that aside. It’s useless now, anyway.
I’m more interested in the man’s arm, anyway.
The Scythestalker’s not dead yet. That’s okay. It’s not going anywhere, so I ignore it. Strauss’s arm’s pretty bad, though. I can see his tight, grimacing face under his helmet’s face shield, and he’s breathing badly. But he’s not screaming, either. He rolls slightly to one side. “First aid kit. In my pack.
I have time to notice that his uninjured hand’s on his pistol, and he’s facing the Scythestalker. The first aid kit’s pretty close to the top; I shove a whole pile of painkillers his way, and he dry-chews them and swallows, coughing. “Jesus.”
“Yeah, Strauss, you’re not planning on using this arm for a while, right?” I ask. I’ve got a wad of gauze the size of Seattle in my hand and a roll of white bandages.
“Very funny, Alpha. Pack that shit in tight. Don’t worry if it’s hurting me. It should be.”
There’s blood everywhere. It’s soaked through his boogeyman shirt, and I tear it away so I can see. The cut’s deep enough that I can see the bone, and my stomach turns somersaults in my throat. I can taste the bile building, but I swallow it down and shove my wad of gauze into the foot-long cut from wrist to elbow.
The second I do, he grunts, and his good hand leaves the pistol grip and latches around my ankle. He squeezes tight, but he nods at me. “Keep going,” he gasps through clenched teeth.
It takes almost five minutes to get the gauze in, wrap it tight, and get Strauss to his shaky feet. I can smell the adrenaline in his sweat. He’s drawn his pistol now, and he staggers to the Scythestalker and pulls his trigger twice at point blank. Then his shoulders slump, and he collapses to the side.
[Skill Learned: First Aid 1]
I’m ready for it, though, and I Slither over to catch him under his armpit.
He smells like pee, blood, and scared sweat.
I made it a dozen steps, half-dragging Strauss down the brick-walled hall, but I’m not strong enough to support him for longer. I try to set him down gently, but he still hits the floor like a sack of potatoes. His head lolls to the side, and I dump out his backpack. There’s gotta be something in here that’s useful.
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
----------------------------------------
James starts talking again as I root through Strauss’s backpack and first aid kit. [Interesting. I’m running simulations of the Geren-Danger anomaly inside this maze, and you win by yourself ninety percent of the time. It’s too slow to hit you unless you get aggressive and forget to run away from it. I’m also still looking for helmet contact, but it will have to wait until we’re safe. Hopefully, the data will require a partial system reboot, and I don’t want that while we’re in another reality.]
“So, wait until we’re back home? I can do that. How’s the unreality level here?” I ask, thinking back to West End High. The first aid kit has a syringe with a bright orange cap over the needle. I hold it up so my aug can see it clearly. “What’s this?”
[Adrenaline booster. CalWest makes them, but SHOCKS buys most of them up, and the rest get poached before—]
“Will it get Strauss moving?”
[Yes. The unreality level here is tolerable. It seems to be a more rules of physics-focused merge, so it isn’t as high as R389. Strauss is also wearing a portable anchor, which will keep him safe until we can leave.]
“Great.” I pop the cap and stab the needle as hard as I can into Strauss’s thigh.
He twitches. Then he convulses. I kick the pistol away from him, just in case he freaks the fuck out, and his eyes open wide. Then his free hand’s in the first aid kit, digging around. I watch with one hand on the Revolver, but he goes for another handful of pills. Then he nods slowly. “Thanks.”
“Uh-huh.” I hold out a hand. “Can you stand up?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” He looks at the needle on the ground. “Got about fifteen minutes before that spike wears off. We need to be on the other side of the exit, dealing with the URA, before that happens. Let’s go.”
It still takes three minutes to re-pack his backpack, though. Leaving R0 material in other realities is a big no-no, apparently. Then I get behind Strauss as he jogs through the maze, picking up shell casings and following the blood splatters and smears until we find a wide room with a familiar-looking elevator door on the far side.
I blast another rat pack with the Revolver while Strauss checks the elevator door. Then he nods once. “Alright, through here. We should come out in the basement. If this acts like other maze anomalies, that is.” He’s hurting; I can tell by the catch in his voice. The adrenaline isn’t doing it for him.
I step into the elevator. He follows a second later, pushing the ‘B1’ button, and the door closes. I blow air out of my nose, clearing the lilac and copper spells, and it's quiet for almost twenty seconds while the elevator goes down. I can hear Strauss’s breathing, can practically hear his too-fast pulse, and the bandages on his arm are starting to soak through. He’s too pale. “James, what do I do?”
[There’s not much to do. He’s running on that shot, but once it runs out, he’ll need a doctor. Luckily, we’re in a hospital. Unluckily, we need the URA to get actual treatment from a trauma team. We have to shut down the storyline anomaly.]
“Right,” I whisper. The elevator dings, and I ready the Revolver.
The door opens. We’re in a hall that looks a lot like Aberdeen Hospital. Light—the fluorescent kind that reminds me of school—pours through a windowed double door across from us, and tile covers the walls. There’s a sign: ‘Surgical Suite 1.’ I rush the door, Revolver up.
The first thing that hits me is the corpses.
Three of them. They’re all on surgical carts, all mostly naked and all in various states of sliced open. An old man, a middle-aged one, and a nurse; I can tell from the scrubs hanging off her in tatters. My nose wrinkles; it smells like the biology classroom during dissections. I try not to look at them.
The URA is right in front of us, though. Its metal circles and lights hang from the central tower, unspinning, and the green light’s not lit up. I step toward it; something’s got it jammed up, and someone has to get it going. But Strauss’s hand tightens on my shoulder. “Alpha, this is my job. Protect the room while I make repairs.”
I almost ignore him, but something shimmers in the air, and a scalpel zooms toward my head. The Revolver goes up, and I use Bullet Time.
----------------------------------------
Time stops. I pull the trigger three times as I fall toward the ground, already asking James what this thing is.
Time starts. The three shots slam into the hall’s wall, shattering ceramic tiles over the old man’s naked corpse on a surgical table. They don’t hit the knife thrower, who’s already vanished.
I Smoke Form the blade. It disintegrates. Rusty shrapnel bounces off Strauss’s helmet, but he’s already running for the URA. The smoke swirls, and I reform in the middle of the surgical room. Why is the URA in here?
James is busy yelling at me about the Class Four Incorporeal Emotion-Consuming anomaly in the surgical suite, how it’s a Geren-Danger anomaly, and how he’s seen it in the files but can’t remember the specifics. I ignore him. None of that’s useful.
The knife thrower—
[Fear-Eater]
—sure, the Fear-Eater appears again. It’s man-sized, maybe a touch slimmer than Strauss’s muscular body, but it’s hard to tell with the bulky, baggy cloak that clinks with every movement. Its yellow-tinted, round goggles stare at me, and a suitcase hits the ground. It pops open, and a couple dozen blood-covered surgical knives cover the floor.
I can’t look away from the goggles or the crow-like nose, and a shiver builds up inside me. Then my Compulsion Resistance kicks in, and I barely Slither back as a scalpel slices right across where my throat was.
The backswing catches me in the shoulder. It slices through my hoodie, shirt, and skin, leaving a hot, sharp pain across my collarbone and down my chest. I step back, eyes wide, but bite back my scream. It hurts, yes, but not as much as Mrs. Helquist’s classroom window shards. The Revolver goes up, and I shoot another burst of fire toward the Fear-Eater. It misses.
More importantly, Strauss is clearing the wheels, spinning them by hand. I can smell the fear on him, but he’s still going. So, my job is to hold off the Fear-Eater until he’s done. That’s…doable. I think. But I could use a few fewer variables.
[Working on my analysis,] James says. [You’re on your own for now.]
Okay. Equation. Strauss has to live long enough to turn on the URA. I have to survive. The rest doesn’t matter. That raises an uncomfortable variable: is Strauss’s life valuable to me? Or am I willing to let him die if it gets me what I want? He’s a boogeyman, and he wants to stick me back in the SHOCKS facility. But he’s also a person. And I’ve already decided to trust him and treat him like a partner. Like James. Otherwise, I could have left him in the maze.
The Fear-Eater appears again, this time with a pair of razors only a few feet from Strauss. I table the equation for now.
Bullet Time. Three shots. This time, one where the monstrous plague doctor is, and two on either side of it. Got to test if it’s teleporting or invisible. Two shots hit the wall, but one fizzles before it even gets close. Did I hit it?
Another scalpel flies, this time toward Strauss. I go Smoke Form again, intercepting it with a shadowy tendril and watching it fall apart as it insta-rusts. I’ve got one shot left, and I fire it toward the Fear-Eater again. Just before it disappears, I catch a view of the flaming hole in its cloak, and this time, I can see the thin smoke move with our invisible attacker.
Something hits a surgical table, and the nurse’s body hits the floor with a squishing sound that makes my stomach flip. But Strauss isn’t over there, and neither am I. Two more scalpels zip past my head, but I don’t use Smoke Form to dodge them, even though one leaves a hot, thin line under my ear and slices some of my hair.
The Revolver’s shells glow again, and I wait. I’ve got a trick up my sleeve this time.
Strauss is still working on the URA. That’s how I win. When he finishes it, it’ll shove around all the anomalies. Will it hurt me, too? And if it does, can I trust Strauss enough to not end up in cuffs, in transport back to SHOCKS?
I don’t have a choice, and I hate that.
The Fear-Eater becomes visible, knives leaving its hands, but I’m already moving. I Smoke Form and Slither at the same time, and I fly through the knives, through the Fear-Eater, and through the surgical table behind it. And through the old man’s body. As I do, my Smoke Form falls apart, and I feel…staticky? Fuzzy around the edges. My mouth fills with bile, and I try to swallow it down.
[Stability 3/10]
Nope. Not going to happen. But the Fear-Eater’s turning, so even as my nose fills up with the too-close smell of death and formaldehyde, I use Bullet Time and fire three shots into the anomaly’s side. It doesn’t dodge them. A second later, it can’t dodge anything.
[Skill Learned: Revolver Mastery 10]
[New Ammunition: Gravity Shells]
And a second after that, I throw up. Bits of half-digested prunes cover the floor around me, and the formaldehyde stench clears my nose, only to be replaced with my lunch. I close my eyes; my throat’s burning, and I try to blink back tears. There’s a weight in my hoodie pocket. I reach into it and feel the cylinder, with bullets that feel as cold as ice. They seem to cling to my fingers when I try to let go.
“Alpha, I’m going to fire up the URA,” Strauss says. He sounds exhausted, and I take a breath, then look at the Fear-Eater’s body. It’s not going anywhere, and it won’t be butchering anyone else—especially not once the Universal Reality Anchor starts working again.
Strauss pushes the button, and my vision goes rainbow-colored. I blink through it. The RST soldier’s already moving, but it’s not toward me. It’s toward the door. I follow him, wobbling on my feet. It feels like when my augs cut out, the whole world’s spinning, but then it stabilizes, and my balance pops back in.
[Skill Learned: Reality Anchoring 1: Increase your anomalies’ resistance to reality-anchoring devices]
That’s a relief, then. At least I won’t be at Strauss and Aberdeen Hospital’s mercy. We pile back into the elevator, and Strauss pushes the ground floor button. Then he slides down onto the elevator’s floor as it starts to ascend, and I reach out to touch his battered, scratched helmet.