CHAPTER 4: SHARON THE FALLEN KNIGHT

I needed this film night. Badly. As in really badly. My stepdad had lost it again and started this whole shouting match with my mum and I have to step in just to calm them down. He wasn’t a bad man, he’d never raise a hand to hurt any of us, never physical but when he panicked he just sort of lost it. Thankfully my brothers and sister were out on sleepovers with friends from school so once I stepped in they sorted it out and we got to listen to how he had done this big report for his current job and he was super stressed that his manager was going to fire him.

Ugh. Then my stepdad and mum made these eyes at each other and hugged and I just wanted to leave. Old people kissing, yeah no. Not even when they’re a happy couple once more. We had these tickets which Sal’s parents had provided.

The whole thing was funny really because almost everyone in our entire year group had turned up at our local town cinema this Friday night to check out this hot vampire trilogy which was trending and apparently actually watchable.

Sal, the super vampire freak who I’ve loved as my little sister since we were both back in Primary School was so hyped for it. All I wished was that her parents didn’t decide to come along and this time they didn’t. Her mum was funny to talk with, she grew up in China in the countryside and had all these old stories and legends about vampires or jiangshi as they called them in Chinese.

Her Dad was awesome though. I’m not ashamed to admit I had a little teenage crush on him, no, not that way, but the way that he lived. He was a living legend whose whole life was researching and documenting ancient legends on Belphus.

I loved his research on ancient gods and current legends. He had all sorts of stories so I had a girl crush on his lifestyle and whole thing. Not the man himself. Ugh. Not my friends Dad.

No. I’m not going there. I need to find a boy my age or a little older who can take a good punch and a squeeze without flinching.

Thankfully, I arrived at the cinema long before Trev and Sal to make sure that we had enough time to buy snacks, find our seats. The place was so packed, like so packed, with people I knew and knew me but not close with and they all turned up for the vampire film.

I had planned after the film we could maybe take a bus afterwards down to the waterfront, grab a bottle of mild alcoholic fizz and some yogurt and mix them up for a good drink. I know that we were a little young to drink alcohol but I had turned sixteen last month and my height and body build meant that I could pretty easily pass for an adult.

Yeah, I wasn’t your cute, little dainty girl. My mum told me I was born strong and that’s why my Dad left. He wasn’t a nice guy and I apparently snapped a few of his fingers as a toddler when he got angry once.

Dad. Yeah, my stepdad was good to my mum. Or I’d keep him in line. So we entered the cinema screening room six and we even got seats 6a, 6b and 6c. I didn’t believe in coincidence but we were together the three of us so I was happy. Trev, in his usual pushover self had gotten us all snacks out of his own pocket.

I wished that I had enough strength to make him into a real man. Give him some confidence or even some of my muscle tone. I was naturally strong, really strong and tall. Trev was...average. Not short, not ugly but ehhh….average. Lovely eyes and hair though.

Yeah. So, the reason that I’m sitting here talking to myself is that the trailer which Sal showed us on her phone wasn’t the one which showed on the screen in front of my eyes. I don’t know how they managed the switch but I blinked for a second and my friends were gone.

The entire cinema was empty and I was stuck watching this trailer about some handsome blond guy or girl. Long blonde hair suits anyone I guess and I couldn’t tell with the shape of armour. All I knew is that they rescued a few princesses and princes from an enemy castle. Then they killed a fire breathing dragon, saved the kingdom a few more times before the king cast them into a dungeon for betrayal or some nonsense. Stupid old king. Stupid old queen.

I should have been paying attention to the fact that I was alone in the cinema and broke out running but the story just captivated me. There was one thing that the knight and I had in common. They were seriously jacked. Even under that armour they could lift up horses and carts and throw them around like milkshakes.

When the knight was thrown into the dungeon I almost cried, here was someone who cared and fought for what was right and they were cast into this dungeon. Their armour was ripped from them but they wore one of those long robe things which covered their body and there they were.

Trapped and alone and punished in this deep, dank dungeon and you know what they did? They cried and prayed for the health of the kingdom. Crazy I know. But yeah, one of the prisoners had died and become a zombie and then bit them. Hard.

After that it got a bit darker, these black veins ran on their face and they became crazy angry and smashed out of the dungeon and picked up their armour which had begun to decay a little on touch.

And then it ended. The whole trailer had to have been a few minutes but from my perspective I had been sitting here for years. The screen went dark and I saw nothing for at least thirty seconds, all sound vanished, even that of my breathing and I was wondering why I wasn’t searching for my friends. Searching for Trev and Sal.

This voice calls out. Enters my mind and forces me to see words which clearly aren’t there even as I stare out into the darkness.

[Welcome Wannabe Vampire. System tutorial initiating…]

Yeah. I wasn’t having any of this.

[Initial Character Choice automatically made according to last known preference. Searching host memories…undead phenotype detected. Corrections are being made to the current host body.]

I wanted to talk. To scream but it stopped me. Something inside my brain activated as it sounded out once more.

[Welcome new participant. A full blood scan has been undertaken. Your genes are currently being modified to suit your chosen class. The tutorial will be beginning shortly. Please take your seat and a pre-recorded message will play on the cinema screen.]

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Nope. I’m out of here. The lights came back on along with a flickering cinema screen with a soft noise coming from the speakers. I had read about this stuff, using weird sonics to make people hallucinate as part of some deep undercover military experiment.

My favourite person in the whole world. Carissa Acqua, this total beauty and genius who had married way too young in my view, she had vanished. Gone. No trace of her.

There had been rumours that her ex-husband had enough of her because she was hated for her brilliance and creation but I did some digging and she had a strong interest in gene alteration and the military was totally interested.

Yeah, this was going to be an experiment where they chose to use teenagers for test subjects. Nope. Out of here. Standing up I stretched out a little as something fell from my lap onto the cinema floor in front of me. Picking it up I recognised it as the same back of pick’n’mix which Trev had brought us. I stuffed in inside my pocket to keep it safe. Deep inside.

‘Hey. Hey. You can listen to me and take this for free.’ I held my hand up and made a gesture which I used when annoyed.

I wanted to find my friends. Trev and Sal were what mattered, not this stupid system, not this voice in my brain. Just. My. Friends. I had a bad temper I knew that, my mum used to tell me that I had been a hard kid to raise. I mean she loved me and took care of me but she found it hard at times when I had a bad mood.

‘Nope. I’m not interested. You can return my friends for me or I’m going to have to do some damage to this little cinema experiment of yours.’ I said.

I grabbed hold of the cinema seat I had been sitting on, the seat itself was welded in but I managed to get it rocking from side to side a little. I opted for the easy option. The cushions. Gripping my fingers hard I managed to rip off a few of them and threw them at the screen.

Right before they hit a man appeared on the screen and did the impossible. Some guy dressed in red sitting in a chair with a smart red suit, red shoes, red sunglasses and pointy ears with a bald head smiled and showed me his fangs.

As the ripped off cinema seat cushions were about to hit the screens he flickered for a second before he was sitting back down in his chair holding them on his lap. For good measure I ripped off a few more cinema seat cushions from the seats next to me and threw them at the screen.

My bad mood was going to get me in trouble if this wasn’t a secret military government experiment. I mean, my stepdad and mum both worked in good jobs but this would give them stress.

I tried to calm down a little standing there with both my fists clenched, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. The same calming exercises I had been told to practice in school when I’d found someone trying to push Trev around.

The man on the screen sighed and threw them back, faster than I could see. One of the cinema seat cushions smashed right into my stomach hard making me double over. The next hit my knee and the final one landed neatly on the seat next to me. Then he spoke.

‘Usually, I’d start off polite but with someone like you who likes to think with their fists young lady I think this is far. Do you want to go a few more rounds? Please, feel free to rip out a seat if you can and throw it at me. I mean, I may or may not throw it back with one hand. Does it scare you? No friends, nobody around you and then a strange man on the screen is talking to you.’ said the red suited man.

I glared at him before responding.

‘Vampire. Worst, costume, ever. I mean my friend Sal loves vampire so much she could even tell me what story or fable you came from but I prefer the other stuff. Did you make that trailer? The one with the knight who got corrupted? That was sad. Genuinely sad that an old geezer like you has to resort to kidnapping a bunch of teenage kids. How about you tell me where Sal and Trev are and I won’t smash the screen. After all, I’ve got a lot more chairs to choose from and the project room should be right up there behind me.’ I said as I jerked a thumb upwards and behind me.

‘Sharon. You’re not vampire material. None of the grace, the intelligence and...and...and…’ said the man as he paused for a moment as though on repeat.

The voice filled my brain once more but this time it was a mechanical style.

[Wannabe Vampire. Please view the pre-recorded message on the screen. The system will be explained in necessary detail.]

‘Rubbish. Pre-recorded doesn’t throw cushions back at me.’ I said as I placed a hand on my stomach.

I had no idea how he could catch them inside a screen and throw them back unless this was all sonics and technological stuff designed to control and disorientate people.

The man unpaused, picked up the cushions on his lap and placed them to the side of the red chair. Then he began to walk up and down inside the screen with his arms behind his back shaking his head.

‘You interrupted the system. Annoying but not unexpected. Run again.’ said the man as he waved a red nailed hand in my direction.

Nothing happened. I stood there and he did and we both looked at each other before we laughed a little.

‘Ah, not a vampire. Correction made then. Tell me...do you like to fight Sharon? Would you fight to keep your friends safe? I would think you would need power for that. All that strength and I simply threw a few cushions back. The world outside of this screening room isn’t what you think it is. You don’t care about questions. That’s so not you. Sal has the knowledge, Trevor likes to work it all out but you….you just like to take action don’t you.’ said the red suited man.

I didn’t like to be judged. Not by him, not by anyone. My bad mood was coming back again. I had an uncle, my mums brother who I only met a handful of times but I knew about him because my mum said that my temper was just like his.

My Uncle Wolff. Johan Wolff. Worked in finance or spreadsheets or something. He’d come around a few times for holidays but I hadn’t seen or heard from him for a few months. Apparently, when he got angry he got really angry and intense and that was the emotion coursing through my body.

I forced myself to calm down. Even though the red suited man was right it didn’t mean that I was stupid. People tended to think that. Big strong tall girl must have a trade-off for brains.

‘What do you want from me?’ I asked. ‘I want to protect my friends. I’d fight anyone and anything to keep them safe. Even you. Old red suited vampire geezer. What deal do we have to make to give me enough power to survive? No. You want me to fight don’t you. All those kids inside this cinema have been taken for a war, or as soldiers or something. A vampire war and you’re looking for new recruits? I’m not stupid. Not as clever as Trevor or as knowledgable and wise and Sal but I’m not stupid.’

I took in the entire cinema around me, there was a single sound, not a movement of any kind. Even the projector had stopped running but the man on the screen continued to work. My Uncle Wolff had told me that he had gone on a trip once when he’d been younger to a place like a dungeon but with dangerous things.

He survived and escaped somehow but he’d told me that if I was ever inside a place like that I needed to do whatever it took to survive. Well, I wasn’t only looking out for myself, I wanted to find Trev and Sal and keep them safe.

The red suited man in the screen just smiled at me.

‘All you have to do Sharon, is tell me exactly what you saw in the film trailer and the system will do the rest. Of course, I can’t promise that you’ll be exactly next to your friends when you leave here as we need to randomise our movements but you’ll meet them soon enough. I promise you power, strength and ability to protect those you care about. All you have to do is tell me. Do we have a deal?’ said the man as he flickered and appeared sitting back in the red chair.

Without waiting for an answer I leapt over the cinema seats in front of me and ran to the cinema screen staring directly at the red suited vampire as he looked down on me.

‘Deal. But you need to make sure that you give me a weapon first.’ I said.