Right toward little ol’ me.
Deciding it would be bad for my health to stick around, I spun around and started running through the forest away from the retreating carnivore and its spiny entourage.
Stumbling over roots and slamming into trees, I quickly began to realize that I was one uncoordinated son of a bitch when it came to stressful situations, “No, no, no! I refuse to be trampled by a dino…saur…” I let out as I ground to a halt in a clearing and saw a squad of clearly surprised storm-ninjas.
Believe me, there’s no better way to describe them.
“Hands above your head!” one of them, I guessed the leader, roared once he’d gotten over the shock of my appearance, “And put the rabbit down!”
“I… I… What? What order am I supposed to do that in?” I asked, not actually trying to be as deliberately pedantic as I seemed.
“Put down the fucking rabbit or I’ll shoot!” the leader growled, the rest of his squad finally having joined him in aiming at me.
“Alright!” I cried before gently putting Fuzzles on the ground and then raising my hands in the air, “Alright… just… don’t shoot, okay? I’m just trying to find my way out of here.”
“What? Shut up!” the soldier barked, thoroughly confusing me, “Where’s Zoey?”
“Who?”
“Don’t test me,” storm-ninja commander warned, “where’s your leader? We know she’s out here somewhere.”
I really wished I’d had an answer for him, and I desperately wanted the opportunity to listen out for where the rex had gone, but I was stuck.
Then I remembered I wasn’t.
“Oi! Dickhead! Answer th-”
“Shh…” I whispered, putting a finger to my lips while leaving my other hand up in the air, “You hear that?”
I’d successfully managed to confuse the squad leader, as shown by him relaxing slightly and looking between his soldiers, “Hear what?”
“That sound, it’s almost like a… snap.” I said as I snapped my fingers, altering the somewhat archaic code with a visible shimmer over Doctor Fuzzles.
The storm-ninjas didn’t have a second to react as Doctor Fuzzles lunged into action, leaping in a single bound from his place at my feet to the nearest soldier’s throat where he proceeded to tear into the poor man’s flesh, spraying his compatriots with blood.
Suddenly the air shattered as the rest of the troops tried to open fire on Doctor Fuzzles, but he was simply too quick, launching from person to person and throwing them around like floppy action figures, showering the forest floor with viscera.
Now, I’m not sure who did it, but I like to hope that it was the leader who managed to get a shot off at me as the idea of just some random grunt shooting me in the leg is somewhat demoralizing.
Didn’t really matter who did it though, all that mattered was that the bullet managed to tear apart my left thigh muscle like chicken in a blender made of fire, and caused me to keel over onto my side.
“Fucking Hell…” I growled as I gripped the wound in an attempt to stem the bleeding, the awful sting sending waves of pain throughout my body.
I’d been shot before, a lot, though I’d usually been able to do something with it. Snap my fingers and instantly heal, or even react fast enough that I could turn the bullet into some kind of small pillow before it could hit me, but that time around I simply couldn’t focus on the old code long enough to figure out what I needed to do.
Luckily, Doctor Fuzzles wasn’t having the same trouble and was having no difficulty whatsoever in dispatching the soldiers before they could finish me off.
Unluckily, I could hear the rex coming.
“No…” I muttered when I saw the large reptile thundering through the forest toward me.
“Please…” I groaned as I tried and failed to crawl.
“Not like th-”
I didn’t get to finish my thought.
I’d been crushed.
TRUE CRIME
I couldn’t breathe, everything in my body had been crushed, but then it had been instantly uncrushed, like someone had sucked all of the air out of the balloon that was my body then blew it all back in.
My eyes refused to open, couldn’t tell you why, they just wouldn’t, and I couldn’t move to save my life.
“Eddie?” a familiar voice rang in my ears.
I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
“Eddie?” Quinn repeated, “Eddie open your eyes, you’re okay.”
Every part of me wanted to believe her, to believe that I wasn’t dead, though there was still something within my psyche that refused to let me believe I was alive.
“If you don’t open your eyes I swear to every holy being imaginable I will work you like a puppet and force you to open your eyes.”
That was what finally triggered it, the threat of something untoward being done to me somehow the only thing that could ground me in reality, and I was finally in control of my body again.
With some hesitance, I opened one of my eyes and discovered I was sitting in a police car, obvious from the computer attached to the dash and the word ‘POLICE’ being printed across the white hood.
It was night time in the city I was in, which made the obviously low socioeconomic street I was parked in all the more discomforting.
“Wh-where’re the storm-ninjas?” I stuttered out, “And Doctor Fuzzles? Where’s Doctor Fuzzles!?”
“Calm down!” Quinn snapped, causing me to immediately pull my head in and shut up, “Good, now, what are you talking about, and would you mind telling me calmly?”
“I…” I said then stumbled over the words in my mind, “I… There were dinosaurs, there were dinosaurs and rabbits. Quinn, Quinn, the storm-ninjas attacked me and Doctor Fuzzles.”
For reasons that now seem completely reasonable but at the time felt deliberately hurtful, Quinn seemed confused, “Right… So, that explains absolutely nothing. Where’d you go after we stepped through the portal?”
I tried to stammer out a response, but the words refused to come, so I eventually settled for a tired sigh and silent thanks that I was back in the mostly normal world, “Doesn’t matter, you?”
“I popped up here, along with you, but you appeared to be stuck in some sort of coma.” Quinn replied, clearly wanting to hide something before giving up, “Your fingers might feel a tad tingly.”
“And why’s that?” I asked, only then noticing that my fingers felt like they had vibration sensors under the nails.
“Because I tried to zap you awake, alright?” Quinn answered somewhat angrily, as if I’d asked the same question a dozen times over, “It was the only option I had, I genuinely thought that you had some kind of permanent brain damage.”
“Well I might now.” I snapped, “What made you think it was sensible to electrocute me?”
“Please, I barely tickled you.”
“Tell that to my fing…” I muttered as I looked around and realize that in the entire time I’d been sitting in the car not a single person had come by, in fact nothing about the scenery had changed, “Where did you say we were?”
“I didn’t,” Quinn replied after clearing her throat, “but I’ve been able to find out that we’re inside some kind of horror game.”
“A horror game? Really?” I asked with just a tad too much excitement, “I love horror games.”
“Is that so?” Quinn mocked, “And here I thought you were the type that got scared of something as popularized and culturally declawed as zombies.”
“That’s different,” I snapped as I turned my attention to the dilapidated duplex we were parked out the front of, “zombies hit me on a… personal level. But horror games, true horror games? They hit me where I live. The pacing, the music, the atmosphere, everything.”
“Well, I suppose that’s good then.” Quinn said while I practically drooled over the neo-gothic house, “You’re going to get the opportunity to live it.”
“I know! Isn’t it exciting?”
Looking back on it, I should’ve probably been keeping a better eye on my emotional state, particularly when it was so quick to jump from intense fear to complete elation. To be fair though, I really did love horror games.
“So, what’s the story?” I asked as I climbed out of the car and adjusted my police cap, “Have I been called out for a domestic disturbance? Or am I rogue cop out looking for the killer of my family?”
Quinn seemed to ignore me for a few seconds before letting out a confused “I don’t understand the question.”
“What’s there not to understand? I-” I started then stopped as I realized that, in my excitement, I was being a bit of a dick, and also forgetting the primary reason I was there, “Do we have any information on what I’m supposed to be doing in order to get to the portal?”
“Oh, oh yeah. It looks like this is the start of a short game, only about two or three hours’ worth, but from what I can tell the portal’s underground and you should be able to go right for it once you’re in the house.”
A slightly disappointed moan escaped me before I could stop it, but I managed to regain some composure as I knocked on the severely damaged wooden door, “Alright, guess I’ll try and squeeze as much fun out of this as possible in the short time we have then.”
Unsurprisingly, the door creaked open a few seconds after I’d knocked, revealing a pitch black room and, courtesy of the bright moon, the first three steps of a set of stairs leading upward.
“Should I go in?” I asked, my excitement giving way to no small amount of fear.
“Only if you want to continue forward with our mission.” Quinn replied, doing nothing to hide the fact that she was judging me, “Seriously, if you can push through this whole ‘giddy child on amphetamines in a candy store’ thing, that’d be great. And I promise we can come right back as soon as we’re finished.”
I wanted to say something to the effect of ‘I’m not a child’, but what came out was “Okay, if you promise.”
Before taking my first step, I decided to do a quick sweep of the house, but stopped myself just short of snapping my fingers.
“What’s wrong?” Quinn asked, noticing my hesitation, “Your fingers seize up or something?”
“No, it’s just that… I don’t know if it’s the best idea for me to be messing around with the code.”
“Why? Wait… is this because of the whole portal thing? Because that had nothing to do with you being a Code Jumper, and everything to do with the fact that you’re impatient as all Hell.”
A weak smile crawled across my lips and I let out a slightly amused huff, “You’re sure?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure.” Quinn replied in as comforting a tone as she could muster, “Just don’t mess with any of the portals again and we should be fine.”
“Heh, I’ll do my best.” I said as I finally took the step and crossed the threshold, forgetting to do my scan, “What do you thin-”
A needle being jabbed into my neck mid-sentence cut me off, instantly paralyzing me and causing me to fall to the floor like a bag of bricks.
“Hehehe,” a deranged man cackled in my ear, “looks like the madhouse caught itself a piggy.”
“Eddie?” Quinn whispered as my vision started to fade to black, “I don’t think this is going to be nearly as fun as you think it will be.”
“Really?” I scoffed back, “Because I figured getting dragged by my ankles up a flight of stairs was how every great mission started.”
There were a few seconds of silence while my eyes fully closed and my head bashed against the stairs of the surprisingly strong tweaker's drug den.
“Hey, Eddie?” Quinn finally said once we’d reached the top of the stairs.
“Yes Quinn?” I replied as innocently as I could.
“Screw you.”
WHAT HAS BEEN SEEN...
When all was said and done, I’d been left bound to an annoyingly creaky single bed while the tweaker went off to do who knows what.
“What’s the plan?” I asked as my eyes flitted open, “Should I just run down the stairs and find the basement?”
“I don’t think that’s an option,” Quinn replied disappointedly, “if I’m reading this code right, and I’m pretty damn sure I am, every time you get to the base of the stairs the tweaker finds and knocks you out.”
With relative ease, I managed to wriggle free of the tweaker's poorly tied knots and climbed off the bed as quietly as possible, “Alright, then what? What’s the objective?”
“Honestly? I couldn’t tell you. The game was clearly made by a human,” Quinn said with a sort of disgusted respect, “but it’s got the sort of creative flair that I’ve only really seen with AI generated simulations.”
“And that means..?”
“It means that the game appears to be mostly freeform, do as you please and think your way out of the house, and perhaps solve a few crimes along the way.”
I crept my way over to the barely closed door and let out a slightly confused huff, “How do you mean?”
“The solving crimes thing? Well your overall ‘score’ is determined by how well you perform as both a survivor and a police officer.” Quinn replied with what sounded like genuine intrigue as I pulled open the door and stepped out into the dark hallway, “Basically make sure you don’t get carved to bits, take note of crimes in progress or evidence of previous crimes committed, and get out alive.”
“Isn’t getting out alive and not getting carved to bits mutually exclusive?”
“You’d think so, but no. Looks like you can take quite the beating before getting out.”
“Well, thank God we aren’t trying to get out then, eh?” I quietly chuckled as I got up into a sort of hunched standing position and started making my way to the light at the end of the hallway.
“Yes, thank God you only want to delve into the depths of a murder house that doubles as a depraved sex and drug den.”
“Where are you getting sex den from?” I asked before clinging to the wall next to an opened door.
“Let’s just say that I have a much better understanding of what’s going on in this house than you do and leave it at that.” Quinn replied with obvious distaste, “The room’s clear by the way.”
“Thanks.” I said before ducking past it and continuing on my journey toward the end of the hall, “Can you tell me what’s going on down here?”
“If I tell you it’ll ruin the surprise.”
Eager to see what she meant, I quickened my pace toward the lit up door, “What is it? Some kind of gory pleasure room?”
“Ew, and no. Again, I don’t want to ruin it for you.”
“Oh, come on, please? You know I’ll enjoy it just as much if you tell me.”
Quinn didn’t respond for a few moments while she apparently scanned my brain, before letting out a smug little giggle, “No you won’t, just hurry up and open it would you? I want to see your face.”
I have to admit, Quinn’d done a brilliant job of building up the suspense for whatever hid behind the door, to the extent that I was actually genuinely scared for what awaited me.
Not too scared to open the door though.
“What in the James Earl Jones!?” I shrieked as I pushed open the door and was greeted by the sight of… well, you know that scene in The Shining where Wendy stumbles across that guy in the bear costume?
Picture that, but mixed with the elevator scene.
And also if Rob Zombie had directed it.
Only worse.
Much worse.
Once I got over the initial shock, I slammed the door shut and did my best not to throw up all over the floor, “Why would you think I’d want to see that?”
“Because you said you like horror games,” Quinn replied, clearly hurt by the fact that I wasn’t thrilled by what I’d stumbled upon, “isn’t that horrifying?”
“It’s scarring is what it is.” I snapped before realizing how harsh I was being, “I… ugh, I get that you were just trying to let me get
a good ol’ scare, and I’m grateful for that, but let’s avoid stuff like that in the future, yeah?”
Quinn still seemed somewhat offended, but she let out an accepting sigh and regained her professionalism, “Alright, you’re going to want to go back the way you came.”
“What, to the end of the incredibly spooky hallway?”
“That’s the one, you’ll find a dumbwaiter near the very end, be careful though, one false step and you’ll wake up the tweaker.”
I started down the hall and gave a half-smile, “Why’s he sleeping? Shouldn’t he be out here, terrorizing all the good folk of ‘the madhouse’?”
“You’d think so, but no.” Quinn replied with a little laugh, “Turns out employer-employee contact isn’t a huge thing here. Probably for the best though, the employer appears to be a special kind of whack-job with a penchant for bathing in people’s blood.”
“Delightful.” I said after a few seconds of uncomfortable swallowing, “Warn me if anyone’s gonna jump out at me, alright?”
“I thought you wanted to get the full experience?” Quinn teased, “Have some fun while you’re going through your mission?”
I rolled my eyes as I reached a door that Quinn had gone ahead and lit up with the word ‘tweaker’, and dropped down to an almost crawl in preparation for a sudden needle attack, “That was before I found out that this place was filled with psychologically scarring imagery, now I just wanna make sure I don’t accidently subject my brain to anything like that ever again.”
“Oh… in which case you’re really going to want to avoid that door right there.” Quinn said as I stepped in front of the locked door beside the opening to the dumbwaiter.
“See, why’d you have to put it like that?” I asked, my temptation to see what was behind the door only barely being halted by my need to avoid it at all costs.
“I know it’s tempting,” Quinn replied, obviously relishing the fact that I was desperately torn, “but trust me, you don’t want to open that door.”
“But I really do.”
“But you really don’t.”
Code Jumper Page 19
