Marcus dangled the scourge, letting it play out again in preparation, but Cicerus gave him the slightest shake of the head, satisfied that they had made their point.
‘What now?’ Marcus asked, speaking as though Ross wasn’t there. ‘Port him back to Starfire or does he get some down-time first?’
‘We hold him.’
‘You got it. I’ll organise a transfer to the detention blocks.’
‘No, I mean we hold him here. I’ve had orders from the very top. Ankou himself wants to deal with this one personally.’
‘Ankou is coming here?’ Marcus asked, with a tone of concern that was all the more disturbing when Ross realised it reminded him very precisely of that bloke in Return of the Jedi who’s just been told Ian McDiarmid will be popping by for Eccles cakes and summary executions.
Circling the Drain
Ross sat on the cold floor, as miserable and depressed as he could ever remember. The physical damage from the scourge was now healed but the mere thought of it seemed to bring forth an echo that caused him to shudder, and it wasn’t an echo of the pain, but of that absolute violation.
He felt water run down his back from the damp brickwork he was sitting against, and as he worried distantly about corrosion he realised you can always fall a little further. A moment ago he thought he’d bottomed out, but now he was concerned about personal rust. Mother of fuck.
He’d never been imprisoned before, he realised, other than voluntarily. He remembered himself and Eilidh being locked in the laundry cupboard by Megan when he was about seven, but it was just a game. His big sisters had been watching Prisoner Cell Block H. Megan had always loved bossing the others about, so she was the warder. They made beds on the floor from spare pillows and duvets, and Megan brought them mugs of water and digestive biscuits as meals. He had reprised the game with Megan’s kids back at his mum’s house last Christmas. Little Caitlin had inherited her mum’s juvenile authoritarian streak, keeping Ross and her older brother Danny under guard in the same laundry cupboard. It was a little comfier than this, and considerably easier to stage a break-out.
At least his guards had unhooked him from the ceiling, content that he wasn’t going anywhere without their say-so. The single window was robustly barred, too small to fit through and too high to reach anyway. The steel door had been locked and bolted in so many places it reminded him of the opening credits in Porridge, and beyond it lay a whole host of these eco-Nazis, including Cuddles the maenad. That just left the grate in the floor, but it wasn’t removable. It was completely embedded, as though they had put it in place first then poured the concrete around it.
He’d given it a dig with his metal-clad heel, but it felt like the heel would break first.
He had no weapons, not even the default shitty blaster. He was stuck here in this cell, stuck in this cyborg body and pretty soon he’d be stuck in Starfire for what sounded suspiciously like eternity. Even as a teenager he’d had limits to how long he could spend on one video game.
Cicerus’s words seemed to slam door after door upon his hopes of returning to reality, yet at the same time they permitted glimpses behind those doors sufficient to tantalise him that the eco-Nazis at least understood the reality Ross was referring to. Wherever this realm was, it had clearly been here a long time before Ross’s arrival, supporting certain of the Reaper’s comments. But unlike the Reaper and the NPCs, Cicerus knew what this world was distinct from: what he had disparagingly referred to as ‘the meatverse’.
Cicerus had repeatedly told him to forget about the world he had come from. It could hardly be described as friendly advice, but there was no doubt that it was sincere. ‘Here is all there is,’ he said, and there was little doubting his commitment to preserving ‘here’. But to forget that world was to forget his family, his friends; to forget Carol, forget the baby.
It was amazing how clear this shit could become. Not once since he arrived here had he thought how important it was that he got back to his job and his research. He’d admit that the news of Carol’s pregnancy had banjoed him, but a big part of the impact was simultaneously learning that she had chosen to keep it from him, and almost as instantly understanding why. He wouldn’t pretend that the thought of settling down and playing dad hadn’t horrified him, but Carol deciding that he wasn’t up to the job had felt worse, compounded by his thoughts of how lonely and scared she had to be feeling. He knew he had let Carol down, and that bothered him because he hated seeing her upset. He wanted better for her. He wanted to be better for her.
He loved her.
Yup, there it was. It had been lurking in the background, fogged up by the chaos in his mind, but it was plain and clear now. No bloody mistaking it once he’d been forced to contemplate the prospect of accepting that he’d never see her again and never get the chance to put it all right.
Cicerus had warned that clinging on to his memories would rain down pain, and the misery he was already enduring at the mere thought of Carol amply demonstrated the truth of this, but he’d take that over the nothingness of cauterising his past. The man he had been in the old world was still who he was in this one. The things he felt, the thoughts he had, the choices he made and the actions he took were all determined by his memories. He couldn’t erase them, nor was he ready to give up hope of returning. He wasn’t ready to accept that there was no way out of this place, and he certainly wasn’t going to shuffle off meekly to spend forever in Starfire. He recalled the torment of that poor bastard Bob, who feared he was in hell, doomed to spend eternity amidst war and carnage.
It reminded him that there were obligations and responsibilities to be met here too. He’d made the guy a promise.
Even as he recalled his pledge, he felt the tiny black tongues of the scourge licking at his resolve. These people could hurt him in ways he had never imagined. There was anger too though, and the defiance he’d always felt whenever anyone sought to make their case through the threat of force rather than facts and reason. And what made him all the more defiant was that the facts should have been compelling enough. It was more like they were using their ecological cause to support their use of force rather than requiring force to support their ecological cause. And, with that, something else became clear. Cicerus might have the ability to spontaneously alter his appearance, but Ross could still spot a chancer when he saw one.
If transit through these gaps was potentially catastrophic, fair enough: it stood to reason that people should confine themselves to one place. But shouldn’t they get a say in where? Clearly there was far more to this realm than Starfire and a World War Two cover-shooter. That flying abomination didn’t hail from around here, and Cicerus had worn skins from different periods and even genres, presumably enabling him to not-quite blend in with the milieus of several games. It was clear that the importance of the eco-Nazis’ mission absolved them from practising what they preached.
He only had Cicerus’s word about this apocalyptic threat, and it was one of his most fundamental principles not to accept something purely on the basis of anecdotal evidence, especially when the anecdotal evidence was coming from a complete throbber. He needed data. He had to get out of here, and before this Ankou character showed up, as that didn’t sound like a promising development at all.
He stood over the grate again, testing its solidity quietly by putting all of his weight on it and rocking up and down on the balls of his feet. The metal was not going to bend. It made his own cladding seem puny and insubstantial, like the sides of a car compared to a railroad spike. But with that thought came inspiration: he had more than just armour that he could bring to bear.
He clenched his fist and drew out the spike. It still looked thin compared to the circular grid covering the drain, but it didn’t need to be stronger than the grate; it only needed to be stronger than the concrete. He poked it through, enduring a shuddering quease as it penetrated a slimy membrane of blood, flesh and other matter, like the sensation of lifting a stranger’s hair from the plughole multiplie
d by that of picking someone else’s scab.
The tip of the spike found purchase in the concrete just beneath where the grid was embedded, which was when Ross opened his hand and engaged the Cuisinart effect. He felt, as much as heard, a brief grinding sensation, vibrating all the way through him, then the walls became a blur as he was pirouetted at high speed, sparks flashing all around him where his legs scraped against the concrete floor.
With his arm threatening to wrench itself from his trunk, he managed to withdraw the spike and was sent tumbling into a corner, where he remained motionless on his knees as the room continued to spin. It was like that horrible latter-stage drunkenness, a sensation that extended to him subsequently barfing voluminously into the sluice. It struck him as both confusing and unfair that he could be sick when he hadn’t eaten anything and wasn’t even sure he had a digestive system to speak of, but these ruminations were cut off by a muffled clanging sound somewhere to his right.
For a troubling moment he thought perhaps the spike had come flying off, or that some other metal part had been shed as a result of his brief wind-turbine impression, but when he looked up from the river of spew he saw an object wrapped in an old rag, lying on the floor directly beneath the barred window. From outside he could hear the splash of footsteps withdrawing at speed across the rain-swept street.
Ross waited for the dizziness to subside then scuttled over and examined the manky beige cloth, curious but wary regarding what it might conceal. He tugged gently at one edge of the material, revealing a hooked shaft of metal with a fork in the end.
It was a crowbar.
‘No. Fucking. Way.’
He was getting help, not just in the form of this object, but in what it was intended to communicate. Game rules still applied: a drain cover can be impervious to grenade blasts and machine-gun fire, but there is one weapon that will always break it open like a piñata.
Ross returned to the grate and wedged the crowbar into one corner, creating a fulcrum at the lip of the concrete, then placed a foot upon the other end and began applying weight. It was a bit more effort than a couple of mouse-clicks, but after a few seconds of pressure, the grate began to come away from its surround.
It was a tight squeeze, but the narrowness of the shaft meant he could control his descent, at least until it opened into the ceiling of a cavern-like tunnel. From there he dropped the last ten feet or so into a slow-moving cold brown river, the water breaking his fall but leaving him waist-deep in the reason sewer levels would never have been quite such a staple had PCs been able to render more than just sound and vision.
It was dark, the dim glow from the chute above being the only light source, the passage fading into blackness in both directions. He could follow the flow, though. It would be creepy and very disgusting, but it had to lead somewhere, and not necessarily according to the logic of waste treatment. This was a scripted route through part of a World War Two map, intended as a thoroughfare as much as any street on the surface, and put there by a level designer, not a town planner.
Presumably you were meant to have a torch when you reached this part of the game, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Ross could handle it: he had played enough gloomy horror shooters on irritatingly bright winter mornings to have faith that he could bump his way along in the dark until another light source eventually presented itself.
It was slow going and unnervingly silent, just the occasional splash of drips and the constant slow trickle of the jobby-bearing current. He waded steadily, picking his steps with caution as his feet encountered all manner of slippery squelchiness beneath them. They encountered more solid things too, soft yet firm shapes motionless in the trench. A reluctantly exploratory hand reached down and confirmed that they were bodies. He’d like to get hold of the developers who were always advocating ‘realism’ and make the bastards wade through this for a while. Dollars to donuts they’d soon be patching the game to make the dead NPCs simply disappear instead of lying around and rotting.
Jesus, this was mank. If he couldn’t get back to reality and did end up banished to a gameworld forever, he was choosing Driver San Francisco or Just Cause: some sandbox affair where the weather was warm and the lifestyle was decadent. Not Saints Row 2, though: that shit-spraying carry-on wasn’t going to be funny again ever.
Ross’s progress was next halted not by an obstacle, but by a sound. He heard a grinding of metal followed by a splash; and it wasn’t a drip-from-the-brickwork splash, but a big, humansized splash. It was followed moments later by a glow, light and shadows playing upon the arched walls up ahead where the tunnel bent out of sight.
Someone was coming. Ross could hear him wading through the murk. There seemed no point in running: the intruder was making considerably faster progress than Ross had been, and the light that let him do that would also let him see Ross attempt his gingerly waddling getaway. He could hide, however. He could lie down and play dead, though he wasn’t sure what the survival underwater time-limit was in this place. It was a strange anomaly of certain first-person shooters that you could take a grenade blast and multiple bullet-wounds to the face and yet still limp home for a couple of Paracetamol and a warm bath, but if you stayed under the suds for more than thirty seconds while washing your hair, you would drown. Making this even more of a risk was the fact that he had been left without his tablet, so he had no way of monitoring how fast he was losing health.
He settled for crouching shoulder-deep, waiting until the intruder was in sight before he’d have to go face-first into the corpse-and-jobby soup. Unfortunately this plan broke down when his facial proximity to the liquid caused him to retch with the dry heaves, having already emptied himself of vomit upstairs after he became the human rotary drier.
He was still racked by involuntary gagging when the torch beam struck his face.
‘I ain’t so sure that stuff’s potable, dude.’
Ross stood up straight and gawped at the approaching silhouette. The height and build were all wrong and he couldn’t see the face for the dazzle of the torchlight, but the voice was unmistakable.
‘Solderburn?’
‘I figured you’d appreciate the crowbar.’
With the torch no longer pointed straight at his face, Ross was able to get a better look at the figure wading towards him, dressed in contemporary civilian clothing. His beard was trim rather than its standard cosy-spot-for-a-bird’s-nest bushy, his hair also unusually short and neatly swept into place. It may have been the light, but both beard and locks looked black rather than that familiar shade of blond that could be less accurately described as ‘dirty’ than as ‘genuinely unhygienic’. There was no mistaking the face though, albeit it appeared to be several years younger and his features notably more chiselled.
He was also looking nonchalantly pleased with himself in a way that was causing Ross to speed past his relief at finally seeing a familiar face. For one thing, he felt annoyed that Solderburn got to be a slim, handsome version of himself while Ross got to be something you’d find at the bottom of Megatron’s bin. But mostly it was the sudden, welling conviction that this man owed him an explanation, and possibly a very large apology.
‘Where the hell am I, Jay? What the fuck did you do to me?’
‘Dude,’ he said. ‘Words like “hello, glad to see you, thanks for saving my ass”. That kinda thing.’
‘How about words like “sorry for ripping you out of reality and dumping you into an eternal vortex of pain”? What is this place? And, more importantly, how do you get out?’
‘Man, I know you’re feeling a little confused right now, but—’
‘A little confused?’ Ross erupted. ‘Do you know what they just did to me up in that—’
‘Yes, I do. I know exactly what you’re going through, which is why I came a very long way to bust you out. I know you’re pissed off, and I realise you’ve got a million questions, but the first thing you’ve gotta understand is that I’m not the bad guy here, okay?’
Solderbur
n looked at him with urgent sincerity, grabbing him by the arm. It was just about the first non-violent contact Ross had had with another person since getting here, and it stemmed the flow of anger that had been clouding his vision.
‘Sorry, man,’ Ross said. ‘And I am glad to see you. You’re looking well.’
‘Wish I could say the same. It’s been quite a while, but I seem to remember you looking less, you know, ferrous.’
‘Quite a while? How long have you been here?’
Solderburn glanced over Ross’s shoulder and then back down the tunnel in the other direction.
‘Buddy, I’d love to stand here and shoot the shit, but I’m not lovin’ standing here in the shit, and even more to the point is that any second now we’re gonna be dealing with like two dozen guys who may not entirely have our best interests at heart.’
‘Got you.’
Even as Ross resumed wading through the sewage, he could hear sirens from somewhere above.
‘They’re playing our song,’ Solderburn said, turning to lob something over Ross’s head down the tunnel towards where he had escaped from the cell. He heard it land with a splash.
‘What was that?’
‘Proximity mine. Should take out the first guys they send down the drain after you.’
‘Did they have those in World War Two?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’re in violation of diegetic trespass protocols.’
‘Only on my good days.’
Escort Mission
They came to a junction in the sewer, three tunnels meeting at ninety degrees and pouring all of their effluent into a fourth that sloped steeply away to the left.
‘Hard right,’ Solderburn said, pointing the way with the torch. As he did so, they heard a splash from twenty or thirty yards behind them, followed by a cry of ‘Halt!’, then a second or so later by a blast.
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