by HL TRUSLOVE
Finish him – Turn to 16.23.
* * *
Help him up – Turn to 16.24.
16.21
Continuing with your work, you wait for the perfect moment to strike, all the time exchanging lightning-fast glances with the people around you. In those fleeting moments, you gain a sense of knowing anticipation from your fellow captives. Unnoticed by the guard, you work in silent communion, a secret wave of eagerness binding you all.
At the end of the table, a young man finishes his work and carries his collection of scrap and components to the shelves at the end of the room. As he does so, another captive stands to carry more work to his spot, and as she passes she catches your eye and holds your gaze for a moment. It’s a signal. You reach down for the screwdriver in your lap and the woman stumbles on purpose, dropping her scrap to the floor in a loud clatter.
The guard frowns and gets to his feet immediately, crossing over to her with a hand on the whip he uses so freely. As he draws near, you jump from the bench, leading with the screwdriver like a rapier, plunging the metal deep into the soft flesh of his neck. You drive the tool in to its handle until you feel a snap, the tough membrane of his throat popping under your force. His head jerks back and judders as a pulse of warm blood spurts out, trickling down your tightly gripped fist. He coughs and gurgles before collapsing to the floor in a heap. The rest of the captives rise to their feet around you. The eldest, a grey-haired woman, begins to rifle through the guard’s pockets for the key. In a short time, your chains are unlocked and the captives all swarm the door.
Within moments the building is in chaos as the prisoners run through the rooms and halls, searching for a path to freedom. Guards are being knocked to the floor and trampled. You make an effort to run back to the holding cell to gather up your pack, which you’re lucky is still there waiting for you. You strap it on and head back into the fray.
It takes a while of following the other captives to find the door. You follow them through it, into the cold of the old world, beckoning your salvation. You sprint across the newly snow-covered ground, ignoring the sound of gunshots ricocheting past you, forcing your legs onwards. You think other captives go down around you, but you don’t stop to look – you keep going, onwards, until the slaver camp is nothing but a speck in the distance.
END.
Add The City Centre (Chapter 13, L.13) and The Battlefield (Chapter 26, L.26) to map.
16.22
The pace of the work day continues unbroken. As has happened for many days now, the captives strip away the scrap before them, extracting value for their current overlords. All the time, the weight of the screwdriver sits heavily in your lap. When the workday ends, you subtly slide it from its resting place and into your sleeve. The guard doesn’t notice.
Night falls when you’re locked in your cage. You don’t sleep. Instead, you wait for the telltale sounds of steady breathing and get to work, forcing the screwdriver into the lock and forcing it open. Luckily for you, they’re either old or badly made, because it takes only a few moments to spring yourself free. The restraints fall to the cold stone floor – a man’s breathing hitches at the sound but then continues gently, mostly uninterrupted. You grab your pack, luckily still in the room with you, and head to the door.
You think you’re home free when you feel a hand on your leg.
It’s the woman who got you the tool in the first place. She’s looking at you, desperately. With a nod, you push the screwdriver into her hands. She nods back, thanking you, and begins to pick away at her own chains.
You sneak into the corridor, moving each foot as quietly as possible. You come to a window with a view of the outside. It’s small, but it opens and you force yourself to contort your way out of it, landing heavily with your pack on the grass below.
Then you run.
You run before anyone can see you. You run and run until you can’t see the base any more, past the point of pain in your lungs, to freedom.
END.
Add Compassion to your character sheet.
Add The City Centre (Chapter 13, L.13) and The Battlefield (Chapter 26, L.26) to map.
16.23
You step towards the boy as he squirms away from you. His soft blue eyes are wide with fear. But he’s exhausted and no match for you when you place your foot at his neck. His hands reach up to desperately claw at your leg, but he’s weak and, frankly, it’s pitiful.
You push the heel of your boot down into his neck until you feel a sickening crunch beneath your sole as his throat tears and breaks. His face turns a crimson colour, his eyes bulge, his body flails wildly – and then he goes still as you finish the deed.
The crowd cheers and applauds. You feel a hand on your back and you’re guided out of the arena. You don’t pay much attention as you go, letting yourself be shown the way, the image of the boy’s dying face etched into your vision every time you close your eyes.
You feel the cold on your skin and look around. You’re outside. Your pack is being shoved into your hands. You look at the slaver in front of you who’s watching you with worried eyes.
“Looks like the boss thinks you’re too dangerous to keep around. Now fuck off before someone shoots you,” you’re told before he turns and leaves. You stand in the fresh snow. When you walk, one of your boots leaves blood-red marks in the unstained white, until the blood has been washed away.
END.
Add Cruelty to your character sheet.
Add The City Centre (Chapter 13, L.13) and The Battlefield (Chapter 26, L.26) to map.
16.24
You stand silently above the boy before offering a hand. He hesitates, eyes it cautiously, before he takes it slowly in his own. You pull him roughly to his feet and you stand, eye to eye, for a moment. The crowd boos as the two of you are forced apart, dragged separately through opposite doors.
You’re dragged back to your cell and thrown in roughly. One of the guards kicks you as you go, clearly unhappy with your display. His boot is sharp in your ribs and you grunt as you’re locked back up.
The other prisoners shuffle back in from wherever they spend the day and are chained as the evening comes. As usual, no words pass between you before everyone drifts off to sleep.
You’re awoken by the sounds of keys that evening. You stir and in your sleepy haze, you worry you’re going to be dragged away to fight again, but instead find yourself being pulled to your feet and hurried out of the cage. It takes a moment to blink the sleep from your eyes and your brain, but you find yourself being stolen away by the boy from the ring. He has your pack on one shoulder and guides you deeper into the building, coming to an empty room – an empty room with a hole in the wall to the outside. He undoes your restraints and they fall to the ground with a loud clang.
“What?” is all the question you can summon.
“You showed me an act of kindness, outsider. This is a favour in turn. Don’t let them catch you,” he states, shoving your bag and map into your hands and leaving you. You don’t need telling twice, and put your arms through the straps and run into the night. You don’t stop running even when your lungs begin to burn, instead going as hard and fast as you can to get as far away as possible.
END.
Add Compassion to your character sheet.
Add The City Centre (Chapter 13, L.13) and The Battlefield (Chapter 26, L.26) to map.
16.25
Your stomach lets out a loud growl and you realise just how hungry you are. You almost dive at the bowl of food and shovel it into your mouth with your hands. It’s hard to tell what it is, maybe some sort of thick, flavourless porridge, but you eat every scrap and then lick the bowl clean.
You feel pathetic being grateful to your captors for these scraps. The food churns inside you, your belly used to being empty and not sitting well with the influx.
Add Instability to your character sheet.
* * *
Turn to 16.6a.
Chapter 17
The Library
> 17.0
Turn to 17.1a, Needs Old World Language.
* * *
Turn to 17.1.
17.1
It seems odd to be in a place with so many people after all this time. You’ve got used to travelling alone. But now, you’re truly in the city centre. All sorts of people come and go around you, from the elderly using sticks to keep them upright, to children laughing and shoving each other out of the way. It’s nice to see that these people have adapted to life after the war.
The true epicentre of the city is a great, ancient building, what you know to be the library. The greenery around it seems to be slightly more well kept; the trees have been trimmed so they don’t brush against its great windows, and there are some pretty flowers planted outside the front. It has still become a victim to moss, though, and patches of green and brown are making their home in the mortar. They sprawl and form chaotic patterns amongst the heavy cracks and pitted stone.
There is a sign above the doorway that looks like it was once lettered in gold, but the colour has been lost to time. One day, perhaps someone will come back and repaint it.
You step inside the open doors. A few people are coming and going, but it seems that on the whole they prefer to stay outside the library than in it. You can understand why.
The place you enter is an open hall which comes to a point above you in a vast, formerly glass dome. It clearly used to be a skylight but has long since been left to decay. Where you imagine there were once windows, there are only open holes. At least it seems someone had the decency to sweep up the shards from the floor, as the mosaic beneath your feet is quite tidy, possibly the only thing that hasn’t succumbed to dust.
The whole place smells of damp. Even with the broken windows, the air was much fresher outside.
The dome leads to a corridor which splits off into three. The left sign has an insignia of children being taught by a teacher. The right sign has a picture of a man looking at a family tree. The one pointing forwards shows a pile of books on a shelf.
Go right – Turn to 17.2.
* * *
Go left – Turn to 17.3.
* * *
Go forward – Turn to 17.4.
* * *
Examine the mosaic – Turn to 17.20.
17.1a
It seems odd to be in a place with so many people after all this time. You’ve got used to travelling alone, but now you’re truly in the city centre. All sorts of people come and go around you, from the elderly using sticks to keep them upright, to children laughing and shoving each other out of the way. It’s nice to see that these people have adapted to life after the war.
The epicentre of the hubbub is a great, ancient building, what you know to be the library. It isn’t as tall as the church, but it still holds a sense of grandeur. The greenery around it seems to be slightly more well kept; the trees have been trimmed so they don’t brush against its great windows, and there are some pretty flowers planted outside the front. It has still become a victim to moss, though, and patches of green and brown are making their home in the mortar. They sprawl and form chaotic patterns amongst the heavy cracks and pitted stone.
There is a sign above the doorway that looks like it was once lettered in gold, but that has been lost to time. One day, perhaps someone will come back and repaint it.
You step inside the open doors. A few people are coming and going, but it seems on the whole they prefer to stay outside the library rather than in it. You can understand why.
The place you enter is an open hall which comes to a point above you in a vast, formerly glass dome. It clearly used to be a skylight but has long since been left to decay. Where you imagine there were once windows there are now only open holes. At least it seems someone had the decency to sweep up the shards from the floor, as the mosaic beneath your feet is quite tidy, possibly the only thing that hasn’t succumbed to dust.
The whole place smells of damp. In spite of the broken windows, the air was fresher outside.
The dome leads to a corridor which splits off into three. The left sign tells you it leads to the education centre, the right towards the public archives, the forward-facing one to the main library.
Go right – Turn to 17.2.
* * *
Go left – Turn to 17.3.
* * *
Go forward – Turn to 17.4.
* * *
Examine the mosaic – Turn to 17.20.
17.2
You think the path to the right is the best option. You follow the sign where it points deeper into the dilapidated building.
Surprisingly, you come to a set of stairs. They seem to be what you need to follow to obey the sign, taking you to a lower level. You hope the structural integrity of the building has stood up since the time of the war – you don’t fancy walking somewhere that might collapse at any moment.
Thankfully, it seems that when the building was constructed it was done with great care – the stone walls on either side are in good condition, and there’s very little actual rubble as you go. The stairs end abruptly and give way straight to another large, long room, definitely at least a hundred feet across. It’s lined with several sturdy metal shelves which stretch up to the ceiling, and upon each of them are boxes of uniform shapes and sizes. There seem to be little scribbles of writing underneath each of them, possibly to help differentiate the contents, but they’ve long since worn away.
You’d expect this place to be lightless, or at least only lit from any sunlight creeping in through the cracks in the foundation, but you’re surprised to see there’s a blue glow coming from the opposite end of the corridor, only visible when you made it to this floor. It bathes the other end of the room in a surreal, ominous glow and makes the angular geometry of the shelves and boxes form a strange grid of shadows.
You feel uncomfortable. It’s the sort of electronic harshness that you’d expect from the vault, not from the ruins of the Old World.
Against your better judgement, you push onwards, towards the room at the back, your skin taking on a glow from the light as you approach. The shapes begin to define themselves more clearly as you get closer. You can see a room separated by a glass partition with rows of chairs all facing away from you and towards the opposite wall where a square of blue is lit up. It seems to be coming from an ancient machine on a pedestal. If you listen carefully enough, you think you can hear it humming.
Search the shelves – Turn to 17.21.
* * *
Inspect the machinery – Turn to 17.5, Needs Engineering.
* * *
Return upstairs – Turn to 17.19.
* * *
Hunker down for the night – Turn to 17.18.
17.3
Left, you decide. Left seems to be the best idea.
You follow where the sign points and find yourself ascending a staircase. Though it doesn’t lead to an entirely new floor, the curved stairs bring you up, towards the dome of the main hall, where you can see a series of small rooms clustered around the atrium.
You move slowly, hoping the walkway won’t give out beneath your feet. The structure of this place seems sturdy enough, but it has had to survive a hundred years post-war – not to mention however long before then. Each doorway you pass gives you a glimpse into small rooms, all of which appear to be quite uniform – a few desks and chairs, sometimes upturned. A few scraps of brightly coloured posters cling to the walls, depicting lists of numbers and old maps of the globe. They remind you of a far more primitive version of the classrooms which you spent your childhood in.
You shiver as a steady, cold wind blows in from the outside. Turning your head to find its source, you see that there is one door not closed on the opposite side of the room, though it hasn’t aged well. A chunk of it is missing from the bottom, but you can still see there’s what’s left of a sign on it – a few faded words and a picture showing children aren't allowed inside.
Explore the classrooms – Turn to 17.6.
*
* *
Go through the open door – Turn to 17.7.
17.4
You decide to go forward into what you believe must be the main library. That’s what you’re here for, after all.
Past the open atrium of the dome, you’re led through to a wide hall. It retains the circular shape of the previous room but spreads out further, lined with hundreds of bookcases and piles of old books. There are a few people milling around inside who appear to be engrossed in scanning the shelves. They don’t pay you any mind as you walk past them.
