by T. K. Kato
I stalked over to the door, pulled out my hammer, then waited for a lull in the rattling. That came quickly, my enemies perhaps giving up on the lock. I slid the bolt open quietly, then grasped the handle.
One … two … three!
I flung open the door.
Outside, three men in robes stood, hoods obscuring their faces. They jerked in surprise, but that didn’t last long.
I hefted the hammer but before I could swing, the nearest man tackled me. I barely had time to consider how the biofeedback managed to actually fling me to the floor before the impact stole my breath.
-2 HP
Before I could recover, a fist smacked into my cheek.
-1 HP
Shit, that hurt! I swung the hammer but had no leverage and only clipped my foe.
6 Damage
And then other men were in the room, circling around me. I dropped the hammer and thrust my hand forward the way I’d done to call up telekinesis before. A blast rippled through the air and flung my attacker bodily off me.
12 Damage
Yeah, bet that hurt, asshole. Another man’s shoe caught me in the ribs, and again from the other side. Their blows fell repeatedly.
-2 HP
-2 HP
-2 HP
My vision grew hazy, the color bleeding out of it. I raised my hand to blast another of my foes, but the cultist leapt atop my arm and pinned it down. We wrestled on the floor, and I struggled to turn him over, but he was stronger than I was. I slapped around on the floor, trying to grab the hammer.
The other men joined in the dog pile. One of them landed a blow to my gut.
-1 HP
It stunned me a bare instant, and another blow fell on my head.
-2 HP
Everything had become black and white now. I heaved upward, pushing one man away, trying to free an arm. I willed telekinesis to work, but nothing happened. It seemed I had to actually jerk my arm forward in a thrust—a move I couldn’t pull off while held down.
-2 HP
Another blow reduced my vision to a narrow strip. At the next, everything went dark.
The knocking on my apartment door grew louder, like the person couldn’t take a hint. A salesman or delivery man or whoever should have given up and gone away after I didn’t answer the first two times. And if it was maintenance, they’d have let themselves in already, or tried.
With a groan, I lifted myself up off the couch and ambled over to the door. My t-shirt was dirty and I hadn’t showered or shaved in days, but this asshole would just have to deal with it. At least for the few seconds it took me to tell him to fuck off.
I opened the door just a crack, but my words died on my lips. It wasn’t a man at all, but a woman, maybe around my age, and strangely familiar. Maybe it was my ennui or maybe I was just slow …
“Hey, Bobby.”
“E-Elise?” I stood there, mouth half open, brain not quite able to process what I was seeing. I hadn’t seen her since high school, and that was a lifetime ago.
“Can I come in?”
Normally, I might have been embarrassed to have her of all people see the wreck of my apartment. A pizza carton lay strewn across the coffee table, an empty wine bottle beside that. My clothes I’d flung all over the living room. Dishes lay wherever the hell I’d left them. I hadn’t cared enough to put anything away in days.
Once, I’d have minded her seeing it. Not anymore. Nothing really mattered much to me now.
I stepped aside to let her pass and she strolled inside, looking around without comment.
“How did you even know where I lived?” I finally managed to ask.
“Bobby … I heard about the accident. I’m so sorry.”
I grunted, then sank down on the couch. She sat down beside me, uncomfortably close. It was odd, really. Once, I had relished whenever she sat this close. Once I’d thought I’d loved her, that we’d someday end up together. But she’d gone another road, gone off to college, met someone else. And then so had I, and I’d barely thought of her in years.
And here she was, like it hadn’t been fifteen years since we’d seen each other.
“I saw Mike a while back,” she said after a moment.
“How’s he?” An automatic response. It’s just what you say and I didn’t have to think about it.
“Doing well. He’s got a good job now.”
“That’s good.”
She drummed her fingers on her knee a moment. “You think about the old days much? The gaming group and stuff?”
“Not lately.”
“I meant … no, of course not now. But before, did you miss it?”
I shrugged. “Once in a while, maybe. I was … busy. Zoe and Grace were …”
“Yeah. Of course. I um … I have something that might cheer you up, you know?”
I stared dumbly at her. Sometimes, people in the throes of depression or grief or self-loathing don’t want to be cheered up. I guess there’s a part of people—some people, anyway—that wants to wallow in their suffering. People can be masochistic, maybe.
It gets to the point you resent someone trying to pull you out of it.
She blew out a breath and let her hand fall on my shoulder. Her touch was warm and might have once been thrilling. Even now, I felt a tiny flush of excitement. And I hated myself for that. My wife was dead and I was getting aroused by another woman. What the hell was wrong with me? “Do you still work as a game tester?”
Guilt won out and I stood, maybe too abruptly, and wandered over to the fridge. “Want a water?” I grabbed us each one. I handed her a bottle, but didn’t sit back down beside her. “I do that part-time. I used to be … I do it some.”
She stared at me without opening the bottle, the very hint of a smile playing at the edge of her lips. “I got a job working for this company developing a new VR game centered on Cthulhu and that mythos.”
Huh. Despite myself, I did sit back down now. “Cthulhu?”
“Yup. Remember all those nights spent playing the tabletop game?”
I snorted. How could I not? She’d run a lot of those games, but I’d spent as much time daydreaming about getting in her pants as thinking about the actual game. But I had read all of Lovecraft’s work at her urging. “The only story I remember much of is the actual ‘Call of Cthulhu’.” Even that, I was a little hazy on the details. A lot changes in fifteen years.
“So … we need someone to test it out.”
I rubbed the rough stubble on my face. “I … can’t.”
She took a pointed look around my desolate apartment. “Too busy with stuff?”
“I just … I’m not up to it, all right?” I shook my head. “It’s not a good time.”
Now she put a hand on my knee. Because that helped a guy think clearly. “Yeah, I think that’s why it should be now, Bobby. I mean, you can’t just give up on life. You still have to live.”
I clamped my mouth shut, unwilling to admit to her I’d considered alternatives to living. I had a few ways to do it. A gun I’d loaded but hadn’t had the guts to use. Some pills I’d stared at a long while, even popped a few. Not enough to accomplish anything other than give me some nightmares, as it turned out. But sometimes I thought I was working up to it.
“Bobby. You have to live, you know? That’s just … how it is. So you need something to throw yourself into. Some work might do the trick.”
Part of me knew she was right. Part of me was just tired of arguing. Instead of answering, I stared hard into her eyes.
“Bobby? Look, I set this up for you, okay? I mean, I went out on a limb with my bosses so you could have this.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“No, I know. But … you need this.”
Maybe I did. Either way, I sighed and nodded. “Right.” I rubbed my face. “You’ve got a contract already?”
She nodded.
A drum beat against the inside of my head. I thought I’d opened my eyes but I couldn’t see shit. I was lying on a c
old, hard floor. Wooden, by the feel of it. So what the hell had … the game?
+1 Max HP
The biofeedback went so far as to actually knock me out? Really? What the actual hell were the developers thinking? I had neither the energy nor resources to sue over something like this, but other customers might. I pulled off the headset, which revealed absolutely nothing.
Total darkness all around me.
So wherever the game or NPCs had left me, I needed the headset to escape it. Cute. Play the game or just lie here in the dark until somebody came to get me. It was half-tempting to do just that. But the chilly floor wasn’t exactly my ideal spot to roll over and go back to sleep.
Groaning, I pulled the headset back on, then felt around. The hammer was missing from my belt, but the flashlight was still there. I switched this on and turned about, taking in my surroundings. A small, windowless room with a single door. I could have been anywhere, but it kind of felt like a basement or cellar. Back in the Mason hall, maybe?
It took me a moment to realize everything was still in black and white, with the edges of my vision fuzzy.
I swung the light back around. Sprawled out in the corner lay a body. I started at the sight of it and dropped the flashlight, which clattered along the ground. I held stock-still for an instant, but the flashlight had spun when it fell, and I could not see the corpse.
A faint groan sounded from the shadows.
Ah, hell. The only thing worse than it being a corpse was it being a zombie. Given that wouldn’t have fit in with the setting, I dared to hope I was wrong. Slowly, I stalked over to the flashlight, grabbed it, and shone it back in the corner.
The body was moving, but not to rise. Just the slight shifting as the man turned about in pain, despite his obvious unconsciousness. I stalked closer. The button vest gave him away, even before I saw his face. This was the treasure hunter, Mr. Smith, my supposed competition in the game. Of course, I hadn’t even thought much about the treasure after spotting that Cthulhu door. Maybe that hid the bounty of Captain Marsh.
If I woke him, would he help me? Or would he turn on me? Thus far, all I’d seen from him was belligerence and arrogance. Maybe he’d change his tune after having obviously received the same treatment I had. But maybe not, and the last thing I needed was another enemy.
Finally, I resolved not to let him wake, and stalked slowly over to the door. I tried the handle but it was locked.
Maybe my telekinetic blast could knock it down, but that would surely wake Smith. To say nothing of drawing in a bazillion cultists. Plus, I still felt like shit and my vision was still monochrome.
Actually, that reminded me. “Access menu.”
It sprang up before my eyes.
Stats:
HP 1/21
Dex 20
Might 22
Cha 24
Stealth 20
Sanity 74
Lore 2
Currency 11
Inventory:
Flashlight
Jerky
Map
Eldritch Powers:
Telekinetic Blast
One HP. Not a good place to start the mission. If it was like many such games, maybe eating would restore some health. I snagged the jerky off my belt and munched on it. The biofeedback simulated the feel of chewing, but couldn’t create any kind of flavor to the imaginary for me.
3 HP Restored
Design trope: eat to live.
And 3 HP was better than nothing, I supposed. Color seeped back into my vision, drab though it may have been in the dark cell.
I still had to deal with the locked door, and I didn’t have anything to … Smith! He’d been trying to pick the lock on the Mason hall earlier. They must have grabbed him back then. But the cultists hadn’t bothered to take my flashlight or jerky, so maybe they’d have left him with his picks, too.
I stalked over to Smith’s unconscious form, careful to make not a single sound. At his side, I crouched down. Then very slowly, very gingerly, I patted around on his vest until I found a ridge in one pocket. From this I slipped out a set of lock picks. Perfect.
+1 Stealth
Oh. Nice. I tiptoed back over to the door, then began to fiddle with the lock. Despite having played plenty of games with annoying lock picking mini-games in them, I didn’t actually know much about how tumblers worked or what I should be doing.
Suddenly it clicked.
+1 Dex
Wow. Yeah, if I had to guess, it must be computers hooked up to the door lock, like in the hotel. Because I seriously doubted I had the skills needed to actually pick a lock. So the game made some kind of check against my Dex to see if it would open. What would happen if I failed? Maybe then I’d have no choice but to partner with Smith.
Just as well I didn’t.
I slipped open the door only to be greeted to the sound of distant chanting. None of the words made any sense. In fact, they sounded almost alien and guttural. Maybe they were just repeated the magical old one speech from Lovecraft’s work. Either way, if they were chanting, that must mean I was under one of the churches. The worship centers for the damn cultists.
Meaning they no doubt had intended to make a sacrifice of me and probably of Smith, too.
The man may have been a bastard, but I didn’t wish that on him. Well, I’d leave the door ajar for him and with a bit of luck, he might escape on his own.
Leaving him behind, I snuck out into the hall.
I hadn’t gone far before footfalls sounded out from the hall behind me. A moment later, the hint of lights shone from around the corner. My heart leapt into my throat and I darted around another corner, then switched off my flashlight.
Not a second later, a pair of robed cultists entered into the hall I had just left. The light came from a lantern one of them bore, swaying in time with their erratic gait as they made their way forward. I pressed myself hard against the wall, sinking as much into the shadows as I could manage.
The two men bypassed me without so much as looking in my direction.
+1 Stealth
I dared to let out a shuddering breath, then crept on after them. No telling which way was out, but since I hadn’t seen other light or windows anywhere, my initial guess about being underground seemed true. Maybe this pair would lead me out or maybe they’d lead me into a cluster of their warped sect.
Actually, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed better to break off on my own. I ducked down another hallway and waited until I was certain they were long gone before pulling my flashlight back out. Before I even had time to switch it on, the flicker of another lantern greeted me from up ahead.
“Jesus,” I mumbled, and doubled back, picking a hall at random to slip into. This whole place was a maze of winding halls and rooms.
Were each of these cultist groups actually going about business? Or were they instead programmed to follow some kind of circuit around this whole level? The next cultist came into view, this one alone and bearing another lantern. Mercifully, he didn’t turn in my direction, but continued straight forward toward whatever lay at the far end of this hall.
My stealth options seemed limited here. I couldn’t see in the dark and couldn’t sneak around very well with a flashlight on. Sooner or later someone would spot that. So I had to either follow close enough behind this goon or … Screw it.
Fortune favors the bold and all that.
I crept forward behind the man who had just passed, as quiet as I could manage while still closing the distance. In real life, I seriously doubt I could have snuck up on someone and pulled off what I intended. Then again, I probably couldn’t have picked a lock either.
Or thrown a blast of telekinesis for that matter.
As I drew up just behind him, I lunged forward, wrapped an arm around his throat and slapped my hand over his mouth. The cultist flailed in my grasp, surprisingly strong. I squeezed as hard as I could, driving him down to the ground. In a few seconds, his flails grew slower and weaker.
H
oly shit. I was actually pulling off a stealth takedown. Baaaaadass.
+1 Stealth
+1 Might
The cultist fell still. I grabbed his shoulders and dragged him back to the hall I’d hidden in, hurried back for his lantern, and returned to the body. I mean, I’d seen this done in other games, so why not? I stripped the cultist’s robes off him, revealing a misshapen bald man with bulging eyes and sickly colored gray skin.
Yeah, that was nasty. Halfway to Deep One status already.
His robes stank like raw fish, but I pulled them over my head anyway. Hood up and lantern in hand, I slipped back around the corner and walked down the hall like I belonged there. The chanting grew louder as I progressed. Assuming they worshipped in the main chapel, that meant I was going in the right direction.
Around the next bend I came to stairs, with another pair of cultists coming down them. They shuffled along with an uneven, almost hopping gait that I tried to mimic. My pulse quickened and a sheen of sweat ran down the back of my neck. They passed within inches of me, but barely spared me a glance.
I swallowed and made my way up the stairs, toward the ever-increasing chanting. This route opened into a small room with an open door and a tiny window. A glance out that window revealed I was indeed in a church adjacent to the mason hall. I crept forward toward the door.
No pews lined the chapel. Where a cross should have stood instead rose a statue of Cthulhu. Before this, dozens of robed cultists lay prostrate, chanting and mumbling.
“Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn—”
I cringed at the alien-sounding language. If they spotted me, they might wonder why I wasn’t joining the ceremony. But since all had their faces remained trained on the blasphemous idol, I had a chance.
Careful of every step, I stalked forward. All I needed now was for a floorboard to squeak and give me away. None did, however, and I inched ever closer to the main doors leading out of the church.
Unable to stop myself, I glanced over my shoulder. The chanting continued, and the cultists remained on the floor.
