Chicago

by Wyatt Savage

  “I’ve missed you two so much,” he said.

  “We’ve missed you as well,” Ali replied.

  “I don’t know how or why it happened, but there’s something happening in the world. There’s a game being played.”

  “What kind of game, Daddy?” Aidan asked. Kurtis smiled, hearing his son’s voice.

  “A big game, buddy,” he answered. “Something that’s difficult to explain, but it brought you back. For whatever reason, a door was opened and now you’re back.”

  Kurtis stopped. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

  “What’s the matter?” Ali asked.

  “I can’t see the way forward.”

  “You need to take that step, Kurtis. You need to have faith.”

  Kurtis reached out his foot to tap the ground in front of him and nothing was there. “Back,” he said. “We need to go back.”

  But Ali and Aidan didn’t want to go back.

  Their grip had tightened on Kurtis’s hand.

  They were pushing him.

  “Didn’t you hear me? We need to go back!”

  “There’s only one way out, Kurtis,” Ali whispered. “Mortem ne timueris—fear not death.”

  Her words were a mistake. Whoever was pretending to be Ali was spouting words his wife would never have said. He’d learned those words from Jimmy Mulvey, long after Ali and Aidan had died. The use of the phrase, the deceit, was just enough to pull Kurtis out of his stupor and bring him back to his senses.

  Kurtis broke Ali’s and Aidan’s grip and turned in a flourish, spotting the true faces of the things pretending to be his dead wife and son. He gagged at the creatures, silver-skinned, nude and sexless, broad-shouldered and blank-faced, like large-boned men who’d been dipped inside a vat of pewter. They had no eyes, no noses, only a jagged line across their faces that Kurtis thought looked like a zipper. And to make matters worse, forms undulated within the beasts, wriggling, swimming under the skin.

  The two things slammed into each other, creating a single, larger creature. Faces appeared on the surface of the monster’s flesh, the barest outline of dozens of tiny faces, screaming, straining as if trying to rip through the monster’s silver skin.

  “Wha – what is t-that?” Kurtis stammered, as his eyes widened.

  “What your mythology refers to as Hecatoncheires,” Nadine answered via Mindspeak, his HUD reflecting the thing’s stats:

  Species: Hecatoncheires

  Level:2

  Class:Monster

  Health:10/10

  Attributes: Absorption—possesses flesh capable of acting as armor by converting external attacks into internal strengths; fangs tipped with Gelsemine of the Gelsemium family, also found in various shrubbery within the Melee and known as Heartbreak Grass, that causes severe seizures and convulsions while paralyzing the spinal cord and lungs, ultimately leading to asphyxiation.

  “Whoa. There’s been a mistake. The HUD says it’s a Level 2 monster,” Kurtis said.

  “Yes.”

  “But I’m on Level 1!”

  “The Noctem reserve the right to introduce creatures from different levels.”

  “For what reason?”

  “For the same reason that the strongest steel is forged by the fires of hell.”

  Kurtis didn’t fully comprehend what that meant. He was preoccupied by the Hecatoncheires as it drew back, curling into a crouching position like a snake, ready to strike again. The fantasy had morphed into a nightmare.

  “When will you ever learn, Kurtis?” the Hecatoncheires spat, dribble oozing from the edges of its thin lips. “No one loves you. You were born alone, you will die alone. Survival is the only thing that’s real. You’re only safe with us. Come closer.”

  “Get b-back,” Kurtis stammered.

  “Join us.”

  “Get the fuck back!”

  Kurtis pulled up his rifle and opened fire. The bullets from his gun slammed into the slivery surface of the creature’s body. Instead of hurting the monstrosity, the projectiles were swallowed up with no effect, no diminishment of the monster’s health points. The divots that had appeared upon impact quickly vanished, reminding Kurtis of the T-1000 terminator in the old Terminator 2 movie.

  The air smelled of rotten meat, supercharged and buzzing as the horrific monster rose up to its full and terrible height—a full fifteen feet. Enraged, the thing stretched its body, making ear-shattering, bone-crunching sounds to gain length and girth. Tiny heads exploded from its flesh, partial bodies, dozens of them, with hooked hands and Venus flytrap mouths with thin lips, blood and saliva dripping from razor-sharp teeth.

  “Come give us a kiss!” the monster roared.

  “I’ll pass,” Kurtis replied. He turned and fired his rifle again, the illumination from the barrel revealing a hole in the floor, a trap. It was five-feet-by-five-feet which meant Kurtis would have to hurtle it. Before the monster could pounce on him, Kurtis backed up and then galloped forward, flinging himself over the hole. He landed in a heap, gathered up his weapons and fear and dashed down a pathway into the outer-space blackness of the spire.

  As he ran, his energy ebbed, and he felt like stopping and resting. An indistinct, lurid yellow light flashed near the edges of the pathway. His HUD blinked, and he saw that his health had dropped to 6/10. He reached up and touched the scratch on his cheek. His hand came away red from the spot where the alien, in the guise of Ali, had scratched him.

  “Nadine, that thing cut me.”

  “Yes,” Nadine replied as Kurtis slowed. “The wound has been seeded with a particularly virulent bacterial pathogen that will cause you to lose one health point every minute unless you heal yourself.”

  The monster appeared, howling, pumping its fists, a remorseless killing machine. It began plucking bony knobs from its body, hurling them at Kurtis. The knobs were sharpened and resembled black daggers. One of them struck Kurtis in the shoulder – 2 Health Points!

  Kurtis yanked the dagger free and shot at the Hecatoncheires, but his bullets had no effect. He ran through a narrow chamber lit by what appeared to be torches. The flickering light bled up an incline, a ramp. Kurtis remembered seeing the ramps on the schematic. His lungs burned and his legs felt like jelly. He was down to 4 health points. He tried running up the ramp, but couldn’t make it to the top. He paused, clawing at the ground, spotting what looked like a small trove of illuminated treasure up on the landing above the ramp.

  He slid back down, fighting to catch his wind. The monster was advancing. Kurtis scoped his HUD. He had 289 XP and could purchase a medpack, but he might need the points on another sublevel and so he fought his way back up the ramp, hellbent on getting his hands on that trove of treasure.

  Something slashed past his head and he was horrified to see one of the monster’s black daggers. Another one struck him in the back of his leg and Kurtis coughed up blood. He reimposed his will over his failing body. He jumped one last time, throwing out a hand, losing another health point, but snaring a handhold.

  With one last burst of strength, Kurtis pulled himself up onto the landing and rolled over, acquiring the loot, which included a medpack, ammunition for his rifle, and a flare. All of the items appeared on his HUD and immediately he felt an upwelling of power, his senses returning, back up to a full 10/10 in terms of health points.

  Standing, he fired down on the Hecatoncheires. The shots were well-placed, peppering the monster around its groin, and while it didn’t do any damage to the fiend, it knocked the bastard off stride. Kurtis used the moment of confusion to his advantage, slingshotting across the landing.

  “Nadine, I need to see a map!”

  Nothing appeared and suddenly Kurtis’s HUD vanished, leaving him to stare at an open space, a circular courtyard that lay somewhere deep in the belly of the black spire. On the other side of the courtyard, a wide stair rose, one that was glowing, which signaled to Kurtis that perhaps it was a way to another sublevel.

  Kurtis took a step and there was a puf
f of air and an object grazed his knee. Kurtis traced the trajectory of the object and spotted a metal arrow quivering from the wall off to his left.

  Shit! Traps.

  He took another step and nothing happened, then noticed that the floor had assumed a different shape, taking on the appearance of a parquet floor. The monster’s howls grew louder and more intense and Kurtis knew there was no turning back.

  Kurtis said a quick prayer for a short death and then he began zigzagging forward, running, jump-running, covering his head as arrows began flying left to right. He blitzed forward and stopped, coming to the realization that there was a pattern, almost like the odd beat in the introduction to the Led Zeppelin song D’yer Maker. The arrows were skipping ‘the one’ as a drummer might say, and going right to a pattern of three arrows unleashed at once.

  Kurtis stepped down and waited for the three arrows to fire, and when he successfully avoided them, he ran ahead, stopping, waiting, continuing, trying to mimic the groove. He was able to dodge between the arrows, but then the groove changed and—

  WHUNK!

  An arrow struck him in the right bicep – 1 Health Point!

  The pain was excruciating, the tip of the arrow severing tendons and muscles. He ripped the arrow free and hot sticky blood ran down his arm as he tripped and fell forward.

  The floor opened up out in front of him and Kurtis threw out his hands, managing to stop himself from falling into a hole in the ground. Kurtis cried out, dangling from the edge of the hole, the hand attached to the arm hit by the arrow threatening to give out at any moment. The pressure caused by holding onto the edge of the hole forced more blood through the wound, threatening his grip.

  He hazarded a look down as a gust of wind whipped up at him. Nothing was entirely clear, but he witnessed a subterranean space under the floor, a pit filled with limbless abominations, gigantic pale snakes with the heads of men, women, and children. They moaned and wailed and flicked long, yellow tongues at him. Grunting, he pulled himself onto his hands and knees, then crouch-ran across the rest of the floor, struck twice more by arrows that hammered into his wrist and left calf, decreasing his strength to 4/10.

  He pulled the arrows out, but every movement now provoked pain at the cellular level. Kurtis struggled to breathe, leaking blood. He collapsed on the stair and quickly purchased a medpack to heal himself, lowering his XP to 271 points, but boosting his health back to 10/10.

  Levering himself up, he edged forward, rounding a corner where he came upon a fork in the corridor. The one on the left led to a low-ceiling tunnel that reminded him a bit too much of his tiny cell block back in prison. The one on the right had a high ceiling.

  He drew in an audible breath and began quickly moving a finger back and forth between the two paths. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a tiger by the toe. If he hollers, let it go, eeny, meeny—”

  A roar interrupted him from behind, and he could smell the stench from the Hecatoncheires’s putrid flesh and horrid breath that emanated from numerous mouths. He was about to have his choice taken from him. It wasn’t that he wanted to take the cramped tunnel, but those words—Mortem ne timueris—fear not death. It was starting to feel more like a clue, a key, not just a mantra, but some kind of secret that had been helping him get out of jams to this point. He fired his rifle at the monster and then went with his instinct against logic and fear, diving into the cramped low-ceiling tunnel, scrambling on all fours.

  At the other end, he exited into a space he hadn’t expected, not that anything about this day was going according to expectations. Shit. He’d rushed headfirst right into an identical replica of his solitary confinement cell.

  Aside from the gap he’d exited from, the space looked and felt exactly like his cell. Even the moss on the walls and indents in the floor he’d etched with his drumsticks to pass the time were present. He tried leaping up to the ceiling with no luck. He was truly trapped within a trap.

  A roar from the beast chasing him hit his ears hard, indicating it wouldn’t be long now. No, no, no! With dread, he realized he’d made a mistake and allowed the Hecatoncheires to box him in.

  As the stench wafted up from the gap, Kurtis tripped while backing up into the far corner, not that it would make a difference. Maybe he’d get a few extra seconds of life.

  Kurtis squeezed his nose as he watched the Hecatoncheires emerging from the gap, having reduced its size to fit through the miniscule space, its jagged teeth protruding into the cell before its grotesque body.

  He groped for something to use and pulled out the flare from the loot stash. He pulled a nylon ring on the end of the flare that sizzled to life. He thrust the flare at the monster, but the flame didn’t do any damage. He threw the flare at the thing and then grabbed his rifle. Since the bullets seemed to have no effect on the Hecatoncheires’s body, Kurtis stepped forward and shoved the muzzle in between two jagged teeth as the creature was still attempting to creep out of the small gap in the wall. Then he pulled the trigger.

  The bullets tore through the creature’s jagged teeth, shattering them to bits. The pieces flew off in droves, smattering against the stonewalls and clattering against the ground.

  He was shocked when a prompt appeared on his HUD -1 Health Point for the Hecatoncheires!

  Kurtis thought back on his time in prison. It was a day of many firsts. The first time he’d walked through the heavy iron doors and security vestibule only to have the inmates hoot and holler at him. The first time he’d been suckerpunched in the lunch line, and the first time they’d made a go for him in the showers. It was a big sonofabitch who did it, a six-foot-six bear of an inmate who’d come for Kurtis with a toothbrush shank. Kurtis had seen enough tough guys to reckon that the wannabe killer’s muscles were not natural. As such, he didn’t try to block the stab. Instead, he clenched his fingers from both hands together, held them up to his face like he was guarding against a strike, and waited for the jab to get just close enough for him to slam the attacker’s wrists with all his force. The big man’s wrist bones fractured on impact. Within seconds, the guy everyone thought was the toughest prisoner in the block collapsed to the ground in tears, and within days, word had spread and Kurtis was left unmolested, at least for a time. The lesson learned was sometimes there was weakness in the unlikeliest of places, like the monster’s teeth.

  The rifle’s magazine emptied faster than expected.

  -2 Health Points!

  -4 Health Points!

  The creature reeled in excruciating pain, down seven health points, snapping its head back and forth against the walls, its neck outstretched, its body still inside the gap.

  Despite his better judgment, he edged closer to get a better look and make sure he’d taken out all the teeth. Sure, the Hecatoncheires could still play mind games and maybe even squash him like a bug, but without the jagged teeth, he had a chance. Looking, however, was a mistake.

  The beast snarled and swung its head around in an attempt to snag Kurtis with its one remaining tooth. He pulled back and stumbled onto the ground, pressing hard on the trigger, but the bullets were empty.

  With no other option left, Kurtis twirled his tomahawk and began slashing at the base of the remaining tooth, which was the size of a saber-tooth tiger’s fang. He hacked at it like he was chopping a tree trunk, which was what it felt like and exactly how long it took. He dodged the beast’s attempts to snag him as he continued chopping, sending chunks of rotted tooth flying along with black blood.

  With one final swing, Kurtis cut through the tooth, sending the last portion flying up in the air. As it came back down, Kurtis stepped back, watching, exhausted, panting. The giant tooth swooped down like a missile and stuck in the creature’s head. The monster bent to dislodge the tooth, and when it did, Kurtis planted his tomahawk in the thing’s chest, carving out a sizeable piece of monster meat.

  The Hecatoncheires squealed like a stuck pig. It fell forward, down nine points, and Kurtis yanked his tomahawk free. Then he hurriedly gathered up
several sharp chunks of its teeth and began thrusting them into the beast’s body. Each stab caused a painful screech and more geysers of black blood. He was turning the thing’s weapons against it, and it was working. With one final heave, Kurtis slashed the tomahawk down, slicing through a large section of neck, causing the head to lop off and roll along the ground, leaving black goo and sludge behind. It was enough to make him gag, but he wasn’t complaining. The monster was dead, his HUD reflecting the kill along with several additional XP for survival time:

  Species:Homo Sapiens (Evinrude, Kurtis)

  Chattel:9 mm G17 Gen-5; Tomahawk (Melee-class); Remington ACR 5.56 mm

  Health:10/10

  Level:1

  Class:Fighter

  Kills:11

  Vitals:BP – 125/80; T – 99.02f; RR – 14bpm

  XP:320

  Yet, Kurtis felt like he still hadn’t won. He remained trapped inside the replica of his isolation cell, feeling the cold creep of solitude descending over him.

  12

  Resurrected

  Just as he was about to give in to the desolate loneliness and hopelessness, Kurtis heard the barely audible sound of a woman’s voice. It was distant but felt real, not like the illusion the Hecatoncheires had attempted. He pressed his right ear against the wall and listened with hope.

  “Are you in there?” the woman asked.

  Kurtis was beside himself. He felt hope. “I’m here! I’m in the solitary confinement cell!”

  “Can you hear me?” the woman asked.

  “Course I can,” Kurtis replied. “I’m trapped inside the cell. The Hecatoncheires’s body is blocking the way out.”

  “Hecaton-what?” the voice asked. “You been hittin’ the pipe in there, Kurtis?”

  Tae! He recognized the saltiness in her voice. She was alive!

  “Tae! It’s Kurtis.”

  “Course it’s you,” she replied. “What other dumbass would be yelling inside the black spire?”