I hold her that way a few moments, turning my wrist to peer at my display at her back.
00:13:42… 00:13:41…
Shit. Minute and a half gone, and I don’t know what the fuck’s going on. Let alone how to get out of here.
I drop my hands to Mika’s shoulders, take a step back. “Mika, listen. I don’t know where the hell we are, how this can be happening. But it is, and we have thirteen minutes to figure out how to get out of here.”
She takes a panicked look at her display, opens her mouth to say something. I can tell by her eyes, her trembling hand, that she’s losing it.
I bridge her lips with a finger, stopping her. “Mika, listen. I need you. We need each other. Panic won’t help us. Keeping cool, fighting back, will. Stay with me. Stay strong.”
She nods, taking a shuddering breath. “I’m with you.”
“Good. Good.” I slump, cast a look at the rat, whose blood runs in little rivulets from under its body. “Stay away. Probably diseased.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” She swipes disheveled hair from her eyes. “Thank you, by the way. That was… really brave.”
I laugh. “More like panic, but I’ll take it. Now, let’s figure out how to get out of here.”
“Right.” Mika moves to the front of the cell, grips the bars. “Solid. And locked.”
“Just our luck. There has to be something,” I say as I move to the back of the cell. “Something brought us here. Created this fantasy. What would be the point if there wasn’t a way out?”
“I guess I’m afraid to assume anything. None of this makes sense to me.”
“I’m not the smartest, admittedly, but there are some things I think we can make assumptions about. We’ve been given ways to escape, clothes, and weapons. To me this feels more like a… well, as weird as it sounds, it feels like a video game. We get stuff, we progress. Right now, we’re on the Castlevania level or something.”
Her mouth tugs up in a half smile. “A video game.” She nods. “Okay. I can handle that. Almost makes sense.”
“Good. Now, there must be something…” I pick up the bucket. Empty, thankfully, though judging by the dark stains in its wood it isn’t usually. “Gross.”
Mika rifles through the straw pile, a bold move after the rat. Her search is equally unproductive and equally disgusting. That rat nested here for a long time, guessing by handfuls of droppings raining out of the mildewed flakes.
“This is crazy. How can this place exist? I don’t understand how this room is joined to the room we were just in.”
Mika runs her hands over stones around the door. “Like a holodeck, maybe?”
“What’s a holodeck?”
She turns an accusing look on me. “You play games and watch bad movies, but don’t know what a holodeck is?” She shakes her head. “You are the worst kind of nerd.”
“Owch. That cuts deep. Excuuuuse me, Princess.”
She narrows her eyes. “Okay. You get a few points for that one. You’re back in the green.”
“Good to know.” I glance at my wrist. 00:11:23… “Found anything?”
“No.” She smacks the stone. “Hologram or not, it feels depressingly real.”
“Well, only one thing left to try.” I wink. “This always works in the movies.”
“What are you –”
“Hey!” I shout, yelling as loud as I can. “Anyone out there? Hellooooo!” I pull my broken dagger from the rat and rattle it back and forth across the bars. “Anyone in this fucking place? Guard!”
“Sam, I don’t think–”
“Guard, guard, guard!”
“Sam! I’d stop if–”
Her words die in her throat.
Footsteps echo down the stone passage beyond our cell.
I glance to Mika. “Be ready for anything.”
She wavers.
“I’ll take the lead. Just stay with me.”
She clutches her dagger and nods.
The footsteps draw closer. Whatever makes them, it’s big. Armor rattles and something else, a jingle with each footfall.
Keys? Fuck yes.
Now I just have to figure out how to get them from a–
“Orc,” Mika whispers, backing up a step.
Orc it is. Taller than me, hugely muscled, with worn leather and chain armor dangling from its frame. It has a sword as long my torso strapped to its back, and a necklace of ears, human and not, around its considerable neck.
And his face. Green with red piggy eyes and boar tusks cradling a mangled upper lip. It sneers, a hideous effect.
“Well, well, well,” it rumbles with a voice like shattered glass. “The prisoners is awake. ‘Bout time. Thought Gruk beat you a little too hard, but…”
Gruk? Beat us? Something tells me we showed up after the fun.
His eyes widen. “Weapons? How’d you get –”
“Now!” I shout to Mika, not sure what the hell now is supposed to entail. I reach through the bars with both arms, stabbing, but his chest piece deflects my broken dagger.
Shit.
I drop it, grab the sides of his chest piece, and yank.
He bellows, showering me with spittle. My move is so sudden it surprises him, and no amount of twisting breaks his inertia. He rams into the bars of the cell. I hold fast as he begins to thrash.
Goddamn. It’s like trying to hold back a bear. He grabs the bars and tries to push away, but his feet are tangled. We have seconds. “Mika!”
She cries out and stabs forward, her blade whispering past my head and driving between the bars.
Into the orc’s eye.
His body stiffens as her blade passes into his brain.
“Yes!” I whoop. The orc spasms and his face rams the bars. Blood pours from his pierced eye onto me and Mika. We cry out together in disgust and triumph.
It’s dead.
I release my death grip as it slides down the bars and a last breath moans from rigored green lips.
The orc falls to its knees against the bars, starts to tip back. “Oh shit!” I yell, whipping my hand low to catch its falling keys before they move out of range. My hands close around a massive, pitted key ring, and I hold on for dear life as the orc’s backward inertia tries to rip it away from me. There’s a frozen moment as my trembling, sweat soaked fingers grasp the ring on one side and a leather loop on the orc’s belt pulls from the other. “Shit… Help!”
Mika slides a hand through the bars and grabs. Her blood covered fingers are hot against mine as she grunts, strains.
The leather stretches, stretches… and snaps.
Mika releases her grip as we tumble back on top of each other.
Right onto the dead rat.
I’ve never stood up so fast in my life.
Mika stands frozen at the bars, staring down at the orc. “I can’t… I didn’t…”
“Mika?” She doesn’t look up.
“It’s… dead.”
“Mika.” I cup her face.
Her eyes focus on mine and she grins. “Sam, I killed it!”
“That was amazing!” I reach around her, lift and spin, laughing. Her hair smells like roses. “You saved us!”
I set her down and she brushes her hands down her clothes, shaking her head. “I did it. I killed him.”
“You were fucking amazing.”
She blushes, deep scarlet. “Thanks. Almost peed my pants, I think.”
“Hah. Me too.” I glance to my wrist.
00:10:01… 00:10:00… 00:09:59…
It seems unreal all this happened in three minutes. Adrenaline courses through me like liquid fire, and I feel like I can do anything, take on anything. “Okay. Let’s see about these keys…” I spin them, feeling deft and heroic.
Thirty seconds of fumbling follows where I try not to drop the keys as I probe the other side of the door for a keyhole I feel with my fingers but can’t see. The first three keys are a bust. The fourth slides home. How many movies have I watched? It’s always the last o
ne.
I turn. The tumbler doesn’t give. I swear and Mika lets out a defeated groan. Out of sheer frustration I crank on the key and am rewarded by a series of clicks and thunks from the lock’s mechanism.
Mika chews her lips, thinking. “Why?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, straining.
“This place? A dungeon with orcs. Just seems like a bizarre choice of… Test? If this is one. Just trying to get my head around the logic of this place and its rules. What are we supposed to get from this part?”
“I don’t know,” I grunt as the door finally unlocks. I stand, cracking sore knuckles. “This place, the orc, the rat… They’re like the most generic version of a fantasy dungeon ever. Did you ever play Baldur’s Gate?”
Mika frowns so I don’t bother explaining its run of the mill ‘defeat all the rats in the cellar’ quest. “Hey, thought you were a gamer. That’s a classic.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard of it. Too much new stuff to play. Anyway, why bring it up?”
“Maybe it came from us,” I wonder without thinking.
“What do you mean?”
I pause to think, and it starts to gel in my mind. “You know…” I make wavy fingers at my forehead. “Bzzzt. Mind scan. Takes things in our heads and makes them real.”
“That’s… impossible.” Mika looks down, to the orc with her dagger still jutting from its skull. “Okay, yeah, never mind.”
“Virtual reality, holodeck, shadow monsters, brain scans. I don’t know how it all works. I don’t know anything aside from the fact that I want to get the hell out of here. But you’re right; we probably have better odds if we understand the rules and how it all works.”
“I can think of worse explanations,” agrees Mika. “But does that mean we need to be careful what we think about?”
“I don’t actively think about rat quests so no, I don’t think it matters. If our thoughts are being scanned or whatever, I think it’s all fair game.”
Mika eyes me. “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.”
“Same. Just don’t think about the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.”
“Shit. Too late,” she says, punching me in the shoulder.
“Owww… I see how it is. Take down one orc and now you’re a bloodthirsty killing machine.” I grasp the iron bars. “Help me with the door?”
Another minute of shrugging and straining follows as we struggle against five hundred pounds of dead orc behind the door. When it’s wide enough for us to slip out, I hold it for Mika as she shimmies through, straining her thick body through the narrow gap. The view is pretty nice, but I still shove a little harder when she almost gets stuck.
The orc’s bulk shifts behind our efforts. It slams the cell shut with an iron reverberation that echoes from the dank walls.
We trade glances. “Shit.”
She shakes her head. “Good job, Pippin.”
“That another nerd reference?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t watch the movies…”
“No, I did. Just giving you shit.” I grin. I feel a bit loopy. Surviving the last few minutes has me all jumped up. I’m almost eager to see what comes next.
“Oi, what’s all that ruck!”
Okay, maybe not.
The cry echoes from down the dark hall. Another orc, larger than the one we killed, looms ahead. He eyes his dead friend, then us.
“Ah, shit.” I push Mika behind me.
A glance at my display doesn’t help matters. 00:03:27… 00:03:26…
This just gets better and better. Opening the door took longer than I thought.
“You killed Arok,” the orc rumbles, face twisting with rage.
“Sorry?” I try, slowing and bending to pull the dagger from Arok’s eye.
The orc’s face calms, and his head cocks. “Hm. Didn’t like Arok. Ploughed my sister.”
I trade another bewildered glance with Mika. “Oh,” she says, voice placating. “What a whoreson.”
Whoreson? I mouth at her.
The orc nods. “Yes. Whoreson. Good he’s dead.”
Mika takes another step forward, hands up to show they’re empty. “Now that we’ve done that for you, we need to be going. A favor for a favor?”
The orc laughs. “Oh, no. Prisoners don’t leave.” He snuffles and pulls his sword. His big sword. His jagged, pitted, man splitting sword. “Prisoners who leave the cell die.”
He charges toward us.
“Shit . Mika, get back.” I put a hand to her chest and push. She handled Arok but this guy is ten times her size and coming on full steam.
The hall is long, with no exit behind us, but if I have to fight this thing… “Get as far back as you can.”
“Sam…”
“Just go. We got this.”
She nods, and with a strangled sound, turns and darts down the hall.
I take the dagger in my shaking palm, watch the orc come.
Fuck. I’m an idiot. I look down, and sure enough, the dead orc has a variety of weapons at his belt. His sword is pinned at his back behind him, but there’s a dark axe that’s… It’s glowing. It’s strapped to his belt, and I wrestle it free, standing triumphantly.
Hell yeah. Magic axe, bitches.
The orc is closer, now. He’s still about twenty feet away, and is closing slowly, unhurried. He spins his blade as he passes a torch, and its terrifying length reflects liquid gold. And God, he’s huge.
A little dagger and an axe as long as my forearm? Even magical, what the hell am I thinking?
But there’s nowhere to go. It’s fight or die.
00:01:59… 00:01:58…
My heart throbs and my breath comes in sharp hitches, but I grip my weapons tighter. I died once, and I’m not eager to do it again.
Screw it. Surprise worked once.
I bellow and rush the orc. His eyes widen, but he’s ready, and his enormous blade cuts sideways, a wide sweep that will chop me in half.
That is, if I weren’t already ducking.
It’s a panic move, one that could have easily gone very wrong, but somehow, it works. I bellow again and cut at the orc’s stomach with my glowing axe.
It cuts through leather armor like butter, slicing deep through layers of clothes and green flesh. Blood sprays my face, into my mouth, hot and metallic as thick ropes of the orc’s entrails pour forth like wet snakes that flop to the stone.
The orc screams in pain, and as I raise, it’s armored fist hammers down, taking me in the shoulder and the side of the head. I’m slammed down like I’ve been hit by a train, and there’s a sickening crunch from my arm as my face impacts the floor like a hammer. My nose flattens, breaking spectacularly, and my blood washes across the floor, mixing with my enemy’s.
Oh, fuck me. It hurts. For long moments, there’s nothing but the agony, white hot, as I moan against the floor, trying to roll to the side.
“Sam!” Mika’s feet slap the stone as she runs for me, but I’m barely aware of it.
Nearby, the orc still shrieks, over and over, startlingly human. He stumbles back, trying to hold in his insides, before falling heavily to his knees, then onto his face.
“Sam!” Mika’s hands are on me, and she turns me, laying me on my back. “Oh shit, oh fuck. Sam, what do I…?” She takes the hem of her shirt, wipes ineffectively at my face.
“Door,” I groan. “Get to… door.”
“Right. The door.” She grabs my other arm and heaves. I barely have the strength to help her. We stumble along. The orc isn’t as dead as I thought, and his hand slaps out as I pass, whipping across Mika’s leg. She staggers and almost collapses under my weight but between the two of us we don’t fall.
Please don’t let the exit be far. Don’t let the door be so fucking slow.
Luck answers this time. At the end of the hall, there’s a turn, and there it is: The hand scanner pulses, waiting for us.
Lifting my wrist enough to see the time is agony. 00:00:11… 00:00:10…
M
ika smacks the panel and jostles me when I don’t. “Sam?”
“Arm. My arm… Broken…”
“Oh. Oh, God. Sorry!” She squeezes her eyes shut.
I cry out as she grips my wrist. There’s not enough time to be gentle. She jerks up my arm. My fingers don’t line up at first. Mika has to take away some support to help me.
Broken bones grind in my shoulder. Sparks explode behind my eyes. I’m about to pass out.
Our displays ding.
Time’s up.
Behind us a roar begins, like air rushing into a vacuum.
Scrape… Scrape…
The Shepherd.
Mika mashes my hand to the scanner and slaps hers in place.
The door starts to dissolve.
I stumble back, peek around the corner. “Oh fuck, oh shit…” It’s already so close. It doesn’t step over the dead orc, just passes through it somehow. Except its blade. It doesn’t lift its midnight edge, just drags it along, and it cuts through the orc from top to bottom with no resistance.
I fight back vomit, at my injuries and the grotesque sight.
“Hurry the fuck up!” Mika shouts, beating her fist against panel.
My vision clouds and things go dark. I’m dizzy, think I’m moving back to Mika. I vaguely realize that if I pass out, I should try to fall through the door. I don’t feel a loss of balance until the floor catches me.
Can’t see. Can’t…
Hitting the ground shoulder first wakes me with my own scream. I’m not proud of it but I can’t swallow back the agony.
When my eyes can focus past the pain, we’re beyond the door.
We’re safe. Everything’s okay… right?
5
Convalescence Field 1
Aspirant 2239
Room Timer: 00:10:00
Everything is not okay.
What follows is one of the worst experiences in my life.
As orange light pulses dully above us, my body rebuilds itself. There’s no anesthesia, no ibuprofen, not even a fucking IE pack. Just me lying on the cool floor, shuddering and trying not to moan as bones shift and relocate in my shoulder. As my nose thickens, pushes out from my face. As blood wicks away into nothingness and torn flesh heals. This is what it would have felt like, if I’d hit the bottom of that canyon. My last moments, if I could remember it. If it had happened? Either way, at least this agony is healing.
Aspirant: A Sci-Fi Harem Adventure Page 3