Citadel: The Concordant Sequence

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Okay, you’re going down, game.” She pointed at it.

  She ran to the bathroom and then the kitchen, coming back to her console with a squeeze bottle of orange fruit punch. Okay, so the right side hall is better for stealth I think. It’s darker and has more places to hide. But those damn turrets….

  Kiera engaged sneak mode, which made the character move slow. A vent by the start of the first hall let her skip both aliens and the turrets, so she hit the button to crawl in. She hated the speed after two minutes, but when aliens didn’t attack her right away, she decided to keep going. The last time she’d tried stealth, what felt like over a year ago, she’d been obsessed with the ‘perfect dark’ achievement: getting to General Xax without being detected by anything. After fifty or sixty attempts where something always spotted her near the end, she’d sworn off ever touching stealth again.

  But face-smashing hadn’t worked either.

  Hugging the wall, she edged up on the aliens’ position, debating how to ambush them. The huge damage talent required approach from behind, but these two didn’t move. After sitting for a few seconds, she remembered another ability, and used a gadget to create a noise off to the left.

  Both aliens and the turret swiveled that way.

  She snuck past, heading into deep shadows of the rightward corridor. Only after she got into the next section of hallway did she remember another vent that could’ve bypassed it. Ugh. Almost got seen. Kiera sat up straight, feeling insulted that she’d gone around an enemy without killing it. “Grr. They all have to die… but… She’s moving so slow! Damn. The only one that I really have to kill is the end boss.” She followed a recess along the wall where the darkness appeared thickest, passing turret after turret without being detected. “Wow… okay, maybe skipping fights is even faster than blowing stuff’s faces off.”

  The mini-map showed cones where enemies’ attention wound up pointing, allowing her to move through unwatched areas. She’d played and replayed and replayed this bunker so many times she’d stopped even looking at the minimap. Every hallway, room, closet, vent shaft, and ladder had a permanent etch in her mind. For the first time in her (relatively short) gaming life, she played the exact opposite of normal, avoiding fights at all costs.

  Dark hallways glistened in the soft blue light glowing from within recesses lined with wires and hoses. The soft tap-tap-tap-tap of her character’s boots on the metal floor made the game feel new. Usually, her entire room shook from the sound effects of plasma beams and grenades exploding. She paused to take a couple swigs of orange punch, then maneuvered her video game avatar down a vent shaft, along a tunnel, up a small ladder to another shaft. She cut through a maintenance conduit she discovered months ago but never used since it bypassed most of the third level―and she had wanted to see/kill everything.

  Her character dropped down to hang at the end, scooting sideways by her fingertips to a ledge. Doing that made her fingertips hurt for real. She still hadn’t recovered from the climbing gym two days ago. Dad’s new obsession. Well, it would’ve been if he’d been home from work to go, but he paid for it and still made her go. Two hours, three days a week of ‘healthy activity.’ Like the endless school year, it felt as though she’d been visiting that climbing gym forever.

  Much to Kiera’s astonishment, she made it close to the final boss’s door and still had eighteen minutes left on the doomsday timer. From what she’d read online, a bad but successful attempt on the boss only took nine minutes. She stopped, pausing the game.

  “Crap. I can’t just run into its face and be all like blam with this build.”

  Eyes closed, she pictured the boss chamber. It resembled a rectangle with triangles stuck to the narrow sides. Two floors tall but wide open, it made no sense as an actual command room, quite clearly designed as an arena for the final boss fight. A catwalk ran around the edges near the ceiling. Barrels and boxes littered the area. Lots of hiding places. Holes in the floor that she always fell into connected to vent ducts. Sniper builds went high and ran while firing. Combat builds tried to dance around the room while ducking behind boxes… those tunnels had to be meant for stealth builds. Ambush, duck down, move to another opening and try to pop up behind its back. Ten ambushes would kill it: 25,000 health.

  “Well, sneaking down here was kinda boring, but it worked… and I can do that again easy.”

  She sucked down the rest of her orange punch, unpaused the game, and approached the final boss room. Her character held up the severed eye of a robot-alien, which the scanner accepted. Blue light streaked in an X across the giant door, meeting a circle at the middle, which spun around counterclockwise.

  A heavy thud shook the floor of her bedroom, and the huge metal slab split in half—one part sliding into the ceiling, the other sinking into the ground. In the middle of the giant chamber stood her nemesis: Xax, the alien commander. Lemon-yellow, his enormous and malformed body floated around the room atop a wide mechanized disk. Little (by comparison) tentacles held an array of weapons, and his ‘chair’ bristled with numerous missiles and plasma cannons. Her soldier stared at a blob the size of a truck.

  Sixteen square holes, each with a conveniently open grating nearby, dotted the floor at regular intervals. In her prior running and gunning attempts, she’d always tripped into them, gotten stuck waist-deep in the ground, and eaten missiles or some other devastating attack before she could get free. Tonight, they would help her.

  Snarling, Kiera sprinted for the nearest opening and went into a slide, passing under a ripple of laser fire before her soldier fell into the shaft. The bedroom thundered and vibrated from the fury of explosions and the thrusters on the monster’s pad/chair thing. Furious at not having a line of sight on her, Xax zoomed back and forth. After twenty seconds, the boss calmed and entered a slow gliding search pattern. She scooted across the room under the floor, able to catch glimpses of the enormous general from vents.

  Once behind it, she popped up, aimed her big rifle, and fired at the back of its head. The ambush hit critically for 5,000 damage. Xax roared and spun, but she’d already ducked back out of sight before dozens of missiles rained down on the spot she’d fired from. Kiera leaned forward, as if doing so would push the character to crawl faster in the vents.

  Small robots entered the shaft to attack her, but even the stealth build’s lower up-front damage handled them with ease. They became more of an annoyance. A problem only if they snuck up on her, or happened to spawn when she tried to line up a shot on Xax.

  Perhaps due to the weird day she’d had, Kiera focused on the pattern of shoot, duck, move, shoot, and didn’t spare a second’s thought for getting angry at taking damage or wanting to rush the clock. She had plenty of time.

  Five minutes and thirty-one seconds after entering the room, her final ambush shot caused the alien overlord to explode into a gory mass of virtual splatter. His mechanical flying perch careened around the room like a rocket-powered-Frisbee during a cutscene, embedding itself into the huge computer core and destroying it, permanently disabling the invading fleet.

  Kiera leapt to her feet, waving her arms. “Yes! Finally!”

  She dropped the controller on her pillows and did a victory dance.

  “Perfect run,” said a deep male voice from the game console.

  “Awesome.” She grinned. “Wait, I took damage from the little ball things in the vents… how was that perfect? Huh. Oh well. I’ll take it.”

  She plopped down to sit and picked up her empty fruit punch bottle, frowning at it.

  “You reached the chamber without being detected at all,” said the game console.

  Kiera froze, bottle an inch from her lips, staring over it at the monitor. “Did you just talk to me?”

  The cutscene ended, shifting to credits for the game developers.

  “What the heck is wrong with me?” She set the bottle down and grabbed her head with both hands. “Am I really going schizo?”

  “You’re not experiencing a mental illness,
” said the game console.

  She laughed. “Right. Voices in my head are telling me I’m not nuts.”

  “My origin is not from within your mind,” said the game console. “Congratulations on mastering the Concordant Sequence.”

  “Uhh, thanks.”

  “I’m glad you are finally prepared,” said the console. “Time was running out.”

  Whatever. Even the system is making fun of me.

  Kiera picked up the bottle, which somehow had become full again. As soon as it touched her lips, her mouth filled with the sensation of plastic wedging her jaw open. She tried to pull the bottle away, but it remained stuck.

  “Mmm!” she shouted, bottle clutched in both hands, struggling to get it out of her mouth.

  The plastic extended forward into a tube that slid down her throat. She screamed, grabbing at her face, desperate—but unable—to breathe. The pain of needles jabbed her in the arms and legs. Tears streamed out of her eyes from the awful gagging sensation. Her body convulsed, wanting to throw up, but something that didn’t exist plugged her mouth. Overcome by panic, she fell sideways and curled up, wheezing.

  Her fifth try, she let out a real scream. The cry became coughing before she rasped, taking deep breaths until her head spun.

  “Daddy!” shouted Kiera, lapsing into tears. “Mom!”

  She clutched her throat, which felt like she’d tried to swallow a plastic sword. The room stopped spinning in a few seconds.

  “Dinner’s almost ready, hon,” yelled Mom from downstairs.

  When did she get home? I never heard her come in… Kiera choked on drool and staggered to her feet. “Mom! Help! Something’s really wrong!”

  She stumble-ran down the corridor, almost falling over at the top of the stairs when cramps hit both legs at the same time. Her arms locked up like chicken wings. The same sense of freezing came over her again, worse than a bucket of ice water dumped on her head. She shrieked.

  Clinging to the railing, Kiera slid down the stairs on legs that refused to move. By the time her feet hit the carpet at the bottom, all the strange feelings had gone away. Crying and freaking out, she jumped up and ran to the kitchen, inhaling the smell of chicken and garlic. Her mother stood facing their huge microwave, smiling.

  “Mom! Help me! Something’s really, really, wrong with me. I gotta go to the hospital right now!”

  Her mother didn’t move. Kiera stared at her for a few seconds before stepping closer.

  Thunder rolled overhead.

  Despite not having been afraid of thunder since she’d been six, Kiera cowered at the sound. She couldn’t remember a storm ever being that loud, or sounding so close overhead.

  “Mom?” She crept up and put a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Mom!”

  The woman didn’t move.

  Kiera leaned around to look at her face. Mom gazed with a vacant grin into the microwave, and didn’t even appear to be breathing. The timer had stopped on 08:04. Though the machine emitted a whirr like it continued cooking, the tray with a huge bowl didn’t rotate, nor did the timer tick down.

  “Mom!” Kiera screamed, trying to shake her, but her mother had become as solid as a statue. Even her shirt felt as rigid as stone.

  A blinding flash from the window over the sink made her flinch away and shriek.

  Where once had been perfect green suburbia now stretched an endless field of barren brown sand. Small tornados of dirt glided back and forth beneath a dark indigo sky flickering here and there with bright green jagged lightning.

  “I’m not schizo!” shouted Kiera.

  She tried to hug her mother, but recoiled as her arms wrapped around a jelly-like mass of freezing slime. Mom didn’t look any different. “M-Mom? What’s going on?”

  A peal of thunder rattled the entire house. The alien landscape outside tinted the kitchen green.

  Kiera backed away from her mother. The kitchen floor squished between her toes, ice-cold gel. “I didn’t wake up yet. I’m playing too many video games. This is a screwy nightmare. I’ll just go back to my bed and dream that I’m going back to bed, and when I wake up, I’ll be okay.”

  She headed out of the kitchen, trying her hardest to ignore the sensation of walking in two-inch deep frigid snot. The view from the huge bay window in the living room matched the kitchen windows―miles and miles of open sand. Far in the distance stood blackened shadows of a ruined city, skeletal skyscrapers raking at the haze.

  Kiera ran across the living room to the stairs. A quarter of the way up, her feet plunged into the carpet and she sank up to her waist in freezing ooze. Screaming, she grabbed at the railing, but the wood rungs melted to slime between her fingers. Deeper and deeper she sank, no matter how hard she fought to keep her head above the liquefying staircase.

  In seconds, her screams for help cut off to muffled bubbles. Icy liquid surrounded her, and the world went dark.

  3

  Womb

  The raging booms of a titanic thunderstorm faded to perfect silence.

  Kiera’s eyes fluttered open to a blurry world of dim light in which she floated, weightless. A clear, curved window a short distance above her head offered a view of dingy drop-ceiling tiles. The dark red billow of her long hair bloomed around her. Her breathing became the loudest sound in the world, with a hollow plastic quality. A rigid band encircling her head pressed a mask tight over her mouth and nose. Between her teeth wedged a hard, rubberized nodule like a scuba diver might wear.

  Kiera tried to move, but stopped at a sharp pain stabbing her forearm. She lifted her head and gazed down at her pale body, naked, glowing blue from the light outside her tank, and floating in some manner of clear, syrupy liquid. Thin robotic arms sprouted from the sides of her coffin-sized prison, impaling her with giant needles: two in each thigh, one in each calf, and two in each arm.

  She stared at the insectoid, metal limbs and screamed into the mask, shaking from terror, but afraid to move.

  Dad! Help! She started to hyperventilate. A beep came from above and behind her head, and it became more difficult to breathe. Something brushed against her shoulder. She turned her head to gaze along an inch-thick hose attached to the front of her mask. It curved around behind her, connected to the back end of the tank.

  Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

  Whirring filled her ears. She went rigid from fright as two metal arms extended toward her from above and grasped her head with gentle, but firm pressure, immobilizing her skull. Trying to squirm made the needles burn, and her head had been locked in place. Freaked out, she screamed into the air hose. Seconds later, a jabbing pain shot into her skull from behind. Before she could scream again, the feeling changed to that of a long needle sliding out of her rather than thrust in. Kiera gagged, choking on the object stuck in the back of her throat she couldn’t swallow.

  Please wake up! This is too scary! I don’t like this dream!

  The needles piercing her arms and legs all retracted at the same time. Small puffs of blood lingered in the clear goop for only seconds before a current pulled them away past her feet. The clamps holding her head released next, leaving her floating free except for the air hose. She grabbed at the back of her head, the top of her neck, where the pain had been. One tiny point hurt, like a bee sting or bad mosquito bite. Her probing finger found nothing alarming: no gaping wound, no metal, only a tender spot that hurt about as much as the red dots the needles left on her arms and legs. She rolled over to stare at the panel that had been behind her head. Flickering lights winked and shimmered from within a nest of robotic arms all folded up like some giant, sleeping alien spider.

  Screaming, she grabbed at the mask, trying to force her fingers between her cheeks and the hard plastic ring keeping it locked on, but couldn’t pry it away. Her panic stopped short.

  I’m stuck in a fish tank. Pulling off the air hose is stupid. But if I drown in my dreams, will I wake up before I die? Kiera looked around at her chamber. About half of the tank, plus both ends, consisted of solid met
al, with a transparent lid sealed tight. To her, it felt roomy. A seven-foot-tall man could’ve fit, but would not have been happy.

  She swam closer to the side, peering out at a dimly lit room that resembled a hospital. Only a few lights in the ceiling worked, tiny blue LEDs among dozens of dead tube bulbs. More tanks, all open, continued into the distance, separated by a few feet. A thin layer of fog gathered low to the tiles, drifting over dark smears beside the other pods that trailed past the foot end before curving off away from her toward the distant end of the room. The marks had the unmistakable appearance of blood left behind by dragged bodies.

  Again, she screamed into her air hose and curled into a floating ball.

  Please wake up. This isn’t real. I’m having the worst nightmare ever. I’m at home in bed.

  Minutes passed in silence with nothing changing. Trembling, she uncurled and looked out at the same gory room. A privacy curtain lay on the floor two tanks away. Whoever had been in the two closest tanks would’ve been able to see her with no clothes… Mom? Dad? She pressed her hands to the wall of her tank and leaned close, trying to get a better look around. The breathing mask got in the way, but she turned her head sideways to put one eye against the window. A tall metal cabinet to the left, behind the head end of her tank, held towels and folded clothes. One of Mom’s skirt suits hung on the right side, covered in an epic amount of dust. The man’s suit on the next hanger had to be Dad’s, and it too, had collected so much dust he would’ve thrown it out rather than have it cleaned.

  Kiera stared at the bloody smears on the floor by the tanks her parents should’ve been in. Only her absolute faith that she found herself in the middle of a nightmare kept her from bawling like a child. Shaking, she patted around her tank’s lid, searching for any button, lever, or dial that might open it.