Continue Online (Part 5, Together)

by Stephan Morse

  “Find Xin!” I shouted at the fading image. “Keep her safe!”

  His barely visible nod was the last thing to fade.

  I kicked the ground in annoyance. Whatever mechanics kept this island going included isolation from our party. Was it designed to drain our resources? Maybe starve out the weaker ones who weren’t carrying food?

  Hecate: Are you okay?

  Hermes: Yeah. Lost. Can’t even see Dusk, and I just tried to summon him.

  Hecate: We’re split up, I guess. Maybe a mechanic of the island? This is weird. Half my—interface, I guess, is missing.

  I looked at my own screens and poked around for options. Sure enough, some items were grayed out or completely hidden. I couldn’t see a view counter to tell me how many people were watching me. There were no notices about how far along my skills were.

  This place was even weirder than the missing interface boxes. The walls around me looked solid until I stepped forward. Then they moved as if there were a dancing picture behind them that only existed while I was in motion. It reminded me of an optical illusion from grade school, where they used to test us with weird problems.

  Each step forward took more effort than expected. There was an after-echo to each movement, like I wasn’t simply moving one foot, but three or four. Every step gave me a headache. By the fourth step, I felt as if the real world had grown distant as my mind slowly detached from itself.

  My head shook rapidly, and I tried to focus. There was a box in front of me that needed to be paid attention. The chat from my wife served as a lifeline.

  Hecate: We can talk if you want to pass time while we explore?

  Hermes: I’d like that.

  Hecate: Okay, so a slightly different question than the earlier one; if you only had a day left to live, what would you do?

  Hermes: If I only had one day left to live, then I would go on a grand adventure with my wife. One that doesn’t involve splitting us up. What would you do?

  Hecate: Beg god for another day. There are too many things to do!

  Hermes: Well, someone heard your plea. We’ve had a lot of extra time together, and I’m thankful for every minute.

  Hecate: What about after? Have you thought about what happens to us next?

  I shouldn’t have typed that at all. The sentence had slipped out before any self-control could be exerted. I could blame the high processing speed of this virtual reality for poor judgment.

  The text hovered in front of me as I realized exactly what we were talking about. Holding myself in one piece became impossible. Maybe it was for the best that our party was split up as part of this dungeon. Grieving alone felt survivable.

  We had both had more days than we deserved. Her coming back from the dead, and me surviving my own attempts at rushing toward an end. We had only been parted for a few minutes, yet I missed all three versions of my wife. The one who died on a train. Her digital continuation that had married me. Then I felt upset for the woman she would be on the other side of this event.

  Session One Hundred

  When We Shadows

  I struggled to get myself together. First, I took a mental inventory. [Mechanical Hades Crown] had enough souls for a few [Empowerment]s. My boots were still tied and served as a buffer between a slick-looking floor and me. Twisting my feet either way failed to get a response.

  The ARC interface was in operation, but it kept flickering out. Everything else about the game world was fading slowly. Both weapons refused to shift into new shapes. I felt almost plain.

  “ARC,” I shouted.

  “Awaiting input,” its voice dragged as if the battery were dying.

  My face went through a series of motions as I tried to figure out if that was good or bad. It responded, which meant something. ARC devices all over were in need of constant repair as the system errors became more obvious. Maybe mine had finally conked out. Could I be trapped in here?

  The hallway turned darker with each step forward. An old-fashioned light bulb swung above my head and powered on at random intervals. Every time the light came on, it clicked. The thin metal chain with a wire woven through only served to make the setting worse. I looked for my message box to Xin and watched in growing panic as the box vanished every time the ceiling light went out.

  “Awesome,” I muttered dryly.

  My heartbeat thumped as the clicking kept me company. This was a video game. This was only a video game.

  I took another few steps toward a second light in the distance. A table sat at the end of a narrowing hallway, and atop the ratty surface was a torn lampshade with dull yellow ambiance. Both Morrigu weapons refused to shift shape, leaving me with two small sticks with hooks on the end.

  It didn’t matter. I had played this game long enough to use any weapon at hand, especially since the rules for this island were inconsistent with everything else. This disconnect from the normal motions of a virtual world felt familiar.

  Stepping forward was easier, but the air became heavy. Each breath felt like taking in a heavy fog laced with musk. The sound of air passing out of my lungs became amplified.

  I continued forward while trying to remember my wife’s words. Move only forward. Be like Orpheus and don’t dare look back. The walls grew closer together while the ceiling distorted out of place. The light I had been wandering toward flickered in time with the first one. They both pulsed and clicked.

  I came around the corner with [Morrigu’s Gift] raised, ready to club a monster, but instead I found nothing aside from a long stretching hallway. Halfway down sat two doors. One was open a few inches. The room beyond was dark and shadowy.

  Farther ahead sat a window to the outside. Lightning flashed where there had been zero stormy weather before. I crept down the hallway, sure something was going to jump out and try to eat my face at any moment.

  “I’m on your side?” I whispered while feeling uncertain.

  The door to my right creaked on rusty hinges. My eyes drifted to the barely visible room. Two sharp raps came from behind me instead, making me jump and turn around. The handle on the closed door to my right turned slowly.

  I readied both weapons in case a fight broke out. Even though they were only foot-long sticks, I planned on beating something to death. The door knocked again, softer this time.

  There was a rattle of chains behind me. I looked away at the wrong moment. The closed door opened rapidly into a deep, dark room the faint hallway light couldn’t penetrate. Two impossibly long arms with clawed hands shot out. They latched on to me before I could react.

  My feet tried to dig in, but they pulled tighter. A thin bony body pulled its way out of the room the more I resisted. The smell of dead fish and bathroom rot assaulted me, and my stomach twisted.

  I tried to fight off the hands but failed. They were overpowering, or my [Brawn] amounted to nothing. It, whatever it was, pulled me into the dark, formerly closed room and additional hands grabbed on. There was a squelching noise as my arms popped off. Sharp pain overrode sense, and red laced unstable vision. The urge to throw up hit me while my eyes closed.

  Then the pain stopped. I felt myself upright once more. Gravity pulled in the correct direction and the pressure against both shoes felt normal. I gradually opened my eyes and looked around. There was no game over message or player death notification.

  Hecate: Gee? Gee, are you okay?

  The message flickered in and out as the starting hallway light flashed above me. Somehow I had been sent back to the beginning.

  “ARC?” I asked again.

  “Awaiting—” it sounded worse than before and couldn’t even finish the response line.

  I took a deep breath and tried to calm my heart. It raced from the sensation of being ambushed, then having limbs torn off. Virtual reality sometimes reached a level of being too real, and this macabre landscape of a twisted house certainly was interactive.

  My fingers reached out to type a response to my wife. The touch keyboard would only accept a few buttons befor
e everything wavered out. Stifled messages got through with less grace than I might hope.

  Hermes: No! thi

  Hermes: s plac

  Hermes: Fuc it

  Hecate: ??? Be careful! I hear people fighting. I think Dusk is nearby. And that demon brother of yours. My skeletons aren’t working right either.

  Hermes: Be saf

  Reading her response took at least four clicks of the light. I heard a hiss behind me and turned, worried another creature might leap out of shadows and dismember me. Nothing happened, and I sighed.

  Dance music fluttered through my head. The calming tempo of a waltz helped. I remembered my wife’s lips and smile. Hopefully the place she’d ended up in didn’t involve this sort of horror show.

  My feet moved forward once more. The desk lamp at the corner table flickered in time. Every time the lights went out, the room felt a bit distorted. I walked past the two doorways with my weapons ready. No knocking came forth until I reached the window.

  Spider webs sat in opposite corners of the frame. Dust lined the sill. I looked outside and saw a landscape illuminated. There was a tree, and in it sat a single black bird with a massive moon serving as the backlight.

  The bird squawked loudly and ruffled its feathers. Lightning flashed again, then the reflection of myself took over. I stared at the man. Paler skin than normal dragged downward like melting clay. Black eyes were nearly comical buttons.

  “What’s going on?” the man who almost looked like me asked.

  My head shook, but looking away felt impossible. The man in the window twisted with an ugly expression. His hand lifted a jagged-looking [Morrigu’s Gift]. The frightening doppelganger started shouting, and lights swirled. Lightning curled along dense clouds outside. Thunder rattled the frame as he swung.

  My feet hit the room’s back end, and I quickly looked around. There were no places to escape to. A second bolt of lightning flared as the window shattered toward me, sending shards all across the room. My hands went up in front of me to ward off some damage. The pain was intense, and I looked up to find myself once again reset.

  I tried again but ignored both doors and the window. There was a small hallway with a decrepit couch and recliner. I eyed them as the lights clicked out. The small alcove went dark, and the furniture moved.

  I backed up, and the light clicked out again. This time when it came back on, the small couch and recliner were closer and had wide-open mouths displaying between cushions. I readied my weapon, and the light went out again. My arms started whacking again but failed to fend off all of them. Teeth tore into my exposed flesh, and soon I was standing back at the beginning hallway, shaking with fear and anger.

  My shoulders lowered as I let out a scream powerful enough to strain my neck. “Dammit!”

  This whole situation was frustrating beyond belief.

  The fourth time through, I tried to sprint down the hallway for the door on the other side. I intended to bypass every single scary spot and stop paying attention to the wrong portions of this house. There had to be an outside, bedroom, garage, or anything new.

  As I neared the far end of the hallway, a black mass descended and pulled me up. The motion was so fast that all I felt was a sudden thud as force attempted to drag me through the ceiling. My digital flesh screamed in pain and discomfort as the house won again, and I felt the ARC feedback twist my perceptions into a flat pancake.

  It kept going. Each repetition brought some new jump scare and another death. I started to wonder how many ways this building could end a life. Whose insane idea had this been? What was the point, other than making it to the other side?

  On the next lap through, I died from the walls closing in. Beating on them with my restricted versions of the Morrigu weapons did no good. When the world came to, I was back at the start again. How many laps had that been? My health bars were gone. Only the heavy weight to every part of my body provided any indication of my time. The ARC clock kept fading out. Outside in the real world, it was near eleven at night.

  I didn’t care anymore. No matter what happened, they shoved me back to the beginning. Everything that happened served as a creepy jump scare. Those clammy fingers, wet sounds, and strings of spider web or filthy hair against my face. All of it was designed to scare the heck out of me.

  The first few times, it had worked. Now I was just pissed. This place kept sending me in circles and subjecting me to painful game deaths. I didn’t even have the comfort of most ARC limitations on feedback since starting this stupid event. Everything hurt more than normal. Only the knowledge that my physical body remained unharmed gave me the willpower to move forward. That, and Xin.

  I stomped down the hallway with both weapons out and proceeded to break everything that looked remotely threatening. [Morrigu’s Echo] slammed into the desk lamp. Electricity sparked across the floor, and fire licked up one side of the room.

  Knocking came from the door on my right. I turned, kicked it open, and proceeded to start swinging before the hands reached out. There was a growl of something from behind me, which latched onto one flailing arm while the other creature got my legs. My body hung suspended between their hands, and I saw the edge of that strange female figure draped in stringy hair. Her impossibly long arms and sharp teeth only aggravated me further.

  “Fuck you, lady!” My face dripped with cold sweat. “I’m trying to help this stupid place!”

  Hands clasped across my mouth, and I bit down hard. It yelped with a confused squeal, and one of the arms holding my shoulder let go. I twisted rapidly, then got an arm loose and started banging away at her head. The monster’s nails dug into my flesh, but I didn’t care anymore. This disturbing game had pushed me far enough.

  “Stop. Getting. In. My way!” I yelled while slamming [Morrigu’s Gift] and [Morrigu’s Echo] down repeatedly.

  Fingers tore into my back. Overwhelming strength grabbed at legs. The face being beaten looked wounded and confused, but I kept smashing even as the other one rent me limb from limb.

  Then it started over. An aftertaste of rotten fish hung in my mouth. I spat and tried to wipe the gross paste or blood off on my toga.

  “Oh my god,” I said while trying not to throw up. That had been one of the more disturbing things I had ever done. Ever. Biting that grimy horror story character ranked up there with crawling inside a giant space eel’s anus to blow it up.

  However, all the items I had destroyed now looked exactly the same as they had the first time. The light clicked above me as it swayed. My distorted shadow danced wildly as I smashed the bulb.

  The clicking stopped as the hallway went dark. The silence comforted me. All that remained was the sound of deep, slow breaths and a fuzzy pale light at the hallway’s corner.

  I took time to right myself, then started walking again. One spot had been conquered with two dozen more to go. I planned to stomp out every single spot that had scared the daylights out of me. As Wraith had confirmed, I wasn’t the scared little wimp anymore.

  My other options were limited. There could have been hidden clues in the walls or paintings or inside cabinets, but patience and time were not on my side. I tried to yank out a shelf under the desk lamp but found nothing but gibberish numbers scribbled in red paste. The drawer was slammed shut. I yanked the entire desk off the ground and heaved it down the hallway, where it shattered into pieces. Lightning illuminated the path, and it looked as though the edge of a chair had crept away from the wreckage. Perhaps it was frightened by my rampage.

  This place was creepy and kept sneaking up on me, but it wouldn’t win. I had lived the last moments of a server legend. My efforts had brought a war between kingdoms to a halt. I had trekked across the stars and fought an army to rescue my wife. Prison didn’t stop me, undead zombies eating each other didn’t stop me, and a nightmare only pissed me off.

  Other noises filled the hallways. Whispering came from a vent as I walked by. The sound reminded me of a madman raving while some bird cawed in the background. The
ir noises went back and forth as I moved past the two doorways. One was boarded up with caution tape and looked flat. The sight of this strange hallway admitting defeat made me happy.

  Four more laps saw me destroying more random pieces of the room. Each time, I shut down one of the places that had killed me before. This program apparently didn’t like me beating the crap out of it.

  On the next lap, I arrived at the window to confront the reflection of myself. The other me stood there with his eyebrows knitted together, one lip being chewed, and a wrinkled forehead. Fog formed around where his fingers pressed against the glass.

  “What’s going on!” I shouted at the other man.

  He drew backward and looked confused. Its arms came up and prepared to break through. My teeth ground together and shoulders hunched tightly. One foot pressed against the nearby back wall for extra force. I dove through the window, ignoring the pain of glass tearing at my skin, and tried to claw at the other man.

  A bright flash of light came from inside as the desk lamp overloaded. Thunder sounded throughout the hall, and walls rattled. A bird’s cawing could be heard.

  The world reset before I could get to the doppelganger and end his mocking existence. Heavy gasps came from me as the pain from leaping through a glass windowpane faded. My head hurt.

  My head hung back as I walked forward again. Down the hall I went again, past the lights which flickered in unison, all the way to the alcove with furniture. I smashed the chairs without pause then stared absently at a bookshelf.

  A small man hung onto the wooden ledge at eye level. He couldn’t have been more than four inches tall. His feet kicked wildly while he looked around with a panicked expression. I put my hand under him and lifted the person to a higher shelf. He took no note of the hand helping him and ran for a back corner of the bookshelf and looked around wildly.

  I knew that man, or at least the situation. He was one of the people that superheroes could rescue in that other game. Progression Online? Either way, getting him off the ledge felt like the right thing to do. I had no idea why an augmented reality feature had shown up in Continue Online.