Dr. Morbid's Castle of Blood (Masks)

by Hayden Thorne

  I unrolled it and read it out loud without skimming over it first. “‘Surprise, losers! Guess who! So I’m sure that by this time, you think this game’s way too simple and boring, right? Okay, I’m up for a challenge. It’s called hide and seek. By the time you finish reading this message, all but one of you will be left to carry on the so-called mission, which is to reach the castle and destroy all of the monsters there. And here’s the twist: for you to win and get out of the game, you’ll have to find the other heroes, who’ll be turned into things that blend in with the scenery, courtesy of some pretty kickass hacking skills by moi. And you’ll have to get all that done in two hours, tops, or you’ll be stuck in this game forever, along with your transformed hero friends. So much for boring games, eh? Better start now. The clock’s ticking.’”

  I glanced up, shocked, and saw that everyone save for Ridley was missing. He sat directly across from me, pale and horrified.

  “Oh, my God,” he squawked, his head whipping around as he frantically searched the area. “Oh, my God, Eric—where’d they all go?”

  “What the hell happened?” I asked, scrambling to my feet and glancing around as well. The place was deserted. The only signs of life that I saw were marks in the snow where Wade, Freddie, and Peter had seated themselves not too long ago.

  “I don’t know!” he cried, following my lead. “They were sitting with us one minute and then gone the next!”

  “Like a transporter got them or something?”

  “I think so—but I didn’t hear anything. It all happened in a second—literally. Right when you read the last word in that scroll.”

  “Fuck!” I looked at the message again. “This was another trap, just like that first scroll you found. But if this talked about having only one hero left, why are there two of us here?”

  Ridley looked at me, all freaked out. “Dunno—maybe because you’re not a superhero? That’s all I can think of. I mean, maybe this game’s rigged so that only genetically-tweaked people are affected by whatever’s been done to it. I’m guessing that you’re able to fly under the radar because you’re normal.”

  Panic levels were at a record high as I reread the message a gazillion times over. “Okay, we need to calm down and think,” I said, giving him the scroll to go over as well. Chewing my cuticles, I started to pace around Ridley. “I think everyone’s been taken to the castle and maybe turned into things, and if we want to get out of here, we need to find them, finish the game, and then be free.”

  “We can’t find them if they’re blending in with the scenery! I mean, are there going to be clues anywhere?”

  “I know we can’t without clues or whatever, but that’s what this asshole’s saying! He knows it’s practically impossible to find them, anyway, and he’s banking on that to keep us trapped here!”

  “What’re we gonna do?”

  I stopped my pacing and looked at Ridley, echoing his deer-and-headlights look. “I think we should move forward and keep playing. You need to up your points, anyway, and earn back your powers.”

  “Yeah, but they’re all defense powers. Lot of good that’ll be!” Ridley’s complexion went white and red and then a funny shade in between that I didn’t really want to figure out. Probably puke green with a touch of fuchsia.

  “Hey, cut it out,” I retorted. “You’re way better than that. You’ve punched your way to higher points, haven’t you?” When he nodded helplessly, I added, “There you go. You’ve got your power punches for offense, and you can shield us or slow monsters down when the going gets way too rough for only two people to deal with.”

  “I guess so, but I don’t know how well that’ll all work out.”

  “The only thing we can do is cross our fingers, kick major ass, and hope for the best.” I winced as we exchanged nervous looks again. “One thing we definitely need to do is to supply you with weapons like mine. I mean, a power punch is good, but it’s also better to have some offensive backup, right?”

  Ridley could only nod, his grip on the scroll tightening as though he were clenching his hand into a frightened fist.

  “And we’ve got Althea hacking into the program once in a while to help us out, though I wish I knew how to talk to her. Communication here’s all one-way.” Crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap.

  God, of all people to be left behind—the baby of the superhero bunch, who still needed to work on his game, and the non-superhero with limited-to-zero strength. Oh, man, we were so screwed.

  Chapter 8

  Ridley and I marched onward, nervous and completely unsure of how we were going to pull this off. I didn’t want to add to his issues, but I sure didn’t have much faith in his abilities at the moment, given the fact that he was a defense hero. What good were force fields when we needed to fight our way to the castle and destroy everything we saw there? And Ridley had zero confidence to boot, with whatever self-esteem he had taking a pretty massive beating when we were first trapped in this game.

  I sighed, staring ahead and keeping an eye out for stray monsters here and there that I could slaughter, so we could up our points as quickly as we could. I tried not to think about Peter and the fact that he’d just been turned into something that we could easily overlook and leave behind because he’d become a part of the scenery. That thought was enough to make me want to curl up on the ground and fall asleep, hoping to wake up and find myself safe in my bedroom with Grimm, lost in happy denial.

  But at the same time, I knew that that denial thing would be something that Peter hated, and I could hear his voice lecturing me in my head. If I were more emotional, I’d have fallen apart and got all wobbly-lipped and sniffly, but I was pissed. I mean, pissed. Like Mrs. Zhang-style pissed when she was turned into a toddler by the Deathtrap Debutantes. The more I wallowed in the fact that my boyfriend and my other buddies had been turned into game accessories, the angrier I got. I wanted to kick monster ass so badly, bust out of the freakin’ game, and majorly kick that jerk hacker’s ass till his sphincter fused itself with his brain.

  I cussed under my breath and shook those thoughts off. I needed to focus and work fast. The first objective I had was to find Ridley a weapon he could use to complement mine as well as his regular defense powers.

  The path we took led us up the side of the mountain, where a little gang of wolves came after us. They leaped out from a higher part of the path, oddly not sliding off the edge of the mountain considering how narrow the path was. Then again, that was all part of the game, right? It was pretty damned weird, looking at a pack of wolves snarling and snapping away at us, with a couple of them standing off the side of the mountain path and looking as though they were on an invisible ledge.

  “Okay, whatever,” I said, holding up my sword and taking my position. “You ready, Ridley?”

  “Yeah,” he said. Too bad he stammered, which kind of threw me off my anger mojo for a moment. But he also assumed the position, raising both his fists in front of him like an old-school boxer.

  “Just punch the hell out of them.”

  “Easy for you to say. It’s so weird, punching a fake wolf to death like this.”

  “I know. The things we put up with when trapped inside a game.”

  The wolves lunged at us, snapping their jaws and making as though they were ripping us to shreds. As with the previous monsters, we didn’t feel anything but soft rubber moving whenever they came into contact with us, but it didn’t change the fact that two against six was kinda-sorta unfair. Besides, with us advancing with every kill, the wolves were also harder to get rid of compared to the previous monsters.

  I barely kept track of Ridley, who quickly got into his battle zone, and as I swung my sword again and again till I could feel my shoulders crack, I heard him let out angry grunts and occasional cries of “Take that! And that! Ha!”

  Well, if he got into our battles in that same mindset he was in when he was doing all those practice search-and-rescue missions with the others, yelling out virtuous catch phrases along the way,
that was perfectly cool with me. Every once in a while, I’d hear a wolf howl, which was the sign of death.

  For my part, I hacked away, having been backed up against the mountain wall by two wolves. Gritting my teeth and letting out angry, virtuous sounds as I fought, I swung my weapon like crazy, listening to my sword whistle in the air and watching obviously fake blood fly all over the place till one wolf howled before collapsing. Then I continued with the second wolf, which didn’t take too long for me to kill. After it howled, it fell off to the side, and I was standing in between two fake-bloodied carcasses. Half of their bodies floated outside the path, by the way, and I shook my head at how bizarre it all looked.

  It was quiet now, with nothing but heavy pants and gasps filling the air. I glanced up and found Ridley at the top of the path, which was a level surface. He was all red and sweaty, but he looked elated at the same time. I saw that he’d slaughtered four wolves to my two.

  “Tsk,” I muttered, making a face as I trudged up the path to join him. “The downside to being genetically normal.”

  When I reached him, I gave him a high five. “Good job! Too bad I suck at fighting. It’s like I can’t kill more than maybe a quarter of what you kill, and even then, I’m wasted.” I shook my head, grinning tiredly, while wiping my forehead against my sleeve.

  “I’ve been thinking about that, actually, and I find that kinda weird,” he said after pausing for a moment, scrunching up his face in concentration. “I suppose we can blame superhero powers for that, but my fighting skills feel—well, they feel pretty basic. You know, generic. So in a way, we should be fairly even as far as damage points go.”

  I snorted, still grinning. “Yeah, sure, generic for you, maybe, but not me. You’d still have way stronger fighting skills than I ever can, no matter what, because of who you are.”

  Ridley didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know, Eric. Gut feeling tells me that there’s something else that’s up, and what we get out of these mini-battles says as much.”

  I shrugged. “At this point, it doesn’t matter to me. If my killing a quarter of what you’re able to kill somehow helps you, I’m cool with that. At least I don’t stand by, all helpless and stuff. Come on, let’s look for more messages from Althea.”

  So we busied ourselves for the next few moments looking around for scrolls. After finding another bottle of healing potion and another leather vest, we decided to move forward and continue battling it out.

  I couldn’t help but mull over what Ridley just said, though. I didn’t feel anything weird, frankly, but I’d always expected fights between me and any monster to be much harder than those between the heroes and monsters. It was pretty much a given in real life, anyway, so why would it be any different in a make-believe world like this?

  We walked on, following the path that continued to go up the mountainside. Here and there, we’d be waylaid by wolves and an occasional abominable snowman-type of monster. Or at least it made me think of the abominable snowman because it was like ten feet tall and shaggy-haired. Like a monster hippie without the awesome bling. The attacks were getting more frequent, I noticed, and I was getting tired. Not enough recovery time in between them, and as before, I could only manage to slaughter a fraction of what Ridley could with his bare fists.

  “Okay, time out,” I panted after our last mini-battle. I had to plop my sorry ass down on a rock, using my sword like a cane that I could lean on while I rested. “Jeebus, this shit’s getting harder and harder for me.”

  Ridley stood nearby, watching me and looking sympathetic. But he also looked winded, though I was sure it had everything to do with the fact that he’d killed about eight wolves and abominable snowmen-type things, while I only managed three. And one of them was, like, diseased or something, judging from its fur’s coloring and its scarred, zombie-like face. I mean, seriously? That was pretty sad.

  “I wish I could give you extra strength or recovery time,” Ridley said. “I wouldn’t even trust those healing potions we find. They look like sparkly blood inside bottles.”

  I shuddered. “Hell, no, I’m not touching those! I’d rather fight using my own strength than down any of that stuff.”

  “Okay, let’s rest for a bit. I don’t know how much longer we have till we reach the castle, but we can’t stay here too long. I’m going to look around.”

  I nodded, and Ridley walked away to explore. In the meantime, I felt all depressed as I started to really consider what my role was. It felt as though I wasn’t part of the game—not sure exactly how I came up with that conclusion, but circumstances kind of made me entertain that idea even though there wasn’t anything conclusive about them. I just had a way harder time fighting monsters, and that was that, though I probably should blame Ridley for planting the seeds in my head to begin with.

  I leaned my head against my sword’s hilt, gulping air and listening to my heart slow down its beating. I was also getting really, really hungry, which upset me, because I knew that it meant my energy stores were practically zero. Hell, they were most likely in the negative numbers by now, judging from how I felt.

  “I found something!” Ridley called out. I didn’t even bother to stand up when he came back into view, waving not one, but three rolled up pieces of paper.

  “Meh. Could be another trap.”

  “Could be a message from Althea.”

  “I’ll betcha it’s a trap.”

  Ridley snorted as he unrolled one scroll while dumping the other two on the ground. “You’re too cynical.”

  “Considering what’s been happening, can you blame me? This sucks!” I leaned against my sword again, but I kept my eyes on him. I might be cynical, but I was still open to possible good news.

  Ridley quietly read the message first, and he broke out into a smile. “Told you it’s good news,” he said, glancing up at me. “Message from Althea: ‘Tracking your progress. Found some weird scars in the program. Communicating those to Sentries.’”

  I nodded, my mood lifting. “What about the others?”

  Ridley stooped down to pick up the other two scrolls and unrolled the second one. “Dude, check this out: ‘Game doesn’t seem to acknowledge Eric. He doesn’t register anywhere in the program. I think hacker only expected heroes, or he didn’t know how to tweak game to mark non-hero.’”

  We looked at each other, frowning. “Well, I guess that’s good news, depending on what that means,” I stammered, scratching my head. “If the game doesn’t recognize me, that explains why I feel like I’m like salmon going upstream when I fight. But then what?”

  Ridley shrugged, looking just as confused as me. “Let’s see what the third scroll says: ‘Communicating like Twitter sucks ass, but keep moving.’”

  “That’s it? A mini-bitchfest about communicating in limited characters?” I retorted, and Ridley shrugged again. I sighed as I watched him roll up the scrolls again and then stare at them. “Okay, fine. Looks like Althea confirmed what you said about something else going on—at least where I’m concerned. But what about that? If the game doesn’t recognize me even if I fight against monsters and stuff, how’s that going to help us?”

  “I don’t know. I have a feeling it means that you don’t earn us points when you kill something.”

  “What th—you mean all that trouble for nothing? How fucked up is that?”

  “That’s how the game responds to you, dude. If monsters react to you, it’s because you get in their way, not because you’re that hacker’s target. It’s pretty normal for monsters in computer games to do that.”

  I frowned even more. “So you mean I should stay away from what’s attacking us?” Okay, at that point my brain hurt so much, I needed to hunt down that zombie baby if only to kick it again and again. Maybe even see if I could dribble it around like a disgusting basketball.

  Ridley grimaced when he paused. “Oh, man, this sucks. This means that only I can earn points, no matter what you do to help me fight my way to the castle.”

  I shook m
y head, getting even more pissed than ever. “Oh, hell, no. That’s not gonna fly. If the program doesn’t recognize me, it should work for us somehow. We just have to figure stuff out along the way.”

  “But here’s our problem now—if you can’t earn us points, it means you’ll have to stop fighting in order to give me all of the monsters I can kill to earn maximum points, right? But that’s going to slow us down along the way with only a couple of hours to get through the castle. I mean, you’re helping me out a lot by taking care of some monsters…”

  I stood up, sighing heavily, and took up my sword. “No, I’m not going to buy that, Ridley. We have to figure out what I can do as a—dunno—non-entity in this game. I’m sure that this is going to help us somehow.” I walked up to him and gave him a tired but encouraging pat on the shoulder. “That jerk might think that he’s managed to get you, but it looks like he didn’t really think certain things through. Or he probably just totally screwed up in his own hacking to have this kind of glitch.”

  Ridley didn’t answer, but he turned and faced a tree that was several feet away. Raising both hands, he let the scrolls drop as he focused, and his hands immediately glowed with pulsing energy. With a little cry that sounded like “Wah!” Ridley blasted the tree with an energy bubble, completely swallowing it up.

  We both stared at it for a moment, counting seconds before it faded, and I nearly pissed my pants in excitement to see that the bubble remained for a long time before it went away. Ridley had amassed enough points to access his more advanced defense powers, at least.

  “Okay, if time’s our enemy right now, we definitely need to get you weapons,” I said, turning to him. “Power punches are great, but if you want to kill as many as you can in the shortest amount of time, something fast and effective would be good.” I thought for a moment before blurting out, “A crossbow! Yeah, that’ll be good. Range weapons should work.”

  Ridley nodded, looking a bit stunned yet elated at having close-to-normal levels of superpowers back. I led him away, once again following the path that meandered through the snow. “I’ve never used crossbows before. I hope the learning curve isn’t too steep.”