Chicago Read online

  Red-and-orange tracer fire slammed into the pillar and several explosions rang out along with screams and the ululations of whatever monsters were swooping through the air.

  “Check it out!” Tae shouted.

  She aimed her gun at a flying fiend, a silver-winged beast with a ram’s head and the body of a lion, that was zipping between the pillars. The creature was knocking the participants off of the footways or taking bites out of them. Kurtis looked closer on his HUD, which populated with information on the monster:

  Species: Criosphinx Monstrum

  Level:1

  Class:Monster

  Health:10/10

  Attributes: Palladium-coated wings are impervious to small-arms fire; it also possesses a barbed, telescoping tongue, and the ability to launch bone darts from its talons.

  The Criosphinx buzzed past a participant, a bulky bearded man, who was firing at it with a machine-gun from a footway that was suspended eighteen feet off the floor. The participant’s bullets ricocheted off the monster’s wings and Kurtis watched the thing swipe its clawed hands left to right, sending a flurry of gray darts into the participant. The bulky man was wearing body armor, but the darts cut through the material like a knife through smoke. The participant fell in a bloody heap to the floor, ten feet away from them.

  Without warning, Gabriel jumped up, braved several bursts of fire and slid to the ground behind another pillar that was located twenty feet away. Then he reached out and grabbed the bulky man, snagging his machine-gun and dragging his lifeless body over to another pillar, where he grabbed several magazines of ammunition from the man’s gear.

  “Thirty feet give or take,” Kurtis said. “That’s how far up we need to go to get out of this place.”

  Tae scanned the roofline and checked her rifle. “Easier said than done.”

  Kurtis motioned to Gabriel, pointing up to the first footway, a nearly invisible patch in the air. They would have to climb up onto the first one, crouch, totally exposed to the other participants and monsters, and then hop from footway to footway to make it to the balcony.

  “You ready?” Kurtis asked.

  She nodded. “You gotta die sometime, right?”

  “That’s my girl. Always full of sunshine.”

  Kurtis whistled to Gabriel and held up three fingers. Then two. Then one. Then they all ran forward toward the first footway.

  Gunfire greeted them and Kurtis returned fire, spraying bullets in every direction while being mindful of the Criosphinx. In the back of his mind he was wondering where the other two monsters were. The HUD, unless it was wrong, said there were three in the chamber.

  Gabriel reached the footway first. He leaped up, grabbed the edges, the compressed air buffeting him, flapping his hair back. He pulled himself up. Tae and Kurtis did the same. The sensation of standing on the footway was awkward, Kurtis thought, as if he was trying to balance on a surfing board.

  Tae quickly adopted a crouch and shot a female participant who was on a section of footways fifteen feet overhead. The woman, who was clutching a grenade, fell backward, dropping her grenade, which airburst, killing another two participants. The other fighters were too busy trying to kill each other to notice. Kurtis had expected that maybe everyone would find a way to work together, but apparently that was not to be.

  “We’ve got another monster!” Tae screamed.

  She pointed and Kurtis spun to see a hideous thing skittering down one of the pillars. It had the head of a woman with long black hair, a bloated, naked body, and four segmented legs that resembled something taken from a grasshopper or a praying mantis. The woman’s mouth was shaped in a huge V and she was moaning, spitting red liquid in every direction, Kurtis’s HUD reflecting:

  Species: Formicidae Monstrum

  Level:1

  Class:Monster

  Health:8/10

  Attributes: Hooked feet coated in a natural adhesive allow it to climb upside-down; able to launch poison-coated stingers and vomit projectile acid.

  Kurtis saw the Formicidae confront a tall, bald participant who was clutching a combat shotgun. The man shot the monster – 2 Health Points! for the monster, and then the beast alighted onto another footway and vomited a steady stream of red bile down onto him. The man screamed, clawing at his flesh, which was smoking. In seconds, his flesh began peeling off in streamers, leaving the man a moldering heap of burning flesh. Kurtis fired at the monster, which leaped from footway to footway.

  “It’s coming this way!” he shouted.

  Tae and Gabriel commenced running to the right. They hurtled onto the next footway, which was four feet away, not an easy jump by any means, but doable, particularly if you were at full strength. Kurtis wasn’t, he was down to 8 Health Points, so the jump was more difficult, but he managed it.

  “C’mon, old man!” Tae shouted, pulling him forward.

  Kurtis’s eyes were locked on the Formicidae, which wasn’t stopping its advance. The eerily human face on the beast dropped open and it grinned at Kurtis. He pulled the trigger on his rifle, firing off bursts, willing bullets into the fiend. -1 Health Point! -2 Health Points!

  The monster wailed in agony and spat a stream of red acid at Kurtis, who lurched out of the way. To avoid the acid, he stumbled back. Readying to finish Kurtis off, the Formicidae shook its body and fired a volley of poison-coated stingers. Kurtis had no choice but to jump out of the way. He vaulted laterally and felt himself falling down through the air—

  WHAM!

  Landing hard on a footway directly below the prior one, the wind knocked from his lungs. He looked up to see Tae and Gabriel moving on without him. The Formicidae sprang forward and Kurtis rolled over, losing his grip on the rifle. He was down to the Glock and the tomahawk.

  Pushing himself up, Kurtis gripped the tomahawk and turned, heaving it at the monster with everything he had. The axe hit the monster in the face, splitting it open. Red liquid mixed with a fountain of green blood as the monster tottered. Kurtis grabbed his Glock and fired two shots, finishing it off. The dead Formicidae landed on a footway directly below Kurtis. Kurtis dropped down and grabbed the tomahawk.

  “Hurry!” Tae shouted from overhead. “You need to move now!”

  Kurtis jumped onto the next footway, then leaped onto two more. He grabbed a machine pistol off of a dead participant, Nadine congratulating him on acquiring a Heckler & Koch MP5K. There were only twelve bullets left in the magazine, but they would have to do, his HUD reflecting:

  Species:Homo Sapiens (Evinrude, Kurtis)

  Infected: Heartbreak Grass – Drains health at a slow and excruciating rate

  Chattel:9 mm G17 Gen-5; Tomahawk; HK MP5K 9x19 mm

  Health:7/10

  Level:1

  Class:Fighter

  Kills:12

  Vitals:BP – 124/80; T – 99.07f; RR – 15bpm

  XP:425

  Kurtis was down to 7 Health Points and was struggling to climb higher. Tae and Gabriel were just above him. They were ten feet off the ground and had another twenty to go. Kurtis watched a bevy of participants reach the balcony and vanish through a door.

  Feeding off the adrenaline that came with killing the monster, Kurtis made his mind go black, just as he’d done back in prison. He tuned everything out and listened to an internal beat, the pounding of his mental tom-toms, the sound that had gotten him through his darkest days.

  Clutching the tomahawk in one hand and the machine-pistol in the other, he jumped up, elbowing himself onto the edge of a footway, then did this again. Another participant took several pot-shots at Kurtis, but Kurtis returned fire, cutting the man down. He began running, jumping from footway to footway, knocking three other participants down like bowling pins, amassing experience points.

  Tae and Gabriel were screaming for him, but Kurtis was too far down in his zone to hear them. He was laser-focused, intent on catching up with them and then heading through the balcony to Sublevel 3. He reached another footway and then bounded up, twenty feet off the ground, movi
ng faster than a person in his condition should be able to move.

  He caught up with Tae and Gabriel and passed them, jump-running like a man possessed. A shadow startled him out of his revelry. It was the Criosphinx, the flying monster. In all the excitement he’d forgotten all about it, but there it was. A few feet away, flying directly at him. Kurtis held up his weapon to brace for impact and the monster slammed into him.

  14

  Into The Fire

  Kurtis thought he’d been hit by a freight train, the impact from the lion-like body of the Criosphinx was so jarring. A panic attack threatened, but he fought it off, too busy focusing on grabbing something before he slammed, head-first into the ground.

  His arms windmilled and then something stopped his descent. It was Gabriel! The kid was on his knees on the edge of his footway. He had both hands around Kurtis’s ankle and it was clear that Kurtis’s bulk was threatening to pull them both down to injury or death.

  “Don’t let go!” Kurtis shouted.

  “Wasn’t planning to!” Gabriel replied.

  Tae leaped back to Gabriel’s footway and she grabbed Kurtis’s other leg. They pulled Kurtis up to safety. Kurtis dropped his machine-pistol and tomahawk on the footway and withdrew his Glock, aiming at Gabriel.

  “GET DOWN!”

  Gabriel did and Kurtis fired his pistol at the Criosphinx. The monster’s mouth was open and its tongue was unfurling like a bullwhip. One of Kurtis’s bullets severed the tongue and the barbed end, loosed from the root of the tongue, flew past Gabriel’s head.

  The monster vomited blood and bile and Kurtis shot at it until his magazine was empty. The other bullets bounced harmlessly off the monster’s wings.

  “We need to keep moving,” Tae said. “We’re almost there.”

  Kurtis pocketed his pistol and grabbed the other weapons, pushing himself up to see that they were only twelve or so feet away from the balcony, to the exit that led to Sublevel 3.

  Kurtis had lost another health point, but he couldn’t stop now. There was no way in hell he was giving up. Willing himself forward, he skipped from footway to footway. Looking back, he saw that Tae was following, but not Gabriel. The kid was standing alone, enormous combat knife in one hand.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” Kurtis shouted.

  Gabriel didn’t respond. He stood transfixed by the Criosphinx as it flew at him. The sound that came out of the monster’s open mouth was sharp enough to shatter glass. It fired a burst of bone darts. All of them missed Gabriel except a single jagged dart that hit him at the base of his neck.

  Gabriel’s head jerked back and his legs buckled, but he didn’t fall. Instead, he planted his feet and waited and then drove the knife into a spot under the monster’s throat. The Criosphinx didn’t stop and the blade didn’t dislodge. Instead, the sharpened steel ripped open a gash that mortally wounded the creature.

  The thing squawked and flew in a circle, blood spraying in short bursts. Tae planted several rounds in the thing’s head, causing it to plummet to the ground where it broke apart on impact.

  Kurtis hopped back to Gabriel, throwing an arm around him. The boy had his hand over his throat, but the wound was plaguing him. Kurtis could see the blood spritzing between his fingers even as he fought to staunch the flow.

  “Buy a medpack,” Kurtis said. “Hurry up and do it.”

  “Not yet,” Gabriel responded.

  “What are you waiting for.”

  “Just get me up there,” Gabriel said, glancing at the balcony.

  With much effort, Tae and Kurtis did just that. The trio jumped over the final footway until they were standing on the balcony, which was translucent.

  “Congratulations,” Nadine said. “You have reached Sublevel 3 and acquired an additional 100 experience points.”

  Kurtis’s HUD reflected a battery of updated stats that included his survival time, XP for killing 4 participants, along with the reward for reaching Sublevel 3:

  Species:Homo Sapiens (Evinrude, Kurtis)

  Infected: Heartbreak Grass – Drains health at a slow and excruciating rate

  Chattel:9 mm G17 Gen-5; Tomahawk; HK MP5K 9x19 mm

  Health:6/10

  Level:1

  Class:Fighter

  Kills:16

  Vitals:BP – 122/80; T – 98.09f; RR – 14bpm

  XP:631

  The air shimmered on the balcony and Kurtis could see something on the other side, what looked like another corridor. He wondered what was on the other side of the corridor, but frankly it didn’t matter. They had to make their way through Sublevel 3 if they had any hope of finding the portal that led to Level 2.

  They passed into the corridor and found that its walls undulated, as if something or some things were on the other side fighting to get through. The only light came from Tae’s cellphone. A retching expulsion of breath issued from Gabriel’s mouth, along with a clot of blood. There wasn’t a whole lot of life or fight left in him, and Kurtis was worried that he wouldn’t last much longer either. Even though he’d gained XP, he still didn’t have enough to acquire the requisite Ragetag and he was down to 6 Health Points. His vision was beginning to blur and every muscle and joint in his body was throbbing.

  Along with his progression, he noticed a new set of menu options. Boxes inside his HUD marked “Reactions” including, among others, “Attack,” “Evade,” “Dash,” and “Brace,” began blinking.

  “What do I do with those, Nadine?”

  “As you progress, all of your bodily and mental functions will become more integrated with the Melee, which is a great honor.”

  “I’m supposed to select actions from now on rather than just go through with them?”

  “You can do whatever you choose. The new functions allow you to be aware of your every move, which will greatly increase your reaction time and reflexes, as well as general decision-making processes.”

  Kurtis mentally toggled through the various actions and settled on something he’d seen before, but never explored: “View Outcome Probability.” He mentally selected “View Outcome Probability” and a litany of potential fates displayed:

  Save Gabriel as promised (Chance of success at 3%)

  Save Tae (Chance of success at 6%)

  Save Tae & Gabriel (Chance of success at 1%)

  Save yourself (Chance of success at 16%)

  Please make your selection, keeping in mind that once an option has been chosen, it cannot be undone. Good luck!

  “What are these?” Kurtis asked.

  “Potential choices,” Nadine answered.

  “And possible outcomes?”

  “Every choice has consequences, Kurtis. The first objective of the Melee is to stay alive, the second is to kill. By staying alive and killing adversaries you acquire experience points that can be redeemed for various items that may ultimately assist you in improving your station. As we discussed, you will require a Ragetag, which will greatly increase your chances of reaching Level 2. Acquiring the requisite experience points for such a purchase without hard choices is exceedingly unlikely.”

  An image of the Soucouyant Ragetag appeared, a bronze battle suit with a black helmet, which cost 750 experience points. With additional minutes of survival time, Kurtis had 633 XP.

  “Are there any alternatives when it comes to acquiring enough experience points to purchase a Ragetag?”

  “I will answer your question, Kurtis, but you should know that killing a member of your own party, now that you have rescued them, results in significantly more experience points.”

  “I get more points for killing my friends?”

  Nadine was silent.

  “Answer the question, Nadine.”

  “Very well. It is my duty to assist you. Yes, more points are bestowed for killing participants that you are friendly with, along with family members.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “You may also seek out a quest within Sublevel 3 where you may be able to obtain enough experience points
to purchase a Ragetag. There are also loot crates gifted by the Noctem when true merit and ability have been shown—for the purpose of testing individual participants with great promise and potential. If you demonstrate you are capable of handling a loot crate’s contents in an effective and deadly manner, you will gain experience points and additional chattel. I believe I have answered your question in full, yet, you should consider that pursuing a quest or a loot crate decreases your chances of success overall, unless your intent is to use members of your party as bait, sacrificial lambs to the slaughter, or decoys to slow down pursuers. Of course, that would be most clever.”

  “If there’s an option to delay choosing what happens with party members, I’ll take that,” Kurtis replied, hanging his head in frustration. Things were getting more fucked up by the second. “In the meantime, how do I get a quest or find a loot crate?”

  “Keep following the others.”

  “Just…walk into the darkness?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  “Simple seems to have different meanings in your culture, but yes. Select the option in your HUD for quest once you have arrived near the edge of the Sublevel 3 plain. If the Melee finds you worthy and capable, you will be granted one. Then you simply…venture in.”

  The darkness was soon split by a flash of light. Kurtis followed Gabriel and Tae into the opening of a room that appeared as large as a football field. The trio stood on a rise, a spit of naked rock that looked down over a basin. The ground was covered in gray pumice and the air was stifling and gritty. Information flooded Kurtis’s HUD. The landscape was desiccated, flat, and full of all sorts of bad guys. There were more yellow dots than red, thousands of them, everything swirling around a mighty cropping of rock that appeared to be smack-dab in the center of Sublevel 3.

  “That’s it,” Gabriel said, pointing at the cropping of rock, “that’s the shortcut.”

  Kurtis’s HUD showed two paths to the cropping of rock. One path that was longer, but less overrun by monsters and other participants, and another path that was much shorter, but which ran, like a gauntlet, directly through the bad guys. A prompt appeared on Kurtis’s HUD: