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  “Works for me,” Tae said.

  Kurtis and Tae each slung a rifle and bandoliers, which were heavy with ammunition, over their shoulders. Kurtis’s HUD acknowledged the new loot. Realizing he was being overburdened by everything, Kurtis chucked the two pistols from Jimmy Mulvey’s dead wife, and the shotgun. He kept the Glock, pocketed two magazines of ammunition for it, and one of the assault rifles from the mad priest, along with a bandolier of ammo and the tomahawk, which were reflected as chattel on his HUD.

  “I feel like I might become a believer after all,” Kurtis said, watching the priest make the sign of the cross.

  Tae smirked. “Sure you will.”

  Remembering the photo of Jimmy Mulvey and his family in his pocket, Kurtis pulled the photo out and flashed it at the priest. “Have you seen this boy?”

  The priest narrowed his gaze. He nodded. “Twenty minutes ago, maybe less. I sent him off with a blessed rifle.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “That accursed tower, the black spire,” the priest answered.

  “That’s where we’re going.”

  “Go with God,” the priest offered, “but beware. You will see things near that tower, things that once seen can never be unseen. You will be tempted and there will be things, dark things, that try to lead you astray.”

  “We can handle it,” Kurtis replied.

  “There will be bodies all around the black spire,” the priest continued. “The unlucky. The damned. They’ll be naked, white as chalk.”

  “Why?”

  “Some are jumping from the top of the spire. An object falling from the sky travels between 100 miles per hour and 150 miles per hour, my friends. At a height of 13,000 feet, it takes a body a full minute to hit the ground, and when you do, the result is traumatic. Limbs are severed, clothes are ripped from your body. All that’s left is a nude, bloody heap. Course that’s better than what happened to those who vanished in the dust.”

  “What do you mean?” Tae asked.

  The priest pointed to the green cross on his forehead. “I sheltered some of the older and younger ones before the game began. I watched them vanish into the nothingness and now some have told me they’re coming back.”

  “How?” Kurtis asked, even though he knew the answer.

  The priest’s face screwed up in disgust. “The things that did it, those devils, they’re recycling them. They’re stealing some of those lost souls, that green dust that you may or may not have seen, and embedding it in other things. Godawful things. Monstrous things. They’re doing this right before our eyes. Occultis aperta. Hidden in plain sight!”

  Kurtis shivered at the thought of what he’d witnessed back in the church. The thought of a child or an elderly person implanted inside of a monster tore at his insides. He fought off these images and swapped looks with Tae.

  “Thanks for the goodies, father,” Kurtis said.

  The priest had a faraway look in his eyes. “This is all because of sin. You know that don’t you? Sins of the heart, sins of the flesh. This country was built on the shedding of blood. The violence was always here, but we managed to keep it at bay for a time, like a beast locked up in the cellar. But sometimes the beast gets hungry and the devil reaches up a hand and undoes the lock and lets the monster roam loose to devour and corrupt…”

  Father Sabina closed his eyes and began reciting passages from the Bible. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord!” he screamed.

  Tae held out her hand and touched the priest’s wrist. “If you happen to see the Lord in the next fifteen minutes or so, send him our way. We’re probably gonna need some backup.”

  Father Sabina nodded and went back to reciting verses, shouting. “You are all creatures of the Lord! Made of a teaspoon of alkali and a grain of sand! You are the true salt of the Earth!”

  Kurtis and Tae walked single-file through the city’s shadow-smothered alleys and backstreets. A disarming quietude fell over their section of the city, and Kurtis spotted a pool of eerie emerald light up ahead. He and Tae inched forward, exiting the shadow of an office building, laying eyes directly on the black spire. Up this close, a strange elemental sound, almost like a mantra being chanted, emanated from the spire which cast the emerald light.

  There were other participants in sight. Men, women, all heavily armed. But nobody was fighting. Everyone was standing and staring at the spire, the ground around them littered with what looked like mannequins but which were, upon closer inspection, the nude, dead bodies of participants. The flesh of the dead was the color of piano keys, and Kurtis wondered whether they’d jumped from the top of the spire or been tossed outside.

  An archway opened on the spire and a knot of participants entered. The archway would close for several seconds, then open to allow participants in, then close, and so on.

  Screams, angry roars, and the muffled sound of explosions echoed from somewhere deep inside the spire. Kurtis looked up, trying to push the horrific shrieks out of his mind. His eyes flitted up to the twisting top of the spire, its peak sharp against the sky, as if piercing the air and making nature itself bleed.

  The structure gave off a kind of energy that made his skin crawl. God only knew what horrors awaited inside. He began to doubt whether he really wanted to move forward, not that he really had a choice. Outside was death. Inside was death. Free will my ass, he thought. The only real choice is how you die.

  A few seconds later, he was surprised to find that he’d been drumming his fingers against his rifle, impatient, mimicking a beat from Hal Blaine, one of the greatest old-time drummers of all time. He stared at the spire. Fuck it, might as well go out fighting like a raging wildcat, he thought.

  Kurtis swallowed hard. After taking a deep breath, he slipped a fresh magazine of ammunition into his gun.

  “This is it, kiddo,” he said to Tae. “Last chance to bail.”

  “Screw that,” she said. “In for a penny, in for a fucking pound.”

  Kurtis smiled at Tae’s ballsiness. She was going to need it, hell they both were, if they had any hope of making it to Level Two.

  The archway opened and Kurtis and Tae ran to it. There would only be two outcomes—they’d make it through the opening gauntlet, or they’d be dead and not know the difference. No need to get their feet wet first.

  11

  The First Trial

  When Kurtis passed through the archway, a cold chill struck him, and his body shivered. The air smelled of rank biological decay and was charged, causing the hairs on the back of his head to stand at attention.

  “Congratulations,” Nadine said. “You have reached the Black Spire.”

  His eyes panned left to right, up and down, as he observed the innards of the spire, awed at the incredible otherworldly feeling the strange space filled him with. The interior was significantly larger than it appeared from the outside. Shadows clung to the walls like mold, but even in the low light, Kurtis spotted two avenues to access the spire: one, a wide, gravity-defying staircase spiraling upward, and the other, a broad pathway that led forward.

  “How big is this place, Nadine?”

  “Its size cannot be quantified.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Impossible things happen every day, Kurtis.”

  A schematic appeared on his HUD, three-dimensional representations of spaces and rooms of varying dimensions. There were ramps, staircases, ladders, catwalks, gantries, and even ropes and poles inside the spire. It appeared to Kurtis that there were levels within the spire and each was populated by red and yellow dots.

  “I thought we were already in Level 1,” Kurtis said.

  “This is all Level 1, but within the spire there are various sublevels,” Nadine answered.

  “How many?”

  “More than ten. You will receive an additional 100 experience points for each sublevel you reach.”

  “How about points for reaching the black spire? We get anything extra for getting here?”

  “I’m sorry, but
no, Kurtis.”

  “Cheap-ass aliens,” he muttered to himself. Tae looked over. “You checking this place out?”

  He nodded. “Sublevels within levels, a thousand participants, eighty-two monsters, traps, and treasure galore.”

  She batted her eyelashes. “Don’t get no gooder than this, Kurtis.”

  “I thought there was a shortcut, Nadine.”

  “There is a quickening in the spire, a secret portal that provides access to the other side of the wall.”

  “I don’t suppose you’re going to point us in the right direction.”

  “That I cannot do. You must quest and find it and if you do, you may be able to circumvent the majority of the sublevels within the spire. Be aware that this place will try to deceive you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The spire affects different people differently. Some come to find themselves within these walls.”

  Kurtis didn’t fully understand what that meant.

  “How do we make it out?”

  “You must discover that for yourself. But be aware, sacrifices will need to be made if you hope to make it eventually to Level 2.”

  Kurtis took a mental snapshot of the schematic and powered down the HUD. He and Tae inched forward and Kurtis had the strangest sensation, as if he belonged in the spire, that this had always been his destiny. At the same time, he knew better, and that the spire was likely causing the sensation as a way to draw him in deeper with the sole intent of capturing would-be treasure hunters only to devour them without mercy. If anything, he had a hunch that the spire was an alien incarnation of a dungeon core. He just hoped he hadn’t already doomed himself to its whims.

  Tae dropped her gun and it made no sound. The walls were like sponges, having the ability to absorb not only light, but sound. The effect was unsettling. The pair remained dark and mysterious, in sight but almost hiding with the archway still open behind them. Everything seemed blank and void. The moonlight and even a flashlight that Tae clicked on, the one they’d taken from the basement of Jimmy Mulvey’s house, barely penetrated the murk.

  Caught up in the moment, Kurtis hadn’t even noticed the archway closing behind him. His HUD sparkled with information and he heard the massive doors groaning closed behind him. He wheeled around and instinctively stepped back toward the entrance, but it was too late.

  The entrance sealed shut with a loud swoop and grinding noise that caused his ears to ring. By every measure he was in the lion’s den now—no turning back was almost an understatement.

  Tae tapped his shoulder and he looked back as a sickly crimson glow emanated from an invisible source, illuminating the darkness with an unnerving aura, revealing things that Kurtis hadn’t noticed before.

  Along the jet-black walls, strange markings and runes were etched into a pliable material that was most definitely not of this world. Kurtis rubbed a finger over the walls and left no prints, no smudges of any kind. He pulled out his tomahawk and hit the wall, but the blade just bounced off, leaving no mark of any kind. The engravings and inscriptions were intricate and chaotic, as if they’d been filigreed by a delegation of lunatics. There were words and symbols Kurtis had never seen before, images of nightmarish monsters and things that defied description, and numerals and what looked like some form of alien hieroglyphics.

  Interrupting his curiosity, a loud and ominous voice echoed off the cavernous walls. The voice didn’t seem male, female, or robotic, but more like a million voices speaking all at once and in harmony—with disturbing and creepy synchronous words. “The first objective of the Melee is to stay alive,” the voice cooed. “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.”

  Kurtis had heard some version of that already (or at least that’s what he recalled), but the delivery made all the difference. It felt like millions of dead souls—human, alien, and monster—were calling out from the depths of the great beyond, not warning him per se, but making sure he knew his fate was going to be the same as theirs.

  “What do you make of it?” he asked Tae.

  There was no response. He looked in every direction, seeing that she was nowhere in sight. Tae was gone.

  Kurtis’s breathing quickened. A pang of worry hit him, the thought of being alone strangely terror-inducing. It was the spire, he thought. The building, the alien structure was doing it, trying to fuck with his brain.

  He moved around in a circle, searching for Tae, but there were no nooks or crannies, no hidden alcoves where she might be hiding. She had vanished. He was all alone, trapped like a rat inside a dark space from which there was little chance of escape.

  “Tae,” he called weakly.

  Nothing. No response.

  He checked his HUD and seeing no participants or monsters directly ahead, hobble-stepped forward, moving deeper into the spire.

  Soon his feet echoed off the smooth, polished floors. “I can make this work,” he said, in an attempt to boost his confidence. “The darkness is my friend.” A still, small voice chuckled, whispering in his ear that he was beyond hope, that salvation lay at the end of his gun. All he had to do was place the cold barrel of the Glock against his ear and end it. “You’ll be with them again,” the voice said. “Ali and Aidan. They’re so close…”

  Thrumming filled his ears, a low hum bounced off the walls, and his vision began to blur at the edges. He tried accessing his HUD, but the stats were blurred, as if the Noctem were running jammers to scramble the signals.

  “It’s been too long,” a familiar voice echoed along the walls. “I’ve missed you, Kurtis.”

  Kurtis shook his head. This couldn’t be real. Then again, after all he’d witnessed today, so many things were possible.

  “This is a trick,” Kurtis replied. “You’re not real.”

  “Oh, we’re very real, Kurtis,” she said, still unseen. “And we can finally be together again.”

  He tripped over his own feet as the haze overtook him. He stumbled forward, advancing deeper into the spire. He wouldn’t have thought that there was any way for the semi-darkness to grow thicker, but somehow it had.

  Two silhouettes appeared up ahead—one tall, one short. They were standing with their backs to a darkened space that was without form or definition. Then they moved forward, briskly, as if they had no need for the light.

  Kurtis stumbled toward them as fast as he could. When he reached them, he saw exactly who he thought it would be, Ali and Aidan, his wife and son. They looked exactly as he’d remembered them, dressed for winter, readying to head out for school on the day they’d encountered that truck on an icy road and slipped into eternity. How long ago had it been? He strained to clasp a memory, but Kurtis couldn’t remember, stroking his chin, absolutely dumbstruck, horror and relief struggling for purchase in his mind.

  “Welcome home, Kurtis,” Ali said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “This can’t be happening,” Kurtis replied. “What kind of trick is this? You’re both dead, and we’re all fighting for our lives. There’s no chance you’re really here.”

  His vision blurred more by the second. He swooned, disoriented, unfocused, yet simultaneously ecstatic at the sensation of seeing his family again. They had their arms out, beaming, Ali calling for Kurtis, begging him to come closer—it was too much. He had to know for sure.

  After a few steps closer, the visage of his wife smiled and almost seemed to moan with pleasure at his approach. Aidan wasn’t talking, but that didn’t strike him as unusual. The boy was probably in shock, as was Kurtis.

  As he grew nearer, he could smell them. Strange how much a scent can bring you back to a particular place in time, Kurtis thought. The air was heavy with familiar odors: warm spring afternoon by the lake, a packed lunch, perfume, a dusty old book that his wife held onto because of nostalgia. Was it really them? Was it a trick? There was only one way to find out.
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br />   When he approached without hesitation or fear, a claw struck out and scratched his face, drawing blood that splattered across the ground. Kurtis pulled back, grasping at the cut in disbelief. Ali had scratched him.

  “Why would you do that?” he asked.

  “I thought you were going to hurt us,” Ali said. “You came in too fast. It won’t happen again, I promise. It’s just that everyone has been attacking us. We’ve been lost inside this thing, Kurtis. Aidan and me. Locked up in the darkness for as long as I can remember. Is something going on outside of the walls? We’ve heard screams and shouts. Are people fighting? Is someone coming to hurt us?”

  Kurtis quickly pushed the pain aside and shuffled in close. Maybe it was too good to be true, but he could understand how she’d be on guard with all the chaos and destruction.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” Kurtis said, trying to calm her, reaching out. He hugged his son, who felt clammy. “How long have you been in here?”

  “I don’t know,” Ali replied, hands pressed to her cheeks.

  “Do you know the way out?”

  “I don’t—I think that way,” Ali said, pointing toward a cavernous space that lay spooled toward a corridor lit by a single bulb fixed to the ceiling.

  “Let’s go,” Kurtis said, taking the hands of Ali and Aidan. “We need to find a way out of here.”

  “And then?”

  “We’re going home,” Kurtis said. “I don’t give a damn about the game or what’s happening outside. We’re going home.”

  He led them down into the corridor. The single bulb lost some of its vibrancy such that Kurtis was soon straining to see the way forward. The walls and ceiling seemed to be closing in on them. He groped for the right words to say to them. He hadn’t seen either of them in so long that they felt like strangers. In time they’d grow close again, just like it had been before.