Dan froze when he reached the hallway leading to the bunker access shaft. With Vega carrying that man, and Farrah destroying hallways as they advanced, he had somehow taken the lead. Perhaps that was why he felt even more so responsible for the crawling agglomeration of flesh, bone, and whatever goo the mutations were made of that shifted on itself up ahead. They hadn’t breached the threshold into the bunker, no doubt stopped by any of the three dozens of skills the board members – or whoever those piles of nerves and skin used to be – kept active, and that he hadn’t had the time to deactivate or read. But that changed absolutely nothing.

  “Fuck,” Farrah swore, finally catching up.

  “Sir,” Vega nodded.

  “Don’t agree with her!” Dan snapped. He was concerned the next thing the girls were going to agree on was that this was all somehow his fault.

  “The sun is – close,” The man smiled.

  Dan gave him a glance, and something tightened in his chest. All the uncalled-for self-deprecating thoughts vanished, as he saw the very thing he sought in that man’s eyes: the blue-coloured screen that would finally give him agency over his own death.

  Vega leaned forth, to make eye contact, and he shivered and looked away as she spoke:

  “Amplify your invisibility to Mastered, and use an amplified weave to combine it with Farrah’s environmental camouflage and my arena, both at novice.”

  It took Dan a second to register what she was suggesting.

  “Where do you want me to get weave from?” He asked. The answer came to him before Vega had the time to reply. He could clone it from those things downstairs, cast it five times to gain it at untrained, and then follow Vega’s plan.

  He folded three fingers, as he did the mental math of how much that’d cost.

  Farrah sighed, making him aware that she could do that same math in seconds if she knew what he was calculating, but didn’t comment. She nodded at Vega, confirming their plan, and walked forward, her rifle at the ready for the possibility of the zombies breaking through.

  “Just to confirm,” Dan spoke, looking at the shorter woman, “The plan is to just walk through there?”

  “That’s a bone heavy, that’s a field wraith, and all those non-distinct ones are walkers,” Farrah replied, pointing at one of the many of each type of zombie. “They’re all crawling on the floor because they shattered their legs jumping or falling from up there. I have no way of mapping how many more there are, but my bullets will be of much better use up there than in the sole narrow shaft we need to take to escape. Let’s go,” she gestured forward with her rifle.

  “I’m just asking because this will use pretty much all my power,” Dan paused for a second, then added the part he did not want to say out loud with a shaky voice, “I’ll be dead weight after this.”

  “We’ve got your back,” Farrah said without turning around. He could tell she nodded from the way her sweaty and blood-soaked ponytail moved.

  She most likely meant it, but even if she didn’t, it wasn’t as if Dan could get out any other way.

  “Legs first, questions never, as they say,” Dan tried to reassure himself with a movie quote as he started walking forward.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Vega replied as if the comment was directed at her.

  As he got closer and closer to the invisible boundary, he activated each skill in succession.

  Cost: 1P per up to 4 levels of mastery increase. 2P per level of domain mastery increase.

  Then came the tricky part.

  Cost: 7P to cast. 2P per extra target. 4P to clone additional skill from the same target. 1P per range extension of 1km.

  He spammed weave. A screen bipped in front of him, notifying Dan that he’d just gained the skill, but he wasted an extra 7 power casting it again as a clone before he processed that. He quickly checked his Power, and was reassured to see it sitting still in the high 2700’s.

  “Okay, here goes,” he spoke.

  Cost: 2P per extra 0.5h. 2P to extend the skill to another target. 1P per 1*log(x in meters) wavelength extension. 1P per 500m radius increase.

  “I’m here,” Dan said, more so to reassure the girls that he was still working on the dome than to remind them of his position.

  “Mhuum.”

  Sphere of 5m in diameter used on self. All within sphere is invisible at 50m to 5μm wavelengths “;” imperceptible by creatures non-reliant on sight when closer than 30m to target.

  All outside sphere repelled, not projected, by directional force of 7N based on angle of incidence between self, gravity-adjusted sea level, and sphere contact point.

  Cost: 40P per minute of tapestry use.

  “The sky is so close…” The man muttered, as he glanced up, hope in his eyes.

  “Yeah, we’re getting you out of here, don’t worry,” Dan replied, now visible to his companions again.

  He took a deep breath and crossed the threshold.

  The creatures were immediately pushed aside by the arena skill. Dan had never realised how small a 5-meter sphere was until he and three other people had to share one. The zombies were everywhere but the floor. They crawled over the shifting blue dome, creating ripples as they dragged their mingled bodies behind them, all heading towards the door. Them crossing the threshold seemed to have triggered some signal, finally allowing the sea of corpses to flow inside.

  Cost: 2P per 5cm of radius extension. 15P for 30 seconds of duration extension. Variable P cost for wavelength penetration.

  “Bip,” Dan mumbled on reflex.

  “What is it?” Farrah asked.

  “A new skill; protective dome, but it’s untrained, it’ll eat through more power than, this. And the costs for it are unclear, …” He gestured around. In doing so, he accidentally glanced up and made contact with an elderly man. His wrinkled olive skin and thick beard would have given off a trustworthy impression – the kind of person you’d take candy from at the playground – if not for the left-hand side of his face being entirely bashed in by something angular and large.

  “Focus. Hand to the wall, let’s go,” Farrah ordered.

  “The magic skills aren’t usually worth it,” Vega added.

  Her tone was somehow calm, almost edging on reassuring, and for some reason that unnerved Dan almost as much as the corpses crawling over them. But he clocked his eyes on the floor, outstretched an arm to touch the wall, and made his way to the stairway.

  He stopped again once he got high up enough for the sphere to reveal a sea of shifting flesh below him. This was truly his worst nightmare, he realised. The stairs had been claustrophobic enough, but now he realised that if the skills were to suddenly stop working, stop synergising in the way they did, meters upon meters of decaying bodies would collapse onto him, and push him down, to the bottom of an equally dead but living mass of flesh. And then, it would be anyone’s game what he’d die from first; blood force trauma, a zombie tearing his throat apart, or Farrah shooting a rocket at the creatures around him.

  “Hey,” Farrah’s hand landed on his shoulder, jerking him out of his own head.

  “It’s really hard to not think about all the gruesome ways we can die here…” He muttered, in an attempt to make himself feel better. Then, he made the mistake of looking up at Vega who seemed entirely in her element. She gave him a friendly smile, and the man slumped over her shoulder glanced back, as if more concerned with the dirty t-shirt pressed into his back than the zombies around them.

  “You know what,” Farrah squeezed past, and took two steps in front of him, “put one hand on my hip, the other here,” She guided his other hand to the side of her rucksack, to a side pocket that contained an empty and a full magazine, “And close your eyes.”

  “What?”

  “Just follow my lead.”

  Dan made didn’t look at Vega, or down, and quickly realised that this was indeed the better way to proceed.

  “Just don’t go too fast,” He said, doing as he was told.

  “We are on a timer,” Farrah reminded him, that dryness returning to her voice, as she began to walk.

  Vega felt oddly calm as they ascended out of that horrible place. And for once, she knew it wasn’t her skills dulling her perception of the world.

  She’d killed so many of the doctors, so many of their victims, … They were gone for good, free from the horrors of that place, and stopped from doing further harm. She knew that there were other facilities, and perhaps once Farrah was done with her quest, they could go free those people too.

  This facility somehow felt personal, perhaps because it was her first time.

  She stopped in her tracks.

  This was the first time in her post-memory-loss memories that she wasn’t having a sense of deja vu at something she should have seen before.

  “Vega, are you okay?” Farrah asked, stopping three steps ahead.

  “No, there’s, umm, I’ll explain later,” The woman replied before hurrying up.

  A message from Altair appeared before her.

  “No need,” Vega whispered.

  With the noise of the creatures crawling around them, and Dan muttering something to himself in a language she didn’t know, it wasn’t hard to hide a whisper.

  Vega didn’t reply. She wished Altair would say those things out loud so Farrah could redirect the conversation.

  He turned his head, his determined expression being caught in Vega’s peripheral vision.

  “They don’t want to evolve,” she whispered, “Umm, you don’t get it, but the OBELISK, umm-”

  “Easy for you to say…” all of the previous sense of fulfilment and optimism was gone from Vega’s voice. “The System only makes the world worse. People die, umm, people turn into monsters,”

  Altair shrieked in pain, covering his eyes, as the sky finally opened up above them.

  Vega immediately moved to shelter him, although she couldn’t be certain what from. He knelt on the stairway, arms over his head. Dozens of screens with unfinished sentences appeared before Vega. She glanced back at the duo.

  “What’s wrong?” Farrah knelt by Altair, her hand over his shoulder, as she tried to pinpoint the source of his pain.

  “Nothing-” He barely managed to mutter. “Continue … up.”

  “Hey, whatever it is, we’re almost out.” Farrah gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Then we’ll sort it. Yeah?”

  Altair opened his mouth but did not manage to utter a single word. He eventually nodded in reply.

  Vega looked up at Daniel, who stood, eyes still closed, one hand on the torn cables, the other on the railing.

  “Yeah,” Dan was the one to reply. “I only have six more minutes of this left. So if you don’t mind.”

  “Okay,” Vega whispered.

  “Hmm?”

  “We need to get going,” Vega said, pulling Altair back up. He was clearly in pain and resisted the motion on an instinctual level. But she respected his decision, and it seemed Farrah did too.

  The woman regained her position two steps above and began leading Dan at a slightly faster pace.

  “What’s wrong?” Vega whispered quietly enough only for her and Altair to hear.

  His grip over her shoulder tightened with every step she made him take, and an unpleasant tightness constricted something non-vital in her chest. Several of his text boxes appeared then vanished before they could be fully formed. Eventually, he managed to regain enough composure to tell her:

  That was all too true. But pain could be treated and its cause removed. Vega whispered to Altair about the drugs both her companions carried, but he refused. He hid his face in her shoulder as the stairway above them fully vanished.

  “Three meters to go!” Farrah spoke from above.

  Just as she did, a winged monster dove past them, into the shifting mass below. Vega looked down one last time. She didn’t have the time to wonder or care where, or rather whom, those creatures had come from. She practically carried Altair up the last few steps, and let him collapse to the cement ground as he yelled in pain.

  The helipad was open, although Vega had noticed that a long time ago. There were only a half-dozen of the winged monsters up here, keeping watch along the rooftop and from the untouched helicopter. Tiny hands and feet and strings of organs crawled around, avoiding the translucent blue dome around Dan.

  Farrah spared Altair one pitiful glance, as she swapped out her magazine.

  Dan was catching his breath, from the stress more than from the effort, bent over with his hands over his knees.

  “Do you girls want a countdown?” He asked. It was unclear, as usual, if the question was genuine or mean-spirited. “Fuck, are you okay?” He dropped to the ground by Altair as soon as he realised the situation. “Shit, what’s – I have ibuprofen,” He started rummaging through his bag.

  “Countdown,” Farrah reminded. “You’re going to have to carry him, I’ll cover you.”

  “What?” Vega asked.

  “Almost got it,” Dan unzipped a red cloth pouch and started squinting at the unlabelled tablets.

  “To that door,” Farrah gestured to the doorless doorway. “On his count,” She nodded at Dan.

  “Fuck give me a second,” Dan finally found the ibuprofen and extended the pill to Altair.

  “No.”

  For a second Vega wondered if the two had heard the word among the shakiness of Altair’s voice, and the screeches and moans coming from the well. But both froze mid-movement, expecting him to continue.

  “No! You can’t!” Vega exclaimed.

  “Can’t what?” Farrah asked after half a second of thought. She’d caught on. “Please, now is not the time. How much longer have we got Dan? Just do this,” She gestured between Vega and Altair, “When we’re all safe.”

  Dan’s frown eased as he too understood that a conversation had been taking place outside of his ear range.

  “I’m sorry,” Vega turned towards Farrah. She really was. She tried to pull Altair up, to follow the retreat order she’d been given, ignoring the text boxes he wrote in protest.

  Altair suddenly pushed Vega to the side, almost to the edge of Dan’s tapestry.

  “Seven,” he said looking up at Farrah.

  “What?” Dan asked, his fingers wrapping around the painkiller as he began putting it away.

  Time slowed down, by no skill of Vega’s as Farrah and Altair locked eyes. The corners of his lips began moving into a smile. He didn’t rise, still sitting with his legs under him, his arms shaking under his own weight. The clouds parted just enough to allow for the setting sun to give his naked body a quaint, calming, yellow tint.

  “Six,” He said, and Dan moved up, and Farrah moved forward.

  Vega’s mind saw their movements before they happened. She could predict where Farrah would put her left foot, at what angle she’d bend down to pick Altair up, and how she’d recoil when he pushed her away the same way he did with Vega.

  Vega knew the janky, hasty movements of Dan’s fingers, and how his chest moved with irregular shallow breaths as he zipped up his backpack and got ready to run.

  She saw Altair’s lips forming the word ‘five’ before they actually did, and she saw Farrah kick him in the chest.

  But she couldn’t move.

  And her heart tried to break out of her chest with a racing rhythm, and the air was suddenly so void of oxygen because Vega didn’t know why.

  He fell into the darkness of the well.

  Dan’s bubble burst, and Vega was on her feet before she knew it, on instinct, punching through one of the flying monsters.

  Farrah shot several of them down, and even Dan’s aim proved true for once.

  They found themselves back to back, on the edge of the well. Vega was the first to look down and to spot Altair’s figure among the monsters. He didn’t drown in them, nor was he devoured. It seemed whichever one of them he touched suddenly became docile. One by one, the guttural noises quieted down.

  “He’ll live.” Farrah patted Vega’s back. Then she raised her Steyr and shot several buckshots into a mass of limbs crawling towards them. “One of the writings on the wall said-”

  Dan poked her with his crossbow, interrupting the sentence. That was for the best because Vega didn’t want to know what the mad writings of those doctors said. She had not read them on purpose.

  “Umm, we should bury Altair,” Vega spoke, taking a step back from the well, which was now very obviously a helicopter access shaft. “Can you fix that?” She pointed at the H135. “With, umm, the luck thing,” She added. She tried to remember how that grief had felt, as her mind rearranged itself. She wondered if that was what had held her down seconds prior.

  Farrah shook her head.

  “I’m on last stand.”

  “Oh, of course you are. Shit,” Dan fired a bolt at a walking corpse that ran through the door-less hallway.

  “We’ll burry – something for him,” Farrah spoke. She shot down two more monsters from that same hallway, before checking her stats “Can you still use run?” She asked Dan.