Remy drifts through the space between worlds. This place reminds her of the bugs that games sometimes experience when an avatar glitches outside of the constructed level and falls into infinity.
Is that where I am? she wonders. Have I clipped out of bounds? Am I going to die here? How long would that take?
She curls up alone in the dark recesses of nowhere – no, not alone. The whisperer in her ear, the demon on her back, her smiling shadow, is always with her, always flooding her mind with disjointed thoughts.
Alone, all alone, we’re going to die here.
You again. Why are you always so scared? Remy asks herself.
Not me, you, we. They’re all gone. Gone like Avarice, like Esmerelda. You’re alone again with nothing. Nothing to go back to. Nothing to go back for.
No, that’s a lie. Maybe my life is a mess, but it’s mine. I can turn it around. If I can survive this, I can survive anything.
The voice sneers in her head. You barely survived and it cost you an arm. You’re broken, you’ll never be whole.
She looks at the prosthetic shield strapped to her right arm, beaten, scarred, worn, just like her, and smiles. It doesn’t matter, I’ve got this far without it. You drag me down like those corpses and I’m sick of you. Sick of me. I can change it. If I get back, I’m going to change it.
A glint catches her eye – a lone star in the abyss. As she floats towards it a ringing tingles her ears, faint at first but it grows to head-melting loudness. She presses her hand against her throbbing skull and releases a hellish scream. Her eyes snap wide as the pressure stops as suddenly as it came and the pull of gravity weighs her down.
“Remy?” She hears Ed’s voice, but she can’t see him.
“Ed?!”
She runs her palms across the ground to gauge where she is. It feels smooth – some sort of stone maybe, but coated in a thick layer of God knows what.
A gentle breeze brushes her face, but the air feels sticky, unbearably humid and stale, and the smell of scorched dust offends her nostrils. Another dungeon? she wonders.
“Ed?” she calls to him again.
“I’m here,” he replies.
Her fumbling hands find him in the dark. She pats his shoulders and throws her arms around him.
“You’re alright?” he asks.
“I was drifting, lost, confused, alone. It sucked.” Nothing a floundering twenty-something hasn’t experienced already. “I didn’t think I’d ever see anyone again.”
“It was five minutes.” Valentine’s grouchy voice resounds from the dark. Remy can barely make out his shape in front of her.
“Is Jess—?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, I made it,” Jessica replies.
“George?” Lauren calls out.
“You’re sitting on me!” he groans.
She feels about, and cups his head in her hands.
“Sorry.” She stands to free him and bashes her head on something hard. “Agh, what the f—?!”
“Where are we?” Jessica asks.
“Hell if I know,” Bengeo says. “At least we all made it.”
Lauren draws her phone from her pocket and switches it on, hoping the two per cent of battery will last enough to activate the flashlight app. She illuminates the dark, featureless tunnel that surrounds her and a familiar racket thunders in the distance. She casts the light on the rail suspended above, and it dawns on her where they are.
“Run!” she screams.
“What’s wrong?” Jessica asks.
“Just run!” She takes George’s hand and bolts towards the light at the far end of the tunnel. The sound of her trainers slapping the concrete is quickly muted by the roar of whatever calamity is stalking them. The noise is monotonous, repetitive and evokes unprecedented misery. The light draws nearer until they can see clearly, and the seven of them emerge from the tunnel and scramble onto the platform of Highgate underground station, only to be met by the confused and bewildered stares of people occupying the platform. They gawk and video the ragtag party who look out of place, dressed in a mishmash of fantastical clothing, caked in blood, sweat, tears and filth.
Bengeo looks amazed at the station. It’s like nothing he’s ever seen – the yellowing tiles, the huge tatty billboards opposite the platform advertising package holidays and a cure for erectile dysfunction. He peers at the numbing fluorescent lights hanging above, bathing everything in a sickly yellow hue, and jolts, startled by the train pulling in behind him.
“Get back!” He raises his fists defensively as the doors beep.
“It’s just a train,” Ed wheezes.
“That’s a train?” The bandit looks dumbstruck as the doors slide open by themselves and people disembark and board. He looks curiously about to ascertain the source of the announcement telling him to ‘mind the gap’.
A young couple exit the carriage, look Bengeo up and down and smile. “You look awesome!” the man exclaims. “Can we get a selfie?” he asks.
“A what?”
“Actually, would you mind? It’d be cool if we were both in it.” The young man hands his phone to Lauren who, in a daze, politely takes it and frames the photo while the couple poses either side of Bengeo, who looks utterly unimpressed. Click, click, click.
“Thanks!” The man grins as Lauren passes back his phone.
“You guys going to the con?” his girlfriend asks.
“Uh, what?” Lauren’s mind is occupied with a million thoughts – How did we get back? What about what the crystal said? What are these brands on our skin? Did Vincent make it through too?
“The game convention, at the ExCel centre?” the girl asks.
“Oh, sure…” she replies absentmindedly.
“Well, have a good one.”
“The hell was that about?” Bengeo asks, eyeballing the couple with suspicion as they exit the platform.
Lauren shrugs. She’s still pretty disorientated. Her eyes wander to the tube station sign and a little smile creeps across her lips.
We’re back. We’re home.
Never in a million years did she imagine she’d be happy to be standing on the platform of Highgate tube station.
Jessica throws her arms around Lauren and jumps up and down excitedly. “We made it! We made it!” She’s so happy she’d kiss the floor if it weren’t so filthy it might kill her.
“So that’s it? It’s over?” Ed asks.
“What? It wasn’t thrilling enough for you?” Valentine leans against the wall and lets out a thankful sigh. Maybe with years of therapy and alcohol he can put this whole ordeal behind him.
“But what about all that stuff the voice said?” Ed lifts his sleeve, revealing the blistering brand on his forearm. “What are these marks?”
Valentine scoffs, “Consider it an ugly reminder that this wasn’t all a psychotic break.”
The doors bleep before shutting, and the train departs as usual, then violently shunts to a halt. The party stare with dreaded anticipation while the passengers inside look about in confusion as they pick themselves up. Remy wonders if it’s just a run-of-the-mill train fault, happens all the time. Her gut tells her no, but her heart tells her, also no. Her worst fears are confirmed. Colossal tentacles emerge from the tunnel and slither around the rear carriages.
“Well, that didn’t take long,” she sighs.
“Oh God, I, like, can’t even with this game,” Jessica whimpers. The trauma of her time spent petrified in stone comes flooding back. Perhaps most torturous of all was the inability to scratch her nose or go to the toilet. She couldn’t see or speak in her condition, but she could feel, and being petrified when you need to pee is without a doubt the Worst. Experience. Ever.
“Hey, Muscles, gimme a hand with this!” Valentine says to Bengeo, and together they prise the rear set of doors open, allowing the passengers to flee before the creature drags the end carriage back into the tunnel and crushes it like an empty soda can.
More tentacles writhe onto the platform in search of the ‘players’ who are caught up in the rush of passengers fleeing the station, which only incites fear into the people walking by the entrance, who start to panic as well.
“They probably think it’s a bomb or something,” Ed says as people push past him in a frenzy.
“That’s not a bad thing right now, long as it keeps them out of the tube station,” Valentine cries.
“Yeah but the police aren’t going to have any idea how to deal with that thing.” Lauren pushes her way up the stairs and clings to George’s hand, making sure they don’t get separated.
“That’s why we gotta warn ’em. All of you, come with me.” Valentine forces the ticket barriers open and once outside, glances at the foreboding overcast sky. A biting chill lingers in the air and snow starts falling all over the city.
*
Helen sits in her car, parked on the street outside the police station. The worry on her face ages her horribly. She’s hardly slept a wink this past week. She’s been parked here for hours because she doesn’t know what else to do with herself. She gnaws her fingernails to the cuticles while staring absentmindedly at a strange group of people bickering with each other as they jog across the road towards the police station entrance. It takes a moment to recognise Jessica and Remy covered in all that muck, but the second she does, she jolts forward, headbutts the window and spills her coffee everywhere. By the time she’s scrambled out of the car, they’re gone.
*
Valentine bursts into the police station, darts past the reception desk and into the backrooms with the others following closely behind.
“Hey, you can’t go back there!” the receptionist cries, but they pay him no heed, and he sits down in a huff.
Valentine marches everyone through the holding area and up flights of stairs to the offices, where Constable Alapati is trying to explain to Lauren and George’s mother that there’s no new information on her missing children, without giving away that, not only is she out of her depth, but the lead detective has disappeared also. She spots Valentine through the blinds of the meeting room and excuses herself immediately.
“Scott?!” she shouts across the office, drawing the stares of her colleagues who regard the group curiously.
“Nitya!” Valentine smiles like he’s welcoming her to a dinner party.
She looks him up and down and grimaces. He smells like he’s been wading through sewage.
“Where the hell have you been?!” She prods him in the chest. “You disappear in the middle of a bloody investigation, you don’t answer your phone, you don’t check in! We had half the station out looking for you, diverting valuable time and resources from finding those missing people!” She points at Lin sitting in the office on the far side of the room. “Everyone said you were a waste of space, but I defended you, and now I’m the dickhead that has to—”
“Mum?” Lauren’s meek voice interrupts her rant.
“Mum?” Alapati lights up, recognising Lauren from the picture her mother had shown her. “You…? You found them?” she gasps.
Valentine grins. “Yeah, I found them. So maybe soften your tone, eh?”
“Everything. I want to know everything right now.” She grabs a passing constable and tells him, “Put ’em in the break room, we’ll interview them one by one. Who’s this?” She gives Bengeo a sharp eyeballing as Valentine takes her aside.
“Listen, something utterly insane is happening, and it’s going to sound unbelievable,” he whispers.
Knowing he doesn’t take much seriously, she assumes by his severe expression that whatever he has to say must be important.
“In here.” She leads him into one of the interrogation rooms for a quiet word while the others are escorted into the break room.
Lauren breaks the line and bursts into the office her mother is sitting in.
“Mum!” She flings her arms wide.
“Lauren?!” Lin catches her daughter, pulls her close and sobs with joy. “Are you alright? Are you hurt? Is George with you?! Where have you been?!”
“I’m okay, Mum.” Tears stream down Lauren’s cheeks. She shuts her eyes with a smile. “We’re okay.”
Lin spots her son standing in the doorway and waves for him to come. George runs to his mother, and she embraces him too.
“Mum, it was crazy! There were monsters and airships, and Grimoirh was real! Only he wasn’t really Grimoirh, but he still had this sword that explodes with fire, and I shot down an airship when we got chased through the sky and crashed into this big crater and underneath…” The boy barely stops for air while Lin tries to keep up, but she hasn’t the foggiest idea what he’s talking about.
Through the window in the break room the others watch the Bakers’ reunion.
“That wouldn’t be happening without you.” Ed nudges the bandit. “You’re a real hero, you know.”
Bengeo shrugs it off, the tough guy act, after all, is hardwired in him.
*
“Trapped inside a video game?” Alapati is a picture of scepticism as she perches on the desk in the interrogation room.
“Believe me, if you’d seen the shit I’ve seen, you’d question your own sanity too,” Valentine laughs.
“Scott, this is—”
“I know how it sounds, I mean, hell if it were the other way around… but c’mon, Nitya, you think I’m making this up? You know I’m not that creative.”
“You’re telling me monsters, actual monsters, from a video game are crawling out of Highgate tube station.”
He nods emphatically.
She breathes a long sigh and folds her arms. “I’m sorry, I can’t… I don’t even—”
Valentine wipes his hand down his face and sighs too. “Terrorists then. Armed terrorists have seized the underground.”
She glares at him and shakes her head.
*
Ed watches Jessica struggle to unwrap a chocolate bar the policeman had given her from the vending machine in the corner of the break room.
“You okay?” he asks.
She shrugs, then bites off more than she can chew but tries anyway. The poor girl looks like she’s been dragged through a series of thorny hedges, mauled by wild animals and kicked down a mountain. No filter on earth could fix her.
He glances at Remy sitting opposite. They exchange a fleeting smile before she lets out a brooding sigh and runs her hand through her tangled, matted hair.
She’s happy to be back, but an undercurrent of dread is sweeping her out to sea. It’s not over yet, and that’s scarier than any monster could ever be. She looks worriedly at Bengeo who’s sitting against the wall, his mind a million miles away. He’s always been a wayfarer, but he loved his world, and now it’s lost to him.
Sensing the dour mood, Ed raises his little plastic cup of water. “To fallen friends.”
The others look tenderly at him, and raise their cups in solidarity.
“May the great spirit guide them to infinity.” Bengeo sips his drink then pours the rest on the carpet to commemorate them.
A ruckus outside the room disturbs their memorial silence. A familiar voice pricks Jessica’s ear.
She looks at Remy, on the edge of a smile and asks, “Do you hear that?”
Remy nods. That brash voice is all too familiar and chills her to her core like nothing else can. She exits the break room to find her mother screaming at several police officers, who try in vain to calm her down and usher her downstairs.
“Hey,” Remy shouts, “that’s my mum!”
Helen pushes her way through and squeezes Remy and Jessica tightly.
“Where in God’s name have you two been? What the hell are you wearing? What is this thing on your arm?” she shouts, somewhere between fury and rapture.
“It’s a long bizarre story,” Remy replies.
“Why didn’t you call? Jess, you never go anywhere without your phone! Are you in trouble? Did someone—?”
“Mum, we’ll tell you everything, but you’re going to want to sit down.” Jessica escorts Helen to a chair. Remy perches on the desk beside it, and regales her mother with their adventure.
*
“Bum a smoke?” Valentine leans his head back against the wall.
Alapati rolls her eyes and pulls a pack from her breast pocket. She knows you’re not allowed to smoke inside, but good lord, he looks like he needs it. Valentine takes the cigarette and holds it in his mouth while he fumbles around for a lighter. Alapati pitying him, offers hers. He leans over the flame and his eyes roll back as a wash of nicotine floods his body with euphoria.
Alapati places her hand on the door handle but hesitates before opening it. “I’ll bring them in one at a time, get to the bottom of all this. Sarge will want a full debrief. If I were you, I’d drop the crazy schtick.”
“Yeah… maybe,” he sighs, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
As Alapati steps into the hallway two uniformed policemen sprint past her down the corridor.
“Hey, watch it!” she cries, but they pay her no mind. Moving into the main office, she notices everyone is mobilising from their desks, and grabs another uniform passing her by. “What’s going on?” she asks.
“Something is happening on the underground.”
“What do you mean ‘something’?”
The policeman pulls out his phone and shows her a shaky video of a tube train being ripped apart on the platform. It’s difficult to make out what exactly is happening, but it looks like something hurled the carriage.
“This is a joke, right?”
“I’ve seen four other videos just like it, and the phones are lit up.” The policeman shoves his phone back in his pocket and sprints out the door.
“Can’t be…” She looks down the hall at the room Valentine is in and weighs up whether or not to humour his story. After a moment of hating herself, she begrudgingly returns to him.
“Alright, say I believe you. What the hell is going on?”
Valentine grins like the Devil, clenching the cigarette between his teeth. “Shut the door.”
*
Remy isn’t having much luck explaining it either. She tells her mother of the monster in their living room, how Jessica was petrified, Bengeo’s daring rescue, the man-eating forest, the trolls, the crypts, the crystals, everything. Helen listens with a pinch of salt until Remy hesitantly unbuckles her prosthetic shield and shows her mother her bandaged stump.
Helen clutches her stomach and turns ghastly white at her daughter’s dismembered limb. Jessica’s efforts to comfort her prove futile. She pushes the girls away and retreats to the other side of the room where she leans over, drawing slow breaths to quell her nausea.
“Oh Jesus,” she sniffs. “Who did this to you? What are you going to…? How could…? Oh God.”
Remy and Jessica, recalling their earlier predictions on how Helen would take the news, share a smirk at her expense.
“Why on earth are you two smiling?!” Helen snaps.
“N-no reason.” Remy sucks her lips between her teeth.
“Ray is going to go spare.” Helen clutches her head as the room spins.
“Calm down, Mum.”
“Calm down?!” She looks furious at Remy. “You disappear for over a week without so much as a word and show up with a bloody hand missing and you’re telling me to calm down?! Remy Meredith Winters, you tell me right now who did this to you! No more nonsense about games and monsters!”
“Mum, she’s telling the truth,” Jessica insists.
“Not you,” Helen gasps, “you’ve always been the sensible one.” Her anger quickly turns inward as she spirals down into a dark abyss. “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have been so hard on you, I drove you away, but you just kept pushing…” She leans her head against the wall and slides down it onto her knees. “I… I’ve failed you.”
Throughout all their arguments over the years, never has Helen shown a flicker of weakness or self-criticism, which usually drives Remy mad, but hearing her mother say those words hurts in a way she never expected.
“Mum…” Remy kneels beside her, “… I know I’m difficult. I push you all away and act like I don’t care, but I do. I felt so alone all the time, and I didn’t know what to do. I’m just so sick of feeling like… like I don’t belong anywhere… I’m sorry that I’m not the daughter you wanted.”
Helen looks at Remy, raw and ragged before her, and hugs her tightly without a word, then she takes Remy’s face in her hands and looks her dead in the eye. “No matter what you think, you have been and always will be my whole world.”
Remy trembles in her mother’s hands. The look in her teary eyes says everything she can’t.
A blaring alarm cuts short their embrace. Any police left in the building hurry downstairs, and Alapati and Valentine tear out of the interrogation room and regroup with the others in the main office.
“What’s going on?” Lauren asks.
“Not sure.” Valentine stubs his cigarette out on a desk.
“All of you wait here,” Alapati exclaims, “I’ll find—”
The air is torn by shattering glass. A rabid winged feline bursts through the office window and crashes into a desk. Alapati watches speechless as its humanoid face shrieks while it scrambles on its razor paws. Bengeo wastes no time and leaps at the creature, which swats him aside with its sprawling wings. Remy draws her broken sword and drives it through the beast’s head freezing it solid before it shatters. She turns to her mother, who looks absolutely stupefied.
“Got it.”
“What in God’s name was that?” Helen yelps.
“I… uh, I think it was a manticore.” Remy’s explanation brings no comfort to her mother who looks just as terrified if not more so.
Ed peers through the broken window at a dozen more game monsters striding through the snowfall towards the police station.
“I count fourteen!” He draws Mr Slashy from his back.
“There are more of those things?” Alapati asks.
“A lot more and a lot worse!” he replies.
“We need to lock this place down,” Valentine says. “Go to the locker and sign out something with stopping power.”
But Alapati is too busy tapping a frozen chunk of the monster with her toe to pay him any attention.
“Nitya!” he shouts, pulling her back to the moment at hand. “Guns?”
She composes herself and races to fetch them.
Jessica stares at the brand on Lauren’s neck and recalls the evil entity’s words. “They’re coming for us,” she says.
“No kidding,” Remy replies.
“I mean they’re hunting us!” She hikes up her jeans, revealing the brand on her calf. “The voice, it said we belong to it.”
Ed looks worriedly at the blistering sigil on his forearm then at Remy who shares his concerns.
She looks at her mother and at Lin. “We can’t stay here. We’re endangering everyone.”
“Where can we go?” Jessica asks.
“We could drive into the country. Maybe they wouldn’t follow us that far, at least that would buy us time,” Ed suggests.
Remy shakes her head. “Those monsters will keep flooding the city, and my sword froze that thing, which means magic somehow works in reality, and that can’t be good. We need to find Vincent. As much as I hate to admit it, he said this would happen.”
“But we don’t know where he is. Again,” George says.
“Maybe, maybe not.” Everyone looks at Lauren expectantly. “Today is the London video game convention.”
“So?” Remy asks.
“So, Eric’s unveiling the DLC, announcing patch updates and doing a whole bunch of promotion. When I saw Vincent in the game, he looked shocked to hear Eric was alive, and in the crater he mentioned how that made him realise one of the shards had already escaped the game. I’d bet my life that if we find Eric, we find Vincent and your hand.”
“Did she just say ‘your hand’?” Helen looks visibly disturbed.
Remy purses her lips. She regrets stabbing Vincent but shudders to think that he might have had even a shred of justification for his horrible actions.
“They’re at the doors!” Ed yelps.
“Let’s go!” Valentine says.
“Excuse me!” Helen cries. “Can someone please explain what on earth is going on?”
“I second that,” Bengeo says.
Helen points her finger at the bandit. “And who the hell are you?” She looks to Lin for backup, but she shrugs.
“Mum, you’re embarrassing us,” Jessica whispers.
A crash and then screams ring out from downstairs.
“This way!” Valentine leads them through a fire exit to an emergency stairwell.
Remy grabs her prosthetic from the desk as she passes, and manages to fasten it on before an undead rhinotaur bursts through the wall and tackles her. Bengeo rushes to her defence and wrestles the creature’s horns, twisting its head away from her. It snaps its jaws and hurls him into the wall with a jolt of its head, then fixes its attention to the others. Remy puts herself between them and slashes the beast as it charges. The thing releases a quaking roar and Helen shrieks as it grips Remy’s broken blade in its hands. BOOM! A gunshot crackles through the corridor, and the creature collapses in a gory heap at Helen’s feet. All colour drains from her face as she stares at the guts and debris scattered across the carpet.
Alapati cocks the smoking pump-action shotgun in her shaking hands.
“What the fuck was that?!” she gasps.
Ed gently lowers the barrel towards the ground. “Nice shot.”
They descend the stairs and follow Alapati through a heavy fire door into an underground car park.
“So what’s the plan?” she asks, deferring to Valentine, who looks surprised that she’s actually on board for this crazy rollercoaster.
“Where’s this convention held?” he asks.
“The ExCel centre,” Lauren replies.
“That’s the other side of the city,” Alapati says.
A chorus of spine-chilling wails draws their attention to the exit ramp, and the hell-spawn pouring down it. Alapati tosses Valentine the shotgun and arms herself with the carbine rifle slung on her shoulder. They open fire on the monsters, but the hail of red-hot lead and buckshot isn’t enough to keep them back for long, and walking dead overrun the car park in a matter of minutes.
“Mrs Winters, stay back!” Mr Slashy vibrates in Ed’s hand as it springs to life and in one swoop, lops off three festering heads.
“Dirty undead bastards!” the blade chants, slicing another in half at the waist.
Helen turns green at the decapitated legs stumbling about while the top half crawls towards her, trailing its rancid guts behind it.
Bengeo brings his boot down, smashing its skull, then hurls the body like a rag doll into the horde. Jessica pulls George away and they scramble beneath a parked car as the corpses swarm them.
*
Ed’s voice croaks with fear. “If we don’t make it—”
“Oh shut up, we’re going to make it.” Remy pushes back the living dead with her shield, but they pile on and drag her to the floor with clawing, bony arms. She drives her sword through a wight’s face, which shatters as she retracts the blade then stabs another. Her bounding heart fuels her with adrenaline, and she lets out a bloodcurdling scream as the dead pull her in every direction. Memories of the pit come rushing back, sending her tumbling down a well of panic. A scream, desperate, determined, human, tears through them like a chainsaw. From within, she summons the strength to push back with her shield as the corpses clamber over her and sink their rotting teeth into her flesh.
With all his might, Ed brings Mr Slashy down, cleaving a wight’s head above the jaw. His hand finds Remy’s amongst the struggle, and he pulls her free.
“Go!” He helps her onto the bonnet of a police car and she pulls him up after, then they hop across the parked vehicles and climb atop a police van which is tall enough to keep them from harm.
Helen and Lin clamber into the back of the same van while Alapati and Valentine cover them.
“Hurry!” Lin shouts and stretches out her arm, but before Lauren can reach her mother’s hand, a wight grasps a fistful of her long hair and drags her away kicking and screaming. Lin shrieks as her daughter is engulfed in a tide of withered flesh and bone.
Lauren struggles and writhes until her hand finds Remy’s discarded sword, and with one swipe she lops off her hair, freeing herself from the creature’s iron grasp, and wastes no time scrambling back towards the van while Valentine fights his way to her. BLAM! Limbs and guts fly everywhere as he fires into the crowd while she crawls on her hands and knees to him. He pulls her onto her feet and keeps the dead back until they reach the van. Remy and Ed quickly hoist her onto the roof with them, and Valentine turns to join them but flinches suddenly at a sharp sting below his ribs and staggers backwards. Looking down, he sees a splintered bone protruding from his stomach and with a groan he slumps to the floor, gasping. His wrinkled hand trembles as he pulls the bloodied photo of his daughter from his pocket.