Chapter 6

I covered my head with my arms, smacking into the oil-slicked ground. My vision blurred from the impact as discomfort radiated up my arms and my knees. My heart rate spiked, fluttering in my neck, until it reached a threshold. Then something happened. My pulse began to plummet, a wave of calculated calm washing over me like a drug.

What was that? My title at work?

Snap out of it. Take stock. You hit something.

I stood, ignoring the cold prickles of pain from my scraped hands, and surveyed the scene.

A dull stoplight loomed overhead through a layer of fog that rolled in from nowhere, emitting specular red strobes. My bike laid on its side, handlebars splayed upwards. Whatever hit me struck with enough force to tear the tire from the spokes. The tire had landed a short distance away, bent in half from the impact, wobbling back and forth on the asphalt like a ship in a storm.

But I wasn’t looking at the bike. I was looking at the crumpled form beside it. It took a moment to recognize it for what it was. A body. My skin lost all warmth as I realized what had happened. I wasn’t under attack. Someone, or something, had thrown a whole-ass person and I’d just happened to get in the way.

A slight chill went through me as I considered a new possibility. I quickly pulled up my quest notification. It still indicated east. Good. Not my target.

My earlier hope felt foolish now. This was the second case of violence I’d had a front row seat to in less than a day. I snuck a look around the corner and saw nothing but an abandoned street, then made my way to the body to investigate

Within a foot of him, the sharp scent of chemicals caught my nose. His skin was raw and angry, covered with red splotches that laid bare bits of muscle and bone beneath. Half of his face had been melted away. A single gray eye blinked and looked up at me.

Acid.

Nausea gripped me and I held a hand over my mouth, trying not to vomit. It’s not that I was an idiot, but I had clearly been unprepared for the sort of situation I was getting myself into. I just hadn’t expected it to be this bad.

This is low threat?

My one test case of Probability Spiral was indirect, minimally violent when you considered the person I used it on had a gun to my head. Any damage caused was brought on by his own actions. If this was the result of another user, then they were basically my polar opposite. I pulled my phone and keyed in 911—

Stop. A voice told me. My voice.

It’s a burner. It’s fine for minor indiscretions, setting up payment and services from students for what amounts to petty misdemeanors. But you called home with it earlier. Even if it took them a while to access the call history, they could potentially trace it to the gas station you bought it from, pull the footage. Then it’s just a matter of running the image through facial recognition.

No. I couldn’t call the police. But I couldn’t just leave him there, either. I bent down, shining the light from my phone on his pants, confirming none of the acid had made its way onto them, then began rifling through his pockets. He groaned when I accidentally jostled him. Keys. Wallet. Drivers License, Dorian West. No cash in it, just pictures of his kids. My hand settled on something in his side pocket and I removed it.

A knife. Not the compact sort. It was long with a wooden sheath, and an overly ornate handle trimmed with burnished silver. But now that I was looking at it, and looking at his pocket, it was far too large to have fit there comfortably.

Weird. But irrelevant.

Valuable? Maybe. But taking a weapon from a crime-scene seemed like a terrible idea. I tossed it aside. Dug around in his pockets until I found a cellphone. I swiped up, and when facial recognition failed, it gave me the emergency option at the bottom left.

I called 911 and masked my voice while I gave the operator a location, then left the phone face-up next to the man’s burned and withered ear. Grimly, I realized that they would, in all likelihood, not get to him in time. Not if things had been as chaotic as the SWAT officer who chased me into the garage made things seem.

Bad for him, but not necessarily for me. It meant I’d have plenty of time to make an escape. At some point, I’d made the decision to flee. The body had firmly jolted me out of the previous manic state and fear for my life was kicking in. I didn’t know enough about my class, my skill, or what I was up against. I was open to investigating before discovering the magnitude of the threat. Having now seen it second hand, there wasn’t much point in putting myself in this level of jeopardy. The reward wasn’t a small amount of money, but I wasn’t willing to die for it, or curious enough to get my face burned off.

I eyed the knife. It didn’t look like much, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a little protection, and it wasn’t like this guy was using it. I took the knife from the ground and slid it out to check out the blade. It was long and pointed, more like a dagger. It felt good as I hefted it in my hand before I, then I slipped it back in its sheathsheathe and , nestlednestling it into the kangaroojoint pocket of my hoody.

<Uncommon Item gained: Blade of Woe>

Oh. Apparently we were doing unbound System loot now. That was a sure sign this guy was another User and a strong indication the scenario I was in involved PVP. No way that could possibly go badly. I glanced at the man on the ground with a bit of suspicion.

<Item Description: A rogue’s knife. Unlocks additional utility for rogues and stalkers. Not much more use than an average knife in a frontal attack. Gains additional utility when used from behind.>

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I wasn’t particularly impressed. The description pretty much could have just said knife and gotten the same point across.

Readjusting my hood, I gave one last forlorn look to my fallen bike and left it behind, jogging back down the street towards home.

Then someone screamed. A woman’s voice, pained and shrill. “I’ll kill you and your mother, you bastard.” She screamed out, voice echoing from almost a block away.

I felt myself deflate. Because the voice sounded familiar, yet I couldn’t place it.

And now I had to look.

My palms started to sweat as I crept down the alley. Every footstep seemed unconscionably loud, grit and gravel crunching under my feet. I found myself silently wishing that I’d worn softer shoes. The voices grew louder until they crescendoed. A man cackled, so loud and over the top it might have been funny if I’d heard it in any other context.

I slid down against the wall and leaned over. It was like having a front row seat to a portal to hell. A half dozen bodies in worse condition than the earlier man littered the road. Their features were raw, slowly erased by a bile-like liquid that covered a large chunk of the ground. It seemed to be bubbling but not burning through the concrete itself, which honestly wasn’t much in terms of comfort.

A car was burning from the engine block upwards, the entire front caved in, a driver splayed lifelessly through the half-shattered windshield. A quick check on my quest showed I was right on top of the target location, but it gave no further information.

And then, at the center of the carnage, I saw her.

Daphne Verner.