Chapter 13: Of Course Murphy’s Law Survived

At the last moment she hesitated, deciding to check the time before she left the bunker.

[19:22]

She grimaced. On her shoulder Maus was all soft fur, and supportive black eyes.

“You know what? Let’s wait eight minutes,” she said, her voice low and even, “what do you think?” She asked, tapping into their bond and feeling nothing much going on at all.

Her gaze drifted back to the timekeeper on her interface.

[19:23]

Eight minutes, seven minutes now, would make it 19:30.

“No,” she said. “That would be ridiculous. Waiting seven minutes just so the numbers are neat?” She scoffed, but she wasn’t even fooling herself.

She rose, adjusted the off-the-rack jacket, reached for the door.

The sense of unease hadn’t faded, but the CCTV had been clear. The woods were quiet. Nothing had approached the bodies, and she was more heavily armed than she had been that time she’d done a stakeout at a laundering front on the Eastside.

She was doing nothing but delaying the inevitable. So Scarlet opened the door and stepped outside.

She wished she’d waited.

It wouldn’t have changed anything, but at least she would have had a few more minutes of life in which she’d never experienced this feeling.

Like the door was a dam, her senses were overwhelmed the moment she’d opened the door.

There was that pervasive sense of wrongness she couldn’t quite pinpoint. But there was also just a sense that the world was more, in some inexplicable way. It was subtle, but impossible for someone like Scarlet to miss.

Now it felt like that intangible sensitivity she had for the world around her had been somewhat muffled underground. If before it had been a whisper, now it felt amplified; the feelings coming through loud and clear.

Unfortunately, loud didn’t mean directed.

That wrongness was coming mostly from one direction, but not entirely. It was like something was dispersing the energy. Instead of a directed stream of water, it was a vaporous diffusion. If she could just focus enough, she’d be able to find-

The shift was so abrupt, that it barely qualified as a transition at all. One moment everything was foggy and restrained, the next was a spike of aggression so swift and clear she nearly missed that it was getting closer. Fast.

Scarlet gasped, one hand flying instinctively to shield Maus as she stumbled backward. She slammed the bunker door shut only a heartbeat before something hit it from the other side with enough force to make the entire frame warble in protest.

The reinforced alloy was struck by something, so hard it turned the metal into a gong.

She jerked her hand back, feeling the vibration through the door, and nearly fell down the stairs. Only her reasonably high reflexes – DEX – and the slightly longer than average top landing kept her from an accident she knew would have her out of commission for long enough that her early advantage would become irrelevant.

She stood there for a second, breathing too fast, heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat. One hand braced against the wall and the other still curled protectively around her bond.

“We should have waited the seven minutes,” she said, breathless.

The vindication would’ve been a lot more satisfying if something outside hadn’t just tried to kill her.

She straightened slowly, then leaned back against the opposite wall, and pressed her lips together as in her mind she replayed what had just happened.

She had nearly been mauled the moment she stepped outside. This was the second time she had opened that door and been met with immediate hostility.

She rubbed at her temples with the pads of her fingers. Twice was a coincidence, and she very much hoped this did not become a pattern.

Another thump struck the door, lighter this time, and she looked at the door with open disapproval. Somehow, she could feel the, whatever it was through the door. It was like the stress of the situation combined with her actively trying to sort through the earlier haze had expanded something within her.

Her eyes narrowed; intuition telling her to open her Status.

Perception: 12 -> 13

Level: 3 ->4

She laughed out loud. The sound sharp and disbelieving. Nope, nope this was too much right now, she thought, closing the interface.

“You know what, nobody said we had to get the loot first,” she said, pushing herself away from the wall.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

She made her way downstairs on shaky legs, the slight limp certainly not helping as now that the adrenalin was fading away, everything hurt again. Crossing to the desk she set Maus down on his pillow.

What had just happened? She needed to know. Not just whatever was going on with her PER, but what was that?

Bracing herself, Scarlet called up her Interface. The familiar presence unfolded in her vision, and she directed her attention toward the Guide.

“How do I access a battle log?” she asked aloud. Not having the mental energy to ‘think-talk’ right now.

[System Log may be accessed through the interface with focused intent.]

So, it was called a System Log.

She did as the guide suggested, and a moment later the entries began to arrange themselves into something structured and readable. Yep, just as promised here was a log of… well ‘events’ didn’t feel right, but ‘things-the-System-things-are-important-enough-to-catalogue’ seemed a little wordy to her.

She skimmed the first few entries quickly; glad she could pull up old logs. There were confirmations of kills, level notifications, and several entries that looked and felt more like System Notifications than anything else.

[You have been attacked by Unknown]

[You have killed Unknown – Level 2]

[Entity designation updated: Roidcoon]
[Designation recognized… Accepted]