"Help!" Emily gasped. "Someone's chasing me!"
The guards appeared confused but alert, one speaking into his radio while the other moved toward Emily who rammed into him like he offered shelter from a storm. She clutched his uniform like she feared he would disappear.
Her hair clung to her sweat-slicked face, mascara running in dark rivulets down her cheeks. The silk blouse she wore — no doubt crisp and professional hours earlier — now hung partially untucked, a button missing near the collar.
Had the guard been more unprofessional he might have looked down or focused on the feeling of her warm body against his. But the sound of the alarm had both alert and focused on their duty.
"It's okay, ma'am," the young guard said, his voice steady trying to appear calming. "You're safe now. What happened? Who's after you?"
Emily opened her mouth to respond, but her eyes widened in renewed terror as the stairwell door she'd just exited banged open with such force it slammed against the wall, the sound echoing across the marble lobby like a gunshot.
The creatures emerged — three of them in wrinkled dirty maintenance uniforms that hung wrong on their frames, too tight in some places, too loose in others. Their eyes were focused on Emily, as if even between walls they could tell where she was.
Then they saw the guards and froze mid-step.
For a moment, everyone stood motionless. An uneasy balance maintained between the two parties, both calculating their next move. The air in the lobby seemed to thicken, time stretching like taffy as seconds crawled by.
Arthur leaned closer to his monitor, his fingernails digging crescents into his palms. The game's microphone picked up nothing but the soft hum of the building's ventilation and the older guard gulping down a mouthful of saliva as his hand went down to his hip holster.
Then, cutting through the tension like a knife, came the distant wail of police sirens.
The creatures' heads turned in perfect unison — not a sequence of individual movements, but a single, coordinated rotation, as if controlled by one mind. Without a word or signal between them, they pivoted 180 degrees and walked back inside the stairwell, their gait smooth and purposeful.
"Hey!" the older guard called out, drawing his weapon with practiced efficiency. "Stop right there!"
They didn't even slow down. The door swung shut behind them with a heavy thud.
The older guard advanced cautiously, keeping his gun trained on the door while the younger maintained his protective stance with Emily.
The guard pushed open the door, gun raised, ready to confront the intruders.
But the stairwell was empty.
As soon as the door had closed behind them, and the line of sight was interrupted with the guards, something unexpected happened right under Arthur's eyes.
Through emergency lighting bathing the stairwell in red, Arthur watched the creatures undergo a horrifying transformation. Their skin, muscles, and even clothes lost cohesion, seemingly melting into each other. Their forms wavered like mirages in desert heat, boundaries dissolving until they were nothing but vaguely humanoid shapes of writhing matter.
Then, in a sudden flash that overexposed the camera feed for a split second, they burst into flames — bright, intense, but strangely contained. They disappeared into nothingness, leaving no traces behind, like pieces of paper in a bonfire.
"What the hell?" Arthur whispered, the words escaping involuntarily as he pushed back from his desk, the wheels of his chair squeaking against the hardwood floor of his apartment.
A moment later, the camera feed from the stairwell turned blurry and was replaced by a signal lost, message, then another and another until the only video feed he had left was the omnidirectional eye of the game.
[MISSION SUCCESSFUL]
The notification flashed across Arthur's screen in bold green letters, accompanied by a subtle chime that seemed jarringly cheerful given what he'd just witnessed.
Arthur exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, his shoulders dropping as tension drained from his muscles. The leather of his gaming chair creaked as he leaned back, running both hands through his hair.
"Jesus Christ," he muttered to the empty apartment, his voice sounding foreign to his own ears. Inside his chest, his heart continued its frantic rhythm, each beat a reminder that whatever was happening, the stakes were all too real.
He'd done it. He'd saved her.
But from what? And why?
On screen, Emily was talking animatedly with the shocked security guards, her hands cutting through the air in sharp, desperate gestures. The guards' expressions shifted between concern, disbelief, and growing alarm as she recounted her experience. She was safe, at least for now.
Arthur reached for the half-empty energy drink on his desk, the can cold against his palm. He took a long swallow, the sweet, chemical taste filling his mouth as his eyes remained fixed on the screen. Outside his apartment window, Seattle's perpetual rain tapped a gentle rhythm against the glass, the city lights diffused into watercolor smears through the droplets.
A notification appeared on screen, pulling his attention back:
[Congratulation!
Mission accomplished.
Rewards: +100 credits, +1 INTEL point, Emily Chen [Engineer] is now [Friendly] build a safe house to recruit her.]
"Engineer?" Arthur muttered, setting down the can with a metallic clank against his desk. "The brief said she was a data analyst."
He clicked on Emily's name in the notification, curiosity overriding his exhaustion. A profile appeared, displaying basic information against a sleek, military-style interface: Emily Chen, 34, specialization in quantum computing systems, formerly employed by DARPA, currently working for a defense contractor called Nexus Dynamics.
Not just any data analyst, then. Someone with government connections and classified knowledge.
Arthur's eyes narrowed as he scanned the additional information. The profile listed attributes like character stats in an RPG: High intelligence, moderate physical condition, specialty in cryptography and systems infiltration. A message at the bottom indicated he would need to recruit her to see more of her attributes.
He closed the profile and examined his updated resources. His credit counter now showed 100, and a new counter had appeared next to it: INTEL: 1.
Arthur's fingers danced across his keyboard as he navigated through the interface, exploring options that hadn't been available before. After several clicks, he found a section for safehouses. A global map appeared, similar to the mission select screen but with different markers. These showed potential safe house locations in various cities around the world, each accompanied by small icons indicating proximity to resources, security level, and capacity.
"Build a safe house to recruit her," Arthur read aloud, recalling the notification. His eyes scanned the map until he found the nearest location to Emily's position highlighted in pulsing blue — a small warehouse in Huntsville that looked abandoned from the satellite imagery.
The interface prompted him with floating text: [PURCHASE SAFE HOUSE] [COST: 700 CREDITS]
Arthur frowned. He only had 100 credits.
As if sensing his dilemma, a new notification slid into view: [First time purchase discount applied]
The cost immediately updated: [PURCHASE SAFE HOUSE] [COST: 0 CREDITS]
"Well, that's convenient," Arthur muttered, clicking the purchase button without hesitation. The screen darkened momentarily, lines of code scrolling across it too fast to read. A loading icon appeared — a spinning globe that gradually filled with blue light.
Then a notification: [SAFE HOUSE ESTABLISHED - TDCJ Old Cotton Warehouse. WOULD YOU LIKE TO ASSIGN LOCAL OPERATIVES HERE?]
Arthur clicked yes without really understanding what it meant. A twelve-hour loading bar appeared at the center of the screen, its slow crawl seemingly mocking his urgency.
"Twelve hours?" He squinted at the time estimate. "What is she supposed to do until then?"
He watched as Emily was escorted to a police car, a shock blanket wrapped around her shoulders despite the mild night. Her face was pale in the flashing lights, eyes wide and haunted as she glanced repeatedly over her shoulder.
"Damned if I know," he muttered, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. "But at least I bought her some protection, whatever it means."
The clock in the corner of his screen read 1:07 AM. Arthur's body felt like it was filled with lead, exhaustion crashing over him in waves as the adrenaline from the mission faded. His muscles ached from hours of tension, and his eyes burned from staring at the screen without blinking.
He should sleep. Any rational person would shut down the computer and crawl into bed, maybe write this all off as some bizarre hallucination brought on by too many energy drinks and too little rest.
But Arthur knew he wouldn't sleep. Not after what he'd seen. Not with so many questions unanswered. He was too intrigued and excited.
With a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul, Arthur straightened in his chair and reached for a fresh energy drink from the mini-fridge beside his desk. The can hissed as he popped the tab, the caffeine a poor substitute for the rest his body craved.
He studied the world map again with renewed focus. Dozens of missions were active, timers counting down like digital doomsday clocks, spread across every continent. Defense missions like the two he'd attempted, marked in blue. Investigation missions at locations marked as "anomalies," glowing yellow. Subjugation missions targeting what the system called "hostile entities," pulsing an ominous red.
He turned his eyes to another rescue mission, not too far away from the warehouse he had just purchased. The marker pulsed urgently, its timer already half depleted.
Arthur took a long swallow of his energy drink, set the can down with determination, and clicked.