Seeking Strays

AN: My book just released! For those of you that don’t know, I also write Outrun here on Royal Road. Book 2 of that just released on amazon today.

Here’s the link if anyone wants to check it out:

https://www.amazon.com/Outrun-Neon-Sprawl-Lost-Rain-ebook/dp/B0HHGD8NLY?ref_=saga_dp_bnx_dsk_dp

Blurb:

All good things must come to an end.

I had a nice, short break from the chaos of the city. Unfortunately, it was one of those good things. Thanks to a series of seriously unfortunate events, the machinations of the city once more drew me into the fray. Ready or not.

Where there was danger, there was opportunity. If I played my cards right, I might just be able to survive and even thrive. ‘Course, that was assuming I managed to wiggle away from my surprisingly diligent boss. Oh, and did I mention I wasn’t getting paid for any of this?

If there was one thing that could be said about Aythryn City, it was that the odds were never as bad as they seemed. They were somehow worse. It’d take every scheme, plot, and help from my, um, trusty interface to get through this one. Worse still—quite a bit of social interaction. Here’s to hoping it all went well… Then again, when was my luck any good?

— — —

The scent of fresh food tickled my nose as we walked. I’d caught it every once in a while on the way out here, but it’d been becoming stronger and stronger as we approached Quinn’s position. I hadn’t eaten since lunch, so the scent was incredibly alluring.

Robert started to pick up on it long after I did. As per usual, enhanced senses weren’t all they cracked up to be. “I-is that food?”

”Are you hungry?” I asked. Most of the kids would probably start getting hungry. If Lizzie was the only one to bring food, and she left her bag outside, then… 

“A little bit…” My ears twitched as his stomach gurgled. He covered his stomach with his hands as his cheeks turned red. “I-I can wait till we get out of here, though.”

“We can check it out.” See if it was safe, at least. I saw something about a food court in safe zone C awhile back, so maybe this was it? I poked his shoulder playfully. “I’m a little more than a little hungry.”

Robert smiled and started to walk a little bit faster. It was all too easy to keep up with him as we moved down through the aisles of the arcade. Slowly but surely, the aisles started to grow larger and larger. The tight avenues between arcade cabinets stretched wider as we moved toward the delicious scent of food.

Eventually, the infinite maze of arcade cabinets stopped appearing ahead of us. At first it was hard to make out, but a gargantuan clearing broke open. The scent of food grew stronger and stronger until finally—we saw it.

The food court was way larger than I expected. I thought it’d be something like a mall, but that was totally wrong. At some point while we were walking, we moved onto the second floor of the arcade. A balcony surrounded the entire food court and looked down onto it. The zany carpet disappeared under white tiles with dark blue swirls through it.

The food court itself was massive. Large, irregular columns with all kinds of food stalls inside of them were scattered across the area, most of which were marked with green. In between the pillars, booths and tables of all kinds and sizes filled the space. A group of three sitting at one table near the edge caught my attention.

”Quinn!” I shouted at the top of my lungs and waved down at her. My tail wagged furiously for a moment before I forced it to go still.

The Guardian herself jerked upright with her halo glowing a brilliant blue behind her head. “Reyna?!”

”Just wait there!” I shouted back to her as I glanced at the other two people with her. 

Both were girls about the same age as Lizzie and Robert. Lizzie herself was nowhere to be seen, but that made 3 of the 4 found and safe. Guardian Tidebreak may look like she slacks, but she was an even better worker than me when she started trying. Granted, that wasn’t that hard to do.

“There’s stairs over there.” Robert pointed to our side. He leaned over the glass railing of the balcony, and looked down along the curved wall surrounding the lower floor food court.

“Good find.” If I didn’t have him with me, I’d probably just jump over the side and get over there with a sprained ankle. Stairs worked too, though.

“Robert!” The girls finally stopped holding back once we got close to the three of them and raced over to us.

”Tracy! Beth!” The kid left my side and ran to meet his friends. They quickly turned into an affectionate ball of laughter and crying. 

Quinn skirted around the three of them, and smoothly approached me. She stopped just at my side with her arms crossed. “Good to see you still in one piece."

”What happened?” I stared down at her arms. It looked like she was trying to hide them, but the scent of blood was unmistakable.

”The scent gave me away?” Quinn sighed bitterly, and carefully uncrossed her arms. I stepped in front of the kids and blocked their sight as I pulled up her sleeve. Bandages that’d already turned red with blood wrapped her arms.

”Quinn…” I felt something churn in my stomach at the injuries of my Guardian. How the hell did she get this injured already? 

“Away from them?” Quinn nodded her head to the kids. She didn’t wait for my answer before speaking up to them. “Feel free to eat from any of the green marked food stalls. My Canary and I need to talk.”

“Don’t eat too much, kids,” I called out to them as we walked to a table a bit further away from them. The food should be safe, but running on a full stomach could be torturous in its own way.

“I earned a healing anomaly,” I muttered to her. “Mended a cracked hip, so your arms will be fine in a bit.”

”That’s a relief.” She smiled like she had all the time in the world. “The pain’s about to knock me out.”

Once we were far enough away, I helped unwrap the fabric wrapped around her injuries. No idea where she got a bandage from here, but it wasn’t that outlandish all things considered. Long, jagged serrations covered her arms. I pulled out the Healing Salve and got to work slathering her injuries. “What happened, anyway?”

”Tried to fight that creature the second time around.” Quinn shook her head. “I was lucky enough to blast it away and hide. It’s deceptively agile.”

Even more of a reason not to face it. If she was being hunted by it as well, then were there multiple of the maintenance creatures? That was… uncomfortable to think about. Maybe if I was a bit stronger, I’d be able to take it on. I had no faith in my own capabilities if even Quinn had to blast it away and hide.

“Why the hell did you try that?” Though I probably could guess the answer. She probably thought she could take it. It was like being an Awoken flicked the stupid switch.

”I found Tracy and Beth right as the lights were going out the second time. They were already together.” Quinn shrugged, which pulled her arms out of my hands slightly. She resettled down immediately and let me keep working. “There was nowhere to hide, so I baited the creature while they ran.”

My tail twitched in guilt, and my ears drooped heavily. I was calling her an idiot when in actuality she was a brave hero. Heh… would I have done the same? No. Probably would’ve just cowered in the dark like I had everytime the maintenance creature came back. Cowardly mutt. 

I abruptly tried to shift the topic so my mind wouldn’t eat itself alive. “Did you hear Lizzie’s already been in and out once before?”

”Yeah… the one kid who knows how to escape is the only one we haven’t found yet.” She hissed through her teeth as I probed one of her jagged wounds too roughly. “There's irony in there somewhere.”

”Apparently all the kids started in the shop.” I pulled out another wad of Healing Salve and applied it to her other arm. “No idea how that worked.”

”Maybe she bought something the first time around that let her return quickly to it?” Quinn sighed. “Then they crossed through the door there into the arcade proper and were all split up. Poor kids.”

”At least Beth and Tracy found each other quickly.” Robert and Lizzie were stuck wandering the endless maze of this place all by themselves.

”Yeah…” Quinn stared blankly at the floor. “We got pretty lucky to find each other again, huh?”

”There.” I patted her arm, and pulled away. I was almost out of the Healing Salve entirely. The anomaly was effective, but I ran through it way too quick. I could probably find the arcade game it came from again if I needed to?

”Thanks, Reyna. You’re a real life saver.” She glanced back toward the kids eating away on the food provided from the food court. “This is so not how I thought today would go.”

”Same.” I picked Vigil back up, and hugged him tightly. If I would’ve been told I’d be going into an endless arcade when I was hiding in my office this morning, I would’ve laughed. Here we were, though.

“Check this out.” Quinn pulled out an unfamiliar phone done up with pink sparkles, and handed it over to me. Probably one of the girls’ phones. A picture of four kids popped up from them in the isolation room just outside of the arcade. “You need a visual, right?”

”Smart thinking.” I leaned forward and locked onto Lizzie. My eyes swept across her for anything I could use as the anchor for Seek.

“You really take that guy everywhere, don’t you?” Quinn stared at the silver plushie in my arms with a thoughtful question, and drew me out of my inspection. “Vigil the Ninth, right?”

”Operator, she recognizes me.” Vigil buzzed warmly in my arms like he was stoked about that fact. “How do I look?”

Like a cute plushie? Not like his form changed all that much since he used his advanced mimicry. From how he made it out to seem, it was on a long cooldown till he could use it again. “Yep, Vigil the Ninth. He’s… surprisingly witty.”

”I’ll take your word for it.” She stretched out and patted his head. My tail wagged back and forth as she lifted her hand and patted my head a moment later.

I let her for a second before shaking off her hand. “I’m not a dog.”

”No, you’re a big ferocious Silver Wolf.” Quinn grinned broadly. “It’d be impossible to forget.”

“As long as you know.” I tried to smile back at her. Big bad wolf… I’d been calling myself that for a long time. Originally, it was to psyche myself up when I was with Deadlock. Then for other reasons. Hearing someone else call me that kind of hurt. Cute and cuddly wolf didn’t roll off the tongue nearly as well, though.

“Apexes always impressed me. You know, when I was younger, I wanted to be one of you.” Quinn laughed at her younger self, and shook her head like she couldn’t believe those days. She spoke casually, but her eyes never left me. “Money can’t buy everything.”

What was with all this talk about Apexes? I never really thought about being a human, to be honest. I had way too many other problems. It sounded like she put some thought into this, though. ”You’re fine just the way you are, Quinn.”

”I mean, naturally. This?” She waved a hand to her face. “This is perfection. Apexes are pretty cool, though. So, you gonna use your psionic ability to find her?”

”Yep, that’s the plan.” Phew, that was a relief. It was easy to get depressed in this field. It was reassuring to see her still, well, her. I wasn’t any good with people’s emotions, so I wouldn’t have known what to say otherwise.

”Cool. Cool cool cool.” Quinn coughed lightly, and pulled at her shirt’s collar. Despite the uneasy mannerisms, her eyes were razor sharp as she eyed me. Did I… did I do something wrong?

”Is everything okay?” I asked. Maybe I should’ve offered a more supportive answer? Becoming an Apex… it wasn’t technically impossible. The world was full of strange things.

”Oh, yeah. Just ready to get out of this place and get a drink.” She sighed, and pulled a strand of tickets out of her pocket. “I miss my beloved… You grab any of these?”

“I’m proud of you for quitting, Quinn.” I took off my satchel and tossed it to her while I started to feel out Lizzie’s location. Seek snapped to attention, and pulled me sharply to the side—

“Damn!” Quinn let out a low whistle as she stared at the mounds of tickets stuffed into the bag. “You rob the arcade bank or something?”

”No?” I eyed the tickets. There were quite a few of them. I hadn’t bothered to count them, so—

“This unit’s scanners indicate there are 855,431 tickets in the satchel.” Vigil revealed the exact number.

I stared down at the silver plushie, and whispered softly, “h-how many?”

”855,431, Operator.” Vigil pulsed warmly. “Should I rescan to make sure?”

He was probably right. My eyes dipped to the satchel in Quinn’s hands. That couldn’t be right, could it? Heh, to think I carried that bag around without thinking that much about it. The dead researcher had seriously been hoarding them—

The fur along my ears shot up. Not enough. The words from the researcher’s journal crawled back through my mind. He hadn’t been collecting them because he was crazy—though he probably lost his mind at some point judging by the journal entries. He’d been working toward something. Working toward recreating Experiment 467 with a million tickets.

Why, though? The entire facility had been abandoned after Harbor bought it, and locked into isolation protocols. Even the records were scrubbed. The documents warned that trying to recreate the experiment would result in a court martial. What even was it?

I took the satchel back from Quinn once she handed it back. It felt heavier than before. 855,431 tickets… what could I buy with that? The cure was just 10,000. I had so much more than that. What would this place sell for 100,000? 500,000? 1,000,000? Could it give me corruption immunity?

I shook my head, and forced myself to look away from the satchel full of tickets. This place… it was like it fed off of greed. No, that wasn’t quite right. Lizzie wasn’t greedy for wanting her mother to live. The kids weren’t being greedy for wanting to help their friend.

Desire? Wanting? It didn’t really matter. This place found something you wanted, and gave you a perfectly reasonable way to get it. Play, win, and earn tickets. Everything else would be taken care of. Just keep playing. Everybody’s a winner, right? Of course you should just keep playing… Until the lights went out.

It was probably for the best that the doors were closed and forgotten about. I was worried about the containment teams, to be honest. With no records, there was a good chance this place was reopened up and researchers came back. And from there it was only a matter of time until the cycle continued.

As for why I thought that way? It was simple—resources. I mean, just playing a zombie shoot ‘em up game for a little bit rewarded a healing anomaly. If that process could be repeated infinitely, there would be infinite magical healing items. That was just one item from one game. What if something in here gave a truly extraordinary anomaly? Or even if there were crazy things in the store? 

That wasn’t just worrying about nothing either. There truly were extraordinary things in the store. Hell, the entire reason Lizzie came in here was for an anomalous cure for her mother. I doubted it could be replicated, but if it could be bought again and again and again? This place was literally the golden goose. The golden goose that fed on the flesh and blood of humanity.

That was something to worry about after we were out of here. I looked back over the kids, and nodded my head. “I’ve got her.”

“What are we waiting for? Let’s go find her and get out of here.” Quinn smoothly slid her hair back, and walked back toward the kids to get them ready to go. After a moment, I followed after her with Vigil held loosely in my arms.

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