Hometown - Chapter 8: Characters

Chapter 8 – Characters

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A short, cloaked man knelt by the edge of a cliff that overlooked a vast city of cyclopean architecture. Grand towers rose high into the air, and even with the distance between the city and the man, the towers still loomed over him. From the tapered tips of the towers down to their wide bases were vibrant yellow lights that pierced deep into the midnight sky, almost making the city look like dozens of burning torches left in the middle of an open field of darkness. Most impressive of all were the great bridges that connected all the towers together like sky-highways.

	The man wondered what horrors lurked the city streets for the residents to prefer travelling from place to place so high above. He pondered this as rain fell on his hood in soft pitter-pats, but neither the light shower nor the thunder in the distance that followed distracted the man from the hypnotic view ahead of him.

	Cassaris. Home of the Ancients. A massive promontory of jagged crags and steep bluffs served as the foundation of the dream-city, which had existed for measureless eons before human history. The landmass was like a floating island stretched high above the surrounding lands, but the soft sound of waves crashing into its rocky base somewhere deep bellow echoed in the quiet night. Such a display of nature emanated a certain regality that was matched by the city itself serving as the land’s crown.

	The Angel lies here and, with Him, all the perversions of humanity and monsterkind.

	It was nothing like the man had ever seen before. ‘Almost like a dream,’ he thought solemnly, clutching his coat tight to his chest as the cold midnight air swept around his body and off the cliff.

	‘How did I even get here?’ he thought, shivering.

	The man turned around and saw a pitch-black forest behind him. It was so dark that the man was afraid a void had swallowed the land whole, and that he would simply walk off into nothingness should he venture too deep, too curiously. Yet, something even more pressing was biting at him from inside.

	‘Who… am I?’

	The lone man stood up and stared at the distant city again. Cassaris. How he came to learn of that name and the snippets of its history, he did not know. Maybe his brain was playing tricks on him. He could not say how or why, but he had a gut feeling that he was in a dream. There was a certain… off-ness in the air that did not seem consistent with a waking-world.

	Despite these feelings, there was also something surreal about everything that one could not experience while asleep. This sensation was everywhere, steeped in the land, but also deep inside his chest. It told him to move on, towards the city. He did not know why, but he wanted to obey it. It felt like… being away on a long journey spanning many years, and then struck with an unshakable desire to return home.

	The man chose to heed the pull, and he made his way down the side of the cliff and towards the shining city. He knew he had just sealed his fate, for better or for worse.

	In this fantasy of Cassaris, a city where days are eternal, the man hoped to find the answers to questions he did not know he had.

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	The man blinked and found himself standing in the middle of a massive bridge, though not like the ones that connected the towers together. When the man looked ahead, he was met with a gate of solid iron, almost as if a gigantic black monolith was guarding the entrance to the city. Though perhaps that was quite close to the truth. The gate was the only entrance into the city guarded by miles upon miles of an impressive wall of massive stonework.

	Behind him, like before, there was nothing but darkness eating at the area behind him like a starved monster. The bridge disappeared into the abyss, as if a black blanket was thrown over half of it.

	As the man looked closer, the darkness did not appear to be expanding. It was almost like there was something telling him that there was no going back once he moved forward. The thought sent a chill down his spine.

	“You’ve made me worried sick, thinking you’ve forgotten about me!”

	The man’s head shot upward as he glared towards the voice he heard. He almost missed her amidst the darkness and the raindrops falling on his face, but he spotted a figure peeking out from the wall above him. There must be some walkway up there, he mused.

	“Are you having trouble getting into the city? That’s kind of like getting locked out of your own house for you, ain’t it?”

	Her voice was playful and noticeably feminine, even through the sound of raindrops falling on the stonework beneath him in loud pitter-patters. The man could only make out a head resting on two crossed arms as he tried to identify the woman talking to him, but he only managed to get his face soaking wet in the attempt.

	“What’s wrong? You don’t remember me?”

	The man shook his head solemnly. The voice spoke to him with such a friendly sweetness that he felt guilty that he was unable to return any of those feelings.

	“Here. Maybe this will help you remember.”

	The man blinked as something twirling through the air came at him from above. He had no time to react. It was growing larger and larger in his vision. From a dull wooden hilt to something bright and metallic that gleamed in the moonlight…

	...Kris woke up and nearly slammed his head into the desk he was sleeping under. Wincing, the human held his head in his hand as he crawled out from his hiding spot, no longer too concerned about the… thing that had terrified him solid moments ago.

	Or had it been hours ago? Kris had no idea how long he was out, nor whether he had been truly asleep at all. Was that a dream he had dreamt? It was so real, and yet it was nothing comparable to anything he has ever seen before. Well… ignoring the dark world from before and the nightmare he was currently in. Perhaps all three are related somehow?

	Something cold seemed to vibrate inside Kris’s hand, and he immediately turned his attention to it. It was a knife, but not like the knife he had from before. The blade was quite long, though by no means a sword, and the handle was curved, but only somewhat.

	‘A hunter’s knife,’ Kris thought as he looked at it, almost like the weapon had introduced itself to him. He liked how the weight of the blade felt in his hand and, before playfully bouncing it into the air and catching it, slid it under his belt for safekeeping. A feeling of bravery and power surged through him, but only for a moment.

	“Wait…” Kris muttered, his eyes betraying a flash of fear as he examined the room around him. “This isn’t the same office I fell asleep in.”

	The room was dark, but there was an ominous red glow coming from a computer screen near the other end of the room by a boring white wall. There appeared to be a woman using the computer but judging by how her body was slumped against her chair and how her head was leaning off to one side, Kris was certain her attention to the screen had most definitely… lapsed.

	Kris searched deep inside for the Watcher for any form of advice on how to continue, but nobody came. He had to muster up the courage to continue alone.

	 Step by step, Kris approached the woman. Like a well being pumped until the water flowed freely on its own, the young man pushed all doubt and fear into one corner of his mind so that there was nothing but free real estate for bravery to move in.

	And it worked. With newfound bravery, Kris strutted over to the desk without much hesitation.

	“Another one of these officers…” the human said under his breath as he looked down at the dead woman sitting in front of the computer. There seemed to be no difference with this scantily clad police woman than any of the others. Though Kris found her certainly less terrifying when he was looking down on her. The fact that it was just a body also helped, too.

	“Well, she looks dead enough…”

	Kris leaned over and placed a palm on the blue woman’s cheek and turned her face to meet his. Her eyes were wide open. Frightened would be the best way to describe her pupils, staring at something utterly terrifying before her last moments, but now she was peering at nothing.

	There was some blood around her mouth. Dry but still red, a shade of crimson not that much different than the vibrant lipstick still smudged on her lips. Even in this state she was quite kissable.

	Kris shook his head, almost as if to literally shake those kinds of thoughts away. ‘Looking at these officers seem to have an effect me. A, err, psychological effect.”

	Turning his attention away from the body, Kris looked over at the only thing lighting up the room – the glowing red computer screen. It had a very to-the-point message in big, bolded letters:

	MULTIPLE CONTAINMENT BREACHES
	PLEASE REMAIN CALM AND HEAD TO YOUR DESIGNATED SAFE ROOMS

	“Safe rooms,” Kris repeated with a small chuckle. “I guess leaving this place altogether would be too much to ask for the people running this lab.”

	“Didn’t help her much…” Kris said, staring back at the dead officer. “…Wait just a minute.”

	There was a glimmer in the corner of Kris’s eye that caught his attention. There was a red ID card clipped to the officer’s breast pocket, which gave way with a quiet “snap” as Kris took it off her.

	Bringing the ID closer to his face, Kris could make out that it was some form of access card. “Level 3 Clearance” it read, along with “Head of Security.” Her name and age, however, were smudged black, almost like they were burned off.

	“This might be what the Watcher wanted me to find. I don’t see any reason NOT to take it anyway, it looks too darn useful.”

	Kris eyed the dead officer one more time. He could have sworn that she locked eyes with him, but it was just the glitter of red light from the monitor.

	“Besides, it’s not like she needs it more than m—”

	With a resounding crash, a large, white hand punched through the wall inches away from Kris’s face, hurtling splinters and drywall across the room as the human could only stand by and gawk, completely speechless.

	There was a loud, distinct sound like a watermelon being crushed as the giant hand closed around the officer’s head and pulled it and her body back through the wall. For a moment it looked like the head was going to snap clean off its neck as her shoulders got stuck in the narrow hole but, with a loud grunt that sent shivers down Kris’s spine, the hand simply dragged itself horizontally, cutting through the wall with its wrist like paper, allowing the body to slide right through like junk mail under a door.

	Kris was too stunned to move as big, boisterous footsteps echoed away into the distance.

	Kris blinked, and he could feel the muscles in his legs kicking back into action. With newfound courage, the human knew there was no time to waste. He needed to find Susie and get out of here, and there’s a good chance that the keycard he swiped was his ticket out of here.

	Kris just hoped that he doesn’t meet whoever owns that big white hand, let alone anything else that might be lurking around the facility.

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	Next on Hometown - Chapter Nine: Containment