9 years ago, the Red Sun shone above a small town in northwest Montana for the first time in a millenia. To an outside observer, every human inside disappeared within seconds. To the residents of the town, they were trapped and caged, and they became what can best be described as 'monsters.' Now, the Red Sun is shining above you.
Secrets under the Red Sun
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Prelude
The mall was overflowing with the indistinguishable murmur of a hundred conversations. The sound was an ever present reminder of the crowds that clogged its pathways like clots in its arteries. You had found a corner of the mall as far away from the watching eyes of the masses as you could, to wait out the time until your Mom was finished dragging your brother and sister from store to store, kitting them out in the finest back to school gear, adorned with superheroes and anime characters. You wouldn't have come if you had the choice, but when Dad was out on business, Mom's word was law. She didn't trust you alone in the apartment, so you came out with her.
Selena was getting old enough to begin her own rebellious phase, but Anton was still star struck by the attention Mom gave his every action. Your baby brother was only in fourth grade, and no matter how much he puffed out his cheeks and insisted on being, 'a big boy," as Mom always called him, you would always see him as your baby brother. You still remember the little baby he was when you were his age. He could be a brat sometimes, and when Mom always took his side it frustrated Selena to no end. But you remember when it was Mom spoiling Selena, always taking her word and not yours before Anton came around. It's not really Anton's fault.
But they'd do fine buying things without you. Mom had decided she wasn't responsible for you once you entered high school, and you know that it'd only be a couple short years before Selena was given the same treatment. You cooked food, did all your own chores, and worked jobs at all the local fast food chains that were perpetually chewing up new hires. Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King, the works. Oftentimes you even did Mom's chores.
And so as soon as you entered the mall, Mom dismissed you from her presence. She wasn't responsible for what you did to prepare for your senior year, but she definitely didn't want you in the house without her around. You hadn't even the time to grab your wallet before being rushed out the door and into her budget, beat up sedan.
You could have looked for someone you knew from school in the crowds, doubtless there'd be quite a few on a Sunday, a couple weeks before the first day of school. But with the sudden bounty of responsibility dumped on you on the transition to high school, you barely had the time to keep up with your old friends, let alone make new ones at a new school. It felt like you'd missed the window to make friends, anyways, as in those first critical weeks of high school, where everyone is making new connections, you were in a frantic search for a job to scrounge up the money for the rent Mom had started demanding. Admittedly, there was a chance that Jeremy was here. He was a friend, you suppose. You mostly met him by sheer luck, as you kept on finding the same job openings at the same time. But it was really unlikely he was here, as you were about 70% certain he lived in a cardboard box and didn't even go to high school. He was only a year younger than you, so you really should have seen him at least once if he did go. But you'd never seen him once despite his, well, noticeable appearance of unwashed hair, dirt on his everything, and jackets that looked freshly picked from a dumpster.
You sighed, one hand smushing into your face. Mom was going to walk your siblings through at least three stores, and you had yet to see the trio walk out of the first store. You'd have to trail them on their way to the other stores throughout the mall, giving up your first class seat away from most normal traffic. If you didn't follow them like this, Mom would leave the mall without giving you a single hint, and then get upset when you showed up home several hours later. It was almost like a game sometimes. Or like a puzzle. Mom had these things that she'd do, and she'd expect you to comply with her unsaid task. You had to figure out what she wanted, and how to do it out of her view. It was a lopsided game, with one player at a severe advantage over the other. But that was always the best kind of challenge, the fight from below.
A couple wandered in front of your view. One was a short, brown haired guy, dressed up all nice in a button up shirt. The other was a black haired girl with glasses and makeup that was seriously on point, with vibrant red lipstick, well applied mascara, and eyelashes that popped just right.
"Babe, please. You can't expect to come all the way out the mall and not spend some time at the bowling alley," said the guy.
The girl looked inside her velvet purse. "I came here for one thing. And can you imagine if my mascara starts to run?"
"I drove us out this far and you just wanted to buy one thing?"
"Well it's a limited edition, you know. It was already sold out in all the other malls."
"It's just a figurine babe! It's not that big of a deal."
The girl stepped right into the guy's space and stared him down, her extra few inches on him giving her the height advantage. "Do you want to say that to me? We don't need to be together."
The guy stepped back, his hands up in the air and his voice pleading. "Now, don't say that babe! I just thought we could do something together!"
"Well, we are doing something together," said the girl.
"I just thought, well, that after driving out for an hour and half we'd do something more than stand in line for another half an hour. We've done nothing and it's already getting dark!"
You hadn't been here for that long. You were dragged out here just after lunch. How was it already getting dark?
The girl scoffed. "You're so overdramatic. Come on, it's only one o' clock. It's not going to be dark for hours." She started walking away, in the direction of the parking lot.
But she's wrong, you thought. The sky was getting dark. You checked your watch, and sure enough, it said it's only 1:09. Far too early for the mall to be swathed in monotone colors of gray.
You looked up at the sky. It was not the light blue of the sunny, cloudless afternoon it was fifteen minutes ago. It was the roiling indigo of a night where the sun has long since gone down. But the sun was still resting up at the peak of the sky. It was no longer a brilliant star, that burnt your eyes just to look straight upon. It was a burnt out red, looking like the moon cast in red but a hundred times larger.
You shot to your feet. Anton and Selena. You spot out of the corner of your eye what might be the bright orange jacket that Selena came here in fading into the crowd. But it could have been a trick of the eye. You could chase after what could have been Mom leaving the store right at the moment of your distraction, or you could enter the store.
It was hard to choose. But it was unlikely that Mom was good enough at the game of yours to have slipped out the moment you were distracted, after having been there for a good thirty minutes already. Your feet slammed into the floor as you sprinted straight into the store, as the crowds stumble around your sprinting form, surely all calling you weird, pointing you out to each other, and remembering the weird girl sprinting like her life depended on it. But you only had eyes for the store in front of you.
Your feet screeched on the linoleum floor as you sprinted past aisle after aisle, trying to catch a glance of Anton or Selena in any of them. Some poor overworked cashier called out behind you.
"Miss! Miss, no running!"
You pushed those words to the back of your mind, unable to simply just ignore them but focusing on the more important task in front of you.
Once you reached the end of the aisles, you redoubled your efforts, sprinting down the aisle to the other side and continuing the search there. There still was no sign of them, and at this point, you were sure Mom would have made a point to yell at you to stop if she was here. But you wouldn't be able to follow their trail if they had already fled, so your only option was to continue.
Then the siren started. It started as a shrill beep until it built into a howling wail that reverberated throughout the store like a thousand voices in a terrible harmony. It reverberated so deep into your ears that it felt imprinted into there, like someone had stuck it directly onto your eardrum before playing it. And then for one agonizing, tense second, there was silence throughout the entire mall, the siren having quieted and with it, the voices that had saturated the entire mall. And then the siren looped, its shrill beep piercing the eardrums. And pandemonium descended.
People started screaming. Footsteps fell heavy on the floor as people started sprinting for their life. You followed their lead, sprinting out of the store yourself, to look up at the sky.
It was almost pitch black above you, yet not a single star but the rusty red sun shined down upon you. If the sky was this dark above you when camping you'd have seen the entire milky way dancing before you. Now, there was only the sun, the unrecognizable color of blood.
Someone shoved past you as you stood there in awe of the demented sky, panting fast and hard. You staggered and fell, body collapsing onto the floor, the howling wail of the siren piercing your head deeper than the pain or the screaming of hundreds of panicking mall goers. The people stampeded past you, desperate to escape from the grasp store, its door not designed for the sheer traffic of the packed store evacuating in a frenzy of mortal terror. And unfortunately for you, your downed body was directly in the middle of the door.
A voice resounded over the terror gripping the mall, an androgynous voice louder than even the howling wail of the siren.
"This is an automated emergency broadcast."
Someone stepped on your hand, and it felt like something broke.
"Evacuation is not necessary."
Someone was shoved next to you, and had to step onto your arm to balance yourself.
"I repeat, evacuation is not necessary."
One arm felt like it was broken and lame, and you tried to pick yourself up with the other.
"This emergency is of unknown nature."
Someone used your back as a stepping stone to get past another.
"Remain calm and await further instruction."
Your good arm failed under the weight, and was trampled upon.
"Please make your peace with yourself."
You laid there, collapsed upon the floor, as one last flood of people pushed, shoved, and forced their way past each other in a frenzy.
The voice finally went silent, even as the siren continued its unearthly wails.
The final wave of people broke through the doors and your body was trampled upon in their feverish attempt to escape.
The voice began to loop upon itself, repeating its instructions to its deaf audience.
Your breaths came through harsh and ragged, desperately trying to fill lungs that felt squashed and flattened. One arm felt broken, and the other felt like jelly. Your lungs were tight like someone was smothering you. Someone had stepped on one leg in a wrong way, and twitching it the slightest bit made your knee feel like it was going to fall apart.
But Anton and Selena weren't going to be safe with you there. And Mom wouldn't look for you if you just laid here. With your non-broken arm, you agonizingly pushed yourself up, painful inch by painful inch, until you could get your legs beneath you. Then, with only one leg and one arm, you pushed yourself to your feet. Something hot and salty streamed down your face. Every breath felt hot and painful.
You staggered forward. You were on the top floor. Mom was parked on the bottom floor. In the brief pauses where the siren's wail diminished, you could hear the clamor of people trampling each other and screaming for their lives beneath you.
Each step was liquid agony, one half of your body limp and impotent and screaming with the slightest twitch. You slowly pulled your body across the floor and to the escalator, and with breaths that felt bloody and raw, you stood upon it, resting on the good side of your body.
You gritted your teeth and stepped off at the bottom of the escalator, staggering forward, towards the next escalator to take you down to the third floor. Three more floors, and then you would need to stagger across the first floor to the parking garage.
As the next escalator brought you down to the third floor, the wail of the sirens finally cut off and the androgynous, repetitive voice disappearing with it. The screams and pandemonium of the people beneath you suddenly stood out in stark contrast to the otherwise complete silence. The escalator beneath you came to a halt seconds after the siren stopped. You'd have to continue on foot, crushed knee or not. With the failure of the escalators, the few lights that were active were quashed as well, leaving the mall in true, utter darkness. You took hesitant steps down the still escalator steps, only daring to step down to the next step with your good leg, creating a halting, stilted gait. You clutched onto the railings with as much strength as you could muster with your good arm.
The sounds beneath you cut off one by one, and by the time you had stepped onto the third floor and began on the next escalator, there was nothing at all. Nothing but the sound of a single pair of footsteps, heading straight up the steps to you. There was no way it was a survivor. Mom and Selena and Anton were still down there, where everyone fell silent. You had to get away from the footsteps. You hauled yourself back up the escalators with brutal efficiency, uncaring for the tearing feeling in your knee.
The footsteps beneath you accelerated.
You had to hide. The third floor was home to the food court, home to hundreds of previously full tables and few stores. At least, that you could see. You staggered towards the nearest open food stall. Achilles Gyros, the sign above it read, food still steaming inside of pots. If you could hide behind its counter, if you could survive, you could go back for Selena and Anton.
Your knee gave out as the counter came into reach and you collapsed back onto the ground as something tore completely apart inside you. You slammed onto the floor in a heap, and your bruised arm scrabbled at the floor to give purchase.
The footsteps crested the final escalators.
"You are the final one." The voice cut across the food court, crackling static in its tone.
The footsteps found you. You supported your weight on your good arm as best as you could and looked behind you.
They looked like a plague doctor ripped out of the 17th century. They had the signature beaked mask, black tophat, and a voluminous cloak that hid their body shape. But there was something distinctly wrong with their appearance. Beneath the glass eyepieces of their mask were catlike, yellow pupils. Their hands were like the talons of a bird, red and ugly, with three grasping fingers tipped with silver nails. And behind their back, a pair of black wings, like an angel, fanned out.
"Ah, just like the rest of them, you are ugly," they said. "But you're a bit more interesting than the rest of them." Each footstep they took rattled the mall, their steps heavy and deliberate.
You gritted your teeth. Was this person the cause of this? Were they even human?
"What did you do with them," you said. Everyone beneath you had gone silent so quickly. You could not imagine this person had just let them sit around after silencing them. And if Anton and Selena were with them at that time… you didn't want to think about it.
There was a smile in their voice. "I planted a seed. They will shed their flesh, their memories, and their mind, and be born again. They will fail to be human, and become something greater. Something like me," They punctuated their sentence with a singular beat of their wings.
They sounded like a madman, but then again, they didn't seem human.
"So you killed them?" you asked.
They stopped and tapped one claw against their chin, as if in thought. "That's a shortsighted way to look at it. The body is dead, but what does that matter to the soul?"
Definitely insane, you thought.
"I'm doing the honor of answering your questions, so I'd expect you to answer mine in turn," they sighed. You opened your mouth. "Doesn't matter now. For the mind, it struggles when moving between bodies. You lose everything in the transition." They shrugged, their wings bobbing with the movement.
"But the soul itself is unharmed. It's better for you than radiation. So really, I fail to see what's so bad about it that terrifies you humans. Some of you even manage to keep some of the things from your human life around! It's always the interesting ones, too. They want to preserve some part of themself so bad, that even as they are reborn, their soul remembers it. It's kind of interesting. But really, I'm not here to study you humans." They suddenly loomed above you, their cat-like eyes meeting your eyes.
"I don't really care about how it works. I just want you to be more interesting."
In one claw they revealed a formless light that shone like a miniature star, a searing, overwhelming warmth, something primordial and beautiful. It was a chaos chained, forced into something tangible.
Then they forced it into your chest, pulverizing bones and flesh, and dropped the light into you. For one moment, you felt power, the light suffusing every inch of your body. Power enough to get up from the ground and throttle the plague doctor. Then your limbs fell slack, as if the wires that connected you to your body had been cut.
"Do at least try to be interesting. Everything here has been so dull, it almost wasn't even worth the effort."
You were drifting. You saw an infinite darkness just beneath the surface of the world, roiling and bubbling fiercely, only held back by a cosmic bubble. Your connection to your body was fading, just like your heartbeat.
The plague doctor readjusted their hat and took to the sky with one powerful stroke of their wings, shattering the upper floors of the mall.
You were losing yourself. The darkness crept up around you, gripping you tightly, threatening to drown you within itself. The world around you faded, the darkness so much more real to you, like a disconnect from reality. A thick fog settled in your head, slowly growing, spreading its tendrils through every part of you.
This was like dying, you mused. Like dying but wrong. Everything was fading, but you were still alive. You'd still be alive after this, the doctor had said. But you'd lose everything that made you you.
…You refuse to let that just happen. They also said that you could keep some part of you alive. So you'd pick something, and you'd hold onto it. And when you become a blank slate, you will be filled with it.
[ ] Protect your love: Love is important in a human. You loved Anton and Selena and even Dad. That love was important to you. You let yourself do all the work in the household, never put up a fuss, for their sake. And you'd save them here, you'd do everything you could to make them happy. Because without love, how would you ever be happy?
Goal: Reunite with Anton and Selena. Keep them safe.
[ ] Exalt your determination: You never chose to give up willingly. It was the trait you were proudest of in yourself. That no matter the odds, you'd throw yourself into the challenge. Without your determination, could you be proud of yourself? So you'd throw yourself into this challenge knowing that you'd always win, that you'd fight until there was no option but winning.
Goal: Escape this world, save as many as you can, and win.
[ ] Embrace your hatred: To hate someone is a tall task. You have to truly mean it, and they have to truly deserve it. To hate is to intend to get back, to hurt as you've been hurt. You hate Mom. You hated the bully who broke your arm. And now, you hate the plague doctor. You cannot let hate go, or it loses meaning. So you'll remember your hatred, to not leave unfinished business.
Goal: Exact vengeance on the plague doctor and Mom.
This choice will determine your goals, disposition, and the form you will take.
Selena was getting old enough to begin her own rebellious phase, but Anton was still star struck by the attention Mom gave his every action. Your baby brother was only in fourth grade, and no matter how much he puffed out his cheeks and insisted on being, 'a big boy," as Mom always called him, you would always see him as your baby brother. You still remember the little baby he was when you were his age. He could be a brat sometimes, and when Mom always took his side it frustrated Selena to no end. But you remember when it was Mom spoiling Selena, always taking her word and not yours before Anton came around. It's not really Anton's fault.
But they'd do fine buying things without you. Mom had decided she wasn't responsible for you once you entered high school, and you know that it'd only be a couple short years before Selena was given the same treatment. You cooked food, did all your own chores, and worked jobs at all the local fast food chains that were perpetually chewing up new hires. Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King, the works. Oftentimes you even did Mom's chores.
And so as soon as you entered the mall, Mom dismissed you from her presence. She wasn't responsible for what you did to prepare for your senior year, but she definitely didn't want you in the house without her around. You hadn't even the time to grab your wallet before being rushed out the door and into her budget, beat up sedan.
You could have looked for someone you knew from school in the crowds, doubtless there'd be quite a few on a Sunday, a couple weeks before the first day of school. But with the sudden bounty of responsibility dumped on you on the transition to high school, you barely had the time to keep up with your old friends, let alone make new ones at a new school. It felt like you'd missed the window to make friends, anyways, as in those first critical weeks of high school, where everyone is making new connections, you were in a frantic search for a job to scrounge up the money for the rent Mom had started demanding. Admittedly, there was a chance that Jeremy was here. He was a friend, you suppose. You mostly met him by sheer luck, as you kept on finding the same job openings at the same time. But it was really unlikely he was here, as you were about 70% certain he lived in a cardboard box and didn't even go to high school. He was only a year younger than you, so you really should have seen him at least once if he did go. But you'd never seen him once despite his, well, noticeable appearance of unwashed hair, dirt on his everything, and jackets that looked freshly picked from a dumpster.
You sighed, one hand smushing into your face. Mom was going to walk your siblings through at least three stores, and you had yet to see the trio walk out of the first store. You'd have to trail them on their way to the other stores throughout the mall, giving up your first class seat away from most normal traffic. If you didn't follow them like this, Mom would leave the mall without giving you a single hint, and then get upset when you showed up home several hours later. It was almost like a game sometimes. Or like a puzzle. Mom had these things that she'd do, and she'd expect you to comply with her unsaid task. You had to figure out what she wanted, and how to do it out of her view. It was a lopsided game, with one player at a severe advantage over the other. But that was always the best kind of challenge, the fight from below.
A couple wandered in front of your view. One was a short, brown haired guy, dressed up all nice in a button up shirt. The other was a black haired girl with glasses and makeup that was seriously on point, with vibrant red lipstick, well applied mascara, and eyelashes that popped just right.
"Babe, please. You can't expect to come all the way out the mall and not spend some time at the bowling alley," said the guy.
The girl looked inside her velvet purse. "I came here for one thing. And can you imagine if my mascara starts to run?"
"I drove us out this far and you just wanted to buy one thing?"
"Well it's a limited edition, you know. It was already sold out in all the other malls."
"It's just a figurine babe! It's not that big of a deal."
The girl stepped right into the guy's space and stared him down, her extra few inches on him giving her the height advantage. "Do you want to say that to me? We don't need to be together."
The guy stepped back, his hands up in the air and his voice pleading. "Now, don't say that babe! I just thought we could do something together!"
"Well, we are doing something together," said the girl.
"I just thought, well, that after driving out for an hour and half we'd do something more than stand in line for another half an hour. We've done nothing and it's already getting dark!"
You hadn't been here for that long. You were dragged out here just after lunch. How was it already getting dark?
The girl scoffed. "You're so overdramatic. Come on, it's only one o' clock. It's not going to be dark for hours." She started walking away, in the direction of the parking lot.
But she's wrong, you thought. The sky was getting dark. You checked your watch, and sure enough, it said it's only 1:09. Far too early for the mall to be swathed in monotone colors of gray.
You looked up at the sky. It was not the light blue of the sunny, cloudless afternoon it was fifteen minutes ago. It was the roiling indigo of a night where the sun has long since gone down. But the sun was still resting up at the peak of the sky. It was no longer a brilliant star, that burnt your eyes just to look straight upon. It was a burnt out red, looking like the moon cast in red but a hundred times larger.
You shot to your feet. Anton and Selena. You spot out of the corner of your eye what might be the bright orange jacket that Selena came here in fading into the crowd. But it could have been a trick of the eye. You could chase after what could have been Mom leaving the store right at the moment of your distraction, or you could enter the store.
It was hard to choose. But it was unlikely that Mom was good enough at the game of yours to have slipped out the moment you were distracted, after having been there for a good thirty minutes already. Your feet slammed into the floor as you sprinted straight into the store, as the crowds stumble around your sprinting form, surely all calling you weird, pointing you out to each other, and remembering the weird girl sprinting like her life depended on it. But you only had eyes for the store in front of you.
Your feet screeched on the linoleum floor as you sprinted past aisle after aisle, trying to catch a glance of Anton or Selena in any of them. Some poor overworked cashier called out behind you.
"Miss! Miss, no running!"
You pushed those words to the back of your mind, unable to simply just ignore them but focusing on the more important task in front of you.
Once you reached the end of the aisles, you redoubled your efforts, sprinting down the aisle to the other side and continuing the search there. There still was no sign of them, and at this point, you were sure Mom would have made a point to yell at you to stop if she was here. But you wouldn't be able to follow their trail if they had already fled, so your only option was to continue.
Then the siren started. It started as a shrill beep until it built into a howling wail that reverberated throughout the store like a thousand voices in a terrible harmony. It reverberated so deep into your ears that it felt imprinted into there, like someone had stuck it directly onto your eardrum before playing it. And then for one agonizing, tense second, there was silence throughout the entire mall, the siren having quieted and with it, the voices that had saturated the entire mall. And then the siren looped, its shrill beep piercing the eardrums. And pandemonium descended.
People started screaming. Footsteps fell heavy on the floor as people started sprinting for their life. You followed their lead, sprinting out of the store yourself, to look up at the sky.
It was almost pitch black above you, yet not a single star but the rusty red sun shined down upon you. If the sky was this dark above you when camping you'd have seen the entire milky way dancing before you. Now, there was only the sun, the unrecognizable color of blood.
Someone shoved past you as you stood there in awe of the demented sky, panting fast and hard. You staggered and fell, body collapsing onto the floor, the howling wail of the siren piercing your head deeper than the pain or the screaming of hundreds of panicking mall goers. The people stampeded past you, desperate to escape from the grasp store, its door not designed for the sheer traffic of the packed store evacuating in a frenzy of mortal terror. And unfortunately for you, your downed body was directly in the middle of the door.
A voice resounded over the terror gripping the mall, an androgynous voice louder than even the howling wail of the siren.
"This is an automated emergency broadcast."
Someone stepped on your hand, and it felt like something broke.
"Evacuation is not necessary."
Someone was shoved next to you, and had to step onto your arm to balance yourself.
"I repeat, evacuation is not necessary."
One arm felt like it was broken and lame, and you tried to pick yourself up with the other.
"This emergency is of unknown nature."
Someone used your back as a stepping stone to get past another.
"Remain calm and await further instruction."
Your good arm failed under the weight, and was trampled upon.
"Please make your peace with yourself."
You laid there, collapsed upon the floor, as one last flood of people pushed, shoved, and forced their way past each other in a frenzy.
The voice finally went silent, even as the siren continued its unearthly wails.
The final wave of people broke through the doors and your body was trampled upon in their feverish attempt to escape.
The voice began to loop upon itself, repeating its instructions to its deaf audience.
Your breaths came through harsh and ragged, desperately trying to fill lungs that felt squashed and flattened. One arm felt broken, and the other felt like jelly. Your lungs were tight like someone was smothering you. Someone had stepped on one leg in a wrong way, and twitching it the slightest bit made your knee feel like it was going to fall apart.
But Anton and Selena weren't going to be safe with you there. And Mom wouldn't look for you if you just laid here. With your non-broken arm, you agonizingly pushed yourself up, painful inch by painful inch, until you could get your legs beneath you. Then, with only one leg and one arm, you pushed yourself to your feet. Something hot and salty streamed down your face. Every breath felt hot and painful.
You staggered forward. You were on the top floor. Mom was parked on the bottom floor. In the brief pauses where the siren's wail diminished, you could hear the clamor of people trampling each other and screaming for their lives beneath you.
Each step was liquid agony, one half of your body limp and impotent and screaming with the slightest twitch. You slowly pulled your body across the floor and to the escalator, and with breaths that felt bloody and raw, you stood upon it, resting on the good side of your body.
You gritted your teeth and stepped off at the bottom of the escalator, staggering forward, towards the next escalator to take you down to the third floor. Three more floors, and then you would need to stagger across the first floor to the parking garage.
As the next escalator brought you down to the third floor, the wail of the sirens finally cut off and the androgynous, repetitive voice disappearing with it. The screams and pandemonium of the people beneath you suddenly stood out in stark contrast to the otherwise complete silence. The escalator beneath you came to a halt seconds after the siren stopped. You'd have to continue on foot, crushed knee or not. With the failure of the escalators, the few lights that were active were quashed as well, leaving the mall in true, utter darkness. You took hesitant steps down the still escalator steps, only daring to step down to the next step with your good leg, creating a halting, stilted gait. You clutched onto the railings with as much strength as you could muster with your good arm.
The sounds beneath you cut off one by one, and by the time you had stepped onto the third floor and began on the next escalator, there was nothing at all. Nothing but the sound of a single pair of footsteps, heading straight up the steps to you. There was no way it was a survivor. Mom and Selena and Anton were still down there, where everyone fell silent. You had to get away from the footsteps. You hauled yourself back up the escalators with brutal efficiency, uncaring for the tearing feeling in your knee.
The footsteps beneath you accelerated.
You had to hide. The third floor was home to the food court, home to hundreds of previously full tables and few stores. At least, that you could see. You staggered towards the nearest open food stall. Achilles Gyros, the sign above it read, food still steaming inside of pots. If you could hide behind its counter, if you could survive, you could go back for Selena and Anton.
Your knee gave out as the counter came into reach and you collapsed back onto the ground as something tore completely apart inside you. You slammed onto the floor in a heap, and your bruised arm scrabbled at the floor to give purchase.
The footsteps crested the final escalators.
"You are the final one." The voice cut across the food court, crackling static in its tone.
The footsteps found you. You supported your weight on your good arm as best as you could and looked behind you.
They looked like a plague doctor ripped out of the 17th century. They had the signature beaked mask, black tophat, and a voluminous cloak that hid their body shape. But there was something distinctly wrong with their appearance. Beneath the glass eyepieces of their mask were catlike, yellow pupils. Their hands were like the talons of a bird, red and ugly, with three grasping fingers tipped with silver nails. And behind their back, a pair of black wings, like an angel, fanned out.
"Ah, just like the rest of them, you are ugly," they said. "But you're a bit more interesting than the rest of them." Each footstep they took rattled the mall, their steps heavy and deliberate.
You gritted your teeth. Was this person the cause of this? Were they even human?
"What did you do with them," you said. Everyone beneath you had gone silent so quickly. You could not imagine this person had just let them sit around after silencing them. And if Anton and Selena were with them at that time… you didn't want to think about it.
There was a smile in their voice. "I planted a seed. They will shed their flesh, their memories, and their mind, and be born again. They will fail to be human, and become something greater. Something like me," They punctuated their sentence with a singular beat of their wings.
They sounded like a madman, but then again, they didn't seem human.
"So you killed them?" you asked.
They stopped and tapped one claw against their chin, as if in thought. "That's a shortsighted way to look at it. The body is dead, but what does that matter to the soul?"
Definitely insane, you thought.
"I'm doing the honor of answering your questions, so I'd expect you to answer mine in turn," they sighed. You opened your mouth. "Doesn't matter now. For the mind, it struggles when moving between bodies. You lose everything in the transition." They shrugged, their wings bobbing with the movement.
"But the soul itself is unharmed. It's better for you than radiation. So really, I fail to see what's so bad about it that terrifies you humans. Some of you even manage to keep some of the things from your human life around! It's always the interesting ones, too. They want to preserve some part of themself so bad, that even as they are reborn, their soul remembers it. It's kind of interesting. But really, I'm not here to study you humans." They suddenly loomed above you, their cat-like eyes meeting your eyes.
"I don't really care about how it works. I just want you to be more interesting."
In one claw they revealed a formless light that shone like a miniature star, a searing, overwhelming warmth, something primordial and beautiful. It was a chaos chained, forced into something tangible.
Then they forced it into your chest, pulverizing bones and flesh, and dropped the light into you. For one moment, you felt power, the light suffusing every inch of your body. Power enough to get up from the ground and throttle the plague doctor. Then your limbs fell slack, as if the wires that connected you to your body had been cut.
"Do at least try to be interesting. Everything here has been so dull, it almost wasn't even worth the effort."
You were drifting. You saw an infinite darkness just beneath the surface of the world, roiling and bubbling fiercely, only held back by a cosmic bubble. Your connection to your body was fading, just like your heartbeat.
The plague doctor readjusted their hat and took to the sky with one powerful stroke of their wings, shattering the upper floors of the mall.
You were losing yourself. The darkness crept up around you, gripping you tightly, threatening to drown you within itself. The world around you faded, the darkness so much more real to you, like a disconnect from reality. A thick fog settled in your head, slowly growing, spreading its tendrils through every part of you.
This was like dying, you mused. Like dying but wrong. Everything was fading, but you were still alive. You'd still be alive after this, the doctor had said. But you'd lose everything that made you you.
…You refuse to let that just happen. They also said that you could keep some part of you alive. So you'd pick something, and you'd hold onto it. And when you become a blank slate, you will be filled with it.
[ ] Protect your love: Love is important in a human. You loved Anton and Selena and even Dad. That love was important to you. You let yourself do all the work in the household, never put up a fuss, for their sake. And you'd save them here, you'd do everything you could to make them happy. Because without love, how would you ever be happy?
Goal: Reunite with Anton and Selena. Keep them safe.
[ ] Exalt your determination: You never chose to give up willingly. It was the trait you were proudest of in yourself. That no matter the odds, you'd throw yourself into the challenge. Without your determination, could you be proud of yourself? So you'd throw yourself into this challenge knowing that you'd always win, that you'd fight until there was no option but winning.
Goal: Escape this world, save as many as you can, and win.
[ ] Embrace your hatred: To hate someone is a tall task. You have to truly mean it, and they have to truly deserve it. To hate is to intend to get back, to hurt as you've been hurt. You hate Mom. You hated the bully who broke your arm. And now, you hate the plague doctor. You cannot let hate go, or it loses meaning. So you'll remember your hatred, to not leave unfinished business.
Goal: Exact vengeance on the plague doctor and Mom.
This choice will determine your goals, disposition, and the form you will take.
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Character Sheet
Name: ??????
Title: None
Gender: Female
Classification: Human
Description: A highschool senior under the thumb of her negligent mother. She has golden brown skin, and cut short black hair. She's very competitive and distant. She currently works at a local Subway.
Reputation: She's known by her fellow students by her intense stare, startlingly good grades, and complete lack of friends. She's respected as someone smart in classes, but out of it, she's seen as an outsider who doesn't try to fit in with anyone.
Status: Being reborn.
Realization Level: None
Title: None
Gender: Female
Classification: Human
Description: A highschool senior under the thumb of her negligent mother. She has golden brown skin, and cut short black hair. She's very competitive and distant. She currently works at a local Subway.
Reputation: She's known by her fellow students by her intense stare, startlingly good grades, and complete lack of friends. She's respected as someone smart in classes, but out of it, she's seen as an outsider who doesn't try to fit in with anyone.
Status: Being reborn.
Realization Level: None