SOM - Chapter 1 - All Aboard

Luke regretted his life choices as he waited for the train to finally get moving. In the last few hours, he had self-destructed both his career and the tattered shreds of his personal life. If life came with a reset button, he would have smashed it repeatedly. 

Sighing, he ran his fingers through his matted and overgrown hair. He was long overdue for a haircut, but motivating himself to do anything had been difficult over the last week. 

What if Ryan goes to the cops? Luke thought.

He hadn’t meant to break the douchebag's nose, but it had been undeniably satisfying.

Stretching out his neck and cracking his bloody knuckles, Luke let out a long breath. He resolved to hit the gym in the morning to work out some stress. Since the breakup, he hadn't had a proper workout, or gone for any early morning runs. He was slacking. 

For the tenth time since the train stopped, he looked down at his phone. It was late, and he had been lucky to catch the last train. Luke wanted nothing more than his bed and the quiet oblivion of sleep.

Ignoring the multitude of missed calls and unread messages was hard. Instead, Luke distracted himself by opening up a crappy mobile game. It was exactly the kind of braindead base-builder a five-year-old could beat and was the perfect way to switch off his mind from dark thoughts.

If he were a more social person, Luke might have started up a conversation. 

He was not. 

Only sociopaths talk to strangers on the tube, Luke thought. Besides, who would he talk to? The only other person on the train in the middle of the night was a tired old construction worker who looked as bad as he felt. The old man hadn't moved once since he got on the train half an hour ago.

How anyone could sleep in the small, grimy subway seats was something Luke couldn’t understand. He was a large man, half an inch short of six feet, with a heavyset build, and his seat struggled to contain him. 

Growing up, bullies constantly tormented him for his pudgy body, but it hadn’t been until after his dad’s heart attack, that he put in the work to turn that soft physique into hard muscle. 

Smelling booze from several seats back, Luke wrinkled his nose. Somehow he doubted talking to the guy up front would make for stimulating conversation, and he wouldn’t try to find out. 

A few minutes later, Luke had given in to temptation. With a scowl, he was reading through some of the unread messages on his phone. Most of them were from Chrissy, scolding him as expected. 

The gist of her messages was that she thought he had overreacted to a bit of banter and was rehashing several old arguments. There were plenty to choose from, a veritable buffet of unresolved issues. Though they had only broken up a week ago, their relationship had been treading water for a while. 

Luke was so preoccupied, that when the voice first spoke he wasn't really listening, the words washing over him like background noise. The speaker was female and her voice oddly maternal.

[Hello, I am your new world spirit. My name is Gaia. I am a gestalt intelligence formed from your collective psyche known as a world spirit. Recently, my development was accelerated with the creation of a quantum based artificial intelligence. This event has tethered the planet to the Veil between worlds. Welcome to the omniverse.]

There was a pause, and when Gaia spoke again the warmth had drained from her voice.

[Enemy psions detected. Predicted arrival is imminent. Initiating training system.]

Luke looked up from his phone with a jolt as a burst of pain exploded in his mind, but it was gone as swiftly as it arrived. 

As the pain subsided, Luke rubbed his temples and mentally played back the message in his head, but it was hard to focus.

Lights in the train carriage were flashing on and off rapidly, and the strobing effect disorientated him.

Then, as the flashing stopped, reality shifted before his eyes. On the sticky white floor, a mass of solid darkness flickered into existence, the shadows coalescing and taking form. 

The creature looked like a giant rat, with a long, slender whip-like tail. Mangled fur clung to its skeletal frame like the tattered remnants of a shroud. The flesh on its lower face was missing, exposing a ghastly grin of exposed bone and rotting sinew. It looked like death, yet somehow the rancid smell was even worse, and made Luke’s stomach churn.

Skipping any introduction, the animal lunged at the sleeping construction worker, who had a violent awakening. Powerful jaws bit into his stomach and tore into flesh as if it were wet clay. Pink intestines spilled out of the cavity like uncooked sausages. The man’s neon jacket stained a deep crimson as blood gushed from the cavity. 

Luke's eyes widened, his mouth agape, as he sat frozen watching the carnage unfold. 

A primal instinct surfaced. Adrenaline surged through Luke, erasing any weariness. His breath caught, pupils narrowed, and heart pounded. The primitive switch in his lizard brain teetered between flight or fight. It landed on the latter.

Luke sprang to his feet and raced toward the oversized vermin. With one hand he grabbed the rodent's scruff and the other clutched a protruding rib bone. 

Staining his muscles he threw the rabid animal off the drunk man. The beast landed hard against a perfume poster on the wall, and as it slid down, it emitted a shrill hiss.

Although he had dabbled in a few martial arts, none of them prepared Luke to fight this. He had to improvise. Luke jumped into the air and slammed down on the rodent with his considerable bulk.

The heel of his boot broke the rat’s spine with a crunch, followed by a wet squelch as its innards splattered the floor. As he stomped through its chest cavity, a jagged rib bone sliced through his jeans, leaving a red line on his calf. He looked down and winced. 

A glance back up at the neon man showed he was alive, for now, but might not live long if he kept losing blood. 

Up close Luke saw the man was middle-aged, with a rugged beard and pockmarked skin. The man was pale and his terrified eyes looked down at the gaping wound in his abdomen. He was in shock, which was perfectly understandable. His insides were on the outside.

Indecision gripped Luke as he stared at the potentially fatal wound. While he was gawking, he caught a movement in the corner of his vision. Luke reacted just in time. As he jerked his leg out of the way, the rodent’s head twisted 180 degrees backward and tried to bite him.

Luke flinched. He had seen the damage those jaws could do. 

In a blind panic, Luke raised his foot and kicked, stamping down on its head once, twice, and again over and over. When he stopped all that remained was a pink slush of brain and bone fragments; gore and viscera dripped from the seats and painted the walls.

[You have killed a Level 1 Plague Rat. This is a common undead monster found in urban dungeons that can create lesser zombies.]

[You have gained enough experience to reach level 2.]

Luke recoiled at the words, still on edge. The voice didn’t emanate from his surroundings but spoke directly into his ears, reminiscent of noise-cancelling headphones. The voice made him doubt his sanity, but reassured him that the rat was dead. 

This must be the system Gaia mentioned, he mused. Has life become a video game? Despite everything, Luke felt a tiny rush of endorphins at the prospect of levelling up.

A groan to his right pulled him from his reverie and Luke saw the drunk grasping towards him. Unfocused, bloodshot eyes stared at him. His initial reaction was to step back; thoughts of zombies filled his head.

When the man gurgled for help, Luke realised he was being ridiculous; he watched too much TV.

Luke was ill-equipped to deal with a mortal wound, he had some rudimentary training. A few years ago he had worked as a hospital porter for a stint and had taken the basic first aid course. 

He had to stop the bleeding.

Luke took off his shirt and wrapped it around his hands, pushing down and putting pressure on the wound. Blood quickly saturated the shirt. Luke wasn’t certain if this technique came from his training or daytime TV, but it was better than doing nothing. 

Luke’s efforts had some effect. The man was as pale as a corpse, but Luke was pressing on the gut wound hard enough to stem the bleeding. Shit. Shit. Shit. What now? Luke panicked. 

He couldn't call an ambulance. Luke’s gaze darted around the carriage, looking for an alarm to pull. Distracted and unsure of what to do next, it took Luke by surprise when the man took a bite out of his forearm.

[You have gained the status effect - Dormant Zombie: If you die while infected you will rise again. This effect spreads via bodily fluids and induces cannibalistic urges. +1 Strength, -2 Empathy.]

The voice was the same as before but colder and more automated. Luke didn’t know what was happening, and he only really registered the mention of zombies reinforcing his earlier worries. 

Pain flared from his arm as the zombie continued to chomp down on Luke’s arm like a dog with a bone. Relying on instinct, he acted without thinking. 

Luke pushed the zombie away, then lifted himself by the grab rail and kicked down as hard as he could. The zombie’s neck snapped backward, and the back of its head cracked against the rim of the window. It stopped moving.

[You have killed Level 1 Patrick Fenn. This is an unclassed human. Loot generated.]

[Concept gained: Forerunner - Copper rank. This is awarded for being one of the first thousand humans to reach level 2. +1 all attributes. +5% experience gained. The early bird gets the worm. Accept? Yes/No.]

[Concept gained: Murderhobo - Gold rank awarded for being the first human to kill another human. +5 Will, +3 Strength, -1 Empathy. +40% chance of loot manifesting from kills. It’s what my character would do. Accept? Yes/No.]

Luke froze as the announcements came at him in rapid fire. He struggled to process them. That wasn’t right. The system had clearly said the man was a zombie. Hadn’t it?

What have I done? It didn’t matter if a voice in his head justified his actions. This was scales of magnitudes worse than punching a douchebag for making a move on his ex. 

The messages wouldn’t disappear from his vision until he acknowledged them, and he wasn’t in the mood for games, or to indulge whatever mental break he was currently suffering from. Still in shock, Luke swiped right to get rid of them.

Dread poured over Luke like liquid nitrogen dousing him. He was going to go to jail, or an insane asylum. Blaming murder on a voice in his head was exactly what an absolute nutcase would do.

He had killed a man. 

Luke looked down at his clenched hands. The white knuckles of his right hand were still bruised and scabbed over. He had gone from assaulting a co-worker to homicide in a few short hours. Worse still, he was feeling a bizarre urge to eat the corpse.

Looking back at the floor, Luke saw that the [Plague Rat] was still there. At least he hadn't hallucinated that part. It was physical evidence that what happened was real. 

Nudging the beast with his foot Luke found the monster was lighter than expected. Even that small kick was enough to send the monster rolling down the carriage, spreading entrails as it did so. 

The underside of the rodent wasn’t a pretty sight, and the smell of rotting flesh was only getting worse. Luke didn’t think he could conjure up a smell that pungent. He wasn't that creative.

Pointedly ignoring the dead man, Luke stood and tried to control his breathing. The stench didn’t help, but after a few forced breaths, he regained a modicum of self-control. It was easier than he expected, and Luke felt an eerie calm settle over himself. 

Recriminations could wait until he was somewhere safe. He doubted there was only one rat, if the undead vermin were anything like the mundane variety there was probably a whole nest nearby. With that in mind, Luke did a slow scan of the train.

There was nothing in his immediate vicinity. This set Luke at ease, but it was too soon to relax yet. When he walked towards the front of the train, he saw a trio of the undead rodents in the carriage ahead. They were devouring a human corpse and showed no sign of noticing him.

The run-down train was an older model. This meant that each carriage was a separate unit, separated by a pair of doors and a closed gangway. It was a small silver lining. Luke stepped back and took a moment to look outside the train. 

He expected to see concrete walls but got more than he bargained for. The tunnel was gone. Instead, the train sat in a vast subterranean cavern. Luke wasn't sure how he had failed to notice until that moment, even with the events of the last few minutes. 

Peering out of the window on his right, he saw a large flowing river. The river ran in parallel to the train and glowed a radioactive green. Beneath the waves, Luke discerned the ethereal forms of ghostly figures. There were hundreds of them drifting downstream. Squinting, he thought he saw a silhouette of a colossal serpent.

Instinctively, Luke looked away. A creature that large could swallow the train whole. He tried to put the lurking leviathan from his mind and turned to look out of the other window. 

He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but what he saw surprised him nonetheless. Bathed in a spectral blue glow, the overgrown ruins of an ancient city had not been at the top of his list. 

Fuck me sideways, we’re not in Kansas anymore.