60,000-year countdown has ended
Nesis 1 released
Please acknowledge
Jas blinked blearily and swiped his gloved hand at the glowing letters. They didnt disappear. He frowned, turned away, and they tracked with his line of sight, bright green against a subtly darker rectangle, hovering in mid-air at a distance of so three feet from his face.
He tried to turn away again, but the center arms on the wooden bench were designed to keep people like him from getting too comfortable.
Didnt stop him from trying, though.
Damn it, he hissed at last, and sat up. It was cold. His breath misted in the air. He looked around. The subway platform was empty. The fluorescent bulbs in their long casings filled the air with toxic white light. The tracks on either side of the platform were endless black strips of rusted rails, old wooden ties, and the shifting, scurrying form of New York Citys truest citizens, the rats.
He was all alone down here.
What the hell? Jas rubbed at his eyes and then frowned at the green lettering. His head swam from the last effects of the wine hed finished earlier that night. But the green letters were crisp and clear.
And they werent going anywhere.
Too steady and weird to be a hallucination. So form of new advertising? Who the fuck would bother marketing to him, though? And this wasnt selling anything. It was threatening.
Nesis 1?
Had the governnt implanted sothing in his head? So sort of ocular overlay? Hed been in the hospital six months ago when that asshole had swerved to hit him on purpose. Concussion, broken left leg, broken ribs. Had the hospital staff realized hed never pay, and installed sothing to keep track of him?
Jas screwed up his face in annoyance. Didnt make sense. The ssage would be about hospital bills if so.
Again, he waved his hand before his face, then stopped. The lettering disappeared when his hand interposed itself. If it was an ocular projection, theyd simply ripple over his palm.
But no. He could block them out.
Which ant they werent originating from him.
Jas sat up a little more.
Again, he looked up and down the platform. Nobody. Were there caras? Was he on a reality show?
Hell, was he still asleep?
Jas slapped his bearded cheek. Slapped himself harder.
The words remained in the air before him.
Fully awake now, he read them again. 60,000 year count down. What was that about? Humans had discovered agriculture twelve thousand years ago. What had started fifty thousand years before that? And whod been around to start a count down? Aliens?
Nah.
Nesis 1 released. Code for so sort of virus? Military operation? So kind of crazy gar thing?
No idea.
The last line though was a question.
Acknowledged, he rasped and the words disappeared abruptly.
Jas jerked back, surprised, and looked up and down the platform again. Silence. The trains ran twice an hour this deep into the night. The white lights blared down onto the bright yellow stippled strips on the platforms edges. The white tiles on the walls beyond the tracks seed to glow. The tunnel mouths at either end were cavernous and hungry.
Ominous, sohow.
Had he activated sothing?
Instincts honed by five years living on the streets told him it was ti to go.
He rose, slung his grubby backpack over one shoulder, and started making his way toward the broad staircase that led up to the station and then the street.
Panicked squeaks.
All the rats were suddenly pouring down the tracks, dozens of them, racing in unison away from the left tunnel mouth just beyond the stairs.
Jas froze.
Hed seen New York rats ignore trains, empty cans thrown at them, flaunting their ownership of the city.
Nothing scared a big city rat.
He squinted into the darkness. The bright lights ruined his dark vision. He shielded his eyes. The darkness was almost impenetrable.
Almost.
Was that movent?
Yes.
Sothing was approaching. Small. Walking. Drawing closer to the light from the depths.
Jas felt his gut clench. A child?
He knew it was no child, but he couldnt shake a lifeti of being raised in the normal world that easily.
Hey, you a kid? It was a ridiculous thing to shout out. Hey. You all right in there?
The small, shadowed shape paused. Then it made a hissing sound that caused the hairs on Jas arms to prickle, his mouth to dry up, and for him to take an involuntary step backward.
Not a hiss. An inhuman giggle.
Fuck this, he whispered, and ran the last dozen yards over the gray tiles to the base of the steps. His left leg twinged with pain as he hauled himself up the stairs, breathing harshly.
The ticket station was closed. The magazine kiosk had its roller tal awning pulled all the way down and padlocked. Turnstiles glead; their arms endlessly polished by passengers pushing through. Movie posters on the walls, trash kicked across the floor.
Still nobody.
He went to leg it up the final flight of stairs to the street but paused to glance back down to the platform. He couldnt help it.
The small figure had stepped into view.
It werent no kid.
Small, wiry, two feet tall, it looked like one of the gremlins from the 80s movie. Batwing ears, triangular face, mouth filled with needle-like teeth, eyes like twin rubies with vertical black pupils shoved into its head. Naked and sexless, it was covered in black, scaly skin like an iguana, and each finger ended in inch-long talons. Even from the top of the stairs Jas could tell they were wickedly sharp.
What the fuck, he croaked.
The gremlin? It grinned at him. There was no mistaking the malice behind its widening smile, the intelligence gleaming in its red eyes.
It crouched as if about to leap up the stairs at him.
Jas ran.
Didnt even feel his left leg. He burst through the exit turnstile, pounded across the station, took the next set of steps three at a ti.
Once hed been in great shape. For a second he felt as if his old body had been returned to him. He flew up the stairs and burst out onto the street, gasping and panting.
The irrational fear that hed erge into a deserted world was imdiately dispelled. Cars rolled down the street, even at this hour. The bar across the way blared a Journey song into the bitter cold night. The restaurants and shops were closed, sure, but here and there people were still out. A small group of college kids, drunk and laughing and making their way to their next destination. Another holess dude in a doorway, layered up in old sleeping bags and blankets, barely visible.
The sounds of the city washed over him. The distant rumble of a train. Honks from the Flushing Avenue a few blocks away. A crowd singing to the Journey song with raucous abandon.
Reality.
Jas passed his hand over his sweaty brow. His heart was pounding. A dream. No, a hallucination. Sothing wrong with him. A bad trip, though hed not taken anything.
Trembling with the excess of adrenaline, he took a deep breath and looked down into the subway station, confident that hed see nothing, that the bad juju was over. Nothing like so cold February night air to wash the madness out of your system.
The gremlin was making its way up the stairs, eyes locked on him.
Jas let out a cry and stumbled back. Ran into the street. A car slamd on its horn as it swerved around him. Jas nearly fell, his backpack sliding down to the crook of his elbow. He ran across both lanes to the bar. Paddys Luck. Big windows revealed the crowded interior. TV screens high above the bar, the last of the crowd around cocktail tables or bellied up. A galaxy of bottles gleaming from the backlighting.
Three guys stood by the front door, two smoking, one clearly working.
Hey, whoa, said the bouncer. You all right there, brother?
Jas couldnt go in. Places like Paddys Luck werent for the likes of him. But he ignored the bouncer, looked back, saw the gremlin erge into the open, its manner hesitant.
There, he said, pointing. You see that?
The three n looked at the subway entrance. Their expressions were blank. Mystified.
The 43rd street station? asked the bouncer.
Jas thrust his finger back at the gremlin. No! That thing! The the gremlin thing, there, right there!
The gremlin crouched upon the sidewalk, glanced back and forth as if learning how the cars moved, then grinned and began to lope across the street toward them when traffic died.
Dont see nothing, brother man, said the bouncer. Look, you want to call soone? Friendship House is only a dozen blocks away
Jas felt his mind warp under the stress. The gremlin was there. The way the city lights played off its wiry body, the animal-like manner with which it ran across the lanes, he couldnt be making that up.
But the three guys didnt see it.
Was this it? Had he finally cracked? It wasnt textbook. But perhaps schizophrenia? A brain tumor? Lewy body dentia? Charles Bonnet syndro?
But his instincts told him no.
That thing was no hallucination. Hallucinations werent introduced by floating green text.
Regardless, basic survival instincts told him to keep it the hell away. Hallucination or not, he wasnt going to let it get close.
Jas darted into Paddys.
Hey! shouted the bouncer angrily. You cant -
The air beca warm, filled with the slls of sweat, cologne, booze. People mostly ignored him, which forced him to shove past, earning angry words that turned into recoil and shock.
Party kids didnt like seeing holess dudes in their bar.
Jas glanced back. The bouncer was surging after him, all kindness gone, expression like a closed fist. But the gremlin had also entered the bar. Jas caught a flash of its black scaled form as it slid ahead of the bouncer, fast and nimble in the crowd.
Get out of the way! hollered Jas, abandoning his backpack as it beca entangled in the press. Hed never make the rear of the place. He needed high ground.
He shoved his way up to the bar. Drinks spilled, people shouted, and one of the bartenders scowled at him, a huge dude with tattoo sleeves up both arms.
Where was it? Where was it?
Jas had to get out of the press of bodies. He slamd a filthy hand on the glowing white bar and heaved himself up.
There was still so of that old strength in him. Up he hoisted himself, knocking more bottles and glasses over, onto his knees, to turn and stare down at the ground.
The whole bar was staring at him now, ignoring the ending to the song, the singing having died down. The bouncer was there, reaching up for him, and he felt a strong hand grab his pants by the knee.
But the gremlin. There. Eyes burning like twin embers in the gloom by the floor. It grinned up at him and then, like a flea, it leaped.
Jas scread as it latched onto his chest, talons cutting through his thick army jacket, weirdly light but viciously strong. It was all ropy muscle and sinew.
Jas tried to wrest it away, but it jerked forward and bit into the side of his neck.
He didnt feel much pain, or, there was pain, but it was clinical. Sheer adrenaline kept him going. He grasped the gremlin by the throat and shoved it away.
It ca off with a chunk of flesh in its mouth.
Blood splattered over the white bar, over the upturned faces, over the bouncers outstretched arms.
The music was blaring, but a mont later screams filled the air as college kids turned to each other, wide eyed with horror and panic, blood running down their cheeks.
The bouncer froze.
The gremlin squird in Jas grip. But he wasnt going to let it get away. It lacerated the sleeves of his thick coat, shredding the stiff canvas material. Jas shook it, but this was going nowhere.
He needed to kill it.
With a shout he dropped to the bar and slamd the gremlin as hard as he could against its white glowing surface.
The thick plexiglass cracked as the gremlins head bounced off it.
Still, it hissed and scratched, tearing at his arms now. Blood was pouring from Jas neck, stark and crimson on the luminous bar, saring as the gremlin wrenched this way and that.
But Jas was bigger.
Fear, doubt, panic, all of it went away.
Leaving only cold fury.
His old fury, his truest companion. A fury that was always with him, but always undirected, or pointed at himself.
Finally, though, in this mont, he had sothing to take it out on.
He grabbed a bottle by the neck. Liquid flowed out the open top as he raised it up on high and clubbed the gremlins hideous face.
Again. And again. And again.
The bartender had him by the waist, was trying to pull him off the bar. But Jas was rigid. He smashed the bottle till the gremlins skull split, till black blood poured out to mix with his red, till brains oozed out and its arms and legs ceased twitching.
The crowd was shoving away, making it hard for the other bouncers to get to him, but the bartender was bigger than all of them put together and finally heaved Jas down onto the rubber mat that covered the floor behind the bar.
The guy was shouting sothing down at him, but Jas had ceased struggling. He knew he had to apply pressure to his wound, that sobody needed to call 911, that he was entering shock, that depending on how much blood hed lost he didnt have much ti.
But he stared past the bartenders pale sar of a face at where new words had appeared, sohow precise and legible even as the rest of the world grew blurry and then faded away:
Nesis 1 Defeated
Personal Statistics Unlocked
You are #2,789 to survive Global First Wave Nesis 1 Incursion
Title Earned: Vanguard
4 Days till Nesis 2 Released
90 Days till Pits Open
Dawn of the Void has begun
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