Chapter 57 – Pinball

It felt like we stepped into a casino, to be honest. There were no windows, and all the light throughout the room came from flashing arcade cabinets and bright RGB lighting spread across the arcade. Despite all the lights, it was still fairly dim like some kind of retro laser tag arena. The carpet was dark blue and covered in squiggly confetti, geometric patterns, and polka dots that made my eyes swim.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” I squeezed my eyes shut, and looked away from all the flashing lights. I never was quite good with this kind of thing. Always made me nauseous.

Quinn didn’t say anything, nor did she pat my back like I half expected her too. My eyes flew open, and my ears perked up alertly. She was gone. I wasn’t sure when it happened, but she wasn’t right next to me like she had been when we entered this place.

The door we came through wasn’t even behind me when I turned around. Instead, I stood in an intersection formed by rows and rows of pinball machines. There were so many cluttered together that the entire thing was like a winding maze of confusion. The arcade stretched on endlessly around me—so much so that I couldn’t even see the walls of the building.

”Quinn?” I shouted across the retro arcade. My voice was drowned in the noise of machinery and sharp tunes of arcade machines. “Quinn!”

Okay, okay… don’t panic. Don’t panic. I held my tail, and softly brushed the flared out fur along it. We entered at basically the same time, so she was definitely in here with me. I just needed to find her. Seek snapped to life as a connection formed deeper into the arcade. Or further out? My sense of direction was totally out of whack.

I pulled out my phone and checked it—no signal. Honestly, it’d be more surprising if there was a signal in this place. We should technically still be in Silverport, but since when had anomalies cared about technicalities? I shoved the useless device back into my pocket.

BZZzzzzzzzzz… zzzzzzt… zzzt…

“Attention, valued guests.” A grainy, distorted voice called across hidden speakers as the lights started to flicker. “Scheduled maintenance is now beginning. Please remain near an arcade cabinet until service resumes!”

Click!

I didn’t even have time to think before the lights all over the arcade cut out. Darkness filled the space so thickly that even my night vision struggled to pry through it much beyond what was right in front of me.

Blackouts, right. Heh, as if this thing wasn’t going to be complicated enough with Quinn disappearing. I picked a pinball machine at random, and crawled underneath it. I just had to hope that my Guardian also remembered the rules. Pyre, please let Quinn be safe.

I sat in the darkness for what felt like hours, though it was probably just a few minutes. The entire arcade was so eerily quiet that I could hear my own heartbeat pound in my ears. I curled my tail around my knees, and buried my face down into Vigil’s head to keep my calm.

Darkness and cowering like this… it sent a shiver down my spine. My tail twitched erratically as I stroked at the silver fur. It was entirely spiked up by dread. I could face all sorts of Calamities and monsters without any issue, but this kind of thing… my arms broke into trembles.

Vigil pulsed warmly against my chin as if to remind me he was still here. The soft comfort allowed some of the dread shaking through my body to fade away. I dropped my nose against the back of his head, and squeezed my eyes shut.

Mechanical grinding came from somewhere in the arcade. One of my ears tracked toward it while the other stayed up and alert to my direct surroundings. The grinding was joined by the ratcheting of a wrench, and something sparking.

One of the pinball machines churned to life. The sounds of a high score rang across the entire place, and lights flashed erratically. My eyes snapped open to track the source of the noise. There was just enough light for me to make out a shadow backlit against the roof.

Although the shadow stretched it out, whatever it was looked tall and narrow with way too many limbs sticking out of it. There were so many that they looked like hair. I bit down on Vigil’s ear tightly. An alien mechanical chittering came from the pinball machine, and the lights abruptly cut out to plunge the place into darkness once more.

Clomp-clomp… clomp… clompclompclomp…

The creature steadily moved away from me with heavy, pounding steps. My ears twitched as I listened closely. Only once I was sure it was far away did I let out a breath of air, and released Vigil’s ear from my teeth. I whispered softly to the warm plushie, “sorry.”

The warmth radiating from him abruptly faded. My ears flattened, and my legs started to shake once more. Heh, right. Sorry couldn’t make up for someone like me biting him like that. I burrowed my head down and tried to make myself go still—

The alien chittering returned, and this time it was right above me. My ears instantly shot upright as I froze. The choker around my neck felt like it was suffocating me, and my heart pounded so loudly I was sure the creature could hear it through the silence of the arcade.

A soft knocking noise echoed down through the pinball machine above. It knows I’m here. It has to know I’m here. It must’ve heard me say something. By the Pyre, why did I have to be stupid and open my idiotic mouth?

Clomp!

A heavy metallic leg slammed into the ground on the side of the pinball machine. It was a grotesque abomination of flesh twisted with electrical wires, hand tools, and steel. The leg skewered down through the gaps between machines, and was quickly joined by three more. A set of seven dropped down on the other side like it was straddling the machine, and caged me in.

Two more arcade games flashed and flickered so far in the distance I could barely even make them out. The legs of the creature froze, and then abruptly pulled away through me. I sat absolutely still throughout the next few minutes as I barely dared to breathe. Eventually, the murky voice from before returned.

”Scheduled maintenance now ending!” As if to punctuate the announcer's voice, the lights turned back on and arcade machines churned back to life. “Thank you for your patience!”

I hesitantly crawled out from beneath the pinball machine. I half expected a monster to be standing just above me waiting for me to stick my head out. Instead, the maze of arcade games was just as empty as when I looked last time.

”Operator.” Vigil’s voice made me flinch so hard I nearly banged my head against the machine.

”What, clanker?” I growled out in annoyance, and shook out my tail. I pulled him out of my pocket, and held him tightly in my hands. Honestly, it was a good thing he was with me. If the Silverport Back Arcade separated us, he’d be stuck and completely immobile in that plushie body of his.

”This unit detects short-wave radio signals coming from that direction.” His eyes flickered, and flashed to the side. I followed his gaze for a moment before slowly nodding my head. That was in the direction of Quinn anyways… maybe it was her trying to establish contact?

With that hopeful thought, I started to move down through the arcades. I tried to calm my breathing down as the fur along my tail slowly started to settle back down. Despite my desperate attempts, my fur bristling was totally out of my control.

“Operator Reyna’s heart rate increased abruptly even before the unknown entity appeared.” Vigil said in a matter of fact tone. I focused on his words to distract myself from the bright lights that kept me constantly off kilter.

”I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped at the robot.

“Fear responses before a threat appears is unusual for you, Operator.” Vigil pressed on without a care about my snappy voice.

”Just… just mind your own business, ‘kay?” I pushed down memories from my time in the kennel before they could claw their way back up, and pulled roughly at my choker. “Why’d your Grail Knight abandon you in the Mire, anyway?”

”This unit detects the Operator’s desire to shift subjects.” Vigil pulsed weakly in my arms. “Very well. I was to observe and report from the ship. Only, the Grail Knight vastly underestimated the damage dealt to the ship.”

”He sounds like a real class act.” My jaw tensed. I didn’t even know the name of the guy I was supposed to find. So far, all I knew was his occupation, the fact his entire ship full of people flatlined, and he was being hunted by a group of goliath superhumans.

“The Grail Knight was… not particularly liked by those of the Ordos Gradalis.” Vigil’s voice came slowly. “Further discussion should wait for another time. This unit has detected that your heart has returned to normal operations.”

My mouth opened to tell him I didn’t care about my stupid heart rate. I stopped a moment before I could actually say something. Huh, so that’s why he… “Thank you, Vigil.”

I shook my head roughly, which caused my long silver hair and ears to flop around. Honestly, I shouldn’t be getting so worked up over a little impenetrable darkness. I could probably take whatever creature that was with my bare hands if I needed to. I was just being a cowardly little mutt with her tail curled between her legs.

I turned down another aisle. Honestly, they were all starting to blur together. I did notice that several were more ornate than the others, and designed with incomprehensible symbols like they were from some kind of esoteric ritual. A few of them even had green marks on the cabinet windows like someone dragged a marker across it.

Harbor was definitely experimenting here at some point, so maybe it was some kind of experiment marking? Why, though? Were only certain games safe? That was a worrying thought. If those kids came in here and messed around—no, they were fine.

Vigil finally called me to a stop as I turned down a new aisle. “The source should be just in front of us.”

I leaned against a shoot ‘em up machine, and shook my head. All I could see was more of the same. “Just more arcade stuff.”

”Operator, it may be below.” Vigil reminded me.

”I… heh, right.” I thought it might be Quinn, in which case she’d probably be walking around trying to find me. If it wasn’t, though…

I crouched down near the edge of one of the machines, and caught something flashing in the light. I dropped down and crawled forward. Several of the arcade machines had been pushed together to create an almost canopied space for me to crawl through. The backs of machines created a maze of walls that I worked through.

I caught its scent long before I stumbled across the scene of a skeleton leaning against the side of a salvaged machine. A lab coat covered the skeleton, though it had long since decayed and discolored around the old bones.

I crawled forward a bit more, and the canopy above me faded away to create a small room formed by the backs of arcade machines. Tallies covered a wall—though I didn’t bother counting the hundreds of marks. Whoever this was put a serious amount of time into making a shelter for themself.

A radio sat just to the dead man’s side. It’d been wired into one of the machines to draw power from it. I picked it up and switched the device off. “Poor guy must’ve gotten stuck here.”

”Operator.”

”What.” I stared down blankly at the radio. How long had he been here to wind up like this?

Vigil’s eyes flashed weakly from my pocket. ”This unit would strongly prefer that you do not die in the arcade.”

I stopped what I was doing, and focused down on the soft silver plushie. He really was adorable like this. “I’ll try not to, Vigil.”

Unfortunately, he had to keep talking and ruin any soft feelings that were starting to grow. ”Recovery from this place would be extremely inconvenient, if not impossible.”

“Heh, right.” There it is. Despite the bitterness in my voice, it was almost comforting that he so clearly needed me for something that only I could do.

I scrounged through the supplies scattered around the place. Most of it was salvaged junk and empty food cans. Judging by the mountain of empty cans without a scrap of food left, I had a pretty good guess how things ended for him.

A satchel dangling from the back of a machine caught my eye, and I popped it open to reveal rows of neatly folded arcade tickets as well as a small journal. The journal itself was worn out, and most of the pages were ripped out of it. Scorch marks along the floor left no room to doubt why that was.

A few of the pages were still held within the old leather. I briefly glanced through it, but it was so scribbled over in illegible handwriting I couldn’t make out much beyond the esoteric looking arcade games being anomalies in and of themselves. The ones marked with green were safe, and could reward more than just tickets. The rest… better not to use them.

The writing devolved into ramblings about not having enough tickets. The entire last page was covered in not enough so much so that the ink made the entire page look black.

I looked up at the satchel again. He had tickets, though, didn’t he? So why was he still here? What was this guy saving for before he died here all alone? Could he not find the exchange booth?

I snapped the journal shut, and grabbed the satchel full of tickets. “I’m sorry, doctor.”

Robbing the dead wasn’t ideal, but he didn’t exactly need this stuff anymore. I crawled out from the hidden away shelter with a heavy heart. His bones would likely remain here, trapped in the anomaly he died in, until they turned to dust. What a miserable fate.

I shook it off, and started to move through the aisles once more. I had more pressing matters to worry about—such as the still living. I needed to find Quinn, the kids, and the exit. Preferably before any of us ended up having to build a shelter of our own.

Seek’s connection pulsed at the back of my mind, and I adjusted my route to go find Quinn. The sooner we linked up, the better.