Seeking Strays

Every noise in the arcade sounded like thunder in my lupine ears. My arms tightened around Robert, who had his mouth clamped shut and eyes wide in terror. My boots pounded against the ugly carpet of the arcade as I flew down the aisle.

Chittering came from the distance, quickly followed by the familiar clomping sound of the maintenance creature moving through the distant arcade. The fur along my tail spiked up further and further with each passing moment that we were stuck out of cover.

Just as the clomping grew closer and closer, I spotted something through the deepening darkness of the fading lights. Unfortunately, the light cut out entirely as soon as I spotted it, and the arcade plummeted into complete darkness.

Bang!

A muffled whimper broke out of my throat as I slammed full force into an arcade cabinet. I felt something in my hip throb, and I staggered forward. By some feat of dexterity, I somehow managed to stay upright despite being top heavy and blind. Felt like a fracture, but it might’ve broke.

”Put me down!” Robert whispered at me. My ears twitched up at the noise that sounded like thunder in my ears.

”Not happening,” I quietly whispered back as I staggered down the aisle.

”But you’re hurt.” His voice weakened slightly. “I c-can walk.”

“And you’d be very brave. Hush now.” I bopped my head down against his, and tried to find my way forward once more. No way was I going to put him down. It was impossible for me to see. He’d be lost in the darkness, and then after that… I didn’t want to think about it.

The darkness that devoured the arcade was all-consuming and impenetrable. I shifted tactics, and Seek swapped off Quinn for the first time since I set it. Instead, it locked onto the arcade machine I spotted just before the light totally faded. A connection snapped forward. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it.

Clomp… clomp-clomp-clomp…

Irregular and heavy footsteps pounded somewhere behind me. The creature paused, and went entirely silent. A moment later, like the sun breaching the horizon, one of the arcade machines churned to life. Shadows flashed across the arcade like they were reaching out for me.

The dim light wouldn’t be enough for a human to see, but for a Silver Wolf Apex? It was just enough for my night vision to work. The world entered a brief state of washed out greens and yellows. Everything was blurred, but it was just enough to make my way forward.

The lights cut out just as I reached a motion simulator cabin. It was one of those fully enclosed cabin things that played a video of a roller coaster while the seats shook around erratically. I wasn’t sure if it’d work considering the creature could just push aside the veil, but it also could’ve just crouched down to see me under the pinball machine the first time too.

I blindly reached forward, and pushed back the cloth curtain blocking the way forward. With my hip throbbing fiercely, I dropped Robert into one of the seats and flopped into the other. My tail snapped the curtain closed behind us.

For a few moments, there was just the sound of my ragged breathing as I tried to catch my breath and the panicked breaths from Robert. I shifted to take some of the pressure off my hip, and reached for Robert’s hand to help keep him calm. Just as I found it—

A metallic chittering broke out just above us, and his hand tightened on mine like a vice. I squeezed back reassuringly. I hoped it came across as reassuring, anyway. He relaxed ever so slightly. Heh, at least one of us thought I knew what I was doing.

A light flickered to life just outside of the roller coaster cabin. It wasn’t very bright, but it felt blinding in the pure darkness of the arcade. A broken tune echoed out of the arcade. It wasn’t that creepy into the mix of cabinets, but in isolation it created a creeping dread that made my ears twitch uncomfortably.

The noise abruptly cut off. In its place, a metallic knocking came from the front of the machine. It was slow at first, but built up into an uneven tempo like something incredibly large was crawling across the top of the cabin.

Robert broke into full-body shaking in the seat next to me. By some miracle, he managed to keep entirely quiet despite his body going into full shudders of terror. I squeezed his hands as my ears twitched and swung around erratically to track the creature on top of us.

Lights flicked on from elsewhere in the arcade, and illuminated the fabric curtains blocking the inside of the cabin from the outside. An inhuman shadow appeared against the top of the dark curtain. A head-like shape slowly dipped down as the creature crawled down the side of the cabin. It pressed against the fabric, revealing two razor sharp mandibles along its head.

I dropped a hand down to the pistol at my hip, and palmed the grip. I doubted it’d do anything against the creature. Instead, my mind drifted to the choker wrapped around my throat. Robert would see if I equipped the Barghest armor, but at least I’d have a weapon in the axe that came with it.

The fabric pressed in toward me, and one of the limbs stretched into the machine. It was a mess of wire and twitching flesh tipped with a deadly spike. Bit by brutal bit, it reached in toward me. It took all of my willpower to keep from reacting—

Ding! Ding! Ding!

A machine went off elsewhere in the arcade, and the spike abruptly ripped back out of the cabin. The shadow of the head tilted to the side, and then the thing crawled down the machine and disappeared in the blink of an eye. Its uneven display of legs clomped heavily the entire way until it faded into the distance.

Robert started to relax in the seat next to me. My ears stayed pinned upward and alertly listening to even a whisper from beyond the dark curtains of the motion simulator. Seconds passed into minutes, and my fur slowly started to relax back down.

The kid started to shift around, only to freeze once I clamped down tighter on his hand in warning. I couldn’t hear it, but this thing could move deceptively silent through the arcade. That proved to be the right choice—

Tap. Tap. Tap… Tap. Tap. Tap…

A metallic clicking came from the top of the roof almost as if trying to sound us out. Robert instantly broke into a shaking fit next to me once more, and I wrapped my tail tighter around to try and keep him calm.

The tapping sound continued for a minute before entirely vanishing. Soon, lights flashed elsewhere as the maintenance creature went back to whatever it did when it wasn’t hunting us down.

It wasn’t until much, much later that the lights across the arcade flicked back to life. “Our scheduled maintenance is now ending! Thank you for your patience!”

I let out a heavy breath, and a shiver went down my spine. I tried to pull my tail back. At some point, though, Robert had hugged my tail to his chest like a safety blanket. Instead of ripping it away, I let him hold it as we sat in silence inside of the machine.

”Are we safe?” Robert asked quietly after a few minutes of the lights returning. The screen of the motion simulator had long lit up with a choice of rides we could go through.

”I think so.” I looked over the kid to check for injuries. He looked totally fine outside of a total lack of blood in his face and trembling fingers.

”S-sorry.” He shyly let go of my tail, and ducked his head. One of his hands shot down to clutch at his Hero’s Dagger. “A-are you okay?”

”Peachy.” I stood up, and flinched as I felt my hip pull painfully. It wasn’t as bad as a break, but maybe a fracture? It’d take at least a few hours to heal to a point where I could move comfortably… we didn’t have that kind of time.

“Are you sure? It sounded like it hurt…” He brought up my whimper, which just made my tail lash in irritation at the slip up. Had it really been so long since I’d been in the kennel that I was actually making noise when I got injured? Pyre, I was so weak.

I cleared my expression before my irritation could show. I didn’t want him to think I was mad at him. He’d been nothing but a brave little champion since I found him.

“Operator, might I remind you of the Healing Salve.” Vigil spoke up as a lull in our conversation appeared.

Yeah, yeah… he had a point. Being hobbled wasn’t ideal. I pulled out the Healing Salve, and poked my head out the curtain to ensure the coast was safe. The arcade was back to its deceptively cheerful facade. “Um… can I have a minute in here? Just don’t go far.”

His eyes dipped to the Healing Salve in my hand, and he quickly got up and shuffled out of the ride. “I’ll go play a game nearby.”

“Thank you.” With just myself in the cabin, I stared down at the little tin of salve. Using an unknown anomaly on myself… I set Vigil down on the seat next to me, and mentally psyched myself up. “How certain are we that the Blackwater Biosystems can correctly identify anomalies, Vigil?”

”This unit estimates a 98% certainty. Purely off my own scans, I’d give it a 56.988% repeating that it's a healing solution.” Vigil broke down the numbers for me as I pulled down my pants to apply the salve. His bright eyes abruptly went dark like he’d shut off his optics to give me some privacy. “Blackwater itself appears fully anomalous, and likely has ways of identifying other anomalies.”

“Good point.” Once I was set and ready to go, I gritted my teeth and stepped out of the arcade machine. The salve took some of the sting out, but I could still feel my hip grind weirdly when I tried to move. Although the salve was anomalous, it wasn’t an instant cure-all like I kind of hoped it would be.

Robert sat on a plastic motorcycle as he raced across an arctic tundra. Tickets were already spitting out of the ticket slot as he casually pulled ahead to first place. I watched him win the race by a landslide instead of interrupting him. It was only once he started to move for the next race that I dropped my hand onto his shoulder and shook him slightly. “Ready to go?”

The kid flinched, and jumped off the motorcycle. “Y-yeah… sorry.”

”You’re fine.” I knew just how enrapturing the games here could be. I kicked at the bike lightly. “I’d kill to have one of these in here.”

“You could. The prize shop has one for sale,” Robert said.

“… you’ve been to the prize shop?” For some reason, I thought he wouldn’t have been there at all.

”It’s in a different room than here.” He looked around the arcade, and shrugged. “Lizzie took us there first to show what we were after. After we left there and entered the arcade, we were all split up.”

”Was she in here before? I mean, before you guys all came together?” Why did they go to the shop first instead of being spat out here like me and Quinn?

”Yeah… that’s how she knew about the cure.” Robert frowned, and shook his head. “She told us it’d be dangerous, but…”

”You thought you could handle it?” I asked softly.

He nodded his head. “We all did.”

These poor, brave idiots. I sighed and shifted Seek back to Quinn. As for why Lizzie and the kids went to the shop first? It was probably because Lizzie had tickets when they first entered. I wasn’t totally sure of that guess, but it was what would make sense. “Let’s keep moving.”

We continued deeper into the Silverport Back Arcade. Along the way, arcade cabinets constantly flashed and flickered with enticing slogans. EVERYBODY'S A WINNER was a common favorite amongst the games.

Interestingly, as we moved through the space, I barely saw any repeat games. It should’ve probably been something obvious to notice earlier, but out of all the arcade games there’d only been one or two that repeated. Almost every game was a brand new one that I’d never seen before.

Were there even that many arcade games in the world? There were only twenty-six cities in the UCS. I couldn’t imagine that there were that many games still being made. Unless maybe this was games from before the Mire? Or maybe I was just being stupid. This was an anomaly, so it didn’t need to play by the rules. It could very well be creating new games itself.

”What’s that?” Robert spoke up and drew me out of my thoughts.

I immediately spotted what he was talking about. A cleanroom suit dangled from the side of an arcade machine. Its white surface was heavily decayed into a yellowy shade from years of abandonment.

I was slightly ahead of him, so I could see it before he did. A hunched over figure sat on the motorcycle of a racing game. The dead man’s dessicated fingers were still clutched around the grips in death. Green marker covered the side of the cabinet reading NO ESCAPE.

My tail snapped up to cover Robert’s eyes before he could see it, and I dropped my hand onto his shoulder to guide him better. “Nothing. Let’s just keep walking.”

“O-okay.” The kid obediently followed my lead as I covered up his view of the corpse. Although we were going through something horrific, there was no need to traumatize him anymore than he already was.