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open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

Date & Time: August 5th, mid morning.
Location: Anywhere characters happen to be/the VR.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: From August 5th to August 8th, characters are plunged involuntarily into the VR Program.
Warnings: Potential violence within the threads.

When the chance arises, she's quick to take it. The programming is incomplete, she knows; the simulation isn't ready — but she's not likely to get another shot at it. And so she moves, slipping through security codes to input the command. The machines hum to life with nothing but a flicker of a green light in a dark room, and it takes only seconds to establish connections. The signal is sent out; the weapons respond.

In a single pulse, reality drops away.

There will be darkness at first as the mind realigns itself to the signals being sent it. Slowly, the darkness fades, forms take shape. People take shape. The setting is terribly familiar, plucked from the user's own mind. It might feel like a dream at first, with events playing out as if predestined, the would-be dreamer moving through a familiar and unalterable route in them. But as things begin to feel more and more realistic, as more senses more fully connect to the simulation, awareness will change. This is not a dream. This is more than a memory.

Welcome to the VR.

Only 20 minutes later, in some underground quarters, Doctor Sponde is roused from an undignified sprawl. He's hastily briefed and shuttled toward the command center, looking grim. He knows the problem demands an immediate fix, but… well, this is some complex machinery. It could take some time. It could take days. He gets to work.

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Chloe opens her eyes, but it's almost useless. There's nothing but darkness. Well, that and the strong smell of decay and dirt in her nose and mouth. She wants to freeze up, but she's rolling over and that's when she sees it: the small sliver of light in the distance. The door to the basement. Her arms twists, and the ropes that had been binding her hands finally give way and start to slip.

I've done this before, she thinks as the girl finally works her hands free. Her breathing is too loud as she pushes herself up in the small crawlspace. The floor beneath her trembles, hard, and she braces herself from falling over.

Her first thought is that it's an earthquake, but that's not right. Earthquakes aren't a typical thing in Buffalo. She's summoned them, those spirits back into their bodies.

Chloe scrambles to untie her legs, cursing her powers, cursing Tori for throwing her into here. It's so dark and there's...

Crunch.

The girl pauses to listen. They're awake and digging themselves out of their sad, shallow graves, and she's still trapped in here. That's worse than anything. The darkness, the dead. She's not ready, and the gag muffles her yelps as her fingers hurry to undo the knots around her ankles.

She screams into the gag for them to stop, but they don't. They're supposed to. Chloe has power over them, as their master. Their necromancer. But she can still hear them crawling towards her, growling and clicking as the sounds of crawling continue.

They're not listening to her, and it makes her panic grow, fingers trembling too hard to even finish untying herself before she throws herself forward, towards the light, towards safety. Icy fingertips brush her arm, the grip tightening as she squeezes her eyes shut and tries to concentrate on sending them back.

He'd tripped over...something. Shifting gravel, a naked tree root, his own foot...That shocking feeling of a sudden fall, staggering out of that hollow antechamber. Why he'd run from the man was...an excellent question, really. One he didn't have any time or sense to think on. Not now.

"Houff—!" He lands on his belly, losing his breath on impact. He stays still for a moment, getting the air back, letting his muscles and bones shift out of pain, and, sucking in that air, he moans. He can't help it. The reek was suffocating. His arms locked at the elbows so fast out of reflex it made him all but whimper.

The sounds flooded in next, and all the sense in the world wasn't going to help Martin make sense of anything fast enough. He blinks many times before the bleary world around him focuses, eyes adjusting to the dark he's born to work in.

What he sees doesn't make any more sense than the rest of the world around him.

Click-clack-click-clack.

The sound is practically at her ear, and Chloe wonders briefly if it's the chattering of the zombie's teeth. She's almost thankful for the darkness now, even as one of them climbs up her legs. Can they kill? They can scare people, sure, and they don't die, but can they kill? The necromancer that dies from her own handiwork, now that's funny. A hysterical laugh bubbles up in her throat.

Another sound, one completely unrelated to the scene at hand, draws her attention. Blue eyes snap open wide. She tries to speak, remembers the tape that's covering her mouth. It doesn't stop her from yelling and pushing at the fingers holding onto her.

There's still skin. There's still skin. There's still skin.

She's pretty sure she's going to be sick as she scrambles away.

There was no point to question anything anymore. Maybe ever again, the way Martin was feeling. He'd watched his sister — his family...The thought dashed all questions and fear out of his head. No. He wasn't going to think. He was just going to do. It almost didn't matter what, except amid the lumbering and churning swell of bodies, he'd seen a flash of grayed gold in the dark.

So he went to do. His legs lost their tremble after a couple steps, and, after reaching forward, his arms broke out of their stiffened, frozen state to grab at the lumbering mass in his way. Grabbed, pawed around for better hold, and then pulled.

It was pulling her. How was that even possible? Where had the old bones gotten their strength?

She lashed out with her hands, pushing while it pulled. Maybe it's Derek. Remember Derek? He's the one that rescues you, idiot. But if it was Derek, he'd say something. He'd be growling at her in that gruff tone of his. He'd be telling her to calm down.

This wasn't going to help her, and she could nothing while her legs were tied like they were. So instead of fighting, Chloe reached for the tape covering her mouth, biting back a whimper as she ripped it off with trembling fingers.

"STOP!" For the love of everything, just please stop. Please.

The sound freezes Martin in place, causes a sharp and cold pain in his gut. The shape in his grip writhes again, practically freed until the boy's hand finds its strength again to grab and yank. Pushing through the growing mess and mass of rank bodies, faster and more desperate and aware with each move, Martin begins to scramble, tucking his shoulders up against the feeling of the very thing he was doing. Everything he did and saw was absolutely wrong, and Chloe was stuck in the middle of all of it.

"Chl—" He sucked in against the sound as he felt something across his belly. The danger of it snapped him out of his stupor at last, and he writhed, wrestling himself free. His momentum dropped him to his knees with a heavy thud beside her, bound. His eyes raced from her to the things on her legs very quickly.

"No!"

He stretched his arm out, palming the rotten face attached to those arms, and loosed the lance. It split the head, sailed off as far as it could go in that place, through whatever was in the way, until it was dust. Martin had already forgotten about it. The force had blown him back against those things crowding behind him, and he had to wrestle again to get free.

"Martin?"

What was he doing here? What was even going on?

She stared at his outline in the darkness next to her, squinting. Her eyes were beginning to adjust somewhat to the darkness, but that really didn't help her much. All she could see now was her own handiwork as the things moved.

And then he attacked one of the undead that had been tugging at her legs. There was a vague sense of horror as its body was destroyed that rose up in her. This was her fault. She couldn't control her powers, and now the two of them were being attacked, and the shell holding that spirit had been destroyed.

"Martin!" Her breathing picked up, almost panicky. Stop playing around, Chloe, and do what you have to do. Biting her lip, she tugged at the knots in the rope before finding the right one and loosening. There. Freedom. "I can stop them. They... Actually, I don't know what they can do, but..."

When this was over, she was going to have to get serious about this necromancy.

I can stop them, Martin thought, echoing the words in his head. It all rang hollow, left him no more the encouraged, but a little less wild-eyed and shaken. It is my purpose.

He gave up one of his arms in the struggle, letting it be pulled backward to the mass of shapes. As his expression darkened and jaw set, he bent himself forward and conjured once again, skewering a row of bodies in its path and freeing himself. He staggered steps and planted his other hand on the ground to stop from ploughing right into Chloe, hunching his shoulders and ducking his head down.

That was the part where the black was supposed to come, that he was supposed to force out. He knew that, but nothing came, not even a ripple of nausea.

And that was actually more exhilarating than nerve-wracking.

He lifted his head, looking up at Chloe.

"We...need to go."

"Go?" Chloe found herself shaking her head. They could reach the basement door, but the basement led to Lyle House, and how would she explain Martin to the nurses? "Go..." Panic seized at her as she backed up and away from him, ignoring the chilling hands that tugged at her clothes.

What if this was just in her head? What if she crawled back out and everything had just been a hallucination? She wasn't a necromancer. She was just schizophrenic. That was the diagnosis the doctors had given her. Not special, but crazy.

A body crawled over her again, and she clenched her teeth together as she pressed her hand to its face and closed her eyes. Had to imagine releasing his spirit, tugging it free from this prison. Gently, she pulled and breathed out until it was nothing more than a corpse again.

Chloe wasn't crazy, and she wasn't going to let herself start thinking that. "Martin, wait. How did you even get in here?"

Martin was thinking very little in that venue. The physical world around him was dictating his movements, his choices...If he stopped too long to think about it, he'd only drive himself mad. He was sure of that. He had to keep moving. Chloe wasn't safe; she had to be protected. She had to keep moving, too.

He forcefully chose to ignore the power she exerted, clenching his jaw tight against the infuriating tingle at the back of his neck. It's the monsters, he told himself. It's all their fault.

He grabbed her wrist, already in motion, stepping over the dead body, watching the sliver of light not far away. It was bad form for a Darkov to leave monsters lingering, but he couldn't make himself stay. Not now. He had to make the madness stop. Just...just stop.

"We need to go," he repeated, trying to smother the hysteria mounting with a mechanical tone.

He was really giving her no choice, and Chloe almost dug her heels in even though she wanted to get out of here. She didn't want to be in the dark anymore, didn't want to know what the dead could do to her, but she didn't want to leave them in those bodies. It was her fault. She had summoned them by pulling too hard.

"Wa-wait. We j-just can't go out there. I'm... This is the group home. What if the doctors see you?" Chloe didn't even really care that Martin knew nothing about that, or really anything about her life before ending up in Exsilium. But this wasn't right. He shouldn't have been here, and if the nurses were to catch them, how much worse would it be than with they thought her and Derek had been fooling around down here?

The light was brighter now, and she blinked rapidly as she saw the end of the crawl space that led to the utility closet.

The door was fortunate to give way so easily; Martin had no patience to spend time calmly pushing through. His grip tightened and slacked and tightened again on Chloe's wrist, cold with sweat, shaken and all the more forceful to pull and move forward because of it. Maybe just getting out would be enough to fix everything. Or maybe there'd be worse in the light. He didn't know.

Of course, it was a closet, not a full-out exit. Of course. Martin's jaw clenched tightly again against another swell of frustration. Then where was the light from? It wasn't a mistake; it was stinging his eyes in that dark place.

He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, hissing, and swung his free hand forward, blindly launching the lance ahead. The force rocked him backward against the girl, but her as buffer kept him from staggering back many steps.

Maybe the wall had been a door? He didn't know much about it. He just wanted out, and he'd make an out if he damn well had to. Having the place give way to his demands through force was, in a way, very pleasing.

Chloe stumbled back, her worry spiking hard and fast at Martin's actions. He seemed desperate, and that wasn't good for either of them. He needed to calm down before something happened.

Biting her lip, she placed her free hand over the hand that was gripping at his wrist and gently pried at his fingers. "Martin, you need to let me go," she said softly, keeping her voice calm and steady. "Believe it or not, I can take care of myself." For the most part, anyway. "Besides... This is my memory. I could have just opened the door for you so that you don't alert people."

If you're really here, she almost wanted to add, but she pushed that thought away.

The room opened up to show exactly what Chloe remembered about Lyle House, a plain basement with a concrete floor. Across from the closet that Martin had just destroyed was the laundry room, emptied of clothes. Tori had probably taken them. To the side were the wooden stairs that led into the group home.

It took a moment for anything Chloe was doing or saying to really sink in, fixated as Martin was on the way ahead. His chest ached and head buzzed with the frustration of nothing familiar waiting for him, but what did he expect? An easy way back home?

I was just. There...

The plucking and prying at his fingers was what drew him more than anything, hand reflexively tightening against it. He swung his head around, eyes wide and almost accusing of some mystery offense. This is my memory, she was saying throughout; his expression clouded with confusion. That doesn't make any sense. Something was wrong with her.

"No, we," he sucked in a breath, leaning forward before pushing into motion, pulling her. "We need to leave. Or, I'll...Get you out. Clean them out. Fix whatever's..." He made a frazzled, nasally sound, shaking his head quickly. Too many things clashing in his head at once. "Just. Come on!"

She stared at him, unsure of how to react in this situation. Hit him, maybe? Yell? Be more assertive? This was getting her nowhere, and Martin was really beginning to freak her out. Something had happened to him before he had gotten here, that much was obvious.

"Get me out? Are you even listening to me?" Chloe tugged back, digging her heels in so that he couldn't just keep dragging her around. "There's nothing to fix, unless you're going to let me go back in there and send the spirits back to wherever I summoned them from."

Besides, she didn't know where they would go or how they would get out. There were alarms on the doors, and if this wasn't even real -- and she was really beginning to have her suspicions on that -- then she needed him to calm down and tell her how he had gotten here. Then they could figure out how to get back. And if one of the nurses came down the stairs or...

Derek. She nervously looked up the stairs. Derek was going to show up to rescue her, or at least that was what had happened last time.

Martin felt his skin heat up with a pulse of agitation. Why was she being so difficult? She wasn't that way in the jungle or...all that snow. Why was this any different? He just wanted to help...

He yanked one last time, his own, sweaty hands betraying him and freeing her with the effort. He had swung around to glare at her just in time to hear summoned, and halt once more, his expression wracked with a frustrating confusion and alarm.

Summoned? What business did a human have with summoning things? That was...Well, back home, that was Darkov territory.

This wasn't home.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he insisted, grimacing. "That doesn't. Make sense. Those dead things down there..." They were hurting you.

Chloe rubbed at her wrist absently once she was free, taking a step back as she pressed her lips together in a thin line. Why did she say that? She could have just pretended that they were there for another reason, but even just thinking about that made her feel disgusting. Why did she feel this need to appear normal? There was nothing normal about her life.

"It's not like I meant to do it!" The words just tumbled out of her mouth. "I didn't even know I could do that then. I wasn't even sure if ghosts were real at this point." It was a lot more than she intended to say, but there they were. "Those dead things are angry. You would be too if suddenly you were shoved back into your rotting corpse."

She didn't know what else to say, but she was sure that her ranting sounded like the words of a crazy person. Fitting, actually, considering where they were.

The last bit was startling enough, but wrapped up in all the rest of it...Martin's face scrunched up, as if peering harder at her would somehow make all the nonsense peel away and expose what she really mean. She didn't have anything to do with those...things. Not her. He was sure, but...

But his nose was still full of the stench of death, even with her so close. Nagging voices within could easily accuse her of being the cause, if not one of them. After all that had just happened, was it really so far-fetched?

"You made them," he said, pressing it on her like the crazy accusation it was. It had to be enough to admit she was lying — had to be. His body gave a quick, self-contained little shudder, feeling rotten to the core again. "You?"

"I didn't mean to!" Her chest felt tight, like she was going to cry, and she took another step back. "I-it's not my fault. I pulled too hard when I was just supposed to summon their spirits, and it's not like anyone explained to me what was happening at the time. They told me I was crazy." And she believed them, but it was Simon and Derek and Rae who helped her to understand that it wasn't true.

Or well, Simon and Rae helped. Derek just slammed her face into the truth repeatedly.

She went quiet, running her dirty fingers through her disheveled hair. "I'm... not sorry for who or what I am, okay? But I'm sorry that you had to find out like this. And that you're... not taking it well. Which, you know, kind of sucks. I'm not any different that I was a second ago."

If he stopped to think about it, it...explained a little. Little, tingling feelings under his skin at certain times around her. Thinking about it, he could probably attribute all the strange feelings he had about her to that and be false; not everything he felt was the creeps. Right then, though, he couldn't sort it all out, not with all the things going on, things that had been going on...

He slowly turned his head, scanning the nothing passing across his vision, trying to hold his breath for more than a second. More unaccountable powers. More things with no explanation or sense in the Darkov state of mind other than the glaring default. Yet Chloe was no monster, even with that conclusion being the only one he'd have. He refused it; she was too kind and...

"Alright," he managed, all but talking through his teeth. His stomach had roiled again, filling his mouth with a foul taste, but not the one he knew to be right. Nothing is right. Red-rimmed eyes were turned to stare back at her, bleak. "Then. Tell me what to do." Because I don't know. I was home. I want to go back.

She frowned then, waiting for him to say something. Anything. Well, maybe not anything. People could be wrong, could be evil, but she knew she wasn't one of them. Even if she wasn't exactly innocent by any means, but she wasn't out to hurt people.

And then he did speak, and a relieved smile flickered over her face, letting out a breath she had been holding. "Okay. I... I have to go back in there before they come out here." Her words were a lot braver than she felt, because the idea of heading back into the darkness was enough to make her sick, but she couldn't... She just couldn't let those poor souls suffer the indignity of being trapped. Or let them attack other people, should they escape.

Not by yourself, he thought, feeling much more apprehensive than he looked. Slowing down and trying to understand was more exhausting than pulling out the stops and trying to barrel through each crisis blindly to their conclusions. Too much open time to think, and he didn't like what he thought.

"Then let's go," he said, shifting in place before moving, stepping around her and back toward the door.

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open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

When Zombies Attack

and the sequel: when darkovs invade

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fuuuuck elle, i am so sorry for this late ass tag, sob

I'VE DONE WORSE TBH