System Hunt: Regalia

Sam was done questioning whether his reality was a simulation or if he’d actually died that day outside the supermarket— maybe the Doom Tower landed near him and the blast murdered him and he was living some last minute hallucination of what life could be.

Whatever the case was—simulation, hallucination, or some twisted afterlife—Sam couldn’t afford to care anymore. The fact remained: he could control glass. GLASS. The very thought sent a thrill down his spine, but also a cold shiver of dread. What did it mean? What else could he do?

It made a whole lot of sense now that he knew, those random headaches from the first week since his phone glitched and the itch to follow some otherworldly call.

It was all glass and it was everywhere he went, it made up almost everything he interacted with to some degree and yet…Sam quickly found he couldn’t control it all. He couldn’t lift his mirror off the wall or open his windows with a thought, he’d tried with all his might, scrunched up his face and willed the glass in front of him to move, shift, flinch, to do something but to no avail.

He was missing a key component to replicating the incident with the glass cup and a part of him already knew what it was. No, scratch that, he certainly knew what it was. He wasn’t dumb, at least not too dumb. There were too many coincidences and his own headaches were like a radar for the kind of glass he could control, namely, broken glass.

Sam hesitated though. He thought about breaking another one of his glass cups or even shattering his mirror in hopes of putting it back together with his…powers, but what if he truly was going insane?

No, that was no excuse not to try. A glass cup was easily replaceable now that couriers had become essential workers for the quarantined population. Two weeks since the glass cup incident and the government had made drastic changes to day to day life as the denizens of his city knew it.

A declared state of emergency. Soldiers, police and the new multinational force called the ‘Doom Suppression Force’ or DSF were patrolling every turn, corner and inspecting every traffic light while periodically issuing warnings against travelling downtown.

The DSF had commandeered all five avenues that made up the downtown area, evacuating people from their homes and actually providing housing for them in various places around the city and beyond. Sam’s apartment was cushioned between the fifth and seventh avenues, technically in the sixth but also very nearly in the fifth.

When he first heard about the evacuations he was scared, bothered at the thought of having military men and police force their way into his home and relocate him somewhere entirely unknown. But then the benefits, free housing, food and utilities for an entire year…

Still, the DSF were the real reason behind Sam’s hesitance. Caught at the edge of their downtown quarantine the usual noise wall of people existing wasn’t there to drown out the persistent gunshots and sounds of cannon fire as the military and DSF went to town against the Doom Tower. Frankly, Sam still felt he wasn’t close enough to the tower or the military’s activities to hear all that commotion but alas, he was.

As always, he was fractured with indecision. Whether to confess about his findings, the message on his phone over three weeks now and his strange, untested ability to sense and control broke glass or to keep it to himself and trust the authorities knew what they were doing.

What if after he confessed they strapped him down and had their way experimenting on him? What if he escaped, hurt someone in the process and became a fugitive? He might live alone but he still had family in the country, friends far away not to mention his ex-girlfriend…not that she mattered anymore.

But what if he was part of the problem? What if the Doom Towers were here because of him and the other ninety-nine unfortunate folk that might have received that message. Come to think of it, none of them had made themselves known so why should he? He wasn’t even sure they existed or if they could control glass like him. What if they were watching him? What if—

“Arrgh! Enough, I need a joint.”

Sam sped up, burning what little fuel left he had in the tank after a day of running around the city. He was on his last delivery and as his luck would have it, the place he was delivering to was in the same sixth avenue he lived in, he was basically going home.

Usually he’d have to return to the office after a day of deliveries but he’d intentionally made this his last delivery and asked his boss if he could turn in the next morning. He was more than accommodating now that the government was sponsoring his business and he didn’t mind letting this breach of protocol slide, it was the first time Sam had asked for something like this anyway and so everything was set in his favour.

The wind blew against his visor as he rushed past yellow traffic lights, saluting an eager cop stationed beside it as he blazed by. He’d make this last delivery, get back to Nyx, roll up a joint and let the tension melt from his muscles.

Can’t wait.

Much like the rest of the city, sixth avenue was barren of people, the quarantine effort in this area was even more intense than others as the residents were well aware of the danger beyond their avenue. Fifth, fourth, all the way down to first were off limits to everyone including couriers, the Doom Tower itself made land fall far away from any of these places and yet the ever present sounds of bullet fire and thunderous explosions persisted.

Sam slowed down as the address for his last delivery brought him closer and closer to the edge of the sixth avenue. It was getting late too, around this time was when the noise began. He brought his bike to a crawl with the engine still running as he checked the address again, matching it with his phones map. The more he compared the more it looked like he might have passed it or the address was actually further in.

He lifted his visor and stared down the T-junction with the shutdown Habanero fast-food restaurant, there was a traffic light blinking instructions at the non-existent traffic and a bunch of garbage littered at the side of the streets. His GPS was telling him to make a left but that lead right into fifth avenue and he couldn’t run past the barricades the military had set up anyway.

The longer he lingered at the junction, the more the silence pressed in on him, heavy and suffocating. Something was wrong. Every instinct screamed at him to abandon the order, to get home and barricade himself inside. The empty streets, the flickering traffic light—

He gulped. It’s not wasn’t worth getting in trouble with boss talk less of the military anyway.

Just as he stuffed the little package back in his bike’s courier box the air cracked with deafening gunshots. Sam stilled, eyes wide as he processed just how close he was for it to be that loud when another volley of shots tore through the echoes of the first.

He locked the box and hopped back on his bike immediately, revving it to life and twisting around only for a bloodcurdling scream quickly overshadowed by a bestial roar to echo through.

Against common sense, Sam turned to look as six soldiers ran down the street leading up to fifth avenue. Shotguns, rifles and one even equipped with a rocket launcher on their back fired bullets indiscriminately at a growling creature.

“Take it down! NOW!” a soldier barked, his voice raw with panic. “Fire the damn rocket!”

“I’m trying, I’m trying!” the rocketeer shouted back, his hands shaking as he fumbled with the launcher. He sprinted to the side, crouching behind a battered car for cover. His breaths came in ragged gasps as he aimed at the creature they were running from as it finally came into view.

A terrifying twin-tailed jaguar-like beast nearly twenty-feet long from nose to flaming tails smashed through the barricades like they were blocks of legos. Its massive jaws opened with a frustrated roar as the plethora of bullets bounced off blue-black fur wreathed in flames. It leaped forward, clearing the distance the soldiers had struggled to gain in a single bound, its giant paw crushed one unfortunate solider in an instant, splattering the pavement red with his blood.

Its two flame tipped tails whipped about, thrashing at the three other men it had leaped over. They opened fire again, desperately pumping ammunition into the creatures hide. To no avail. Its eyes glared down at them and it lurched with an open maw, ready to swallow them whole when the RPG blasted it.

The explosion knocked the creature over off its feet for but a moment before it stood, shook its head and growled at the offending solider. The poor man was already on his feet, the launcher abandoned as he ran for his life but it was all for naught as the beast’s tails arced above it, summoning a flaring ball of fire between their tips. It roared and the ball exploded forth with a heat wave at its trails.

It landed squarely on the rocketeer and while the man screamed in pure unbridled agony Sam could do little but watch in transfixed terror as the creature turned and glimpsed Sam and his rumbling bike. Its yellowed eyes narrowed at him as it licked its lips.

Oh…I’m going to die.