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Level 2

“Goodbye pa! We love you Pa!”

Halstrom could barely hear them anymore, hidden as they were beyond the veil of fate. Halstrom felt himself begin to fade and drift, away down the nowhere tube, into the pillow of oblivion. It was not so terrible, this absence, not so horrible a fate. Halstrom was almost eager to begin the long, sleepy wait when the sign appeared. It read simply:

Level 2

Halstrom would’ve cursed if he had the power of speech. But he did not, and anyway there was no time because there was that damned bright light, that bathtub drain with its inter-dimensional pipe back to being, dragging him, spiraling out, over the lip, through the porthole, into the cold air and the beating music and now there he was.

“Yo, what time is it?”

“Showtime!”

“What time is it?”

“Showtime!”

The music increased in volume substantially and Halstrom – he was not Halstrom anymore, no, who was he – the person who had been Halstrom watched as three young men began to dance outrageously around the subway car. One was upside down, his feet hooked into the ceiling handholds. Another was almost stuck in a loop of standing flips, just flipping and flipping in place with perfect form, never moving an inch in any direction. The third was manipulating his baseball hat on his hands and feet, kicking it into the air and catching it on a toe behind his back or between his legs.

Not-Halstrom watched from his seat, scrunched in between an old woman and an angry looking fat man of epic proportions. As the three men danced Not-Halstrom had opportunity to see his own reflection in the glass of the window passing by the dark tunnels.

He was not, decidedly not at all, human.

Neither, he saw now, were any of the people surrounding him on the train, nor the dancers. Each had about three too many appendages and vaguely crescent shaped skulls, and turquoise skin with five eyes, four in front of the face and one in back, vestigial and cloudy.

Not-Halstrom tried to scream but found he was not yet in control of the body which he now seemed to inhabit. It sat, stony faced, as best as the comically, sort of horrific features could be read by not-halstrom’s ex-human sensibilities. After a few minutes Not-Halstrom calmed down and a scroll of English words began to stream down in his vision. As Not-Halstrom read the words, he tried and failed to remember whether they had been there at the moment of his human birth as well. He doubted it.

You have progressed to level 2. You are now on a Ferleth Doom Train. In two stops the Doom Train will pick up its final passenger and the game will begin. You have three minutes to select your equipment. Make it to the front of the train. Good luck.

Not-Halstrom read the message twice, totally nonplussed, and then it disappeared and was replaced by a series of menus, also mostly in English, except for the names of the equipment. Options were presented for things like Primary Weapon and Armor. Not-Halstrom was having a hard time navigating the menu and soon the time ran out.

Random

Not-Halstrom watched as a large conical weapon, about rifle size appeared in the hand of the creature that was definitely not Halstrom. All around his turquoise skin a layer of liquid silver began to spread until it covered every inch of his – its? – skin.

Then the doors closed, the train sped up, and suddenly he was in control. Not-Halstrom struggled to make his new body work, moving the four upper appendages, playing with the digits and then working the three legs, jumping a little in place, squatting and then standing. To his surprise he got the gist of it almost immediately.

Which was lucky because he managed to barely dodge out of the way of a charging Ferleth with an energy sword. The screaming turquoise creature went flying past him, hurtling into another Ferleth armed with a living ooze wrapped around two of his arms. As the energy sword sliced through the gray hazmat suit of the bio-armed Ferleth, the organism on its arms reached out for the orifices of the sword wielder, stabbing into the Ferleth’s ears and nose ferociously until its head exploded.

Not-Halstrom screamed like a lost child and instinctively raised his gun at the organic blob, depressing the trigger and releasing a cataclysmic wave of plasma that seared right through the bio-terror and into the far wall of the back car. The blob turned a sickly black and fell to the ground, its host gurgling half cauterized azure blood, the sword wielder effectively decapitated and twitching violently.

Not-Halstrom took a long, deep breath and released it slowly through his four slitted nose. The car was otherwise empty. Scanning his surroundings, he noticed a translucent number in the upper right hand corner of his vision.

15000

Wherever Not-Halstrom looked the number stayed perfectly in place. After awhile not knowing what to do the door leading to the next train car began to glow imperiously, at first yellow and then red. Not-Halstrom got the message and walked over to step through into whatever insanity the next car held.

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