The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 03: The Chamber

"So, how are you enjoying your stay here in The Hole?" V asked.

"I'm not," Eric grunted, reaching out and moving a pawn.

The barest exhalation of a laugh escaped V as he reached forward without hesitation and moved one of his own pieces. Eric sighed and his frown deepened as he studied the chessboard.

"That's what I figured," V said. "You're different."

Eric didn't say anything for a moment longer. Finally, he reached out and moved a piece. "In what way?"

V moved another piece without hesitation. "You don't belong here, but that's because you don't belong anywhere."

Eric looked up, a little startled. He could count on one hand the amount of people in his entire life who had accurately guessed that about him, or told him to his face. V stared back passively. Eric looked back down at the chess pieces.

"Why do you say that?"

"Something about you, the way you carry yourself, this sort of vague discomfort. You're like a man out of time. You don't belong anywhere or anywhen. Or maybe you'd feel a lot more comfortable and satisfied in the stone age. Although we could probably quibble over Neolithic or Mesolithic."

Eric laughed softly, but he felt something spark uncomfortably at his words. "You think I'd be happier sleeping in a cave, carrying a club, spending as many calories hunting as I manage to get by hunting, if I'm lucky?"

"Yeah, I do. I've lived that way."

Eric raised an eyebrow. "You've lived in a cave, hunting with a rock or maybe a spear? Drinking from a river, making clothes from skinning your kills, picking wild berries?"

"Yes."

He considered it. He'd heard bolder claims, and it was a common fantasy that normally got kicked out of young Privates' heads, convinced they were caveman alpha males because they'd been through Basic, about three days into their stay in impoverished conditions in some third world nation while on deployment.

A lack of internet connectivity and air conditioning tended to fuck with most people more than they liked to admit.

"Why'd you stop?"

V lost his very slight smile. "I made some mistakes before I discovered who I really was. Mistakes have a way of following you, I've learned. And the world just wouldn't leave me alone. So now I'm here. For the time being, anyway."

"What kind of mistakes, exactly?"

"I killed forty seven people."

"Wow. That's...a lot."

"They had it coming."

Eric considered and rejected several responses, but in the end, he decided that he hadn't been there, so he didn't know. He reached out and moved another piece.

V regained that razor's edge of a smile and moved his own piece. "Check."

Eric sighed and studied the board for another long moment.

Two days. He had been in prison for about two days now. And so far, it was going about as he had expected. In a way, he knew that he was privileged, being V's cellmate. The sheer fact that V had chosen not to kill him, let alone to play chess with him, gave him a kind of immediate legendary status among the prisoners.

During breakfast yesterday, Ranse had told him that V had killed at least twenty people during the four months he'd been there. And he was not subtle about it. And that list included every single cellmate. So it was an interesting position to be in. For now, he was still getting the lay of the land, but even here, the land was boring. He ate three meals of gray glop a day. He went to the bathroom. He took a shower. He resumed working out. He considered his overall life goals.