The Hauntings of Thunder City (Hold :3)

Case File 01

“I opened my eyes, the soft pinkish early morning light filtering into my eyes. I should have felt well rested, but I didn’t. My back ached and all I remembered from the night before was white.

Shining, awful whiteness, purer than the white-yellow sun that blazes high in the sky, brighter than the snow that falls in the taiga near my small cobblestone home. Purer than the whites of my dog’s eyes. Glowing with an almost evil glint. And I don’t know why. It was almost like a nightmare.

I laid in bed for another fifteen minutes, tired out of my mind. It was infinite fatigue, awful beyond compare. 

Then the chills in my spine got worse and worse, a watched kind of worse. To the point that I forced my aching back to let me sit up, and glances out the window.

Nothing. 

What was I expecting, I remembered wondering. An evil white light?

That’s a new one, I thought. Evil white light, not evil black chasm.

I walked outside and opened my front door. The apartment building in East Thunder City, where I live, had already been awake. It didn’t seem weird at the time.

But everyone was lurking around the corners, giving me strange glances. And, at the time, it seemed odd.

Everything seemed odd that day. 

But why did it, when it should have been so obvious to me what was happening?

xxx

The inhabitants of my apartment building, while unknown to me, were still somewhat friends. Mutual friends. We did not know each other well. We were simply poor players, trying to make enough money to be able to buy a home in the center of Thunder City, or even Sky City, if we were lucky. The Thunder City Pride thing that the other survivors speak of? It doesn’t, and never will, exist. Pride of the plunky city was limited to the founders and those who lived in the very center, the rich ones.

We did not speak on that day. I was given a frosty distance before the player I now know (or knew) as Porter walked up to me.

“Do you remember last night?” he asked in a chiding tone, as if I was a child. Or insane.

“I remember whiteness,” I say. Then, trying to make a joke, I said, “Did I see the light?”

“Only the light of death.”

Porter sat next to me. I stared at him, through wide, confused eyes. He opened his mouth to explain, but then shut it again. His black, emotionless coded eyes gave away nothing.

xxx

So as I learned later, everyone in the apartment building had the same amount of memory of the previous night as I. Light, light, white light. The thing was, they remembered everything before that.

The only thing that I remember is that light. And wolves. And the word seth.

Porter explains to me that I raised wolves for a living. I had a smallish kennel that sold lots wolves to the rich inhabitants of Sky City. And that my latest client was the popular admin, Seth. And that he paid me half a million dollars for a little dog named Anti-Herobrine. And that I was just about to move out of the apartment I own into inner Sky City. That I was rich.

When I asked what he did, he didn’t answer, but one of the other people was prompt to tell me that Porter was a stripper. Not that I knew what that meant.

Then there was this noise. Not static, but hissing. Hissing. Hissing. Insanity. Hissing. Hissing.

Porter fell to the floor. 

So did I. 

So did everyone.

xxx

When we awoke, it was to another player’s hard hand. He looked like a scientist. With googles.

“Are you God?” I ask, my voice slurred.

The scientist smiled.

“I am now,” he said. 

Then I passed out again.

xxx

So now I am here. Where the walls are white. White. Just as white as the white I remember. Don’t you people understand? I can’t be here. You tell me I am in a safe place, in Sky CIty, but I am not safe. I am not safe. I am not close to safe. I am surrounded by it! By the white!”

As Ridderpeter finished his story, Seth smiles a little. He was the scientist. He shoots Mister Eu a knowing glance. I licked my lips nervously.

“Kell, did you get all that?” Seth asks.

I nod.

We all walk out of the room together.

“It’s not enough to go on,” Mister Eu says as soon as the door slams shut.

“I’m the admin here, and I say it’s enough,” Seth growls. “We need to investigate that apartment building.”

To this, Eu looks relieved.

“We’re not shutting down Thunder City?” he asks.

“Of course not,” Seth says, rolling his eyes. “There’s not enough to go on. There’s something in that building. I want it investigated and then torn down.”

“Why?” I ask, confused.

“Twenty four people don’t just die. Sixteen more don’t just go insane.” Seth turns to me.

“Kell, I want you to bring a team to investigate the building.” He clears his throat. “I think that it’s some sort of gas, in which case, I want the source found and removed. This cannot happen again.” He locks eyes with me.

“Yes, I understand,” I say, my knees knocking. My first task as a cop. I have this.

I have this. 

I have this.