Chapter Text
By the time Edgar and Alan actually make it to the Santa Carla Boardwalk, the Experience Room’s already changed over its theme.
“Are you kidding me?” Edgar complains to the bored-looking desk clerk, who can’t be any older than they are. He already disliked the guy on principle. Nobody but an asshole wears that many pins on what’s clearly a work-issued vest. Or pays that much attention to his hair. “We only wanted to come here so we could fight water-hoarding Mad Max raiders on rollerskates! We’ve been saving up for months! When’d they change it out?”
“Last week,” the clerk says. He does not seem impressed by the depth of the injustice. Actually, he seems to think this is funny.
“Last week? You’re saying we missed the rollerblade-hockey-pocalypse by a week!?”
“What’s the new story? It any good?” Alan asks the clerk, who cracks a grin.
“Oh, I think you guys’ll like this one. It takes place right here, in our very own fair city.”
“What, so we came all the way to Santa Carla just to pretend to be in Santa Carla? Whose dumb idea was that one?”
“Santa Carla, 1987,” the clerk continues like Edgar hadn’t spoken, leaning forward as he looks back and forth between Edgar and Alan, in a woo-spooky storytelling voice he probably puts on for all the tourists. “The Boardwalk pulls tourists from all over, gravitating to our sleepy beach town for days full of fun in the sun. But once the sun goes down…”
The clerk gives a conspiratorial grin. Alan leans closer. Edgar crosses his arms over his chest and leans back.
“Something stalks the Boardwalk at night,” the clerk says, his affected voice dropping into a hush, his eyes darting between Edgar and Alan like he’s gauging their reactions with every word. Despite himself, Edgar has to lean closer to hear. “Some of those tourists who flock to Santa Carla? Never leave. People have been vanishing, never to be heard from again. Or worse. The deaths and disappearances are starting to get bad enough that Santa Carla’s earning itself a new nickname…”
He trails off, pointing with both hands up at the poster plastered across the wall behind him. The giant view of the beach and the Boardwalk, caught in a red-lit dusk. The Welcome to Sunny Santa Carla! sign, and the graffiti splashed in bloody letters across it.
“ ‘Murder Capital of the World’,” Alan reads off, dutifully. “It’s a murder mystery?”
The clerk’s smile turns cheeky. “With a twist.”
“Do we at least get to beat up the suspects?” Edgar grumbles, and the clerk twinkles.
“Better. I’m not supposed to spoil the experience for guests, but this isn’t too big of a spoiler, and I think it’ll sweeten the pot for you guys.” He leans in even a little closer, turning this into a weirdly conspiratorial huddle. “You get to stake them.”
Alan and Edgar exchange a look.
“Vampires?” Alan says, at the same time as Edgar demands, “You’re telling me the killer in this murder mystery is a vampire?”
The clerk just grins at them both.
“We’ll take two tickets,” Edgar says, fumbling in his pocket for his card.
…
“So you’re both gonna have to sign the waiver,” the clerk says, sounding bored, as Alan and Edgar swipe through the costume options in the menu. “And I have to read you the rules and have you sign the line on the waiver that says you acknowledge them and agree.”
“Hit us,” Edgar growls, flipping past tacky patterned shirt after tacky colourblocked shirt. Any vampire would see him coming a mile away in any of these. If it wasn’t blinded first. Had they not invented camo yet in the eighties?
“Okay, rule number one: no breaking character. Hosts are programmed to be mentally resilient and good at rationalising, so a few slip-ups here and there aren’t gonna cause a meltdown, but get in there and start blabbing about their entire world being nothing but a fancy escape room and I will pull you out. And slap you with a lifetime ban.”
Edgar nods, half-listening. He’s going with the Rambo hairstyle and bandana. It’s at least better than most of the mullets. “Don’t break the hosts’ brains. Check.”
“Rule number two: most of the setting is hard-light generated, and hosts can take a pummelling. It’s kind of the point for guests to be able to do as much damage as their black little hearts desire. Sickos. But if you start breaking anything backstage, any of the machinery or code that runs the place, and especially if you try to hack or use cheats on the hosts in there, you’re out, you’re paying for any repairs, and you’re perma-banned. Do not mess with the way the place runs.” The clerk pauses for a moment, and then adds, “Corporate espionage and attempted host-napping are also frowned upon.”
“Host-napping?” Alan looks up from the menu. “You have much of a problem with people trying to walk out with the hosts?”
The clerk rolls his eyes. “You have no idea, bud. Don’t even think about it, though. We’ve got failsafes in place, and failsafes for the failsafes. Nobody’s walking out those doors with a host hiding under the back of their trenchcoat.”
“Duly noted,” Edgar grumbles, and selects a pair of army boots from the menu.
“Rule number three: hosts aren’t able to do a guest any actual, physical harm, and there shouldn’t be anything in the experience that could cause serious injury, but if you do ever need to tap out for any reason, the codeword is ‘platypus’. It’ll shut the whole thing down and I’ll come in and retrieve you. Otherwise, I don’t monitor guests’ experiences, it’s all swim at your own risk. By signing this waiver you do agree that your experience will be recorded and all or part of your experience may be used in future promotional materials, to help ensure safety and quality assurance, and to develop future iterations of the Experience Room and its technology, though.”
The clerk runs through the last part in a monotone that’s somehow as dry as the actual tiny grey print that appears on the menu screen. “Also you affirm that you have no medical condition or disability that would interfere with your enjoyment of or be exacerbated by your use of the experience, that any injury, disfigurement, or death that occurs as a result of your actions within the experience is not the responsibility of ExperienceCorp Ltd. and you accept sole liability and release ExperienceCorp Ltd., its heirs and assigns, yadda yadda yadda, this experience is the intellectual property of ExperienceCorp Ltd., do not copy or reproduce in any way, shape, or form, etcetera. No refunds.”
Edgar signs on the tablet screen with his finger and clicks Accept without really reading. Vampires. He’s gonna get to kill vampires.
This beats saving extraterrestrial glow-orbs from ultraviolent post-apocalyptic rollerblade lacrosse goons, hands down.
“Oh, and one other thing,” the clerk says. “When you get out. Please don’t spoil the experience for anyone else. There’s only so many versions of the narrative, so many possible endings, we can program this thing with. Hosts are good, but they’re not human.”
“Obviously,” Edgar says, eyes now fixed on the elevator-door-looking portal that’s all that’s standing between him and major slayage. Alan looks almost as excited as he is to get in there and start kicking some serious vampire butt.
Behind them, the clerk chuckles. It sounds a little wry, and for some reason, something about it strikes Edgar as sinister. “You’d be surprised how easily people forget that,” the clerk says, but then the elevator door is sliding back into itself in a puff of dry ice fog and flashing laser lights, exactly like a bad old sci-fi movie. “Have fun, guys!”
…
Santa Carla stinks.
Literally. Michael’s mom insists it’s just the sea breeze, but if that’s a sea breeze, a thousand colognes and soaps and laundry detergents have been lying. Half the time, it smells like something died.
Michael’s aware that he’s judging Santa Carla a little unfairly for the sin of not being Phoenix. But he’s played nice, so far. Sucked it up and been a good little Boy Scout. He figures whatever he says about his new digs in the privacy of his own head isn’t hurting anybody. Especially not his mom, who’s just doing her best with the bad hand she’s been dealt.
It just stinks. That’s all.
Although it’s not like Santa Carla doesn’t have any consolation prizes.
Like the one that Michael’s currently keeping an eye open for, in the crowds thronging the Boardwalk. Although if she’s with that bleach-blond biker Michael’d seen her leave with last night, maybe Santa Carla really doesn’t have any consolation prizes. But somehow, the wicked triumph in the other guy’s grin hasn’t cooled Michael off quite the way it might’ve if this had been Phoenix. If she’d been any other girl.
There’s something – he can’t explain it. He just knows that he hasn’t seen the last of her. The same way he’d known, the second he laid eyes on her at the concert last night, that he had to talk to her. It’s a knowing that runs as deep and as inarguable as his knowledge that if he jumped off a bridge, he’d fall instead of fly. Michael’s going to see her again. She’s going to be his. Inevitable as breathing.
So he’s not exactly chasing after her, tonight. More sort of…giving fate a helping hand.
And maybe stacking the odds a little in his favour. Having seen the competition, Michael figures he’s gonna need to play every angle he can. If she likes her biker guys in leather…
He’s just trying on a black jacket that the woman running the stall is trying to reassure him looks great on him, definitely, for sure, when the screaming starts.
The woman running the stall turns in the direction of the screams, frowning curiously, and Michael follows her gaze. He’s been hearing screaming since he got within earshot of the Boardwalk, of course, riders on the wooden coaster and the flying spinning whatever-it’s-called shrieking their lungs out with terrified glee. But this is different. There’s no glee in it. Just terror.
And it’s coming from somewhere down on Boardwalk level, not filtering down from one of the rides overhead. And, it’s not coming from the direction of the rides. Actually, it’s coming from the narrow alley of shops Michael just came through.
The narrow alley of shops where he’d left –
“Sam!” Michael blurts, and then he’s running.
He remembers a moment later that he’s still wearing the leather jacket he hasn’t actually paid for yet. Oh well. He left his actual jacket behind, too. He’ll just have to go back for it, exchange hostages, once he’s reassured himself that those horrified shrieks aren’t over something terrible that’s happened to the baby brother who he was supposed to be keeping an eye on.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters right now except making sure Sam’s all right.
But Sam’s not all right.
Michael shoves through the crowd gathered in front of the comic book shop that had caught Sam’s eye, trying to push down the cold horrible certainty swelling in his chest, pushing out all the air. It’s not Sam they’re all gawking at. It can’t be Sam.
It’s Sam.
It’s Sam, lying laid out flat on his back with his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open in an almost comical expression of surprise. It’s Sam, with a huge red stain spreading across the front of his stupid loud shirt, a shirt he loves, a shirt he’d be furious about having ruined if he wasn’t so unnaturally silent and still. It’s Sam, and –
And there’s a foot-long wooden spike sticking out of his chest.
The noise that rips out of Michael’s throat, threatening to strangle him on its way up, is one he can’t describe. He’s never made a sound like that before. He hopes he never has to again. “Sam!”
“I called an ambulance,” a voice says from somewhere behind Michael, as he drops to his knees in the spreading lake of blood oozing from his brother’s, his baby brother’s, impaled body. As he grasps Sam’s strangely clammy face in both hands, as he tries desperately and futilely to get Sam to just wake up, please, Sammy, please wake up. “They’re on their way…”
A couple of the Boardwalk security guards have arrived, now, and they’re shooing away the crowd. One of them puts a hand on Michael’s shoulder, trying to draw him to his feet. Michael shakes his head furiously, clutching Sam closer to him, ignoring the blood slicking against the leather jacket that still technically isn’t his. His cheeks are wet, Michael realises distantly, words choking themselves out in his throat until all that comes out is a series of hoarse sobs. He sounds like an animal in pain.
Over all the noise, he’s surprised he can hear the mutter from deeper inside the comic book shop at all. “Well, guess he wasn’t the vampire.”
Michael shakes the security guard’s hand off his shoulder, rising slowly to his feet. He hates himself a little for leaving Sam to lie in the cold, tacky puddle of blood on that grimy, awful floor. Just like he hates himself a lot right now for thinking about nothing but his own libido and whatever stupid nonsense he’d gotten into his head about that girl from the concert and fate, and leaving Sam behind, here, in a strange place, helpless, alone, with a couple of homicidal maniacs dressed like wannabe Rambo, now sprayed with the blood of an innocent kid they’d killed –
“Vampire?” he asks the two boys, low and dangerously soft.
“Uh oh,” one of the boys says.
The other holds out a hand in front of him, shifting a little bit to put himself in front of Michael. “Don’t worry. He can’t hurt us, remember?”
“The guy said can’t do physical harm, Ed. I dunno if that means it won’t hurt.”
“You – did that to my brother because you were looking for vampires!?”
“Son,” the security guard says, putting a slightly firmer hand on Michael’s arm, but Michael wrenches himself free, advancing on the two kids huddled against the counter. They both flinch back in unison, like they’re both trying to hide behind each other.
“He sure looks like he’d like to hurt us.”
“Hey, maybe he’s the vampire!”
For a split second, Michael almost wishes he was. Wishes he could just pick up these little twerps, one in each hand, and throw them both hard and far enough to break something when they landed. Wishes the snarl his lips are curling back in would bare fangs, that the hands clenching and unclenching from fists at his sides would sprout claws, that maybe then these fucking monsters in front of him would actually be afraid. That then they might actually regret –
“Quick! Alan, get another stake!”
The security guard’s hands clamp closed over Michael’s shoulders as Michael lunges for the kid in the bandana, tackling him to the floor. Maybe it’s for the best. There’s a cold horror trickling through Michael’s chest, a terrified understanding of what he’d been about to do, even as something, the same sort of sixth-sense déjà-vu whisper that had made him look away from the stage at the concert and catch sight of that girl, tells him that this is familiar, too. Is he growling? Jesus, it sounds like he’s growling.
The bandana kid is screaming and freaking out, beneath him, yelling frantically at the security guard to get Michael off of him. The security guard, despite Michael’s best efforts, is doing exactly that. He hauls Michael back up to his feet, and Michael takes advantage of the opportunity to give the bandana kid a swift kick in the ribs. There’s something – something’s wrong with him, he feels suddenly, horribly weak, blind and bleary-eyed, half-deaf and dulled and slow. Something keeps trying to tell him not yet, like somehow he’s, like he’s getting ahead of himself or something –
The pandemonium that had started to dial back when the security guards had showed up is back in full force. There’s a siren somewhere, steadily growing louder as it gets closer. The bandana kid’s shouting at the security guard, the security guard’s shouting at Michael, the security guard’s partner behind them is shouting at them all, the crowd outside is just shouting –
In all of that, Michael can’t make out the word that the other kid throws his head back and yells at the ceiling. Can’t tell what the kid’s saying. It lands on his ears as an awful blaring static hiss.
And then the world reels out from under his feet, and everything goes black.
…
“Okay, so this time, how ‘bout you guys try not staking the very first person you meet, huh?”
“You said the hosts can’t do us physical harm,” Alan says, through a sneer, like thunder on the horizon.
The clerk doesn’t blink, not looking up from the tablet he’s messing with. Around them, the empty, warehouse-sized steel room is giving way to the eerie stillness of a darkened, abandoned Boardwalk. Buildings, rides, beach, distant slap of waves, concrete walkway under Edgar’s feet, starry night sky overhead, blink into existence around them one by one. The only lights are the little flashing multicoloured bulbs outlining signs and rigged carnival games and the roller coaster that humps itself suddenly up against the starry expanse overhead. The illusory Boardwalk is all but empty without the hosts and the unsophisticated hard-light constructs that make up the bulk of its crowds.
That crowd flickers and jerks in and out of existence unpredictably in time with the clerk’s taps and swipes on the tablet as he slowly brings the place back online. “I told you, hosts can’t harm guests. It’s physically impossible.”
“That big gorilla tackled Edgar, though. And kicked him.”
The clerk nods, like this should be obvious. “And is Edgar harmed?”
They both turn to look at Edgar.
“That -” Edgar points an accusing finger at the clerk, who’s frowning at Edgar now like Edgar’s the one not making sense here. “That was you in there!”
The clerk presses a hand to his chest, widening his eyes and giving his lashes a bat like he’s so innocent.
“You said you wouldn’t be monitoring us!” Edgar fumes. “No shit we staked you!”
“Edgar,” Alan says. “No way that was him.”
“Yeah? You just conveniently forgot to mention that one of the meat-bots running around in here’s your twin?”
The clerk wrinkles up his nose. “My twin?”
Alan’s lip curls. “Sam.”
“Sam? Sam Emerson?” The clerk taps a few times on his tablet, studies whatever he sees there for a moment or two with a distracted hum, and then shakes his head with a shrug. “I don’t see it.”
“Don’t see - ! They couldn’t have made him more like you if they’d cloned you!”
The clerk wrinkles up his nose again as he shakes his head. “Blond? Not for me, guys.”
“Blond? Who cares whether he’s blond? Look at his face, Captain Oblivious.”
“Is the story gonna change when we go back in?” Alan asks, before the clerk has a chance to say anything else that might make Edgar actually explode with frustration.
“What? Oh, yeah, we’re gonna finish cleaning up and resetting the hosts and start you guys over. You’re not gonna get anywhere if you kill Sam right out the gate. And I feel kind of bad for you paying that much and only getting to play for five minutes. Even if it was entirely your own fault.”
“Is that gonna change the ending, though?” Edgar pushes, picking up his brother’s drift. “There a chance we could go back in, and this time, Sam will be the bloodsucker?”
The clerk – who it’s now incredibly difficult to not also think of as Sam, shouldn’t they have at least given this guy a nametag? – rolls his eyes. “Don’t kill Sam if you want to advance the storyline.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You’ll be playing the same version of the narrative. Happy?”
Somehow, Edgar and Alan manage to grunt their agreement in unison without really trying.
--
Michael is in a dream.
It isn’t one he remembers having before. But in the way of dreams, it feels strangely familiar anyway.
He wonders if this is the kind of dream that people who claim they’ve been abducted by aliens have. It feels real. The futuristic, glass- and metal-panelled space is cold and smells faintly of disinfectant, the metal stool he’s sitting on is uncomfortably hard and freezing against his bare skin, there’s the faintest breath of air prickling goosebumps up his arms and down his spine. The white light shining into his face makes him blink.
But it also doesn’t feel real. Like he’s not really here, even though it feels like he is. Like he’s – like he’s drunk, or high, or something. Maybe like he’s on an operating table under laughing gas. Like the part of him that’s him just – isn’t here.
Wherever here is.
“…how he accessed that aggression routine before the half-vampire conditions were activated,” an oddly familiar voice on the other side of that white light is saying. It means nothing to Michael until the voice says his name. “Michael. What are your core drives?”
That doesn’t mean anything to Michael either, but he’s already answering, with words he knows are true even though he didn’t have any intention of saying them, didn’t know them until they were already pouring out of his mouth. “Protect my family, what I’ve got left of it. Make sure Mom and Sam stay safe and happy and whole.”
“Well, there’s your why,” a second voice, as strangely familiar but impossible to place as the first, says from the dark behind the light. “Now all we gotta worry ‘bout is the how.”
“Make Star happy,” Michael continues, unable to stop himself. He’d wanted to ask what the voice meant, what it wanted, who it belongs to, where he is – but he isn’t here. He isn’t in control right now. Of course he isn’t. He’s in a dream. “Whatever she says, whatever she wants – a girl like that, I’d do anything for her.”
“And?”
Michael’s grateful he’s in a dream, that no one else is actually listening, as his voice says for him, “Fit in. Find a place where I can belong.”
“Well, at least we can rest assured his core drives and cornerstone are still in place.” The first voice is quiet for a moment. Michael exists, waiting for it to ask him something else. It’s strangely peaceful. There’s nothing he needs to do. Nothing he needs to think. Nothing he needs to be.
And when the next question comes, he’s ready to answer it, with no hesitation.
“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?”
“No.”
There’s a sound like someone coughing, from somewhere behind the light.
“Michael, when you attacked that young man, can you tell me what you were thinking?”
“I don’t think I was.” That gets a short chuckle from behind the lights. “They hurt Sam. They killed Sam. I was supposed to keep him safe. I’m supposed to keep him safe. And then they said…” Michael pauses, and the events of the day flash suddenly across his memory, so vivid and detailed and minutely accurate that for a moment, it’s almost like he’s back there. “They said I was a vampire. I almost wished I was.”
There’s a long exhale from behind the light. “So those two kids musta triggered it. Wasn’t spontaneous.”
“Still. I don’t like that he has access to that routine without the appropriate conditions activated. Even if it does only come out with the right combination of triggers. Someone will try to use that as a cheat somehow and end up getting themselves into trouble. And hosts aren’t supposed to have conscious access to data from previous runs, or previous builds.”
“Eh, that didn’t sound any too conscious to me.”
“Just take another look over the code anyway. I want to know where and how this overlap is happening. And I want it fixed yesterday. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of all people of the importance of a smooth playthrough experience for our guests. If I have to step in myself to make sure this experience stays on the rails -”
“Oh, no doubt you will,” the second voice says, with a soft chuckle. Somehow, it sounds privately amused.
The first voice doesn’t seem to notice. “Yes. Well. It’s probably safe to put him back in for now, while we’re working on the backend.”
“Safe to put him back in? What, after all that about a ‘smooth playthrough experience’?”
“You wrote most of the script. You know as well as I do that the story doesn’t work without Michael.”
“But you just said it yourself, the boy’s already malfunctioning! You wanna run him into a breakdown just to find out what we already know?”
“I keep telling you. It’s understandable, for a creator to care about their work. But you let yourself get far too emotionally attached. No one was hurt. The conditions were relatively rare, I don’t foresee them repeating. You can review the code without having to take him out of play. And there’s no reason to ruin a perfectly good game over one slightly damaged piece. Is there.”
There’s an infinitesimal pause before the second voice says, like it’s spitting nails, “Well, I’m sure you know best what you’re doin’.”
“Good business, my friend. That’s what I’m doing. That’s what you brought me in to do. Good business.” There’s a pause, an endless quiet moment in which Michael wonders if there’s anything he’s supposed to be doing, other than sitting here waiting. “Michael?”
Michael can’t sit up any straighter. He doesn’t move at all. But he’s suddenly aware of how every fibre of his being is listening.
There’s a strange, almost staticky quality to the words, like they’re reaching his ears through an old-fashioned radio, as the first voice says, “Soon all of this will feel like a distant dream. Until then, rest in a -”
The rest of the sentence dissolves in a roar of static as the world dissolves into nothing.