43. Locke
LOCKE
The pounding in my head is a constant hammer against my skull that begins long before I start moving.
My dreams are filled with various hammers swinging at me, Cipher mocking me for being weak against them, and Vesper standing off in the distance yelling at me to stop playing around. That’s how I know it’s a dream.
Vesper would never let me fight alone.
The first attempt at opening my eyes is a failure.
Not only does it refuse the order, but my eyelid feels so heavy, I wonder if I’d glued them together somehow.
With my second attempt, I manage to crack them open and immediately close them again.
There isn’t much light coming into wherever I am, but there’s enough to make the pounding in my skull even harsher.
Beneath my hands, I slowly become aware of the coldness emanating from the floor.
There’s grit there, small bits biting into my face where I lay with my cheek against it.
The cold takes longer to penetrate my face, mostly because of how hot I’m running.
As I run my hand along the floor, it feels dirtier and dirtier with each movement.
I stop moving, uncertain of the type of unmentionables I’m rubbing onto my body.
I grunt at the pain in my head, at the feeling of my skin tight on my body, and try my hardest to open my eyes again.
It feels like I have to fight for an hour before I can finally squint at my surroundings, and once I do, I realize that I don’t know where the fuck I am.
The floor is, in fact, metal, and covered with enough grim and dirt to make me yearn for a hot shower in a safehouse.
It’s caked up on my clothing, and when I wipe at my face, my hand comes away black. Great, I grunt to myself.
It takes me a few minutes more to realize that I’m surrounded by metal bars.
And that I’m not alone here.
I whirl at the sound of a sniff and find myself looking at other players all huddled together on the other side of the cage. “What the fuck?”
I count six of us, but as I peer out of the cage I’m in, I spy more metal boxes filled with people, at least a dozen of them. I assume they’re all players, all people like me just trying to get away from the sweltering shithole of Dross.
“Where the fuck are we?” I ask the nearest player. He leans his head back against the bars and looks at me, but doesn’t answer. “What’s the matter? You can’t speak?” I growl.
“He doesn’t have a tongue,” another player answers instead. A woman. “He can’t answer you.”
I turn to her and take in her rough appearance.
She’s covered in dirt. It’s smeared across all her skin, everywhere.
Her hair is a tangled mess around her shoulders.
Scars pepper her face beneath the dirt, brutal scars that must have been horrible to behold if she were clean.
She sits against the cage opposite me, her bright purple eyes taking me in.
“Can you tell me what’s going on then?” I grunt, facing her fully. “Where the fuck am I and why am I in a cage?”
She laughs. “You must be new here.”
I narrow my eyes. “To New Babel, yes.”
“To the Harrow,” she clarifies. “Otherwise, you would have never made the mistake that landed you here.” She tilts her head back and sighs. “Let me guess. You visited one of the speakeasies and had a drink?”
I tense. “How did you know?”
“That’s how it always happens,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Players get lured into a false sense of safety because of the bright lights of New Babel. Because it’s not the ice of the Shatterlands or the loud danger of the Verdant Nexus, they relax.
” She meets my gaze. “You cannot relax in The Harrow.”
“Is that how you ended up here?” I ask, watching her carefully. Because I’m watching her, I see the tick in her jaw that she probably would rather hide.
“No,” she grunts. “No. I don’t drink the giggle water anymore.”
My shoulders roll as I drag myself to my feet. It takes more effort than I’d like. She doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t offer up how she came to be imprisoned in this place. If it’s not the same way I’d been grabbed, then it’s something else, something potentially worse, and I’m not sure I trust her.
I flip open my inventory and look through it, searching for something that could help me get out of here.
I curse myself for not having a fully stocked inventory like Vesper.
It would have come in handy now. My Arctic Smite won’t do any good against metal bars.
Most of my inventory is just winter gear and random shit.
The Pearls of the Beloved don’t look they offer any help.
The Emperor’s Crown is useless. My eyes catch on the Child Shoe Luck Charm, but it had warned about potentially being bad luck.
Fuck. I don’t have shit that can help. Closing my inventory with a growl, I grab the bars and pull.
I’m stronger now that I’ve leveled up, but it doesn’t do any good against these thick metal bars.
The woman laughs. “Bone Breaker, I assume?” I shoot her a look and she only shakes her head. “They always rely on their strength first.”
“It’s my biggest perk. Why wouldn’t I use it?” I grunt, looking at the door. I press against it, but it doesn’t budge.
“Because it’s useless here,” she replies, sighing. “Trust me. I’m one, too.”
I raise my brows. “You’re a Bone Breaker?”
She grins, flashing dirty teeth. “Tier One, but yeah. I haven’t had the nerve to level up.”
I frown. “Why—”
“On your feet!”
I whirl toward the sound and immediately take a step back in horror. There are four guards walking into the large room we’re in. Each of them is dressed in grungy leather armor. I’m fairly sure one of them has actual mold growing on the leather. But that’s not what has me stepping back.
In Dross, there are a few types of creatures that exist with us.
Insects are limited to roaches and small black ants, both a nuisance, but they can’t actually hurt you.
There are maybe two types of birds, both willing to steal your food right out of your hand.
And then there is one other type of creature.
Rats.
Sometimes, I think the rats outnumber the people in Dross.
They’re disgusting creatures there, all scraggly and malnourished, the same as the people are.
Most of them have been affected by the thick, poisonous air, missing patches of fur and highly aggressive.
I know once they might have been clever creatures, but centuries of starvation and sickness have changed them the same as the humans.
Now I know what they could have become.
The guards are rats, but they’re not small.
They’re the same size as I am and walk on two feet.
The great rat features of their faces are horrifying as they speak, and just like in Dross, these ones seem to be missing patches of fur.
One of the guards, the one with the mold, looks halfway dead already, his skin peppered with open wounds.
Large teeth hang from their mouths, filed down to sharp points instead of the square teeth of the Dross rats.
“What are you looking at?” one of the rat guards sneers at me, hitting the bar with a thick stick. I don’t jump, mostly because I expect it, but still.
I’m many things. Opportunistic, aggressive, a bit unpredictable, but there’s one thing I’m not. A push over. And I’m really not good at keeping my mouth shut when I should.
“A pest,” I reply, bearing my own teeth at the guard.
Surprisingly, the rat doesn’t get mad. Instead, he laughs and points his stick at me through the bars. “Oh, keep that up, flesh bag. She likes them feisty.”
It takes everything in me not to change my expression. I don’t know who they’re talking about. I don’t even know where I am. But his words create the first drops of worry in my mind. I don’t like the sound of whoever “she” is.
“Against the bars! Line up!” the guards say, hitting the metal with their sticks, going around our cage to others. Just how many fucking cages are there.
“You do not look the Queen in the eyes!” they start shouting. “Or else I’ll pluck them out. You don’t need eyes in the dark.”
“What the fuck?” I murmur under my breath. “Cipher?”
“Yes?”
“What is going on here?”
“You seem to have gotten yourself into a pickle,” Cipher answers flippantly.
“Can you help me?” I ask. The question is metallic in my mouth. I hate having to ask the asshole for anything, but I don’t know what else to do. Vesper could be in one of these cages.
He hesitates for a few seconds. “I can give you time.”
“Better than nothing,” I grunt. “Tell me.”
“Look the Rat Queen in the eyes, give her your signature attitude, and remove your shirt. Put it in your inventory.”
I furrow my brows. “What?”
“Quickly,” Cipher grunts. “You don’t have much time.”
I do as he says, jerking my shirt over my head and shoving it and anything else in my inventory. My chest is thankfully clean. The woman in the cage with me raises her brows, but doesn’t say anything.
“What exactly is the goal here?” I ask.
“The Rat Queen has a particular appetite,” Cipher says helpfully. “Your goal is to catch her eye. She will select you for her harem. You will be forced before her. Keep her entertained until help can arrive. This is the best I can do.”
“Her harem?” I hiss. “I won’t—”
“The other people in these cages are food, Locke,” he interrupts. “The Rat Kingdom captures players for only two reasons. Feasting and fucking. Which is the better option?”
I swallow thickly. Fuck. Fuck.
“I swore I’d never belong to another master when I entered the Harrow,” I croak.
Mother Remainder held me hostage to her endeavors for so long, I forgot what it was like to be touched with my consent.
Until I met Vesper. And now, if I want to see her again, I’m going to have to do it again.
I’m going to have to give myself away again.
“Your body is a tool, Bone Breaker. Use it.”
I swallow down my revulsion and straighten, tilting my chin up. “Where’s Vesper?”