Phase Q/Wreckage

“Where am I?” You wonder.

From the blackness, forms begin to take shape. Geometric figures assemble themselves into the outline of a car. You see body parts, some of them where they should be. Now you remember.

There must have been an accident. A car crash. You were in a car.

But which way were you going? Who were you with? Who were you against?

Looking around, you recognize a face. Natalya. She’s holding a revolver in her hand. Pointing at you. By accident?

Moving your limbs about, you discover that you can still use your legs and left arm. Your right arm hurts like red. Reaching to rub it, you miss it and feel a mangled mess of flesh. Your right arm is basically gone.

“Natalya! Wake up!” you yell.

After she comes to her senses, you show her the nasty scene. She’s got major injuries to her face and torso.

“We’ve got to get to a hospital!” you say.

“No. We can’t go.”

“Why the dark not?!”

“We’re not going to a hospital. They’ll arrest us.”

“That doesn’t seem so bad to me,” you say, knowing that you would face the death penalty.

“We’ve got to connect with more Flowrisers,” Natalya says. Despair rings in your ears. No way some scattered group of amateurs will do reconstructive surgery.

With blood and sweat dripping down her face, Natalya props herself up, and digs out her nodal unit. Running the now-illegal protocol, she connects to the tubeworks.

As she searches, you decide that you’ll try the pin again next time you have a chance alone. Connect with the Triads, turn in Natalya, get your body sewn up, and start again with whatever you can salvage.

“OK, got it,” she says. “We’re on the interstate, eighty miles south of a Flowriser zone. They’ve got food, water, and ammo.”

You can’t do surgery with food, water, and ammo, you think to yourself.

“I’m calling in a lift. They’ll send a shuttle. I’ve got my badge by memory.”

Looks like you get to meet some more Flowrisers. In the meantime, you'll get as much information as you can out of Natalya.

“What’s your game plan? You can’t live like this forever.”

“My game plan?” she says. “Right now my game plan is to survive. After we get to a node, we do whatever they need us to do.”

“Do whatever they need us to? You can hardly walk, how can you do anything?! Anyway, it’s no use. It’s only so long until the whole node gets destroyed. The org is serious.”

“So what? What else have I got to live for? They’ve already taken everything I’ve got. They can take my life, too, if it comes to it.”

A vehicle pulls up.

“Oh, dark!” Natalya says. The car has the Triad forces emblem painted on it. Two bodies walk out, looking less burly than most squaddies.

“Come with us, Natalya,” one of them says.

“You too,” says the other, gesturing at you.

You painfully drag yourself to your feet, feeling for your balance with one arm.

Time to go for a ride.

• Node
• Heartland

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.