The Last Supper
I'm an EFD veteran, but that doesn't mean I go hunting for exotic exits every single time. If anything, unless the situation is truly desperate or I have no other choice, I take the regular exit.
It isn't because I hate a hassle, and it isn't because I've gone stale as some half-baked veteran stuck in a rut. Regular exits are simply the safest, most reliable option. Why leave a gate to heaven sitting there unused—the kind you can walk out of just by stepping through, climbing a ladder, or opening a door—and go out of your way to take on extra risk? If anything, the ones who insist on clinging to exits packed with special gimmicks and a laundry list of complicated conditions are the ones with a genuine fetish for it.
Ah, but if I do pick a special exit, I can guarantee you one thing.
Fun. That's the only tool that matters.
Not that anyone's handing out praise for it. There's just a certain satisfaction in cracking a special gimmick, ticking off every last complicated escape condition one by one, and clawing your way out anyway. And if the bastards who walked right into my plan get swept up in the process? Double the fun. Double the sense of accomplishment.
The train rattled.
"GYAAAAAAAH!"
The subway car shuddered as it tore through the tunnel. One by one the windows shattered, and something punched through in a blur, snatching the prisoners who'd been standing around like idiots. Three of them had already been dragged off into the pitch-black dark.
The ones who finally caught on forced their exhausted bodies back up and snapped into a combat stance, but dehydration and fatigue had already turned their flesh into something that drooped like melting ice cream.
"The hell are you standing around for?! Drink those energy drinks you brought and get your heads on straight!"
The Team 1 Leader—the same guy who'd started suspecting me after his own plan fell apart—pulled a small drink pack from his pouch and jammed the straw into the feeding port of his gas mask. Best move available in a situation like this, sure. As if I hadn't seen that coming.
"That's right. Eat up, drink up, get your strength back. A last supper's meant to be enjoyed."
The prisoners hesitated or went rigid at my mockery. They were already wrecked, mentally and physically, and psychologically they were shrinking in on themselves. What the hell was happening? Could they even survive this? Who was I, anyway? Questions and suspicions would be chasing each other in circles through their heads. And the more they tangled themselves up like that, the slower their bodies got.
I didn't let the opening go to waste. I snapped up my compound bow and shattered the LED lights in the ceiling of the car. The moment those lights—their only illumination, their symbol of hope—exploded into darkness, the prisoners started trembling like aspens in a gale.
A little temporary panic you can slap out of someone. A few smacks across the face and a good shouting-to will snap them out of it. But once the Sanity Gauge starts dropping in earnest, there's no coming back. In a Dark Zone, if you don't manage your mental condition as carefully as your physical one, you drop out of the fight in no time. Case in point: one of them was already foaming at the mouth, slumped against a seat like he'd just decided to take a nap.
The train rattled.
Crash!
Had the thing infesting the Death Tunnel been waiting for an opening, same as me? Another window exploded, and the prisoner foaming on the seat vanished in the blink of an eye.
By this point, even the densest among them would have arrived at a single conclusion.
Killing me wouldn't solve a damn thing. But that was surely the only thought flickering through their heads. I'd made sure no other answer would occur to them.
"You son of a bitch!"
One prisoner finally snapped, ripping his knife free and charging me. In the dark, he'd have needed a moment for his eyes to adjust. The fact that he didn't even wait that long, just hurled himself at me in a panic, told me how thoroughly he'd been backed into a corner.
The train rattled.
"Ghk?!"
Right before he reached me, something punched back through the already-shattered window and drove straight through his chest. What came out the other side was as thick as a grown man's forearm, studded with knobby protrusions, and it was greedily soaking up the blood pouring from the wound like a sponge. Then, no different from the others, it dragged him out into the dark.
I kicked the knife he'd dropped into the air and, in the same motion, sent it flying with a spinning kick.
Thunk!
"Kh! You fucking—!"
"Don't doze off. Come at me. I'm not going anywhere."
"Hold it."
The guy with the knife buried in his shoulder was about to charge, cursing—until the Team 2 Leader stopped him.
"Watch the timing. This isn't the window."
The train rattled.
The faint vibration swept through the car and faded. Only then did the Team 2 Leader nod, like he'd finally pieced it together, and level his weapon at me.
"While the train's moving, a vibration rolls through at regular intervals. And if you move or make a sound in the gap between those intervals, whatever's out there reacts. That the setup?"
"Oh."
Faster on the uptake than I'd expected. Then again, these were the types who'd loaded up on nothing but firepower and dropped into a Dark Zone purely for recon, not farming. Maybe that tracked. Even decent veterans usually died a few times before they clocked the special gimmick on this subway exit. He'd pieced it together off other people's corpses, sure—but the guy had an eye.
"So what now?"
The train rattled.
"......"
No answer. Just a veteran sprout standing there, high on the thrill of being right.
Not that I'd ever expected this subway exit's special gimmick to solve everything from start to finish. The vibration faded, and just as his so-called regular interval was about to expire, I moved first.
The window of silence you had to hold after each vibration was exactly three seconds. He'd probably estimated it at around five, which meant he was always going to be a second or two behind me. The instant I loosed an arrow, he yanked the prisoner beside him and shoved the man forward as a shield.
"Ghk!"
That made one more dead. But he'd have the three-second figure now.
"Don't move and don't make a sound for exactly three seconds after that weird vibration hits! Anything outside that window, you're fine!"
"Kill that miserable son of a bitch first!"
The prisoners, finally sure of their own safety, leveled their weapons and charged in a mob. But a subway car isn't that spacious, and it sure as hell isn't built for a brawl. The train was still moving, constantly, and the dark blurred everyone's vision—friend and foe alike.
"Hey! Anybody got a flashlight?! Light that bastard up!"
"Hold on! I'm trying to—!"
Which meant I could screw with them like this, too.
Crash!
"AAAAAAAGH!"
"What?!"
"The hell?! The vibration hasn't even hit yet!"
"Why would it—?!"
"Because the light that was gone just came back."
Ever heard of Dark Forest theory? If you carelessly strike a light in a dark forest, every hunter who'd been relying on hearing, smell, and touch suddenly gets visual information—and they all lock onto that one idiot. That's the idea.
The train rattled. And in that span, the vibration came around again. Silence—the closest thing a Dark Zone has to a virtue—settled over the car like an old friend.
"......"
"......"
"......"
Mere seconds ago, these people had been sure of their own actions. Now the price of an uncertainty they hadn't seen coming was carving out their hearts. What other gimmick was still hidden? What else didn't they know?
Truly smart people say they know that they don't know. But did these guys even grasp that they didn't know? Which was why, even after those three short seconds after the vibration had passed, nobody moved. They'd figured it out: they couldn't move until I moved first.
This is why human psychology is terrifying.
That private territory inside every person—the place that turns the impossible into the possible, that decides something false is true. A human whose territory has been seized can't do a damn thing. Fundamentally. Nothing. Even if I was the one holding the initiative right now.
Thwip!
"Kh! Fuck!"
I loosed another arrow, but this time I didn't kill him outright. He stared down at the long shaft punched through his forearm, a groan of pain leaking out of him.
I'd moved first. So why wasn't anyone else moving? Because the instant I fired, I dropped into a crouch. Instead of rushing me, they all scrambled to drop into a crouch too, terrified something else was about to come screaming in.
It was so funny I flicked on the Modular Exo-Suit I'd been keeping powered down.
"I crouched to build momentum!"
The exo-suit's power—far beyond anything its designer had ever intended—launched me forward in a single burst. The ones who'd crouched, completely exposed, dropped straight into my range.
"You son of a—!"
They'd been late to realize there was no more hidden gimmick. They had a lot to pay for.
Crunch! Shhk!
The first one into range caught a fist wearing the exo-suit. His skull caved in on the spot. My other hand dropped the compound bow, ripped a machete free, and swung. Two more dead in an instant. Team 1 and Team 2—the core of this prisoner mob—came back at me.
Of course, I stopped right in their faces.
The train rattled.
"Urgh?!"
"AAAAAAAH!"
Yeah. This is it.
When blood's spraying in your face and lives are being spent right in front of you, special gimmicks and all that shit fly straight out of your head. Your brain goes blank for a second. Your blood boils. You get so amped your muscles lock up—and then, even if your brain is screaming a warning based on every scrap of information it has, you move anyway.
Crash! Screeeech!
"AAAAAGH!"
"S-save me—!"
We call that losing your reason. You might ask how anyone's supposed to hold onto something like sanity when lives are on the line. In a Dark Zone, you hold onto it anyway. At minimum.
"Pretty fucked, huh?"
I asked the Team 2 Leader, who was staring at me wide-eyed from point-blank range.
"I didn't even do anything that impressive, and half of you are already dead. You're probably wondering how I pulled it off—and then wondering what the hell kind of bastard I even am."
"......"
"That's just how games work. It'd be nice if everyone kindly taught the newbies, cheered each other on, and built a pleasant play environment together. But there's always someone who exists to piss you off."
"...What the hell are you talking about?"
"Don't take it too personally. If you don't know, you get hit. If you do know, you get hit again. Even if you prepare, you still get the shit beaten out of you. That's a game. You got in the way of my happiness farming, and now you're getting the shit beaten out of you. That's all this is."
"I've been asking what the fuck you're rambling about this whole time, you piece of shit!!"
He lunged at me without warning, but I twisted my upper body and let the attack slide past, then grabbed his gas mask and ripped it off.
"Hhk! Ghhk?! Hah—hah-hahk!"
The Team 2 Leader, mask gone, clutched at his own throat and started hyperventilating. Taking the mask off and breathing the air in here wouldn't actually kill you. But a man already pushed to the edge would absolutely go into acute panic.
Or maybe he really had inhaled something, and now he was seeing something. In which case—what was he looking at, out there in the dark?
Not that I care.
I just wanted to give these shameless trolls a veteran's education, and while I was at it, confiscate the backpacks stuffed with items that should have been mine from the start. That was all.
The train rattled.
The vibration came around again. The familiar silence. The screams that wouldn't stop.
When the subway finally reached the "last stop," I strolled out with a backpack packed full of high-value items, smeared in blood and scraps of flesh.
It didn't take long to learn that I was the only one who'd made it back from this modern-city Dark Zone in one piece.