Chapter 042 - Skyscraper 02

  Compared to the warped, unnatural environments we’d faced before, this level was disturbingly… normal.

  It was a city.

  A sprawling steel-and-glass metropolis that stretched endlessly in every direction—an eerily faithful replica of any modern megacity on Earth. Towering office buildings loomed overhead, commercial districts lined with gleaming storefronts, streets wide and brightly lit as if expecting the return of rush-hour crowds. It had the bones and breath of a place built for millions.

  But there were no people.

  Not a single soul.

  Just the players.

  Which made the place feel... *wrong*. Uncanny. Like the set of a film after the crew has packed up and left. The lights were still on. Cars sat frozen mid-commute, some halfway through intersections. A 24-hour convenience store stood open, its automatic door twitching like it was still trying to welcome someone in. But there was no one left to welcome.

  At night, the skyline vanished into thick mist. The sharp silhouettes of the buildings rose like monoliths into the fog, their upper floors disappearing into a formless gray. It looked like a forest swallowed by morning haze.

  Only this forest was made of steel.

  Concrete and rebar formed its bones and sinews; highways and rail lines pulsed like veins through its lifeless body. A body that had once moved. Once breathed. Now just a hollow giant.

  “Hello?” I called out, my voice echoing through the stillness. “Is anyone there?!”

  Silence answered.

  Maybe the others hadn’t arrived yet. Or maybe they had—and were scattered too far across the sprawl to hear me. In a place this massive—easily a hundred kilometers across, by my guess—finding even one person was like trying to spot a single raindrop in the ocean.

  I wandered into the convenience store, poured myself a paper cup of hot coffee, grabbed a map off a rack by the door, and started studying the local layout. I’d barely made sense of the major roads when the mechanical voice cracked through the air from above.

  *Beep.*

  “Welcome to Round Four. You are now in the Borderless Urban Forest. Sixty-seven players cleared the previous round; three opted out. This round begins with sixty-four players—all have arrived.”

  A pause, then:

  “Step One: All players must gather in a single designated area, no more than 200 square meters in size, within 48 hours. Once over 60% of participants are present, the area will be recognized as valid. Anyone who fails to arrive will be considered to have lost the game.”

  I froze by a rusted-out phone booth, catching my own reflection in the smeared glass—blank-eyed, jaw tight.

  Brutal. This round wasn’t just a test of survival—it demanded coordination. Teamwork. And we’d been dropped into a world designed to keep us apart.

  Still thinking it through, I headed to an electronics store down the block. A few phones still had charge. I inserted a SIM card and—yes—got a signal. Base stations were up.

  That gave me options.

  I grabbed four more phones, pocketed a couple walkie-talkies, strapped a smartwatch onto my wrist, and took the subway to the media center noted on the map. If the local government used it for announcements, there was a chance I could hijack a broadcast system. Maybe call out a meeting point. Maybe gather enough players to fulfill the requirement.

  The subway station was deserted.

  I climbed the stairs toward the surface, rehearsing my lines, trying to think of something concise but urgent, persuasive but not panicked. The kind of message that would cut through fear.

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  That’s when I saw it.

  A silhouette waited at the top of the staircase, bathed in the dim yellow glow of flickering overhead lights.

  At first, it looked like a man.

  But only about sixty percent human.

  Tall. Abnormally tall. Slender to the point of being skeletal. Limbs too long, shoulders too narrow. He wore a black tailcoat stretched tight across his bony frame, polished leather shoes, and a round top hat perched precisely on his head.

  And then he moved—slowly, precisely—adjusting the brim of his hat, like he knew he was being watched.

  Light caught his face.

  Only, he didn’t have one.

  Where there should’ve been features was a chaotic tangle of jagged pencil strokes, as if someone had taken a charcoal stick to wet paper. His eyes were empty voids, his mouth a lipless grin of serrated shark teeth—too wide, too sharp, and utterly wrong. The expression didn’t just smile.

  It *taunted*.

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  I’d heard stories before. Urban legends.

  The tall man in the top hat. The dancer with the bleeding grin. The slit-mouthed woman who stops you at midnight to ask impossible questions. The dream man—the one who supposedly appears in the nightmares of strangers around the world.

  And now, standing at the top of the stairs, he was real.

  Every instinct in my body screamed.

  I didn’t wait. I ran.

  Behind me, the crisp *clack* of leather shoes rang out—calm, deliberate, echoing through the tunnels like a metronome of death.

  He wasn’t in a hurry.

  Predators didn’t need to be.

  But he never slowed. Never stopped. Always just a heartbeat behind me. My own shoes gave me away—hard soles clicking like a signal flare. Every step I took might as well have shouted *here I am*.

  I ducked behind a column smeared with peeling posters, heart hammering so hard I thought it might explode. I crouched low and held my breath, watching the reflection in a dirty glass panel.

  He looked confused.

  He’d lost me.

  He swung his head side to side, then let out a low growl of frustration, smashing the turnstiles with his spindly arms—steel and plastic flying like shrapnel.

  Then, dragging his limbs like dead weights, he turned and began to move away.

  I exhaled, silent as a ghost.

  That was when the next train pulled in—loud, abrupt, the brakes shrieking on the rails. The doors slid open with a cheerful *ding*, and the station PA announced the stop in a soft, melodic voice.

  The sound drew his attention.

  He turned.

  And in that instant—*he saw me*.

  His grin stretched wider.

  I swore under my breath and ducked my head, trying to vanish into the shadows.

  Too late.

  With a shriek like tearing metal, he lunged.

  I sprinted.

  Dove into the open train car just as he barreled in after me—then ducked out the opposite door, my legs already pumping. He was so close I felt the air shift behind me.

  The train doors tried to close.

  He got caught.

  His scream tore through the station as he thrashed, then *ripped* the doors apart. One half flew straight toward me—slammed into my right shoulder like a cannonball.

  Pain exploded down my arm. Something cracked. Maybe more than one thing.

  Didn’t matter.

  I didn’t stop.

  I couldn’t.

  I ran like my life depended on it—because it did. My lungs screamed for air, my vision blurred, my legs nearly gave out.

  But I kept going.

  At some point, the sound of footsteps behind me faded.

  I stumbled up the stairs of another exit, burst into the misty glow of the city above, and didn’t stop until I reached the wide plaza outside a gleaming skyscraper marked *Media Center*.

  The streets were still empty.

  No sign of him.

  I stood there, chest heaving, arm throbbing, every nerve on fire.

  Then I looked at my watch.

  Forty-seven hours left.