This is an alternate branch of the storyline continuing from [22A]

The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[23A]
For the Primary Branch [----]

Naturally, Giselle‘s brain heard that comment the way Mario said it in the games. The parking lot was absolutely empty of cars despite it being the middle of the day. Several side doors flanked loading zones with enough space for dozens of 18 wheelers to pull up. Approaching cautiously, Blessin tried the nearest door. It was locked securely. The adjoining dock door also didn’t want to move. A keypad sat right next to it, but the Blessin shook her head and sighed.

After wandering around the entire perimeter to make sure nothing was unlocked or accessible, they returned to the front with no point of entry. Stretching her arms, Blessin urged the others to take a step back as she held the bolt cutters and aimed them right at the front of the nearest door. They weren’t terribly effective, but Blessin was doggedly persistent. She eventually popped the lock out enough that she could grip the front portion with some pliers she happened to have in her trunk. With a decent grip and some help from Rachel, she was able to twist the cover to the lock off and get in a screwdriver to finally manually twist the bolt.

Once the door sprung open though, a wailing alarm sounded inside the warehouse. The noise didn’t carry far, but it was enough to echo and raise the alarm of Giselle and Rachel, as they glanced around the neighborhood in all directions to see if police were on their way. Blessin didn’t bother panicking and instead peered inside the dark warehouse and rushed back out to her car to retrieve a flashlight.

When she shut the door behind her, the alarm was either muffled or shut off. The moment uncomfortably left Olivia, Giselle, and Rachel standing there waiting for whatever was supposed to come next. Giselle considered getting in their car and leaving as soon as she grabbed Herschel. This seems like the perfect moment, but she only imagined it and didn’t feel the enthusiasm to act on it. So, they just stood there looking around for some sign until the dock door rolled up with Blessin standing in the opening. The alarm had shut off.

Giselle lingered on the pavement while Rachel and Blessin drove the cars through the opening. When Giselle asked what she did to shut down the alarm, Blessin was quiet a moment before gesturing into the darkness towards a computer console sitting all by itself.

The computer had a simple, white text interface that reminded Giselle of all the Fallout games she’d play through the years with terminals containing interesting lore. Standing in front of the computer, Blessin did some typing. While waiting, Giselle aimed her flashlight around.

It was literally the largest empty space she had ever seen, and it felt even bigger with all the lights off. The feeling was like a cosmic void, as though a sample of the space between worlds. She had cement below to ground her but, otherwise, everything felt like a mote on the back of oblivion.

The only things she could discover with the frail beam of her light were twisting shadows and line-thin hints of light from outside. That notion of twisting actually got literal when it seemed like the blackness was wriggling in place with obsidian worms. The heat beneath her temple flashed for a moment before Olivia crept over and wrapped her arms around her protectively.

“Keep still…” Olivia softly whispered, despite the fact her voice sounded like an echo in the dark. Rachel smothered a gasp and shuffled closer to them. Blessin only mentioned, “I know. Shit. Just a minute.”

That statement didn’t particularly inspire confidence as Giselle did her best not to direct her flashlight towards the parts of shadow which were advancing on them like a swarm of black worms. Ethereal roaring grew closer as though a tornado was just outside and eager to rip the ceiling to pieces.

“Cars! Now!” Blessin bolted from the computer and urged everyone to get back in the vehicles. Like a giant squid with endless tentacles, black ropes surged forward as they tore open the doors and got back in their seats. To Giselle‘s horror, Blessin wasn’t backing out of the warehouse but rather driving deeper into it while hugging the wall of the building. Rachel in their car hesitated but soon accelerated to catch up.

Blessin didn’t drive fast because of the pylons in the way. Giselle trusted that Rachel was a good driver, but she also remembered how many times she launched warthogs off of cliffs in Halo. Despite their modest pace, the entity remained confidently behind them. Unfortunately, as they approached the rear of the warehouse, she could see even more blackness shifting and stretching from the walls and ceiling. Blind fear and agony that she was separated from Rachel in this dark moment gripped Giselle. The heat behind her eyebrows surged like a sudden sun flare.

At the same moment, lights above them kicked on in sequence, filling the entire facility. They looked like emergency lights, frail and red but the massive beast in all directions screamed and twisted like it had been set on fire. With the additional light, Giselle could see that a section of the warehouse projected forward with metal walls all around it. Slowly, a door at the front slid open and spilled radiant blue light with the same feeling as Olivia and her sister.

“THERE!” Blessin rolled down her window and shouted to the other car before gunning it towards the opening door. Rubber squeaked and burned as the cars swung around and shot towards the opening. Looking back, Giselle could see the swarm of blackness fumbling and fighting on top of itself to get closer and closer. In her mind’s eye of terror, she could imagine it falling like a wave of death to erase their car and Rachel within it.

Fuming, stretching, and glowing with everything she had inside, Giselle summoned the hand where her hand was missing and focused it to stretch further and further beyond the walls of this car and out. A shimmering glow washed over her vision and arced through the air. Briefly, the black wave looked like it was going to tumble across Rachel, but then it shifted and tilted in the direction of Blessin‘s car. That momentary distraction was enough for Rachel to gun it, swerve sideways, and back again. It looked like it did no service to the shocks on their poor car but they slipped through the opening and into that blue light.

Behind them, the black tentacles fought, as if they were the mouth of a rabid dog trying to grind and chew at something just out of reach. Fuck Cerberus. They stopped a ways into the narrow chamber and Blessin was the first to hop out and smash a button on the side wall. Slowly, the door at the end rose despite the crazed efforts of the entity.

Once the door was completely sealed, several sounds followed with thunks and downward momentum just like a descending elevator. When Giselle managed to get in a breath and put her blue hand away, she wondered about the strange lights all around them. Blessin answered, “It’s the light of their kind. Flush harvested it for protection. It’s weak but the only force that can protect against monsters like Cerberus. A light against the darkness that harms and burns it but which it can smother with enough force.”

Olivia swooned and bowed with her hand clapping her mouth like she was going to throw up. Giselle took a moment to understand that what was protecting them were the remains of so many of Olivia‘s kind. Athena twisted and contorted like a little girl screaming and crying. Giselle desperately wished she could do more to help her but all she could do was thank her for providing the distraction that saved Rachel. Probing around, Blessin found a button near the entrance of the elevator labeled “Emergency Shut”. She grumbled to herself, looking back at what she had pressed, and muttered a mental note.

The elevator continued to gradually but steadily drop through the earth. Giselle knew that deep bunkers existed throughout the world, especially in DC, but she had the nervous hope that this one wasn’t built by a company with the same moral standards as Vault-Tec. The lights were already foreboding enough. After several minutes of descent, the elevator shook and settled to a halt.

To Giselle‘s surprise, a door didn’t open. Rather, all the walls surrounding the chamber dropped away and the elevator soon became a platform.

“Shit…” Blessin‘s reaction was starkly understated as the chamber they emerged in was revealed with floodlights in the same shimmering blue tone carving out a safe section in a massive, underground chamber. Beyond where the light fell was like living angry oil roiling and fighting to get further as it melted away. It was horrific and Olivia shied towards Giselle for protection, although Giselle had no earthly idea what she could possibly do. They got back in their cars.

When they reached the cement-glazed bottom of the chamber, the elevator shifted into a conveyor belt, swiveling about 90° before advancing them forward. A large, metal door stood in front of them. Getting out of the cars was a challenging proposition as the narrow platform had very little space before the tempest of monsters. Lingering in the light, Blessin glanced at the computer and instructed them to approach the console with a yellow ring beside it.

The display was simple, with the words, “RADIANT ENTITY/RADIANT HOST?” Blessin explained, “Radiant Entity appears to be what the Corporation calls Olivia‘s kind. Giselle is a Radiant Host.” All that left Giselle unnerved to absorb. Her biggest concern was if they needed to be one or the other to enter. Her concern turned towards Rachel. She and Blessin were neither.

With a deep breath and a steady hand, Blessin approached the console and typed a few things. “Guests are allowed, although this was not where the human component of the Corporation was intended to stay. There are suites higher up, but they’ve been… compromised. This was the only option I could find on the computer.” Ultimately, they only needed Olivia to stand over the ring for the door to open. The conveyor belt drew their vehicles forward into the opening. Unfortunately, the height of the vehicles blocked some of the radiant illuminations, and a swirling, lashing mass of darkness clung to the wheels and spread like spider claws in front of them.

Turning with bitter fury, Olivia stretched out her hand and screamed, “LEAVE US ALONE!” A shockwave of blue light rippled out from her body and shook the nearest section of the entity loose. It attempted to get another foothold by scouring the metal as it slid back into place. While a few small droplets of blackness passed through the seams, they soon melted and evaporated under the light like an ice cube in a frying pan. Everyone focused a long steady breath as they were taken by the conveyor belt to a second door with a proper vault opening in front bathed in blinding light.

It opened to reveal a large, interior chamber. This one finally looked like what Giselle was expecting. It was like a Disney Main Street in miniature with tiny schools, little shops, and example homes set off to the side with a small community area and more modern facilities flanking the edges. The size was comparable to a Walmart with a golden version of the radiant light filtering gently from above.

While Rachel and Giselle wandered with wide curious eyes and Olivia lingered behind them, Blessin rushed over to the nearest computer and started typing. After a quick look at the layout of the chamber, they started retrieving things from the cars, especially Herschel, who was absolutely ready to move around finally and sniff everything. Blessin’s cat, You, yowled with annoyance until Rachel carefully let her out. The silver female soon clung to Blessin’s leg as she furiously typed and hunched over the screen.

The harsh tension cranked until Blessin gave an echoing scream of agony. The others paused and looked on with concern.

“It’s gone. Topside is gone. The reason we saw so many of them out there is that Cerberus or whatever the hell it can be called… executed the worst-case scenario that this corporation prepared for. It’s wiped the world clean…and dark and cold…well, with fire to bring the cold and darkness.“

Relinquishing the computer, Blessin gestured to a text box on the monitor. It read, “NUCLEAR CONCLUSION SCENARIO. FULL LOCKDOWN. ASSUME DARKNESS ENTITIES EVERYWHERE!”

Giselle nearly felt herself pass out. She wanted to scream and puke and just let her thoughts flow away. Rachel quietly sobbed behind her. Blessin held Giselle with blank pain in her eyes. “There’s another way. It’s not all lost. This facility experimented with radiant and darkness entities. We’re in a branch reality, but we can go to the other one, to the one in contact with me. But there’s a problem.”

She thought there were a fucking lot of problems, but she wobbled and waited for what Blessin had to say.

Quietly, Blessin concluded, “We’re not in sync. They are three months ahead of us. Like with the alterations to reality to be made, we can’t change our past or their past. We have to meet up but by taking the long route. I’m sorry… I’m so sorry, I had a feeling about so much of this, but I desperately didn’t want to lay that burden on you, any of you. We can fix this but only by waiting for other selves to catch up with us.”

[Since this is meant to be interactive, feel free to suggest ideas and prompts for future/alternate branch storylines. Some branches are already written but this will allow me to best pick new/alternate ones. I'm currently just rolling dice.]

Poll below