Prologue (2)

4:30 AM

A klaxon began emitting loudly from a cellphone, waking its owner.

He groped his bedside for the source, furiously tapping the screen to stop the noise. He succeeded, but the effort knocked the phone to the floor. He rolled over with a groan.

{Another day}, he thought miserably.

As he lay in the dark of the early morning, he stared at the ceiling and dreaded the coming work day.

Minute after minute slipped by.

Finally, when he knew if he waited any longer he'd be late, he mustered the willpower to move.

He begrudgingly pushed himself up out of bed. He may not like his job, but he wasn't going to give up, and he knew that the longer he waited to get started, the longer he would have to work.

{Lots of people are unhappy with their jobs, it doesn't do any good to dwell on it.}

His room was simple, if disheveled, but what always drew people's attention were the large, towering stacks of video game cases in the corner. Several teetering, haphazard stacks that looked like they could fall over just by looking at them.

Most of his free time was spent completing quests, waging wars, exploring worlds, assassinating despots, mowing down Nazis, and slaying monsters... the common tropes. In fact, knowing that he would be able to come home at the end of the day and unwind playing his games is what made going to work bearable.

Several video game consoles were stacked up on top of a dresser, a tangle of cords disappeared behind a large TV that was mounted on the wall above.

{Never enough time.}

Instead of rooting around looking for clean clothes, he just gathered up the grimy clothes from the day before and threw them on as fast as he could.

{At least this way, I won't have to do as much laundry this weekend.}

He snuck to the kitchen and gathered some energy drinks he had put in the fridge the night before. Seeing a pizza box on the counter, he scarfed down some pizza that his family left out, and, while holding a slice with his mouth, tried to put together some kind of lunch with what was on hand. A half empty bag of potato chips and another slice of leftover pizza was the lunch du jour.

The green, glowing numbers on the microwave displayed "5:02", and, as he noticed, he cursed aloud. He should have already left.

He closed the front door quietly, so as not to wake anyone, and ran to his car to begin his commute into downtown Portland. This early in the morning, even the interstate was quiet.

It was early spring in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America, and the weather was cool, even cold to some, with enough rainfall to drown a fish. But for someone who worked construction, like him, it was the perfect weather. Only for a few months a year it was not too cold and still not too hot, and this month was one of them.

Patches of fog obscured the morning commute, like individual clouds had slowly fallen to the earth. He knew the fog wouldn't stick around, usually the sun burned off the fog by lunchtime.

Like so many days before it, he pulled his car into a rough, run down parking lot. A few other cars were already in the lot, the owner's faces distinguishable inside because of the glow of their cell phone screens. A thick fog cloud was centered nearby, making everything seem fuzzy in the lights of the street lamps.

Directly across the street sat a building that was surrounded by construction fencing. The dark building towered over the foreground, seeming kind of sinister in the dim early morning. That impression was made even worse by the thick mist that had obscured the bottom few floors. It seemed as if it were some evil monument rising out of the ethereal plane.

Shutting off his car, the man gathered his tool belt from the trunk and headed inside the building. It was best to start work early, where fewer distractions made it easier to be productive. He was working alone today, so there was no reason to wait any longer.

{The sooner I start, the sooner I can get home.}

Riding the elevator to the basement, he popped in his earbuds and started readying playlists on his phone. The elevator chimed as it reached its destination.

The door opened to pitch blackness. The sliver of light from the elevator shone only a short distance into the room, but he could see that the fog outside on the street had permeated into this space as well.

{Probably through the open hatch the dirt workers had been using to bring machinery in and out of the building.}

Through the fog he could see part of the long, yellow cords of temporary construction lighting that were hung in rows down the length of the basement, and they were all powered off.

Faced with the dark room, his mind involuntarily jumped to an incident that happened a week ago: Early in the morning, one of his coworkers had been scared so bad he almost shit himself when a homeless man popped out from beneath a pile of plywood. I guess the homeless guy had snuck into the building and figured it'd be a safe place to get some rest.

A nervous smile came to his face as he remembered hearing his coworker scream like a girl.

Regaining his courage, he turned on his phone's flashlight and let the elevator door close, sealing him into the dark room. He could see light coming out of the stairwell on the far side of the basement and figured that it must be something simple like an unplugged extension cord.

He began searching for the plug at the end of the temp lighting, but while he was staring at the ceiling, he missed the small, flowing, almost serpentine patterns of mist weaving through the air.

As he inhaled the mist, his breath caught, causing him to instinctively into his elbow, a tickling feeling now started in his throat.

He tried forcefully, and loudly, to clear his airway, but it only caused him to cough more.

The coughing intensified until he was bent over, hands on his thighs, hacking. He felt lightheaded, and he wasn't able to stop coughing long enough to take a full breath.

His vision darkened and the sound of his coughing became faint, like someone else was coughing in the distance.

{Is this how I die?}

He finally slumped to the ground, unconscious, and, as he lay on the hard concrete, soft tendrils of mist swarmed over and around his body.