CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Solo Mission, Part 2

Of course, I know that. Why do you think I sent you here?

“It’s an asylum…” Sam breathed. “That means—”

I know what it means, lame brain. I taught the guys who wrote the book on heroics.

“Going into an asylum alone would be suicide!” Sam protested. “All the raw emotions lose inside there…it’ll be a smorgasbord of horrors…”

Relax, kid… I’m not asking you to storm the demon lord’s castle…yet. He-he-he.

“You’re getting more and more hilarious with each day,” Sam said sarcastically.

One of the top-ranked teams in Queens cleansed this asylum a couple of days ago at the request of New York’s Warden office… Whatever’s left was too weak for them to bother with—and that’s where you come in.

“You want me to clean house,” Sam guessed.

It’d be enough if you cleaned out the riffraff on the first floor. It’ll mostly be phantoms... You do know what a phantom is, right?

“They’re what remains after horrors are destroyed…leftover emotions programmed to feed on negative vibes floating in the air,” Sam answered.

Not the most threatening bunch but still a nuisance if left alone for too long because they can become revenants…and those are nasty SOBs.

To enter a haunted zone, even one that was recently cleared, without a team was the kind of thing Sam might have once been hesitant to tackle. But now, with Triple-A helping him break past his old limits, the eagerness for adventure was growing in him.

He glanced down at his hands and noticed that they weren’t shaking at all. “I can do this.”

That’s right, kid. Lesson number one—believe in yourself.

A mission notification popped up in front of Sam.

NEW MISSION: Goodwill Hunting CONDITION: Exterminate the remaining psychic residue left behind by the defeated horrors on the first floor of Goodwill Asylum. REWARD: To be determined. WARNING: Failure to complete the mission will result in Chiron thinking less of you than he already does… and it’ll also mean the hero’s death.

Sam frowned. “What’s with this TBD crap?”

Don’t worry, kid. You pull this off and you’ll get a big reward worthy of your first official victory!

“Yeah, sure,” Sam sighed.

His gaze drifted back to those open front doors. Under the light of the morning sun, Their dilapidated state didn’t look as sinister as Sam first imagined.

“Okay, mission start…”

Once Sam reached the asylum’s front doors, he reached out for the handle of the item strapped to the back of his belt and then pulled out his new hammer from its holster.

I hope you didn’t spend all your drachmas in the OTC just for that hammer.

Sam glanced down at his weapon.

Its handle was about half a foot longer than Onus and wrapped in a supple brown leather grip. Half its head was a brick-shaped chunk of enchanted iron, while its other half looked like a thick, curved horn. There were runes etched along its two sides.

“It’s called Cranium Smasher…and no, I didn’t spend all my money. I got it on sale in the Olympian Trading Center for only five-hundred drachmas,” Sam explained, sounding pretty proud of himself.

Five-hundred drachma—they ripped you off, dumbass! You could have gotten a complete set of reasonably good Moonday hero gear for that much… This thing better be as good as the last hammer.

Sam couldn’t admit this to Chiron, but he was also annoyed with how expensive items cost in the OTC. After all, the conversion rate of five-hundred golden drachmas was around five-thousand US dollars. His new hammer wasn’t even on the premium items list.

“Um, it had five-star reviews—” Sam smiled sheepishly at the message box—“and it’s got some interesting qualities.”

The appropriately named Cranium Smasher was nowhere near as powerful as Onus, but Sam liked the feel of its leather grip in his hand. Also, the reviews claimed the hammer had a low chance of stunning one’s target which Sam thought might come in handy.

Cold air from inside the asylum drifted out to where he stood, causing him to face forward once more.

“I thought you said there weren’t any horrors left?”

It was faint, but Sam could sense a horror’s energy mixed in with the air. The feel of it made him tighten his grip on Cranium Smasher.

I said it would be mostly phantoms. But don’t sweat it. Whatever’s left isn’t going to be a problem for the hero who took down an alpha-level Terror!

“Don’t need you to butter me up, master.” Sam’s brow furrowed. “I got this…I hope.”

Sam spent another minute getting used to that cold draft before he finally decided to step over the threshold and enter the asylum.

“Apollo, light my way and don’t let the darkness take me,” Sam whispered a short prayer to the Olympian god of the sun. “And maybe keep me alive, too…that would be awesome.”

He moved cautiously through the asylum’s front lobby, taking care to check every dark corner in case something was waiting to jump out at him. The cold air that greeted him outside now filled this lobby, forcing his alertness up a notch.

“Maybe you can send some warm sunlight into this place, too, Apollo,” Sam added as an afterthought.

There was barely any light to see, but what little sunlight filtered in through the front doors gave Sam a moderate view of his surroundings.

Broken hospital equipment was strewn across the cracked linoleum floors while the ceiling above was full of holes that led up into dark crawl spaces. Yes, this place had all the hallmarks of a proper haunted zone.

Sam turned on the flashlight attached to the right side of his belt and then rotated its holster so that the light would shine his way forward.

“I can’t believe my poor man’s utility belt would be useful now.” He patted the worn-looking belt buckle affectionately. “Good thing I didn’t throw it away when I thought I was done being a hero…belts in the OTC cost a fortune.”

After a brief inspection, Sam discovered that there was nothing sinister hiding in the lobby. He moved on to the next corridor—and that’s when the temperature dropped even more.

“Styx,” he cursed.

A floating, ghost-like image shimmered into being around three meters ahead of him. This apparition blocked his way forward in this narrow corridor.

Like all phantoms, this one was mostly a skeleton in its appearance. A semblance of the human it once was would wrap around portions of its bones and skull only to disappear from view to reform on another part of the bone.

“Godsdamn…I was feeling pretty confident walking in here,” Sam gulped. “But now…”

The one good thing about phantoms was that they were hard to miss because their bones glowed with ghostly light which bathed their surroundings in a pale blue hue.

Sam tightened his grip on Cranium Smasher. “Can’t even tell if you’re male or female…which I guess is a good thing.”

He knew from his studies that a phantom whose original form was hard to discern was weak while being able to tell if a phantom was a boy or girl meant they were stronger.

“So…why am I feeling anxious right now?”

Sam was being extra chatty with himself, but that was probably because of his sudden loss of nerves. It was also why he’d gone stiff, although nerves were only partly responsible.

His muscles suddenly felt very heavy, almost like they were being weighed down by iron chains. A similar weight pressed down on his chest, making it harder for him to gulp down air.

“Wh-what’s…what’s wrong…with…me,” Sam struggled through the words as his brain began to feel numb. That’s when realization dawned on him. “Damn…you’ve caught me…in a phantom-lock…”