Hunter: the Vigil - I Left My Soul in San Francisco - Luke Chen - Prelude [Restart]

[Jago]

~ " No, no no no, come on! Work, you piece of $#%@!"

The voice was driving him mad. The dark felt oppressive, as if a force all its own. Why didn't the guard let him in!? Nobody was coming out of their rooms? What the hell was going on here!?

Luke felt stunned. Something rooted him in place. He had to get out. He had to flee. Where? Elevator not working. Stairs nearby. Stairs. Had to find the stairs.

A sudden burst of insight struck him. Cutting through the layers of fear, a bout of clarity caused Luke to tear through his messenger bag, procuring the maglux flashlight he kept in it. Bright, and heavy enough to bash whatever it was that tried to stop him, Luke stumbled towards the end of the hallway by the elevators, knowing there had to be a staircase there. There had to. Fumbling with the torch, it took what seemed like an eternity to finally click the switch, hopefully basking the entire hallway in LED light.

But he didn't want to see the scene. He didn't want to know what owned that voice. He just wanted out, and would do anything to escape at this point. ~

 

[Insight]

Luke didn't look back and it was probably for the best that he didn't. Sure enough, Luke found the stairs and entered the stairwell.

To Luke's surprise, he did not see anything out of the ordinary. This was a neutral-painted stairwell, with white, metal stairs leading up and down. The place was eerily silent; not even the noise from Luke's footfalls made much of an impact.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Luke heard some sounds in the corridor he just left. There was the scraping of possibly clawed feet and a moaning noise that might have been a voice. The sound got closer and closer to the door, until...

(What does Luke do?)

 

[Jago]

~ The stairs were right there.

He could bolt. He could be gone as fast as could be, back out into the streets and away from this insanity. It would be so, so goddamn easy!

Until he heard the voice. It sounded like someone dragging their feet, someone in pain ...

No. No, it was another trick, another ... something! Whatever in the Nine-fold Hells he was dealing with! Luke had the mind to turn away and sprint down the staircase ... but something stopped him. What if it was the guard he left behind, or worse, someone caught up in all of this? He couldn't turn his back on them.

Grasped with indecision, Luke broke the seconds-long stalemate by cursing his self and going back for the door. His hand wrapped tightly around the handle for a heartbeat too long.


This is a bad idea ...

Tossing caution to the wind, Luke threw the door open, come what may. ~

 

[Insight]

Luke flings wide the stairwell door to see...

In the darkness, Luke sees a person, or maybe a person, spectral, semi-transparent, blood red in color. It screams without sound. Luke still hears the distant sounds of dragging feet, of claws on the carpet, of moaning.

"Give me the heart..." an unearthly voice says.

OOC: Have Luke make a WITS + COMPOSURE roll to see whether his mind can deal with all of this.

 

[Jago]

OOC: Luke steels up and apparently has watched enough old Hong Kong horror films to not be phased by this! Wits + Composure: 6d10o10h8 5 Successes!

 

[Insight]

Luke's mind questions reality for just a moment and then, he realizes that some sort of ghost is standing before him. The thing reaches out a hand, palm upturned, as if asking for Luke to give it something.

 

[Jago]

~ " NOPE."

Luke slammed the door as hard as he could and took off at a sprint down the stairs. He didn't understand what he saw. He didn't want to understand, holding onto the railing and leaping the last few steps of every flight. All he could think of was home: to get out of here, get safe, check on Viv, and forget everything about this.

What was going on!? Apparitions, and, and ghosts, and some secret passage and a dead girl and he had shot someone, who was him, but not him!!! It was enough to drive someone mad!

Luke banished this slow slip towards insanity from his head, focusing instead on the one, innate human instinct towards danger.

Run. ~

 

[Insight]

As Luke runs down the flights of stairs, the voice in his head gets LOUDER and LOUDER. The voice says, "Give us the Heart!" and "You must give it to us!"

Luke makes it out of the hotel. He knows people are watching him, as he is making quite the spectacle of himself. Luke doesn't care. He just keeps running.

 

[Jago]

~ He didn't even know where he was going. San Francisco had always been his home, he knew these hilly streets and their patterns as if they were as simple as a single loop, and Luke had no clue where he was by the time he stopped running. He was tired. He was scared.

He wanted to call his cousin and chew them out for everything. He wanted to call Vivian and ask if she was okay, or his mom and tell her how much he loved her. The panic was not subsiding, and his wheezing chest was only making it worse. He couldn't regain control, the world feeling like it was swimming in darkness that was coming to envelope him.

Luke finally stumbled into an alley that looked safe ... enough, finally pressing his back to the brick wall and collapsing down. His lungs burned. His feet hurt from the shock of leaping down stairs. His mind kept trying to tell him that what he saw wasn't real, couldn't be real, but he knew it was.

Was he haunted? Did killing his ... double, if that's what it was, did he awaken some type of curse? Was this all some horrible nightmare?
Couldn't have been. He'd had nightmares before, but nothing had ever felt like this.

" Why ... why is this happening to me?" he lamented, burying his head in his hands.

As he did so, he felt something in his inner coat. The package. The brown-paper wrapped package that had started all of this. With trepidation, Luke pulled it out, holding it before him. Was this the source of his woes? Was this why this night had completely gone to the pits? What was it ..?

Luke had never looked at what he was told to deliver before. Not out of some professional courtesy, but because he knew he wasn't crafty enough to make the item look like it wasn't tampered with, and the people he delivered from and to didn't want others knowing their business. But now, now he didn't give a damn about courtesy or whether he would be shot for it.

He needed to know. He desperately needed to know what this night was about.

His fingers shaking, Luke used his nails to scratch away the paper wrapping, pealing it back enough to get in and tear open the package entirely. ~

 

[Insight]

Luke peels apart the heavy packaging tape that holds the box together. The box feels somewhat heavy, like something of substantial weight is inside.

When Luke finally gets the box open, something inside the box is wrapped in clear, plastic wrap and MOVING

Luke summons the courage to peel back the plastic wrap and sees that this thing is a [sblock]BEATING HEART[/sblock]

Your move