Chapter 1

Kest was practically skipping down the street of the hive city. The crowds and traffic ebbed and flowed like a sea of flesh, fabric, and metal. The smog clouds overhead rolled and churned, threatening foul rain. Yet Kest didn't care if he got home smelling of sewage and chemicals. He'd found a new prize for his strange collection. His collection of ancient physical media, filled to the brim with the weird and freaky.

Kest turned down an old alley, hurrying past trash cans overflowing with refuse to stop at the door of an old, abandoned electronics store and cafe. The now long-dead, broken sign above the door read Ever-Bright Line-Time in a cartoonish array of neon tubes that now hung, listing to one side. Kest gripped the broken handle of the door, pushing the lever down as he lifted the door up a full inch. It was his anti-intruder system. The door was jammed inside the frame with its top hinge only half-screwed into the wall but reinforced to resist breakage. Along the edges, Kest had installed simple raise-latches at the top and bottom of the door and frame every few inches. Don't lift the door, and it was stuck. Lift the door too high, and it wouldn't open either. No one knew the exact method to open the door but Kest, not even the few guests he had invited over.

Kest stepped inside and sealed the door behind him as the rain started to fall. He hurried past the shelves of scrap electronics, the space only lit by the occasional flickering neon sign, no two matching in style or color. The majority of the space was thick with shadows, but Kest preferred it that way. He'd never been one for bright light, finding comfort in darkness when he wasn't at a lit screen or in deep-dive. Kest hurried to the back room, where he'd set up his battle station of computers and equipment for his hobbies and side gigs. He carefully set the disk case on top of his server tower before booting up his equipment and hurrying back to the kitchen. With excited motions, Kest unwrapped a Major Mac synth-beef and cheese burrito and microwaved it without a paper plate. While the Lumina Myst Crystal that produced the radiation bombarded the frozen meal, Kest moved to the fridge and plucked a cheap beer from the door. The microwave let out a solemn buzz and Kest collected his meal, bouncing the burrito in one hand from the scalding heat. While he walked back to his battle station, Kest cracked open his beer with his teeth just in time to flop into his ratty lawn chair. His large holo-screens glowed, hovering in the air before him as he set down his beer and took a bite from his dinner. He breathed out around the hot mouthful in a 'hoo hoo, haa haa' fashion even as he picked up his prize to inspect it again with pride.

It was an ancient plastic case from the early Age of Data, when digital information was only starting to be developed and understood. The case contained a small Magnetic Resonance Disk, or MRD, that could've contained anything from music to a video to a game. But it was the cover that said it all. The cover portrayed a grainy image of an emaciated hand clutching a bleeding playing card. The card was the Ace of Spades with a disturbing eye in the center. Blood seeped from the edges of the card and the corners of the gray-yellow eye. There was no label or title on the chipped case or the faded image.

Rumors had been circling around this thing across the net for centuries. A game, made by a disturbed man, rumored to have been haunted and tormented by something beyond explanation. Some called it Forbidden Solitaire, while others called it Dead Man's Hand. What it was called was of little consequence to Kest; he knew what it was and was giddy with the platinum-quality find he'd stumbled across at the strange antique shop.

According to the rumors, the game was a cross between solitaire and poker with a few extra mechanics and a deeply disturbing story. The story was told through images and short videos the creator had developed from things he claimed to have experienced in his real life. But that wasn't where the rumors surrounding the game had stopped. There were only eight hundred and eighty-eight copies, and almost all of them had been destroyed or confiscated by corporations and governments. Most reports from players of the game reported it being glitchy and prone to crashing if you pulled any moves the program couldn't anticipate. Between those reports and those of the disturbing content, the game didn't sell well and was avoided by many. However, there were reports of certain players making it almost to the end of the game, but things in each player's life got weird, spooky, and even dangerous. Many wrote panicked posts about something 'coming for them' before they simply vanished from the net. Plenty of spook-bags on the net said that the game was cursed and something had stalked and killed anyone who got deep enough into the game. Some said that beating the game was the only way to survive, while others said that beating the game was what could end up killing the player.

Kest heard rumors like that all the time and found that everything he'd gotten his hands on with them was disturbing but mostly bogus. He collected all kinds of 'dark media' just to see how screwed it was and had made a pastime of researching, hunting, and experiencing them before posting his findings to MeTube, a video streaming site on the LSN for all kinds of content creators. Kest admittedly only had a few dozen followers, but they were loyal, and many had become some of his only friends.

Kest pulled up a few videos on MyTube about the nameless game for some last-minute research before making his first post while he finished his dinner. Lord Shoggoth and Sinister101 had some interesting details he'd already found but was happy to have verified, though neither of them had actually found a copy of the game.

Kest popped the last bite of his burrito in his mouth and chugged the last few swigs of his crappy beer before booting up his recording program and setting his usual visual background for his videos. As Kest's screen displayed a backdrop of dark, haunted woods with rolling fog lit by a cheap Torch-Light beam, he cleared his throat and rolled his neck to get out a few kinks. After he clicked the record button, Kest sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers like some mad genius.

"Greets and welcome, spooks. As usual, thank ya'll for comin' back for more, because I've got somethin' special for you." Kest reached over and plucked the Dead Man's Hand case from his server top and held it up to his camera. "I've gotten my hands on something particularly disturbed today." Kest held the cover closer to the camera for a long moment before setting the case down. "Now, I haven't plugged into it yet, but I think I may have found the Mad Titan's chalice with this one. If you don't recognize the cover, I don't blame you. There's almost no images of it circling the net, and most get stripped from the LSN inside of days. Some of you might know it as The Nameless Game. Some might know it by Forbidden Solitaire. But I think I'll be calling it by the creeping name of Dead Man's Hand." Kest held up one of his hands and rolled the fingers in an imitation of a distinctly creepy wave.

"Like I said, I haven't slotted the thing yet, but I have some pretty high hopes. Hopefully better than those dreck-tier Albert the Hunter vids that were clearly false. I mean, they didn't even use real blood." Kest threw his hands up in the air in irritation before resting them in his lap and leaning forward to give the camera a menacing smile. "But I've found some juicy nuggets of knowledge about the thing before I get started, and I thought I should share them before I dig into this horror-show. Shout-out to Lord Shoggoth for finding some age-old news articles about a series of suicides and vanishings rumored to be tied to the game back when it was first released." Kest licked his lips in eager anticipation. "Combine that with a bit of data from Sinister101, we find out that only eight hundred and eighty-eight were published. Only about eighty-eight copies were bought or stolen. The rest were said to be destroyed, but rumors say otherwise. Now, those eighty-eight went missing and left behind either corpses with undisclosed reasons and causes or missing persons filings. After the release of the game, the company that published it was terminated for unknown reasons, and the game's only creator vanished, leaving behind only a strange piece of paper with an even stranger symbol on it at his desk. Oh! And did I mention that symbol was drawn in blood?" Kest wore a mad grin as he pinched his chin between his thumb and forefinger. "That's some serious spook factor. And who knows, maybe this will be the cursed media I've been looking for." Kest put his index finger on the tip of his nose. "You all know I have a nose for these things. I'll leave it here for now, and I'll get back to ya'll after I play for a session or two. Till then, Creeps out!"

Kest killed the recording before moving back to the kitchen to fetch another beer. As he sat back down at his desk, he took a sip before setting down the drink to collect an ancient disk reader and hook it up to his rigged data translator. With the device set up, Kest pulled the blank disk free from its case and inserted it into the reader. He booted a virtual machine to run the program, the screen displaying a generic sky background with a user interface that felt stiff and janky compared to modern systems.

Kest pulled up the system for the disk reader and clicked on the game's blank program image. The screen flashed white twice before settling into the intro video of a cackling skull bleeding from the eyes, its jaw unhinging to hold the banner name of the publishing company 'Crimson Cackle Games'. The graphics were grainy and rough, clearly showing the game's age. The screen flashed white once more before displaying a freeze frame with script dialogue running along the bottom. The image was of the old stereotypical gentleman adventurer, dressed in tan expedition clothes under a metal breastplate. The image showed the man from behind, a walking stick in one hand, a map in the other, and a crossed rifle and sword across his back. The character stood before a dirt road leading into clearly haunted woods.

The text below the image read, "You are a brave but weary adventurer, seeking lost and forgotten power. You have heard rumors of such power being locked away deep in the Dreadwoods. A haunted and loathsome place."

Kest clicked his mouse, the ancient tech still feeling awkward in his hand despite years of practice. The image flashed to another frame with fresh text. This image was a close-up of the road-head, this time flanked by two signs, one wooden and rotting, the other metal and rusted. The wooden sign read "Beware the Dreadwood! Danger ahead!" The metal sign read " DANGER!! Black Threat Zone ahead! Do Not Enter!" The text under the image read "Horrors and nightmares await ahead. Many have walked this path before in days long past. Do you have the courage to press ahead? Do you have the strength and wit to survive?"

Kest clicked again, and the game began. No game title screen. No new game and load game buttons. Kest gave a huff of interest at the strange jump but pressed on. There were no instructions, just stacks of playing cards arranged around the screen with a hand of his own playing cards at the bottom. Five cards sat as if being held by a player, with a deck to draw from beside the player's hand.

Kest tested a few things before figuring out the basics of the game. Much like classic solitaire, he had to match a card from his hand with a card on the field to remove the two, each vanishing in a slash of gore. After using a card, another from the deck beside the player's hand could replace it. After a few failed matches, Kest got a feel for the game, quickly discovering that there were various kinds of joker cards with various effects that were themed after spells and martial weapon techniques to alter the field or his hand to give him an edge.

Kest quickly cleared the first table, and the cards vanished with a flash to reveal another freeze frame. This image was a first-person perspective of the player walking up the road. The text read, "The road will be long and hard. You must steel your nerves for the horrors ahead if you are to survive." Something felt off about the image. Kest couldn't put his finger on it, but it felt like something was watching him from the image. He leaned in close to inspect the screen more closely, but he couldn't find anything among the trees, rocks, and fog.

Kest clicked again, and the next game board came up, the background an image from further up the dirt trail. He beat it with little trouble and moved on. The next image gave him the sense of being watched even more intensely. The trees looked thicker, the wood darker, the rocks larger and more jagged. The text read, "A growing sense of unease sets in as you climb the trail. As if something dark and hungry is watching you."

Kest raised a brow at the message and leaned in even closer to the screen. As he scoured the image, he found two things. First, he found a pair of glowing dark red eyes peering just over a rock, partly obscured by the fog in the image. The second was a strange symbol branded onto one of the trees beside the dirt road. Kest pointed an accusing finger at the eyes with a muttered, "I see you."

As if in response, the screen glitched for an instant, flashing with a dark red tint, sections of the image displacing. The barely visible eyes flashed yellow for that instant, giving the sense that they had blinked at him. The glitch was there and gone in a heartbeat. Kest sat back in his chair, licking his lips in a nervous habit as he eyed the scene for another long moment. When nothing happened, he clicked the screen again, and the game moved on.

In the next frame, the image was further up the road, and the eyes were closer, peering out from behind a large tree as if the thing's head was cocked at an almost unnatural angle. The game board was more complicated, and those eyes could be seen just on the edge, between the board and the end of the screen, almost eyeing him around one of the card stacks, daring him to finish the set.

Kest took that dare and finished the board in only slightly more time than the last. The frame shifted to still further up the road; the trees now showed more warped shapes, the stones almost seeming to have faces, watching him with desperate gazes. The eyes were missing from the scene, yet Kest felt watched even more strongly than before. He peered over his shoulder around his dark room, looking for anything that could be giving him that sense of haunting unease. He found nothing and turned back to his game. The text read, "As you travel the rough road, the forest distorts around you, haunting you wherever you look. You feel as if you are hunted. Something stalks you."

Kest clicked the screen, and it flashed abnormally bright before dimming to reveal the horror show he was looking for. A beast filled the screen. It almost looked like a hulking werewolf lunging at the screen. Except this werewolf had rotting patches of exposed muscle, and too many fingers on its clawed hands. But worst was its face. Instead of a wolf-like face, the beast had something horribly malformed, like two crocodile muzzles fused at the joint of the jaw to give it a V-shaped maw filled with far too many teeth. The thing's eyes, barely visible over the mutated jaws, were just as disturbing: scarlet irises with reptile slit pupils, but the pupils were crooked, the upward tips slanting inwards towards each other. The image glitched for a moment, the jaws closing just the slightest bit more before resting, but it still gave Kest the sense of being trapped and moments from being devoured.

The text under the image read, "Your sense of dread grows darker before you hear it coming for you. You will be devoured if you can't escape." Kest raised a brow at the screen again, his heart calming after the brief spike in pressure and heart rate. "Calling the thing an 'it'." He said with a roll of his eyes. "Can't even name it before jumping on the player." He blew out a breath, lowering his anxiety just a bit more. "Well, I guess leaving it unnamed does make it a bit scarier."

As the game board filled the screen, Kest noticed that it introduced a new mechanic. Some kind of combat mechanic where removing cards from the board caused damage, but he was only given a few moves before he learned it was turn-based and the thing would attack his character, dealing a sizeable amount of damage to his newly appeared health pool. However, he also learned that if he had certain hands of cards, like a full house or straight flush, he could discard the hand to deal sizeable damage to the creature. Kest had started with twenty health points, while the freakish creature started with thirty. That was pretty unfair in Kest's opinion, especially so early in the game.

Kest got the creature within six health points of killing it when it took the final bite. The screen shook and flooded with a bloody red tint, running down in rivulets before the screen turned black with the single message in plain text: 'Your End is Coming'.

Kest leaned back in his seat, lacing his fingers together and stretching his arms over his head with a groan of released pressure. After he let out a long sigh, Kest stood and stretched, cracking his back. "Well, they got that unnerving thing going for them. But I've seen it before. Not impressed."

Kest scratched his neck, his nerves still a little on edge after the game session. He figured he should go for a walk before he headed to bed. Kest glanced at one of the ancient digital clocks that littered his space and found it was just past midnight. He'd gotten home at about seven in the evening. Had he really been playing for that long? It didn't feel like he'd been at this station for five-plus hours. It must've been better than Kest thought, if it had kept him that occupied for so long. Even if it wasn't haunted or cursed, it was at least good enough to keep him engaged and feeling creeped out.

Kest stepped out of his home, double-checking that the door was latched before thumping the heavy metal door with his fist twice. One of the first things he'd done when he moved into the shop was replace it with a stronger door. The old one had been a flimsy piece of trash that he could've put a boot through if he kicked it with half an effort. Kest had replaced it with the best thing he could afford with six months' pay. A steel-plated, Orcate-cored piece of breach-resistant walling. The stuff was normally used for the hull of expedition tanks. It wasn't anything that could handle a Black Threat Zone, but it could hold against gangers, thugs, and maybe a corporate breach team. Kest had made damn sure no one was coming in after he'd been ransacked and beaten half to death by a squad of thugs looking for 'protection money'.

Kest stepped out into the oily rain as it poured from the sky. Green-yellow lightning arced across the sky, followed by a low rumble Kest could feel in his feet. He took a deep breath in, the scent of stale chemicals, rotting food, and trash thick in his nose. It smelled like home. The only home he had ever known. Spooky forests were all well and good, but the city was busy with life. He didn't need to worry about being mauled by some nightmare beast in the city so long as he didn't head into the Undercity. Things did live down there that he wouldn't even think of screwing with.

Kest pulled up the hood of his black jacket, shoved his hands in his pockets, and made his way through the maze of local alleys. Other than the occasional ganger, the alleys near Kest's home were mostly empty. The local neighborhood was mostly made up of abandoned apartment complexes, a few hollowed-out shops, and a couple of half-collapsed warehouses. Kest made sure that almost no one knew where he lived. Only the occasional girl he could talk into lifting her skirts and a few of his sparse in-person friends.

Kest turned down another abandoned alley, this one full of broken cybernetics from the nearby cy-doc. The guy was a scrap-doc of the highest order, not even bothering to dispose of his refuse in a healthy way. Arms and legs jutted out from open trash bags along the alley, waiting for the corporate recyclers to come through and pick them up just like they picked up the corpses in these same alleys.

Kest stopped at the end of the narrow corridor, looking down the branching intersections, debating his path when it was decided for him. Down to his right was another alley leading to a wider intersection. Kest caught a shadow moving against the far wall of those crossroads. Something big. The shadow from the nearby street lights stretched tall across the wall Kest could see, and it wasn't something natural. Yet that shadow looked familiar. A warped head with two somethings jutting from it; Kest couldn't tell what, but they looked like over-thick rabbit ears, like its head was cocked at a horrifying angle. A massive hand reached around the corner to grip the wall. Kest saw that the hand, clearly in his vision, had far too many fingers, each tipped with claws, some covered in fur, some showing exposed muscle.

A creaking growl bubbled up from just past that corner, sounding like rotting wood about to break under pressure, but somehow hungrier. A pair of forked snouts, like crocodiles, crept into view, covered in patches of scales, fur, and muscle.

Kest couldn't believe what he was seeing. It was real. The game was real. But he didn't have time for that. He needed to get out of there, and fast.