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!"