Episode 1

When I woke up beneath the Shibuya underpass, I didn't know what to expect. I live in Chicago! My hoodie was gone, so were my jeans. I was instead wearing a button-up shirt (open) over a T-shirt, and cargo pants, all in forest tones. I also had a strange black skull pin clipped to my right breast pocket. In the distance, I heard screams and cries, but I couldn't see anything past the overpass.

Lying on the ground near me was a strange man. He wore a white hoodie beneath a black leather jacket, with dark jeans. I got down on one knee next to him and nudged his shoulder, but he was out cold. Suddenly I felt a vibration in my pocket, and I heard my phone's ringtone echo out under the freeway, telling me I had a text message. I reached into my pocket to pull my phone out. But the thumping noise woke the man, which was unfortunate for me, since that's really how this nightmare began.

He stood up absurdly fast, looking around with angry eyes. He had a handsome face, like that of a model, which stood in juxtaposition to the deformity of his body as his arms turned black and had claws sprout out from the fingertips. "Who are you?" He growled at me.

Suffice to say, I panicked. WOULDN'T YOU? Don't judge me. I ran as fast as I freaking could to get away from this man, but I hit an invisible wall, of all things. It knocked me back, and onto the ground. The man caught up to me in a second, and pinned me to the ground. It hurt. A lot. The man put one of his claws up to my throat.

"What's your name?" He growled again.

"Xavier," I replied nervously, trying to not wet myself, "Xavier Munroe."

"Do you know where my sister is?" He shouted it my face. This close, I could see that his eyes were almost red beneath the hoodie.

"No, I don't even know who you are!" I almost cried, "I don't even know what's going on!"

"Fine," He got off me, his hands morphing back to normal. I couldn't help but stare, but he glared at me for doing so. I'd never seen anything like him.

Funny, that might have been one of the least exciting things about that day. He tried to leave the underpass but ran into the same invisible wall that I had. He got knocked back, almost landing on top of me except that I rolled out of the way. The concrete cried and buckled as he landed, leaving a slight imprint of his body in the cement. "What the hell was that!" He cried out as he landed.

"There seems to be an invisible wall there…" I noted for him, not that he listened to me. He turned his left arm into a giant black shield…thing. Then he took a running lead and ran headfirst at the wall, only to get a more violent result. He was launched back farther this time, and I decided it would probably be best if I stayed a little bit farther away from him and that wall.

He tried this several times, transforming his limbs into more fiendish weapons and attacking the wall, but only to get the same result. One time he even covered his entire body in a black armor and ran headfirst at it, but he still bounced off.

Eventually, my phone rang again. Whoever was watching the two of us must have gotten bored, and so he sent me another text. My phone rang out and the man looked at me, waiting for me to answer it. I reached into my pocket, but all that I found were a handful of pins, with various designs on them—mostly drills—and no phone.

"Is it your phone?" I ask him. He turns his pockets inside out—they're empty too except for another handful of pins. I check another of my pockets, before I realize that my phone was behind me. With the echo under the free-way, it'd taken me a minute…that and I'm functionally retarded.

I picked the phone up. I had two new messages, from a number I'd never seen before. They read (In descending order):

"Btw, we won't open the walls if you two don't make a pact. Tootles! –The Reapers"

Oh, that's cute. And before that, the first message read:

"Reach 104. You have 120 minutes. Fail and face Erasure. –The Reapers"

I wanted to believe it was spam, who would send a message like that? But, looking around, I couldn't ignore it. It said erasure, and that sure as hell did not sound like it was pleasant. I turned to the man, and suddenly we both felt a sharp pain on the palms of our hands. It was like someone took a knife to our hands. He was able to stay standing, but I fell to the floor.

I stood up again as quickly as I could, picking up the phone with myself. I looked to my hand, and saw the time ticking away, as if someone had carved a magical clock into my palm. From the surprised expression on his face, I could tell that his hand was doing it too. When I turned to him, he looked at the phone in my hand.

"What does it say?" He asked me gruffly, albeit slightly nervously. Well, he certainly does know how to cut to the point. I held my phone out to him, and he walked over and took it.

"We have to make a pact apparently, to survive." I explain to him as he reads, "What's your name? I already told you mine."

"Mercer," He says, "Alex Mercer, how do we form a pact?"

"Like I know…" I look down sadly, "I don't know anything that's going on…"

Suddenly, we both glowed in the light of a blue flame that flashed over our entire body. The walls around us were illuminated by the light, and as the light faded, I saw the wall erupt into shards of glass that fell to the ground.

"What the hell was that lightshow?" I asked him, but he was on the move already, running in the direction the wall had been. I looked at the timer on my hand; we had only 40 minutes left, we really had better get running. I tried to follow him as best I could, but let me tell you, he was fast!
But where were we even headed? 104 could be anything, a person, building—the only thing I really could tell was that it was a destination. I never thought we'd make it, especially when we ran into a wall of the living dead. Mercer backed up from them, groaning out loud. I looked at the zombies that were closing in on us—just being in this area, the zombies were turning the very sky and ground crimson.

"Not the infected, I thought it was over after Manhattan…" he muttered to himself, shifting his arms into those claws again. I raised my hands into fists, getting ready to hide behind Alex.

"DON'T BE STUPID!" A voice called from above, and I looked up to the top of the nearest building, a music shop. Two guys stood up there—one had blonde hair and the other had silver. Both of them jumped down from the roof, running over to stand in front of us. It was the blonde one who was talking, "If you're like me, you have to use your pins to fight." He showed me two pins, one in each hand, and tossed them into the air. When he caught them, two flashes of light blinded me, and when I opened my eyes I saw him facing the infected with two key shaped swords. And by key-shaped, I mean very old fashioned keys. I was a little surprised.

I stopped for a moment to take in my surroundings, the monsters and the three people I had just met. The blonde guy wore a long black coat, with a hood that was down, and everything about him was black, except for his pale skin. His 'friend' I guess wore a flashy red coat, had a giant silver sword on his back, and currently held a black and a silver gun in his hands.

"Dante!" The blonde-haired kid shouted, "Hold off the infected while I explain to these two!"

"On it!" The white-haired guy shouted, leaping over an infected person's head and raining bullets down on top of them, before hacking them to bits with his sword.

The infected were grotesque, mutated versions of what I hoped were once normal people, and not the actual dead. Mostly because the actual dead could be killed, but regardless the two new guys seemed cocky. They must have been doing this awhile, the silver-haired guy…Dante, I guess…was practically laughing as he went to town on them.

"Do you have a player pin?" The blonde-haired kid asked, "You'll need—there it is, on your chest, good—you'll need a player pin to scan the infected."

"Scan…the infected?" I asked, and the white-haired guy chuckled, so I looked to Mercer, whose stoic face offered no clues. The silver-haired guy drew his sword and spun it, hacking away two infected and knocking them into the air. Mercer joined the fight, his arms turning back into the claws, by launching himself at the mass of infected.

"You have a player pin, you're playing the game. Both of you I'm guessing," The blonde-haired kid said. I grumbled almost audibly, grinding my teeth together. I didn't understand any of this! What kind of sick game was this? "There exist a thing called noise and…it's better if you just see for yourself. Touch your player pin."

"This?" I ask, placing my hand over my pin. Suddenly, the world turns blue, and I see a bunch of weird glyphs, white as snow, floating in mid-air. I gasp, and take my hand off the pin, the world returning to normal, "What the hell where those?"

"Those are the noise," The blonde-haired kid answered, batting away several of the infected with his giant keys. I am seriously going to look back at that sentence and repeat myself; he batted away several zombies with two giant key-shaped swords. That will never sound normal to me! "You…do you have pins in your pocket?" he pauses, waiting for me to check, and there are, "alright good, those will be your attacks in the noise realm. Scan and then run right at them!"

"You're crazy, right?"

"No! If you take out the Noise, the infected," He sighs, and then shouts at me, "Just do it! Trust me if you want to live!"

"Fine, I will!" I place a hand on my player pin, turning the world blue again, and revealing the Noise again. I gulp, and freeze in place, this is crazy right? I'm having a weird acid-induced nightmare, right? I take a deep breath, summon up my courage, and run right at the giant sigil.

The first collision was probably the weirdest thing I've ever felt, like part of my life was sucked out of me. Like I half-died. Whatever it is, I suddenly was standing in a gray-scale version of the street I was on, and I was surrounded by giant frog-things. One of them jumped at me, but I stepped out of the way. Another one croaked, and a fountain of bubbles floated in my direction. I scoffed at this, but when I got hit, they knocked me onto my back.

WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING—you know what, screw this. I ran a good distance away from the frogs, keeping my front facing them. Something would happen if I killed them, but what? I pulled out the pins from my pocked and looked at them. The Blonde-haired kid has said that the pins were my attacks, so maybe one of them…I picked the one with a picture of a drill on it. A large drill.

This is where the nightmare…became fun.

I put the other pins back in my pocket, and placed the drill pin in the palm of my right hand. I raised that hand to the sky, and yelled as loudly as I could, summoning up any power I had in me. My hand flashed with green light as a spiral of energy funneled out of my player pin and around my raised arm, turning the end of my finger, and then most of my forearm into a giant rotating drill!

"Now, get out of my face!" I shouted, running at the frogs with my drill arm dragging behind me. It was heavy, like really heavy! I leapt into the air as I met the first frog, impaling it with my drill and turning it into a bunch of dust. One frog landed behind me, and I turned. As I did so, a green energy filled me and my drill became more slender, and I was able to whip it back through the frog, turning that one to dust too. I smiled at my success—I'd never had this kind of power before.

While I was distracted by myself, a frog landed on my shoulder, and kicked off me. It hurt. A lot. I fell over, and my drill turned back into green dust. Another frog landed next to me, and croaked. Remembering what happened last time, I rolled away from the two, and got back on my feet a safe way away. I raised my hand to the sky, and tried to summon the drill again, but nothing happened. I looked at my palm, and saw that the entire pin had turned gray.

"Wonderful!" I shouted, backing away from the frogs as they hopped towards me, "Crap!"

I put the drill pin into my other pocket, and pulled out my other pins. Was there another one I could use? One had the picture of two black swords crossed, except when I tried to use them, it didn't work. The other pins weren't working, except for the one with a picture of a soft drink on it. That one revitalized me, made me feel stronger.

Helped me to keep running away from the frogs. There was nothing I could do, my pins wouldn't work. I had one pin left I hadn't tried, and it didn't look too promising, having the illustration of two puppy dogs on it. Regardless, I held the pin up in front of my face, between me and the frogs, and prayed for the best. And it worked.

Chains shot from all parts of the world, cutting across and around one of the frogs, and knocking the other away. The frog got bounced around between the chains and quickly turned to dust. After it turned to dust, the chains retreated, and I fell to the ground, drained. That pin took so much of my energy, I could hardly stand!

The last frog left closed in on me. It was wounded, and perhaps that made it desperate. It hopped towards me, landing awkwardly from its wounds, and when it finally got to me its underbelly swelled up and it croaked. I closed my eyes, preparing for the worst.

Then it croaked in a figurative way. It was about to open its mouth and unleash a vapor of death-bubbles at me, when all of a sudden it turned to dust, for no reason. Five seconds passed, and I found myself on the city streets again. The sky, which had been red while the infected were thriving, was turning a faint blue again. All around me, the infected were falling to the streets, turning back into mere corpses.

The Blonde-hair kid had been right after all! I stood up and tried to keep from throwing up. I placed my hand over my mouth to keep everything down. When I pulled my hand away, I checked to make sure I hadn't gotten any bile on it, and that's when I remembered the timer.

Me and Mercer had about eight minutes left!

The Blonde-haired kid saw me, and came over to where I was standing, smiling. "Looks like you did it; I knew you guys could handle yourself!"

I didn't hear what he said, I was too preoccupied with what was going on, "Do you know where 104 is?" I asked him.

"You mean 10-4?" He corrected my pronunciation, "of course we do, it's a landmark. Why?" I showed him my hand, and he grimaced, "Oh boy…"

"What?"
Dante answered for him, "To get to 104 from here, you'll have to go through the scramble—which is the center of the infestation. You could make it, if you had more time."

Mercer joined the circle, and growled, "Don't underestimate me." That's all he said before he sprinted off down the road. I watched him fade into the distance, and grimaced.

"What happens if we fail?" I asked.

"You get erased." Dante replied.

"What does that mean?"

"Hell if I know."

"Wonderful. Is Mercer even running the right way?" I pointed in the direction my partner had run.

"Yeah, I hope he can make it…" the Blonde-haired kid said sadly. In his eyes, I saw loss. He had once had people close to him, but they were not here anymore. I felt really bad for him, "Mercer's his name?" He asked suddenly, his eyes becoming their regular blue again.

"Yeah, he said his name was Alex Mercer." I answered, and Dante's eyes narrowed, as if that name were familiar, but he said nothing, "I'm Xavier Munroe."

"Nice to meet you, Xavier," The Blonde-haired kid said, "I'm Roxas, and this is Dante."

"Strange names…" Was all I could say, and then I looked back to where Mercer had run, "Um, I don't know if you guys care, but I'm going to follow him. My existence is kind of on the line."

"Don't worry," Roxas said, "We'll go with you. Afterwards, you guys can come with us."

"Deal." I said, and we all took off running in the direction of the scramble crossing.

They never caught up to Mercer, but he must have made it, because my timer vanished. Roxas explained how the game worked while we were running. Apparently, the game used to be played by the dead, to evaluate humanity, but something had changed. They'd talked to the Reapers a few times—the Reapers were the ones who oversaw the game. No-one knew what had changed, or why living people were playing the Reaper's game now, but the point is, they were and they had to deal with it. Just getting a player pin was a huge advantage in itself, since the two of them had discovered that they could clear away hordes of the infected by clearing out the noise in the area. Apparently the white noise supported the infected, kept them alive.

When I asked him about my drill pin turning gray, Roxas explained that pins had limited uses, before they needed to be charged. I pulled my drill pin out of my pocket and saw that it had regained about half of its color again. That might come in handy. I pulled out all of my pins, and he explained the basics of how pins work.

Pins housed a type of psychic energy called psyches, letting even people with low levels of imagination, will, and fighting spirit to activate powers that would let them alter the world around them. But use of these pins was limited by several factors. The pins do not grant you psychic powers, they enhance what you already have. So some pins I would not be able to use, and some pins I could use others might not be able to use.

Getting all of this at once made my head spin, and I handed Roxas all of the pins I hadn't been able to use, holding onto just the drink, drill, and chain pins. And my player pin of course.

"Here, try these in your next fight." Roxas handed me a handful of pins he and Dante had collected throughout Shibuya.

"Why don't we just have him try them out right now?" Dante asked, looking a little bored as we stopped. We were in what was left of the shopping district right next to the scramble. A path had been cut directly through the infected where Mercer must have run, and Dante had been cleaning up the stragglers that he missed.

I prepared to scan the area for some weaker noise I could take on, when Roxas mentioned one last thing, "By the way, you can't fight the Noise alone."

"What?" I asked, not sure what he meant, because I'd done fine last time.

"You need a partner to fight the Noise. The plane the Noise inhabits is split along the middle, along with the Noise. You and a partner need to combat them in both planes or they'll be able to just slip away. "

"So can I not fight the Noise right now? "
"It'd probably be best to find Mercer first, but it probably won't hurt." Roxas said, pointing me at a small crowd of infected that Dante was hacking away at, "Start with them."

"Alright," I said, scanning the area for Noise. When I opened my eyes and looked around, I was caught off guard by the appearance of a different color, floating over the entrance of a nearby shop, "Roxas, what do red Noise mean?"

"Red Noise?" He asked, "Are you sure?" He scanned the world himself, and gasped, "Red noise are created from the stray emotions of humans. There's someone over there!"