Chapter 10
Roflcopter lolz!!!11one!two
Everyone stepped out of the school and looked around, the town had gone from shadows to an eerie cloud of grey around them.
"Mist," muttered Roper.
Sam shook his head and said quietly, "Ash."
"You say we can't kill this girl," Grabnar said, "so what the hell do we do?"
"I don't know," Sam said, "right now, I think we should look around, get our bearings."
"Alright, Roper, Rossel, with me," Grabnar ordered, "you two gonna be alright?"
"We'll meet here," Sam said nodding.
The three reds were gone.
"We should contact the Shera, they must have seen the Darkness," Vincent said.
"I think it would be better for now if it stayed hidden," Sam replied, "Alessa doesn't know it's here, better she doesn't. If they found Tifa…"
Vincent looked at Sam curiously for a moment, "So what then?"
"Like I said, explore," Sam replied.
They did just that. Sam saw recreations of places he recognized from both the movie and the games. This entire place was a perfect, life sized, replica of Silent Hill.
"So if we can't defeat this Alessa girl, how can we leave?" asked Vincent.
"We can't," Sam replied.
Vincent stopped moving, "I would particularly enjoy something more of an answer at this point."
"I don't know, Vincent," Sam said, wincing as he stepped too hard on his bad leg, "I don't fucking know! This is way outta my league. This girl can kill me, man; the only person here who shouldn't be worried is you. She can kill Cetra, even ones like me; you're a free agent here. Chaos comes from the same darkness that makes this place go creepy. You can't kill her, she can't kill you! If I die here, I go back to the Lifestream, Grim Reaper or not. This place doesn't follow the rules, I can't fight this girl. You though, you can just get hit and come back. Get attacked and just keep on coming, it's like…"
Vincent waited a moment, "It's like what?"
"…it's like you're Harry Mason," Sam murmured.
"Like who?" asked Vincent.
"The main character from the first Silent Hill, Harry," Sam explained. "That might be it."
Vincent waited patiently for some kind of answer.
"Okay, look, the basic idea of the game was the battle between the little girl Alessa, and her mother, Dahlia. Think of the entire game like a chessboard. Alessa, she has most of the pieces. She controls the board, and where her pieces go. Dahlia had only one piece, lucky for her, though, she had a Queen. What I mean to say is Dahlia's only piece in the game was Harry, and the good thing about Harry was that if he died, he just kept coming back again and again. Dahlia was using Harry to slowly get at Alessa, breaking through Alessa's pieces until he got to the girl himself."
Vincent nodded slowly, "Alessa controls the pieces in this situation, so who's using me?"
"Well, I don't think there's a Dahlia around," Sam said, "but I might be Dahlia."
"You?" asked Vincent.
"It would make sense," Sam replied, "Dahlia is trying to get at Alessa, who is well protected. I'm trying to get at Alessa, but I can't do it myself. You, being like Harry, can't really die, so I have to use you to get to her."
"I'm your chess piece," Vincent muttered.
"Alessa really likes Silent Hill, it's possible she's trying to run this entire paradox like the game. It might be good for us if we don't follow the game, try and confuse Alessa," Sam explained.
"So now, if I were Harry, what would I do?" asked Vincent.
"Look for clues; you're trying to find Alessa. It's a little more complicated than that in the game, but that's the idea."
"I believe I'd start there," Vincent said, pointing.
He was pointing at a hotel.
"Yeah," Sam muttered, "the elevator, wonder if it's gonna be that easy."
"What?" asked Vincent.
"In the movie Alessa was under the hotel, you have to use an elevator to get there, it's like a hospital area below," Sam explained.
"With strange monsters fashioned after nurses?" asked Vincent.
Sam looked at him, "Yeah, how'd you know that?"
Vincent shrugged, "It just wouldn't surprise me."
They headed toward the hotel; the entire place wasn't so damn intimidating when it was just gloomy instead of pitch black.
"Sam, Vince, over here!" yelled a voice; they turned to see Roper in the distance.
"What is it?" asked Sam.
"We found something, not sure if it's significant," Roper replied.
"Hotel will still be here when we get back, I'm sure," Vincent murmured.
They followed Roper to a building that looked like it was barely still standing. It might have been an apartment building or something at one time. Now it was as faceless as any other building. They went around behind it and entered a narrow alley; Rossel and Grabnar were looking at something.
"Look at this," Roper said, Vincent and Sam looked.
On the wall, carved in by something obviously very sharp, was a strange phrase Vincent hadn't seen before.
It read, simply: "Roflcopter lolz!!!11one!two"
"Roflcopter?" asked Vincent struggling to get his mouth around the word.
"You think one of these monsters would know the word?" asked Grabnar.
"Did you see any blue team members around?" asked Sam.
Everyone shook their heads.
Sam stared, "Roflcopter goes soi soi soi soi."
Vincent looked at Sam strangely, "Do I want to know?"
"Roflcopter," Sam said, "roflcopter."
The reds looked to Vincent, equally confused; Sam seemed to see some significance.
"Guys, stay close, go check out the area and let me work on this for a bit, I think this might be our ticket out," Sam announced.
"How can a word be…?" Vincent decided against finishing the question, "…I hope you're right."
They left, leaving Sam alone.
Sam looked at the word over and over again, trying to remember where he'd seen it before. It was, in its most obvious form, a very stupid way of saying something was funny; it was also the name of the picture of a helicopter made with the letters r, o, f, and l for some parts.
Where else had he seen it? Who put it here?
"L33t speak is one of those stupid languages made up so people feel they are in some way unique. In fact, they're simply as their language is: stupid."
The phrase came into his head; it took Sam a few minutes to realize who'd said that to him.
"Sorin," Sam muttered and looked around. "The hell are you trying to tell me, man?"
It appeared Sorin had somehow been able to send a message through to the paradox. If Sam was right, then Sorin knew they were in trouble, but if that was all Sorin wanted to convey he would have just left a name, he wouldn't have written something like this unless he meant to say something else.
What was Sorin trying to say here?
Sam knew it must be a code, a riddle, straight from the Da Vinci Code Sam would guess, it was Sorin's favourite book.
"Da Vinci Code," Sam muttered, "some crazy Langdon shit, come on, what are you telling me?"
Invisible ink…Mona Lisa…So Dark the Con of man…
"Anagram," Sam muttered, "you know I hate anagrams, Sorin, but that's why you used it."
Sam started rearranging letters, after he came up with nothing coherent he started throwing in the exclamation marks and numbers. He concluded it probably didn't come out to a word, but a phrase, possibly an entire sentence.
Roflcopter lolz!!!11one!two.
He sat down and started to try and make phrases.
"Anything?" asked Roper kneeling beside Sam after a while.
"It's an anagram, I'm sure of it, but what he's trying to say, I'm not sure," Sam replied.
"Who put it here?" asked Roper.
"Not sure, really, it's all guessing at this point, I might be wasting my time," Sam lied.
"My name's in it," Roper offered, mostly as a joke.
Sam looked at it, Roper was right, even the r was capitalized.
"Roper," Sam muttered, "your name is in it."
Sam started going through the process again, this time leaving out the letters that spelled Roper.
After a few minutes Sam said, "The only combination I can get is 'follow Roper to Lozent c11.'"
"Follow Roper to Lozent, c11?" asked Roper.
"That's too coherent to be coincidence I think," Sam muttered, "that mean anything to you?"
"Lozent," Roper muttered. "You sure it's Lozent?"
"Well, of course it could be any variation of those letters; Lozent sounds like a place to me though."
"Why follow me?" asked Roper.
"Apparently you must know where Lozent is, I guess," Sam said.
"Lozent," Roper said again. "No, I have no idea."
Sam muttered a curse, "I might be making shit up here, too bad, thought I was on to something."
"Lozent," Roper muttered, "never heard of a place called Lozent."
"Where're the others?" asked Sam.
"They sent me to get you, said they want you there when they go in the hotel…" Roper trailed off.
Sam smiled, "What's the hotel called?"
"I don't know," Roper muttered, "it could be the Lozent."
Sam jumped up and winced as he landed on his bad leg again, "Let's find out."
Sam kept up, using the staff for support. They found Vincent and the others waiting.
"What's this hotel called?" asked Sam.
"It doesn't matter," Roper cut off Vincent's answer.
"Huh?" asked Sam.
"There's the Lozent," Roper said, pointing at a small building adjacent the hotel. In messed up red lettering it read, Lozent, "I guess you followed me to the Lozent."
"What's going on?" asked Grabnar.
The small building appeared to be some kind of storage space, it was plain on the outside, but from what they could see inside, it was filled with lockers.
"I got something from the word," Sam explained, "I followed Roper to Lozent, now the last part: c11."
"Locker number?" asked Roper.
They entered the small building, sure enough, there was a locker c11. It appeared to have no lock on it but was somehow stuck and wouldn't open.
"Sam, here," Vincent said from across the room, "looks like all lockers are controlled from this panel."
Sam walked over, there was a large black panel that had all the locker numbers lined up, beside each one was six buttons side by side, numbered from 1 to 6.
"If we hit the right numbers the locker opens I gather," Grabnar guessed.
"The only thing left from the word would be four exclamation marks," Roper remembered.
Sam nodded, "They're ones."
Sam hit the 1 button four times, c11 popped open with a click.
"You're one tricky bastard Sorin," Sam murmured, no one else heard.
They walked over and looked inside. There was a single small piece of paper lying there.
Sam grabbed it, it read:
To Whom It May Concern, whoever found this locker would be smart to stay there for a bit, you'll see…
Yours truly,
Roflcopter goes soi soi soi soi…
"That doesn't make any sense," Grabnar said shaking his head.
Sam shrugged, "Whoever went to all this trouble to get someone here must have a reason."
"Why would they want us to wait here?" asked Rossel.
"Who knows, the writer might be dead anyways," Grabnar said.
"Forget it, it's probably just…" Roper was interrupted.
A familiar screaming filled the room, started low and hit its highest, ear shattering, pitch after a small build up.
"Air raid siren," Rossel whispered.
"Jesus, you gotta be fucking joking," Grabnar growled, readying his weapon.
"Looks like we're not going anywhere, anyways," Sam said, "let's see if the writer wants to show up now."
Sam readied his sniper rifle, "Alright, people, barricade the front door, I'm gonna get on the roof with Vincent and take 'em out from up there. You three kill anything that might make its way in."
"The Alamo," Roper muttered.
Sam looked sidelong at Vincent, "Let's hope not."