Hi! I don't know if anyone's reading this, but if you are it's great to meet you!
Challenge: over the course of the story, try and guess who the narrator is!
Disclaimer: NOT MINE!
I'm sure you've all heard of the Virals, dear listeners - the crime-solving wolf-teens from Charleston, South Carolina. Victoria 'Tory' Brennan. Hiram 'Hi' Stolowitski. Benjamin 'Ben' Blue. Shelton Devers. Ella Francis. Cooper, the wolfdog that tied this ragtag band together, making them a pack.
What you perhaps don't know is that, before Tory joined the gang, and long before Ella found her way into their ranks, there was someone else. Someone quite, quite different...
"I still can't believe this!" Ella laughed as she and Tory began to unpack their cases. "Hi actually won one of those competitions!" One of the major TV networks had been running a contest. All you had to do to win a week-long trip to Vegas for you and four friends was answer a multiple-choice question. Hiram, being Hiram, had been unable to resist.
"That I can understand," Tory replied, "what I don't get is how on earth he persuaded his mom to let him go!"
"Let's just go with it." The conversation continued in this vein for some time, before Shelton burst in, waving his iPhone and trailed by Hi and Ben.
"Han's in trouble!" He yelled!
"Who's Han?" Asked Tory.
The boys shifted awkwardly. "Haneet Dhillon." Hi said. "She was you before you were you."
"Her dad was a security guard at LIRI," Ben continued, "so we saw a lot of her. She had two brothers but they were never really that close with us."
"Han was awesome." Shelton added shakily, "Then when she was eleven her grandpa got sick. The Dhillons upped sticks and moved to Nevada to take care of him."
"Night Something." Hi shrugged. "I forgot where exactly she went."
"Night Vale." supplied Ben. "The city that Google Earth doesn't recognise as existing. Doesn't appear on any maps."
"We lost touch after a while," Hi went on, "but since we're in the same state Shelton figured he should try to find out how far apart we are."
"All she said in reply was this: 'bring food and help.'" Shelton finished.
"Well, Virals," Tory stopped unpacking and began shoving whatever she could find back into the case, "I think our mission is clear."
Ella smiled at being referred to as a Viral. Although she hadn't been around when the others got infected, her blood had mixed with Ben's when one particular adventure had gone bad. She was finally one of them.
"Shelton, text her back and ask for coordinates. Then go repack. We're going to Night Vale."
Two hours later, the Virals piled into the rental car (provided by the network, Hi remembered smugly. Thank God he hadn't listened when the others had tried to tell him he'd never win anything) with the food Ella and Ben had bought and set out on their quest. They'd never actually been to Night Vale, of course - didn't know a thing about it. They didn't realise quite what awaited them in that shadowy place where reality and nightmares intersected. All they knew was that Haneet needed help, and they were going to help her if it killed them. Which, in Night Vale, was a very real possibility...
Because the Haneet they would find there was not the girl who had left them behind so many years ago.
"Here we are..." Shelton, the navigator, announced doubtfully at the end of a very long drive as the gang stepped out of the car. Nevada was a big place, and 'Night Vale' and Las Vegas weren't exactly next-door neighbours. 'Welcome to the Greater Desert Bluffs Metropolitan Area!' proclaimed a newly-erected yet already dented yellow sign (with three bullet holes in it obliterating an emblem of some kind) in glaring orange letters. Someone had crossed out the name of the city in violet spray paint and scrawled 'NIGHT VALE' in its place, along with a peculiar symbol. The shape was easily recognisable as an eye, but instead of a pupil a stylised crescent moon stared out at the pack impassively.
"Here you are." echoed a solemn voice from behind them.
The speaker was about five foot five with coffee-coloured skin and choppy shoulder-length dark hair framing her lightly-scarred, slightly grimy face. She couldn't have been older than sixteen. She wore a black tank top with torn, faded denim cutoffs stained with dirt and what might have been blood, and there was a gun strapped to her left thigh. She carried a large red and black hiking backpack, and around one arm she wore a black armband with the eye-moon from the sign stitched onto it. Her most striking feature, however, was her eyes. Instead of the soft brown irises the boys had been expecting to see shining in the sockets of their childhood friend, faintly-glowing indigo orbs held their startled gazes. As they watched, a flicker of yellow passed through them before disappearing. "You gonna introduce your friends?"
"Tory, Ella, this is Haneet Dhillon. Han, Victoria Brennan and Ella Francis." Ben replied.
"Hey." Han greeted the other girls, who waved back, slightly shocked. "What are you all staring at?" She demanded, eyes flickering to orange.
"What's up with your eyes?" asked Hiram, ever the tactless one.
"Oh, that," she waved a hand dismissively, "I'd forgotten you'd find that weird. Round these parts it's kinda normal. I got myself a summer job at the radio station a couple years back. I know, I know, being an NVCR intern's dangerous and all, but I loved it! Then I got lost in Radon Canyon. I was pretty much fine - I only absorbed a tiny amount - but the radiation left its mark." She sighed. "Now my eyes change colour with my mood and I glow in the dark. I'm lucky. Most interns die within a couple days on the job." The Virals were still a little stunned. "Oh, come on. Don't tell me you don't have anything freaky to talk about." Her time in Night Vale had had an effect on her world view. Although she could talk about 'normal', she could no longer comprehend the outsider definition of the word.
The Virals looked around at each other, one question on their collective minds. Should we tell her?
"Last year the guys and I got infected with a hybrid version of canine parvovirus," Tory began, "and it seriously messed up our DNA. Ella caught it a few months back."
"We're part-wolf now." Ben added.
Ella explained the powers to a remarkably unfazed Han. "When we flare - that's our word for activating our doggy genes - we develop enhanced strength, speed and senses."
"Our eyes glow gold, so you'll be in good company there." The other Virals glared at Hi. Han just laughed.
"Neat!" The glimmer of saffron from earlier returned to her irises. "Now for the important stuff. Did you bring food? I'm starving!"
Wow, thought Shelton numbly, she grew up hot.
Hi, Ella and Shelton had eaten most of the supplies on the way, but there was still enough for Han not to die of starvation.
"Thank the Glow Cloud for you guys." she said through a mouthful of Pringles. "StrexCorp just stepped up their search for me and half the city's succumbed to the brainwashing, including most of the Sheriff's Secret Police. It's been really hard to get supplies out lately."
"Sooo...what's wrong?" Han seemed to expect Ben and the others to understand, but her world already seemed alien to them.
"Nothing. Just, y'know, everything." Her eyes flashed crimson.