On the short walk up Canal to the station, Ruby kept thinking she saw the clown. In the window of the deli there was a flash of tattered, filthy pale fabric. In the press of the crowd in the crosswalk or the backseat of a cab weaving through the traffic, she caught the silhouette of its odd pointed cap or raggedy collar. An elderly man looked up from perusing a pile of T-shirts at a tourist shop and she thought she saw the uncanny ripple of featureless white greasepaint across his wrinkled brown face. She must've made a noise because he cursed at her, and she clutched her phone a little tighter, hurrying past.

Alice was striding ahead, and Ruby focused on her back: dark curls caught up in a red floral scarf, olive jacket with bright pink and yellow patches festooning the sleeves. Her magnificent booty in those jeans, Ruby thought then immediately smacked herself in the forehead. Oh my god. You are such a loser. Either ask her out or cut the shit, dumbass, a little voice whispered in her head as she hoisted her flowery backpack a little higher.

In her pocket, her phone bleated and chirped with increasing frequency.

Ruby pulled it out to look down at the game's opening screen glimmering innocently at her. "Goddamnit, I thought I closed you," she muttered, barely dodging a woman with a shopping cart. Ruby forced herself to not follow the movement of what looked like white rags out of the corner of her eye. Unhelpfully, the phone chirped again as she hurried into the scrum descending into the ACE station.

It continued, ever more insistently as Ruby shouldered her way through the crowd to Alice's side. "So," Ruby shouted over the din of the oncoming train. "You got any plans for the weekend?"

Alice shrugged broadly as they waited for the disembarking passengers to finish clearing out, then scrambled their way to a seat. "A couple of friends are playing some sets at some bar in Chinatown tomorrow, thought I'd go cheer them on. You wanna come?"

"Yes!" Ruby blurted out, as the phone whistled and dinged again. "I mean, I'd love to, I think my schedule is free and…" The sentence drifted off as she realized Alice was looking between her and the noisy phone in her hand.

The phone chimed in what Ruby swore was defiance. "One second, I'm gonna delete this stupid game," she hissed.

"You do you, girl," Alice grinned, popping in her earphones.

There was a menu on screen now, in the same weird, looping script. Animated sheets of paper drifted like petals across the screen. Ruby was almost certain the first line said "Tutorial". No tutorial, we die like men, Ruby thought, pressing the button below it. It made a loud chime and a series of books flitted across.

The letters were unlike anything she'd ever seen before, but with each passing moment, they became easier and easier to read. It felt a bit like one of those ridiculous magic eye paintings where if you stared at it long enough, you could see a dolphin jumping over a rainbow.

The Berserker. The Gunner. The Archer. The Shield. The Storm. The Sword. The Alchemist. The Builder.All of them were in elaborate gold script, moving in delicate animated circles on the colourful covers of the books.

The train clattered to the next stop, and she glanced over to Alice, who was engrossed in a paperback, music drifting softly from her earphones. The white noise of the crowd pushing into to the car was split by the awkward, atonal twang of a guitar. Ruby groaned as a guy wedged himself in with a battered old acoustic and strummed again. "GOOD AFTERNOON EVERYBODY!" he shouted, blocking the door.

Ruby stared back down at the books on her screen, their covers glittering, and poured her attention into the chiming and chirping while the guy played guitar and screamed the lyrics to Aqualung.

The books looked jarringly real, and she found herself engrossed by the detailing on the covers. The visible scuffs and scars on the binding. The texture of velvet and leather and gold that looked as if she could reach through the screen and pull one out.

There was a loud POING, and Ruby looked up, the annoyance that had been building up curdling into something more terrifying.

The guitar guy was holding his instrument, staring down at the broken strings as if he'd never seen it before. The car fell silent as the other passengers looked up at the sudden lack of yowling. The man's face grew slack and the instrument clattered from his limp fingers to the floor.

His face twitched, smearing like wet clay, colour leaching out of it as his features blurred and twisted. His clothes, nondescript jeans and a sweatshirt, tattered and shredded into pale rags. Ruby's phone wailed softly and she startled, clutching it tightly.

Beside her, Alice was still engrossed in her book, listening to her music, and Ruby elbowed her in the side until she looked up. Alice's expression mimicked Ruby's as the clown tilted its featureless head, and stretched, a maw opening where a mouth should be.

Something billowed out, smoggy yellow grey, with a stench bitter and sickly sweet all at once, like rotting flesh and gasoline. And it came with a sound, a gut lurching, window-rattling growl of brown noise. Ruby clapped her hands over her ears to block it out, the phone pressing hard against her ear.

The phone chirped and there was a woman's voice, velvety and clear over the other noise. "Choose your first volume," she said in a language that Ruby had never heard before but understood perfectly well.

Panic and screaming started to spread as people scrambled for the doors to the other cars. She could see blood running from their ears, their noses, their eyes, and she froze, her stomach twisting sick and cold.

Alice scrambled to pull her scarf over her face and turned up her music, grabbing Ruby's arm to drag them both back. "Ruby, as soon as we hit the next station, we run, ok? I know we can make it. Just run."

The clown turned its eyeless gaze towards her and Ruby clamped her hands tighter against her ears. This didn't happen. Not in real life. Not on the goddamn subway. All around them, other passengers were changing too, coats shredding into tatters, features smearing away. They were trapped, they were trapped, and the phone was loudly pinging in her ear and Alice's hand was shaking on her arm as they huddled closer, pressing back across the hard plastic seats.

"First volume chosen," the woman's voice said sharply from the speaker. "Caim, The Gunner."