A crack of electricity knifed painfully through her hand and Ruby dropped the phone with a yelp. They were fast approaching the next station, but the clown, the clowns, were between them and the nearest door that would open. At first, they stood and swayed, heads cracking and tilting in obscenely unnatural positions. There were so many of them, and her eyes darted around the crowded car.

On the other side of the swarm, some of the other passengers were trying to pry the door between cars open, while others took video, eyes wide in disbelief. She watched them all freeze as a fresh tide of screams started in the cars on either end.

Beside them, a woman with a bag of groceries dropped her bag, cans spilling out onto the floor as her face smeared away. She flailed at Alice, and Ruby slugged her with her backpack, dragging her friend from their seats, towards the back of the car.

While the transformed were turning on the other passengers, the first one, with the horrible, stinking noise still belching out of its maw, lurched towards them. Ruby and Alice scrambled back as far as they could into the corner of the car, but there was nowhere else to go.

A pained sound tore out of Alice beside her, and Ruby tightened her grip on the other woman. “NO!” she half-shouted, half-cried. At her shout, the lights began to flicker wildly and the speakers overhead squealed with static, and the clown’s hideous song stopped.

Sparks sizzled along the metal poles and railings and Ruby threw herself over Alice as a thunderstorm filled the car for one blinding, deafening second. She felt the shockwave roll over them, but it hit the swarm of creatures stumbling blindly forward, sending them tumbling back down the aisle, over terrified passengers and slamming into the far end of the car.

Ruby blinked, shaking off the flash of light, and gasped.

He stood there, beside them in his grey uniform, the long coat snapping in the dying gust of wind: the man from that ridiculous game with the long peacock hair shimmering against his golden skin, a neat little beard framing a brief, smug smile on his handsome face.

CAIM. THE GUNNER, the voice had said.

Caim’s smile quickly soured. “Close quarters,” he spat in that same language, and strode past her, snapping his hand up. “PEACEMAKER. Break my spine, I hate close quarters.” An elaborate bracelet, hidden under the length of his sleeve, slid down, and the metal fragmented, spiraling around his hand to reform with a sound of chimes into a massive, alien handgun.

Ruby watched numbly, uncertain of the reality of anything in the moment. Across the car, the clown creatures had been stunned by the shock accompanying Caim’s arrival. But they were already picking themselves up.

It was only Alice’s sharpening grip on her arm that pulled her attention away from the scene before them.

“We’re gonna be at Fulton street in like a second,” Alice said, her voice thick. “We have got to run.”

A terrible realization suddenly set in. The next stop would be swarming with commuters, and they were trapped on a train full of shambling terror. “You have to stop them!” she screamed, and Caim paused to look back at her.

“Understood,” he said. “BOOM.” The barrel of the gun rotated, and he placed a round center-mass in what had been the woman with the groceries. With a surprisingly small sound, the clown exploded in a shower of dust and gooey black ichor. The woman fell out of the mess, face down on the plastic seats with a thud and a moan.

The first clown opened its mouth again, that hideous sound belching forth, and a swarm of others swarmed past it, scrabbling over each other like fat white spiders. Five- no, ten – fighting each other to reach the man in grey first.

He braced himself in between the girls and the swarm. Even as Alice braced to run, Ruby hugged herself close. The space behind Caim’s broad back felt safer than any place else.

Caim hooked his arm on the nearest pole and swung himself around, one heavy-booted foot catching the first clown in the scrum in the face on the swing, and then a second as he spun down. Both came apart with a loud, brittle crack. A third knocked him backwards, and Ruby watched the length of metal railing deform as he held onto it. The creature lunged at him, gaping maw rushing at his throat, and Caim swung the huge pistol up, cramming it into the clown’s mouth. “SHATTER,” he said calmly, pulling the trigger.

That clown froze and cracked, greasy white ice littering the floor, as the human it had been a moment ago flopped into the debris. With a grunt, Caim hoisted himself upright, and yanked the gun free as he kicked another clown under the chin hard enough to snap its neck. Shards of milky ice and spatters of thick black ichor spewed across Ruby’s back.

She swore she could feel it burning through the soft fluff of her jacket, as she watched him litter the floor with unconscious ex-monsters.

At the far end of the car, more were trying to force their way through the half-opened door, and Ruby felt pounding at the door behind her. The brakes screeched, the train overshooting the station and lurching wildly on the tracks. She and Alice were thrown across the car. The hard edge of a seat cracked Ruby in the jaw and she saw stars.

Face aching, she pulled herself up in time to watch Caim smash another clown in the face with the butt of his gun.

Skidding back to her side, Caim spared a second to assess, then flicked the gun back up. “SILENCE,” he spat, firing off a round at the one that had started it all. It burst from the gun like a tiny star, and it caught the thing straight in the forehead. Empty black holes where eyes should have been in its greasy white face opened wide with shock.

A soundless ripple ran through the car, shattering the windows in total silence and throwing Ruby and Alice back against the door of the car. Ruby hurt. Everywhere. She reached around for Alice’s hand. “Alice?” she rasped, tasting blood in her mouth, but there was no sound as she spoke.

There was no echo of the brakes, of the screaming, nothing. There was just a deafening void empty of even the sound of her own heartbeat.

The other creatures spasmed and shook, clawing at their faces while the first one tore at its own mouth, trying to make the sound return. Bits of greasy white clay splatted on the floor as it pulled and twisted what had once been flesh. Oily black drooled down its forehead as it sank to its knees.

Ruby couldn’t hear what Caim said as he repositioned himself again between her and the creatures, and shot two more of them in their heads, the clown faces splattering silently like rotten fruit while the human captive collapsed.

Caim carefully took her face in his free hand and turned her face towards his. “I can’t use heavy ordnance in here, Author,” she thought his lips were saying. “We have to get out, do you understand?”

“THIS IS THE LAST STOP BEFORE THE RIVER!” Ruby shouted, trying to hear herself over the deafening emptiness. “THERE ARE SO MANY OF THOSE THINGS!” She looked past him at the flailing monsters. The train shivered from their spasms. “WE’RE GONNA DIE!”

Caim grabbed her phone from under a nearby seat and pressed it into her hands. “Whatever you do, don’t lose that, Author,” he mouthed with a startling, gentle smile, then stood. One shot, then another, and all she could see was the span of his back as he dropped one with each step, before flicking the gun again. It vanished into another shower of glittering metal and he pried the doors open, tearing the heavy steel from the side of the subway car.

She heard that, and the sudden rush of screeching echoes from the dark tunnel filling the car. The clown creatures in the next one were bottlenecked, tearing at each other to fit through the narrow passageway. Greasy, colourless hands clawed futilely at the air through the gap.

“Come on, hurry!” he roared, kicking the remains of the door away. “That’s not gonna hold them long.”

Ears ringing from the sudden return of sound, Ruby tugged at her friend. “Alice. Alice, come on, come on we gotta go. We gotta…”

Alice looked up, her pretty brown eyes glassy and dark.“Ruby, I think…” Alice whispered, looking down at the gouge across her belly. Dark blood spread across the olive of her jacket and smeared on the brightly hued patches decorating it. “I think that woman next to us…”

“Caim!” Ruby screamed. He backstepped to her, cursing as he folded his big body down beside them again.

“Author, there’s nothing you can do, leave her,” he growled, bright eyes darting across Alice’s trembling form.

“I am not leaving her!” Ruby’s fist twitched and she slugged him in the chest. “She’s hurt, she needs help!”

Caim looked down at where she’d struck him, spat a curse, then stood. In two swift motions he tore the plastic seats loose, wedging one against the door behind them, and kicking the other with enough force to slam into the horde trying to force its way through the other. He picked Alice up as if she weighed nothing at all and reached for Ruby, heavy brows flattened. “Come on, then.”

“What happened to all those people?” Ruby stuttered out as he helped her into the filthy darkness of the tunnel.

“Memetic infection,” Caim said as he half-dragged her towards the platform. Inside the shuddering lights of the other cars, she could see more of the creatures flailing, turning on each other, on whatever human passengers remained, pounding at the windows. “We can’t help them,” he added bleakly.

The platform was in chaos, and Caim gripped her hand a little tighter while they pushed towards the exit.

“You came out of my phone. My train was infested with clown monsters. You shot the clowns out of people!! And Alice is… Alice is…” Ruby babbled as Caim pulled her along. “What… What the fuck is going on!?” She felt a little like she was outside of her own body. There was no horrible stinking noise here, no faceless monstrosities trying to kill her. There was just a subway station full of frightened people. The smell of the city.

And a towering, peacock-haired man holding her closest friend against his chest, half-dragging her through the crowd. Ruby pulled back, and he stilled. “I’m serious, what the fuck?!”

He looked down at her, expressionless with eyes as odd and shifting as his hair. “You summoned me, Miss Author. I was hoping you could tell me the same exact thing.”

In her other hand, Ruby’s phone chimed again and she looked down at the shining books on the screen.

LEVEL UP.