Welcome to Hotel Hell
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Hey, Fidelity. What's it cost to invest with the Fidelity app?

Start with as little as $1 with no account fees or trade commissions on U.S. stocks and ETFs. Hmm, that's music to my ears. I can only talk. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Zero account fees apply to retail brokerage accounts only. Sell order assessment fee not included. A limited number of ETFs are subject to a transaction-based service fee of $100. See full list at fidelity.com slash commissions. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC. Member NYSE SIPC. The Uber's here. I say, grabbing Alex as I lurch up from the table.

For a moment, I feel like I'm going to topple over, realizing just how much I've had to drink. I promised myself I wouldn't do this anymore, but here I am once again, drunk as Bukowski and far less talented. Alex gets up from the table and we say our goodbyes to our three friends, who will no doubt close down the bar. Alex and I both have to work tomorrow, and we live a block from each other, so we're going to split the cost of the Uber.

We swerve through the crowded establishment, dodging other drunks like it's an Olympic sport. That's what it feels like anyway. But I'm sure that if I was a sober onlooker, it wouldn't look near so impressive. Just a couple of assholes who've had too much to drink, working their way outside. We step out into the cool night, scanning the parking lot for the Uber. "There!" I say, pointing to an approaching SUV. But as it gets closer,

I realize it's one of those self-driving Ubers. I look down at my phone, squinting, and see that it changed my order from an Uber with a driver to one of these self-driving cars. I don't trust them, and I never have. "Screw this," I say as Alex opens a rear door. "I don't want to ride in this thing." Alex looks over his shoulder at me. "Come on, man. It's late. I don't want to wait for another Uber. Let's just take this. It's already here."

"There's some Uber driver out there who's getting screwed by this driverless car," I say. "Where does the money for this thing go? Into some super-rich tech CEO's pocket? No. I'd rather support my fellow working humans, thank you very much." "Come on," Alex complains. "Just this once. Hell, I'll even pay for the whole thing. Just get in, man. You ordered it on your account. It won't go without you and the damn car."

Swaying, I consider this offer. If I don't have to pay, then I'm technically not screwing anyone over. Alex is, not me. "Fine," I say, and clamber into the back seat. The stupid robot voice tells us to buckle up. Once we're buckled, it leaves the bar's parking lot and heads down the road, going in the general direction of our neighborhood. I can barely keep my eyes open now that I'm not drinking anymore.

Alex can't stop talking, mostly to hear himself talk. I love the guy, but he's got the gift of gab for sure. After a few minutes, Alex goes mercifully quiet. Slumped in my seat, I revel in the silence, eyes closed. "Where are we going?" Alex asks. "Home, idiot," I say, eyes still closed. "Uh, no we're not," he says. "This stupid thing is taking us out of town."

I open my eyes and sit up, looking out the window. Sure enough, we're on the outskirts of town, heading for a two-lane highway that runs up into mountains. "What the hell?" I say. "This is why I don't like taking these things. They suck." There's a touchscreen on the seat back in front of me. I press the help button, and a voice says to wait while the autonomous car contacts support. Alex and I share a look while we wait.

Meanwhile, the car is taking us farther from town. A few houses dot the landscape, but most of the roadside is occupied by dark trees. The vehicle slows and takes a turn on a road that only has one destination, as far as I know. A partially built resort atop a bluff that overlooks the town. "Where the hell is this thing taking us?" Alex asks. I shake my head and hit the pull-over button, because clearly the help button has done us no good.

the vehicle doesn't pull over. Now I'm getting concerned. I hit it again. Nothing happens. "I'm calling the cops," Alex says, sounding more sober than he is. "Good," I say. "Please." Alex dials 911 and puts the phone to his ear. After a moment, he takes it away and looks at the screen. "It's not doing anything. It's not calling. Come on," I say. "This isn't happening.

Using my phone, I attempt to call the emergency number. The call doesn't go through. With building fear, I look out the window. We should be getting close to the resort now. The road is windy. It's two lanes and boxed in with pine trees on both sides. The resort was a pet project of a tech billionaire who grew up here in town. His idea was to build a lab and a hotel for his employees and their families, where they could work on his big ideas around the clock.

After spending several hundred million dollars on the place, getting it to where it was almost ready to use, the guy suddenly stopped all construction and shut the place down with no explanation. Rumors swirled around town. His poor mother and father were hounded by reporters for several weeks, but they had no idea why their son had halted the project and gone reclusive.

The rumors included everything from a terrible accident, to a Native American burial ground, to poisoned water to a nervous breakdown. The most obvious reason, and therefore probably the correct one, involved the nasty divorce the man was going through as the construction neared completion. Whatever the reason, the guy shut it down, fenced it off, and refused to sell it to anyone.

He has always been a bit of an eccentric, but I couldn't imagine throwing away several hundred million dollars like that. Then again, I don't have more money than God. After a few minutes, the seven-story building comes into view. It looks all but finished, and it screams "High End Hotel." We roll into the parking lot, which is surrounded by a tall barbed wire topped fence.

The vehicle rolls through the open gate and pulls to a stop in front of the hotel. The click of the doors unlocking sounds suddenly like hell instead of heaven. Now that we're stopped, I'm not sure I want to get out. "What is this?" I ask. "What are we doing here? Who cares?" Alex says. "At least we can get out and call someone to get us." He hops out of the car, and I follow suit.

We stand, watching as the driverless car lurches forward a few yards and then stops. The headlights go out, plunging us into darkness, but the faint hum of the vehicle's electric motor persists. I turn and look at the dark hotel. Although it blocks my view, I know that it has been built on a bluff overlooking the valley in which my town sits. I watched the construction of the seven-story building over the course of a year from down in the valley.

glancing up every so often to see that progress had been made. "What now?" Alex asks, next to me. "I still don't have a signal." I look down at my phone and see that I have no signal either. I try to call 911 again, but it doesn't go through. "Maybe there's someone in the hotel," I say, looking at the dark lobby doors.

Phone held absently in my hand. I take a few steps toward the lobby doors. I spin around when I hear Alex shout in dismay.

Just as I get my head around, I see the driverless car clip Alex's leg as it reverses. Alex, who saw the vehicle reversing with its quiet electric motor and tried to get out of the way, screams as the right rear wheel runs over his left ankle, snapping the joint.

Breathless from the pain, Alex tries to crawl away as the SUV whips around, dark headlights now facing him. "Move!" I yell, running toward my friend, even as the SUV lurches forward. I'm too slow and too far away. I never had a chance. Alex manages to get his uninjured foot a moment before the front grille hits him in the upper thighs. He's thrown forward a few feet, and the vehicle continues, crunching over his body on the asphalt.

Thinking it's going to run into me, I dive out of the way, but the vehicle stops several yards from me. It then reverses over Alex, mangling his body further and leaving no doubt in my mind that he's dead. I hear footsteps and look back at the hotel lobby to see four people. Two men and two women walk stiffly out, stopping under the awning, looking toward Alex's body. I scream, "Call 911!" None of the people make any move to help me.

They stare with hooded eyes, standing near each other but with body language that says they aren't together. Behind me, the vehicle tears out of the parking lot, heading back down the mountain. I stop and turn around, staring after the SUV, unwilling to look at Alex's mangled body. Soon, the faint noise of rubber on asphalt fades, leaving crushing silence. I'm standing a few yards out from the awning, but I can hear clearly as one of the men speaks.

Jesus Christ, that was brutal. He's a plump guy with a creeping hairline, a wide nose, and a brash demeanor. He wears cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Didn't you just hear what I said? I shout, my words barely coherent because of my blubbering panic. Don't you see that? My friend is dead. I run toward them, stopping under the edge of the awning, a few feet away from them. A blonde woman wearing sweatpants and a food-splattered t-shirt screeches.

bosom heaving. "I don't care what he says, I gotta get out of here!" She runs past me, away from the newly built hotel, heading toward the open gate, but she doesn't get very far. "Do not run!" a man's amplified voice says from nearby. The blonde woman stops, just beyond the awning, turning to face the hotel. The rest of us look around, trying to locate the source, as the voice comes again.

"If you run, you will be punished. But if you play, you have a chance." The doors to the lobby open on their own, but there are no lights. "Play what?" the man in the Hawaiian shirt asks. There's no answer. "No way!" says the blonde woman. She turns and resumes her run toward the gate, skirting Alex's body. The four of us watch her. The moment she reaches the gate, she suddenly doubles over.

Falling to her knees, she releases a bout of dark vomit. "Oh my god!" The blonde woman screams. "What the fuck?" Little critters skitter away from the vomit. As one comes near, I realize they're cockroaches. Live cockroaches. The blonde woman gets to her feet, clutching her belly, and stumbles back toward the hotel. When she's halfway to us, she vomits again.

This time it's worms and centipedes, covered in dark blood that dribbles down the woman's chin. The worms squirm. The centipedes crawl away from the writhing mass. My stomach roils, mind recoiling, thoughts stuttering. Sobriety hits me like a shovel to the face as dread settles its heavy, slithery limbs over my shoulders. "Help me!" the woman says, stepping over her second pile of vomit and moving toward us.

Despite my disgust, I reach out and take her hand, helping her away from the writhing, living vomit. "I told you not to run!" the disembodied voice says. "Now, all of you enter the lobby if you don't want something similar to happen to you. And leave your phones on the ground out here. They're useless anyway." After setting our phones down, we all move like mourners into the lobby. Stopping near the front desk, the doors shut behind us.

"Welcome to Hotel Hell," the disembodied man's voice says from hidden speakers. He speaks without enthusiasm, which makes his words that much creepier. "Let the games begin." Past the front desk, the lobby opens up into a square-shaped lounge area that is overlooked by six floors of indoor balconies. It's the kind of hotel with corridors that overlook the central closed courtyard, so you can walk out of your room and look down into the lounge area.

There is a cluster of comfortable-looking seats and low tables in the middle of the space. During the day, the glass ceiling would allow light to shine into the hotel, but right now, the entire place is dark and presumably without power. To our left, a pair of useless glass elevators sit inert. To our right, there is a staircase that leads up to each of the floors. "Each of you will be paired off into teams," the man's voice says, "and you will each take two floors.

Your mission will be to find the two weapons on your assigned floors. Once you find the weapons, you will then use them to kill the other teams. You must find both weapons before you can go after the other teams. The last team standing wins. All of us share a look in the dark lounge area, unable to comprehend what is happening. Team 1: Grayson and Brennan. I look around. "I'm Grayson! Who's Brennan?" The guy in the Hawaiian shirt raises a hand. Team 2: Dakota and Judd.

Dakota is the blonde woman who threw up, and Judd is a man in khaki pants, boat shoes, and a short-sleeve button-up shirt. "What about me?" the last woman asks. "I'm alone?" Her dark hair is bound in a thick braid that reaches almost halfway down her back. She's small and fragile-looking, and clearly on the verge of breaking down. "You, Tasha, will be with me," the voice says. "I'll meet you on the fourth floor. Go now."

"Wait," I say. "Wait, I don't understand. We're supposed to find weapons and then use them to kill each other? That's ridiculous, right? We're not going to do that, are we?" "Of course not," Tasha says. "If you don't play, your fate will be much worse," the man says. "Worse than getting killed?" I ask. "Yes," the mystery man says. "Why don't you just come out?" Renan asks. "Who the hell are you, anyway?" "I'm Shepard Kemp, and I built this hotel."

There's a moment of silence as we all take this information in. We all know the billionaire's name, of course. Everyone in town does. The hometown kid who made good. It seems like every time I go to my mother's house, she mentions his name in a not-so-subtle form of motherly shaming, urging me to get my life together. If Shepard Kemp can become a billionaire, then surely I can find a wife and pop out a couple of grandkids, right? Or so my mother reasons.

"Why are you doing this to us?" Tasha asks. "I'm not," Shepard says. Only now he's not using the PA system. We all look up toward the source of the voice, seeing the man standing on the staircase landing between the third and fourth floors. "This is being done to me as much as it is to you." He moves, coming down the stairs toward us. It's only when he comes nearer that I get a look at his face. The left side of it is burned badly, his eye milky white.

It looks like it has happened in the last day or two. Shepard gestures at the wound. "This is what happened when I refused to do what they want. What who wants?" I ask. "I don't know who they are. I just know they're powerful. More powerful than any human. Even one with billions of dollars. And for some reason, they want us all here right now. They made me hire people to drug you and bring you here. Everyone but Grayson." I look around, heart stuttering in my chest.

"Why?" I ask. "What makes me different? They want us to play this game," Shepard says, ignoring me. "And if we don't?" He trails off. "If we don't, then what?" Judd prompts, speaking for the first time without exclamations and shouts of dismay. "Then we'll all suffer, and so will our family members and our friends. They'll go after the entire town."

"This is ridiculous," Brennan says. "Whoever they are, they can't go after a whole town. Do they have an army? What the fuck is this bullshit?" "Yeah, I'm not playing some stupid game," Tasha says. "Me neither." Judd chimes in. "They're not human!" Shepard shouts, causing everyone to go quiet and look at him. A smile creases Brennan's thick face. "Come on, man. What is this really? Some kind of prank show? An experiment? What's the deal?"

"You saw what happened to Dakota," Shepard says, gesturing at the blonde woman who still clutches her stomach. "And what happened to his friend?" he says, pointing at me. Something clicks in my head. Tech billionaire, malfunctioning self-driving car, the memory of Alex getting run over is still so fresh in my mind. I step towards Shepard. "You did this," I say, grabbing him by the shirt. "You killed my friend! They made me do it!" he shouts.

"You fucking killed him!" I scream at his half-disfigured face. He lets out a pained wail before dropping to his knee. I let him go. His pathetic display is enough to take some of the rage out of my shaking hands. He covers his head and starts sobbing. "What the hell is your deal?" Brennan asks. "Please, don't hurt me," Shepard says.

"This is too goddamn weird," Brennan says. "I'm out of-" Brennan stops mid-sentence as he lifts his left arm up, holding it straight out in front of him. "What the fuck?" he says. I can see the fear twisting his features as he stares down at the limb. "Guys, I'm not doing this!" He raises his right hand and grabs his left ring finger in his fist. "Jesus! Somebody help!" he screams. "I'm not doing this!"

"Yeah, right," Judd says, speaking for the first time. "Quit screwing around!" Brennan yanks his ring finger, snapping it in the wrong direction. The breaking of the digit is loud in the dark and silent hotel, but it's followed quickly by a shriek of pain. "Oh shit! What the hell?" Judd says. "Somebody help!" Brennan screams, even as he shifts his grip to his middle finger. The crunch of it folding backward at the middle knuckle is enough to make me nauseous.

Tasha turns and vomits. I glance down to make sure there aren't bugs in the puke. There aren't, which is a small relief. Brennan lets go of his left hand and sinks to his knees, pressing the damaged limb to his chest as he sucks in ragged breaths.

"Okay," he sobs. "Okay, I believe you. I believe you. Jesus fuck." A still sobbing shepherd looks up and says, "They want to know if everyone believes now. They want to make sure you all know how powerful they are." We all nod, but apparently it's not enough, because Dakota suddenly raises her arms, right hand gripping her left finger. "No!" she shrieks. "No!

Yes! I scream. Yes, we believe! Just make it stop! The others shout similar things, and Dakota releases her hand without breaking any digits. She gasps, saying, Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! Shepard gets to his feet and wipes tears away from his good eye. Let the games begin, he says, clearly trying to keep it together. Team one, you get the second and fifth floors. Team two, the third and seventh floors.

"Tasha and I get the fourth and sixth floors. Remember the rules: kill or be killed. May the best team win. Oh, and you have to find both weapons before you can go after the other teams. That's important. You have to find both weapons. Remember that." Shepard grabs Tasha by the wrist and drags her toward the stairs. The rest of us either stare down at Brennan or peer dazedly into the surrounding darkness. Shepard pauses at the stairs and turns toward us.

"Come on!" he screams. "Move! Unless you want broken fingers too. That'll make the game a lot harder." Team Two, Dakota and Judd, share a look before rushing toward the stairs. I reach down and grab my teammate, helping him up. "We gotta move or we're dead," I say. Having the game to focus on helps, even if the rules are too crazy to contemplate. Either way, it's easier than trying to come to terms with what just happened to Brennan.

If I look too hard at that, I might just go catatonic, and that would be a death sentence for both me and Brennan. The big man in the Hawaiian shirt whimpers as we rush up the stairs. A full flight behind Team 2, and two full flights behind Team 3. Luckily, we only have to go up one flight to get to the second floor. As the clatter of footsteps fades, we pause, looking left and right along the corridor. All the hotel room doors are open.

Rectangular maws of blackness waiting to swallow us whole. "Where do we start?" I ask. "Christ, I don't know," Brennan says, regaining some small amount of composure. "I can hardly think straight with my fingers like this. Well, you're going to have to. I'll go left and you go right. If you find a weapon, shout out, okay?" "Okay," Brennan says. We split up, and as soon as we do, I feel like it's the exact wrong move.

but I tell myself I'm just scared as I approach the first open door. I take a breath and step inside. The dark hotel room shimmers in front of me as a pain like metal claws clamping on my brain causes my legs to buckle. As my knees hit the ground, they send up little puffs of dirt. Frail sunlight paints my surroundings as I fight against the pain in my head, blinking in confusion. I'm no longer in a dark hotel. I'm in some kind of village kneeling outside.

Crude, timber-framed houses with wood-thatched roofs line both sides of the dirt alley in which I sit. Screams and the clomping of horse hooves reach my ears just as the smell of smoke reaches my nose. Columns of gray smoke billow into the overcast sky from around the village. A woman screams behind me as the sound of a running horse grows closer. I pivot around on one knee to see a thin woman dressed in colonial garb running down the alley toward me.

Her simple brown dress kicks up as she runs, her face a mask of pure terror. Behind her, a man on horseback approaches, a sword in one hand. He's also dressed in colonial garb, with a ragged beard and what looks like painful sores on his haggard face. Before I can move out of the way, the man comes abreast of the woman and slashes down with his sword, catching her in the back of the head with the blade. The impact stops the woman screaming, and she stumbles toward me.

Shouting, I get my arms up to try and catch her. She falls right on top of me, but there's no painful impact. She falls through me, hitting the dirt with a thud. Her attacker trots on, slowing down and turning around in the narrow alley between crude buildings. I lurch to my feet and look down at the woman while backing to one side of the alley. A chunk of her scalp hangs down toward the ground like a grotesque wig, the wound bleeding profusely.

The woman flips onto her back as the man dismounts from his horse. She sobs, pinning the injured chunk of scalp to her head with one hand. Finally coming to my senses, I shout, "Stop!" at the man. He doesn't even acknowledge me. "What are you doing?" I shout. "Leave her alone!" It's as if I'm not even here.

The man stands over the woman, looking down at her with obvious hate. Now that he's closer, I can see the painful-looking pustules on his face and even the backs of his hands. Some of them are oozing blood and pus, while others just look like huge, angry zits. "We didn't do it!" the woman screams. The man pays her denial no mind, raising the sword in both hands and slamming it down into the woman's suddenly upraised hands.

Blood spews from the wounds as the blade mangles her hands. The woman doesn't scream this time though. The man hacks at her hands until they are out of the way and then he starts on her face. After the first slice crushes the bridge of her nose and destroys her left eye. I turn and run, screaming for help. But as I run, all I see is more destruction, more murder. I see a woman clutching a small baby trampled by a man on horseback.

I see scorched bodies twitching next to burning timber-framed houses. I see a man on foot with a flint-rock rifle, taking aim and shooting a fleeing teenage girl in the back, and I can do nothing about any of it. Anytime I try to attack one of these men, these murderers, my hands pass through them as if I'm a ghost, so I keep on running. I run to one end of the small village and stop near the edge of a bluff overlooking a familiar valley.

As the sickening symphony of violence continues behind me, I stare gapemouth down into the valley, realizing exactly where I am. Although the town hugging the banks of the small river far down below looks nothing like the modern town I grew up in, there's no mistaking the landscape for anything else but my home.

I recognize the lush mountains and the specific, craggy rock face that looks like a giant owl's head. I recognize the path of the river and the distant, snow-covered peaks. I know where I am. But I don't know when I am. Someone, or something, wanted to show me this massacre for a reason. And it must have something to do with the hotel and Shepard Kemp and the other four strangers I've never met before in my life.

On stiff legs, I turn around and look at the old village, trying to see it as it will be in the modern era. The village will be long gone, and in its place, a fancy hotel will sit, built by a billionaire from my hometown. But my imagining is cut short as a young woman runs out from the village, chased by three men on horseback. They drive her toward me, toward the bluff, blocking off all other paths.

The young woman stops right next to me, looking down the sheer cliff face before turning to face the men, who are now dismounting their horses. I stand helplessly by, watching as these diseased disfigured men stare with lecherous intent at the beautiful young woman. One man starts undoing his trousers as they all close in. The woman gives each man a pointed look as they approach, then she turns around and throws herself off the cliff.

Unable to stop myself, I watch as the woman's body shatters on the rocks far below. The three men share disappointed looks before an inhuman scream draws their attention back toward the village. A dark figure suddenly floats above the tops of the small homes of the tiny village. Her black dress billows in the breeze as the old woman rises impossibly from the midst of the massacre. She's a good hundred yards away, but I can still hear her speaking.

Little snippets of speech brought by the wind. I don't understand them at all. I'm sure she's speaking a foreign language. She casts her gaze at the ground beneath her, sweeping her arms around to encompass the area as she talks. Black birds suddenly lift from the surrounding trees and beat their wings as they head toward the woman. They swirl around her, spinning, cawing, calling out shrilly.

A gunshot sounds from the ground, and the woman twitches as a musket ball impacts her leg. But she keeps floating, keeps talking, and the birds keep flying around her. More gunshots sound. I run closer, realizing this is important. I catch a glimpse of the diseased men on the ground, every single one of them covered in zits. While some of them fire their flintlock muskets at the woman, others painstakingly reload.

Sometimes, they hit the birds. Sometimes, they hit nothing but air. But before long, they hit the woman enough times to stop her from doing whatever she was doing. She falls to the ground, landing in the middle of the circle of shooters. The black birds all fall as well, littering the ground with their corpses. I stare at the old woman in the black dress. The word "witch" swims around in my confused head. There's something about her, something familiar. Is it possible?

I wonder, could I be related to this woman? Her eyes are still open, and the hate pours from them as she looks around at the men now surrounding her. A man with a sword steps up next to her, says something I can't hear, and then plunges his sword through her ribcage. She writhes and then goes limp, eyes closing. Her eyes shoot open, and her head snaps toward me as she opens her mouth, releasing a shriek so loud it threatens to shatter my bones.

I scream, jerking away from a hand on my shoulder, throwing myself forward, landing on plush carpet in a dark room. "Relax," Brennan says. "It's just me." I scramble away from him on the carpet until my back hits the TV stand. Huffing, I look around, seeing that I'm back in the hotel. "Didn't you hear me?" Brennan asks. "I was calling for you. I found a weapon." He raises a sword in his uninjured hand.

If it's not exactly the same sword I saw used to kill that first woman in my vision, then it's an excellent replica. "Did you see any of that?" I ask, still sitting on the floor, back against the hardwood. "See what? The village!" I say. "The massacre!" Brennan shakes his head. "We don't have time for this, man. The other teams might have their weapons already."

"You're not really thinking of killing any of them, are you?" I ask. "I don't think we have much of a choice. You saw what happened to me." He holds up his mangled fingers. "This shit is so far beyond anything I have ever experienced. I don't know what to do. But if killing some asshole strangers gets me out of it, then I guess that's what I'll do."

I glare at him through the darkness. "Fine," he says. "I'll go find the other weapon. You do whatever you want, but you won't last long if you have no way to defend yourself." He turns and leaves. After a moment, I lurch up and run after him. Neither of us says anything as we move up the staircase to our other assigned floor, the fifth. The third and fourth floors are silent as we pass them. We see no sign of the other teams.

As we move, I go over again what I saw in my vision, trying to make sense of it, to find something that will help us. But as we reach the fifth floor, I come up with nothing, and Brennan is right. I have to assume the other teams mean business, which means I need the other weapon. We split up again on the fifth floor. I go right, and Brennan goes left with his sword. Suddenly, I feel incredibly vulnerable.

I have no idea how long I was on the second floor, trapped in that too real vision. For all I know, members of the other teams are waiting in the dark hotel rooms, poised with weapons ready to strike. Without my phone, I have no way to light the rooms. It slows my progress way down as I pause just outside every open hotel room door, holding my breath to listen for signs of life from inside. I hear faint movement from the other floors.

but it's impossible for me to pinpoint exactly where the sounds are coming from. There are footsteps and whispers, distant and ghostly. I hope they belong to the other humans in here, and not to whatever malevolent entity broke Brennan's fingers and caused the blonde woman, Dakota, to vomit insects. With bile stinging in my throat and my heart slamming around in my chest, I work my way into my seventh room on the fifth floor and see a crude-looking axe lying on the king bed.

The second weapon. I rush forward and grab the axe, but some small part of my awareness screams at me in warning as a dark figure bolts out of the pitch black bathroom behind me. Whipping around and lifting the heavy axe, I can just make out Judd's silhouette as he stands between me and the room's only exit. He's too far away for me to hit with the axe, which means he's too far away to hit me with any kind of close quarters weapon. But as my eyes adjust, I realize why he's keeping his distance.

The thrum of the crossbow firing causes me to flinch, and I'm suddenly pulling the axe head up in front of me, feeling as though someone else's hands, some invisible hands, are helping me. The axe jerks in my hand as the crossbow bolt glances off it, but I shut my eyes on reflex as the arrow angles toward my face. A blade of searing pain erupts on the left side of my face, along my cheek.

I feel a couple of my molars shatter as the arrowhead gouges through my cheek and impacts my teeth before glancing off and landing somewhere behind me. I drop the axe to the floor and sit down heavily on the bed, putting a hand to my face, feeling the hot blood pour between my fingers. Part of me, the part that has never had anything remotely like this happen to it, is in disbelief.

But another, deeper part of me, a part that has been formed by thousands of years of evolution passed down in my genes, is focusing all of its attention on my attacker. Producing another arrow from a small quiver at his waist, Judd begins to reload the crossbow with shaking hands. I turn toward him, looking through the dark, pain clouding my thoughts and swiftly turning to anger.

Images from my hallucinatory vision come rushing back, overlaying reality for a moment as I see the men on horseback chasing the young woman toward the edge of the cliff. I feel the sickening dismay as she throws herself over the edge to shatter her body on the craggy rocks below. Righteous fury expands in my chest as the pain of my wounds add fuel to the fire now raging in my ribcage.

Somehow, I feel more than I am. I feel a presence, as if someone is stepping inside of me, urging me to take action against this man who is trying to kill me. Bending over, I grab the rough carved axe handle with my right hand while wiping my bloody left hand on my pants. As I grip the axe in both hands to lift it, I'm vaguely aware that my hands have changed.

They are no longer my soft, underworked hands. Instead, they are an old woman's hands, calloused and scarred from years of hard work and knobby with arthritis. I don't pause and I don't fight this notion. It feels right and true. I can taste the sweetness of revenge close at hand, and I revel in it as I put my attention on the man with the crossbow.

Judd, still struggling with the crossbow, notices this and backs away, not yet ready to give up on his weapon. I raise the axe in both hands and charge him. Finally, he does the smart thing, turning to run away, but he's too late.

As Judd lurches out into the hall, I swing the axe down, catching him in the back of the neck with the dull blade. I've put enough force into the swing that it does some serious damage. Judd stumbles into the half-wall railing that overlooks the common area five stories below. I hit him with the axe again, in the upper back this time. Judd flips over the railing and falls down until he crunches onto the first floor far below.

A figure darts toward me from the right, running along the corridor and screaming savagely. I whip the axe toward the approaching figure, and the blade cracks into my would-be attacker's face. Dakota drops her dagger as she falls to the floor, her nose spewing blood, and her face all but ruined by the single blow. She writhes on the floor, screaming, gripping her face in her hands. She takes one hand away and uses it to search for the dagger.

I can feel the blood running down the side of my jaw and along my neck. The pain from the arrow strike is still very much with me, despite the adrenaline. Once again, fragments of my vision overlay the scene before me.

I watch as the man dismounts his horse and approaches the woman writhing on the ground between the rough-hewn houses in that old village. I watch with mounting fury as he hacks her upraised hands away until he has a clear shot at her face. The vision fades, but not the rage it built within me. A rage that is not wholly my own. As Dakota's hand finds the dagger, I step over and slam my foot down on her hand, knuckles crunching with the impact.

Then I raise the axe over my head and send it crashing down into her face. The fingers of her protective hand break easily, doing little to keep her face from caving in. As I step away, she gasps as blood pools up in her ruined mouth. It won't be long until she's dead. "Jesus Christ, man!" Brennan says from behind me. I whip around, raising the axe, causing him to flinch away. I lower the axe as Brennan studies a still gasping Dakota. Then he looks up at me and grimaces.

"Oh dude, your face. Doesn't that hurt?" I don't waste any words answering that stupid question. Instead, I lean over the railing and spit pieces of my molars out. They clatter near Judd's body. Brennan looks over and sees the man's body below. "I guess that's one team down. Now where's the other-" The crack of a gunshot causes me to flinch, and Brennan stumbles and falls back against the wall between two hotel room doors.

I look toward the source of the noise, seeing Shepard Kemp with an old flintlock rifle across the way on the sixth floor. I duck down below the half-wall railing and look toward Brennan. He's dropped his sword, and his hands are searching frantically on his upper chest, apparently looking for the bullet hole. His eyes meet mine, and I see the life leave them a moment later. His hands go limp, falling away from the bloody hole in his Hawaiian shirt. His head lolls, and he stops moving.

I stare at him, surprised at my lack of feeling. I've just killed two people. Dakota is no longer gasping, so I assume she's dead. And my partner has been shot with an ancient rifle. I never knew I had this in me. But something has changed in my head. I'm no longer trying to figure out what those strange visions were about. Now, all I care about is revenge. Revenge for a massacre of perfect strangers over 200 years ago. It makes no sense, but I don't question it.

I look down at my hands, unsurprised to see that they're not my own. They're an old woman's rough hands, but they're strong, driven by a purpose centuries in the making. I grab Brennan's sword and, staying low, I make my way toward the stairwell, one weapon in each gnarled hand. I find Tasha whimpering in one of the sixth floor rooms. I can hear her crying from outside the closed door. There's no sign of Shepard.

but I assume he's somewhere on this floor, reloading his flintlock rifle. With a bloody smile, I stop outside the closed door and listen to the woman sob. For some reason, it brings me joy. I know without having to check that none of the doors lock. They don't even latch. After leaning the axe against the wall, I grip the sword in both hands and square off with the door. Pushing off of one foot, I kick forward, slamming my heel into the door.

There's some resistance because Tasha is sitting with her back to the door, but the power in my kick sends her flying forward into the room. I step inside, and my mouth opens, but the word that escapes are not my own. The voice is an old woman's, and the words are heavy with poison.

With my dying breath, I promised revenge, I say in the foreign voice. I promised to stamp out your bloodlines. Tonight, I make good on that promise. Tasha, sobbing incoherently, flips onto her belly and crawls along the floor. I reverse the sword, pointing the tip down toward the floor as I step over her.

As I raise the weapon, getting ready to impale her with it, the person I see on the floor is not Tasha. It's a man I recognize. A man with a disease-ridden face who stood over me as I lay dying after falling out of the sky, riddled with bullet holes. I remember him saying two words to me before he jabbed his sword into my chest, piercing my heart. He said, "'Blasted witch!'

Tasha, his descendant, says nothing coherent as I slam the sword into her chest, the blade sliding between her ribs to rend her heart in two. She twitches and squirms for a moment, then stills. Before I yank the sword out, I am aware of Shepard's presence behind me. I don't turn toward him. Instead, I just look down at the dead woman, waiting for him to speak. After a moment, he does. "Don't move or I'll shoot you," he says.

I don't move, and I don't speak. "This isn't our fault," he says. "We can't be held accountable for something our ancestors did in the 17th century, for God's sake." "That's where you're wrong," I say in the old woman's voice. "I hold you accountable for what your ancestors did. For the slaughter of innocent women and children who only came to this place trying to survive. Our men had all been killed by war and disease.

But we were finally getting our lives back on track. Until you people decided to blame your disease on us. Until your ancestor used his platform as a preacher to spread lies and work the town into a fervor. "How the hell am I supposed to know what some ancestor did?" Shepard cries. "I wasn't there! If I was, I would have stopped it. Besides, was he wrong? He thought you were witches, and he was right, wasn't he?"

Snarling, I spin around, leaving the sword sticking out of Tasha's back. Shepard flinches, but doesn't fire the rifle. I level one gnarled finger at him. He was wrong.

I scream in the shrill foreign voice. "We used our magic for good! For survival! We had nothing to do with the disease that tore through the town! Nothing! But when your people attacked us, I had no choice but to call upon the blackest of magic! And with the last bit of energy I had, I captured your ancestors' spirits! They're here with me now!"

They've been here with me since the disease finally took them. They're watching, helpless, pleading for mercy. But they won't get it! I leap at Shepard, my body going vertical as I fly through the air with impossible force and levitation.

He fires the rifle, and I feel the ball tear through the toes of my left foot just before I crash into him. I fall to the floor, the rifle between us. Each of us gripping the rifle, we fight for control of the weapon. Not because it will fire again. It won't without reloading, but because whoever has it can use it as a bludgeon. I try to shove the weapon down towards Shepard's throat, but he's too strong, and he keeps pushing me back.

His half-burned face struggles as he tries to buck me off him, to turn the tables. I feel myself weakening despite the rage still blazing inside me. My hands are still those of the old woman, and I call upon her for strength. My throat spasms as the urge to vomit comes upon me like a gunshot. I open my mouth and vomit cockroaches and worms into Shepard's face. He cries out, turning his head away, his arms slackening momentarily.

I use the moment, shoving the crosswise rifle down and jamming it against his throat. He thrashes, trying to buck me off or shove the rifle away from his neck, but he's lost his leverage. I shift forward, pressing down harder on the rifle, feeling the cartilage in his neck snap and crunch as his windpipe collapses.

Even as his eyes bulge sickeningly out of their sockets and the unburned side of his face changes from red to purple, I smile down at him, seeing his ancestor, the preacher, under me, seeing through the eyes of the old witch inside my body. But as soon as Shepard stops moving, I feel the old woman leave me. I slump down, completely exhausted, the pain in my face and toes pulsating unbearably.

The worms and cockroaches I vomited up suddenly disappear, making me realize they were never real to begin with. Feeling sick at what I've done, I scramble out of the hotel room and sit with my back against the wall next to the propped up axe I left there earlier. Breathing heavily, I try not to think about what I've done to these people, these strangers. "Why me?" I ask the dark, silent hotel. "Am I one of your descendants? Are we related?" I hear something from outside.

Car doors shutting. "Not even close!" the old woman says in my ear. "You're one of them, and your punishment is just beginning." A shouting erupts from below. I climb to my feet and look over the railing to see a dozen police officers rush inside, pointing guns and flashlights around. The reality of this night dawns on me. I've killed all but one of these people. I've murdered two of them while their backs were turned. I don't think self-defense will be a valid argument.

The thought of spending the rest of my life in prison is too much to bear. Just as one of the cops down below puts his flashlight on me, telling me to freeze, I climb onto the half-wall railing. I pause for only a moment, the vision of the young woman throwing herself off the cliff, filling my head, and suddenly I understand. The man who unfastened his trousers while approaching the young woman is my ancestor. I look down at my hands gripping the railing. They're my own. I'm doing this.

I throw myself off. As the floor races up to meet me, I hear the old woman laughing in my ear.