Steele Alchemist: A LitRPG Series Read online

  Chapter One

  Little things sometimes change everything. Like a kid looking at his first car engine and then growing up to be a mechanic. Or a girl deciding to walk instead of getting a cab after a night out, and straying into the path of a person with a knife and a dark heart. Tiny things that seemed like nothing, but changed a hell of a lot in someone’s life.

  Jake Steele’s tiny thing was when he found a portal that led to another world.

  It was a cold September night. Gusts of wind swept at him and froze his skin, then blew away from him, before seeming to turn around and come straight back. It started to feel kinda personal, honestly. Despite its freezing fingers, the wind wasn’t loud enough to drown out the blaring of the police car a few blocks away.

  He and Elliot waited until the wailing of the police siren had faded before they made their move. Neither of them wanted to go first so, as usual, Jake took the initiative and climbed over the fence. The chain link rattled as he struggled over it. He’d put on a little bulk over the last few weeks, but it seemed to have all settled in his stomach, leaving his arms and legs wiry.

  When he dropped down onto the other side, he heard a dog barking. His heart almost hammered out of his chest. Any second now, a ferocious beast was going to come tearing around the corner.

  Relax, he told himself. This place has been empty for years.

  As he calmed himself down, he realized that the barking was coming from somewhere else, no doubt some yard where a Labrador had sniffed out a cat. There was nothing in this factory, and odds were there wouldn’t be for a long time.

  That wasn’t to say that every place they went to was abandoned; sometimes they got their research wrong and had close calls with police sirens. Jake was guilty of charging into places too quickly as well. If he was being honest, his excitement sometimes got the best of him. A couple of times, Elliot even accused Jake of getting the research wrong on purpose.

  “You like the feeling of us almost getting our asses caught,” he’d say. “You want an excuse so you don’t have to think about college. Come on, man, don’t bullshit me.”

  Jake didn’t know if Elliot was right or not; he couldn’t decide. Best just to shove the issue to one side and pretend it wasn’t there. It was an effective strategy for dealing with stuff most of the time.

  He was feeling pretty confident about this place, though. An internet search had turned up little about it, save what it used to be. There weren’t any photographs from rival urban explorers, anyway. The IanDiana Jones Blog, his fiercest rivals, hadn’t been here.

  Man, he hated those two. They were twins, Ian and Diana, and they loved to explore abandoned places before Jake and Elliot could get there. Their blog was certainly much better, but Jake had been lax on his photography for a long time now so he could hardly complain.

  So, they’d found a virgin site. Factories like this were an urban explorer’s mecca; completely abandoned and mostly untouched. Who knew what kind of stuff waited for them in there?

  This was the best part – getting inside. It was usually easy but you never knew if a place would have security or not, and for that reason he was a practiced hand at fencing climbing and police siren evading. Both of them were, actually. Jake and his buddy Elliot didn’t spend their nights getting drunk like a lot of guys their age. Well, they did spend some nights doing that, but it wasn’t really their forte.

  Whatever they got up to, though, they did it together. Always. Jake didn’t have many other friends in college or in his neighborhood. In fact, his friend circle kind of resembled his wardrobe, in a weird way. He found a few outfits that he liked, and he stuck with them for years.

  Friendship wise, Jake had Elliot, a guy named Brian who he watched soccer with, and his oldest friend, Laurence. Laurence had moved away five years earlier, yet Jake still considered him one of his closest buddies. He might not have been good at making new ones, but once he was friends with someone, that was it. Lifetime loyalty.

  When Elliot’s studies and Jake’s job didn’t demand their attention, the two of them would search Google Maps for buildings nearby that looked interesting and, most importantly, abandoned. Then, as soon as the sun set, they’d change into the blackest clothes they owned and go urban exploring.

  He couldn’t decide what he liked most about it. Maybe it was the thrill of doing something illegal; it didn’t matter that nobody used the buildings anymore, they still belonged to someone, and they were still trespassing. As much as hearing the shrill whine of a police siren sent a chill through him, it also shot a load of adrenaline into his system. For a guy who spent most of his life bored, that was precious.

  Mostly, it was getting lost in the details that made him love it. It wasn’t just a case of turning up at an old factory and climbing the gates; you needed to find out entry and exit points, research security patrols, alarm systems, and even listen into cop patrols using a radio he had in his bedroom. He could spend hours planning an exploration, and he loved it because he found that as soon as he started looking into the details, they completely sucked him in and made him forget about everything else.

  This particular building had no security at all. On the outside, it looked like an old factory that had fallen into disuse. The walls were decorated with graffiti cocks and variations of the word ‘fuck.’ Every window except one had been smashed.

  “And they say art isn’t accessible to young people these days,” said Elliot, after he’d clambered over the fence.

  Jake grinned. “See the third cock on the right? It’s actually pretty good. The detail, I mean. The guy has talent, if only he’d focus it on something a little more…arty.”

  “Let’s get a move on. I’ve got an assignment I need to finish for tomorrow. What is this place, anyway?”

  “Used to belong to a drinks company,” said Jake. “They made some sugary shit called Elixir.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had one.”

  “They went bust in the seventies. Some government sponsored health report said there was enough sweeteners in a bottle of Elixir to give an elephant a sugar rush.”

  The smashed windows made getting inside easy. After Jake had cleared the broken glass from a window and they’d shimmied in, he saw that the inside of the building was very strange indeed.

  To their right was a long warehouse shop floor, with two rows of work banks that would once have housed machinery. There was a supervisor office over at the far end of the room. Jake took a step inside and he filled his lungs with the smell; a dusty odour, one of age and abandonment. There was something about that smell that he loved. Maybe it was the idea of stepping into the past, like opening an old book.

  Just inside the room and to his left was a giant mirror. The more Jake looked, the more mirrors he saw lined up against the walls. They looked like they’d been stripped out of a bathroom, or something. Maybe someone had snuck in here to try and take away anything valuable. You could probably sell mirrors like these for a decent price. If that were the case, why hadn’t the looters taken the mirrors with them?

  He looked at the mirror and saw his own face reflected at him. He saw his head, freshly shaved the day before and with only the barest trace of stubble. His thick, black moustache was looking pretty good today. It was big enough now that it covered his lip completely and curled out at the ends.

  Jake had styled the tips with wax, so that he looked like a nineteenth century magician. The thing he loved about the moustache was that it divided people; some people liked it and told him so, some people absolutely hated it, but told him that they liked it.

  The people he most liked to hear from were the people who couldn’t stand his moustache and weren’t scared of tell
ing the truth. If someone was willing to be brutally honest with you, it was a person you could trust. Elliot always called his moustache the lip caterpillar, and told him daily that he should shave it off.

  Jake wouldn’t do that though. As well as looking awesome, his moustache had a second benefit in that it also covered up his scar. Well, part of it, anyway. Jake had a red, mean-looking scar on the left side of his face. It started just above his lip and ran down to his chin. The moustache hid some of it away, but there was no hiding the rest.

  Elliot looked into the mirror and adjusted the quiff of his hair. Jake held his torch a little closer to help him out.

  “Kinda freaky in here,” said Elliot.

  He was right. There was a kind of eerie silence to the place. Not just the absence of noise, but almost as if something was purposefully staying quiet. Jake gave ghosts and spirits as much credit he did the tooth fairy, but murderers? They were real, alright. And if there was anywhere he’d guess a murderer would hang out, it’d be in a creepy, old, abandoned factory.

  “Murderers and other dodgy characters!” he called out. “We’re just here to look around. We’ll be gone soon! Say something if you object.”

  Elliot grinned. “Dope,” he said.

  He was putting on a brave face, but Jake knew Elliot was scared. Unlike Jake, Elliot did believe in ghosts and stuff. To him, the mysteries of the paranormal were infinitely scarier than a man with a knife. It didn’t make much sense to Jake. He could hit a man with his fist, but he imagined his hand would just pass right through a ghost. At least, he guessed that’s how it’d work. At any rate, he’d take a fight with a man over Casper the Friendly Ghost any day.

  “Think we’re alone here,” said Jake. “Let’s see what this place is. The question is, where to start?”

  “Depends what kind of Jake I’m dealing with today. The methodical one or the lunatic?”

  “I’m feeling slightly methodical with a pinch of dickishness.”

  Elliot sighed. “You pick the route. I chose the last place, so this is your baby.”

  As he looked around for a starting point to begin their exploration, he settled his gaze on a corridor ahead and to his right. It was a long hall that trailed off into darkness. There wasn’t much light in the warehouse to begin with; just the dim glow from the amber street lamps outside, and the yellow spray of his and Elliot’s torches. Their meagre illumination didn’t reach to the end of the corridor, and where the darkness was almost complete, he saw something.

  It was a little creature. It was too dark to make out in detail, but he knew it was something living from the way it raised its shadow paws to its head. It could have been a rat, except it was sat on its hind legs, with its body upright. Maybe it was a hare or rabbit, but it would have been weird to see one here. Anyway, from the silhouette he could make out of its skull, it didn’t seem to have ears. What the hell was it?

  “Okay, Jake?”

  He carried on starting at the creature, and he got the strangest feeling that it was holding his gaze back. That it was fixed on him, trying to work him out. It certainly didn’t seem scared.

  “Hey, Steele. Stop messing around.”

  He turned to Elliot and nodded. “Gotcha.” When he turned back to the tunnel, the creature was gone. Jake pointed in the direction of the corridor.

  “Let’s go that way,” he said.

  They went down the hallway and took a right turn, before finding a flight of steps. He expected them to lead into a basement full of rank water and rats but instead, the stairs kept on going and going and going, until soon it felt like they’d gone down twenty floors. The darkness was so thick that their torch beams struggled to pierce it.

  “Maybe we better scope out the first floor and come back later,” said Elliot.

  A few flights down from them, Jake was sure he could see the little creature. That made up his mind.

  “You’re not the least bit interested about this? I wanna know how far down this goes.”

  “I just think that we better take our time.”

  “Look down there,” said Jake. He didn’t want to shine his torch on the creature in case it made it flee. “You see that? Just by the wall.”

  Elliot strained to look. “See what?” He started to sweep his torch.

  “Don’t do that,” said Jake, but it was too late; Elliot’s yellow beam brushed across the steps and fixed right onto the little creature.

  And then it disappeared. Whether it had leapt away or just disintegrated, Jake had no clue.

  “What are you on about, Jake?”

  “You didn’t see it?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Elliot.

  “Never mind. Let’s carry on a little longer.”

  Elliot’s reluctance and Jake’s impatience to go on summed them both up perfectly. Jake was a logical thinker when he wanted to be, but sometimes the urge to charge in took hold and he found it hard to shake off. It was like his adrenaline washed away all his caution, and it sometimes got him into trouble.

  Their levels of caution weren’t the only thing different about them. Where Elliot was short, strong and cut out for the wrestling team, Jake’s tall and athletic frame was better suited for track. Elliot would have destroyed him in an arm wrestling match, but Jake’s lungs were better.

  Maybe, just this once, Jake should have listened to Elliot and fought his urge to rush on. As usual, he found it impossible to hold back, and he quickly went ahead.

  Down in the depths of the building, where the black shadows were so heavy that they muted their footsteps, they found only one room. It was circular-shaped, and when he cast his torch around it, he saw no markings on the walls. There was no furniture, and no sign that anyone had ever been there.

  There was definitely no sign of the little creature, though Jake couldn’t help but think that it had led them down here. That it had wanted them to come to this particular part of the warehouse.

  Jake took a deep breath. “Smell that dusty air, dude! Think about it; we might be the first people down here in years. Decades, even. Sends a chill through me.”

  “Reminds me of grandma’s linen closet,” said Elliot. “Remember when we used to hide in there?”

  “I still have nightmares about your nan’s dressing gowns.”

  “You know I don’t like dust. I consider it an occupational hazard, but dust is never good.”

  Elliot was probably right, but Jake had a rule that he lived by – try and appreciate things. This place stunk of dust and dirt, and it’d be easy to think about it that way. But with a little mental twist, Jake found the good side; the fact that nobody had been down here in years. That made it interesting. Kind of like they were low-budget urban archaeologists.

  He looked around, wondering what treasures awaited them. Gold? Diamonds?

  Nope.

  The only thing that he saw was a rectangle in the centre of the room. It was as tall as a full-sized mirror, and blue waves of light seemed to pulse back and forth across it, as though it crackled with electricity.

  “What the hell?” said Elliot.

  Jake’s first thought was that it was a generator, or something like that. Truth be told he didn’t have a goddamn clue, but his brain did what brains like to do when faced with the abnormal; it grasped for an explanation.

  Nope. Much grasping later, he saw that there was nothing that could explain what the hell this thing was.

  There was nothing at the back of it, nothing to either side. The pulsing light seemed to have no depth, as if it were two-dimensional. Yet, when Jake took a coin from his pocket and tossed it at the light, it didn’t land on the other side and clang on the stone floor. Instead, it just vanished.

  “We better tell someone about this,” said Elliot, edging back toward the doorway.

  “Who are we gonna tell? The ghostbusters?”

  He could see that Elliot was getting genuinely worried, so he added in a gentler tone, “Just a few more minutes, and then we�
��ll go.”

  “This is way beyond our remit, Jake. I don’t know what the hell this thing is…some kind of cold war experiment, maybe? We could be getting into some serious shit.”

  “Think about what’ll happen if you go out here blabbing to someone. I know the place was abandoned, but technically, we broke in here. What’ll happen if the police charge us? Come on, man. I’m gonna miss you when you leave, but the last thing I want is you to get in trouble.”

  “You’re not worried about yourself?”

  “Not as much as I am about you. Your parents will beat the crap out of me if I get you get kicked out of college before you’ve even gone there.”

  “Maybe you need to start thinking of your own future, buddy. I know you’re waiting to hear back from Newcrest, but you could, I don’t know, start taking a few photos or something. You’re just holding yourself back. I don’t wanna be a dick with you. I mean, I can’t even imagine what you went through with your parents. But I just hate seeing you wallowing.”