London Underground: An Unofficial Legend of The Secret World (Unofficial Legends of The Secret World Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  What's Happened So Far

  A Flashback to Tokyo

  CHAPTER ONE Ordinary World

  CHAPTER TWO Call to Adventure

  CHAPTER THREE Refusal of the Call

  CHAPTER FOUR Meeting with a Mentor

  CHAPTER FIVE Crossing the Threshold

  CHAPTER SIX Tests

  CHAPTER SEVEN Londinium

  CHAPTER EIGHT Allies

  CHAPTER NINE Enemies

  CHAPTER TEN The Approach to the Innermost Cave

  CHAPTER ELEVEN The Ordeal

  CHAPTER TWELVE The Reward

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Road Back

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Resurrection

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Return

  ULotSW Website, Mailing List, and More

  About the Author

  London Underground

  An Unofficial Legend of the Secret World

  Blodwedd “Wedd” Mallory

  Editor: Trista Emmer

  Cover: Mark “HolloPoint” Innes

  Published January 2019

  Copyright © 2019 Amber McKee

  Electronic Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of author.

  This novel is an unofficial, fictionalized story involving in-game missions and game play available in Secret World Legends and/or The Secret World. It is a labor of love from a fan of both games.

  All characters and locations and intellectual property (IP) referenced within this book are the products of Funcom Oslo AS. The author claims no ownership of this IP and intends no infringement on the rights of Funcom and uses the IP by licensed agreement with Funcom.

  Unofficial Legends of The Secret World

  By Blodwedd Mallory

  To Sir, with Love

  London Underground

  Other Works by the Author

  By Dots Gale

  “Where Fools Fear to Tread” (Parts 1–8)

  Available for play inside Secret World Legends and The Secret World using the “Untold Stories of The Secret World” mod.

  Dedication

  To the many wonderful friends I’ve made playing The Secret World and Secret World Legends over the years. And to P.J., my sweet fluffy Chihuahua, who passed away in October 2018. You were a good boy, and we miss you every day.

  Acknowledgments

  When I was writing the first book in the Unofficial Legends of The Secret World series, To Sir, with Love, it was vital for me to “see” the book as a real thing, so I took great pleasure at writing the acknowledgments at the beginning of that process.

  This time I got all the way to the end of writing the second before I attempted them. There are quite a few folks who deserve acknowledgment for their participation in the process of the development of this book.

  First of all, Michael Payne, who was a tremendously good sport about letting me take outrageous liberties with his Secret World alter ego, Sevenoir. Not only did he give me carte blanche to write the story, but he filled out a character sheet questionnaire to help me paint the Sevenoir on the pages into a rounded mentor/sidekick for Wedd and read it while it was still in rough draft form to help me get things right. Thank you so much for your encouragement and assistance, Sev, and above all, your enthusiasm!

  And while I’m on the topic, Mark Innes (aka HolloPoint) is as enthusiastic a partner in crime as I could hope for. His artwork is fantastic, and his talent takes my breath away. When he mocked up an early cover draft for London Underground about 15 minutes after he’d finished up the final version for To Sir, with Love, he inspired me to get the next book started. I’m not sure when you sleep, Mark, but I’m thrilled to have you illustrating the covers for this series. Your recent forays into 3D animation bode well for all of us who enjoy your work.

  Also, thanks to other Secret World Legends players and friends Gypcie, Drenneth, SnowDrifter, Lurdtz, and Kinii for allowing me to use their character names and/or likenesses for this bit of fiction, I hope you enjoy seeing them on these pages.

  Thanks to readers and advisors who came back to help me again with the second book: Trista Emmer, for her excellent feedback and editing; Kelly Dewnsup, for her encouragement and advice on fencing and blade work—readers, if there are errors, please note that alone I am the cause. Other advance readers and old friends deserving a shout out for their feedback and support include Jenn Gibbs, Regina Napolitano, Courtney Righter, and Brian S. Williams.

  And of course, once again, I owe a profound thanks to my husband, Mark Reviea (a.k.a. Hadad) for his encouragement. He discussed aspects of the plot with me at random times of the night and day, gave me feedback and ideas when I was stuck, and held me tight when we lost our pup P.J about a week before To Sir, with Love launched. I love you great big bunches.

  Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank Terri P. and Andy B. at Funcom. Without your help, this story and To Sir, with Love would not have seen the light of day.

  London Underground

  An Unofficial Legend of The Secret World

  Blodwedd Mallory

  What’s Happened So Far

  So, we trapped the murderous wraith in a photo slide and got the thumbs up on graduation from Innsmouth Academy. Gypcie and I have our respective invitations to join Secret Societies.

  What do you do after the world ends? After you’ve trapped a wraith from Hell and gotten the invitation to join the Templars? As the old saying goes, you chop wood and carry water.

  Lately, I’ve been trying to rent a flat in London. I’m headed there soon to take my initiation. I’ve been in contact with a landlady named Miss Plimmswood, who seems nice, although the rent in London is ermahgerd expensive.

  I can’t wait to go there, see the sights, and start my training. And of course, meet Richard Sonnac, the head of the new Templars. I am also hoping that being at Temple Hall will give me the opportunity to get more news about my mom. She’s a Templar too, and on assignment somewhere that keeps us from being in regular touch. That worries me a lot. There’s scary stuff happening in the world right now, and Solomon Island is no exception.

  Here at the academy, things have settled down to a new normal. Yeah, we still have creepy, dangerous familiars and murderous specters. Not to mention the whole host of zombies—some of them my former classmates—running around outside the academy yard walls. Ms. Usher and Headmaster Montag pretty much keep us close to base, also known as the Administration Office, although Carter, Gypcie, and I have moved back into the dorms. We’ve set up a system of wards and traps that keep us safe enough to sleep at night. Our days are filled with doing what we can to help keep the island as sane and safe as it can be, but that’s a far different picture than was laid out in the school prospectus.

  The Sheriff’s Office in Kingsmouth and the Council of Venice help with that. The soldiers are still holed up in the Faculty Lounge, although recently they’ve traded out some of the traditional soldiers for Gaia’s bees, who, like Carter, Gypcie, and me, are more suited to combat the supernatural threat we’re all facing.

  I’m going to leave for London soon, but I’m torn about leaving my friends and old school behind. I know what we’re facing here. It’s ugly. It chatters. It glides through walls and l
urks in the corners of the yard. But, it’s the known evil.

  What awaits me in London remains to be seen.

  A Flashback to Tokyo

  “It's all shut down, Kaidan-cho, everything, from the park to Orochi Tower...”

  The voice was urgent, young, and feminine, with an English accent. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on the floor of what appeared to be a subway station, artificial light flickering, the cold tiles pressed against my cheek.

  In front of me, I could see three people arguing, two women and a man, standing in front of a gray metal gate blocking the entrance to the platform areas beyond.

  My heart beat loudly, and my eyes blurred as I tried to focus. I could see a dirty hand stretched out in front of my body—I was laying on my left side—but it didn’t look like my hand. Above it was the sleeve of a white leather jacket with blue leather trim cut to look like a flame. That confused me further. I didn’t have a jacket like that.

  “SDF quarantine. Good news for Tokyo, bad news for us.” The other woman spoke, her voice softer, although still young and feminine.

  I pressed up on one elbow. The floor in front of me was littered in the grime and trash typical to subways, but there was something new. A strange shiny black substance covered it, spreading out in thin offshoots like the roots of a tree. In places, the substance was pooled into thicker pods and had started to climb up the nearby wall.

  “I thought the Dragon thrived on Chaos?” the man spoke now.

  The second woman retorted, dryly, “Someone once told me the Illuminati had all the answers.”

  Dragon? Illuminati? My head spun as I continued to try to focus my eyes, my breathing shallow. My body had a dull ache as if I’d been knocked down. My left hip was sore. This was a strange nightmare and very vivid. I couldn’t ever remember being aware of pain while sleeping before.

  My heart thumped loudly. What was I feeling? Was I afraid or merely curious? The detail in this dream was unbelievable. I could smell the mechanical, oily tang of the subway trains and the faint institutional funk familiar to places where people traversed in large numbers. My eyes blurred again. I shook my head and focused on the three speakers in front of me.

  A young platinum-haired woman dressed in a ribbed, white V-neck sweater, jeans, sturdy boots, and a puffy red winter vest stood nearest on my right. She was wearing an off-white knit toque, which pressed her short shag cut hair down over her face, covering her left eye. There was a shotgun on her back, held in place with a thin leather strap, which wrapped around the vest.

  “They're saying a bomb. It's never just a bomb.”

  The other woman with the softer voice, who was standing nearest the gate, responded. “Something worse. Something that brought the Filth with it.” She looked vaguely Asian and was wearing headphones, a rust-colored cropped off-the-shoulder T-shirt, and low-slung yoga pants, with a katana-case strapped to her hip. Ornate dragon tattoos embroidered her shoulders, and her black hair was gathered back into a ponytail.

  I noticed she said “filth” like it had a capital “F.” I looked again at the black substance covering the floor. Was this some biological outbreak? Where was I? The first woman had said something about “Kaidan-cho.” Was that in Japan?

  “So we fight,” the first woman spoke again. “That’s what us Templars do.”

  Templars! Understanding flooded me. Now this dream made more sense. I was fantasizing about my future with the Templars. But, the dream was so real, so vivid. It was unnerving.

  “I enjoy a good fight. It's just that these bloody trousers are velvet,” said the man, who stood off to the right, gesturing at his pants. He was wearing a long, dark-brown duster and had short, spiked brown hair. He appeared to be in his mid-30s, while the two women seemed younger, early-20s-ish. Were they agents of some sort?

  The Asian woman looked over at me as I struggled to my feet. “Sarah! Thank Gaia! Are you okay? How are you feeling?”

  I staggered as I stood up and swallowed hard as my stomach lurched with the movement. Who was Sarah?

  I looked down at my body but didn’t recognize my clothes, or, truth be told, the warm brown color of the skin of my hands. I held up my arm to see the blue-flame details that ran down both sleeves of the white leather jacket I was wearing. I had on a pair of gray jeans and old high-tops. I reached up to touch the wide cloth headband on my head. Maybe it was a scarf. My hair felt different, smoother, finer, and shorter. I turned slightly and could see the black ends of it touching my shoulders. That wasn’t right. I had long, auburn hair that I typically wore in a bun.

  This was some dream. Who was Sarah? I’d never been someone else in a dream before, but I was too fascinated to let the strangeness bother me. I didn’t know what was going on here, but there was only one way to find out. I nodded my head at the second woman to let her know I was okay.

  She nodded back, then turned to the first. “If Zuberi was here, he'd tell us this is the worst time to argue.”

  “Well, he's not. He's down there somewhere,” the blonde responded, gesturing through the locked gate. “Sarah, get your gun.”

  I jerked with a start. She meant me. I spied a shotgun on the floor near my feet with an anxious thrill in my stomach. I’d never used a shotgun before.

  How hard could it be? I picked it up, holding it gingerly with both hands, muzzle pointed toward the floor in what I hoped was proper safety etiquette. I prayed silently that there were shells in it because I sure didn’t know how to load them.

  I looked around the room and spotted the subway exit behind us, a back-lit sign identifying it in English and what looked like Japanese kana. It gleamed in the dimly lit room. A small, deserted news kiosk sat along the wall to the right of the stairs, with newspapers and magazines lining its display shelves. I could see more tendrils of the stuff—the Filth?—reaching across the floors like blood vessels in a circulatory system amid the trash and old newspapers. A brightly lit vending machine offering candy and cigarettes stood at the right of the kiosk, providing a strange contrast of normality to the otherwise grim scene.

  A large thump echoed from the stairwell beyond the gate in front of me, and I turned back quickly at the sound of footsteps running toward us. From the stairs emerged a frightened woman. Spying us, she grabbed the gate and began shaking it frantically. “Let me out!”

  “Open the gate!” the blonde woman in our group yelled. The Asian woman crouched down and struggled with the latch at the bottom, trying to pry it up.

  “I'm trying, Rose! It's inside the electrics somehow, the Filth...”

  “Let me out!” The woman trapped behind the gate screamed more urgently now, the gate ringing as she shook it.

  A man sprinted up from the stairs behind her. My mind boggled for a moment as I took him in. He was wearing a buttoned-down white shirt and gray trousers like a businessman, but his face and head were covered in black, shiny tar, with two tentacles waving wildly from it. Was he infected with something? Was he contaminated with this Filth they kept talking about?

  Before I could contemplate it any further, he jumped on the woman behind the gate and knocked her down, tearing at her face and arms with his teeth. She shrieked pitifully as she attempted to push him away.

  “No!” the Asian woman cried out as she stepped away from the latch, covering her eyes, as the monster ripped the trapped woman apart in front of us.

  “Fuck me!” the guy in our group yelled.

  “Oh. My. God!” Rose echoed.

  My eyes were wide, and I shook at the sight. “We have to help her!”

  I aimed the shotgun at the gate and attempted to fire, but nothing happened. Looking down I realized the safety was still on. I flipped it off and raised the gun to try again, but I was too late. The woman had stopped struggling. The infected man jumped off his victim and ran off the landing down the stairs to the left beyond my line of sight.

  Acid poured into my stomach as horror flooded me. This might have only been a dream, but seeing the woman torn
to pieces in front of me was very real and upsetting. Her body lay on the landing beyond the locked gate, blood pouring from a wound on her throat, her sightless eyes clouded in death.

  I swallowed hard and turned my gaze away. With my left hand, I pumped a shell into the chamber. Next time, I thought with anger as I bit back tears, I would be prepared to fire.

  A low knocking sound came from my left. What was that? My heart rate jumped again, and my eyes widened. I turned quickly but kept the muzzle of the shotgun low.

  To the right of the kiosk and vending machine, the wall of the subway station had three large vents midway up to provide air circulation underground. They were large enough for a human to stand in. My adrenaline spiked as I realized the covers on two of them had been torn off, revealing the blackness beyond the reach of the artificial light of the area in which we were standing. The others also turned and faced the noise, dropping back into postures to prepare to fight.

  “Watch out!” the short-haired man called out as a Filth-infected creature appeared in the rightmost ventilation duct. It jumped down and threw itself at us.

  The Asian woman drew her katana and brandished it at the creature, but I was ready this time, and, holding the shotgun up to my cheek, I fired past my companions at the infected man. The blast caught him in the stomach, and he fell back against the wall, dead or incapacitated.

  Ha! My shoulder stung from the recoil of the shotgun, but I felt a deep satisfaction in having hit and downed my target.

  “Nice shooting!” The blonde woman, Rose, yelled at me from over her shoulder.

  She was interrupted by a raw hissing scream. It echoed from deep within the tunnels, warning us that more infected specimens were on their way.