Highway to Hell Forum

[At around 9 pm, all users of the Chicago forum network are spontaneously signed in on their computers, smartphones, and mobile internet devices. There's no notification, no warning, and no apparent reason. The entire thing could go completely unnoticed if it weren't for the fact that all attached recording devices (cameras and microphones) are remotely switched on, broadcasting their little green lights as the only evidence of wakefulness. Those little lights are all-seeing eyes into the lives that litter Chicago. Some will notice right away. Others will not. But all are now broadcasting live to all of Chicago, for better or for worse.

Attempts to disable the cameras will fail, unless the camera is physically removed or destroyed. Attempts to log out of the forum network will fail as well. Even text communication is impossible, forcing users to speak Chat Roulette-style in face-to-face forum connections. There is no screening these conversations from the public, no privacy to be found. Conversations can contain up to four different individuals on the same screen, all hovering above an untouchable white text box.

The only time the text box shows any sign of life is to broadcast the presence and personal thoughts of an individual named only as "The Virus." The Virus speaks in 11 point Helvetica font and has no recording media associated with his or her account. In stark contrast to the permanence of Chicago's cameras and microphones, the Virus is a ghost - nothing more than a ghost in the machine.]

[Starting midnight on Monday morning, everybody in Chicago begins to have extremely vivid dreams. The visions they have are disturbingly detailed, and they range from the normal to things that dreamers have never seen before. Around 12:30AM, everything from the imagination, from people to creatures, begin to spawn in the streets, some dangerous and others harmless. It only takes a few minutes for the city of Chicago to begin looking like a fun house, dreams from every inner vision imaginable dancing around. There's one good thing, though; the extreme noise of the commotion makes it hard to sleep in the first place!]

Finally, on October 30th at around 6:00AM, The sun starts to rise. Light hits the city of Chicago in a way that it hasn't in days, and the destruction of the past hours is heavy in the streets. Unlike the first odd occurrence, nothing has reverted this time. All the cars are still abandoned in the roads for whoever wants to recover theirs, but all remaining vehicles will be towed after 24 hours. All traces of the creatures are gone other than blood, their fallen bodies completely disappeared. However, the holes in the ground remain, and they're slowly being paved over by the city with no markings on their former location.

Perhaps they were scared, or taking their time to rally together, but the strange scratching noises finally reveal themselves. The first series of attacks began to happen at around 10:30PM, all those in the streets and outside killed as the creatures leave their shadows. Their bodies are long and sickly pale, their flesh looking wrinkled and dead under the faint glow of the moon. They have only four, identical limbs, each of them jointed in a way that make it easy for them to propel after their victims and drag them under ground. The holes that people were seeing are the entrances to their nests, and the bodies of their victims are dismembered to make the pieces easier to drag down into the ground. Their heads are bald and smooth. No eyes are visible, but their mouths are wet, fleshy holes in their face, circled with dagger-like teeth that are ideal for clamping and tearing.

They can climb.

There are sharp claws on four fingered hands attached to their oddly jointed arms. They are used for attack and mobility and they're able to tear up concrete and asphalt, making it easy to drag themselves up the sides of any building. All windows and doors are entrances for them despite the height from ground level, but they seem to have trouble with balance. Unless the window is unobstructed, they fall off a building when trying to move their bodies to claw through anything blocking their way in, as long as it's at least three stories up. As a result, the ground is littered with wasted, monstrous bodies, which seem to only feed the ones still living. All those with boarded windows are relatively safe, but locked, wooden doors can only keep them away for so long.

Strays are possible, but they usually seem to travel in swarms. Guns seem to do enough damage, but only to slow them down. It seems that the only way to kill them is a stab or shot at the base of their throat. They're extremely sensitive to strong light, it seems to temporarily blind them for a few seconds.

It happened at exactly midnight. All angels, demons, and every other creature with superhuman powers in the Chicago city limits, have lost their abilities completely. A few seconds later, all power in Chicago goes out, immersing the city into an eerie blackness and silence. All back up generators are dead, all car batteries died, leaving the roads crowded with useless vehicles. The thick storm has yet to lift, and the natural light of the moon is muffled by heavy clouds, leaving the city in a dark glow, which hardly helps with vision. All cellphones have very low signal and are now the only connection to the forum, and only battery operated sources seem to work, such as lanterns and flashlights.

At 12:10, the noises start. Hollow scratching echoes the streets from the dark corners, as if someone or something was clawing at the pavements and buildings. All those who go to investigate the sounds disappear, and if other investigate all that is found is a perfect circle of a hole burrowed directly through the asphalt and concrete, surrounded by large amounts of blood. The noises start to get louder, and everyone seems to think it be a good idea to stay indoors.

No one is completely sure when it rolled in, but there's a sudden storm over Chicago that's so thick, it completely blocks out the sun. The sky is night all the time, and Chicago seems to be the only place effected by the freak weather. The continuous darkness has its lasting effect on the city. Crime rates have gone up immensely, and it's not safe for anybody to walk the streets alone these days. As for the angelic and demonic powers, they're still flickering oddly, but they haven't strengthened of weakened in any way.

The darkness that the storm (which only rains about three hours in the day, although the clouds never leave) brings is an abnormal darkness. People say that it seems thicker than normal darkness, and light seems to have a much harder time penetrating it.

As of Midnight, Saturday, October 15th, all those who have supernatural powers may start noticing small flickers in their power. It's still there, but little things seem to start happening, prayers are getting dropped calls and for some reason its taking a couple of tries for demons to arrive where they want to be when they try to appear from place to place. In fact, they could end up on the other side of the world before they finally end up to where they want to be. Other than that, it doesn't seem like anything else has changed. It's odd, but it doesn't seem to be causing much more than an annoyance at this point.