Chapter 1

The D.E.D. are coming. Only you and your fellow exorcists can stand against their masses. Only you and your fellow exorcists can protect the world from their invasion. Join now and harness the powers of the digital world to save our own.

That was the advertisement for the game. It had a neat little trailer showing extremely realistic, though obviously computer generated, monsters breaking through a portal of some sorts into the real world. The setting appeared to be a mall, and as people ran screaming as the creatures destroyed everything around them, a group of individuals stepped forward. Clad in strange uniforms they summoned monsters of their own and fought back the enemy forces. These individuals were the D.E.D. Exorcists. These individuals were who the game wanted you to become.

It was a simple concept really. Following on the heels of various other augmented reality games, D.E.D. Exorcists utilized each individual’s cell phone in order to ‘connect’ them to the game world. With the built-in cameras on the phone, players would be able to scan for any disturbances. Small scale disturbances created tiny rifts through which weaker D.E.D., or Digitally Energized Demons, would emerge. You could battle them using your own captured and trained D.E.D. in order to exorcise them and send them back to the digital world from whence they came or capture them to further strengthen your team.

Larger rifts promised town and city sized experiences, requiring a greater number of players to gather together in order to take on the stronger, Tiered demon, threats that could emerge. It was the sole job of all the players, the exorcists, to ensure not a single D.E.D. Tiered threat made its way into the real world. And the game kept a counter, showing just that. Rumor was the developers had special plans in case one wasn’t defeated in time, but everyone was also worried about what might happen. One belief, a rumor started somewhere on the internet that gained popularity, was the game would be deleted if that ever occurred. Given it’s rapidly growing fanbase, no one wanted that to happen.

The popularity of D.E.D. Exorcists was what had finally convinced Henry to give it a try. He’d played some of the previous Augmented Reality games before but had gotten burned out of them quite quickly. However, his friends had been playing D.E.D. since it released about a week ago, and it was all they talked about. In fact, as they sat there, relaxing at their local hookah bar, having a good time, his friends had all grown excited when the commercial popped up on the television. And they grew even more excited as their phones began to alert them of an upcoming rift. A Tiered demon was coming, and they were all ready to leave their hangout to go get ready. And it wasn’t just them, pretty much everyone, other than Henry, was playing, and was about to leave to fight the Tiered Demon.

Prior to each Tiered Demon event, players for D.E.D. Exorcists would receive a countdown. The amount of time on the timer denoted the strength of the approaching enemy. An hour was given for the weakest of the Tiered demons, and there wasn’t word yet on what the countdown would be on the strongest demons.

The current timer was for an hour, and his friends were telling him to hurry up and download the game. If he hurried, he’d be able to complete the tutorial and find himself a low leveled D.E.D. for himself. Hell, his buddy JJ even offered to send him one of his higher leveled D.E.D.s in order to help him level faster.

That was the other trick to the game. Not only could you trade with other players, but the more you utilized your D.E.D., the stronger they became. They had a level system, and players were currently discovering you could even fuse your D.E.D.s together in order to create new and stronger versions. There was already a massive Reddit thread mentioning the various evolutions and combinations, as well as any special skills or traits players should look out for. In other words…the game had taken the world by storm.

Henry caved in. They were all going to leave him anyways to go after this new ‘threat’ and sitting at the hookah bar by himself didn’t really seem to be that exciting. Still, the upload was rather large, so he told them he would meet up with them once he was done using the Hookah Bar’s Wi-Fi to download the game. No reason to waste his own data, after all.

As such his friends had left, and he sat there watching the progress bar as the download counted down. Ever so slowly it crept closer and closer to completion until finally 100% flashed across the screen, along with a pentagram. A moment later, a message appeared before him.

Greetings Exorcist!

The text disappeared, as if breaking apart into a thousand blood red digital pieces.

Please choose your preferred method of identification:

Ocular or Fingerprint

A lot of phones nowadays had fingerprint scanners. For those that didn’t, Henry remembered players would let the app ‘scan their eyes’ in order to confirm who they were. The developers of the game had put these features into play in order to prevent clone accounts. Every person could only have a single account. And Henry had to give it to them, they went through quite the effort to ensure that was the case. Of course…that had also caused all sorts of drama with regards to collecting personal information. Some conspiracies had sprung up about the app really being part of the government as a way to collect biometric data on everyone.

But most people didn’t care. After all, they were already walking around with cameras and microphones in their pockets with GPS tracking devices in them as well. Not to mention most people had already had their fingerprints recorded at some point in time. Most of the people didn’t care about the game’s requirement, and they did it willingly.

Henry placed his thumb onto the screen, where he knew his fingerprint scanner was. A glowing light pulsed under the screen where his thumb was, and the strangest sound seemed to emanate from his phone. For a few moments the screen pulsed differing colors as a progress bar began to fill up at the top of the screen, showing it was ‘synchronizing’ his data with the system.

Exorcist Registered

The message shone brightly above the screen, and he grinned, looking down at it. While he’d avoided the game so far, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued by it. Part of the reason he’d avoided it was because now wasn’t the best time for him to get engrossed in a game. He’d just started college, and he doubted he would be able to put as much time as he normally did into these types of games. However, he’d taken that first plunge, and it was time to give the game a go.

Incoming Transmission from ???

Appeared on the screen, the dark emptiness of the screen throbbing with a strange light green glow. He’d expected the tutorial to begin, not this. Was the game sending him a phone call?

The thumbprint symbol appeared once more with the option to answer the call underneath it. Maybe this was the start of the tutorial? Maybe this was how they decided to try and get players invested, right off the bat?

Henry placed his finger on the thumbprint, holding it there as the answer gauge filled up. The moment that it did a figure appeared on the screen. A woman dressed in a much fancier, all black version of the exorcist’s outfits he’d seen in the commercial.

“Greetings Henry.” She said coolly. He could barely make out her eyes, so dark was the room around her. “And welcome to the ranks of Exorcists.” She held a hand up to her ear for a moment before her eyes, or at least the shadows of what he could see of them, seemed to grow hard.

“I wish we had more time to properly handle this. Just know your aid is greatly needed.” Her hand went back down from her ear. Whatever was going on, she’d received a message of some sorts. “A fellow exorcist will be at your location in a few moments. They will fill in all the details.”

She offered him a small smile.

“From this day forward, you will serve as a front-line defense against the demonic threat that threatens our world. Stay safe out there, and we will have a proper introduction at a later date. For now, we’ve got a Tiered Demon coming, and need to prepare.” And with that the screen went dark. All he had now was a dim, partially green, glowing screen before him, and a head full of questions.