Hundreds of miles beneath the Earth’s surface lived an agency comprising the finest alien hunters the world has ever known. Perhaps, at least by the twenty-first century, the only ones in operation, achieving such a job - The Underground Secret Legion of Freedom, alien hunters of the first degree.
Being so remote, receiving anything more than a notification of an incursion from their General proved unrealistic, yet somehow, to Colorado’s consternation, a white envelope found its way through the cave systems and landed on his desk chair. Their red square faced robot jittered with exasperation as the trespassing object arrived.
A call from the General patched through to the main line on the big screen that served as the central computer. Around it, brown brick walls that comprised the cave system, channelling into creatures forming in test tubes, and pipes which roared with the upper world's ferocity flowing through. The base, made of industrial noise and minimal colour, shot to life as Becks Specks rushed from one desk of duty to the next, while John the tea boy dashed around with similar urgency to bestow hot drinks upon each of the agents.
Colorado rejected the call from the General, which he would never otherwise do, instead fixated on the envelope nestled between his fingertips.
Dasido ignored the letter at first, instead engaged with the test tubes ahead of him containing a green serum and a bulbous alien head growing because of it. When Colorado waved the letter ahead of him, Dasido’s eyes glazed over it. Colorado shook it once or twice, and eventually tore it open, so Dasido took his attention away from his experiment, noticing the item that had no place in their base, yet had arrived there nonetheless.
“You obviously so desperately want my attention,” Dasido muttered, though the distraction caused him to drop the test tube, spiralling the serum onto the floor, allowing the little beige spider-like alien to scuttle away on its seven legs. Trudie Firefox, the resident vampire who hissed with the might of her two front fangs, partway through a mince pie, slammed her boot on the creature, killing it.
“It’s fine," Dasido sighed. "I can make another one.”
Trudie nodded; her mouth too full to issue a worthwhile apology. Instead, her only response came in an apathetic shrug.
As a vampire, Trudie had a very specific diet which excluded human confections. Maggots made up the mince of this pie and bark made up the pastry, and though she found this edible, she became full and chucked the crumbs onto the ground for their square-faced robotic assistant to hoover up. From Ready Maid’s chestplate emerged a green face lit up with a smile, which dropped to a crimson frown once it had devoured the pie. John, their native tea boy, ambled in with a grimace on his face at the prospect of Trudie not having been more satisfied towards the sweet treat that he had made her.
Though it was Christmas Day, Trudie’s fangs snarled whenever Colorado proposed the concept of celebrating the big day. Too afraid of her bite, he pacified her with the alternative - the celebration of anything but. While many listened to Mariah Carey and Wham!, they opted for Bob Marley instead. It surprised Colorado how much Trudie liked reggae. Once she finished the pie, she began to jive, and she pulled Becks up to dance too.
Becks, showing nothing other than her straight-lipped mouth and covering her eyes with her enormous black spy-glasses, sat with crossed legs, consistently shaking her head to refuse Trudie’s request to dance. Trudie danced anyway, waving about her arms like an emancipated prisoner of war, much to the amusement of King Krith - their guest for the holidays - who sat back in his chair, arch-backed, adjacent to Trudie.
Wearing drawn-out robes of silky red on one side and silkier green on the other, the plump King regained his royalty even in downtime, refusing to remove the silver crown from his head. The second of his kind to land on Earth - the first that Colorado had encountered - the orange-faced Monarch began to feel quite at home as he indulged in the selection box chocolates laid out before him. He considered humans great sources of entertainment - much more so than the content humans consumed on their television screens.
Colorado cut the music, forcing Trudie to pause. “Oh no,” Trudie said. “Here comes Doctor C again, announcing once again that the world’s about to end!”
“I quite like that nickname. Doctor C. I might keep it. I’m not here to warn you about an apocalypse. Believe me, King Krith: that’s a daily occurrence, but not today. Today is Christmas Day. We can hope for better, and if there is an invasion, it better be exciting. A real Christmas present of an attack! I’m a little bored, if I'm honest with you. That’s why this is so intriguing. This, which I hold in my left hand, is what appears to be a letter locked in an envelope, delivered to us from an unknown source above the surface, though there are no gaps that the letter could arrive through, no postboxes, no way in or out other than the teleport bracelets we wear on our wrists.”
“Then whatever sent it must share the sewers of Bristol with us,” Becks responded, removing her glasses very briefly to inspect the letter, but returning them to her face before anybody could see her eyes. John tried, and failed, to catch their colour. On the note, where a name would ordinarily be inscribed, were the words: an invitation.
Colorado tore the letter completely open, and a slip of paper fell out which morphed into a two-dimensional-square, then into a three-dimensional-box. Colorado picked it up, twisted about the top edges, and forced it to open up, revealing a sparkling amber light bright enough to match the sharpest sun. Trudie’s sensitivities to light forced her to duck under the nearest desk. The others, even King Krith, went towards it, allured by its powers of illumination. That light jumped from the box, forming into a separate square. What appeared as a gateway of light at first transformed into a wooden door that remained shut.
About to tug at the doorknob, something from the other side beat Colorado to it. Behind that door, a sparkling array of golden lights, a smiling man with an enormous moustache and an infinite top hat emerged at the newly formed passageway. He wore a golden tunic and tinsel wrapped around his neck. His complexion defined itself as inhumanly metallic. Trudie, out of intrigue, stepped forth to place her hand through his see-through heart, but her hand went straight through, and felt only her now moistened hand.
“He’s a puddle man!” Trudie exclaimed, having overcome her fear of the light, realising it was too artificial to harm her. “He’s a man made out of a puddle!”
The ringleader’s face went unchanged, still beaming. He spoke in an impeccably posh way. “Come forth, one and all, to your Christmas surprise! USLOF, defending the Earth and never so much as receiving a reward, so, here is an exclusive gift. Nobody likes playing games at any time more than Christmas, and this is the greatest game of them all - the murder mystery house! Thousands of simulated mysteries, at your disposal.”
Colorado stepped into the glowing golden hallway, which stretched on for as far as the eyes could make out. The others followed, though Trudie, possessing an ever-changeable mind, opted to remain with John, craving more of the grotesque treats her stomach suddenly found room for. Ready Maid attempted to roll in, but Colorado slammed the door before it could. The frown deepened on its chest.
Racing down the golden hallway with boyish excitement, Colorado passed doors labelled The Halloween Room and The Witch’s Nightmare, but stopped once he got two doors from the end. On the right hand side, the most tantalising mystery of all: Jack the Ripper.
The holographic ringleader emerged before that door with its palm exposed to hold him back. “You aren’t going to want to go through there. The simulation lost control of itself. The true Ripper got free and will kill any man, woman or child that he gets his hands on.”
Colorado spun around, noticing a room that caught both his and the ringleader’s attention. Labelled The Christmas Room, it appeared ripe for the festivities. The door creaked as Colorado navigated his way inside. His companions followed, and the ringleader vanished once the door slammed shut.
Concealed behind this door was what appeared to be a small cottage bordering the countryside. Snow had landed on the wintry trees that Colorado set his sights on once he rushed inside. Freezing, the place required heating up, with Dasido being the one to press the switch that lit up the automatic burner. King Krith dragged his body behind Becks. She poured herself some mulled wine and offered the King the same. He, a fan of human beverages, was hardly one to refuse.
Colorado opened the back door. The snow-lit yard led to the silence and the cold. He snorted deeply to get a deeper gauge of his surroundings.
“There’s nobody here. No sign of life, and there hasn’t been for some time. Yes, there’s wine in the cupboard and wood on the fire, but I think that’s for us. There’s no food, no washing up, no matted strands of the carpet, no greasy stains on any of the walls. The house is free from all life, and unless I’m mistaken, murder mysteries are all about life, or lack thereof. Without it, there’s no mystery, but we’re not free of questions - perhaps the mystery here is where everybody has gone.”
“Don’t you think of it as odd that we were selected as if it were a lottery,” Dasido commented. “It reeks of a trap to me, and I can't believe we were so stubborn as to walk into it.”
“Any opportunity for free wine is never going to be rejected by my kind!” King Krith said.
Becks took a deep gulp before standing, keen to move on. “Of course it wouldn’t! You’ve been living off our supplies for nearly a week now! Yes, you’re the King of the Krith, but it doesn’t give you that much of an excuse.”
"King of the Krith before he was deposed," Dasido added. "Everybody forgets to mention that."
"It's not really of importance right now!" The former King exclaimed.
“Something’s very wrong here,” Colorado declared. “Dasido’s right about that.”
Becks checked the drawers, believed to be empty but containing nothing more than weapons - a loaded gun with three bullets exposed in the magazine, a dagger slightly sharper than a kitchen knife, and a small but firm hammer. She closed the drawer again, believing it best that the weapons went unnoticed. She turned around to face the King, who placed his index finger on his inflated lips to promise their mutual secrecy.
Colorado stepped out into the winter mist, though as soon as he took one step from the doorstep, he ended up coming back through the door from which he had entered. He tried running next, tricking the system, but again he went round in circles. He tried pulling the handle that should have led to the staircase, but it seemed to be locked stiff. Dasido tried the door they had entered, but again it merely led him to the other side of the room.
“See what I said about this being a trap,” Dasido replied. “One that we can’t escape until there’s been a murder, and I’m suspecting the house is sentient, biding its patience, waiting for when one of us kills one of the others.”
Everything went pitch black. The night had dawned outside, causing the whites of the snow to beam into the cottage. Christmas lit the room in yellow and blue from the LEDs which previously went unnoticed. The room rotated, literally spun around, with a large green Christmas tree emerging in the living room corner. From one of the kitchen counters, a record player popped up playing Brenda Lee.
“I must return to Krith world,” King Krith insisted, trying the door handle once more. “I cannot abide by this strange fantasy reality for any longer!"
"We might be about to die," Becks said. "Yet all you care about are your riches."
Colorado tugged at his red robed sleeve. “If Dasido’s right, we must remain calm, because the house will try to play us against each other, to start a mystery that will kill one of us. I’m not sure of why.” Colorado squinted to face the oak bunker’s top corners, discovering a camera with a flickering red light watching over them. “Ah! I see what this is! They’re recording this! They’re going to use this as entertainment! That's why we've been invited! Eccentric characters, prone to volatile personalities. Of course the house would crave us!"
"How did the letter pass through the tunnel systems then?"
Dasido raised his hand, keen to answer. "We consider our world two dimensional. There's what's above the surface and what's below it, but there's also what's to the side of it. Other dimensions, other realms of existence, which operate in ways we cannot understand."
"And it seems we've stumbled into one of them," Colorado added.
The King stormed over to the weapons drawer but Becks stood in his way. “There’s no need for haste, your Majesty,” Becks remarked, holding the weapons drawer tight. “We’ll find a way out of here but we can only do that together."
Colorado leaned down to inspect underneath the sofa, opened all the cupboards, searched for clues that were nowhere to be seen. No carpet crumbs, no windowsill dust, just emptiness as the house awaited an unfolding mystery. The Monarch pushed Becks aside, discovering the weapons drawer and clasping the firearm for himself. He waved the weapon around at his opponents, forcing Colorado to raise his hands.
“It goes to show that madness can claim you as its victim even in the shortest of circumstances!” Colorado exclaimed. “Put the weapon down, please. You’re gaining nothing from this. This is a mystery. It requires teamwork and patience."
"Where did teamwork and patience get me when my throne was taken from me?" asked King Krith. "If I'd been more rash, I never would have lost to my opponents."
"You forget that your rashness was the reason you were deposed. We have a habit of getting out of tricky situations like this..."
"It's sort of our MO," Becks interjected.
"Indeed. You fire a bullet from that gun, and you give the house what it wants. We don't know it will let you go."
Krith rotated the muzzle so the line of fire met with Colorado’s Adam's apple. “Those are the rules, I believe. One of you has to die for me to escape this place. Would this team truly be lost without you, Doctor C? I don’t expect so, considering what you hide from your team, your one secret, the thing you would kill to hide.”
Colorado’s eyes turned to steel as he gritted his teeth. His right hand shivered, but he stopped the clattering by placing his left hand onto his glove. Calculating the right moment to jump, he leaped in, wrestling with the Krith for the weapon. A bullet fired from the muzzle, colliding with the half-used mulled wine glass. The King roared, as if mulled wine equated to a conscious entity. Colorado removed his glove, revealing a metal hand and an arm made out of circuitry. Once he touched Krith’s shoulder, an electric shock emerged that led him to drop the weapon which Colorado collected.
Dasido spotted a blue light sparkle upon the snow-dusted fields outside. At first, he thought of it as nothing but a star, though on closer inspection it imprisoned his eyes and made his hands jitter. His eyes became almost completely blue, his legs moving external to his control. Colorado spun around with the firearm in his hand, not expecting Dasido to bounce onto him, desperate for the gun himself. Once Dasido grasped it, he threw the weapon across the room, frightening Colorado with the sharp spark in his eyes. Becks grabbed the hammer and whacked Dasido in the head with it, causing Dasido to roll beside King Krith, who gradually began to stir. Becks dropped the hammer.
From the camera watching over them came a rippling applause, distant enough to be sourced from behind the wall. Whooping and hollering followed; victory at the prospect of their despair. Colorado stood, breathless, closing in on the camera which Becks stuck out her tongue at. The Krith’s eyes opened completely. He clasped the hammer, and snuck up to Becks and Colorado when their backs were turned, raising his arm...and...
SLAM!
The banging from Trudie's hands against the desk as Ready Maid pumped afro-beats from its circuits, back at base, which even it seemed to enjoy.
Trudie picked up a toffee penny, inspecting it and placing it in her mouth without removing the yellow wrapper. John rushed over, dropping the cup of tea he had made for her to provide her with a Heimlich manoeuvre. She spat out the penny and returned it to the box.
“Something for the others to enjoy when they get back!” Trudie said.
John picked up a DVD from the cabinet beneath Dasido’s computer, full of all sorts of films and programmes, but John chose Die Hard. His favourite Christmas film, as he told Trudie, but Trudie snatched it, reading the blurb, able to read faster than most.
“Ah, terrorists and explosions,” Trudie commented. “The true spirit of Christmas!”
John slotted it into the disc player. “I assure you, this will really get you into the festive spirit, even though I know you have no interest in doing anything remotely Christmassy.”
Trudie rolled up the swivel chair beside him. “Bad guys getting beaten up? Sounds like my sort of Christmas movie!”
“What about the others?” John asked, clapping his hands twice so Ready Maid, now their robotic servant, would drive the chocolates over to the desk where they sat. “Do you think they’ll be okay, or should we intervene to help?”
“They wandered into the problem,” Trudie said, grabbing one of the chocolates, unwrapping it this time. “They’re capable enough to wander out of it.”
King Krith was dead. Literally, lying dead on the floor. Face, blanket white and expressionless. Body, clear of blood, for the Krith did not bleed. Instead, puss sprouted from his chest where the bullet had hit him. Dasido arose, with eyes reverting to their default brown. The gun lay between Colorado and Becks. The audience behind the camera watched on in awe. Dasido picked up the weapon and inspected it. Wearing his lab coat in a cottage on Christmas Day, he’d felt quite ludicrous until now, when science finally became relevant, and there were other matters to contend with.
“Right!” Dasido clapped his hands, grabbing Becks’s left palm. He forced it around the gun to see how well it fit. He shook his head to shake away his malaise. He rubbed his forehead briefly, too. “It’s bizarre, that I get this funny feeling that I’m missing a part of the puzzle; that there was this blue light that caught my eyes, in the darkness…”
“The house, the simulation, taking control of you,” Colorado deduced. “It wanted a mystery, a murder, but the house knew it wouldn’t get one without interfering with our minds, so it became desperate, and indoctrinated you through hypnosis to get its way, for the sake of the audience watching over us."
“It’s not much of a mystery, though, if I freely admit that I did this?” Becks remarked, looking mournfully at the pussy Monarch’s body on the ground.
“I knew it!” Dasido chirped in an unseasonably high pitch. “The fit of your hand was just too accustomed to where to hold the trigger for any other outcome to be true.”
“It’s not the murder or the mystery that the house considers most important,” Colorado deduced, placing his finger on his chin dimple to mark his inquisitiveness. “It’s the template. Every murder mystery needs a victim and a handful of suspects, each with their own motives and alibis, correct?” Dasido and Becks nodded in unison. “Yet we came into this house and we were the only ones here. All the other simulations have a complete mystery. The hologram drew us to this simulation because it wanted us to be the beta testers, so that others can come in and play a game where the rules have been set."
“Like any good game,” Becks noted. “It needs people to test what works and what doesn’t.”
“We are those people, and now that we’ve given them what they wanted…” Colorado twisted the door handle, revealing the golden alleyway. He placed it on a latch, more interested in the snow-lit landscape turned to day outside. Photogenic, picturesque, Colorado believed the snowset deserved a photo on a good camera he did not have. “It would feel a shame not to get our reward, don’t you think?”
Colorado raced into the snow, holding his hands out, one human, one robotic, and spiralling around, letting snowflakes freely fall onto his nose and cheeks. Becks and Dasido followed, crossing their arms as if they were a child’s guardians, pleased he seemed to be having fun, but not having much fun themselves. The record player returned to action, aptly playing White Christmas.
Becks stayed back while Dasido whispered into Colorado’s ear. “What did King Krith mean, when he said that you had something worth hiding?”
Colorado’s joy evaporated. “He’s talking about Rufus Sharp. I never told you about what happened to him. About the Hive. About the Shadow. Dark forces are coming. His daughters, I believe, will want to find me, one day. They will want to find answers. We’ve got to be ready, Arnold, but I dare not speak the ghastly truth of what happened to him. Not yet. It's Christmas Day. It isn't the time."
Welcome to the Party, Pal, John McClane exclaimed.
Trudie had never enjoyed a human film so much before. She punched the air several times; a sensation vampires never thought they could experience while indulging in non-existent realities. John grinned, pleased at her elation during the film. His smile widened when the wooden door returned, with the three associates he knew most well, without the King they had brought under their wing.
"King Krith?" John asked. "He didn't come back with you?"
"He's part of the system now," Dasido remarked.
"You know what we could really do with?" Colorado asked.
"A cup of tea and a good sit down?" John leapt from his chair. "I'm on it!"
Colorado eventually settled a chair alongside the others, while Becks and Dasido concentrated on nothing other than their work.
“Come on, you owe yourselves a day off!” Trudie said. “It’s Christmas!”
“I took a life, manipulated situation or not,” Becks replied. “I’d rather do everything in my power to make myself forget that.”
“You forget, anyway, that the work I have been mastering, on these gestalt entities, broke earlier today because of the distraction that envelope provided,” Dasido added. “I can’t exactly take a day off when the work is this vital.”
Trudie shrugged. “Suit yourselves!”
Colorado crossed his legs, put his feet up on the desk, and escaped through the film that symbolised Christmas in no sense of the word. Tommy returned with three cups of tea, knowing how each of his immediate superiors liked their hot drinks.
"After this, I really fancy a game of something," Tommy said. "How about Cluedo?"
Dasido turned to Becks, rolling their eyes in unison, able to think of nothing worse.
USLOF will return this March for six new weekly audio adventures on YouTube. USLOF: Compendium One will be released in full on Amazon on 13th April 2024.
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