HXH: The Deck of Infinite Hatsu

[Kurowashi]

— Marcus Webb –

The smoke didn't smell like fire.

It smelled like plastic left too close to a heater — sweet, chemical, quietly wrong — and Marcus Webb lifted his head from the pillow and sniffed twice because his body had learned the hard way that bad news deserved a second opinion before the brain signed off on it.

2:17 a.m. Room 714. Seventh floor. First night of the business trip he'd been pretending not to care about.

The air conditioner had been running since he checked in, too loud and too cold, and he still hadn't figured out how to turn it down without calling the front desk and sounding like the kind of guy who complained about room temperature in a hotel that charged ninety bucks a night for parking. His phone sat on the nightstand with no new messages. The client could wait until morning. The group home definitely wasn't texting back — not after he'd skipped the last three holiday check-ins and felt guilty about it in the distant, adult way you feel guilty about a bill you keep meaning to pay and never do.

Should've called, Marcus thought. Should've called and said Hey, I'm alive, sorry I'm a shitty orphan. They would've hung up on hold music anyway. He swung his legs off the bed. Bare feet on carpet the color of old oatmeal. He'd noticed that at check-in, along with everything else: which way the door swung, where the stairwell sign hung, whether the window actually opened or just looked like it did for insurance purposes—nine hours in this city. Not enough to learn a building, but he'd tried anyway, because trying was easier than admitting new places made his skin crawl and he wasn't about to die on a business trip because he was too proud to memorize an exit map.

Great life choice, Marcus. Fly three hours to reboot a server rack in a city you've never seen. Very protagonist energy. Except you're not the protagonist. You're the IT guy who dies in the B-plot, so the actual hero has motivation.

He'd posted about that exact trope on a forum once, at 2 a.m., under a username he wouldn't admit to in daylight. The expendable tech support character always dies in act one to give the MC emotional stakes.

Someone replied: bro that's you. He'd blocked them. They were right. He was right now living the reply.

At check-in he'd done the thing — the thing that made coworkers call him weird and that had kept him alive in group homes where weird was a feature. Counted steps from elevator to room. Noted fire extinguisher on floor six, missing on floor seven, because of course. Tested the window latch — fake, decorative, useless except as a lawsuit shield. Memorized the vending machine alcove because alcoves had walls on three sides and that was practically a fort if you squinted.

Fort, he'd thought, and then felt stupid, because he was twenty-six and staying in a hotel that smelled like old carpet and regret, not building a blanket nest like a kid.

Kid logic kept you alive, a quieter part of him had answered. Adult logic got you a ThinkPad and a client who thinks rebooting a rack at 6 a.m. is "urgent."

He'd lain awake anyway, listening to the AC war with the walls. Mapped the room in the dark: bed to door, twelve steps. Nightstand. Bathroom four steps left. No second exit. One way out through a hallway he hadn't walked yet because he'd been too tired and too proud.

Pride, he thought now, smoke curling under the ceiling. Great investment. Really outperforming the market.

Through the peephole, the hallway glowed orange along the baseboards. Smoke moved along the ceiling in slow, patient curls, like it had all night to get somewhere and wasn't in a hurry to explain itself.

Stairs, he thought. Not the elevator. You read that somewhere. You always read that somewhere approximately five minutes after you needed to.

He opened the door. Heat hit his face like opening an oven someone had been preheating for murder. His eyes watered immediately. Down the hall, a running-man sign pointed left.

He slipped out and pulled the door shut behind him. The laptop was still on the bed. The wallet was on the nightstand. He thought about going back for either of them. He decided against it, because dead men didn't need receipts and he had a strong suspicion he was about to become a dead man if he wasted time grabbing a ThinkPad he'd been planning to replace for two years anyway.

ThinkPad's got your browser history, a helpful part of his brain offered. Die with dignity. Leave the porn tabs for IT.

Left, then.

The carpet ended where the hall split. More smoke poured from the right — the direction the sign had not pointed, because apparently this building hated him personally. Someone was shouting two floors down, voice cracked with rage or terror. Marcus couldn't tell which. He'd never been good at other people's feelings. His own were simpler tonight. One word, on a loop.

Out.

The stairwell door had a cool metal handle.

He yanked it.

Locked.

He stared at the red placard he'd missed in the dim light. Emergency exit. Alarm will sound. A bar across the mechanism that didn't budge when he hit it with both palms, like the building had decided this was a drill, and he hadn't been invited.

Of course it's locked. Of course. You don't get a clean exit in a hotel fire. You get a tutorial boss that teaches you the game hates you.

RNG bullshit, he thought, because dying in a fire wasn't dramatic enough — it had to be locked door RNG. If this were a game, he'd be writing a one-star review titled DO NOT RECOMMEND DYING HERE.

Behind him, a door opened. A man in a bathrobe stumbled into the hall, saw Marcus, and grabbed his arm hard enough to hurt.

"Elevator," the man said. He smelled like cigarettes and cheap cologne and panic. "Come on — service corridor by the linen closet. Faster."

"No—" Marcus started.

The man was already pulling him the other way, back toward the smoke Marcus had seen pouring from the wrong side of the junction. Back toward the part of the hotel that made sense on a floor plan and stopped making sense the moment the walls were full of it.

"I know this place," the man said, wheezing. "Worked here six years. Service side's always faster."

You know the part you use when nothing's burning, Marcus thought. You know the shortcuts the guests don't get. Congratulations. So does every horror movie victim who dies in the maintenance wing.

NPC quest-giver energy, Marcus added, because his brain was broken and this was apparently how he processed terror. "Take the secret path!" Sure, buddy. I've seen that cutscene. Spoiler: we both die.

But his lungs were already burning, and the locked stairwell had felt less like a door and more like a judge, and cowards still moved when someone stronger grabbed their arm because the alternative was standing still until the smoke won.

So he let himself be dragged.

Right turn. Linoleum instead of carpet. Pipes along the ceiling. The air tasted like bleach and hot wiring and the specific despair of a corridor built for people who already knew where they were going. Marcus didn't. He was just the asshole in dress socks getting towed through someone else's mental map.

Service corridor, he thought, counting nothing useful because counting was the only thing his panic knew how to do. No exits marked. No guest map. This is the DLC zone they don't put on the website.

The man slowed. "Should be a—"

A green door. Chipped paint. Authorized personnel. The handle turned. Beyond it: not stairs. A landing, another door, and then a maintenance closet — mops, buckets, chemical bottles with labels faded to ghosts, one bare bulb swaying slightly, though there was no wind and no reason for anything in this building to be dramatic except the fire.

The man bent over, coughing. Marcus's chest tightened anyway.

Not stairs. "Where the fuck are the stairs?" Marcus asked, which was the first useful thing he'd said all night and also the last, probably. The man didn't answer. He was too busy hacking up whatever he'd inhaled on the way in.

Cool. Cool cool cool. NPC led us to a mop closet. Achievement unlocked: Dumbest Death in the Pacific Northwest.

Marcus turned back.

The corridor behind them had gone gray. Not smoke-gray. Gone-gray. The emergency strips were swallowed. His foot hit something soft on the floor — a uniform jacket, dropped and forgotten — and he didn't stop to wonder who'd left it because wondering got you killed in situations like this and he had no interest in being the guy who died mid-investigation.

He ran.

His lungs rebelled. Each breath was half air, half heat. His eyes streamed. The hall forked again, and neither branch looked like mercy. He chose left because his body chose left when his mind had nothing left, which was not a great decision-making framework, but it was the only one he had.

There should have been an exit sign. There wasn't.

There should have been a map in his head — nine hours in the room, one walk to the vending machine, one to the ice machine, one guilty glance at the elevator he'd promised himself he wouldn't need because elevators in fires were for people in movies who had plot armor. A map made of crumbs. He'd lived on crumbs before. Group homes, foster placements, the kind of childhood where you learned which doors were safe by trial and error. This building had just been honest about not feeding him enough of them.

Should've walked every floor. Should've fucked the maid. Should've slept in the airport. Should've told the client the server could wait until Monday. Should've called the group home back. Should've—

His shoulder hit the wall. He bounced off, kept moving. Door handle. Locked. Another. Locked. The roar in his ears wasn't the fire anymore. It was blood, or lack of oxygen, or the stupid certainty that he'd always known how this kind of night ended if you didn't learn the layout fast enough.

This is why I map buildings, he thought, which was the most pathetic final insight of his life. Not paranoia. Preparation. And I prepared for jack shit.

He slid down the last door he tried. Cold metal against his cheek. Somewhere far off, a siren finally found the building, which was great- really, fantastic timing, thank you for the ambulance cosplay.

You flew three hours to reboot a server rack, and you're gonna die in a hallway that isn't even on the guest map. They'll find your body next to a mop closet. IT will send someone else. The ticket will get closed as resolved.

Very dignified.

Ticket #4471: User deceased. Status: Closed. Resolution: Replaced hardware.

Smoke came under the door like water filling a room.

His hand twitched on the carpet. Reflex. Habit. Like something might answer if he pushed hard enough — some cheat code, some save point, some bullshit he'd read about at two in the morning on forums where people argued about power systems in fiction like they were tax law.

Alt+F4, he thought. Respawn. New game plus. Anything.

Nothing did.

The siren got closer.

Marcus Webb stopped breathing.

Well, he thought, with the last scrap of humor he had left. At least the AC won't be too cold anymore.

---
End Chapter 1