25 Brooding (1/2)
Sia is not pushed into Immersive Mode. This is different.
She is surrounded by darkness, but a luminescent blue mist is flowing all around her. It vaguely reminds her of her nightmare. Sia feels an odd pressure on her body that makes her move very slow. Breathing feels like a struggle.
”Hello?” She chokes out.
”Hello?....Puter?”
She wanders in one direction and holds her hands out to feel for walls. No matter how far she walks she does not collide with anything.
”Hello?!”
The visual prism pops up in mid air.
”Oh!”
Seeing the familiar object calms her within. The device isn't malfunctioning. This must be an unfamiliar program.
'What is this program supposed to do?'
Sia walks over to it. It is several feet above her head.
”Uh..,” She reaches up for the prism, but she can't even touch it with her fingertips.
She jumps to grab it out of the sky. On the third try, she jumps and grasps it with both hands. It releases from its position as she falls back toward the ground. The images inside keep flashing to different walls and doors.
”What the heck, man. What are you doing?!”
She investigates the triangular window and sees a bitten-up lunch table. The half-eaten roach carcasses are a sign that these things are not having a good time themselves. Sia's body must be the last piece of fresh produce in a grocery store, and these guys are ravenous vegans.
'If only. I would trade them for those worms. Any day.'
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The nearest locker room is inaccessible with the infestation following behind It. It needs to lose the horde before getting the keys to the generator area. It runs into the cafeteria and slides behind a turned over table. It starts taking off each shoe.
Roach carcasses are open and left splayed across the room to snack on later. The plastic trays have been torn to bits. From its position, it can see the broken kitchen doors hanging off the hinges. The kitchen is probably completely totaled.
Crouching beside a table that is on its side hides Sia's body from view for a moment. Roaches are streaming into the room. Its shoes are off, so it pulls out the laces. It twirls the laces around each other and watches the rest of the horde stream into the room.
With a burst of speed, It slides past the last roach and slams the doors on it. Weaving the laces into a quick knot takes a short moment while its hands are enhanced. It doesn't hold for long but by the time it snaps open and the doors fall off the hinges, Sia's body is rounding a corner then sliding into the side hallway stairwell.
It rushes up two flights of stairs. The timer ends right as the door to the 3rd floor closes behind it.
0:00
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
REHABILITATION NEEDED
Sia jumps as the computerized voice speaks from the sky.
”We're safe. You did well,” She waves the prism at the sky.
REHABILITATION NEEDED
T1M3.out DEACTIVATED
The blue mist swirls around Sia and she closes her eyes to stop herself from becoming dizzy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sia stumbles as she is given back control of her body.
'You okay up there?'
STANDBY
Sia blinks at that response and starts investigating the area. The third floor is very similar to the first floor. Her feet softly pad across the floor. Sia is glad she has always favored thick socks. The past few days have been torture on them, but they have stayed intact the entire time. Walking along the cold dusty floors barefoot would have made this a little more unbearable.
The main hall connects to another hall which connects to another…it's a square that meets back at the start. She did not see any other fire exits to get off this floor.
'Did they expect everyone to leave from this stairwell then out to the front? Buildings usually have more than one exit for an emergency.'
She walks down the main hall once again and goes to a door marked in red. The first pass down the halls revealed that, like the first floor, each door has a color marked on the nameplate. Most of them are the same colors that are on the key ring she acquired. She walks over to a door marked in red, a Chemistry lab, and sticks the red key into the lock. Turning the key to the left produces the comforting sound of an unlocking door.
'The keys must be skeleton keys for the specific colors. If only one of them was purple.'
She opens the door and sits inside onto the floor. She wipes some sweat off her face with her hand. A slick substance replaces the sweat and she sighs. It's the one that had been damaged.
She stares at her hand. Flexing the fingers don't broadcast any pain. The hand appears to be the same one.
'It looks the same. Well…,' She notices a scar that used to be on the base of her thumb is gone.
”Well, almost the same.”
'How much longer until we recharge again?'
STANDBY
60 MINUTES REMAINING
'An hour…okay. Okay. I can survive an hour.'
Sia settles down and listens from beside the door. It would be just her luck to get insanely close to a solution and be stopped by an infestation. Next, she expects that the deer from before will break in to finish what it started outside. This world keeps revealing its abnormalities, and it is tiring her out. She's not searching for all these answers, just one. Just one revelation is enough for her. She doesn't need to become informed about them all. Don't they understand that she doesn't belong here? Why won't they leave her alone?
One hour later…
She pulls her backpack around and opens it to get some food. After preparing the MRE, she eats and ignores the weird taste. Her eyes wander around the room as she chews. There are tables, chairs, and two desks off to the side with computers on them. There is a whiteboard that was poorly erased. Mathematics equations are only half cut off. There is a storage room. The shutters on the windows block out the world outside. They are tan shutters and appear to be the heavy sort that protects occupants from broken glass if a storm damaged the windows.
She eyes the door at the back of the room.
'There is a storage room.'
She leaves her backpack behind while she inspects the storage room. There are locked storage cabinets. She pulls out her key ring and fingers the keys on it. The striped keys seem odd. None of the rooms she has seen have striped colors on them. She holds the red and black key and the red and green key up. She tries the red and green key first. It's too small for this lock.
The red and black striped key unlocks the storage cabinet. Some squeeze bottles and other containers are the only things that remain. The rest of the cabinets are empty. Sia sighs and walks back into the main room.
She walks over to a shutter and peeks outside. The sun has officially set, and it is pitchback outside.
She goes back to her backpack and drinks some water. It goes down the wrong pipe and she chokes a bit on the fluid.
”Gaaah…. aah. Survive all of that and I'm taken out by my own water,” Sia chuckles at herself.
She hears a scratching sound and freezes. She looks around without moving her head. The scratching stops. After a few minutes, Sia's heart calms down. She holds back a sigh.
'I can't let this be it. I might be able to contact my family if I can just get the power on and work these computers.'
She gets up and puts her hands on her head. She walks around some tables and sets her water bottle down on a table. Her slow pacing doesn't help clear her mind.
'I just need to hide until I know how to kill those suckers. Fuuuh…It would be roaches, wouldn't it? The one species of bug that can survive a nuclear blast.'
She picks up her water.