Chapter 29, Another Knock
Subtitle: Sea of Fog
“You’re up,” Kayla said. She was smiling at Waylen like they weren’t gazelles herded from cage to cage. But under the surface Waylen noticed tension strung through her, from the neck to her hands.
Waylen stared back at her. She held a water bottle in one hand and her phone in the other.
What the fuck.
What the flying fuck.
Were the last two hours one long involuntary drug trip?
She walked closer. Her fingers brushed his hands, shoulders, arms, and scalp. She nodded. She was checking for injuries.
With both arms.
“Yashin used his credits or whatever to heal me, and I told the voice to heal you,” she said.
“And don’t think about experimenting whether we’re in a dream we can wake up from. The healing surcharge costs more and more per use. Something about a first time discount. I don’t think Yashin or I have money for one more healing even if we put our funds together,” she said.
“Was it the Broker?” Waylen asked. He had a fuck ton of questions, but better to go slow. “What’s the time?”
“It was the automated voice, but everything has a price. Don’t pay for anything else until we explain what we’ve found,” she added. “And it’s 10:36 PM, on a Friday night. The entire week seems to have passed, so we’re at the end of the week on Friday. I haven’t seen the Broker so far.”
Waylen put down the pillow and lamp. She wasn’t the Creature or Broker in disguise, just Kayla wearing the same gray shirt and pants. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.
“Yeah so, I fucking asked to be brought home, but the voice could only make this room like my real one.” Kayla shrugged. “It even knows I like to have blackout drapes for better sleep. Creepy as shit. But I had to pay some credits for the furnishing.”
Wait, how does healing work? If they could heal all this and morph their rooms, could they heal his mom's arthritis? But was this connected to Klaus’s condition? Waylen wasn’t fully healed, only injuries since the mission began were gone, and not mental wear and tear? Did that mean only physical injuries sustained inside the work week could be healed?
Could people be brought back? Maria and Dean came to mind. They were strangers but even if it cost him a lot, he had to try to bring them back.
“Could we bring back Maria and Dean.” Waylen gestured at his healed foot.
Kayla’s eyes lit up, but darkness replaced it a moment after.
“Don’t try it,” she said.
He gestured that he would attempt it, not her.
She sighed.
“What would it cost to bring back Maria and Dean?” Waylen asked. There might be a price he couldn’t pay, but window shopping was free. At least he hoped.
“System Log 1: Hello World.”
“Revival capability is permanently inaccessible. Only the Corporate trademark, incorporated in the year XXX, is eternal, all else succumbs, quarter by quarter. Log End.”
“There are no other logs available.”
“Well shit,” Kayla uttered.
“Damn, so if we die, that’s it,” Waylen said.
They stood like that in silence for half a dozen seconds.
“When you get a chance, leave some parting words on your phone and send it to me and Yashin. Even without access to anything from the outside world, note apps still work. No one will open anyone else's stuff,” Kayla said. “I know what it's like for friends to leave nothing behind when they pass. If there's a chance even one of our phones will be found years from now…”
Morbid but realistic, he approved and nodded. “Yeah, sometimes we gotta gamble on a fountain wish, don’t we?”
She nodded back and held back a laugh. “What, so Kenny Rogers is your favourite musician, huh, Mr. Gambler?”
He couldn’t help it. Old coping mechanisms die like roach infestations. You think you got it all out of your system but there’s always eggs waiting to hatch again.
A niggling thought crawled to mind. The phone said a whole workweek had passed since Sunday night. Could they even trust their phones?
Kayla getting her arm back should have been impossible—well a vampire should also be equally impossible, or a self-rearranging mansion. His thoughts collided so fast he couldn't completely finish them, every question created five more.
He was just a warehouse worker with work next week. He needed a fucking drink, neat, and coming one after another. Not to think about a global human trafficking torture arena.
He stuffed down those jitters. His back straightened as he locked eyes with Kayla.
Her eyes were steeled and steady.
“When did we arrive at these rooms?” Waylen asked.
“5 PM Friday night,” she answered.
“How did you clean me?” Waylen asked. “I saw a bathroom door but the water would have woke me up.”
“Yeah, it’s just a two credit cost for a free cleaning. Basic room furnishings are one of the few things I found when I asked for discounts. Apparently ‘presentability’ pricing means the first purchase is way way down. It was like damn magic, you floated like a princess on air,” Kayla said, flitting her fingers.
Waylen laughed but noticed her left hand jittering. She probably needed a smoke, but none of the windows worked. Was she holding herself back for their sakes?
“The windows are a lie right? Just another repackaged illusion of freedom,” Waylen asked.
“Yeah they are. Also—”
Another head peeked around the door. Yashin sprinted at Waylen.
Waylen wasn’t fully awake, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. Yashin hugged him and tears rolled down the teen’s cheeks. Waylen couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hugged. Maybe his one semester at college, or was it back in high school?
Waylen didn't mind it. He blinked through his hesitation and eventually hugged back. And of course Yashin was as clean as they were.
“I–I could only get the system to heal wounds from the mission,” Yashin said, releasing the hold. “I thought we would be safe after we left, but we're still trapped.”
“So where are we then?” Waylen asked.
Kayla shook her head, and Yashin tried but failed to form words.
Then she used her finger to silently gesture that he follow her outside the room.
“We still don’t have service, and the voice won’t answer, but…” Kayla said.
Beyond the door was a narrow hallway of bare concrete. There were four wooden doors with brass handles and three had nameplates, one with the name Mr. Whitaker, another Mr. Chopra. The one they came from had Ms. Idaho. Kayla frowned when she looked at her door. The last door at the end of the hallway was an unmarked nondescript Mahagonay brown.
The ceiling had high clearance, Waylen guessed twenty feet or so. The lights were the same lights that buzzed like flies in the room he woke up in.
“It’s minimalist brutalism. Functional, but it never was a style I liked. Of course we get this in a prison controlled by the hyperconsumerist Broker fucker,” Kayla said.
“The items we took?” Waylen asked.
“In Yashin's room. Like you we also woke up in the concrete cells,” she said.
“Suppose you’ve tried to break out by now,” Waylen said.
“I could lie and tell you that I waited for you, but yeah, I did try. No luck,” Kayla replied. “Good news though: we did find some… options.”
Kayla put a hand on the wall, then voiced a question, “show us what we are permitted to do.”
“Minimal permissions until inducted by guide.”
“Availible Markets: Room Alterations, Healing Service, Cleaning Service (Discounted), and Corner Shop.
“Buyable Rights: Team Linkage (Purchased), Basic Information Package (Purchased).”
The categories appeared as words printed on the concrete wall.
“The corner shop has stuff like chargers, fast food, and clothes, nothing industrial. Uh, I tried to get another phone and the minimal permissions thing showed up,” Yashin said.
“And of course they don’t sell a lighter, unlike literally every other corner store in existence,” Kayla said. “It’s fucked up that the mansion burning down was the one and only chance.”
The mention of the mansion fire sent a jolt through Waylen. If they started a fire here would there be a fire escape, or would they be left to die?
Waylen put a hand on the wall. “Free us.”
Minimal permissions until inducted by guide.
“You also had to pay insane amounts to not be squished, right?” Kayla asked Yashin. The teen nodded.
“Just like L.A, you can buy every type of furniture under the sun, huanghuali, African pink ivory, but not a way out of gridlock or concrete cells, fucking hell,” Kayla slurred.
“I haven't signed the dotted line for renting a bigger room. It's still a dog crate in all but the level of evil intent by the creator,” Waylen said.
“We can figure out if it was senseless or not later, we moved you to our room after healing either way,“ Kayla said.
“Um, do you think they put something in our skulls to scan how our room looks from memory?” Yashin asked. His hand hovered a centimetre away from the wall.
“Or they broke into your home and took pictures. Did you ever post your room on social media?” Waylen asked.
“Never.”
“Fuck.”
“At least I was able to get a charger!” Yashin said. He pointed to his phone at full battery. Waylen smiled with the teen.
“Drink,” Kayla gave Waylen a bottle of water. He suddenly realised how thirsty he was and downed the entire bottle in one go.
“Eat up,“ Kayla handed Waylen a protein bar, it had no brand but did have nutritional information. Like most of the stuff at real corner stores it branded itself as healthy but actually had near zero nutritional value. Still, food was food so Waylen was grateful.
He didn’t eat to relieve stress like his friend Henrick,but he knew what it was like returning to a foodless home after a long day.
“Yeah, it tastes like dogfood cooled and reheated fifteen times. And I don’t even wanna think about if the food is laced with something, but we’ve gotta eat don’t we?” Kayla said.
Waylen took a bite. It tasted like some groundmeal mix of expired cheerios and chalky potato mashed together, boiled, then left to dry in the sun for good measure. He had to force it down, it wasn’t the first time he’d done similar for worse food.
“Yuck. It’s nasty,” Yashin said. “I asked for chapathi or rice and it only offered instant stuff with no rice cooker. Not even pots and pans are available."
“Even McDonalds would be better than this, but they only have milkwarm stale fucking salads,” Kayla said.
“And–and last and in no way least, even if the Broker did do all that to us, we are healed right?” Yashin said. “The silver, person, thing can’t be that bad. There was a whole light from above, it covered Kayla and her arm came back, almost like a divine aid.”
“Abusive asshats also throw a bandage roll your way after punching you,” Kayla muttered.
“Kayla’s right. But people with this level of power don’t ever do things just to be good. Or if they get caught go to prison,” Waylen said. “If they do, their friends in high places make sure they go to a five star resort with a ball n’ chain in name only. Somewhere they can monitor their investments and get revenge on everyone else. You all saw those notes in the study, rich people walk free, and everyone else picks up the wreckage. We can’t think to bring them down, only get outta the way, get home.”
“Hmm,” Yashin mumbled, “you’re right.”
So many damn mysteries. Of course the mansion was unnatural too so these places must be connected.
Waylen kicked his work boots against the wall. It did nothing, like it was the same concrete from the warehouse. He offered a thought. “Were we kidnapped by aliens?”
“I don’t think it's aliens. Nor the government, they can’t even build a mile of rail,” Kayla laughed. It was the dry kind of laugh Waylen recognized from work.
“So we play along, run and hide until we bust out this bin?” Waylen said. He knew he was being watched, and so he had to mask his intentions. The desire for subtly on his mind filtered into his words, but he figured it was probably useless.
“Don’t worry about keeping it subtle,” Kayla said. She picked up on his unspoken thoughts. That or Waylen was just a terrible actor. “We can't break out guns blazing. It's not like the mansion, we're trapped in here by some different fuckery.”
All those hours ago, Maria asked about the air supply, and Waylen saw no vents here.
The stress on Waylen’s back kept gaining momentum like a boulder rolling down a hill, he had to jump on these problems or they’d landslide over him. He had never been to prison but based on what the last couple hours had been like, damn could he see the need to lash out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
“That Broker fucker, he’s watching us right now isn’t he? He’s savouring every look of confusion with a sense of superiority, I just fucking know it,” Waylen said.
Just then they heard a knock on the black door at the end of the hallway.
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