Daiyu and Anastasia - 13:16 - Day 1

Daiyu walked through the tunnel, closely followed by Anastasia who still was muttering insults about the jellyfish to herself. Anastasia's loyalty was out of the question, she had an almost fanatical devotion to their cause, still, Daiyu wished sometimes that she could control her temper better. Working with her was like using a double-edged sword where one had to be careful not to hurt themselves. On one side she had done an excellent job rounding up the traitors inside the palace, on another hand she had stabbed out the eye of an important merchant after he suggested showing some mercy and not executing all mentioned traitors with their entire families. “Weeds must be pulled out by the roots to prevent them from re-emerging.” She had told him, while he was bleeding all over the floor, and after triple checking that he had no ties whatsoever to the soon-to-be executed, he got a prosthetic eye and was sent off with an not all to heartwarming apology.

Daiyu sighed. We have to get out of here. Not to think of what might happen if the word of her absence makes its way to the wrong ears. After walking for a couple of minutes they saw a dim light at the end of the tunnel and after reaching the end they found themselves in something that looked like a tropical aqua park. In the dim light, they made out a couple of pools and hot tubes, but everything looked turned off or in some kind of power save mode, not a single sound could be heard except the occasional tiny wave rolling to the edge of the pools. As they continued to stroll on Anastasia said. “Looks like a theme park, after hours.” Daiyu nodded in agreement.

Suddenly Anastasia rushed past Daiyu and took a defensive posture. “What the fuck is this?” Somewhere in the middle of the area they reached a small roofed building inside a pool. Daiyu looked over Anastasia's shoulder. “A pool bar?” The pool bar had two counters, one where you could relax in the water and one where you could sit outside the pool on normal stools. Then she saw it too! Behind the counter was standing a yellow thing, build like a bodybuilder and wearing a barkeeper outfit. The oddest part was that it had no neck, not even a face. A half sphere just grew right out of the shoulders, without a nose or mouth. Just two expressionless eyes stared past them without reaction. “Who are you? No, what are you?” shouted Anastasia. For a moment nobody moved a muscle.

Anastasia turned to Daiyu. “Wait here.” The thing still didn’t move at all and Anastasia slowly approached the counter. “What is it?” Asked Daiyu. Anastasia approached one of the stools and sat down, but nothing happened. “It’s off…I think. Or maybe just a statue?” she answered.

After another moment Daiyu caught up with Anastasia and took the seat next to her. Anastasia raised her hand. “Barkeeper, one Beer.” But still, the muscular thing didn’t do anything. They looked at each other and Anastasia shrugged, then jumped over the counter with a swift move. “Look! There are some fridges under here.” She said to Daiyu and crouched down, in a moment she resurfaced and put a can of orange juice in front of Daiyu and opened one for herself. Daiyu slurped on her can and said. “We need to find that ‘secret’-exit as soon as possible.” Anastasia nodded and started searching the other fridges for beer. Daiyu let her eyes wander over the extravagant area. Looks like that Jellyfish really intends to treat us as guests. “Fuck!” sighed Anastasia frustrated. “No Beer.” She took a last sip from her can, then crushed it and threw it against the head of the barkeeper-thing.

With a booming noise, the thing turned on and the eyes lit up red, within a split-second it turned towards Anastasia and reached for her arm. Her survival instincts kicked in and she dodged it with a quick turn, then she jumped backward on the counter. Daiyu and Anastasia knew each other for so long that what followed seemed like a perfectly trained show performance, without saying anything the two women launched their counterattack. Daiyu also threw her can at the thing, right between its eyes. When it turned its attention toward her, Anastasia performed a front flip and stuck her heel bone deep inside the thing's head, she landed perfectly on her feet like a cat and rushed back into safety behind the counter. In addition to that Daiyu had begun to throw the stools at the thing after Anastasia made it out of there. The thing staggered and fell to the ground, unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. It made an alarming sound and slowly stood up again, the dent inside its head smoothed out, like pumping up a ball. “We need to run!” shouted Anastasia, her eyes where fixated on something behind Daiyu. She also turned around and saw two more of the things sprinting in their direction, this time they didn’t wear barkeeper uniforms, they weren’t wearing anything at all. Both girls immediately started to sprint away in the opposite direction, they rushed past other pools and hot tubes when Daiyu who was upfront pointed at an open passage a couple of meters away. 

Without saying anything Anastasia followed Daiyu and they both sprinted through it, closely followed by the sound of two pairs of heavy, barefooted feet. They found themselves in another giant hall, this time designed like a high school cafeteria. The same as before also this area had only a dim light. Like in any other normal cafeteria next to the food counter was a swing door that led into a kitchen, fast they hid behind it. Just in time, the two yellow, naked things rushed through the passage and came to a slithering halt. Daiyu risked a peek through the round window in the door and saw how both things activated some kind of scan mode, their eyes lit up again and they looked under every table slowly approaching the door behind which Daiyu and Anastasia took cover. This time Anastasia was the one who saw another way out, she pulled at Daiyu’s arm at pointed at a sealed door that looked like it led to a cold storage room. Without much hesitation, they sneaked past shelves with kitchen equipment, opened it, and slipped into the cold room. “What the fuck.” Exhaled Anastasia quietly. “I know, right?” whispered Daiyu back, she held her ear against the cold metal door. At first, she couldn’t hear anything but shortly after the swing door to the kitchen opened with a bang, heavy steps slowly stomped around and some of the equipment fell to the ground as the things kept scanning the area, slowly approaching Daiyu’s and Anastasia’s hideout.

Daiyu gave Anastasia a sign and together they looked for somewhere to hide. The storage room was filled with food, the room temperature was set to +2°C, large chunks of beef- and pork meat hung from hooks off the ceiling and all kinds of vegetables were stored in boxes on the shelves. Daiyu started to build a wall of boxes in the corner of the room and Anastasia helped her, just when it was big enough that one person could hide behind it they could hear the heavy steps again, this time directly behind their door. Anastasia quickly pushed Daiyu into cover, she could hear how the bolt on the door moved, and just before the door opened Anastasia did the next best thing she could come up with. She jumped behind one of the beef halves, holding herself with her hands at the hook, pulling her legs up, and hid behind the big ribcage. The door opened and through a gap in the boxes Daiyu saw how one of the things entered the cold storage, it was so big it had to be bent over to fit in the room, and the other one seemed to search elsewhere. Slowly it stomped through the room, looking from left to right and scanning everything. Daiyu took another peek, this time at Anastasia who quietly was hanging behind a giant chunk of beef, it slowly swung from one side to another from her last-minute jump. Daiyu was confident that Anastasia could manage to hang on for a couple of minutes, she just hoped the meat chunk would stop moving before the giant got too close.

Please don’t see her. Please don’t see her. Please don’t see her. Daiyu started praying to any entity that was willing to listen. The thing came closer, looking behind every box, every shelf, and meat chunk. Please don’t fucking see her! It almost reached Anastasia, luckily the beef halve had stopped just now. Anastasia’s meat chunk was one of the last inside the room, now the thing was staring directly at her hideout coming closer step by step. Daiyu could hear a quiet humming when the thing used its eyes to scan. The red light fell on the other side of the beef halve slowly searching from up to down, then it suddenly stopped. Ou shit… It turned its head slightly towards the door, as if an unhearable voice was calling it, then it turned around, left the room, and closed the door.

After a few heartbeats that felt much longer than just that Anastasia let go of the hook and Daiyu exhaled relieved. “Phew. That was straight out of a horror movie.” And Anastasia nodded in agreement. She took a carrot from one of the boxes, took a bite, and asked Daiyu. “What now?” Daiyu also browsed briefly through the boxes but didn’t eat anything after all and answered. “We wait here a couple of minutes, just to be sure. Then we go find that secret exit and get the fuck out of here.”

Mike, Schwarz and Shady - 14:03 - Day 1

„So what did he show you?“ asked Schwarz. “Hmm,” Mike closed his eyes and tried to focus. “Hard to say, it’s like trying to remember a dream after waking up. It’s there but I can’t get hold of the thought.” Schwarz scratched his chin. “He mentioned that it could take some time until the new information got hold within your memory, ok fine. As soon as you get anything you report to me, got it?” Mike who had been sitting in Schwarz’s chair put his legs on the table and stretched. “Yawn…, k boss.”

After all of them had established their own room Qualli had shown them around a little bit more before giving them some time on their own. Close to the rooms, a short walk between the pools was a cafeteria. For now, it was closed and wouldn’t open before tomorrow morning, but they could get food and drinks anytime at the pool bar. Also, there supposedly was a pc room for research purposes and a gym, which Schwarz seemed to be pretty happy about. There also were a couple of other rooms surrounding the pool area marked with a ‘?’. When they asked Qualli about it he had answered with a wink. “That’s for you to find out. I know you humans love exploration.”

 Schwarz and Shady were sitting on Schwarz’s oversized bed. Well, in truth it wasn’t oversized, it just had the perfect size for Schwarz. All of their rooms including the furniture came in the perfect size for their owner. Schwarz has chosen the most basic style the Item-store had offered. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, Shady sat in the corner with her legs crossed and Mike started to slowly spin around on the chair. “So what do you think?” He asked his boss and Shady. “Did we all lose our minds or is this real?”

“It’s unlikely to be a mass delusion. Given how mixed our group is, usually mass delusions occur within a certain area. But the leader of the reds and the EUA? Also, let’s not forget the nomad guy and your old buddy Manch.” Said Shady. “What exactly happened between you anyway?”

“He’s not my ‘buddy’.” The way Schwarz said it made clear that he didn’t intend to go into the details. “But long story short. The team I worked with before, he killed all of them.” Mike stopped spinning and faced Schwarz directly. “What was that anyway, before we came here? One moment you charge at him, then he says some kind of serial number and suddenly you collapse?” Schwarz raised an eyebrow. “That happened? Sorry guys, I don’t remember. I thought I got knocked out or something. I remember how I jumped at him, and next thing I woke up in that pink room.”

“And suddenly ten days have passed, according to this little toy at least. I wonder why.” Mike looked at the watch around his wrist. Schwarz nodded. “Yes, it would be good to figure that out as well.”

“So what’s the plan from now on?” Asked Shady, slowly rocking back and forth on Schwarz’s pillow. Schwarz cracked his fingers and answered. “For now we should at least pretend to play along. Let’s split up and scout out the rest of the area. Mike, you go check out the other rooms marked with a ‘?’. Shady, you try to get some info on that secret exit, and if you can try to engage in some small talk with the others, find out what they are planning. I can’t imagine that any of them play along with that alien’s demands.”

“Fine by me. What are you going to do, boss?” Mike stood up. Schwarz grinned. “What do you think? First I´m gonna hit the gym of course” Figures. “Then I´ll go check the pc room for some cake recipes.”

Manch - 14:12 - Day 1

Manch was pleased with himself; he had tricked the so confident looking alien and got his glasses back. Of course, they weren’t normal glasses, they came equipped with the newest hard- and software on the market, only visible to the user. But that wasn’t something he would share willingly. Valuable as they were Manch had put them in his safe, which the room style he chose luckily provided. Not to think of what the others would do with them if they got a chance. 

“Visit me any time in my office, or if you have any more questions you can also call me with your new watch.” Had Qualli said at the end of his tour, they finished up inside Qualli’s office. For some reason, it was styled like a principal’s office, behind the sturdy oak desk and the upholstered chair was a heavy metal door. “That’s the only place you are not allowed in, it’s my private chamber.” Had the jellyfish said before letting them stroll away on their own. From that moment on Manch had made it to his main mission to get into that room, no matter what.

Oh my sweet little treasure chamber, what secrets and mind-bending technology you must hold. Despite the unusual situation, Manch was in high spirits. After he had extensively examined his room he had found air slits in the ceiling. Air slits meant that there is an air shaft. Common, common, where are you? For a good amount of time now Manch was walking down the walls in the pool area, so far he had found two air shafts but nothing close to where Qualli’s room was.

“What are you doing?” Pathfinder suddenly stood behind him and Manch shrieked in surprise. “Fuck!” That sneaky old fart! After recovering from the shock Manch said. “I´m looking for..., my..., I´m looking for my contact lenses. Yes, that’s what I´m looking for.” No way I´m telling that creepy bastard what I´m doing here. I´ll be the first to get inside that room. Pathfinder looked surprised. “Contact lenses? Didn’t you wear glasses when we met before?”

“Ehehehe..., well you see.” Manch tried to come up with something. “This morning, before we end up here, I was supposed to go on a date so I put in my contact lenses. Then suddenly work called and they seemed really busy. So I just changed my clothes quickly, put my glasses on and went to work, and now I have put them in my safe since I had my contact lenses on anyway.” Pathfinder nodded. “I see, and at work, when you wore both, you didn’t notice anything weird with your eyesight?” Damn old man, what’s your problem? Just drop the topic already! Manch shook his head. “Ah, no because they called me to fix some super complicated equipment, so I must have been caught up in my thoughts, or something. You know? Too focused on my work, hehehe.” Pathfinder smiled understanding. “I see, it’s great to see that today’s youth is so hardworking.” Thanks now leave me alone. Pathfinder showed Manch a thumbs up. “Alright young man, I’ll help find your contact lenses.” Duuuude, fuck off! On the inside Manch was dying, on the outside, he nodded happily. “Well, how about we split up? Two pairs of eyes are better than one right?” Manch suggested and Pathfinder agreed. “Right.” Manch pointed to the other far end of the pool area. “You go search over there, and I stay here. I´m sure together we will find them in no time.” Pathfinder gave him another Thumbs up.” Good plan, alright see you later.” And trotted away. Pfew, finally.

Manch backtracked his way and double-checked the wall, nothing. He saw the swing door to the cafeteria. Well, a look can’t hurt. To his surprise two sentinels walked slowly out from the door before he reached it, he greeted them in case Qually somehow was looking. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was somehow watching through their eyes. They walked past him as if he wasn’t there. Manch shrugged. Whatever.

Nobody besides him was in the dim cafeteria and when he examined the wall he found another air shaft. Jackpot. With 30cm x 30cm the air shafts so far have been way too small for a person to fit. I need to find a bigger entrance point. Manch looked around. The kitchen maybe?  He entered the kitchen and soon found another 30cm x 30cm air shaft. Damn, if I can’t get in I need to build something that can. From the cold storage close to him came some rumbling. Slowly he walked to the door. He put his ear on the cold door. “What if those things come back?” he could hear a woman's muffled voice, another one apologizing. “Sorry Daiyu, it was an accident.” Daiyu? Manch grinned. So, that’s why the two sentinels were here. They were looking for the two bitches hiding in the storage. He listened again. “Let’s wait here five more minutes and then get out of here.” He heard Anastasia say. Five minutes?

An evil smile curled his lips. We’ll see about that. Happy, like a little boy who was rushing to see what presents he could find under the Christmas tree, Manch jogged back to the cafeteria and grabbed a chair. He returned and pushed the chair under the door in such a way that the large handle could no longer be turned. I love revenge. In a good mood, whistling a tune Manch was on his way back, he walked through the door into the pool area.

“There you are.” Pathfinder stood right next to the door and Manch jumped again. Fuuuck! Totally forgot about him. Pathfinder opened his hands. “Here I found your contact lenses.” What? In Pathfinder's hand were indeed two contact lenses. “Here take them.” Whaaaaaaaaat? With an emotionless voice, Manch took the contact lenses. “...thank you. I guess.” For a moment Manch just stood there, unable to comprehend that Pathfinder had found the contact lenses that shouldn’t even exist.

Pathfinder smiled widely. “What are you waiting for? Put them in.”

“Ehm, yeah... they are probably dirty. So... I’ll go to the bathroom first to wash them.” Manch tried not to think about how the lenses had been in Pathfinder's wrinkled old hands. Who knows where he had scratched himself before?

“Nonsense young man, what do you take me for? Of course, I’ve done it already. I wouldn’t give a friend dirty contact lenses. Don’t worry about it, go ahead.” Pathfinder smiled, happy to help. Oh god. I have to do it or he’ll get suspicious. “Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.” With a slightly crooked grin, Manch looked up, held his eye open with one hand, and put the contact lens inside with the other. When the small plastic lens touched his cornea a shiver of disgust ran down Manch’s spine.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Gregor - 14:03 - Day 1

Gregor and Eris had split up. She had tasked him to check if there was a way to contact anybody outside the facility with the computers in the pc room, although it would be probably futile since the original internet had been long gone. But double-checking is better than just assuming something. She also ordered him to check the other locations market with a ‘?’ on the map. Eris herself would go and try to get some more information out of Qualli in his office. Gregor took a seat on one of the desks in the corner, the chair was surprisingly comfortable. With a press of the power button, the PC hummed into life almost immediately, it showed a login screen that said: Please hold your watch in front of the screen. He did as said and with an annoying “yoooo” the desktop showed up. “Alright, let’s see,” said Gregor to himself while browsing through the apps, he clicked on an app called Internet browser. Contrary to the start this app took quite a while to open, when it was ready it showed an almost blank site and the name Booble in big letters with a search bar under it. So this is the so-called internet. For a moment he just stared at the screen, and then he tipped in: communication. After another half minute, the search results came up, but nothing useful was there. There was a website called Wackywiki that offered: ‘the definition of communication’. Another one showed a pretty explicit movie poster with the title: ‘forbidden communication’, showing a short, barely dressed scientist on a white couch with five aliens standing behind her smiling. The ratings variated from 5 out of 5 stars to 1 out of 5 stars. One user only posted the barf smiley in the comments, another one wrote: Best movie ever, already a classic!

Gregor continued to scroll but nothing helpful was showing, a pop-up ad jumped on the screen stating: Is your browser too slow? Change now! Dome! The logo showed a small circle inside a rainbow vortex. Just when he clicked on the X-button two new windows appeared. One showed a woman holding a large eggplant, advertising: Bigger Dick, in just 2 weeks! Click now! The other one was a chat window on the bottom left corner, somebody wrote: I’m a Nigerian prince, you are lucky. I’m so rich that I decided to donate 1 000 000$ to a stranger. Click here.

Gregor also closed those two windows, but immediately after that five more popped up, and one of them started to play a too distracting jingle. “Fuck!” Frustrated Gregor slapped the desk lamp to the ground. After a couple of breathing exercises that his master had thought him Gregor was calm again soon and put the lamp back where it stood before. It was broken but the weird lights appeared and fixed it in no time. Oh, that’s good to know. The furniture gets also fixed. He turned back his attention to the screen. Almost when he closed all advertisements again the last one caught his eye. HotKitsune, faster, better and with an integrated Adblocker! The only web browser you will ever need! That actually sounds great. He followed the download link and after a couple of seconds, the HotKitsune browser opened Booble, almost without any waiting time or ads. Awesome. 

Okay, one more time. This time he typed: communication apps, and the new browser showed results immediately. There were a couple of chat apps like: Whatsnyan or SWiNE, also so some face-to-face video call apps like: Dissmorph or SkyROOM. He tried to Whatsnyan first, but after the download was completed and the app opened it stated: connection to server not possible, please check online connection/settings. Hmm. Gregor tried all of them but neither would work. Figures.

 Eris - 14:04 - Day 1

After leaving Gregor behind in the pc room Eris was on her way to Qualli’s office. Great, I’m stuck in another one's game again. Most of her life has been that way. Other people have always forced their expectations and plans on her, expecting her to follow without questioning them. This wasn’t all too different either, being kidnapped by an alien or not, it was just another golden cage. Well, shit. Frustrated she was trotting through the side tunnels when something caught her attention, a doorway that split into two separate ways, at the beginning of each one was a curtain, one was blue the other one was red. No way. On the blue one was: 男 the Japanese Kanji for man, and on the red one: 女 for woman. No way! Her heart made a jump in joyful anticipation. Being part of the higher class inside the EUA she had been schooled in the proper etiquette and manners of many former countries, although the normal population didn’t care about that anymore the rich and powerful certainly did. She had visited an Onsen many times already, only replicas of course, but the Japanese bathing culture has always been one of her favorite things from all the other stuff she had been taught. As she passed through the curtain and followed the way she soon found herself in a familiar-looking changing room. The floor was laid out with Tatami mats, in the middle were wooden shelves with baskets to store belongings during the stay, and on the right side were a couple of tables with mirrors hanging on the wall over them, all kinds of body care and cosmetics presented themselves on the tables ready to use. Across the room was a sliding door that led to the hot spring area, next to it a giant shelf filled with fluffy towels. Eris suddenly felt like a heavy burden had been lifted from her shoulders. I won’t be doing anything today. Today I’ll spend the whole time just for me. Fuck that Jellyfish, fuck my stepmother, in fact, today everyone else can go fuck themselves. She began to undress and inhaled somewhat wooden, slightly grassy-smelling air, and put both her pajama and the wristwatch into one of the baskets on the shelf. With a few small jumps, she reached the sliding door, grabbed a towel and opened the door. Warm and moist air greeted her on entering with a nice scent of herbal potpourri. An indoor shower area waited for her, luckily she was the only one around. As usual, the showers were closer to the ground than the western counterpart. People were expected to sit on the low seats, which were distributed one to each shower. Next to showers was the first onsen, set to a cozy 38 °C. After a long shower, she skipped out on the indoor bathing pool, knowing that the real deal usually was in the outdoor area. Eris walked straight to the sliding door on the other side of the room opened it and found herself in a bathing paradise, the area was composed of a large U-shaped basin, set at 40 °C, and a smaller one in the middle of it, set at 42 °C. The basins were nestled in a natural-looking garden area and the whole scenery was coated in an orange-red dawn projected by another artificial sky, even a fresh breeze of wind came from around somewhere. As usual, a high bamboo wall separated the man’s bathing area from the woman’s. With pleasure she let herself sink into the hot water until it reached her chin and she deeply exhaled. True, being held like a hostage by an alien was nothing she would have ever dreamed of but besides that, she had been given comfortable clothes, good rooms, and was well-fed. It actually could be much worse than that. Prisoners captured by the EUA surely didn’t get this kind of treatment, not to speak of the Red Dragon’s or the Mercenary Guild’s captives. Compared to that, this was luxury. After a while she let herself sink even deeper until the water covered her mouth and made bubbles. If everyone could live like that there surely would be no wars.