"Come on, now, keep up," trilled a woman as she clacked along the pristine hallway, her steps so speedy there was nary a space between one clack and the next. She flipped her platinum hair over her shoulder as she looked back to see if the new arrival was keeping pace with her.
The new arrival was a girl who couldn't have been more than two years out of high school, if that. She was clothed in a business-like suit with fabric bunched into flowers around the collar, but if one looked closely they could see that it was worn at the seams, as if she had donned it in excess.
"I'm so so sorry," the girl stuttered out breathily, "I'm not used to wearing heels, if I'm being honest."
As if to prove her point, the girl's ankle bent and she nearly fell over into a very expensive-looking vase, filled with a flower arrangement that would cost her a whole year's worth of Credits. She quickly righted herself and sped up, hiding her limp as she forced herself to close the distance even if she looked rather like a giraffe that had to go pee.
The new girl gulped. She picked up the pace until she was beside her new boss, ignoring the electric discomfort in her leg. The two of them advanced through the gold-lined hallway at a brisk pace, until they were two doors away from the double doors sitting at the end of the hall. Em's jaw sagged in wonder as she saw how intricately carved they were, etched with an image of the past two winners of the World of Wills. Behind them were the players who had been integral to their journeys to the top, as well as the weapons that had helped them get there. The first winner had wisely chosen a Polearm, a weapon that kept their foes at a distance, and the second had wielded a Legendary Bow that could nock any other weapon as an arrow.
Every single line, every scratch, was filled with liquid gold that moved behind a thin sheen of what looked to be paper-thin glass. It snaked through the divets slowly, like lava making its way down a volcano except it never cooled, never stopped moving.
"Are you trying to catch flies?" Annoyed, her manager reached out and smacked her jaw with her walking stick, her teeth making a resounding click as they clonked together.
"Sorry, sorry! I've just never seen anything like this before." Em made dutiful eye contact with her guide in an attempt to seem more confident than she was.
Mildred, the manager, huffed and pulled a small notebook from her pocket. "Yes yes, everything in here is wondrous and new. Try not to sound quite so green in front of our esteemed VIPs." She opened the ring-bound book and gave Em a once-over. Her clothes were breaking down near the seams, but at least there were no obvious stains on them.
"Did you turn on the sanitary film before you came in?"
Em nodded emphatically. She pointed at the button fastened to the inside of one of the flowers on her blazer to make her aware of its existence.
She had pressed it just before entering, and it had burst with an almost cling wrap-like energy film that had encased her. To her surprise, when she looked in her compact mirror, she couldn't even tell it was there!
"It appears you applied it correctly, then," Mil declared, checking off one of the boxes in her notebook with the pen she had brandished. "We will need you to put a mask on before you enter the room; the doors are air-tight, but once we go in, they won't want you breathing their air."
She reached over to the wall and tapped thrice, and in response it opened up and spat out a 'mask'. Em would not have called it such; to her, it looked more like a fancy muzzle. Mildred put the 'mask' to her face and it stuck to it, sealing away her nose and mouth.
She grabbed a second muzzle and held it out to her new employee. She looked at the new arrival expectantly, who hesitantly brought the black muzzle up and allowed it to make a seal.
It tore away her air and clung to her, closing around her mouth like a palm seeking to strangle her. It was uncomfortable, but it quickly began to cycle each breath through a filter.
"Alright. To the left here, you will find the kitchen. Your job is to key their orders into the machine in there and then bring them to them; simple enough." Even for a Laboured, she thought - not that she wasn't one herself, but she was much closer to being able to afford a Platinum Rights Subscription than the newling in front of her.
Mil held out a thin rectangle towards Em, which she tentatively took. "You'll receive the orders on there."
She turned around on her pencil-thin heel and grabbed the door handle. "Now stand up straight and be as quick as you can manage, and then twice as fast as that."
The platinum-haired woman pressed on the doors, which opened up to show a theater. It was just as large as any theater the new girl had ever seen, but it held only about 20 seats and the screen stretched from one end of the wall to the other. It was like they were entering into another world as they stepped in. The screen showed the World of Wills in crisp detail, and since the Laboured didn't get to undergo the same laser surgery the Lavish did, they likely weren't even seeing all the majesty the scene had to offer.
The people dotted throughout the room were dressed to the nines, long drapery flowing from most of them, each one wearing a custom tailored outfit made with the finest materials. Red, gold and purple were popular colours, but many elected to wear white.
Since she lived in the Wastes, Em couldn't get away with wearing white for long. Even the outfit she was wearing now had been purchased secondhand on the way in; she had to trust that the Credits from this job would be enough for her to earn the money back, and then some.
As they entered the room, nobody even looked up from their conversations, paying her and her superior no mind.
"When is Phase 1 over again?" One of the people in the seats inquired, leaning backward. They were wearing an ensemble that resembled a snowy owl, with feathers made of fabric jutting from their shoulders. They were also sporting a cape that split in the middle, like two wings.
"Yes, I was wondering that as well. This tranquility has been nice, but I hunger for the brutality that Phase 2 brings. Chess is so much more interesting when the players know they're playing chess," replied a man two seats away in a nasal-twinged tone.
The fresh employee straightened her spine and walked further into the room. She made herself scarce and leaned up against the wall in one of the corners, flicking her eyes down to the device she had been given obsessively, just in case she was needed.
The man standing up near the front of the room chuckled heartily. "Phase 2 is starting at 1 PM tomorrow, so it won't be long now. Do remember, my esteemed VIPs, that you will be able to bet on whichever participants you want to throughout the Second Phase as well, not just Phase 1. That's one of your unique privileges."
At that moment, a man skulked in from the side of the room and tapped on the shoulder of the man who had been speaking. He turned towards him, lips drawn in a thin line. "What is it? You know I don't have the time for this right now."
"I-I'm sorry, sir. We just got a bug report concerning Nikola, sir."
"Oh, I don't care," he spat, waving a hand to shoo him away, "just reset her and leave it at that. We can't have her causing us any more problems."
"But-but that's just the thing; we can't reset her. That would require a full system shutdown, and we can't do that until the game is over, a-and certainly not while everyone is watching."
"Speaking of Nikola," lulled a voice from somewhere closer to the back of the theater, making the two men gasp - they had forgotten about the superior hearing of their guests, and the interjection caused them a bit of a scare, "you said I could bet on anyone I wanted. Well, I want to bet on her."
