The door creaked, and Kaiya panicked. She noticed a desk in the corner, one nobody would likely go to, and barely slipped behind it before two men walked in. They were tall, bulky, and could probably kill Kaiya… again.

Hang on, how… the hell? I’m back in one of their facilities. But, I’m dead.

The question wouldn’t get an answer, but luckily, she noticed the men both climbing into the hole. She managed to wait for them to make it a bit down, far enough that they wouldn’t be able to reach her before she made her break.

That happened quickly, when she bolted to the door. Quickly peeking around, nobody was there. She ran to the side, and slipped into another hall. These places are really weirdly designed, she thought.

A quick check at the convenient map (why do they keep putting these maps up on halls nobody uses?) and she knew where to go. Her hall was beside sect 13, and she noticed a skull inside the room depicted on the map. Made sense to her, given that she escaped her own death through it… somehow. The nearest way out was a staircase just a room over. There was also a tube entrance, but it was in a large mess hall, the odds of which nobody being inside were too low for her to risk it.

She decided to use the quicker exit, and so the stairs in sect 12 were what she chose. Kaiya’s peek at the hall made it a safe pass to the door, but she heard a noise to her left.

Huh???

There was nothing there. She thought, maybe she was just hearing things. I should go for it, this is just making me too nervous.

Kaiya gripped the doorknob, running in and shutting the door right behind her.

The stunned look of the three suited men gathered around a table at the young girl with untamed hair, and a torn shirt.

“Shit- Call another code!” A man yelled across the table, prompting another to run across the room, toying with an intercom microphone. The third pulled a switch on the wall, slamming a metal door closed over the stairway. The first man ran over to Kaiya, and began throwing ice around, trying to trap her. She melted the ice at the bottom, sliding through under his legs. The ice expanded over her, trying to stop her, but she kept the flame alive.

The man who pulled the switch intervened at this point, blowing Kaiya’s hair in front of her face to slow the escape, the act of which gave the first man time to send a shock towards the girl.

She quickly grabbed a chunk of ice which had collapsed behind her, having lost support from the melted ice beneath, and blocked it, but the ice shattered in her hands. The man didn’t send another shock immediately, so Kaiya reached to her side, knocking over the second man, while reaching with her other hand towards the other rocks in her pocket. One quick yellow rock use, and the first man doubled over. Couldn’t handle his own magic, huh?

Another shock to the other two quickly incapacitated them, and she flipped the lever, raising the barricade. The experience didn’t feel over to her though.

Walking up the stairs, she got lost in thought. So, now what? Everyone thinks I’m dead now, Amity is still missing as far as I know as well, and I don’t even know if Himiko, Katie, and Raleigh are still where they were last time I was able to check up on them.

She quickly decided to ignore most of these worries, and focused on her plans.

I need to… figure out where I am. Then, I can figure out where the rest of them are. And then I figure out how to get to them. I can work on the assumption they’re still where they were, which is by a tube entrance, on a hill, next to some ruins. It can’t be that far from where I…

“Where I died.”

Right. She… had died. Kaiya was dead, or at least meant to be. What was the deal with that place, anyway?

I died in… one of their facilities. I can’t believe they didn’t pass a second glance, after what I’ve done. If I died… in their facility, did I end up in… their afterlife?

The hall behind her felt to disappear, as she continued up the barren stairs.

Barren to a point, at least. The walls ahead of Kaiya began to be scrawled in the same messages. Boasting about the facility, from the same, familiar name. Although, she couldn’t recall how she knew it.

Was it.. when she was with that princess? No, Kaiya hadn’t met anyone truly important, most of that was handed off to the princess who relayed it back to Kaiya.

Could it be… I’m not sure.

I don’t know how I know him.

That wouldn’t matter for long, though, because as the messages on the wall became clearer, not faded or scratched out, a light began to shine. The light reflected off the walls, onto Kaiya, and helped her realize what was her priority.

Knowing how she survived isn’t important, it’s what she can make with the opportunity.