Suddenly, Arturo and I stumble out of the unfinished hallway of light and find ourselves on the roof of the hotel.

“How the hell did we get on the roof?” I ask Arturo, who's just kneeling next to the door and placing his hand on it. I guess he's using his Admin powers.

“Who knows? I didn’t design this place. The developers on the outside were either lazy or crunched for time,” Arturo ponders, not looking at me.

“You don’t know!? How the hell do you not know about a part of your own base?” I ask, absolutely baffled.

Arturo’s tiny Admin screens soon vanish, and he turns away from the door and walks over toward me, letting me know:

“We got five minutes. Let’s look for something to get us out of here.”

He's completely brushing off my question. Great.

“But what about Maria?” I ask Arturo, thinking that at least he would care enough about his fellow Admin to answer.

“I don’t know where she went. We have to keep mov—”

Before Arturo can walk away and evade my question again, I place my shotgun right at the back of his head.

“Really? We don’t have time for this!” Arturo tells me, not helping to ease my irritation one bit.

“Just answer my damn question!” I bark back, having had just about enough of his crap.

“If I had to guess: since the door we went through brought us to the roof, she might be on the bottom floor,” Arturo tells me.

“You guess? How the hell did you come up with that?” I ask, unsatisfied with the answer given to me.

“Think about it, if the right door leads to the roof, where the hell do you think the left door leads?” Arturo asks.

Before I could give him an answer, Arturo turns around and looks me in the eye. I guess the question made me drop my guard for a second, or maybe I’m just surprised that someone would stare down the front end of a gun barrel.

“Look, Maria-san will be fine. She can take care of herself. We already wasted a minute on this. We need to worry about ourselves.”

Damn it! He’s got a point.

I don’t know why we only have five minutes, but I need to get out of here. No way am I dying in the ruins of this shit-hole hotel. If I'm going to risk getting eaten by Rotters in a run-down building, I'd rather it be for another reason. What's the point of surviving if you have nothing to live for?

With a frustrated sigh, I lower my gun and say:

“Fine! Let’s get the hell out of here.”

With that, we move over to one of the helipads near the edge of the roof. While walking, I ask:

“So why do we only have five minutes anyway?”

“Four minutes and thirty seconds to be precise,” Arturo clarifies in a cold, bitter tone.

“Sorry about that,” I begrudgingly tell him. I know I am in the wrong there, but can you blame me? It’s been a rough morning.

“I reworked the coding in the unfinished hallway so that if your friend decides to chase us, he’ll be walking in an endless straight line. But only for five minutes,” Arturo explains to me.

“Why only five minutes? Couldn’t we just trap him in that room completely?” I ask.

As an Admin, what’s stopping him from just sealing Atsushi in the unfinished hallway and coding the door out?

Before Arturo can answer my question, he motions me to stand back. At the same time, he moves over to a metal supply box near the edge of the helipad, kneeling to check its contents.

“Not sure if I could do that anyway.” Arturo grabs his bandaged arm as he continues saying:

“Whatever was in that shot, it’s not agreeing with my data. Can’t seem to heal properly.”

Arturo reaches into the metal box and pulls out what looks like three pairs of ropes, grinning slightly in response to his finding.

He then reaches into the bottom of the supply box, stands up, and walks over to me, carrying what looks like black harnesses and dragging the three ropes—all seemingly attached to the supply box. They are colored red, green, and purple.

Please don’t tell me these are what I think they are.

Before I can ask what the plan is, Arturo shoves one of the black harnesses in my arms and just tells me:

“Put this on. Now!”

“Are those . . . ?” I ask, already in disbelief of what he’s going to tell me.

“Yep, bungee cords,” Arturo says with a straight face as if he is unaware of the absolute lunacy of his plan.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“You can’t be serious?!” I ask Arturo with a dry yet bitter tone.

Arturo just lets out a sigh, buries his face into his hands, and tells me:

“You humans and your limited viewpoint.”

“Cut the heady horseshit! This plan won’t work, bottom line!” I snap back.

“And what makes you say that?” Arturo responds.

In shock, I stare blankly into Arturo’s eyes, my mouth open in shock at his nonchalant response:

“A-are you serious? You need me to count the ways?”

“Hmm . . . ,” Arturo ponders, scratching his chin in response.

“Good point! We don’t have time for that. Now put on the vest.”

Goddamn it! Is there really no other way to get out of this? The only thing I can think about as I put on my harness is:

Why bungee cords, for god’s sake? Or whatever the hell counts as a god in . . . whatever the hell this is.

As I put on the harness, I stare at the colorful bungee cords that Arturo holds on to, wishing that they were actual ropes. I already hate having to repel down the side of a building . . . but bungee cords? I’m pretty sure those won’t even take us all the way down. Damn it! There has to be another way.

As I stress myself out, griping my shotgun as tightly as possible, it suddenly becomes enveloped in a lime-green glow.

I hear a soft, electronic, reverberating female voice announce:

“Object targeted.”

“Object targeted? What the hell?” I yell at my shotgun.

You’ve read that right. My shotgun! Just what the hell have I gotten myself into?

Arturo, noticing my yelling, stops setting up the bungee cords and looks toward me. “What the hell are you . . . Oh, I see. You’re no fun.”

Arturo seems to know exactly what is going on, but just before I ask him, the same disembodied, feminine voice I’ve heard a moment ago comes back saying in its soft tone and electronic, reverberated-sounding way:

“Matter transfer. Initiate.”

Just like that, my gun points itself in the direction of the bungee cords while I am still holding onto it tightly. Golden symbols shoot out of my gun and surround the bungee cords in Arturo’s hands.

The golden symbols soon evaporate into a light that changes the red-, green-, and purple-colored cords into dark-blue ropes with a red plastic hook at both ends.

While I’m trying to process what just happened, Arturo starts laughing uproariously and says:

“Well, would you look at that! I guess my hunch was right on the money. Though now that just makes things complicated....”

“Right about what?” I ask.

Before he can answer me, the door leading to the roof shoots off its hinges, flying all the way to the edge of the roof and falling to the ground below, just missing Arturo and me.

Has it already been five minutes?

Before I can see Atsushi walk out onto the roof, Arturo shouts at me:

“Get your ass over here now!”

While I am curious about what he meant when he mentioned 'his hunch', right now is not the time for explanations. I desperately run over to Arturo’s location, struggling to put on the black harness he gave me while on the move.

Just when I get to the evac spot, I finally put on the harness and quickly attach the hook-on end of the rope to the bar where the bungee cord used to be attached inside the storage box.

I’ve never done this before in my entire life, or probably in my previous life either! As the saying goes, 'Desperate times call for desperate measures.'

However, just before I can attach the other end to my harness, my body suddenly freezes up, not from nerves. I feel numb like I’m a patient under anesthesia, but I just can’t go to sleep. Although my body is numb, my hearing is working on overdrive as I hear the sound of shoes tapping on the pavement, each step getting louder and louder. While frozen in place, I notice Atsushi walk past me like it’s nothing to the edge of the rooftop and look down.

As if to confirm my suspicions, Atsushi turns around, tilts his head sideways, and shrugs his shoulders while saying in a cheerful and lighthearted tone:

“Aw, where did he go?”

Atsushi then walks over to me, leans in as close to my face as humanly possible without touching my lips, and continues in a more intimidating tone:

“You know? The Admin?”

Why the hell is he even asking? He knows that I can’t respond. I’m like a mouse in the grip of a cat. Why would someone create something like him? A being that seems only to take pleasure in toying with others.

Before he continues talking, Atsushi puts his finger under my chin and says, “What? Cat caught your tongue? Well, I guess it has, though in this case, I’m the cat.”

“Wh-wh-y?” I ask, just barely able to force out a single word.

“Really, now? You’re going to ask me that cliché question? Just look at your situation. Trapped in this hopeless hellhole, given a past of tragedy and torment. And for what? Because some corporation thought it was where you belong. Now let me ask you, why? Why resist me? Even their dogs have abandoned you.”

“Not quite, damn it!”

And just like that, a bullet grazes Atsushi and me, barely missing the high school boy. My body starts loosening up, and I fall to my knees, dropping the rope I had in my hand. Turning my head, I see Arturo peeking out from under the ledge.

“Get moving!” he yells at me.

With that I grab the hook of the rope and run to the ledge, jumping off in the hopes that I can attach the hook to the rope in midair in the likely chance that this plan doesn’t work, well . . . I’m dead either way—why be picky?

Just when I start to get a couple of feet away from the building, time begins slowing to a crawl for me. I’m not sure if it’s nerves or these confusing powers, but I can’t complain right now. Within what felt like the longest five seconds in my life-or maybe the second longest, I can’t keep track of this shit, I attach the hook to my harness, which causes me to smash into the hotel’s hard window, bloodying my nose.

As I regain my bearings after slamming face-first into a hard glass window and checking to see if my nose wasn’t broken-luckily, it isn’t, I see Arturo looking over at me with a pained expression.

“Are you okay?” He asks, his injured arm dangling by his side.

I notice the arm in question has bright-purple lines pulsating throughout his veins. Now the pained expression makes a little more sense.

“I should be asking you that,” I reply. He could have left me behind; my concern is the least I owe him.

“Don’t be smart! We need to move fast before he cuts the rope!”

While I nod in agreement to his plan, I know Atsushi won’t just cut the rope. It just won’t be fun enough for him. I imagine what he has in mind is much worse than cutting a rope. Almost to prove my suspicions correct, I see five Rotters climbing up the building like spiders below us and fast, most likely attracted by the blood running down my nose. The most notable thing is the purple haze glowing along their bodies.

Just as I’m about to let Arturo know what awaits us, a Rotter stumbles out of the window in front of me. Before it can dig its claws into my arms, I kick the Rotter back into the room, pull out my shotgun from my coat pocket, and fire a shot at its head, pushing it back near the door. Alarmed by the sound, more Rotters start pouring into the room.

I really hate being right. Why couldn't he have just cut the rope?