Author note: Relatively weird chapter BEWARE..! Enter the rabbit hole...
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Grace got up from her chair to explore the room she found herself in. It looked like the inside of a giant steel box. The muffled groaning of metal creaked out accompanied by the sound of waves slapping against something. It played in the background like a broken record. She slowly walked towards the cabin porthole that had appeared along the wall and stared outside. What greeted her eyes was an empty white canvas beyond. She had the distinct feeling of impatience as she waited for something… or someone.
Grace was back on the NOAA Sublime. The knowledge seeped into her mind like it belonged there and she readily accepted the fact. Grace, apparently satisfied with whatever she had seen through window, turned away and began to pace impatiently back and forth in the metal room. After she turned away from the porthole, it slowly closed like the mouth of a collapsing wormhole. The only thing left in the room besides her was the chair that rolled around on its wheels to the beat of the waves against the ship.
Suddenly, over the intercom a blaring noise interrupted the ships talk. Slow gibberish accompanied by blaring noise spiked every now and then. Eventually, it stopped along with Grace's pacing. She nodded her head somehow understanding whatever the entity had spoken over the intercom. Turning to the opposite direction of where the porthole used to be, she looked at the ship door that slowly opened and revealed the outside corridor. As she walked forwards her shoes hitting the floor echoed out as she as if she were in a cave. She briefly glances at a sign that has an arrow pointing down the corridor labeled ' -> Bridge.' Walking past an open ship door she notices a man standing there. He has no face. In fact he lacked almost everything a human had. The mannequins head turned towards her and they briefly engaged in conversation. Grace angrily rebuked the mannequin for daring to do something like that. Eventually she completely forget about the mans existence and continued on her way towards wherever her destination lay.
The hallway in front of her stretched on endlessly as she patiently tried to get to the end of it. After a long while the hallway ran out of room to grow letting her take a left turn and then a right. The corridor winded around like a maze, however Grace took every turn without any hesitation. Two large doors that would fit right into the entryway of castle appeared at the end of the hall. Grace walked up to the two towering doors without any apprehension and pushes them inwards with both hands. They abruptly caught on something unseen inside.
*Blam!* With a superhuman heave the doors burst open allowing her to see what was obstructing them. Inside, sprawled across the floor, lay a life-sized stuffed animal. *Meow* It slowly got up off the floor with a soft meow. It was her old stuffed cat toy from childhood that she still hugged often on her bed at home. The thing reached down and picked up its bowler hat that had fallen of its head and walked past Grace.
Grace ignored it and strolled under the sign above the large doors labeled 'bridge.' She stopped inside and panned her head around the room like a fan. A large mahogany conference table sat inside the room. The table was surrounded by sitting or standing mannequins. From behind her walked the mannequin she had spoken to earlier. It found a seat near the head of the table and she mechanically followed the familiar mannequin.
Abruptly, all sound faded and was replaced by a deathly silence. Something grabbed her attention and forcibly pulled it towards the opposite end of the table where only darkness coiled beyond. The darkness loomed towards the table breaking Grace from whatever state of being she been in earlier. Out from the gloom appeared a mirror image of her. The thing mirrored her small size of 5' 2' (Author note: Yes, she's a Loli), long gray hair, big green eyes, button nose and small pink lips. Her copycat turned it's head from the ship's window towards her forcing out a gasp from Grace. A vertical third eye lay open and unblinking on top of the creatures face. The loli across from her had a mouth that horribly stretched across her face in an eerie almost chesire cat-like grin. The whole body of her copycat continously faded in and out almost as though it was on a T.V. having technical glitches.
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Grace scrunched her thin eyebrows at the out of place creature that didn't belong in her dream. After I while of being creepily stared at Grace tearfully yelled at the thing," What you do want! Get out of here!" Her copycat seemed to analyze her until it finally spoke in a incredibly deep gravely voice,"Accept it. You're just fighting the inevitable."
Grace jumped up and almost fell over her chair in an effort to get away from the smiling, unblinking devil. The devil abruptly lifted its hand and pointing at her leg. She felt an invisible hand grasp the back of her head and force it to look down at her left leg. There, like an ugly cancer sore, sat a poorly cauterized wound. Grace, confused and disoriented examined the bite wound. In roughly the middle of her wound, a very small dark green scale rose from beneath her skin.
Along with her emotional state, the background became extremely chaotic almost like tornado had appeared in the room. Grace, feeling extremely terrified and alone with only her creepy copycat in the room grabbed her leg in horror. She watched as scales continued to bloom from beneath her skin around the initial scale. Grace could only scratch and wail as the creature stared down at her from above condescendingly.
The green scales rose like rising water line, coating her body in hard unnatural scales. The boat ground and tore into pieces along with everything else in the room. The world was falling apart. The scales without any sense of slowing down grew closer and closer to her mouth. Grace let out another scream that seemed to hang in the air as the scales finally reached her mouth. The world without further ado collapsed.
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Grace sat up gasping for breath and hit her head on something above her. Trying to calm down her racing heart and get a sense of the situation, Grace observed her surroundings. After minutes of scanning the surrounding through touch and site, she realized that she was inside a crudely made hut. "Ricardo..?" she mumbled softly as her ragmented memories surfaced unbidden in her mind. With a small tingling in her chest she realized he must of saved her life. Grasping onto that feeling she slowly got up, trying not to knock into the roof of the shelter she was in.
*Ahh* A small shriek escaped her lips as a pain shot from her left leg. A glow faintly entered through the entrance of the leafy abode allowing her to exam the wound bandaged wound. It had become raw and puffy from the extensive cauterizing. Luckily it didn't look infected at all. Right before she exited she noticed something tucked into the corner. Carefully placed on small shells and sticks, lay two speckled eggs. Grace crawled out of the shelter like timid rabbit.
Slightly in front of her abode lay a fire that was almost out. It's glowed pitifully and Grace quickly got to gathering the wood closest to her. *ROAR* As she was tending the fire a roar from some great wild beast broke through the still dark night from deep in the exotic forest. Thinking back to the octopus sucker covered window she shivered and moved closer to the fire. Fog existed slightly beyond the edge of the the forest boundary and she felt like something was watching her. From what she could see through the very weak light from the sun she tried to examine some of the trees sticking out of the sand. After looking at the leaves for a while she finally came to the startling and radical conclusion that she wasn't even on earth.
Her grumbling belly interrupted her disbelief and she got to work making a makeshift cooking pan with one concave stone and two sticks. After enjoying the slightly strange tasting bird eggs she decided upon what to do. Goal number one: Find Ricardo. He was perhaps the only human left wherever she was. Losing him in this dangerous environment would probably break her spirit. Grace lit a torch and after examining her surroundings a while she noticed two sets of tracks leading off from the campsite. She chose a random path and followed it.