“Fifteen minutes, fill the meeting room with your living souls. I don’t want a ghost to sit in a vacant seat. I’m impatient to wait another two weeks just to get another proper meeting. If you declare yourself dead, I’ll kill you.”
“Yes, Nebula-sama. One last game.”
A girl short in stature and owning orange-braided hair that weaved down her shoulder sat on a floating gaming chair surrounded by holographic monitors when Nebula broadcasted her message across the selected few via the intercom. She wore a loose shirt and hotpants casually in her home.
Unlike any other room, hers possessed an invisible floor extending to the depths of the dark horizon as the walls can never be reached. One could walk endlessly in this plane, and never get tired. However, even for years, one could never witness bumping into a vertical matter, an obstacle called walls.
She leaned back her chair in comfort, wiggling her elbows on the cotton support. Her right hand carefully aimed the mouse as if it were her extended body part, while her auxiliary hand tapped the sound of noisy clicks from her rainbow-colored mechanical keyboard. Her round emerald eyes, filled with the wonders of a kid, focused solely on the huge screen surrounded by four auxiliary monitors.
The first small screen focused on the footage below the ocean, as its camera source hid behind a million-dollar-thick glass. The small fishes danced in harmony across the blue-filled space and got interrupted by a huge shark jaw aimed directly at the camera. Even if the screen shook from the impact, the glasses didn’t falter with any visible scratches.
The next small screen showed an online group’s chat box completely blurred with endless scrolling from spam messages. The third one harbors a static terminal containing small lines of technical-related texts and an indefinitely blinking cursor. The last monitor secured footage of a certain apartment room with no people on stage.
Even with her peripheral vision skimming through the external monitors, she solely focused on the screen with the game she was currently playing, a team-competitive shooting arena formed by the duel of six players on each side. The game contained mechanics of the typical bomb-and-defuse tactic with the inclusion of four magical abilities for each character.
To score individually, one must kill the opposing team’s character. For every score she contributed, the name Roxeanne popped up together with the name of the player she killed. As decisiveness to win ate her focus, her muscles tightened as her emerald eyes fixed on the screen, optionally blinking less as possible. For every kill, she pressed her lips and wandered her mouse for a potential kill streak.
Ten minutes passed, and she only got the time to breathe properly after the half-game team switch. When she circled her eyes across other monitors, a woman wandered across the lounge on the fourth side monitor. Showing the timestamp with five minutes remaining, her tongue fell open, accompanied by a long grasp and a short yelp.
“Wha! Procrastination!”
Far from reality, Rox was the goddess of her world. Everyone was. However, her imagination is the only thing that keeps her alive and different from the products of zeroes and ones. Her immersion in the technological world eliminated all bifurcation and planted gray in the black-and-white world.
Rox ejected herself standing from her seat and spammed ‘FF’ in the game chat. Without any physical assistance, she pushed the computer set away only using her mind. She stood short, standing in the middle of nothing but a spotlight directly pointing at her from above. When everything was ready, she thought,
Initiate World Simulation
Her thoughts were a chant of magic without any required voice activation. The endless plane she’s in is loaded reality like chunks, slowly generating pixels to imitate the complete design of her real bedroom. In a mere minute after the reload, she encountered her ideal image of a tall woman with long-braided hair that weaved down her waist. However, in her maid dress, the cuts in her spherical joints made of metal always attracted her attention.
As soon as the sound of her internal clock ticked her senses, she rushed outside.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
***
Two weeks after the onslaught, completely foreign to the new world she’s in, Quimora walked and wandered around her bedroom. She checked through the cabinet containing various modern girl’s clothing weird for her taste, examined the porcelain vase containing Azure Wisdom Azalea, and analyzed the analog clock in which every tick synced with her heartbeat.
While her chest tightened with each passing second, her angelic face turned gradually pallid. Her slushy fingers pinched her cheek, yet she didn't feel any pain. She traversed out of her bedroom with her shaking limbs and paralyzed jaws, emerging into the unknown territory she thought was the afterlife.
A fully furnished living room greeted her with the scent of rose diffused by the conical humidifier beneath the flat wall-mounted LED television before the comfy couch. The kitchen counter was also visible beyond the small dining table accompanied by four chairs, all with matching snow-white colors. At the end of the room, two neighboring doors within the 90-degree wall closed still.
In a surprise, Rox barged the door open, hyperventilating with her metallic body. Quimora, whose hands flew over her nearly exploding heart, screamed due to her sudden hypersensitivity to sound.
“KYAA! W–WHO ARE YOU!?” Quimora squealed, stepping back until she bounced off the coffee table between the couch and the television. She also noticed Rox’s unusual joints, which tempted her to look at a nearby man-sized mirror and examine her own body.
“I humbly apologize for the confusion you’re experiencing,” Rox said in an elegant tone as she put her arm before her waist and bowed. “I’m Rox, the person in charge of assisting you with your concerns. Don’t worry, I won’t harm you in any way.”
“W–Why should I believe you!?”
“You should believe me. You’re alive, and Nebula-sama made it possible to save you,” Rox replied, while internally, she focused on the clock indicator in her view.
“Nebula? Saori!? Where is she!? What… What happened to Hera and the others!? And where am I? Are the others safe!?”
“Woah, don’t bombard me with fast talk!”
Quimora noticed Rox’s uneasiness as she heard rapid rhythms of clanging metal from Rox’s foot. She might have an appointment soon. With this in mind, she inhaled deeply calming her nerves, though the shakiness of her legs didn’t let go. “Aren’t you in a hurry?”
Rox approached her, put her hands on her waist, and leaned to Quimora. Quimora leaned back, chin down. “It looks like you got a huge question mark on your forehead. Do you want to ask Nebula-sama your questions?”
With doubt, Quimora pressed her lips and looked away. Saori, the one who inhabited her body since her birth, was also responsible for killing her friends and saving her twice from death’s door. These mixed feelings, like a game of tug-of-war, pulled her to subsequent contrasting decisions alternately. However, only Saori would be able to answer her questions, whereas she replied to Rox.
“I… suppose…”
Rox clasped her hands together and raised them before her gleaming smile. Quimora didn’t anticipate that Rox’s hands were as mushy as hers, though she nearly panicked when she knew that two metal bars may squash her hands flat.
“Thank you! You saved my life,” Rox exclaimed and pulled Quimora’s hand out of the room. She ran through the single-pathed hallways, passing through identical rooms and light fixtures, only finding the difference in room numbers. In the middle of the route, ten seconds of sprinting away from Quimora’s room, Rox mashed the down button of the elevators.
When the metal doors slid open, the two rushed inside as Rox pressed the ‘B1’ and close button like a fighting game combo. When the doors closed, Rox clasped her hands and stared up at the ceiling, murmuring her prayers and not noticing Quimora who was already tongue-out of exhaustion.
As they reached the destined floor, Rox dragged Quimora out of the half-open doors and rushed straight towards the giant double doors at the end of the path. With only three seconds remaining, Rox barged the door open and declared,
“SAFE!”
Rox exhausted desperately, held her knees while catching her breath on the ground she was facing. In her peripheral vision, she saw Quimora kneeling on the floor and stretching her chest as she rapidly inhaled twice as fast as her. “Oops! I’m sorry. Tee hee. Are you alright?”
“I’m… fine… I suppose…”
“And when did I permit you to imitate both my voice and quirk?” The threatening voice pulled Rox’s head up while attracting the cold glare of five people. As soon as Quimora recovered, she pulled her back straight, witnessing the jury of seasoned assassins.
The lit-off room stationed a long table with ends facing the door. On the other end, the leader of the private syndicate, Nebula rested her elbows on the table while covering her mouth with clasped hands. Behind her is a wide LED monitor currently unused. Aside from the two vacant, the members occupied their designated seats.
A hot seat diminished Quimora’s sanity like a knife stabbed through her chest when the gazes from people that caused her end gathered. Stepping back, her heart pounded with her bulging crimson eyes. Soon, the loss of thoughts accumulated anger, directing her focus to Nebula. She only had one reason why she came here.
“Answers… I only need answers.”