"You idiot, why did you take the relic!"
Tian shouted outraged, they now had another objective and only 7 days to complete them all.
"Relics help us in completing the mission, why shouldn't I have taken it?"
Chris complained, but he couldn't really tell how the shrunken head would help them complete the mission.
"Oh and what was this relic?"
Tian asked mockingly, truthfuly unless it was a car or a helicopter he wouldn't care less.
"It's a shrunken head"
Chris said a bit despirited.
"What did you say, I thought you said a shrunken head, are you a shaman maybe? can you use it in any useful way?"
Tian mocked him, but Chris knew nothing about how one needed to learn about magic before using it, it wasn't really his fault that he didn't know and the Empress, didn't ask about paranormal stuff at all, since it couldn't calculate something that it couldn't understand.
Although it was againt him taking the head in the first place, since it would make their mission more difficult.
Suddenly they heard a ship whistle from outside it was insane to think about, but someone was trying to land next to the cliff.
"The rescue ship is here"
The Red Empress said, causing everyone to get silent.
"What rescue ship?"
Tian asked shocked, not understanding what the Empress was talking about, only Chris knew what it was about.
The Red Empress sent an SOS message, saying that they had lost their ship at the cliff next to the mansion and needed help, normaly they wouldn't have arrived so fast, but hearing a girl's voice talking to them was a major motivation.
Now from being in a building in the middle of nowhere, that clearly played the role of a haunted mansion, with no electric power and tap water, located at the edge of a cliff and evidently near the ocean. There was no way of quickly reaching civilization, they were doomed to spend time just trying to find a city or town.
"Which country are we on! what about our weapons?"
Tian shouted at the A.I. causing it to shout back at him.
"You're in the US, just get rid of the weapons, they will be useless against a ghost anyways!"
The Empress was of course right, it would be better to be taken as shipwreck survivors rather than illegal immigrants like last time.
"There's a map in this drawer!"
Suddenly someone brought out a map, all the names were in english, they were somewhere in the United states again, but where exactly was a mystery to everyone but the A.I.
"What do we do with the video tape?"
Someone suddenly said while holding the said cursed video tape, after a lot of talk, they decided to give it to Tian, whom was the leader, maybe it would be of some use later.
Nick offered to hold all the guns for them, since he and the survivors decided to hide with all the food in the secret piece place, he even had a use for the lamp and oil.
The survivors wouldn't be leaving this place and who knows maybe they will be of use in the future or just stay there and sturvive, since the ghost can't possibly enter the secret piece.
Not even a day had passed and they had already lost a person. Panos fell off the cliff and the coast guard was already there, 11 people were saved from inside the mansion and it was big news by the media.
The coast guard however was more interested in where Chris got the cell phone from and how he was able to call them in the first place. Only to discover that he was a complete idiot. Talking about cursed cell phone and then begun talking to the device while it was dead, seriously waiting for it to respond.
The little girl was never found, but they did find a corpse of a girl at the bottom of the well, which made this very spooky.
Of course even an idiot could say that this girl had died years ago.
The most however distressing thing was the disappearing footsteps going up and disappearing into nothingness.
They could count 20 pairs of footsteps at the dusty floor, but only 11 people were here.
Two days later they were at the docks, lots of cameras were there to welcome the survivors and their saviors to the city.
"This is Rachel Keller from Seattle... questions?"
A blond babe asked, she was part of a wave of reporters whom had swarmed the scene. Our heroes however had no idea that Aidan's mom was right next to them, they had no idea that they could have ended this objective one day sooner. Of course in all this chaos they couldn't discern a single voice in the crowd of reporters and even if they had they wouldn't have recognised the person.
After a fruitless day, Rachel went to take her son from school, this time he had drawn himself being abducted by 11 people, he even drew a TV with a circle on it. The eleven looked somewhat similar to the people she had seen at the docks, but she didn't put much thought into it, it was just a drawing.
Going home she went to take a bath, exhausted from all the pushing and shoving and in the end she didn't even get an answer. Those foreigners were really lucky to be found by the coast guard, it was an amazing achievement that drew in a good light their ability to respond to accidents. Rachel however was more interested in the paranormal haunted mansion the coast guards mentioned among themselves during a short interview after the main event, they weren't even relevant to the rescue, but they still called it haunted, about some non existant little girl calling for help. There was also news that one of the eleven survivors had gone nuts and talked about ghosts and fairies. It was exactly what her newspaper was looking for, paranormal activity and mysteries.
To begin with the ship that brought them to the US didn't exist in papers, until just some hours ago. Everyone speculates that it's foreign espionage business, but it's still something worth looking into, a ghost ship and a haunted mansion, that was to be her headline, their readers will love it.
At that time our eleven "Heroes" were sent to the greek embassy to make papers and other important stuff that had to be done. Them not having saved their ID papers was going to make it an even more time consuming task.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
The ten survivors on the other side still in the hidden space were having horse meat for dinner once more. They had 2 very good cooks among them, they were housewifes sharing the same name, Mary and Maro, Hera also knew a thing or two about cooking and wood was abundant.
In the past 2 days they had made the secret piece into their home with as many comforts as they could get from the mansion, they even brought a couch up to the "Attic", which was what they called the place.
"Do you think they'll find Aidan?"
Hera asked Chrysa, whom looked at her somewhat confused.
"Who's Aidan?"
She asked back, not understanding the original question, two days of survival were enough to make her forget about their objective after all they weren't the heroes, why should she care about objectives.
"You do still remember that we're in a survival death game?"
Hera asked, causing her to remember something, it was not nearly enough to enlighten her, but Aidan was part of some objective they were given.
-Why do you care? You're lucky to even be alive, why did you go inside before it was cleared?
-I didn't, I was grabbed by a hand, which took me right into the portal, I was too afraid to even move until I heard them calling from behind me, but once I touched the wall I only went further away from my goal
-That's one way of putting it, but at least we got 1000 points as a result of you being alive
-I could have died you know!
-But you're alive and kicking, not like that other guy that fell off the cliff, did they even tell us how it happened?
-Nope, probably slipped and fell
Far away Jonas and Samson were having a hard time sleeping, they could still remember what happened.
They were walking near the cliff side, Panos told them that it wouldn't be funny to fall at this height and then poked Samson for fun, causing him to slip.
Samson grabbed for his life and one brought to another, Panos went flying and Samson grabbed onto some grass and was saved by Jonas, whom didn't want to see both of them die.
It was insane dragging the huge guy up from the cliff side, but Panos was nowhere to be seen. Samson had grabbed onto his leg for life, but the result was sending him flying down the cliff.
"Don't think about it, this is a death game people will die"
Jonas told him as they went back to the mansion informing everyone of Panos' Demise.
Now they were kept in a cheap hotel, under their embassy's watch, but they only had 5 days left to find Aidan.
In this low tech world, there was no way to find a person by internet, one could only despair when they looked at the radio on top of the counter, hadn't seen on in ages, at some point in time radios were popular, now they only existed in cars and alarms. In this world however they were everywhere, people talking through the radio about news, songs and sport.
"Do you think they will let him out?"
Christin asked David whom sat in the same room, after discovering a world that was still in the 80s they had come to believe this was all fake or they had gone back in time, either way there was no way to return unless they succeded gathering enough points for the return ticket.
"Who told him to act like an idiot, they think he's crazy now and probbly have him isolated in a ward as a dangerous patient"
David said, but the person they talked about was Chris, whom after being called crazy was undergoing psychological threatment, but the most important question everyone wanted to know.
'Where did he get this piece of technology called a Cell Phone'
If he wasn't crazy talking to the machine and expecting it to answer when it was visibly out of power, they might believe he was toying with them, they could see him however talking to his strange wrist watch, which he refused to take off.
The others all had the similar wrist watches, but they didn't talk to them or even pretend to hear voices from them.
Tomorrow they would have an interview with the reporters, they however were more interested in finding Aidan, whoever he was, a boy, a girl or even a full grown adult, the posibilities were endless and they had to use the terminator's method. Calling every Keller on the phone catalogue one by one, asking if there was an Aidan in their family.
So far the only thing they got was annoyed voices of negativity, sounding more like cuss, rather than words.
Unlike how everyone thought, Chris was kept in a rather clean ward with specialists, he understood by now that the Red Empress wouldn't answer unless it was unoticed by the locals, to the cameras it seemed as if he was talking with his watch as the Empress hid her existence from the NPCs, making him seem like an idiot.
The Empress' hacking ability was too weird, she even made an out of power cell phone talk, if you can believe that, it made no sense.
"So what's the plan?"
Chris asked the Empress, waiting for some strategem to escape and complete the mission.
"There's no plan, you will stay in this ward until the others complete the mission, it shouldn't be too hard"
The empress said.
"What about the survival objective afterwards?"
He asked disatisfied with her answer.
"you're being guarded by the best agents the government has, no monster can get to you"
She said satisfied, there was no escape for him, but also no way for a monster to sneak up to him.
Suddenly the Empress went silent, it didn't matter how much he talked to her, she wouldn't respond.
"Be quiet in there, people are trying to sleep"
Sounded from the next room.
"Wait you can hear me?"
Chris said, as if it was unnatural.
"Of course I can hear you!"
The male voice answered.
"Did you hear the female voice as well?"
Chris asked full of hope.
"Shout up you Wacko! And let me sleep! Already"
The man sounded terribly annoyed by his questions, but in truth all he heard was Chris shouting alone at himself and then pleading for an answer.
"See you tomorrow"
Chris said as he himself was getting sleepy.
=4 days before the objective fails=
They were in a panic, only one phone hadn't taken the call, everyone else wasn't Aidan or just cussed at them for waking them up or bothering them.
Only one adress remained, the problem was that they couldn't just go, they were under watch and they had no money.
"Tomorrow they leave, we've found the adress it's two hours away from here"
Christin told David, whom was shocked that he weren't part of the mission.
-Who's going?
-Tian, George and Xiao, the three of them
-Where was I when they were deciding this?
-Sleeping, but there's a high chance of them being detained afterwards thus if we're asked we say we knew nothing about it
-How about we escape as well, more chances of getting there
-It is now their mission, but if a single person reached the destination it's mission accomplished for all of us...
-It doesn't have to be them that accomplish the mission, what if they get points from it and that's why they don't want us there
-Don't know and honestly don't mix me in this
-Have you given up on the mission?
-No, but I don't want to die because of your plans
-My plan is safe, theirs has so many holes, you can make swiss cheese out of it
-Then why don't you tell them?
-Because I don't trust them, I trust you, even if it's you from another world, it's still the you I know and I know that I can trust you
-You were always like that
She said and they begun making out.
Jonas, Jason and Samson were also disatisfied with the plan, since they too wanted to be of some use in the mission.
After all you got points from endangering your life, you could say that all they would get from this mission would probably be those 1000 points for when they complete the mission since the secret piece was already found and killing monsters was out of the question, unless they went to kill NPCs like Tian had told them, they could do.
"Are you sure we can make it?"
Jason asked a bit doubtfull.
"All we have to do is tell the others our plan and we will be able to surprise Tian and the others once they arrive at the place"
Jonas said with confidence.