Taylor’s mind became frantic, spiraling in on itself. The initial paralysis due to the fear of further pain was forgotten as this new nightmare began to unfold around her. She had no idea what was going on and the current situation felt no different than how she imagined being buried alive would feel. Panic set in and she did what many would do in such a helpless state, scream.
“HELP! HELP! PLEASE! SOMEONE HELP!” Taylor’s desperate cries echoed out into the endless space around her.
As they faded away, she once again cried out, weeping. Her confusion expressed itself, as did her fear and panic, causing even her thought projections to sound strained and hoarse as she sought desperately for a lifeline.
“OLLIE! PLEASE! I KNOW YOU’RE THERE! HELP!” her foggy mind finally recalled the AI that normally acted as a helper to all users of Futures technology, “PLEASE OLLIE! GET HELP! TELL THE LAB THAT SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH THE SYSTEM AND THAT I CAN’T LOG OUT! TELL THEM I’M TRAPPED IN SOME KIND OF WEIRD SPACE! OLLIE!”
She screamed, and she screamed, but the only sound that returned was her own voice echoing back at her, repeatedly. After what felt like hours had passed, it might have only been minutes for all she knew, Taylor let out one last roar in defiance of her helplessness.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Listening as her outrage reverberated around her, she fell into exhausted silence. There was nothing she could do, no place to go, nothing at all for her to hold out hope for. The panic and ferocity from her initial reaction simmered away, leaving behind depression and cold pragmatism.
“Fine. Be that way.”
Taylor considered the fact that the team ‘outside’ would notice something, that her family would eventually show up to demand an explanation for her absence, or even that Mac, having realized that she had vanished from the test world, would log out and pull her out manually. However, all of these scenarios ignored one major aspect of her situation: the pain.
The torment that she had experienced prior to finding herself in this place was not normal. It was not a minor inconvenience that could be glossed over, nor something that any sane developer would place into a video game. Taylor had felt like her very existence was being torn down and ripped into pieces. She couldn’t imagine that anything outside of a life-threatening circumstance would cause such pain, and, if that were the case, she was screwed.
“Take a seat. We three have much to discuss.”
In the white space that occupied her vision, color rapidly invaded from a single point, zooming forward like a tide. The improbable wave swept past and around her like a flood until the nothingness had been washed away, leaving her standing in a vast room facing three people.
Taylor blinked.
Not long ago, she would've been stupefied by the change of events and the unpredictability of her circumstances, but now? Numbness. She honestly believed that she’d skipped past the point of breakdown and gone straight into madness. Everything was too much. Too fast. Taylor’s life had become a non-stop stream of consciousness that was steadily eating away at her, eroding her small amount of sanity. She began to think about the all-consuming pain again.
'Had it really been so bad?'
“Yes, ma’am,” Aiden, one of the three people in the room nodded, stepping past the slow-moving woman in front of him to sit in one of the two waiting chairs. Bringing her attention back to what was happening in front of her, Taylor recognized both the young man, Aiden, and the young woman, Kaitlyn, as the two prospects she and Mac had been tasked with retrieving; as well as the only people that might have any clue about what was going on.
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Excitedly, Taylor took a step forward and held up her hand to get their attention, “Hey-” she began, her mind going blank in shock at what she saw.
Her hand! She reached up with her other hand and gripped her wrist tightly in joy, unwilling to believe her eyes. Tears began to form as she was overwhelmed with the recognition that, along with her body, her sense of feeling had been returned as well. It was almost too much for her. Trying to contain her joy, Taylor’s eyes still retained heavy traces of fear as she moved her trembling hand in an attempt to bring up the alpha menu.
Nothing happened. She tried calling it up with her intent again but it felt like the system wasn't even there anymore.
Not that she was honestly expecting anything to go her way at this point, but just being able to see her body had already restored a small spark of something that she hadn’t even realized she desperately needed: hope.
Her eyes returned to the room and she noticed that the young woman shuffling to the remaining seat looked terrible. Pale skin and sunken features reminded Taylor of how the woman had looked earlier that evening, prior to her collapse. Pulling her hand back down, Taylor furrowed her brow and decided to remain silent.
There were a lot of things that weren’t adding up about this entire situation.
First, she had been attacked by crippling pain and woken up disembodied in a white void, her ability to leave the game, or interact with the system interface, gone. Next, without any warning she had been thrown into this room with two people that, upon taking a second look, seemed to have returned to their states from earlier in the evening; even Aiden, the young man that had been slapped into next week by Kaitlyn’s father, showed zero signs of any swelling or bruising.
Lastly, and this was actually the thing that made Taylor’s skin crawl, no one in the room seemed to recognize she was there. At such close range, none of the three people had even reacted to her partial shout from before. A familiar thought came to mind as she watched Kaitlyn finally reach her seat and stare listlessly off into the space in front of her.
“Is this actually a cutscene? Hey, look at that. My thoughts are in my head again.” Taylor mused.
In contrast to the severity of the situation, Taylor’s mood had really made a complete turnaround. While she might not have any idea about what was going on, at least she wasn’t still stuck as some bodyless voice hobo. Things had markedly improved for her in that regard.
“Ms. Perez. As you are still a prospect at this Academy, I expect you to at least show the minimum decorum for when a senior member of this organization addresses you.” the other person in the room didn’t appreciate being ignored in her own office. The stern woman placed her hands on the desk in front of her and leaned forward, extinguishing the flames that had been flickering on her fingertips as she did so.
“Yes, Administrator Reed,” muttered Kaitlyn, her voice oddly bare of emotion. The Administrator, more confused than anything, adopted an expression of concern as she took in the image of the dead looking girl in front of her.
Taken aback by her appearance, Administrator Reed squinted her eyes slightly before lifting one of her hands in front of her and flexing her fingers as if she were palming a large ball. Particles of light seem to trickle towards her fingers from the surrounding area and, within moments, they had coalesced into a single large orb of light which the Administrator left hanging in front of her to illuminate the area more thoroughly.
“Ms. Perez, are you alright?” Administrator Reed asked with slight concern. She turned to look at Aiden, who had been quietly fidgeting to the side with a much deeper look of concern on his face. “Mr. Wright, can you explain this situation to me?”
Aiden looked nervous as he began to explain, “Administrator, I-”
Taylor never got to hear what the prospect was going to say; not because she couldn't hear it, but because time suddenly seemed to crawl to a halt all around her.
The flickering candles around the room were still, Aiden sat with his mouth open mid-sentence, Administrator Reed remained peering over her desk, the shimmering orb was motionless, and Kaitlyn, well, she still looked like crap.
“This isn’t right! What’s going on? Why is this happening?”
Taylor heard the familiar voice reverberate through the space around her and heaved a sigh of resignation, her eyes rolling upward in exasperation.
“Here we go, again.”