(Strive 10:3)
Flashes of purple light woke me from the most comfortable sleep I’d had in a long time. Now that I was awake, everything hurt like a bitch. I could hear a man and a woman speaking to each other, but my eyes were sealed shut by dried blood. All I wanted was for the voices to shut up and go away.
“Mmf,” I said, my throat like sandpaper, and they stopped talking at once.
A woman’s voice asked me something in a language that was just past the cusp of understanding, before cool water broke the seal of blood around my mouth. I drank thirstily. It was about all I had the energy to do.
“Death is out to get me,” I mumbled, and a voice shushed me.
Someone’s hand was on mine. Their fingers contorted my right hand into different positions. It felt wrong being manipulated this way, and I resisted briefly, but my muscles were like jelly. I was powerless to stop them as they forced me to pull up a system menu that appeared against the inside of my eyelids.
System Configuration Menu
BRIGHTNESS — 50%
VERBOSITY — MEDIUM
FONT — 14pt Arial
…MORE…
My brows furrowed as they made me scroll down to the setting labeled FONT and changed it to Times New Roman. The woman spoke again, as though she expected something from me.
“You don’t like sans-serif?” I asked hoarsely.
The woman’s response was short and exasperated, but no more intelligible than before. It was only a moment later that I saw the next setting in my contact, labeled CAPTIONS, and realized what she had meant to do. Weakly twitching my fingers, I toggled them on, and text appeared at the bottom of my contact as the woman spoke.
Listening…
Language Identified: Sino-Tibetan, Sinitic, Old Chinese (~1000s BCE)
Hold for translation…
Subtitles began to scroll across my field of view a second later.
<<—hear me? Do you understand me?>>
“Wow. I read you.” My voice cracked with dryness. “Where’s El?”
There was an awkward pause before the next response. <
“My friend.”
The two voices had a rapid back-and-forth exchange that eluded the translation software, as I teetered on the brink of consciousness. The last thing I saw was the message, <
I was being moved now, lifted like a child. I tried to protest, but the rocking motion lulled me back into a deep sleep.
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When I woke again, it was to the smell of rubbing alcohol.
A cheap, foam-tiled ceiling hung above me, the kind they use in places like dentists’ offices or cubicle farms. The tiles sagged slightly, giving the whole thing the effect of a giant sheep’s stomach pressing down from above. I giggled, then slapped myself. Mia’s poison was still working its way through my system, making me feel strangely giddy.
Lying here, I could almost believe that everything since the night of the truck crash had been a bad dream. Maybe it had been, and I was just now waking up from a coma. Someone had washed me and dressed me in starched linens, and even the thousand cuts on my skin had disappeared. But my hopes were dashed when I looked down and saw the pale-yellow stone bracelet on my wrist, the color of raw sulfur.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The room didn’t seem to have any traditional doctoring equipment in it, just a few cots that were empty besides mine. A single skylight cast a square of sun onto the table next to me, where a glass of suspicious orange liquid sat.
My kada informed me that the contents of the glass were a refreshing drink. Remembering the sequence of gestures to reach the system configuration menu, I had just switched the font back to Arial when a man in a tunic entered. I didn’t understand the words he spoke, but my contact evidently did.
Language Identified: Early Anatolian, Hittite (~1700s BC)
If I remembered correctly from college linguistics, Hittite was one of the oldest Indo-European languages known, at three or four thousand years old. As I stared, words of a long-dead language winked to life in my field of vision, scrolling across the screen. They read:
<
“No,” I managed. “It’s just… you’re from almost four thousand years in my past. And the lady that healed me too…”
The man nodded. <
I bolted upright. “Where’s El?”
<
“Him?” My mind was fuzzy, but something scraped at the corners of it. “El’s a female. We were together through the first nine floors. I was holding her, but we must’ve gotten separated somehow.”
<
I struggled to get out of bed, and he barred my way. <
“I need to find her,” I said, reluctantly accepting the drink. It was a sugary-salty beverage similar to the fountain on the last floor, and I felt better after a sip. Before I’d finished drinking, another voice boomed from the next room, and my udjat lit up anew, before the source of the sound had even entered.
Language Identified: Balto-Slavic, Old East Slavic (~1000 AD)
The popo, the fuzz, five-o, whatever you wanted to call it, I knew it when I saw it, even without the badge and blue uniform. The man who entered the room moved with the slowness that comes from utter confidence. His features seemed to be chiseled from rock, unkempt stubble only accentuating his dangerously sharp chin. He wore an X-shaped emblem pinned to his lapel, and on his wrist, a kada bracelet that shone like a ruby.
<
“Please,” I said. “She must be somewhere. We both suffered injuries in our fight… and there was a man in a jar, his name was Yao, I think…”
An odd look on the man’s face made me conscious I was jabbering, and I trailed off. He spoke again.
<
“I’m happy to,” I said, a little irked at his authoritative tone.
The man looked at me with something oddly like triumph.
<
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The prison smelled dank, not in the good way. There was definitely black mold in the walls, and I tried to hold my breath briefly before realizing how ridiculous that was.
El’s complaining voice reached me long before I saw her, echoing off the hard stone walls. My heart swelled, and I was surprised at how relieved I felt when they threw me into her cell.
“Identity theft?” I picked myself up off the floor. “What do you mean?”
“Nice of you to visit.” El sniffed at my legs. “You remember how the hotel guy said there was another raccoon named El Bandito.”
“That’s right,” I recalled. “They thought you were trying to impersonate the other one? Guess this town ain’t big enough for the two of you.”
El snorted. “Apparently, the other guy skipped town a long time ago.”
“Sounds like you have some idea of what’s going on, at least. I don’t even know what I’m in for.” I looked glumly at fresh bruises on my arms where the man had gripped me. “Man, that guy is strong.”
The raccoon sniffed at the barren corners of the cell. “By the way, you wouldn’t hold out on me if you had some food in your back pocket, would you?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, compadre.”
Our kada bracelets, along with the inventories they stored, were on a shelf across from our cell, tantalizingly close. I thought I might still have a Health Bar in there, and to be honest, I was getting the munchies too now that I wasn’t tripping balls anymore.
“Hey!” El banged the cell door. “What’s a raccoon gotta do to get some grub around here?”
There was no response.
I sighed. “Look at us. Surviving ten floors of death just to end up locked in a jail cell. How long do you think they’ll keep us here?” I hoped it wouldn’t be long before they sent for us; they hadn’t even questioned us about our crimes yet. What did they consider due process in fantasyland?
Thankfully, barely half an hour had passed before our cell door swung open with a click, revealing a rough-looking man wearing the same X-shaped lapel pin.
“Bossman wants to see you.” He paused and sniffed. “And get yourself cleaned up. Smell like animal piss.”