Mari put Eric's head in her lap and tried to pat his face gently to wake up.

"Hey, wake up Eric, you were right, its time to go," Mari told him.

Pat pat.

"Wake up Eric~"

Pat pat.

"Eric if you wake up I'll tell you how you're right about everything!"

Pat pat pat pat pat.

"Eric wake the heck up!"

Smack.

"Mari, he's alive. Just unconscious," Aster reassured her. "Let's just all lie down for a moment...."

Aster laid his head on the cool, tile. His body suddenly felt warm yet cold all over, like he was running a fever. He closed his eyes and relaxed on the floor, which for some reason felt like it was moving underneath his body in waves.

"Aster, wake up! You can't fall asleep too!"

"I'm wide awake... don't know why I'm so sick," he replied. "We're so far from the city, we should be stronger out here."

"Yeah...no electricity...."

Aster nodded weakly and Mari stroked his hair while they sat alone in the dark, under the dim glow of the red emergency lights. She couldn't understand why everyone was dropping like flies if they were so far from the city. She got up and looked around the lobby for clues.

The lobby seemed quite normal, other than the furniture strewn about. The customer service android stood behind the front desk counter and smiled. Her LED retinas and teeth glowed in the dark, giving her a ghastly grin.

"Can you help us," Mari asked. "Where are we?"

The android opened her mouth and out popped a business card. Mari grimaced and took it out of her mouth. It was simply a business card that read, ARIA MAGNETIC AND GEOLOGICAL OUTPOST. When she flipped the back it said, SOUTHERN OUTPOST, with a picture of the star Optimus on the back, and a map of the electromagnetic waves of the geological area.

"Thanks," Mari said dryly. "What does this place even do?"

"This is a testing center for the effect of magnets, electromagnetic fields, and how it affects our planet's soil. High electromagnetic fields may sometimes induce strange feelings in people."

"Like what," Mari asked.

"Sometimes people may feel like they are being watched. Electronic devices will display the wrong time or have problems with their memory files."

"How can we leave?"

The android said nothing.

Mari figured it wouldn't be that easy and tried to get help from someone of higher intelligence. She ran to other rooms but inside each one she found the other recruits passed out, asleep, or sick. Mari's chest tightened because this felt like a repeat of the transit station.

People were dying, and she could help them but she just didn't know how. Flashbacks of the screams of people falling into the dark abyss, stuck in train cars, the flames, they all kept coming back to her while Mari tried to find a solution. She again took out the business card the friendly android had given her.

ARIA MAGNETIC AND GEOLOGICAL OUTPOST

"Okay Mari, think. This building is a magnet. Magnets pull in things. They push things. Magnets give off uhh...... Waves! Yes."

Mari ran down the hallway to the elevator and pressed the button. It didn't move. She kept pressing the button repeatedly until she realized.

She was a human battery and a magnet.

She ran back to where Eric and Aster lay on the ground. She sat on top of Eric, rubbed her hands together as fast as she could, and made the best impression of a medical android.

"CLEAR!"

She pressed her palms on his chest as hard as possible, and Eric gasped wide awake. He sat up so suddenly that he smacked his head right into Mari's. She screamed and fell backward, right onto Aster who groaned in distress.

"Gods above and below, Mari! Why were you on top of me," Eric shouted.

"Why did you hit me !?!"

"Why is everyone shouting," Aster groaned.

Eric gave himself a diagnostic check while Mari propped up Aster on one of the lobby couches. He scanned the room for abnormalities but his retina display didn't pick up on anything weird, other than the high-intensity magnetic field inside the room. In the dark it was obvious that Eric's studded earring was on, and Mari came over to inspect it.

"Why is your earring glowing," she asked.

"It's a tracker," Eric replied. "Someone should have been here by now to come get us, but I think whatever is going on inside of those buildings is blocking my signal. Do you think you could disrupt whatever is blocking the signal, Mari?"

"Of course I can! Show me how!"

Eric carried Aster on his back while scanning various parts of the outpost. The closer they got to their destination, the weaker Eric became and soon it took the two of them to drag Aster along with them. The elevator wasn't functioning so they had to take the stairs down to the bottom level.

When they arrived at the bottom floor, Eric collapsed onto the floor and slumped over. Aster was no longer awake and Mari was avoiding touching the walls. The walls pulsed blue and black, and different electrical components made up the walls.

After making sure Eric and Aster were okay, she left to go find the source of the waves. When she started walking down the hallway, she stopped every few seconds to look back at them. She felt like someone was watching her, but both of them were lying down on the floor, their eyes closed.

Mari's eyes turned a greyish milky color and her body shivered. She could see her breath from how cold it was, and she felt like everything was slowly becoming surreal.

"Mari, you're being silly," she told herself. "Keep going."

So she continued on, the rhythmic metal taping underneath her boots, but she stopped once she heard something. A few tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-taps were right behind her but they stopped the same time she stopped. Mari started walking again now, but a bit faster, but again, she felt like someone was following her. She turned around, the other pair of footsteps stopped and again no one was looking at her.

Mari now broke out into a full-on sprint down the glowing corridor, looking for a door. She felt someone chasing after her and never looked back this time out of fear. When she turned left she tripped and fell to the ground into a pile of bones.

Bones.

So many bones.

All the skeletons were wearing their red shirts. They all lay in different poses, in front of the door, as if they all fell asleep waiting in line. Mari irrationally believed for a few seconds that she had accidentally cut the line, that she was being rude, and stood in polite silence until her brain could finally understand what she was seeing.

The loud footsteps finally caught up to her and came to a stop, and Mari felt like someone was breathing onto her neck. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and a bit of coughing, and she was too terrified to look up.

"The door is locked," the male voice said. "It's a trap. It will shock you, and disconnect you from the Three Sisters."

Mari didn't want to be rude and say nothing, but she was also terrified because the voice did not sound like Aster or Eric. She kept her eyes glued to the ground and was losing her mind as she had a conversation with herself in the hallway. The metallic floor now started to swirl and mix into different colors, causing even more confusion in her terrified mind.

She didn't know if she could trust the voice, so she asked it a question.

"Which path do you take," Mari asked the voice.

"The one least traveled," numerous voices replied back.

Mari looked up and all the skeletons were replaced with friendly people. They were talking, and laughing, some were crying. A pair were playing cards. One looked up at her from the ground and smiled.

"Would you like to join us, Mari," he asked.

"I don't want to die," Mari replied.

"No, you silly girl! Do you want to play cards?"

The spirits laughed and Mari laughed because she did not want to be the only one not laughing.

Mari finally turned to see who was speaking to her and it was a green-haired Weaver. He also wore the same red shirt that she wore, but the logo was different, it was much older.

"Mari, go back," he told her. "Spend the few moments you have left with your brothers. This door will kill you the moment you try opening it."

"Is that how you died," she asked him.

"No. I starved. I saw others touch the door and get shocked to death. I never found a way out."

The spirits started recounting the different ways they had died, the regiment number, and the year they enlisted. They told Mari that it was a graveyard for Weavers and that the military was weeding them out.

"I can leave. I can open that door. Electricity doesn't affect me."

The spirits laughed and Mari went through the crowd of them with her head high. She was told by so many that she would be nothing, or was useless. The laughter of the dead was not going to stop her from opening the door.

Mari placed her palm on the entry processing panel and the spirits buzzed. A high-pitched whining noise rang in the air and they watched as Mari absorbed the electric current that passed through her body. When the living battery had her fill of energy, the door still did not open.

Her eyes changed from milky grey to their regular blue, and in a few blinks she was standing alone in the hallway again. There were no more swirling colors, but the skeletons were still there. She took a few steps over and found the two that were playing cards.

She checked the hand of the one who asked her to join and she giggled.

"He's a horrible poker player."

She carefully stepped through the bones and back to the old door. She tried placing her palm again on the sensor but the door still would not open.

Out of frustration, she kicked the door and it fell right in. It slammed to the ground, dust flew everywhere, and she peered into the dark. Reluctantly, Mari stuck her head into the room, and one by one the lights turned on. She walked onto a bridge that connected a large circular room from one side to the other.

In the center of the room were long pieces of iron that were as thick as an old tree. The bridge Mari stood on overlooked a dark abyss, and the iron "trees" went down into it as far as she could see. Thin coils wrapped around and around all of them and the top of the "trees" faded into the dark as well.

Mari walked down the bridge and approached a giant machine in the center of the bridge.

Once again, she made a very good impression of a health-care android when she rubbed her palms as fast as possible, sparks flying everywhere, and shouted "CLEAR!".

One by one the iron trees went dim, and the only light left was Mari soft blue hue. She left the strange laboratory and on the other side, when she was back in the corridor, all the bones were gone. All that was left was a small pack of cards and a note on top.

She put the deck of cards in her back pocket and read the note.

"FOR YOU TO PLAY WITH YOUR BROTHERS"

image [https://i.ibb.co/qdq3HkT/a-girl-with-black-hair-and-blu-6.jpg]