Mika joins in with a tremulous sound. “Right? It –” She stills in my arms. This is a moment of realization for both of us. Fear and survival fade. Her skin is warm against mine, soft as she stiffens. Her blush is so deep I can see it in the back of her neck.
She jerks away and half turns her body from me.
I do the same. “Sorry… I didn’t mean…”
“It’s not… I don’t…” She stumbles over her words as she tries to cover herself. Her breasts are full, large, and her arm is barely large enough to conceal dark nipples as her other hand drops low. I stand, transfixed for long moments as she struggles before her eyes turn hot. “Stop looking!”
I spin in place like a top. “Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean… This is all so… It’s this place!” God, this all sounds so lame. Crazy ass situation aside, I usually have no problems talking to women. Comes from years of not caring whether I went home alone or not, I guess. But now?
I sit with my back to her while we both decompress. The space around us is white and sterile as the passage but it’s an actual room. A sparse room, however, which is why I have to sit with my ass rudely aimed at the poor girl behind me. My body has never been a concern of mine, but I usually have a lot more say in when and how I show it to a women. “You okay back there?”
“No. I’m not.” The room is so still that I can hear her gentle scuff as she backs away from me, the smack of her shoulders coming up against a wall. Her voice raises an octave. “I don’t know where I am, don’t know who you are, or what that was .” She gasps, voice trembling.
“Okay. Yeah, stupid question. Just….” I want to tell her to calm down, but no one ever calms down that way. Honestly, I’m having trouble getting a grip too. But we can’t just sit here. “Look, you told me I had to get up and we had to work together.” I point at the door. “And you were right. I think… for now, we gotta keep that up.”
I have to ground myself somehow and it sounds like Mika needs that, too.
After a long stretch she expels a shaky sigh. “What now?”
“Clothes, food and water. Even a chair; this floor is freezing my ass.”
She laughs softly. “Let’s see what we can find, I guess.”
The room is roughly as big as my whole shitty apartment. Featureless, like everything so far. Well, not the ceiling. There are still no light sources I can find, but there are long furrows, pulsing with a gentle orange glow. They don’t give off much illumination, but I can feel their warmth.
My shoulder stings like a bug bite. I slap at it and wince. My hand comes away bloody. “What the hell?”
A thin gash lines my bicep, one of those wounds that doesn’t hurt until you notice it. Probably from Mika’s fingernail while we were falling into the room, or something. I rub the welling blood away, then roll my eyes. Nothing to clean it with or wipe my fingers.
Before I can complain about this to Mika the pain lessens, almost disappears. I rotate my arm, try to bring the wound closer. It itches like mad and pulses in time with…
The lights.
Each time they emit a warm pulse my wound echoes. It shrinks. Even the blood trailing along my arm disappears. My cut is gone, not so much as a scar or red mark to hint where it was.
“What are you doing?”
Mika’s question startles me. “This is… I don’t know.” I do a sort of half sideways shuffle, trying to hide my crotch while not looking her way as I approach her.
She laughs. “Thanks, Zoidberg.”
“Wub wub wub! I know that one.” From a meme, but still. She’s cracking a joke and that’s a good thing, I hope.
I settle beside her. “This is nuts. Watch.” A quick zip of my thumbnail beads blood on my wrist.
Mika leans in, squinting. “What? Whoa…” Her eyes widen as the cut seals.
“I wonder if it works for me, too?”
I nod. “Pretty sure it’s those lights.”
“Why not?” She buries her face in her arms. “Everything else about this is nuts. Why not healing magic?”
“Pretty handy, though. Your nails are wicked.”
She raises her head, eyes narrowed. Damn, she’s beautiful. A purple lock of hair falls over one eye, highlights I didn’t notice before. “I’m dangerous? You elbowed the shit out of me when we…” She blushes. “Before.” She frowns. “But, actually, it doesn’t hurt anymore.” She peers down her torso, shielding herself. “You got me in the ribs so hard I figured there’d be a hell of a bruise.”
Before I can answer, the display at her wrist chimes. So does mine.
We bring our hands up together, peering. It’s the first time I’ve really looked at mine. Thus far, an iWatch embedded in my arm is the least interesting thing that’s happened.
Red words flash urgently: CONVALESCENCE COMPLETE. INITIATING ROOM TIMER.
Room timer?
00:15:00… 00:14:59… 00:14:58…
Mika locks eyes with me.
“What happens when the time runs out?”
“Convalescence field,” she says. “I guess that’s what healed us?”
“Sure. Why not?” I smile, probably not very convincingly. “Like I said. Handy.”
Mika’s eyes roam me. Her cheeks are rosy with her blush, but she doesn’t stop. She eyes the tattoo on my forearm for a while. It’s a set of numbers, random to anyone but me. I’m used to people asking about it. I expect she will, too.
But she surprises me. “Sam.”
“Mmhm. Sam Warner. Colorado.” I don’t know why I add this. Maybe it makes me feel more grounded in this place. Like I still have an identity somewhere.
“Mika Toriyama. San Francisco.”
“Not originally…” Her accent is pretty Americanized, but it’s there.
“My parents came here from Osaka to be with family.”
“Long way.”
“Yeah. Long story, too.” She takes me in without hesitation. “You’re the first man I’ve ever seen naked that wasn’t on the internet.”
“I… Wait, what?”
Red as she is, it gets worse. “Sorry! I don’t… I don’t know why I said that.” Mika turns away, hiding her face in a veil of black and purple. “We should find some clothes. Food and clothes .”
At a loss, I nod. “Yeah. Maybe there’s something we missed. I’ll just.” I glance back but she’s still hiding her face. “No peeking.”
“Oh, no worries.” Her embarrassment is painful but adorable. I don’t remember the last time I met a girl who was legitimately shy about anything.
I move off, decide that searching the perimeter of the room is probably the best option. There’s nothing in the middle, no benches, just flat floor, but maybe there’s a notch or something in one of the walls. The only features that break the illusion of this being a huge white cube are doors at each end.
Huh. The door we came through has a timer on it, too. I give a quick check of my wrist. It matches. 00:13:32… 00:13:31… Across from it is another door, this one with matching handprints, exactly like the ones we activated before.
Good to know, I guess. I’m not dying to venture out, not with sword-hand prowling around, but I’ve already learned we don’t want to be here when the timer runs out.
I smooth my hand along the wall feeling for anything. My fingers trace a rounded corner. It segues seamlessly with the next wall. It's like the entire place is one piece of… plastic, fiberglass? No wood, metal, rivets or screws.
Weirder and weirder.
“I found something!” The words fly out before I know what or even if it’s important.
“Really?”
“A hatch.” It’s so tightly joined to the rest of the wall I wouldn’t have found it if my fingernail hadn’t caught.
Mika hovers at my shoulder. “What’s it for?”
“Not sure.” I run my hands around a circular panel about the length of my arm.
Mika smooths its surface. “I wonder what’s inside.”
“Hope it’s whiskey.” I could use a goddamned drink.<
br />
“What? Whiskey? ”
“Clothes, I mean.”
“Sure.” Her finger stops tracing the hatch. “What’s this?”
“What?” I squint. There’s nothing there.
“This.”
I shake my head.
“You can’t see this?” She traces a long curve. “It’s… obvious.”
“No, nothing.”
“Weird.” She shrugs.
“You can see something I can’t? How does that work?”
She laughs. “Like everything else here, I guess.”
“What is it?”
“Some kind of mark. Let me try something…” She pushes exactly at the center of the hatch. Her finger sinks into the white surface slightly. The material shudders and shifts around her fingertip like white putty. It sinks into the surrounding wall.
Mika jerks her hand back and we hold our breath.
Nothing happens. Nothing bad, anyway.
“Whoa.” I step back. “Nice. How did you see that?” This fact still has me a little shaken. If we’re in the same place, shouldn’t we see the same stuff?
“I have no idea. But look!” She yanks out a bundle of fabric. “Clothes!”
“Thank Christ. I was this close to being done with you leering at me.”
“Leering! I didn’t –” She stops. “Ha ha. Put on a shirt.”
Laughing, I obey as she throws some pants at me a lot harder than she needs to. I wrestle those on, trying to save some of my dignity and stop. “Weird.”
I have to stop saying that.
“What?” Mika asks from inside a shapeless tank top.
“These fit me perfectly. Like, better than clothes I buy for myself.”
She’s turned away, shimmying into pants. Not watching is ridiculously difficult. Her body is curved in the best fucking way. “Huh. Mine too. And that’s not easy with…” She shakes her ass as she the cloth up.
I don’t hide my stare this time.
“And what material is this?” she asks, thankfully too distracted to notice me.
I rub a sleeve between my fingertips. It’s soft and white like cotton but feels substantial and thick.
“I think we should probably just get used to the fact that everything here is batshit and move on,” says Mika.
“Hah. Yeah, probably. Anything else in there?”
She pokes around. “Maybe? It’s dark and… oh shit.”
I try to peer past her. “What?”
Mika holds up a dagger, complete with cross guard. Bright metal winks at me in the neutral light.
“Weapons.” Her voice is hushed, scared again.
“Uh…more than one?”
Mika nods. “Sam, what is this place? Why are we here?”
“I know as much as you.” Who made it? Who runs it? How did they get us here? Do they expect us to fight? What if there’s some Gladiator style arena on the other side of the next door?
I swallow and take the dagger from her. This wouldn’t do shit to that thing in the hallway but get us killed.
“Sam.” Mika’s voice is strong but small. “I’m scared.”
I take a deep breath. How can I reassure her when I don’t have any answers? We’re here. We have to find out why. And we have to survive long enough to get the hell out of here.
“Hey.” I put a finger under her chin and raise her gaze to mine. Small threads of gold glint in her brown eyes. “We’ll be okay. Remember, the door kept that thing out. This place has rules and we can figure them out.” My smile is more genuine this time. “You were right; the door proved you it. It took both of us to open the door and escape the creature. We did it.”
Mika smiles and melts a little, losing some tension in her shoulders. She squeezes my hands. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“Yeah. I’ve always sucked at those Facebook ‘about me’ boxes.”
“I wasn’t allowed to have Facebook.”
“Damn. That tells me a lot about you, actually.”
“Yeah.” Mika winces. “I had one anyway.”
“That tells me more.”
“Yeah. I’m a real rebel.” Her smile drops away.
Something I said? Probably not, but naked or clothed, I don’t know her well enough to dig.
I glance at the door timer. 00:7:44… 00:7:43… We have a little time. “Well, I’m Sam.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Hah, right. There’s not much to tell. Mom died, dad took off. I scraped through welding school and worked my way through the oil fields.”
“Lots of promotions? That’s pretty skilled work, right?”
“It’s skilled work, yeah.” But guys who don’t have a lot of use for the rules or staying out of fights with derrick hands don’t change fields because they get promoted.
Mika tightens her hands on mine but doesn’t press me.
I like her a lot.
“Anyway. I’m pretty boring. Like good Kentucky bourbon, video games, and bad action movies.”
“Games? I thought you said you didn’t play them?”
“Okay, I’m not nerdy enough to know what the hell ‘kiting’ means, but I play some,” I say with a smile to soften the jab.
She grins. “That’s okay. You’ve probably guessed already that I love them.” She grins and seems to forget the insanity around us. “I played competitively for a while.”
“Yeah?”
“League of Legends is my baby.”
“Played that one for about five minutes. Kids are too good these days. I had to take my crappy reflexes back to single player games.”
Her eyes narrow, skeptical. “You’re like, what, twenty-five?”
“Nice guess. With blue collar hands and a drinking hobby. Built for distance, not for speed.”
We laugh.
“What about you?”
Mika looks sad again. “Twenty.”
Do I ask? Nah. Point here is to buck her up, not bring her down. “That it, Mika Toriyama? Strict parents and videogames?”
She deflates again. Dammit. No more jokes. “Yeah, mostly,” she says. “Don’t get out much. Well, I didn’t get out much and then it was a lot of work to… Life is, well… Never mind.”
“No job?”
“Worked for my dad. Kind of.”
“Boyfriends?”
“No.”
“Surprising.”
Her eyes lift. “Why?”
I feel oddly shy suddenly. Probably because she was naked a few minutes ago. “Ah. Just… You’re …” Her gaze is intense. She takes her bottom lip between her teeth.
Suddenly, insanely, I really want to kiss her. Feel those full lips and whatever it is she’s holding back.
“I’m what?” she whispers.
Our wrists ding. Saved by the bell. 00:05:00 REMAIN. SHEPHERD ACTIVATED.
“Shepherd? ” we say together.
“That thing . It has to be.” She tugs me toward the door. “We know each other enough, now. Let’s go.”
“Definitely.” I poke my head through the hole and grab a second dagger. “We can talk more later.”
Her shy smile is heart stopping. “I’d like that.” Then she turns away, fear knitting her brow.
I turn her back to me. “Hey. There will be a later.”
Mika nods.
We reach the door. She puts her hand up and fits it to the reader.
Not exactly eager for what’s on the other side, but we can’t stay here.
I slap my hand to the plate, smile at Mika, and pretend I’m not scared shitless as the door opens…
4
Chamber 1
Aspirant #2239
Time Remaining: 00:15:00
I’m not sure what the hell I expected.
A medieval dungeon wasn’t it.
We stumble through the gateway. I take Mika’s arm to keep her from tumbling over as she gasps.
“What… the hell?”
My words echo off dark stone that glints in the light of flickering
torches that dot the walls. Torches that I can see but not reach because we’re trapped in a cell.
A dungeon cell.
“Run!” We turn and lunge for the door, but it’s gone. The wall is featureless stone, wet with condensation. “Always fast at the wrong times.”
Mika snorts.
The ceiling is low, and the cell isn’t wide enough for the two of us to stand shoulder to shoulder. It’s more like an animal pen than any jail cell.
Good thing I’m not claustrophobic.
I hope Mika isn’t.
There’s not much else. A bucket, for obvious reasons that fill the dank air. Sure as hell am not going to use it in close quarters with Mika. A pile of straw heaps one corner, not enough for one of us to sleep on.
Not that it’s an option. A huge fucking rat peers at me from inside the pile, hissing to make sure we’re aware who owns it.
“Sam…” Mika’s eyes are trained on it. She clutches her dagger, backing against the bars.
“Territorial, but I don’t think it’s aggressive.” I hope.
The rat bares teeth big as carpenter’s nails and hunkers toward us. Like he wants to call me on my bullshit.
“Sam…” Mika’s hand trembles against my back.
I heft the dagger. This is so bizarre, so unreal, some part of me doesn’t believe it’s happening, but the slavering rodent in front of me is enough to snap me to attention.
“Uhh…” I take a tentative step forward, weapon held out. “My hand-to-hand badge is more for fists.”
“Well… if you punch it, don’t miss,” says Mika.
The rat leaps. Fucking leaps like a goddamned panther right at my face.
Mika screams.
I slash, bellowing.
The strike is off, weak and startled, but it’s enough. The blade cuts into the rat’s face, and it shrieks as I take its weight and deflect it to the floor. It slams down, flops over, and even through a ruined it eye peers at me hatefully, bunching to leap again.
I stab, down, as hard as I can.
It takes the rat in the spine, cutting right through it. My dagger snaps against the floor as it spasms, once. It’s remaining eye rolls back in its head and it dies, shuddering hideously, pinned.
“Jesus…” I stand, coughing.
“Sam, how… Where?” Mika’s eyes are on the rat and her whole body shakes like a leaf.
“I don’t know.” I turn, take her in my arms. She collapses against me gratefully, hands to my chest as she lets out a soft sob.
Aspirant: A Sci-Fi Harem Adventure Page 2