The Adaptive Game

"WATERS"

- Shaun

"Take off your tracksuit, and bring your undershirt to the edge of the pool. Gather around the edge but do not jump in." says the square guard.

They all have shapes on their faces or something.

I bet they mean the rank of each staff member.

But anyway I'm here to get a lot of money. From everything I owe my friends and coworkers.

Or I'd have enough cash to run away, I don't like this place.

I have no choice but to get this no matter what.

Everyone starts taking off their track suits, and apparently everyone's wearing swimsuits underneath.

I come right to the edge of the pool with everyone else. My hair is going to get super messy from the water, in fact my 'programmer' hairstyle always does.

All the players are looking around waiting for instructions. Everyone is shivering and there's mist surrounding us.

It's 5:00 AM so it's still not light out. The water is oily black and I can't see the bottom.

"All players throw your undershirt into the water."

A player starts yelling from the other side of the pool:"It's so goddamn dark out here! What are we supposed to do about that?!"

Square Man says nothing.

Everyone grumbles and throws their shirts in. They sink, far down into the dark.

"All players get into the pool. The challenge is to go into the water and retrieve a sweatshirt from the bottom of the pool. It may or may not be your own. All you have to do is find your own sweatshirt and then ask a staff to help you out of the pool. Do this before the water rises and you will pass to the next level."

Another player yells out.

"I can't swim!"

A Triangle masked guard walks behind the player and shoves them into the water. She starts thrashing through the water in haphazard, splashing water everywhere.

A short brown haired girl jumps in and manages to hold her still and gets her to grab onto a metal bar on the pool.

That's when I notice something.

The water, first of all doesn't rise all the way to the top.

There aren't any ladders going out of it.

And there's some sort of... thread being wrapped all around the edge of the pool.

The drains are closed as well, which they usually would be open.

This isn't right. I have to be careful.

I slip into the pool and everyone else is late to realize they can't get out.

Suddenly, all the lights turn on and completely blind everyone. Water starts flowing into the pool... The woman from before tries to grab onto the wire wrapped all around the pool. She suddenly jolts back into the water, frozen still.

The woman falls into the brown haired girl's arms, completely limp.

Everyone freezes still, and then multiple people start to run.

I grab onto a contestant trying to run. A orange haired kid, he realizes he'll die if he comes out and calms down.

"Right. Right it's dangerous. Thanks." he says.

The remaining people who didn't get electrocuted start swimming downwards to grab a shirt.I start swimming down and I grab multiple shirts. It's extremely cold down here but it's away from the wires.

Reaching the surface, everyone starts to yell out names on the shirt they got.

I have a few, number 420, number 166, and number 555.

I hear someone yelling out 010. That'd be me.

I need to get across before these waters get me killed.