The Isdïra Complex

The guards

Some things you shouldn't believe even if they happen. Miranda believed she'd already heard that sentence before. A bell rang in the back of her mind and she tried to focus on that rather than on whatever had happened to Charles.
In her mind there was a garden with flowers blossoming, mostly in colors of yellow and red. There were trees and children running around on a playground... people standing next to her who she had already met, but couldn't remember when...
Miranda's vision faded when Charles came back into the room, entering it through the same door he'd gone through fifteen minutes ago.
"Who are you?" he asked.
Meanwhile the girl kept asking herself more questions than her brain could comprehend.
"Do you know how we got here?" Charles was the one who could've known more than her, who could've explained everything... but he couldn't.
They were both in a cage and had to seek for answers by themselves.
"Hey, I'm talking to you. Do you even hear me?" Charles got closer to Miranda to shake her by her shoulders.
That didn't happen - instead, she drew back and began to say something: "You stood here in front of me fifteen minutes ago, before your body fell apart."
"What are you talking about?" The young man clearly was confused.
Miranda did her best to explain it to him and gave up when she figured she couldn't.
There was only a piece of paper lying on the floor where Charles had fallen to dust. She had seen it for a moment before it apparently had disappeared. Now it lay there again and Miranda decided to pick it up.
"At school I for sure learned how to read," she joked and read out loud what it said on the piece of paper: "'Search for stairs, walk to the tower on the middle North and talk to the guards. They'll help you.'" Miranda chuckled. "Help is exactly what we need. Although clarification would be a more suitable word for it."
They left the room with all the long tables, chandeliers and tons of empty plates and broken goblets and did so by walking through one of its doors. The hallways they walked along were illuminated by blue and green lights at the walls and the ceiling. The lights only shone where they stepped and immediately went off behind them as soon as they didn't need them anymore. Something about this building was extravagant, but that fact also wouldn't answer any questions.
It took them a while to reach the end of the hallway, to open another door with a room that looked similar to a kitchen this time: It was provided with an oven and a stove with two burners in the middle, a small sink at the left and tons of shelves with spices and droors with knives, forks and spoons.
"It's not what we need for now, but it's still good that we found this part of the building," Miranda commented.
There was nothing to drink though, and that's what they needed most.
It took them hours to find some stairs they could walk up. Most of the rooms they'd been at stood empty, although in some of them they had found clothes and a few water bottles which would help them survive the next couple of days.
At the top of the stairs there was a platform leading them outside to a tower... with someone to talk to!
Miranda tried not to be too optimistic about it, not that she would be disappointed after her few experiences here with meeting other people.
The person wore a mask covering her whole face and it stood at the stone tower. It consisted of hundreds of dark bricks, each one of them with the size of a fist, cemented a couple of decades ago. In the far distance there was a forest and the trees of it lined up one after another until the horizon unfolded beyond it. In front of the forest was a huge lawn with small hills and few animals on top of them. Statues of animals, Miranda quickly figured.
The platform ended behind her - a stone wall was at her back. The gap between it and her was only as big as half a step which made the whole platform look quite small.
"You're supposed to help us," Charles said and the guard glanced at him, then raised her head up to talk to someone at the tower's peak.
"Hey, Cobb, you better hurry up because they are here!"
Miranda didn't expect to hear a woman's voice, but that's what it undoubtedly was.
The guard turned to them. She took the silk mask off of her head which had covered her face and long, brown hair. "Hi. I'm Jessa and Cobb should be here soon, too. We're here to help you, that's right." She again looked at Charles. "You probably have tons of questions."
"That sounds totally understated," Charles countered which made him receive a sad smile from the guard.
"I know how it feels," she claimed. "I've been in your position ten years ago. It's horrible to come to this place, not knowing anything about your past. Cobb and I are here to change that for you - if you follow the rules of the Isdrad."
A man in his fifties walked down the spiral staircase inside the tower. He was a bit corpulent and had short, light brown hair. "We're on the same side with you, unlike the other people you possibly have met in the Isdïra Complex - that's what this building is called," Cobb explained.
"What's the sense of us being right here right now?" Miranda asked the most imprtant question that immediately came to her mind.
"It might take a while to answer that, but I'll do my best to break it down to you," Jessa replied. "Every living being has more than one life - you don't know anything about your past in this life because it doesn't exist. The people who come here are torn out of their last lives to get here. For you," Jessa looked at Miranda, "it means that you've probably visited high school in your last life and died so that our enemies could bring you to this place. For you," and Jessa glanced at Charles like before, "it means you probably have been at college when you died."
"I clearly remember the last time I've sat together at the dining table with my brothers and sisters and I'm absolutely certain it didn't happen in my last life," Charles insisted.
"That's not possible," Cobb said, and didn't hesitate as he corrected himself: "...unless our enemies let you fall into a coma. That's the only possibility for them to bring you here before you wake up again."
"It sounds pretty far-fetched for me, to be quite honest with you." Charles was interested in finding out about his own past, but at the same time he wanted the truth.
Cobb shrugged his shoulders. "It's up to you to find the keys which will lead you closer to your own past. It'll be a long way for you to get to know all of it, that's for sure."
"I still don't understand why we are here," Miranda pointed out.
"You're here because our enemies believe that you killed their dependents in one of your past lives. It's the time two lives ago I'm talking about in your case. For Charles it's different. That's what you'll have to figure out, as Cobb said," Jessa explained. "We're just here to help you go your way. We can't get involved in your business too much though because if we do, the Isdrad'll find out about it. That's what we have to avoid. Anyway, it's starting to get cold and whenever that happens, it's a sign either for you or us to go. So please leave now. We'll keep in touch, don't worry about that. Just look out for small notes like the one that led you to the Middle North Tower."
It actually started to get colder and at that point Miranda wondered how the t-shirt and the thin sweater she wore was warm enough for her - the trees in the forest still had their leaves, but the temperatures spoke a language that sounded pretty much like the end of fall.
Miranda and Charles turned around, knowing that they'll slowly figure what would happen with their lives. They'd have to solve riddles for the next few weeks and months, but at least they got some answers for now and that's all they wanted.