The Suite Life X

35 - Point Oasis

As he walked through the darkened, bizarrely silent halls of Point Oasis, X couldn’t help but notice that it felt oddly claustrophobic despite the wide-open spaces compared to the seaside installation he worked at.

His careful march was halted by a grisly sight: it was yet another deceased worker, clearly missing at least an arm and with a deep slash to the chest. He almost wished that the red jewel on his forehead didn’t function as a lamp of sorts…

Then again, the imagination could often paint far worse pictures than reality itself.

It was scenes like this that were part of the reason that he’d retired briefly from the organization all those years ago…

As he kept going, his mind couldn’t help itself drifting over to what his protege would’ve made of this scene.

He’d probably have been scarred for the rest of his life…if he wasn’t already.

If he could get to the bottom of all this and find his brother… Well, at the very least he owed him that much.

A noise broke X from his thoughts.

Clop, Clop. Clop, Clop.

Footsteps, though with an odd, slow gait to them.

His communicator rang, but he rushed to silence it. Now was NOT the time.

Knowing that he was being pursued, he switched to evasive tactics. Hiding just behind a doorframe to a lounge area, he got a good look at the one doing the chasing.

The orange chassis were a dead giveaway: one of Oasis’s workers.

He didn’t need a direct look in his eyes to spot the lack of…humanity in them, in a manner of speaking. A careful side glance allowed him to notice a haunting red glow coming from where his eyes should’ve been.

He said nothing as he continued to shamble forward like a zombie. The sight reminded him of that strange survival-horror game that Axl loved so much, just with less…decay.

He was armed with a knife, no doubt specially designed to tear through reploid systems, and he wasn’t alone.

More slowly brought up the rear, armed with a variety of close and long-range weapons.

His comms went off again, but he muffled the sound as best he could this time, opting to slip inside a locker in the room.

“This is X, do you copy?”

“A-Affirmative,” the shaky voice of Pallette finally came through. She sounded as if she was bordering on having a panic attack. It was unsurprising considering that she had to watch a good majority of her own comrades kill each other.

After carefully working to get her calm enough to continue, she said what she was going to.

“You’re being hunted. our coworkers--, I mean, the enemy is converging on your location!”

“Yeah, I got the idea. A few are lurking around as I speak. Where are you?”

“Storage Room, Northwest Wing.”

The worry pecking at the back of his mind didn’t ebb away as he learned this. He was focused on the voices he hadn’t heard from. “You don't happen to know where Signas or Layer are, do you?”

“If only I did. Be careful, X. Something's very, very wrong…”

---

Making his way due northwest, he tried occasionally to establish communication with the two missing others, to no avail. What he did find, however, were plenty more of these seemingly possessed workers.