JELLYFISH

DOOR 018

[name] bought a wind-up flashlight.

It looked a bit suspicious when [name] crawled out of that vent, quiet and clutching the item preciously to their chest. They lied a second time to Aisha, saying they had difficulty choosing when only four items remained on Sebastian's tail.

Urbanshade knew [name]'s power existed.

Urbanshade knew [name] existed.

All this time, [name] had thought they were an insignificant piece of sand in Urbanshade's playpit. They just had to keep their head down and serve out their sentence, an unknown number to them. Even as they thought back to their time at Urbanshade, there were these insignificant gaps in their memories, but not suspicious gaps, they merged with the more coherent memories, becoming a useless thought.

They had been down here before. Sebastian had found this out, but how? Unless he had left his shop, which was highly improbable, Sebastian couldn't have found this out himself.

An idea that he had lied to them crossed their mind. What if he actually didn't trust them to go back with Urbanshade? What if he wanted to keep them down here because he didn't want to be put through the loop again? Was Sebastian capable of thinking that far ahead?

[name]'s head was spinning.

They passed rooms and doors and documents and USBs, all while thinking and spiraling and hiding from monsters. No doubt they looked lost in space while the others were more focused on searching desks and small spaces for anything else that could be useful until they stumbled upon that dreaded checkpoint. [name] hadn't even looked at the door number before walking numbly through it, following the others. The only thing that snapped them back to reality was the crackling noise that came from the speaker above.

"Watch the skies," it said, in a forced tone, cutting off abruptly before speaking again, "take your time." Then, it crackled once more before falling silent.

Eyes looked amongst each other, giving off looks toward the speaker, "ooookay," Aisha chuckled as she swiped the purple keycard that was clearly sitting on the table near the right of the doors. She inserted it into the reader and both of them opened, allowing them into a smaller room with a door directly across from them.

Door 060. Was [name] really so lost in thought that they had pushed through, what, almost twenty doors?

In room 060, there were those six generators, two of them requiring repairs. They sparked, one with a puddle of water underneath it but it showed no sign of being electrified. Emil wordlessly walked over to one of the broken machines and peered at it, his face becoming a little brighter as he inspected the internals of the device.

"I think we can fix this right up!" He said, turning his head to the rest of the group. Kei was the first to move after Emil, heading to the other broken box, Aisha in step behind him while Evelyn hurried to Emil's side. Oz, Ezekiel, Vanessa, and [name] lingered at the side, rummaging through the few drawers that were around.

[name] felt off knowing what lay in the large room ahead. A pang of hurt spread throughout their body, more specifically around where the hook of that beast had pierced them some time ago; but now it was healed. No, not healed, it didn't exist. But their memory was still very fresh.

The metal boxes in the room they were working at gave a ker-chunk as they were finishing up with them and the door ahead opened. In room 061, there were two more generators requiring fixing, and the same groups went their same ways, but Aisha was the one who made it to one of the machines first before Kei.

[name] passed their hushed argument and leaned their body against the wall near the door. A small wave of exhaustion swept over their mind, with a headache following shortly after. This whole operation was a headache. The sounds of the machines whirred in the back of their head, gears, and electrical circuits churning and buzzing away. Only the sound of a successful shout from Aisha brought their mind back, and the door on their right flew open.