Levels

17 Hours 50 Minutes 24 Seconds

The airship began to move, and the whole room was shaking cause of the start of the huge turbines, that where mounted outside the ship.

Dayl was still shocked of the fact that nothing would ever be the same again and couldn't resist but to think that perhaps he shouldn't have gotten onto the ship in the first place.

"They would have gotten me anyway" he said more to himself than anyone else.

"Attender, at your right hand side of the ship, you will find some supplies and training gear to prepare yourself for the first level. It will start in exactly 0 point 46 hours. You will be thrown on the first level grounds, be ready until then." The female voice appeared sounding hollow through the big white room.

Dayl looked around, he spotted a metallic black door to his right.

"Must be the room the voice was talking about" he mumbled.

As soon as he moved, he noticed, that he had been standing on a strange looking platform with the shape of a circle. He stepped down and headed straight to the black door, opening it with one hand. As he walked past the door step, the room revealed itself to be packed with amore and all sorts of bags and backpacks. At the end of the room, there was a little bed, with fresh washed sheets and three grey pillows piled neatly at each other. At the back right corner, there was a little metal sink, shaped like a plastic bowl. Near the entrance, something that seemed like a wristband was hanging limp from the wall.

Dayl picked it up, just staring at it for a few seconds, seeing that there was a little display on it. As he failed to find a turn on button, he slid it across his left hand and pulled it up to his wrist. It fit perfectly.

The display lightened up and showed all sorts of numbers. As he looked closer, he saw, that there was a little heart drawn on it and a number that showed 83 next to it. He figured that it was his heart rate and that it might be handy out there, since he didn't know what was going to happen once he got out of this ship.

A strange looking grey and black coat was laying besides the bed. But Dayls attention was caught by something else, near the sink, he spotted another door with the words "Kill Room" written across.

He hesitated but then he thought:" If they'd want to kill me they could've done ways earlier" so he entered.

The room was filled with dummies from all sorts of materials, some bodies were made of stone, some of wood, even once which were made of something that seemed like titanium.

"This has to be some kind of training room...".

He moved forward, right were the body made of titanium was standing. He touched the blank titanium head and closed his eyes. With all his might, thinking about cracking the titanium into little pieces. He stood there for several seconds, but nothing happened, not a single carve into the blank surface of the greyish titanium.

Frustrated, he left the room, leaving behind the spotless surface of the titanium. But before he went through the door, he stopped by the nearest wooden dummy. He held his flat hand against it and everything it took, was just the thought about wood cracking beneath his palms, to crash the dummy into thousands of little pieces, spreading wood all around the room.

"Target one destroyed". The robotic voice appeared from above.

Caught by the thrill of shattering more dummies, Dayl slashed and blasted away every target in the room, leaving only the titanium one standing in the middle of the room, the one he couldn't destroy.

Satisfied he finally left the room, leaving a huge mess behind.

"Start until the first level, ten minutes" the familiar voice informed him again.

He had ten more minutes, but was he ready for whatever would await him outside? The answer was, he didn't know, but he would do everything possible to pass the first level.

A few minutes later the ship started to shake again and with a smash collided with the ground. They landed. Dayl knew it. It was soon to begin, now there was no way out anymore.

Moments flew by as the voice raised itself again:" Attender, place yourself on the start platform ".

He hesitated, but he had no chance to give it a second thought, so he got onto the platform he stood at the moment he arrived for the first time. Every second waiting, felt like an eternity. He looked at his left wrist. His heartbeat was at 140.

Then once again his body felt like it was stretched in every direction. Dayl closed his eyes, not daring to open them again.

Dayl could feel the wind blowing through is hair and snatching the edges of his coat. He took a deep long breath, filling his lungs with cool fresh air but there was something else, the ground felt hard, but not artificial so he had to be outside.

Slowly he began to open one lid of his eye and then the other one. Sunlight instantly fell in his iris, so he had to raise his arm to shield his face from the bright sunlight.

He looked up in the sky, and saw something floating through the air. He tried to look closer to make out the outlines of that something. He stopped breathing for a second, as he realized what was dangling up in the sky.

It looked like huge pieces of dirt had been ripped out and were now floating in the air. Each one of them as big as a small town, and each one of them floating higher above one another.

But there was even more, one of the airships was flying to the floating island directly above him.
Dayl looked around as a thought crossed his blurred mind. He too was at one of the floating islands, he had to be.

He looked at his left wrist and noticed that the display was now also showing something else.

"Level Zero, Timer... 17 hours 50 minutes 24 seconds" he read out loud.

"A timer ? Why is there a timer attached and what will happen if it runs out of time ?" mumbling now even louder than before.

But from this point on, he knew he had to complete Level Zero in less than eighteen hours. He didn't know what would happened if he wouldn't make it in time, but he rather didn't think about it...