A Man for Himself (Norton X Eli) [Identity V] *UNEDITED*

Chapter 9 - Trapped

Eli didn't feel safe.

Norton was sitting a couple of chairs away from him. The prospector would glance at the prophet from time to time while fiddling with his magnets, but he did it in a subtle way so Naib wouldn't notice. Nevertheless, Naib remained on guard. He still hadn't caught on what had happened a few days ago; and Eli preferred it that way. It's already enough that Aesop knew about it. He would rather not involve anyone else. It's his own problem to deal with.

It wasn't an easy one though.

The team was composed of Eli, Naib, Norton and Aesop. Judging from the absence of noise, Eli could tell that this group wasn't the most talkative type. He appreciated the silence, but it didn't help on lessening the tension in the air. It was suffocating. It was so thick that Naib's kukri could probably cut through it. Someone had to break the ice.

Eli cleared his throat. "Let's do our best and win this match," he managed to say without his voice cracking.

"Of course, we will win," Norton said with a gentle smile. "I'll make sure of that."

Eli wasn't exactly surprised when Norton spoke. He remembered the first time he teamed up with the prospector; it was Norton who responded to him as well.

With a nod and a forced smile, Eli muttered, "I'll count on it."

When the familiar sound of the alarm went off, he stood up from his seat and marched down the hallway to the arena. Norton was walking ahead of them, but Eli chose to stay behind Naib. As much as possible, he didn't want to be anywhere near the prospector. He wanted to stay with the mercenary, but that wouldn't be a good idea since they had to finish multiple cipher machines  in the shortest time possible; and decoding together wasn't one way of doing that.

From the entrance, Eli walked down the corridor to the right, passing by a chapel and an electrotherapy chamber until he reached a corridor full of empty rooms on either side. Those rooms used to detain the patients with mental illness. They were in Whitesand Street Asylum. He had only been there three times, so he's not really familiar yet with the location of the machines and possible escape routes.

Once he found a cipher machine inside one of the rooms, Eli decided to hide first so he could send his owl out to scout the area for his teammates. Through the vision provided by his owl, he's able to locate everyone's position as well as identify whom the hunter was.

The hunter was the photographer.

Eli didn't realize that until a camera clicked behind him. He couldn't help but curse under his breath. He didn't notice those tripods along the way.

Once the photographer activated his camera, a mirror image of the real world would be temporarily created, allowing the hunter to injure the recorded image of survivors without them being able to fight back or escape. This gave the hunter a chance to make surprise attacks. To be safe, Eli entered the camera world through its projection and started decoding inside.

Weirdly enough, time had passed by quickly without any sign of anyone getting injured. The camera world was about to collapse, yet there was no sign of the photographer.

Could it be that the hunter was having a hard time finding a survivor in this maze? It couldn't be helped. This asylum was almost as big as the amusement park and had a lot of rooms. There's a lot of possible hiding spots.

You must not rely on what your naked eyes can see.

The thought crossed his mind when he felt a searing pain across his back. His mind went blank for a moment. He found himself falling down on his knees as the camera world collapsed around him.