¶ When I opened my eyes, I couldn't see a thing. I slowly rose to my feet and heard myself panic. I felt my lungs rapidly expand only to collapse, and repeat itself. I felt my heart pounding against my chest like a prisoner trying to escape. "Hello! ...anyone"! No one responded. I tried again, but my voice lost the vigor it once had, "anyone"?
¶ Still no response. I touched my eyes, hoping to find a blindfold, or some sort of reason for the void before me. There was nothing blocking my eyes. I fell to my knees. I'm trapped without any hope for escape. "Not even three minutes and you give up", suddenly I heard a series of lights switch on followed by the darkness be replaced with pure white.
¶ I recoiled from the pain of taking in all that light so suddenly. I covered my eyes in an attempt to prevent the pain. I let out a barrage of blinks to get used to the light. When I finally regained my bearings, I saw a man wearing a shimmering black suit , and a black bar over his eyes, his image was broadcasted all over the walls, floor and roof.
¶ His feet hung off the arm of the chair, while he slouched against the opposite end and looked directly at me. His elegant appearance didn't match his slouched posture nor his oddly worn armchair. His voice distorted itself, but every word was recognizable. "Reeling, tch tch tch. I expected more from you. I thought you'd run until you found a wall or something, not falling to your knees in defeat near instantly-". Before he could finish, I yelled, "who are you! Where am I! Why am I here!"? His hand disappeared beneath the black bar covering his eyes, it seemed like he was grabbing the ridge of his nose. "Interrupting a person is an awful habit to have Reeling". He let out a disappointed sighed, "I had planned a whole monolog-". I interrupted him again, "How do you know my name"? He repositioned himself to slouch forward and clutched his hands together. "Are you finished"?
¶ I swallowed my fear, but the pounding in my chest made it so I was barely able to hear his words. "Reeling who I am doesn't matter. All that matters is your friends are here. Now go find them". As he finished his sentence, all of the walls in the room rose to reveal an arched doorway in the center of what used to be a blank wall. The man had disappeared from every screen. I was alone again, but my friends are trapped here, somewhere.
¶ There are four doors. That means there are at least four people here, but just because he called them my friends that doesn't mean they are. Unless they've been watching me. That doesn't matter right, I'm alone, I need to find someone, anyone. Without much thought I walked to door directly in front of me. Well it's not so much a door as it is a hole in the wall, but regardless I went forward.
¶ With every step I took, I felt myself shiver in fear. As I passed beneath the archway the room began to shake, it churned me from side to side and once I finally gained by bearings it began its decent. When the elevator stopped, there was a glass door opposite the side I entered. Through the glass I could see what seemed to be an abandoned laboratory. A lone light flickered and silence occupied the occasional darkness. I tried to push and pull the door open with no luck. As I tried pulling it to the side, a gust of wind shot out from the creek I had opened. As I looked to my left I found switches, flipping them quickly solved the lighting issues. I expected to find a corpse, a robot, or hell even something out of a slasher movie, but aside from paper and broken glass scattered around the floor there was nothing in the room. There were science lab esc tables lined against the walls to my left and right and cabinets below them.
¶ The only thing I can really do is search the abandoned lab for clues, so that I did. I must've spent fourty five minutes to an hour combing through every cabinet, drawer, and every table's surfac, and then another hour gathering and reading all the papers on the floor. Except for the fact that this place was abandoned in 07/19/71, I didn't learn a thing. The papers only talked about boring science stuff. Also something about learning how to turn concrete brittle. Without much hope for tomorrow, I fell against the empty wall. I heard a rumbling sound, then felt the stones behind me begin to crumble. I fell backwards and braced myself to be crushed by the stones above me, I tried covering my face with my arms.
¶ Strangely, instead of getting crushed by falling stone, I felt something like sand fall on my body. Once it finished, I quickly crawled back into the room and marveled at the grey sand on the ground and the hidden room behind the broken wall. A red hazard light enveloped the hidden room. In the center of the room there was a giant glass pod filled with a greenish liquid. As I got closer to the pod, I was able to makeout the shape of a human from the center. A breathing apertures covered the guy's mouth, and he wore a plain white industrial jumpsuit with matching work boots, I wore the same matching jumpsuit. My hand hovered over the glass while I contemplated tapping it. In the end, my curiosity won out. As I finished my last tap, an eye shot open. Bubbles of air escaped while he tried desperately to punching the glass.
¶ Using all my strength, I kicked the glass pod. It was no use, the glass was too strong. I searched around the room for something to break open the pod but there was nothing aside from a steel box with a number pad glued to the wall. I tried pressing one two three four, but the number pad flashed a shade of scarlet. I thought back to everything in the room and decided it wouldn't hurt to try the date the lab was abandoned. The hazard light flashed green then turned into a regular light. A wave of green liquid escaped from the pod while the glass decended. The guy fell to his knees. He threw off his breathing aperatus and inhaled all the oxygen he could. With his face now revealed, I saw my first friend. "Reeling, where are we"?