Snippet #2406615

The computer did not reply to Tom. Besides it hardly ever giving any information about the game, it didn’t understand what he meant.

The noise became louder. The change in volume didn’t seem to depend on which way they were going, and the sound did not have an echo (although that’s a bit difficult to tell about a constant noise). The maze appeared to be vibrating, and yet it wasn’t, which made Andromeda nauseous... or was it her feeling Tom’s nausea? No, definitely her own.

Now, the computer voice began to talk. “We are about to arrive at an unknown destination. Congratulations, your teamwork has beat the highscore by six million threehundredtwentyfivethousand ninehundred twenty points. We apologize for the delay and for the inconv-”

The noise and vibration were replaced by a different, unbearably loud noise and violent shaking. The computer voice stopped mid-sentence, everything in the maze stopped moving, then -- black. Seconds later, there were a bang and a crunch, one last extra violent shake, followed by silence.

Andromeda lost consciousness at the bang.

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In less than a minute, Andromeda was back. She opened her eyes. She was sitting in a chair inside a round white thing, something almost like an egg. Hanging from a chair was more like it, without the seatbelts she would have fallen into the door in front of her. The air smelled awful, like zombie breath. She felt dizzy and sick, and her head hurt, and at the same time she was hungry. Andromeda unbuckled. Her arms and legs felt weak, tired, sleepy, but they still had the strength she expected from them, allowing her to land almost graciously on all fours. It was a bit awkward not to land on the door.

To her left there was a small closet, which contained a familiar looking backpack. It didn’t look as full as before. And were those loops at the side always damaged like that? Were they always there in the first place? She’d worry about that later, first she needed to get back to the group. She put on the backpack.

Now wait as second.

Andromeda looked at her hands. She was back in her own body! She grabbed her tail. “Hello! I missed you!” It felt so soft, so real. Strange.

She finally opened the door below her. There were more of the egglike things, one directly below her with its door facing her. Hadn’t she seen Corki enter that one, long ago? It occurred to her that they had become friends at least twenty times.

She looked around. Most of the doors of the pods were open, nobody had ever been in there. To the left, after a few rows of pods, there was a wall. An equal distance to the right, there also was a wall, but one that didn’t seem to belong. It was made of rock, and where the metal walls joined it those were bent all out of shape. Following that wall in the direction that should be up, but wasn’t, there was a huge hole and a mess of crushed pods. Something red was dripping from a few. Water was flowing in through one side of the hole.

“What kind of fucked up shit is this?” Andromeda commented. Nothing happened. “Come on, relog me goddamnit. I don’t want to play!”

Andromeda climbed down from her pod. It was good to be upright, but she had no idea what to do. The water slowly flowing into whatever this place was worried her. Getting away from the water was a good idea. There was a door in the wall to the left, its frame was bent out of shape and it had dropped open. Behind it there were racks containing suitcases. Two things that weren’t suitcases stood out, they were rectangular orange things labeled “black box”. How odd that they weren’t black.

One of the suitcases looked familiar, but Andromeda was intrigued by the universal connectors on the orange boxes. She reached into her backpack. How come her datapad had grown a keyboard? Another thing to worry about later. Copy that data, find a clue what to do...

There were lots and lots of numbers. Coordinates, speeds, sensor readouts, life support system statistics per pod... Nothing looked like a clue. She closed the laptop. There were sounds coming from the room with the pods. There were other living people here!

The familiar suitcase had her name on it. She tugged at it but couldn’t get it to move. Maybe one of those other people could help. Andromeda slapped her forehead, not a good idea considering she had a headache. She had been right above Corki’s pod and never bothered to look inside to see if her friend was still there and okay!