This Is Above my Pay Grade
I open my eyes. Then I close them again. This time I open one eye carefully, then touch it to make sure it's open. I poke my eyeball and then spend about three minutes tearing up and holding my face in my hands because poking an eye fucking hurts.
I open my eyes again. I do this about 6 more times. No, I'm not blindfolded; I can't feel anything against my eyes - I'm seeing the same thing with my eyes open as I am with my eyes closed, which is pitch black nothingness.
Okay, I think. What a nice start.
What happened? Where am I…
It all comes back to me - the chase, the black spider-men, the kidnapping. Oh God, I was kidnapped. Is this real? Shouldn't this only happen in fucking movies?
Nari… oh God. Uhm… well… I'm sure that the Guard will find me sooner or later after Caesar or someone sends out a missing person report.
I decide that sitting around twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the Guard isn't going to help my predicament, so I feel about on the floor – it seems like it's a cold, hard, natural stone ground, like I'm in a cave.
My heart sinks.
I have no idea how deep I am, which continent I'm in or anything.
Is this real?
Something forms in my throat that I can't find the will to swallow, and I suddenly feel like crying.
Nuh uh. None of this.
I explore further, feeling about in front of me, and then my hand touches something warm and fleshy.
I almost jump out of my skin. My whole body's trembling. It's obvious instantly what I've just touched.
To be honest, the thought that someone else might be here with me hadn't crossed my mind. Don't know why I thought I was alone, but the other guy doesn't seem like he's awake, at least not yet, but he definitely wasn't dead.
While I wait for my... roommate to wake up, I decide to do some more exploring. I'm terrified, sure, and shivering, begging this to be a dream, but I've fantasized about what I'd do if I were ever in this sort of situation before. In my dreams, in my fucking daydreams, not real life. It's cold. I'm hungry, and I wanna go home.
I didn't even have breakfast.
But I have to stay calm. By measuring using paces and feeling around, I've surmised that I am stuck in a hole in a cave that's of unknown depth, almost perfectly circular, with absolutely nothing in it except one other person and a bunch of creatures skittering around. It's of about twenty feet in diameter, and the walls are rather smooth for a natural cave, with only a few small handholds and footholds the size of ping pong balls. I realize that there is a faint trace of chrona (short for Chronoplasma) in the air, from the occasional small blue spark that flickered out of nowhere and then disappeared. That was when the voice sounds in my head.
I'm sitting down to take a rest from pacing around, trying to hold myself together, when suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my skull, like someone was poking my brain with a hot metal stick, and then a voice breaks through into my thoughts.
"Loading... registering host. Starting Project Pharo."
The pang of sharp pain from the voice droning on inside my head has apparently appeared in the skull of the guy in the hole with me as well, because he let out a sudden cry and then sat up, panting.
"W-where am I?" He demands, obviously looking around in fear and bewilderment, although he probably couldn't see a thing.
"Are you awake?" I ask.
There's quiet whooshing noise as he flings his head around, searching for me.
"Listen to me," I tell him, trying to sound reassuring. "We're trapped in a hole in some cave, without any light or food, and we don't know how deep this place either. Please don't do something stupid to make this more difficult for us both."
Doesn't exactly help. He drops to the ground and starts hyperventilating, sweating, convulsing, sobbing and generally spazzing the fuck out.
If this is a test, whoever designed it is a sadist.
Eventually, my roommate calms down, and he tales a few deep breaths to steady himself. I give him some time, and a few minutes later he finds his voice.
"Did you get kidnapped too?" he asks me a little shakily.
"Yes," I say. "I couldn't do anything."
"Same with me," he says forlornly. "I'm a combat graduate but…"
He doesn't need to say anymore, but I'm glad I have someone… dependable.
We converse a bit more, in the dark. I've figured out that he's about as old as me, and despite being a combat graduate he had wanted to be a comedian for some reason. And his name is Alex.
"Please tell me you're good at climbing," he says.
"Well," I look up into the darkness, seeing nothing. "That depends how far we need to go."
"That's true, I can't see shit."
"Oh yeah," I say. "I should probably do this."
I ask him to help me look for two smallish stones on the ground, and then I rub the two stones together as fast as I can. Unfortunately, I can't get it to do what I want.
"Here," Alex offers, from right next to me. "Let me try."
I hand him the stones. Our eyes have grown accustomed enough to the dark to make out each other's silhouettes, so we can at least interact a little.
Alex rubs the stones together, and after about twenty seconds the sides being rubbed together begin to glow faintly blue.
"Wow," I say, as he hands them to me. "As expected of a combat graduate."
"It's nothing," he replied. "What's it for?"
"You'll see," I say.
I set up the rocks next to each other, with the sides glowing blue face up, then, I wait a bit of time, and the glowing increases ever so slightly. I count the seconds for five minutes (feels like an hour) then I ask Alex if he's ready to see again.
"Huh?"
I clap my hands as hard as I can and every spark of chrona in the whole place illuminates, bathing me, Aaron, and the walls of our prison in a blue light.
It's a simple reaction I've been taught in outdoor survival class my parents made me take when I was like eight - I'd hated in back then, but now I'm thanking God I took them.
Me and Alex stare at each other, seeing each other for the first time. I'm taken aback. He could probably've become a model, or an actor or a media star with that face. The light from the ignited chrona's reflecting off his eyes, making them glow a brilliant electric blue, and his light brown hair is a scruffy mess. He's wearing an old brown aviator's jacket (no fur) over a light grey t-shirt, with black pants and a pair of navy hiking boots.
Our little staring contest is rudely interrupted by the voice splitting my head again.
"Welcome to the Facility."
"You no longer have an identity."
"Your first objective is simple: leave this pit."
"Henceforth, you are forbidden from speaking the names you once held, or the names of anyone you knew before arrival."
"Refer to yourself and others only by the designations we assign."
"Any violation of these conditions will result in immediate termination."
The voice cuts. The pain fades.
And suddenly… it's just us again. The pit, the dark, the silence.
I don't move for a few seconds and neither does Alex.
My heart's still hammering, but now it's slower. Like it's realized something my brain hasn't caught up to yet.
"…did it say," Alex starts, then stops and swallows. "Did it say termination?"
"Yeah," I say quietly. "It did."
Silence again.
Neo lets out a shaky breath. "Okay. Okay. That's… that's fine. That's just-"
He laughs once. It's short and sharp and dies immediately.
"That's just a word, right?"
I don't answer.
Because I'm trying hard not to say her name, or Alex's, or mine.
I don't want to test what happens if I do.
I press my palms against the cold stone and force my breathing to slow. In. Out. Count. Anything except thinking about how a single word can get me killed now.
"They took our names," Neo mutters. "That's… that's insane. That's not normal. You can't just—"
"They can," I interrupt. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "I'm just gonna believe that if they can get us down here and put a voice in my head, they can kill me when they want to."
He goes quiet at that, before we're interrupted again.
"You are now number 224 'Sword'."
Sword?
After a moment, Alex asks,
"What did you get?"
"Sword."
The word feels wrong in my mouth.
"Huh," he says. "Figures."
"Yeah, I guess I just took the type. You?"
"I'm Neo now. Dunno what that means."
"It sounds cool."
We sit there for a while after that. Not talking. Just listening to the cave breathe. The distant skittering. The weight of the countdown we can't see ticking somewhere above us.
Eventually, Neo breaks the silence.
"So," he says. "Leaving the pit. Any ideas?"
I stare into the black and think about the rules. About the numbers. About how carefully the voice chose its words.
"Yeah," I say. "A few."
I don't tell him the real thought clawing at my head.
That if names can kill us now…
Then remembering them might be just as dangerous.
The voice speaks for the final time.
"Time remaining is 27 days 14 hours."
"1,000 out of 1,000 contestants remain."
"Failure to complete the objective results in elimination."