#krprologue

[the-killing-room]

02.Sleep

You weren’t fast enough to stop her.

When Iki smashed her hand into the button, nothing happened. No alarms, no sudden spikes or crumbling walls or poison gas—but certainly no click of the door unlocking.

She pulled back, disappointed, before collapsing.

One of the others managed to catch her just before her head could hit the ground, but her lips had already tinged blue. You tried not to get trampled as half the students backed up and half of them surged forward in a claustrophobic mess of trepidation and concern.

“I can’t find a pulse—”

“Someone has to know CPR, right?”

“I’m not sure that would help, man—”

“What even happened?”

As students shifted, some pressing themselves into the wall, some forcing their way towards Iki to help, murmurs of panic built. Only when all attempts to revive the girl failed did you pause for breath.

“It seems we have our first victim,” called the voice beyond the door. “Thank you, Ms. Kadou, for breaking the ice. Though you can no longer hear me, of course...”

The voice had to pause as a flurry of objections and outrage interrupted. Despite questions and demands, it continued unperturbed.

“This is death. For those of you not accustomed to it, I suggest you learn to quickly, as the game has only just begun. Now, as promised, I will let you leave this room... Though first I’d like to explain what just happened. The collars that all of you wear contain a certain general anaesthetic. It’s really quite harmless—at the proper dose. I have remote control over the injections and can adjust them to a lethal dose if necessary. But rest assured the collars are currently carefully calibrated for each of you.”

She—was it a she?—paused again. “So that is how, in approximately five minutes, you will all fall unconscious again. Please be prepared, as it happens quite suddenly and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to strike your head on the way down.”

[the-killing-room]

Goto begins to uh well uhm strip down.

goto ur supposed to at least wait for a trial to—o well. At any rate, no one comes in to stop you. Your roommates may not be so ambivalent.

[the-killing-room]

01.Wake

You hadn’t opened your eyes yet. You seemed to be sitting up, in some strange position that made your joints ache and throb. But your head throbbed most of all.

Eventually you found the concentration to pry your eyes open. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, too bright to look at but doing a poor job of keeping the whole room lit. The whole room seemed to be square, not much bigger than a living room.

And fifteen other people were crammed in here with you.

They all seemed vaguely familiar, but your head was still too hazy to recall who they may have been or how you’d gotten here. You doubted you had come willingly.

The bare, stony walls smelled like mildew and maize, but if you were in a cellar, the stairs must have been beyond the single door. There was no switch to control the light—as if you would want to plunge the room into darkness—but a small red button sat beneath a hinged plastic cover by the doorknob.

Just as you were discovering the collar fastened around your neck, a voice filtered through the door, muffled by the thickness of the metal.

“Good morning,” it said, “and congratulations. You have all been selected to play the Killing Game. In lieu of a wordy introduction, I will allow you to explore. There are no necessary facilities or sustenance in that room. And none of you will be able to leave that room until one of you is dead.”

While you were all still waking up, this caused enough of an uproar to silence the voice for a moment.

“You may examine the door and anything else as much as you like, but be assured you are trapped unless I let you out, under my conditions. One of you must die. Relatedly, I suggest you do not attempt to remove your collars or press the button by the door, unless you wish to sacrifice yourself.”

The room remained silent, or perhaps you just couldn’t hear any murmuring over the roar of your pulse in your ears.

“Have fun,” the voice concluded. “It is a game, after all.”

PROLOGUE START

(Please post opens on your character blogs with the tag #kropen so we can find them and add them to the Opens page. Investigation asks are to be sent to the Askbox.)

[the-killing-room]

Goto leaves the gloves on while he checks for any marks on his body.

Nothing of any significance. Of course, there are a few spots you can’t check so easily…

[the-killing-room]

Michi aggressively taps all the walls bar the one with the door in. Give her your secrets.

They pretty much feel like cement all around. No hollow sounds, either.

[the-killing-room]

Goto yells

He Yell

[the-killing-room]

Iki's gonna do it!! She's gonna unlock that door! By pressing the button whenever she can what could possibly go wrong.

The zippy child is the first to flip up the plastic cover when the timer runs out. She pushes the button.

[the-killing-room]

Being careful not to yank at the collar too hard, Michi feels around the outside and as much as she can about the inside surfaces of the object around her neck. Searching for maybe a joint or something she couldn't catch by just looking at the others.

Feels like there’s a seam on the metal just over her spine. It’s not about to split with so little prompting, though.

If she halfway crushes her windpipe to check out the inside, she’ll feel some sort of additional plate along the front-inside of the collar. It’s too tight to investigate much.