After STEM
{ starter for @badasskidman2 }
♔—- Escaping STEM had been a literal nightmare. Not only did he have to relive the horrors that his own memories could produce, he had to endure the terrors that came from other people who were locked within the blasted contraption. If he were honest with himself, he still wasn’t entirely convinced that he’d truly pulled himself out of STEM. How many times did he wake up, thinking that he’d detached himself from the infernal contraption, only for him to find that he was still lost in the endless loop of the distorted past?
But he’d gone a few week without incident. Nothing randomly changed, sending him spiraling into a different setting with a different sort of monster chasing after him. Everything seemed calm and normal and he was very much in control of himself, something that he couldn’t always attest to when he was trapped inside STEM.
Whether or not he fully believed he escaped from STEM, he hadn’t really decided upon yet, but he knew one thing for certain. There was one person inside STEM who did everything she could to ensure that he escaped, that he was safe until he could pull himself from that dream-like world, and since he found his way back to the real world, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Julie Kidman had been his only friend within STEM and no matter how much he wanted to leave Krimson City--and Midgard altogether--he couldn’t bring himself to leave without making sure she was all right.
His search for Julie came up short for a couple of weeks. He couldn’t get a solid trail on her or anyone that she knew. He was beginning to wonder if she even existed. Had Julie been a person trapped in STEM? Had she been a figment of his imagination? Was she one of the creatures that inhabited that plane?
Eventually, he found himself right back at the building he woke up in. The STEM was still set up there, but no bodies sat within the pods. The machine didn’t look like it’d been operational in quite some time. Someone must have busted it up pretty badly, but it left him to wonder... How many people had been hooked up to that contraption? And were any of them still alive?
He went further into the building, hoping that he’d come across someone, anyone that he might be able to question, though he was prepared for confrontation. Should he need to defend himself, he was ready.