"I'm sure you're wondering exactly how you can get away with murder with all of your potential victims in the same room. But upon pressing this button, a random number of participants will lose consciousness. I suggest you take advantage of this."
Currently in Chapter 2. Students Remaining: 13
The general air of pain and distress following the brutal murder and execution hadn’t had nearly enough time to subside before the overhead lights dimmed. The time display on the screen shut off, and Murasaki’s “face” filled it instead.
“I think it sad,” she began, “that I need to remind you of the situation you are in. No one within this room will escape without killing another competitor. I believe you have acquainted yourselves with the button and the rest of the killing room well enough to formulate a plan, but perhaps you are still having some difficulty. Is it with selecting a victim? Is it anticipation of the victim fighting back? Or are you all merely not motivated enough by the slow death that awaits you here should you choose to stay?”
She paused. “In any of these cases, I feel I can help. You will all lose consciousness shortly, so please prepare yourselves...”
There wasn’t much you could do to prepare, but you at least made yourself moderately comfortable before the collars did their work.
When you came to again, Murasaki’s broadcast was back on—if it had ever ended.
“Is everyone with us?” she began. “I’ll begin slowly so you may have a chance to wake up fully. You must kill to leave this room. It should go without saying that your victim must be a person other than yourself. In the coming days, however, you may feel tempted to betray your own self-interest.”
She waited another moment, apparently deeming you all awake enough to cut to the chase. “I have released a certain virus into the killing room. Some of you are already infected; some of you will contract the disease over the next few days or weeks, if this goes on long enough. The disease may progress at different rates for different people, but the symptoms are as follows: a mild fever. Difficulty maintaining your normal personality. Spurts of time in which your brain’s processing speed plummets, leaving you in a helpless stupor as the world around you runs in fast-forward. A powerful sensation of being overwhelmed. All of this eventually culminates in the irrepressible desire to end your own existence.”
She adjusted her mask. “If you would prefer to live, I suggest you commit murder before you can reach such a point. I hold a cure for the disease that I have already ensured will be effective on all of you. I will administer it to everyone remaining upon the discovery of a murdered competitor—and no sooner.”
The overhead lights began to strengthen again.
“The best of luck.”
The screen reverted back to a plain digital clock.
(Please post opens on your character blogs with the tag #kropen so we can find them and add them to the Opens page. If you would like to know if your character has already been infected, ask here.)
Goto checks out the clotheslines and ponder why they need them when they also have dryers.
What, Goto doesn’t have any nice clothes that need to hang dry?
A half-flight staircase leads to an identical platform on either side. Each platform has a small shelf for convenience along the wall and a hand crank to turn the clothesline. You’d be in a bit of trouble if you just Tyrol’d it to get to the middle, after all.
Oh, yeah, right. Investigating. Mack takes a look through the laundry storage.
The storage area is a series of freestanding shelves accessible from all directions. It holds plenty of bleach, fabric softener, dryer sheets, clothespins, and whatever other things you could possibly need to wash your clothes.
Speaking of your clothes, a few of the shelves hold freshly folded shirts and pants in various sizes.
When you next awoke, something seemed off. Maybe the shock of the murder and execution was just throwing off your senses. You had been placed back on your bed, in the same room—or was it?
At first glance it seemed the same—the button, the food and water, the crayon scribbles on the wall—but the dead body was gone, and the shutter door appeared to be farther down. Past the final beds now stood a few more amenities.
Murasaki did not appear to congratulate you or explain. The ceiling screen remained silent, only the 7:00 across its face proving it hadn’t been turned off altogether.
So... What now?
CHAPTER TWO 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.)
A dark hallway is the first thing anyone sees when the screens showing the execution flicker on. Once your eyes adjust, you can make out Hibiki and Kasumi at the end of the hallway, standing nervously. They don’t know where they are any better than you do, and although the darkness makes features hard to discern, it’s clear how frightened they are. Kasumi is reaching across to clutch Hibiki’s hand - whether out of fear or protectiveness, that isn’t clear. Slowly, the two pace down the hallway, flinching at every little noise.
Dead, suffocating silence seems to fill the hallway, save for the little clicks and creaks that make the twins jump, and the sound of their footsteps on the hard tile. It’s still far too dark to tell where they are, but the walls appear largely barren. There are countless doors on either side of the twins, each labeled with unreadable plaques. They keep walking, not stopping to try any of the doors. They don't know what could be past them - not that they know what's at the end of the hall, either. The straight path seems the safest, although ‘safe’ is a relative term. They keep walking. Their footsteps start to echo, like another set behind them. Click, click, click. Click, click, click. It never halted, rhythmic as the thump of a heartbeat.
Click, click, click.
The twins came to a sudden halt. The hall spit into a 4-way intersection. Should they keep going straight? Or make a turn? Probably go straight, right? But who knew what was down any one of these paths! Despite the fact that they had stopped, the footsteps kept going - click, click, click. Hibiki noticed it first, tightening their grip on Kasumi’s hand. The footsteps grew louder. Click, click, click. They looked at each other, then slowly but surely turned around. The sound was coming from behind them, that was for sure. Click, click, click. In the far distance, a shadowed figure made itself just barely visible. The twins took a few steps back, trying to analyze the being. They both squinted, unable to work out many details besides a only vaguely humanoid form--
Suddenly, the hall was bathed in blinding light. Someone, or something (perhaps the one at the end of the hall?), had turned the lights on. The entire hall was pure white to the point of being sickening, an uncomfortably sterile sensation overwhelming the area. They were standing in the hallway of some sort of hospital, it seemed, but any more details were still unclear. It was just awfully clean, and awfully bright, and awfully mechanical-looking. Back at the end of the hall, the figure seemed to stare back - not that their eyes were visible. A shadowy cloak made their entire body impossible to discern, even in the light. They knelt, it seemed, making it even harder to figure out, and in their gray, clammy hands, they held a bright orange chainsaw. One spindly hand was tightly gripping the starter rope.
There was dead silence for a good 10 seconds. The twins stared at the figure, and the figure stared(?) back. And then, Kasumi whispered,
“Run.”
The duo spun back around and booked it down the hallway, running as fast as their legs could carry them. The figure went out of sight, but the distant sound of a cord extending and a violent, mechanical growling were awfully audible. They just did their best to run faster - pretend it’s just like walking dogs, Hibiki thought. That’s easy. Dropping a leash, however, is far less consequential than letting a person of questionable species, who also happens to be holding a chainsaw, catch up to you. The sound of their footsteps was entirely drowned out by the guttural noises of the weapon. At this point, they had no clue where they were going. Every part of the hospital looked the same - and it wasn’t like they even knew much about hospitals, anyway! The best they could do was run until they came to a wall, and then make a turn. Both of them knew it would eventually lead them to a dead-end, but what else were they supposed to do? They couldn’t fight someone like that, if it was even a someone.
The figure was catching up to them, and the noise of the chainsaw only grew louder and louder. The being seemed to be incapable of getting tired - the twins, on the other hand, were beginning to run sheerly on adrenaline and not wanting to get massacred. They barreled down hallway after hallway, room after room, and eventually slammed through a wide pair of double doors--
Only to find a dead end. They froze in place as they realized the room they had walked into - a large operation room - had no exit save for the entrance they had just come through. There was perhaps a moment where they could have run back out and had a slim chance of survival, but in those few seconds that they were stunned with shock and terror, that window closed. The figure burst into the room, now standing - albeit hunched - as it pursued the two with relentless intent. The twins lost their balance as it burst into the room, and they fell onto an angled operation table. Hibiki was sobbing, Kasumi was spitting vitriol in the face of a creature that clearly didn’t care. The terror in both of their faces was unmistakable, but indescribable. With no further hesitation, taking advantage of their fear-induced paralysis, the figure raised the chainsaw and sent it down.
A ripping, shooting pain tore through the twins - both figuratively and literally. More specifically, the chainsaw was digging directly into Kasumi’s chest, cutting through flesh and bone with ease. The excruciating, crushing torture sent Hibiki into hysterical tears - Kasumi, on the other hand, was in far too much shock to cry, and by the time that shock would have worn off, the damage had been done. But that did not stop the figure. It continued to hack and slash away with the growling blade, ignoring Hibiki’s choked, desperate wails and rapid, shallow breathing. Relentless as it was, it seemed the figure had a rather good idea of what it was doing, and how it cut the two apart. When it finally finished, when the horrible splatters and squelches and squishes halted, when the visceral sounds calmed down, the only thing that could be heard was the rhythmic dripping of blood and the labored breathing of a person barely alive. The chainsaw was now off. The figure gently picked up Hibiki, so tenderly and carefully that you wouldn’t even imagine the deeds it had committed just seconds ago, ripping and picking apart any last strands of flesh that held them to their late twin. Carelessly discarding the chainsaw and Kasumi’s unrecognizable carcass, it carried Hibiki somewhere else. It didn’t seem to have any more murderous intent now that the convicted killer was dead and gone. The lights began to dim, and you only barely caught the figure carrying Hibiki into a different, far cleaner operation room.
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