The Multiversal Road-Trip: Book Five

28

They didn't even have to sneak in, because their new guard pal seemed to be pretty alone in this place. Inside was much like the outside – depressing. Like a prison, in fact. A high tech one. An endless one. A very empty one. Without security cameras. So basically a very unusual prison by Scott's standards.

"Why doesn't everyone just break out?" he murmured to himself, too quiet for anyone to actually hear him, much less answer.

"This afterlife is very different to Mephisto's," Stephen noted, aloud, as they walked through the corridors. "Think I'd rather be in hell."

"All afterlives are very different," Emo-Guard-Loki whispered, in his regular voice. "I mean, Valhalla's a hotel."

"How many rooms?" Scott asked, because he was weird and liked to know stuff like that.

"No one really knows. There's a few hundred on each of the 540 floors, if you want to work it out," Emo-Guard-Loki shrugged as he peered around the next corner before leading them on.

"540 floors?" Scott repeated. "Crap, that's a lot of floors."

"Well, if you talk to the Greeks, they seem to think the Empire State Building has 600 floors, and by going up the special elevator you can get to Mount Olympus, but I just think they wanted to get one up on us," Emo-Guard-Loki continued, and Scott didn't think he was joking.

"Isn't that in, like, Percy Jackson or something?" Stephen chipped in.

"Guys, can we focus?" asked a very tense-looking Wanda. "We can save this for another time." They didn't speak for a while, and had only made it a few more corridors before she spoke again, sounding oddly agitated. "Where on earth is he?"

Emo-Guard-Loki put his hands up in surrender. "Hey, I just look like the guy, I don't actually know my way around here."

"Cooper?" an unfamiliar guy's voice behind them said, and they all wheeled around to see another guard at the other end of the corridor, heading towards them. It took Scott a few seconds to realise that Cooper must've been the name of the guard Loki was impersonating. "Aren't you meant to be on door duty?" Then the guy caught sight of them. "Who are these three?"

"Those inspectors the boss told us about," Cooper-Loki said, without even hesitating, or letting the accent slip for even a second. At least his acting skills were pretty much perfect. And it was a better excuse than the tourist idea.

"What inspectors?" the other guard asked, eyebrows furrowed. Crap.

"Huh? Didn't they tell you?" Cooper-Loki asked, with genuine or mock genuine confusion. "I thought they did. They told me they were going to tell everyone."

"They didn't, no, but I'm amazed they told you," the guard shrugged, and thankfully, he didn't appear to be the super suspicious type. "They usually leave this kind of thing to Nathaniel or Bronwyn, not to little old Cooper and Kris." Aha, so that was his name.

"Well, yeah, but since I was on door duty, I had to let them in, so I offered to show them around. I thought I might even get a pay increase for it," Cooper-Loki shrugged. Scott thought he was doing a pretty awesome job of covering this up.

And then Kris looked at them, and he started to panic. Scott was just glad he had his helmet on, or he would definitely betray them by the look on his face. He had zero acting skills. Stephen and Wanda just smiled politely, clearly at war with themselves of what to do. Scott offered a little wave.

Kris, thankfully, returned his attention to Cooper-Loki. "Aren't they a little... y'know, weirdly dressed for inspectors?" he whispered, as though he thought they couldn't hear him.

Cooper-Loki lowered his voice too, almost as though the two of them were sharing a secret, and somehow, he still kept the accent perfect. "They're Terran," he said, and while the meaning of that was unknown to Scott, the look on Kris's face told him he got it completely. Maybe this was a space people thing?

"Say no more," Kris said, tutting to himself. They were in danger of falling into a very uncomfortably awkward silence before he put on a very fake smile (with very, very white teeth) and asked, "So, what have you inspected so far?"

"Décor's great," Stephen shrugged, when neither Scott nor Wanda could think of an answer. "Maybe a bit heavy on the white paint, though."

Scott couldn't help wondering if Stephen's words had just been influenced by Kris's smile. It was blinding.

"Hm, that's funny," Kris said, frowning. "The last inspectors we had in said we went too heavy on the grey paint." He nudged Cooper-Loki, laughing, "I told you we should have gone with the bright green paint last time."

"What, and match my wonderful hair with this dump? No chance, dude," Cooper-Loki replied, then, playing his part as guard, turned to them and asked, "What should we suggest to the boss then?"

"Magnolia," Scott, Wanda and Stephen said in unison, all of them panicking and thinking of the first colour that came to mind. Both the guards looked confused.

"Magnolia?" Kris repeated, testing out the word. He turned to Cooper-Loki. "Is that a Terran thing too?" He shrugged in return.

"We'll suggest it to the boss anyway," Cooper-Loki assured them. There was a slightly awkward pause. "Well, um, we have a lot to see, so..."

"Oh, yes, I get it," Kris started, then he surprised them all by suddenly kissing Cooper-Loki on the cheek (which even he almost seemed to be caught off-guard by). "You're afraid of being embarrassed by your boyfriend in front of the fancy inspector people, aren't you? I guess I'll leave you to it, then." He began walking backwards down the corridor and waved. "Bye, Cooper."

"Bye, Kris," Cooper-Loki replied, waving back until he was sure he was out of earshot and returning to his usual voice. And expression. He rubbed his cheek with his sleeve awkwardly. "Ew."

"He seems like a nice guy," Scott said, to which Loki just glared at him.

"That was awkward," Wanda said, and Scott and Stephen nodded.

"You're telling me," Loki murmured. He dropped his hand dramatically. "And really? Magnolia?"

"It was all I could think of," Scott, Stephen and Wanda said in unison.

Loki sighed, shaking his head. "I'm disappointed. But I'll admit, you three didn't actually fudge it up, which is surprising. Well done. Strange, you said about three sentences, but you've improved muchly since last time. Scott and Wanda, you did a great job of staying unsuspiciously silent."

That... sounded like a compliment? It was hard to tell with this guy.

"Anyway, lets go," Wanda said, after an awkward pause. "Lead on, Cooper."