Inhalation.
A girl was lying on a field. It felt like she just fell out of the grey sky. She was a subject of this virtual wasteland, like many others. The purpose of the place was unknown, but our heroine wasn't alone.
The poor daughter finally regained consciousness and got back upon her feet. Reality felt unreal, she was in no delusion that this was the real world. When she looked around, she took a moment to appreciate the beauty of this broken land. Where she was standing was a large grassy field with red poppy flowers. To the north was the particularly sad-looking shore, to the west were snowy mountains and to the east and south was a huge metropolis. It's buildings were towering high above the clouds. It was colorful and monochrome at the same time. Since it was the closest point of interest, the girl decided to head there to look for answers.
She didn't exactly know anything about these grounds, hence it was her first time down here. Her memories from before were also cloudy, she only remembered a few details.
The trip towards the city was rather long and uninteresting. Sure, she passed by a few abandoned train tracks and found some nice graffiti art, but there were no other happenings. She had no sight of anyone other than herself. When she finally reached the edge of the city, a huge digital billboard towered above her:
Welcome to VeloCity! Hope you have a pleasant stay!
The stay will be pleasant indeed. The girl just walked on the roads as there were no vehicles in sight. No soul was on the streets, in fact the city looked like it was dead on the outside. Then she came upon a café and decided to knock on its door. She asked if anyone was there. The moment a word left her mouth, a distant deep chirping sound hit her ears. It was truly uncanny. What was even more uncanny was that the glitching sound started getting less distant. Like what was emitting it was also getting closer. Dread took over her and just before the thing caught up, the café's door opened. Something grabbed her by the hand and dragged her in with the speed of light, closing the door behind her.
Her savior was a young girl just like her. The room was in total darkness, since the blinds were on. Then suddenly two lines of lights turned on near to the floor. They were the fluorescent shoes of her savior. She looked at our heroine with great caution. She asked:
???:
What is your name, outsider?
The girl thought a little bit before answering. She looked at her tight grey bodysuit and remembered.
AL1C3:
My Test Subject ID Code is A-L-1-C-3.
???:
Alice... Uhm call me D. Since you are new around here, let me introduce you to the basics. Our world is nothing like the outside one. You may have been sent by a company, but they don't rule here. When the sun is bright, this city is dead. Dangers walk the empty streets, that's when we sleep. During nighttime, we live normally.
Alice:
What kind of dangers exactly?
D:
Oh them? Well they really are like 🅰🅲🅲🅴🆂🆂 🅳🅴🅽🅸🅴🅳 and we don't exactly know where they come from. Here you can stay and live your life most similar if you were outside.
Alice:
And what if I want to get out?
D:
Out? Hah. No, never. You know the RabbitHole works only one way. Nothing ever gets out.
Alice:
I don't understand. There's no way in hell I'll stay here forever. What's the point of coming here anyways? What even is this place? When will my memories come back? Who sent us here? Why does it benefit them if we're here? What's the outside world like? Can we die here?
D:
Oh my! That's a lot of questions for today, outsider. I think I'm going to head back to sleep. If I can give you one advice, you should do that too. I'll answer your questions tomorrow. Use the CryoSleepPod in the backroom to fall asleep. It is set to wake you up when the sun sets.
Alice went to the backroom and placed herself in the pod.
Sleep at daytime? How? Tomorrow I should thank D for saving my life. - she thought, before liquid started filling the pod. Just before she knew it, she fell asleep.
STATS:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ID: AL1C3
CLEARANCE LEVEL: BETA TESTER
CORRUPTION: FALSE
STATUS: SLEEP MODE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
