Respawn: Last Man Standing

Chapter XV: Repeat

  After both teams were finished resting, they all get up and prepare to continue walking through the maze. After they began walking, Drake asks "Hey Ziya, when do the mazes end?".
  "This is the last one" Ziya says. "Floor 15 is when the floor layout changes again".
  "We didn't even manage to find many weapons in this maze" Judy says. "I was expecting... more. No weapons laying around, no food... and not really much competition".
  "The lack of competition is weird" Chris says, "but the lack of guns isn't really a new concept for these floors. One of the factors that's supposed to make this set of floors hard isn't only the maze, but also the lack of supplies".
  "And then there's the next floor layout..." Ziya says.
  "What's up next?" Drake asks. "Bigger mazes?".
  "No, the floors continue getting smaller" Ziya says. "It's actually like... I'm not sure how to describe this...".
  "Wait, you know what's up next!?" Gerald asks. "How's that?".
  "This isn't my first time being put in this game..." Ziya says.
  "Wait... so you've already lost this game before?" Gerald asks.
  "Not lost" Ziya says. "I won...".
  "Then, like I expected..." Gerald continues, "there really is no prize for the last man standing. I guess it's a good thing me and these boys stuck together after all".
  "About those floors..." Gregory asks, "describe... now".
  "Well..." Ziya says as she thinks. "Hm... have you ever played like... a video game where you have to find your way out of like a... a laboratory or a factory?".
  "Like a dungeon crawler, or like a mystery or detective type of game?" Judy asks.
  "Yeah, I guess so" Ziya says, "although I was thinking of more like a puzzle game".
  "A puzzle game?" Judy asks.
  "That doesn't sound so bad" Gerald says. "Definitely better than a maze".
  "Yeah, you'd think that..." Ziya says. Ziya turns to the rest of the team and asks "Remember what I said before about the floors?".
  "It only gets worse?" Drake asks.
  "Right" Ziya says. "It only gets worse".
  "What do you mean by worse?" Gerald asks. "Do we stop getting weapons and supplies?".
  "No, you can get plenty of that" Ziya says. "The game masters don't expect many people to reach Floor 15 or higher. There are plenty of weapons to fight with, although... there's new enemies".
  "New enemies?" Drake asks. "They send in new people?".
  "No, it's just..." Ziya says as she thinks for a second. "I'm not good at describing it... you'll see when we get there".
  "I'm not liking where this is going" Gerald says. "You guys sure you can keep up in terms of firepower?".
  "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it" Ziya says. After a while of walking in silence, and the stairs to Floor 15 came to sight, Ziya suddenly remembers something. "Oh yeah!" She says before they start walking up the stairs, "I almost forgot! Subsections!".
  "Subsections?" Gerald asks.
  "The floor layout from Floor 15 and up have subsections" Ziya says. "I'm not sure when the floor layout changes after this, because it remained the same until I won the game last time... since I only made it to Floor 12, I'm not sure what lies beyond that".
"But what exactly do you mean by subsections?" Gerald asks.
"Each floor is split up into several layers of floors" Ziya says. "Like, for instance, Floor 15 has three subsections. You have to pass three floors in total to reach the next floor".
"That doesn't make a whole lot of sense..." Chris says.
"Look... I already said I'm bad at describing it... can we just go?" Ziya asks.
As the team began walking up the tall flight of stairs, they could see at the top of the stairs was a bright white room. An intense light seemed to be shining down from the floor above them, and the next floor appeared like a bright white room. When they reach the top of the stairs, they're surrounded by a brightly lit room with white walls, the ceiling was a lot lower than it usually is, a black camera facing the stairs, and a large metal door. The floor beneath them was still concrete, and if they got close to a wall, they could almost see their reflection in the walls. As they look back at the wall opposite of the large metal door, the number "15.1" was painted in bright red paint. "This is like a total change of layout for this game!" Drake says. "It's always been just concrete and blood. But this looks rather...".
"Nice?" Ziya asks. "Give it time...". Ziya walks forward towards the large metal door. When she steps in front of it, the door opened on its own, splitting horizontally. After the door opens and sinks into the walls, a brightly lit white hallway with tile floors, wide hallway space, and several doors leading to many different rooms was exposed. The hallway wasn't very long, and there were three metal doors on each wall, as well as another metal door at the end of the hallway. At the end of the hallway, on the top right corner of the ceiling was another black camera watching them. "W-which way do we go?" Drake asks.
"That's a good question" Ziya asks.
"I still have a lot of questions..." Gerald says. "First, what's with the floor number? Is no one else going to question it? It says "15.1". That's not a normal floor number!".
"Subsections" Ziya says. "Each of these floors that I've been on so far have three subsections that make up the entirety of Floor 15. There's 15.1, 15.2 and 15.3".
"Which means..." Drake says as he comes to a conclusion, "we have to climb three floors... to pass a single floor?".
"It'll probably be easier if you think of the floors as levels" Ziya says, "like in a game... and the subsections as floors. Each level has three floors. Sound easy enough to follow?".
"Wait" Gregory says, "is this a game to you?".
"It's always been a game" Ziya says. "Maybe not to us, but it's been a game to the game masters who host this... piece of crap tournament bullshit! In case you're thinking this is any better than a maze, I'd like to remind you to stay on your toes".
"Because this is still a maze... isn't it?" Drake asks.
"Pretty much" Ziya says. "When you get right down to it, this is a maze where you have to pick the right room to enter".
"If you pick the wrong one?" Chris asks.
"Well, sometimes you find supplies..." Ziya says. "Sometimes you die".
"How'd you learn about all of that?" Gerald asks. "I assume even running through here once isn't enough to learn about all of that so easily".
"It wasn't learned easily" Ziya replies. "In fact, I learned about it the hard way. If you're interested in discovering how, just go ahead... open a door and see how it goes for you".
Gregory steps forward, but Gerald stops him. "Hold on" Gerald says, "I have more Respawns. It'll be safer if I risk it". Gerald walks up to the first door on his left and it opens automatically. When the door opens, a small room is exposed. However, in the small room was just three walls, and a camera armed with an AI controlled machine gun turret. "Oh fu-" Gerald begins to say before the turret aims at him and fires several bullets into his chest. The force from the bullets knocked Gerald backwards a little before he died and fell onto his back. The doors closed themselves before he got back up, and his watch went down to "90" Respawns left.
After Gerald gets back up, Ziya says "And that is how you learn the hard way".
"So, how do we get through this?" Gerald asks as he pops his neck. "Trying to make constant guesses at random will obviously not work. How'd you get through it before?".
"Well, now that we have more people here, this should be quicker" Ziya says. "Before I had to run in front of the doors to have it open and get behind cover before the turret had a chance to aim at me. It didn't always work out... the turrets are really quick at reacting. Now that we have more people, we can try using that method to check multiple doors at once. We can stick in groups of two when checking the doors. When one person runs low on Respawns, then the other person in the group will take over the job of running in front of the door".
"That's a terrible idea" Gerald says.
"Got any better ideas?" Drake asks.
"I'm all ears if you have an idea" Ziya says.
  "Well, how do the doors open?" Gerald asks. "I'm assuming there's a sensor and not like some sort of pressure plate?".
  "It's gotta be a sensor" Ziya says. "You can't open it by sticking an inanimate object in front of the door, and I can't find any buttons to open the doors manually".
  "Then that means it's likely an infrared sensor" Chris says. "It opens when it detects certain types of heat signatures within a proximity".
  "Yeah, that definitely makes this harder" Gerald says. "Unless we can find some other people to use as bullet sponges, we can't really open up the doors without taking a risk".
  "Are there even any other people left in this game?" Drake asks.
  "Of course there is" Gerald replies. "... isn't there?".
  "We haven't been running into anyone else lately" Drake adds. "Other than that, we'll need to consider the math behind this. When Ziya won the last game, she had about as many lives as you have now, Gerald. Now, when the last game was won, there was one man who managed to escape with an unknown amount of lives, and Chris who found a way to hide from the game also with an unknown amount of lives. I don't know how many lives there would be if all of them were added up to a single person, but considering that there's a lot of us together now, some of Gerald's lives came from Georgie who took those lives from Ziya, and the rest of us together with our combined amount of lives... I think it's safe to assume that if we're not the last two teams of people, we're definitely down to the last few people in this current game".
  "Hey, you're right" Chris says, "most people don't even make it to Floor 30, let alone any of them pass the towns or mazes. There's a possibility that we are the last eight people in Pyramid".
  "And the game masters are just waiting for us to kill each other then?" Gerald asks.
  "You heard the announcer at the start of the game" Ziya says. "Last Man standing wins. The game won't end until there's only one person left alive in Pyramid. They wait for the teams to either kill each other, or for them all to starve to death. The only reason Chris got away with hiding from the game until now was because they couldn't track him anymore with the watch. With the other man who escaped, I'm sure they hunted him down on their own, only to end up finding Drake instead and dragging him to Pyramid".
  "If it sounded too good to be true" Chris adds, "for them to allow one convict in death row to live after winning some death game... that's because it is too good to be true. They never had any intentions to let a convict from death row walk away alive, nor would they care about letting people who weren't on death row who somehow got involved in this game walk away after experiencing such a chain of events. The moment anyone is put in death row, or sets foot in Pyramid, is the moment the government decided they were too dangerous to let live and considered a menace to society. Freedom was never an option".
  "And that's why you plan to break out of here..." Gerald says. "To get that freedom they lied about?".
  "No" Ziya says, "it's for revenge. I have a personal bone to pick with Governor Floyd".
  Gerald raises one eyebrow in interest and asks "It's personal then? Interesting...".
  "It's no business of yours, however" Ziya says. "So I will not be explaining that story to you".
  "No, that's fine" Gerald says. Gerald then starts walking down the hall, while saying "you just keep managing to pique my interests more and more. Come on, we've got to move, don't we?".