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thefandomcassandra · 8 months

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Schrödinger's Cat Ch. 1: Tides of Time (ft. ANRI AI) — Orange_Oyster

Content Warnings for This Chapter: drowning, vomiting, explicit gore

Junpei woke up coughing and sputtering, trying to clear his lungs of the liquid that was choking them. He hit the ground on all fours, shaking like a small animal, and wheezed and whined. His breathing was ragged and stuttering but surprisingly dry. The only liquid he'd managed to eject were thin splatters of spit, the remnants dripping down his chin. His nose ran and he scrubbed at it with the back of his arm.

His heart rate slowed to something close to normal and he closed his eyes to try and get his bearings. Okay, Junpei. Where the hell are you?

The last thing that he could remember was the feeling of something sharp entering and exiting his body. He had keeled over, his legs suddenly not listening to him any longer, and plunged into the moon pool. Water had flooded his lungs as blood left him just as quickly, saturating the water around him in pink and brown ribbons of his life. Everything had gone black around the edges as blood loss and oxygen deprivation squeezed the last bit of his consciousness away and he had passed out. Or, more likely, died.

But he was on dry land with no water in his lungs and no stab wound in his back so maybe...

Maybe that was some horrid bad dream! Yeah, that seemed real likely. Whatever nonsense death prophecy that he had just woken up from was a dream and nothing more.

So where was here?

Satisfied with his not-death, Junpei stood up, wiped his palms on his jeans, and looked around to try and orient himself.

He was in what appeared to be some kind of sleeping quarters. There were two three-tiered metal beds with incredibly thin mattresses and starched sheets tucked military style around the corners. There was something that looked like a utilitarian stove with a teapot on top. By that was some kind of accordion door.

On the other side of the room, near a round window, was a folding table and two folding chairs with threadbare cushions. By the table was a sink and small corkboard. Directly opposite from the window was something that was standing against the far wall covered in a sheet and, between the standing object and the sink was a metal door with a large red 5 painted on it in thick, dripping strokes.

The whole place looked eerily familiar and also incredibly ominous. Both of those things were not good in the slightest and Junpei was still trying to orient himself so he didn't have time to figure out if he'd been kidnapped for murder purposes or miscellaneous purposes.

Just as he was about to consider laying down on one of the uncomfortable-looking beds and sleeping off what was obviously a waking nightmare, there was a horrid creaking and cracking noise. It was coming from the window! The glass was fracturing, spiderweb cracks ejecting polygonal chunks of yellowing glass into the room as water began to leak and then pour in.

"Oh shit!" Junpei looked around the room, trying to find a way to escape. No way in hell he was dying here. Drowning in what was obviously the economy bunks of what was apparently a ship on the ocean seemed like a genuinely embarrassing way to die.

His first thought was to try the door. There was this weird electronic device next to it with a card reader and lever but when Junpei poked at it, nothing would move or respond to his prodding.

Oh great. It's a death trap puzzle room. He'd been kidnapped for murder reasons.

His second thought was to start tearing the room apart. If this was some kind of puzzle trap, there had to be a sporting chance of escaping before he drowned. Where was the fun in killing your victims before they got good at convoluted point and click adventure game logic nonsense? Ergo: there had to be some kind of keycard or whatever lying around to open the door.

On the bed near the stove was a blue briefcase with a keyhole and number lock. That was irritating but not unexpected. Why would anything be simple? The next course of action had to be finding the blue key for the blue briefcase.

From there he threw open the stove door and found a screwdriver with a red handle resting on coal-crusted metal. He gingerly picked it up and shoved it in his pocket because who doesn't need a screwdriver? After he closed the door, he looked in the teapot.

"Jackpot!" Inside the metal cookware was a blue key. Now he needed the number code unless he wanted to brute force the damn thing open; not that he had time to do that. The rushing water was already getting a little too high for his liking, lapping the more absorbent parts of his shoes.

If he survived but had wet socks he was going to be pissed. Death was better than soggy socks any day.

Throwing the closet open revealed a red briefcase. That meant he needed a red key and, yeah, another code. At least things were consistent.

There was a weird memo with shapes and an arrow in blue and red under a pillow. That probably had to do with the briefcases, obviously, but it was hard to tell what. It probably wasn't a complete clue. Junpei waded against the current to the sink by the broken porthole—because this was a ship and ship windows were portholes, right?

On the corkboard was another shape and color memo, which Junpei pocketed with the other one for scrutiny later. Below the corkboard but above the sink, sitting on a damp-looking wooden shelf, was a picture of some old ship in a frame. It looked modern. Not like super modern, but like last century definitely-probably-a-cruise-ship modern. Big and metal with smokestacks and sharp contrasting values.

The picture wasn't in color so he could only judge the design by shape and monochromatic value at best. It wasn't bad looking but it also wasn't something Junpei wanted to die on.

If he was going to die, it'd be doing something halfway interesting, not a sinking abandoned cruise ship from decades ago.

"I wonder..." Junpei flipped the picture frame over and felt rewarded for being nosey. On the backside of the frame were crosstip screws and he had a crosstip screwdriver! Perfect tool for a murder puzzle room! Fair and square, just like he figured.

It was more than a little weird how Junpei had yet to freak the hell out about how he had been kidnapped. Thus far, he had tries to puke ocean water, realized he wasn't drowning, tried to get his bearings, realized he was going to drown if he didn't escape, and somehow found two keys, a hint paper, a picture frame, and a screwdriver—oh, wait, scratch those last two. The picture frame lost its value the second he extracted its innards and the screwdriver, as useful as it might have been in literally any situation, broke. Tip snapped right off.

"That's just planned obsolescence. Cheap way to make extra money selling tools." As fun as it was to snipe and talk to himself as if anyone else could hear him, he was wasting time being cute. Besides, it looked like the back of the photo had the key for the color and shape puzzle. That's a win for Junpei.

He tossed the now-ruined remains of the screwdriver to the side and walked past the door to the standing thing covered in a sheet on the other side. He tugged the sheet off and saw a standing mirror with a red key taped to the frame. He yanked it off and stared at his reflection with scrutiny.

He was starting to develop a bit of a headache between his temples. It was a digging, ever-present pain that spread fire across his nose and the back of his eyes. Maybe it was the whole 'wake up and cough until he realized he wasn't drowning' thing but he felt like hot garbage.

"Oh I look terrible." It was fine if he said it aloud because it was true. He was pale and sweaty, his hair matted down in places against his skin, and he had massive dark circles under his eyes. He felt like shit too but that wasn't the point. The point was that, staring in the mirror, tracing the scruff on his chin with his eyes, and thinking really hard made him realize that he remembered how he wound up here.

Someone in a gas mask broke into his apartment and gassed him into unconsciousness and that was...damn. Kidnapped for murder reasons and he knew the face of the bastard who did it and their motive. Kinda? If a gas mask counted as a 'face'.

Still, whatever was going on was infuriatingly vague. What the fuck was a Nonary Game? Aside from the obvious 'game where he put his life on the line' as ol' Gas Mask had been kind enough to tell him. And why him? What had he done to deserve this?

He didn't have time to worry about the why and self-pity and so on. He needed to get the hell out of this room before it flooded. His socks were getting wet and he hated it. Time to use that irritation as motivation!

Comparing the two color and shape papers to the key on the back of the picture of the ship, Junpei unlocked the blue briefcase and was rewarded with a really nice file folder, a calculator, a pen, a notebook, and a handful of blue key cards. Not willing to miss out on any kind of hint or information about how to use the key cards, he cracked the file open and started reading, sitting on the bunk next to the briefcase with his feet pulled on the mattress to keep them dry.

The one file in the folder was on something called 'digital roots'. It was some kind of math thing that just involved adding together numbers and reducing them down to the ones digit by continuing to add them. Wasn't a complicated process, all things considered, and Junpei was pretty sure he could do digital roots in his sleep, but the calculator, notebook, and pen went into one vest pocket and the file folder went under his arm for the moment.

"I should invest in something with larger pockets," Junpei mused as he unlocked the red briefcase and got the other key cards, leaving the picture and two code papers in the briefcase as he walked to the door. "Imagine if I could keep my notebooks in my pockets? No more backpack! Rain wouldn't be so bad anymore." It was wistful thinking. Nobody made pockets that big.

There was nowhere the cards could be used except the card reader by the large door out of here. Looking at the intimidating 5 on it, Junpei's headache flared and he winced. No time for pain though; he had to use the keycards to escape.

Swiping one of the red cards caused the machine to beep but it didn't react to any of the other red cards so he swiped a blue one and the display flickered to life. Junpei stared at it and tried to puzzle out what they wanted from him but...it was obvious wasn't it? The file on digital roots wasn't just there for kicks. 1, 6, and 7 had a digital root of 5. He swiped each card and pulled the lever, which opened the door and let him finally leave.

Panic and relief filled his lungs like the white gas in his apartment but with an opposite effect. It energized him, gave him the energy to tear out of the flooding room and down the now-flooding hallway on his own two feet. He scrambled towards the stairs as fast as he could go, trying to not slow down too much. If he escaped that room only to die by drowning anyway he was going to be so, so angry. All that effort for nothing.

He skidded a little as he tore the door open into what looked like a grand staircase. Panicked by the wave of water rushing towards him, he dashed up the stairs like a frightened animal, using his hands to give him an extra boost to continue up to the next floor, only stopping mid-step when he found himself staring at a group of seven oddly familiar people.

There was a large mountain of a man wearing a teal beanie, an older gentleman with hair like a lion, a reedy dandelion looking guy who was sweaty as hell, some punk guy with white hair and a scowl, a tall, handsome dude in a regal looking coat, a pink girl in Harajuku fashion, and a woman in so little clothing Junpei was worried she might freeze. Junpei was certain that this group saw him tear up the stairs like a man possessed and hoped they didn't think less of him for it. Would be pretty embarrassing to have to introduce yourself as 'that guy who ran up the stairs like a thing from a horror movie' but considering his pants legs were soaked and he looked harrowed, he was probably fine. They would understand.

"No time for introductions. Sorry kid." The woman pushed past him, the rest following her as she tried to go down the stairs. Junpei would have considered it rude but, really, it seemed like that's just how she was.

The punk pushed past Junpei as well, but stopped to glare at him. His skin crawled like he was being dissected by the punk's gaze. Then the punk continued downward.

"There's nowhere to go upstairs," the older gentleman said. Junpei looked up the stairs and frowned. "The two doors on the A-deck are locked."

"Uh—!" As if he remembered he could talk, Junpei called out to the older gentleman and the other two who had descended the grand staircase. "I think D-deck is underwater by now! Be careful!"

The older gentleman looked back at him and nodded.

On the stairs, the girl in pink had the handsome man's wrist in her grip, dragging her with him. He was smiling faintly as she did so, almost as if this was a normal way for them to interact. He tilted his head as if he was listening for something but he spoke up, his voice refined and careful. "That's the ninth one? All of the cards are in play now." The pink girl holding his wrist nodded and made a noise of affirmation. The two of them walked past him with no worries.

The mountain in the beanie and the sweaty guy got to the landing and passed Junpei on the stairs. The dandelion guy startled at every movement, his glasses fogged where they touched his skin. When Junpei looked at him, he made a quiet noise of fear. Junpei's nose wrinkled in confusion but he didn't try and stop him as he went down.

The mountain, on the other hand, stopped to call back to Junpei. "Th' hell are you doing? C'mon down to B-deck with everyone else!" Loud seemed to he his default volume but his tone wasn't unkind. Rather, he seemed almost worried and protective, like he was trying to make sure everyone made it.

"L-like I told the others: the D-deck is underwater."

The mountain didn't seem to care. "Good thing we're not going all the way to D-deck then." With one hand, as easy as moving a glass of beer on a bartop, the mountain pushed Junpei down the stairs.

He stumbled and caught himself on the railing, his extra momentum causing his legs to skid slightly. He frowned at the mountain but the man had caught up to everyone else sitting on the B-deck landing, grouped up in a clump looking at something. There was an air of tension choking the crowd and Junpei was worried that, if he didn't hurry up, he'd miss something important.

Just past them were two large metal doors and, while he could only make out one of them, what he saw made his blood run cold. A large, red, painted 5. Just like in the room he woke up in. Junpei could barely breathe.

"Oh..." It wasn't a word so much as air escaping his lungs in horror.

"They're exactly the same," the punk hissed.

"Agreed." The older gentleman nodded, rubbing his chin in thought. "It's similar to the one I exited out of to reach the main hall."

Everyone clamored to admit they also had similar doors, though the older woman was having none of it. "Sure, we all had doors like this. We don't have time to talk about it!"

"You think I'm just chatting?" The punk snarled and gestured at the 5 door. "If I could will the damn thing open I would." They seemed to already have beef, or it might be a clash of personality. The punk and the older woman both seemed rather abrasive.

Thankfully, as strange as that might sound, the mountain moved the punk with as much care as he had Junpei. The punk grunted as he was displaced but the mountain reared back and bodied the door. The wall rattled, a metal sound that made Junpei's teeth hurt. The mountain pulled back and tackled the door again. And again. And again. He was gonna bruise his shoulder if he kept that up.

"You're big but that's a metal door, man," Junpei called out. "I don't think that's the way to open the actual door." He had walked down the stairs to B-deck to the landing and looked at the other door. It had a big red 4 on it, like the 5 door. He tugged on the handles but it didn't budge. The only clue they had to how it worked was the familiar scanner next to it with a lever on the side and a digital display above it, like a clock but blank.

If their only way out were these unopenable doors, then what did that mean for their survival? Even if this was a fucked up murder puzzle, calling it the Nonary Game implied some level of fairness. There shouldn't be unsolvable puzzles and there shouldn't be unopenable doors. Then he remembered that there was one floor down that wasn't under water. The C-deck.

Junpei turned to head down the stairs to the C-deck but someone caught his eye: an eighth person standing by the clock near the grand staircase. He hadn't noticed her there before and she hadn't spoken up or run to B-deck like the other seven had. Instead, she had calmly walked down the stairs, long after everyone else had.

She couldn't have been any older than Junpei himself and she was achingly familiar. Before he realized it, Junpei was running towards her, his voice caught deep in his throat. His chest ached, he was desperate to reach her and make sure she was real. He needed to see if she was alive. It meant more to him than anything else, even escaping.

She, too, looked as if she had seen a ghost. Frozen on the stairs, it was only when he was close enough to reach that she moved to meet him on the landing. Her foot slipped and she failed to catch herself on the railing but Junpei was faster than gravity. She only fell against his chest as he tried to not move too quickly.

For all he wanted to touch her, to hold her in his arms, he didn't want to upset her. Every move Jupei made was careful and stiff. He only held her shoulder to set her back upright, eyes drinking in every detail of her face. The flush in her cheeks, the light in her eyes, the breath escaping her lips all signs she was alive.

Then his brain caught up with the rest of him and Junpei had the sense to look embarrassed. He cast his gaze to the stairs behind her and chuckled slightly as he let go of her shoulders. "Uh, sorry about that, I—"

"You're crying." That caused him to look back at her. She gave him a soft smile and laughed a bit. Her laughter was wind-chimes on a summer day and it loosened something in his chest.

"O-oh. Am I?" He reached up to rub at his face and his hand came back wet. "Huh." Why had he run to her? Why was he so concerned if she was alive? Who was this person to him? Did it have to do with his weird dream about drowning? "Again, uh, sorry."

"No need to apologize." She smiled again. "I guess part of you recognized me after all these years! You care about me."

"Who—?" Even as he started to ask her who she was, he figured it out. He hadn't seen her in years and yet...maybe he truly did just know her, without effort. After all, Akane Kurashiki was his best and only friend growing up. "Akane! What are you doing here?"

"Oh, you know," Akane tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and beamed, "probably the same thing as you, Jumpy."

He hadn't heard that nickname in years. It knocked a peal of laughter free from his chest and he felt so light. Then the reality of their situation hit him and a stone dropped into his stomach. The Nonary Game. Getting kidnapped. Before Junpei could say anything else, their kidnapper and captor, their game master, decided to give them a hearty welcome.

The voice that came out of the antique PA system was warped and distorted, same as it had been when they spoke in Junpei's apartment. "Welcome aboard." Everyone, even the punk, the mountain, and the older woman froze, their eyes turned upward to the brass trumpet mounted in the corner of the B-deck stairwell. "From the bottom of my heart I welcome you to this, my vessel."

The silence and tension were thick enough to cut with a butter knife. As their kidnapper spoke, Akane's hand snaked into Junpei's and he could feel her trembling slightly. He squeezed her hand. She squeezed back.

"I am Zero, the captain of this ship." Now they had a name for their captor: Zero. "I am also the person who invited you here." Invited?

Junpei snorted derisively. "Invited my ass."

The punk, however, leaned toward the trumpet and yelled loud enough that Zero probably could have heard him at the prow of the ship. "Fuck that! Get your ass out here so I can beat it! None of that cowardly gas shit either!"

"Why are we here?" The older gentleman was much more measured than the punk and Junpei. His voice was low and calm, though projected, and his posture was defensive instead of aggressive.

"I mean to have you participate in a game," Zero answered. It was unclear if they could hear everyone or if this was just a well-timed recording, but either way, their response caused everyone to freeze in place. Nobody seemed capable of breaking through the spell Zero's words had cast over them. "Some of you, I know, are familiar with this game. The Nonary Game. It is a game where you will put your life on the line."

It was a murder kidnapping. A murder puzzle kidnapping. Junpei should have been horrified or shocked, but it was almost like he knew this already. Zero's information, while upsetting, wasn't new to him. He knew about the Nonary Games and the stakes of it.

His head hurt, a burning pressure against his eyes. Akane looked at him, worried, and squeezed his hand. That was an anchor, her cool skin against his striking. He squeezed back and offered her a soft reassuring smile.

"The rules of the Nonary Game can be found upon your persons. They are simple rules. Read them." Zero was very no-nonsense. Couldn't even say please.

"What are they talking about? Rules?" The older woman looked at everyone else as if they might have a satisfactory answer for her.

Thankfully, the punk had stuck his hands in his pockets, searching for whatever rules Zero had left everyone, and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. "Holy shit."

Junpei, realizing he probably had one as well, patted his pockets down and found an identical paper in his back left pants pocket. "Oh hey." Zero put that in his pants? That felt like an invasion of privacy or something. Touching his ass was a step too far, even past drugging and kidnapping him.

"Well it appears as though our host is at least gracious enough to not leave us in the dark." The older gentleman pointed to Junpei. "Do you mind reading that for us? So we can all have the same information."

It was a weird ask, all things considered. If everyone had the same sheet with the same instructions, why would he need to read it out loud? Then Junpei remembered the handsome man was blind and how little clothing the older woman was wearing. Between the two of them, they probably didn't have or were unable to read their rule list so...it was only kind to let everyone know what was expected of them.

Junpei unfolded the paper and tried to make sense of the printed instructions as he read them aloud to everyone, enunciating as clearly as he could. "On this ship you will find a handful of doors emblazoned with numbers. We will call them the numbered doors. The doors in front of you are a pair of the same." The 4 and 5 doors loomed at them, their red numbers not so much emblazoned as slapdash, but it would be rude to correct their host. Not that Junpei thought Zero was actually listening to them in the first place. It was probably something automated on a timer.

He continued reading, "The key to opening these numbered doors are the numbered bracelets that each of you possess. Should you total the numbers on your numbered bracelets and find that the digital root of that number is equal to the number of that door, the door will open." Junpei had been trying to keep his voice neutral as he read so he didn't color the objective rules in any way but it was hard to not become excited at the prospect of getting off this ship. "Only those who have opened the door may pass through. There are, however, limits. Only three to five people can pass through one numbered door. All those who enter must leave, and all who enter must contribute."

Junpei realized he hadn't even bothered to look at the watch on his left arm. Even during his initial escape, in the room he woke up in, he hadn't noticed it. It was almost as if he was already used to its weight and presence on his wrist. As he looked at the number, thinking about the rules Zero had given them, he realized how simple and ironclad they were. Two people could not go into a numbered door alone, which meant that no direct murders or collusion could happen without a third person witnessing. Everyone who entered had to put some effort into whatever came beyond the numbered door itself—likely something similar to the room he'd woken up in—which meant that there could be no dead weight. Everyone worked, everyone made their way to the final exit, and if Junpei's math was right, it was highly unlikely that any one person would constantly pair with one other person the whole time. The necessity of the numbered doors requiring a digital root meant that eventually pairs would be split and everyone would have to get along.

Judging by the variety of personalities in this group, Junpei figured it would be hard.

He continued on, mind racing as he tried to make sense of the absurd position he'd found himself in. "The purpose of the game is simple: leave this ship alive. It is hidden, but an exit can be found. Seek a way out. Seek a door that carries a 9." His words rang out in the B-deck. Even though he was keeping his eyes down on the paper, he could see Akane's hands shaking in his peripheral vision and the way the handsome man's face was drawn and ashen.

"There is one last thing I must tell you." Zero broke their lull, everyone staring at the trumpet in the corner with bated breath. "As you have no doubt surmised: this ship has begun to sink. On April fourteenth, nineteen twelve, the famous ocean liner Titanic crashed into an iceberg. After remaining afloat for two hours and forty minutes, it sank beneath the waters of the North Atlantic." What the hell was Zero on about? What did the Titanic have to do with the Nonary Games? "I will give you more time. Nine hours. That is the time you will be given to make your escape."

Just as Zero said that, the clock by the staircase rang out nine times. Everyone's attention was there, every bell a rising death knell. They had nine hours. It was nine o'clock right now. That meant that, in order to not drown as the ship capsized, they would have to be gone by six in the morning.

"Nine?" The mountain's head was cocked as he listened to the clock tell the hour.

"Nine PM," Junpei said. When the mountain looked at him weird, he added, "There was a porthole or window or whatever in the room I was in. I couldn't see outside so it has to be nighttime." Or it could be that the porthole was under the water line, but even ocean water refracted light. If it was daytime, the light would have shone in regardless.

"A deadline of six AM tomorrow, hm?" The older gentleman said what everyone was thinking.

That, apparently, was Zero's clue to finish their spiel. "Now, it is time. Let our game begin. I wish you all the best of luck." Then the white noise cut out and the trumpet fell silent. The only sounds were the gentle lapping of the water in the D-deck and the creaking and groaning of the ship itself. It sounded like the screams of the damned, drowned souls clawing at the hull. It was an eerie sound, a mausoleum of metal on the water.

The silence was broken by the punk yelling at the trumpet. "Hey! The hell is that supposed to mean? Get out here you insincere piece of shit!" Junpei's head throbbed, the pain behind his eyes flaring up with every loud noise.

While the others weren't yelling like the punk was, they were upset. The mountain was standing rigid, his shoulders hard angles, eyes darting this way and that as if looking for something. The older gentleman was staring at the floor, his brow furrowed in deep thought. The older woman had her hands on her hips, one hip cocked, and was frowning so hard Junpei thought she might hurt herself. Akane had her arms wrapped around herself and was staring at Junpei as if she was waiting for him to act first. But what could he do?

Barring his first instinct of 'sit down and do nothing and die about it', his second instinct wasn't much better. Should they really play along with Zero's plans and engage with the Nonary Game? If this was some kind of murder kidnapping, aside from the slowly sinking ship, there had to be some kind of murder trap in one—if not more—of these numbered doors.

That's not even accounting for the weird specificity of their nine hour time limit. Could Zero control the speed at which the ship sinks? If so: why? Why nine people? Why nine hours? Why nine doors? Why nine at all?

What was Zero playing at? What was the point of all this?

And, the little voice in the back of his head asked, why is Akane here? It can't just be happenstance. You can't just meet your childhood friend again out of nowhere on a murder boat. That's statistically improbable.

It was the older gentleman who broke the heavy silence. "Well, standing around sulking won't do us any good. We should get going, before another hour is up."

Junpei stared at him, confused. He understood what he was suggesting but...

"You want to open the numbered doors?" Akane voiced Junpei's thought for him.

"You can't be serious?!" The older woman moved forward towards the older gentleman, her posture aggressive. "You're going to just do what our kidnapper told you to?"

"You misunderstand me." The older gentleman pulled back from her and shook his head. He seemed a little irritated she was misunderstanding him but Junpei couldn't tell what the older gentleman thought he was saying. "I'm suggesting we look about for an alternate route. We've only just gotten here. None of us have actually tried to find any other exit."

The older lady seemed confused but Junpei was moreso. He had been the odd one out, the only one of the nine of them still on D-deck. What had they done that he hadn't been privy to? "Huh? You guys searched A-deck already?"

The mountain scratched the back of his head. "We did search around but we were in a hurry coz of the loud noise. We might've missed something."

"I think C-deck should still be okay, despite the water. D-deck, like I said earlier, is submerged. That's where I woke up." Junpei ducked his chin at the stairs. "We could search there?"

"Sure. Why not." The punk, calmer now that he'd given Zero a verbal lashing, seemed amicable. The older gentleman seemed to like Junpei's idea as well.

C-deck was, blessedly, not under water. The stairs leading down from C-deck to D-deck were covered, the surface calm, but that didn't assuage Junpei's fear about the ship sinking.

Even if the water isn't rising, the anxious part of his brain screamed, even if the surface is mirror still, that doesn't mean the ship isn't sinking. It very much is. Zero said so and, thus far, Zero hasn't lied.

Zero kidnapped everyone and is forcing us to play in this...this Nonary Game, the angrier part of his brain snapped back. Why the hell should we trust them to be honest? That's gonna get everyone killed.

He assumed he wasn't the only one having this line of thinking because, despite most everyone standing a fair distance from the water-filled stairwell, the handsome man was knelt down with his hand in the water. Next to him, the girl in pink looked anxiously between the handsome man and the water.

"Good news," the handsome man said as he stood up and wiped his hand on his pants leg, "the water is still so that means that it is likely that Zero sealed the breach."

"So we aren't sinking?" The mountain wasn't ready to relax just yet.

"We were given nine hours to complete the Nonary Game so we can assume the water will remain this still for nine hours. The moment it is six AM, the seal will open and the ship will capsize with whoever remains still inside." He was very, very calm for someone saying shit that ominous.

"That's...good?" The mountain still refused to relax. "Or, it's good if true."

The handsome man smiled at that. "I might be presenting this a little optimistically but I am fairly certain that I am right." The girl in pink nodded in agreement.

The punk, however, didn't consider this good news. "Man, that blows."

"Unless there is a way to access the floors below D-deck, assuming they're not submerged as well, we only have A-deck and C-deck as alternatives to the numbered doors." While he was telling the truth, nobody liked what the older gentleman was saying.

"Well let's look at C-deck since we're here instead of just assuming the worst?" The punk jerked his thumb behind him, at the whole of C-deck. Junpei looked at what little this deck had to offer.

"Yeah," he agreed. "The metal doors there, the ones on the far side of C-deck? Those might be promising."

The older woman crossed the C-deck and stared at the door. "Well they're not numbered, despite mirroring the ones a floor higher, and there's no authentication device." She leaned forward, grabbed the knob of one of the doors in her hand, and tried to twist it. It didn't move so she rattled it a bit, then let go and turned back towards everyone with defeat written all over her face.

The mountain tried the other door and found it immovable, even for him. "Damn, both of them, huh?"

The punk, however, had found something interesting. "Hey, check this out." Everyone—including the mountain and the older lady—trailed after him and found a door that looked like the other two.

The older gentleman rattled the door. "Locked as well."

"We'll see about that," the mountain grimaced at the door. "Hey, old man, help me out." The older gentleman seemed to realize the mountain was planning on using brute force and, despite his age, tried to help. While the mountain yelled in exertion and both men yanked on the door, it didn't budge, leaving them panting.

The older woman had withdrawn from near the door when they tried to force it. She sniffed and demanded, "Let a girl know when you're going to start shouting. Scared the shit out of me." Her hand was trembling where it rested against her chest.

"Sorry." At least the mountain apologized.

"It's very well made to not have moved an inch," the older gentleman noted with a degree of awe.

"Well why not use your brain first, idiots." The older woman tapped something below the doorknob of the door. It was a circle with a dot in the middle, but she wasn't indicating that. Just the keyhole beneath it. "We need to find the key before this—" she rapped a knuckle against the door, "—will open."

"A key." The punk didn't seem convinced or all too enthused.

"Yeah. Unless you wanna try picking it?"

He rolled his eyes at the older woman. "I just don't think it'll be that easy to find the key to this specific door. It's not gonna be in a chair cushion or anything." She didn't like that.

Regardless of their conversation, Junpei was more interested in the symbol above the keyhole. There had to be a reason it was there and, above all else, it had to have a meaning.

"What does this even mean?" Junpei asked aloud. It wasn't to any one person in particular, which is why he was startled when the girl in pink answered him.

"Here's another one!" Junpei walked to where she was standing by the double doors and tried to see what she meant.

"Man," Junpei sighed. "More doors."

"Elevators, I think." The girl in pink indicated the glowing buttons to the right of both sets of doors and the round cages that covered the actual door mechanism. "Don't those look like elevator call buttons?"

They did. Junpei pressed one and nothing happened. He frowned.

"You think they're not powered?" Akane asked. Junpei jumped a little but pretended like she didn't unintentionally sneak up on him.

"Maybe this card reader is the key." Junpei pointed out a card reader that had a lever like the verification devices by the numbered doors and a strange symbol carved into the face of it. It looked like a weird letter.

"It looks like someone took the letter 'h' and stabbed it." Junpei gestured, trying to show the two girls what he meant.

"Oh, no." Akane giggled. "It's the celestial symbol for Saturn."

Celestial symbol... "Then the other door? The one with the keyhole?"

"The Sun, I think." Akane tilted her head in thought and nodded.

"Oh! I think there were some like that on A-deck!" The girl in pink seemed to realize.

"I don't remember seeing anything like that." The older woman frowned.

"I haven't been up there so I couldn't tell you." Junpei didn't think any of them cared but he felt the almost compulsive need to speak out anyway.

"Well since we're talking about it, we might as well give A-deck another look." The older gentleman began walking up the grand staircase and everyone else followed. The girl in pink stopped to make sure she was holding on to the handsome man's wrist again, which struck Junpei as both odd and normal in equally conflicting amounts.

When everyone reached A-deck, the girl in pink pointed out two doors where the stairs let out. "Those. The left one is where I saw a symbol like the one on C-deck."

It was a circle with a cross in it, dead center. Junpei couldn't deny that it was remarkably similar to the Sun symbol downstairs. "Yeah, it does kinda match."

Akane, who was actively peering over Junpei's shoulder, smiled. "This is the Earth symbol. The lines here are the equator and the prime meridian." She knew a lot about celestial symbols.

Junpei tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. It was a large metal dome held shut with rivets. "Oh."

"It looks as though we're barred from going that way." The older gentleman sighed.

"Man," the girl in pink groaned, "but climbing out the top of this ship would've been so cool."

"Yeah but imagine the amount of explosives we'd need to crack it open." The punk pointed out. The girl in pink stared upward and grinned as if she was thinking about what he was suggesting.

Junpei looked around as well. Arched windows were sealed with metal plates and rivets. Nothing quite like the porthole down in D-deck here, it seemed, only sealed windows and covered domes.

"Sealed windows and locked doors," Junpei murmured aloud as he continued to look around for some kind of non-numbered exit. Still, he knew deep down that they had to play by Zero's rules or not at all and it made him angry and bitter.

"I'm sure we'll find the keys for the locked doors somewhere." The girl in pink looked surprisingly upbeat for their situation.

"And what if they lead in circles or to nowhere? What then? That's not an exit." The mountain grimaced at the thought but, really, someone had to say it.

"I doubt it." The handsome man shook his head. "If there was no point to them, they wouldn't exist. And we know there is an exit, the door marked with a 9. So why not try the two doors we know we can open?" He was referring to the 4 and 5 doors.

A heavy feeling of dread and grim acceptance seemed to smother everyone. Everyone, that is, save the older woman.

"I've already said that I think we shouldn't mess with the numbered doors." She placed herself between everyone else and the stairs leading down to B-deck, arms out as if she was blocking their path. "I don't want to play along with Zero. I don't think it's a smart decision."

That sparked a loud and spirited back and forth.

"Might as well try the doors," the mountain pointed out.

"I am in agreement there." The older gentleman nodded.

"Are you listening to me?!" The older woman countered.

"We should at least try," the girl in pink pleaded.

"It could be a trap! We should stay put." The older woman rebuffed.

"You wanna drown?!" The punk snapped at her.

The only people not participating in this row were the handsome man, Akane, Junpei, and the dandelion, who had been quiet this whole time. Junpei's headache intensified. He wanted everything to be quiet and cold and cool. He'd have to settle for quiet.

"Shut up!" Junpei hadn't been very loud but he was shouting. That seemed to get everyone's attention. Even the argument ceased as the participants stared at him. Their eyes felt like hot coals against his skin. He swallowed and exhaled out his mouth. "Before we argue more over if we're going to go in the numbered doors or not, we gotta do one thing first."

"Oh?" The girl in pink cocked her head. With her pigtails, she looked like an inquisitive cocker spaniel.

"Swap information. Names, mostly. Whatever else you're willing to divulge. Just so I can stop mentally calling everyone by epithets. It's giving me a headache." Another sigh escaped him, hissing steam through his teeth.

Nobody answered. That was fine, he hadn't expected any of them to willingly show their hand or anything, but it still pulled his guts into a tangle. He hated standing there, being looked at with disdain and distrust.

Then Akane voiced her opinion. "I agree with Jumpy."

That caused the mountain, barely suppressing a smile, to ask for clarification. "Jumpy?"

Akane blinked. A flush of pink crept across her cheeks. Junpei was certain he was blushing too. "Oh, uh, right. Sorry, I'm talking about him." She pointed directly at Junpei. "His name's Junpei, but I call him Jumpy. We've been friends since we were kids."

"Hey," the mountain kept her from saying anything else, concern and worry weirdly evident to at least Junpei. "Part of the reason nobody's saying anything about themselves is coz Zero's probably listening. If they are, then they might use any personal information they hear against us."

Akane blinked in surprise. "Huh?"

"We don't know if Zero grabbed a bunch of random people off the street or if this was planned out. Any information they know is information they can use to hurt us, y'know? Leverage our families against us, ransom us to get whatever they can. Any information is dangerous."

"We still need to know each other's names," Akane protested. "Having conversations will be really hard if we don't have names."

"So we use code names." The mountain looked proud of himself for suggesting that. "Each of us pick our own. I'll be Seven."

Junpei's first instinct was to nod at him because his code name made sense. His second instinct, the stronger one, was to run his mouth. "Why Seven?"

The newly christened Seven grinned. "Coz of my bracelet number." He held up his left hand, revealing the number on the display as 7.

"Damn, that's a smart idea." The punk seemed impressed with Seven's plan. "Then just call me Santa." As if he expected people to ask him follow-up questions, he continued with a smirk. "Three in Japanese is 'san', right? And that way I can be San-ta. Santa. Like Santa Claus. Works, right?" He seemed so proud of himself.

The older man looked as if he was understanding something about Santa. "So your bracelet number is—"

Santa held out his left wrist displaying the digital number 3. "Good job, grandpa. It's a three."

"Okay, I'll go next. My bracelet is number one. Ergo, I think Ace is a fair code name for me." The older man—Ace—held out his left wrist to reveal the bright 1 on its face.

The older woman chose to go next. "Call me Lotus. I'm sure everyone knows that the lotus flower has eight petals. Of course that means my bracelet number is eight." She held out her left wrist, the 8 visible from even where Junpei was standing.

The handsome man was quick on the draw, following Lotus before anyone else could speak. "I would appreciate it if you would call me Snake." He held out his left wrist to show his 2. "My bracelet number is two. I figure the card motif for Ace leaves dice for myself. Snake-eyes seems especially relevant considering I am blind." Everyone but the girl in pink seemed surprised by this information. Well, her and Junpei.

"You can't see?" Ace's brow furrowed even deeper as he stared at Snake.

"I knew it," Lotus hissed, even though she seemed just as taken aback as everyone else.

Junpei, however, was mulling over why he wasn't thrown off by the revelation that Snake was blind. He hadn't known that, had he? But it wasn't a surprise and, really, it made sense because the girl in pink kept holding him by the wrist and—

His headache flared and he had to take slow, deep breaths to get the pain to lessen.

Thankfully, the girl in pink volunteered to think up a code name. "My turn! I want to be Clover. Like a four-leaf clover? A good luck charm!" She idly showed everyone the 4 bracelet on her left wrist. "I've got bracelet number four."

Junpei figured that he was numerically next. "Okay so I've got bracelet number five and—"

"Why bother?" Lotus cut him off. When Junpei didn't seem to get why she did that, she waved her hand at him and Akane. "We already know your name is Junpei. It's pointless."

Junpei couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. He wanted a cool code name and all but, well, not having to think up something relevant to the number five was a bit of a gift from Lotus, whether she intended it to be or not.

Akane frowned. "Then you should call me by my name too, since I gave Jumpy's away." She fidgeted with her sleeves, nervous. She didn't really want to do this but she felt obligated.

That wouldn't do. "What's your bracelet number?" Junpei asked her. She held out her left wrist, showing off the 6 bracelet. Junpei gave it a moment's thought, then found something. "June."

Akane stared at him with wide, startled eyes. She looked like a baby rabbit being gently scooped up by their human caretaker.

"June?" Ace seemed confused.

"Sixth month of the year?" It wasn't a question, more of a clarification, but being put on the spot made Junpei nervous. He turned back to Akane, meeting her eyes. "So you're June." He wasn't asking and she seemed confused.

"Jumpy, you—"

"Is that okay?" He tried to give her his most charming smile but it must have looked silly because she snorted.

"...Yeah. I'll be June." It was a slow, almost reluctant agreement but she did it anyway. Now Junpei was the only one who didn't have a code name. That was fine. Learning to answer to another name would've been hard anyway.

He tried to keep telling himself that so he didn't get jealous of Seven or Santa of all people.

"So to recap: one is Ace, two is Snake, three is Santa, four is Clover, five is me, six is June, seven is Seven, and eight is Lotus." Everyone nodded as Junpei repeated their numbers and names, pointing to each of them in turn. "All that leaves is—"

"The guy with the glasses and the wild hair," Seven finished for Junpei. Everyone looked over at him.

He was sweating still, dark stains forming in his armpits, and his glasses were patchy with fog. His hair, still a wild puff like a dandelion, was sticking to his forehead and neck in places. He looked pale and twitchy, his eyes flicking across the room every couple of seconds. He seemed almost moments away from passing out.

Santa closed the distance with him and bent forward, sneering a little. "You haven't said a thing this whole damn time."

He gaped a little and made a strangled noise.

Clover slowly walked towards him, pushing Santa back a bit. She placed her hands on her hips, cocked them, and eyed the man suspiciously. "What's your number?"

"Uh..." It was the closest to words they'd gotten from him yet but it still wasn't actually words.

"Are you listening? I asked you a question." Clover snapped at him, still not entirely in his space.

He licked his lips nervously, panting a bit, and finally spoke. "W-w-why are you e-even asking? There are nine people a-a-and you know - you know who one through e-eight are. I'm the - the only one left." His voice was shrill and dry in equal parts, like a styrofoam on styrofoam and pine wood on a campfire. He sounded like he was seconds away from throwing up or passing out.

Clover sighed like she was coaxing an answer out of a small child. "So you're nine?"

The man fixed her with a dull gaze and answered, "Yeah." Then he held out his left wrist to show everyone his bracelet. The digital display showed a 9.

Clover stared at his bracelet like it personally offended her. "And your code name?"

"C-code name?" He repeated.

"What do you want us to call you? We got ours so you should too, unless you wanna be like Jumpy over there." It was a personal dig but June was the one who seemed hurt.

"I don't - I don't need one."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm n-not going to - to stay here. ...With y-y-you." He took a shaky breath in, then exhaled slowly, like he was trying to calm down.

Clover just glared at him like he was something vile. "You've got a plan?" She asked sweetly, her tone not matching the simmering look in her eyes or the set of her shoulders.

"Y-yeah."

"What's that?"

"Y-you sure you want - want to know?"

"Yeah?"

"O-okay. Let me sh-show you. Here's my - my plan!" He stepped forward, closing the distance between himself and Clover and snagged her with his left arm around her waist. For all that he talked like he was terrified, he moved with a blinding purpose and seemed to express no regret.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Santa snarled at the man, lunging for him. He only stopped when the man pulled a small knife from his pocket and pressed the point against Clover's throat.

"Stay back!"

Clover stifled a squeak of fear as the knife pressed hard enough to hurt, but not enough to break skin.

"I-If you get any closer, I'll - I'll cut her open!" The wild look in his eyes let everyone know he wasn't joking. Clover was in legitimate danger.

Santa backed up a little bit but the man's grip didn't loosen. He didn't relax. He just smiled.

Even though he had a hostage, he still looked anxious. His glasses were now nearly obscured with fog save a couple streaks where the lenses touched his cheek and nose. Sweat was soaking the collar of his shirt. He looked like he was barely hanging on.

Junpei still pitied the man. He didn't deserve what was going to happen to him.

"Clover! Are you alright?" Snake's question was soaked in fear, his concern seemingly out of place.

"Yeah," Clover's response was hoarse, "I'm fine."

"What the hell's your problem? What do you want?" Junpei's voice shook. Not with fear, but with anger.

"Like I s-said! This i-i-is my plan!" The man's knife arm shook.

"What the hell are you gonna do to her, you sick sonofabitch?" Seven, back behind even Santa, took a step forward. His face was drawn in furious concern, his eyes trained steadily on the knife the ninth man had in his hand.

"N-nothing, if she d-does what I - what I tell her to." The knife point shook where it touched Clover's skin, the ninth man's sweaty hand unsteady despite his bold words. "Then I'll - I'll let her go." Then he backed up, dragging Clover with him. She let out a soft squeak of fear and backed up with him, unwilling to let his knife draw blood. "Th-that's right. Follow me." For all his bravado, he looked terrified. His sneer pulled at his mouth, pulling out the tension that would indicate how deeply afraid he was. This was an act of desperation, planned or otherwise.

What about the Nonary Games was so awful that this man would take a hostage to avoid it? Should they be worried too? Junpei didn't have time to think as the ninth man dragged Clover back to the wall, everyone following at a distance so he didn't stab her. When he reached the wall near the numbered doors, he startled and glanced around at everyone, eyes wide behind his fogged glasses.

"V-verify," he demanded. Clover looked confused.

"Huh?"

"L-look to your left. The device on the wall." The ninth man waited for Clover to look where he was telling her, then continued. "Place your hand on - on the scanner panel. Th-the round part."

"And if I don't?" Junpei's heart leapt into his throat. Now was not the time to be obstinate, Clover.

Thankfully—or not, it was a strange situation in the first place—the ninth man also seemed to find her sass stupid given the position she was in. "W-what the hell do you th-think will happen?" He dug the point of the knife into her neck, drawing blood, and she grimaced in pain. "I would - would slit your throat! I could kill y-you any time I wanted but I just - I just want you to v-v-verify!" Clover glared at him, refusing to budge. Her eyes flicked out at the crowd, to Snake, and then back to the ninth man. "Just do it!"

"Fine." Clover stretched her left out out towards the scanner for the 5 door and placed her palm flat against it. It took a couple seconds because her back was to it but when she managed, there was a beep and an asterisk appeared on the display.

The scanner and the device seemed to function in the same way the keycard reader had in the room Junpei had woken up in. More than likely, it needed a digital root to open the door and, seeing as it was the 5 door...Ace was next on the list. But why did the ninth man know how the doors worked? Junpei was only guessing himself.

"G-g-good. You're done." The ninth man let out a heavy breath, shoulders sinking as some kind of tension left him. His grip on the knife and where it pressed into Clover's neck didn't move, however, and his eyes flicked from person to person until he stopped on Ace. "You. You have the number one bracelet, r-right?"

Ace leveled his gaze at the ninth man, his face betraying nothing. "Yes," he said calmly, "I am." Ace must have come to the same conclusion Junpei had because he didn't ask any follow-up questions of the ninth man.

"C-come over here and verify your number, like this - this little brat did." When Ace didn't move, the ninth man's composure slipped and he shouted, "Don't y-you care about what happens to her?"

Ace frowned and held his hands up as if he was soothing a wild beast. "Okay, okay. Calm down. Here I come." The ninth man jerked his chin towards the scanner but didn't move otherwise. He kept his grip on Clover tight, the knife as steady as his nervous clutch could hold it. Without prompting, Ace placed his left hand on the scanner and the device beeped again. Another asterisk appeared on the digital display. If Junpei's math was right, the only number the ninth man needed to open the door now was his own.

"B-b-back up!" He shifted his grip on Clover and commanded Ace, who did as he was told. One step, then two, then three. All the way back to the group, hands up as if he was at knifepoint himself. He didn't need any prompting from the ninth man, well aware of what was being demanded of him. Then the ninth man's terrified expression morphed into something gleeful. He laughed and laughed, then leveled his gaze on everyone. "Th-thank you for being so cooperative. I hope you enjoy this hell without me."

Without looking at it, he placed his left hand against the scanner panel. A third asteriks appeared on the display and he pulled the lever. The 5 door opened with a metallic groan, like something dying. The ninth man's smile widened. "I d-don't need you anymore!" He shoved Clover towards the group, causing her to stumble. She fell to the ground as the ninth man stepped through the 5 door into the hallway beyond. He sneered at everyone and waved, a mocking farewell. "Keep her. Have a good one. I'll see you l-later. Goodbye..." The door swung closed with the same noise as before, cutting the ninth man off from everyone else.

Snake ran out to Clover, kneeling down to help her back to her feet. "Are you alright?!"

Clover reached up and wiped away a bead of blood on her neck where the knife had pressed too hard. She was staring at the ground, a mix of frustration and disgust on her face. "I'm fine." She didn't sound fine but she leaned against Snake, seemingly relieved by his presence. He rested his head on hers, also relieved.

Junpei ran towards the door and swore, angry that none of them could have prevented Clover from being taken hostage. "Bastard!" Santa, Seven, and Ace came up behind him and the four of them tried to force the 5 door open to no avail. When they realized it wasn't moving, they all let go, panting heavily. "Dammit!" Junpei kicked the door, wincing as pain shot up his leg.

"Do you hear something?" Lotus asked.

Junpei looked back at her. She looked uncomfortable, her head cocked slightly as if she was trying to focus in on whatever noise it was. "What?"

"There's a...beeping?" She frowned and pressed her ear against the door. Junpei and everyone else there followed suit.

Behind the cold metal of the door was a steady electronic beeping.

"You're right..." June's voice was soft and concerned.

"What is it?" Santa seemed horrified by the noise, like it was an omen of some kind. Junpei was feeling the same way about it.

And then, muffled by the metal and probably by distance, the voice of the ninth man could be heard. "Shit! Why isn't this stopping? Goddammit!" The beeping remained constant, the fear in his voice rising. "You - you lied to me!"

Junpei stared at the door. "Lied? Who lied to you?" He wasn't sure if the ninth man could even hear him between the beeping, the metal of the door, and the rushing of the ninth man's own heart in the face of fear and betrayal.

On the other side of the door, presumably having run all the way from wherever he had been before, the ninth man banged on the door. The noise was desperate and Junpei winced, sympathetic pain rushing through his own fists. "Th-this wasn't supposed to happen! This is wrong!" The ninth man sounded like he was crying.

Whether out of shock or a sense of self-preservation, everyone stepped away from the door and looked at one another. Ace was the first to speak, his voice loud enough that the ninth man could hear him. "What is happening in there?"

The ninth man beat his fists against the door again, in spite of the futility, his voice cracking as he screamed out to the people on the other side. "Open the - open the door! Please! I'm begging you! Help me!" Junpei could imagine the ninth man sliding against the smooth, cold, unfeeling metal of the 5 door, clawing at a surface that would not yield as he desperately tried to escape. "Let me out! Let me out!"

Against his better judgment, Junpei felt another pang of pity for the ninth man. Sure, he had taken Clover hostage and used her for his own selfish needs, but he didn't deserve to die for it. None of them deserved to die. "Dammit." Shaking his head, he stepped to the device and stopped. The digital display, which before this mess had read 'VACANT', now said 'ENGAGED'. The room behind door 5 was occupied, not unlike a toilet, and nobody would be able to verify, even if their digital root was five. Junpei looked back at the door and the other people, panicked and horrified understanding obvious to everyone.

The ninth man banged on the door again, faster, harder. "There's no time left!" Again, he sounded like he was sobbing. Something was happening and he couldn't do anything about it. None of them could. "Listen—" his voice, still shaking, was deathly serious, "I was - I was lied to! He lied to me, put me in here!"

Being manipulated didn't excuse the ninth man from taking Clover at knifepoint, though.

"He killed me!" The seriousness had left the ninth man's voice, replaced again by panic and terror. "It was him!" Then he started screaming, wordless and terrified.

There was an explosion on the other side of the door that rattled everyone, physically and emotionally. Everyone had dropped to the ground, covering their heads, and when they stood up, what had happened seemed to finally sink in. Junpei felt ill and it seemed as though the others did too. Lotus had a hand pressed against her mouth, eyes wide as she stared at door 5. Even Ace, who had been so calm to this point, was pale.

The device at the door beeped. Junpei looked at it and saw it read 'VACANT' again. With the ninth man dead, the door was considered empty again. They could go in.

"Why don't we try and open it?" Seven suggested. Junpei swallowed bile and nodded at him. They needed to make sure they understood the rules, even if they had to see a corpse to do so.

Junpei placed his left hand on the scanner, verifying his number. He motioned for Seven to do so as well, then called to Snake. "Hey Snake? We need your number."

Seven placed his large hand on the scanner and verified his number, then made way for Snake, who peeled away from Clover and walked to the 5 door. After Snake verified, Junpei checked his math and, satisfied that the digital root was five, grabbed the lever. "Ready?" He didn't know what was going to be on the other side of the door—probably whatever remained of the ninth man—but he wanted to make sure he wasn't dragging Seven and Snake into a situation without their permission. They both nodded at him, concerned but willing to brave this unknown. Junpei pulled the lever and the door opened wide again, the hinges screaming like the ninth man's ghost still was clawing away at it.

A wave of rancid air tore out, the metallic smell of blood and cooked meat, acrid sourness burning his eyes. Junpei slapped a hand over his mouth and fought his body's attempt at retching. He couldn't make it worse. He tried to not turn away, staring down the open doorway at the remains of the ninth man.

Lotus and Ace both uttered oaths under their breaths. Lotus eventually turned away, shaking, while Ace just stared, his face ashen.

Seven tried to remain as even-keeled as he could. "That's...awful."

"He...exploded." Santa could barely speak, his voice a harsh whisper as he took in the carnage.

The inside of the door, along with the hallway behind it, were painted in dark red blood. Chunks of flesh and organs were scattered along the way, pulpy remains of the ninth man the only testament to his existence aside from their memories of him.

June let out a shriek of horror and collapsed to the floor. Junpei turned and tried to catch her before she hit the ground and behind him he could hear the door groan shut. The smell cleared but everyone was still unsettled by what they had witnessed to really talk about it. Plus, Junpei was too worried about June to bother with being nauseated. He knelt next to her and tried to support her and as he wrapped his arm around her, he recoiled. She was hot enough that he could feel it against his skin.

"You're burning up!" Junpei wasn't sure why. She had been fine earlier. Why is this happening now?

June seemed as though she couldn't answer, her body wracked with shaking. Her breath came in short gasps and she leaned into Junpei's arms.

"Okay," Junpei took a deep breath, exhaled, and smiled softly at June. "Why don't we take a break. You can rest, we can talk about this, alright? Can you stand?" June nodded and Junpei supported her as he stood up and walked her to a chair. She sat down and placed her head in her hands. Junpei didn't know what to say to her to make it better.

"Are you okay?" His voice was low, caring, quiet. He didn't want to frighten her any more than she already was.

June nodded, a tear dripping off her chin and onto her lap, darkening her clothes. "Why did this happen?" Her shaking, no longer feverish, was simply just her sobbing. Her voice was choked and wracked with grief and horror. Junpei didn't have a good answer for her that didn't boil down to 'Zero wanted this'. All he could do was just try and support her, make sure she was okay.

Junpei turned to look at everyone else, "Do any of you know what the fuck is going on?" He didn't feel the need to elaborate what he was asking, certain everyone knew what he meant. "What the hell is even happening?"

Nobody answered. Everyone was busy looking at the floor, faces twisted in expressions of horror and deep thought. Lotus, Seven, Snake, Clover, Ace, and Santa kept their thoughts to themselves. It made Junpei frustrated but he understood. Everyone was terrified. Nobody knew what to do. Nobody trusted anyone enough to give away their hand. Junpei turned back to June, irritated.

It's not like he wasn't keeping secrets himself. Akane...June was...well he couldn't fault them too much. But still...

He let June continue to cry. She needed to let it out. After a while, the clock ticking away in the background, she slowly stopped. The clock rang out ten times. They were running out of time. They only had eight hours now.

"Ten o' clock." Ace's words were grim. Like everyone else, he didn't want to think about the deadline they had.

"Fuck! I'm done with this!" Santa jumped off the stairs where he had been sitting, his fists clenched. "Are we just gonna sit here and just let Zero win? We've only got eight hours left! Let's fucking go!" Nobody answered him, their faces just as blank and empty as Junpei felt. Santa's frustration turned to fury as he looked for someone, anyone to look at him and agree with him.

Lotus was the first person to speak. "I'm not going to end up like...that."

"The ninth man?" Santa bristled.

"Of course." She stared at the 5 door, eyes nearly lifeless, seeming to replay the grim scene behind the metal.

It's not as if Junpei himself wasn't haunted by it. The way his lower torso was just...chunks, his upper body folded over the mess that his stomach used to be, what remained of his face painted in his own gore. He had been framed by what remained of his intestines, the pinkish yellow spires of his ribs like the fingers of death grasping out of hell for him. His glasses were shattered and splattered with blood, a couple feet from his prone corpse. It was going to haunt Junpei every time he closed his eyes.

Santa's eyes were dark. His mouth was a thin, pale line, the color leeching from his lips as he thought about it. Still, he didn't seem like he pitied the ninth man. "I think he fucked up." When everyone looked at him in confusion, he elaborated. "He did something wrong, set off some kinda trap, that's why he died. I'm not gonna be that stupid. I'm gettin' out of here."

Something about that made Snake break out into laughter. He leaned against Clover, pressing a hand against his face.

"What the hell is so funny?!" Santa closed the distance between the two and grabbed a fistful of his jacket. Even though Snake was blind, Santa was obviously trying to intimidate him.

"Oh, nothing," Snake eked out between laughs, "you were just so...confident. I just couldn't resist."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think you've misunderstood what happened to the ninth man." Snake shook off Santa's grip, smiling at him, though there was something mirthless about the situation. "His death was not because of a trap. Or, rather, not in the way you would imagine."

"Huh?"

"He broke one of Zero's rules. That is why he died. If you think about it, it is very simple." At Santa's silence, Snake continued. "Or maybe I am asking too much of you. Think back to what Zero wrote on that card you had. Namely: what they said about the number of people."

"They said 'only three to five people can pass through one numbered door', right?"

"And after that?" Snake prompted.

Santa frowned, deep in thought. Junpei could almost smell the smoke coming off of him. Junpei, however, got what Snake was trying to say.

"'All that enter must leave and all who enter must contribute', right?" Junpei hadn't meant to say that out loud but it didn't matter. It was the answer Snake was looking for.

"Very good, Junpei. A gold star for you." It almost felt patronizing as Snake tilted his head at Junpei as if to indicate him. "The ninth man, however, broke that rule. He entered a numbered door by himself. Therefore he was executed." Executed was a kind way of putting it, but yes, Snake was probably right.

Seven didn't seem to like what that was implying, however. "If Zero knew he broke a rule, then they're probably watching us right now."

"I highly doubt that," Snake refuted.

Seven blinked in confusion. "Well why not?"

"The execution system is likely entirely automatic. You weren't aware? Zero doesn't need to monitor us." Snake seemed so sure of himself and yet...

"What?"

With something that almost seemed like pity—or resignation—Snake shook his head and waved his left hand about in the general direction of the two numbered doors. "I suppose I will tell you. I waited long enough, hoping Zero would spare me the trouble. It is beginning to seem increasingly unlikely." Even though he was blind, it was likely that Snake could feel everyone's confused—or in Santa and Seven's case, irritated—stares.

"Do you know something?" Ace asked.

"I know a great many things, actually."

"What is it you know about the rules of the Nonary Games?" Ace pressed, being more specific. Snake's response was to pull a card from his jacket pocket and hand it to Ace with an almost delighted smile. Ace took the card and frowned. "What's the point of giving me this?"

Santa cut in, stepping close to Ace and snatched the card from his grasp. Then all his frustration turned into confusion. "What the hell?"

Seven took the card next, plucking it from Santa's grasp as if he was pulling it from a rolodex. It didn't take him long to understand what Santa and Ace hadn't. He passed it to Lotus who passed it to June who handed it to Junpei. That's when Junpei remembered what was so weird about this card. It was in braille. The only person who could have read it was Snake.

Junpei passed it back to Snake who graciously took it with the same smile he had given Ace. Or, no, not a smile, a smirk. He had been playing with them.

"So aside from making fun of us, what's the point of that card?" Lotus put her hand on her hip and gave Snake the most scathing look she could muster. If he could see her, he would have been sweating. As it was, he was immune. Lucky.

"I found it in my pocket when I woke up here. I can only assume it is a message from Zero."

June squeaked out, "W-what does it say?"

As if he hadn't just made fools of them, everyone but Junpei and Clover surrounded Snake, desperate to learn whatever information Zero had given him. Clover was still sitting on the stairs, rolling her eyes as if she was just disappointed with the whole exchange and Junpei hung back because he didn't want to crowd him.

"Hold on. If you will give me a moment, I will read it. No need to force me." Everyone backed up a bit to give him space, even though Santa looked like he was seconds away from grabbing Snake's tie and strangling him with it. When he seemed to feel everyone had calmed down enough, he began to read, fingers gliding across the raised bumps on the card. "Bracelet number two, since you are not blessed with sight I shall bless you—and only you—with information. I shall tell you of the function of the RED, of the DEAD, and of the bracelet. The RED is the Recognition Device. It will verify your number. Beside every numbered door, you will find a RED. The DEAD is the Deactivation Device. It does exactly what it says. Once you have passed through the numbered door you must use the DEAD to stop the detonator in your bracelet."

Before anyone could cry out in horror or ask him any questions, Snake continued on, trying to power through the information Zero gave him so everyone would know what he knows. "But perhaps you are wondering 'What does this detonator detonate?' I am afraid this might be something of a surprise. I have placed a small bomb inside of you, and the people whom you are about to meet. You swallowed it while you were unconscious. I have no doubt that by the time you read this note, the bomb will have passed your stomach and found its way into your small intestine. In other words, you will be unable to regurgitate it. I suggest you do not try."

Nausea curled through Junpei but he could recognize the truth in what Zero was saying. If they swallowed bombs when they were knocked unconscious at midnight yesterday, then they weren't going to be able to vomit them back up. They just had to deal with them as they were...a threat to their life if they didn't play by Zero's rule.

"As I mentioned before," Snake continued, his voice level and nigh unshakable in the face of such horrid information, "the bracelet on your left hand contains a detonator. Think of it as a remote fuse, or timer, for the bomb in your body. There is only one condition which will cause it to detonate. That condition is that you enter a numbered door. Once you have done so, the timer will activate, no matter who you may be. You will have eighty one seconds. If, after that time, the detonator has not yet been deactivated, it will send a signal to the bomb in your body, instructing it to explode. In order to deactivate the detonator, every person who verified their number at the RED must also verify their numbers at the DEAD. Once all numbers have been verified by the DEAD, you need only pull the lever at its side and the countdown will cease."

A cold chill ran up Junpei's spine. Because the ninth man had verified Clover and Ace but hadn't brought them in with him, he was short two numbers for the DEAD. Thus...

"Anyone who does not verify their number at the RED will find themselves unable to verify their number at the DEAD. That is to say, if you should pass through a numbered door without first verifying your number at the RED, in eighty one seconds you will be dead. You must also keep in mind that the numbered doors will close automatically after nine seconds have passed. So long as the door is open, the DEAD will not function. You would do well to remember this. Lastly, let us discuss how to remove the bracelets. There are only two ways to do so. One: you escape from this ship. Two: your heart rate reaches zero. In other words, once the bracelet is taken outside the confines of the ship, or detects that its wearer's heartbeat has fallen to zero, it will shut down automatically. There is no other way to remove your bracelet. If you attempt to force it off, or disable the detonator, the bomb within you will immediately explode." Snake frowned at the card in his hands and took a breath, giving everyone a second to process this information.

"This is all the information which I can impart to you. How you choose to use it is for you to decide. If used wisely you can eliminate those who might be a danger to you. For a time you would be able to control your fate. I wish you the best of luck." Snake finished, unable to see the way almost everyone else was eyeing him with suspicion, and pocketed the card. He smoothed his pocket and waved a hand. "That is all."

It was extremely useful information and the fact that Snake had willingly shared it with everyone when given the chance made him look really good. Not that Junpei needed any assurance that Snake was on their side. While he seemed aloof and sharp around the edges, he actually cared about making it out of here. If he didn't, he wouldn't have said anything.

Junpei might've been the only one who felt this way, however. Seven and Santa were both shoving their fingers in their mouths, trying furiously to force themselves to regurgitate the bomb that absolutely wouldn't be possible to throw up. Lotus, June, and Ace were all frowning, uncomfortable looking, touching either their bracelets or their stomachs. Only Clover, Junpei, and Snake were seemingly unaffected by this news, though not happy. Clover looked a little ill, Snake looked like he was in a cold sweat, and Junpei did actually feel like he was going to hurl. Seven and Santa making horrid gagging noises and half-accomplished retching sounds didn't help settle his stomach.

Junpei took a deep breath and exhaled, swallowing the spit that had collected in his mouth, then looked out at everyone. "Alright, one more time: does anyone know anything about Zero? Anything?" Nobody said a damn thing, all of them looking at one another, waiting to see who would talk first.

Surprisingly, Santa said something. "I...actually saw them. Zero, I mean. When I got grabbed. I didn't see their face, though. Son of a bitch was wearing a gas mask." Everyone else startled a bit, seeming to recognize that description of their kidnapper. Everyone.

Everyone had seen Zero in a gas mask.

Santa looked confused. "C'mon everyone, gimme some kind of reaction. Surprise, maybe?"

But Lotus surprised him by admitting, "I saw that too."

"I did as well," Ace added.

"Me too. I couldn't see inside the mask." Clover said, tugging on her sleeve nervously.

"That mask was really scary," June confessed.

Santa frowned as he did the math. Thankfully for him, Junpei had already realized. "All of our abductions were the same then." Everyone was silently enrapt as he spoke. "We were taken from home, at midnight. The person claiming to be Zero had a mask on. There was white smoke, then each of us passed out. We woke up on D-deck in a room with a three level bunk bed." When nobody contradicted him, Junpei turned to the odd man out. "What about you, Seven? Is that right?"

"Me?" Seven was a little slow to answer, his face contorted as he thought really hard about something. "Uh, yeah..."

Junpei let it go. It wasn't Seven's fault, after all.

"Hey, I gotta question," Santa spoke up. When everyone looked at him, he tilted his head at Snake and Clover. "Why the hell were you taken from the same place?" The way he was smirking at the two of them seemed to indicate he was insinuating something. Junpei fought a grimace. It wasn't like that.

"You ass!" Clover snarled at him. She took very poorly to his assumption, apparently, and Junpei couldn't blame her. "That's my brother!"

Santa was taken aback. "Brother?"

"Yeah!" Clover gestured at Snake with her hand as she sneered at Santa. "What kind of freak are you, assuming something like that?"

"Now, now," Snake seemed like he was trying to calm Clover down, speaking carefully to her, "I'm sure he did not mean anything by it. We were keeping quiet about it, after all."

Santa struggled for a response, opting to just shake his head and sigh.

"Are there any more questions regarding me and my sister?" Snake seemed, if not annoyed, at least a little defensive. Though it seemed more for Clover's sake than his own.

"Uh, yeah?" Seven was confused, admittedly, but still had questions.

"Why? There are other people who have connections. Those two, specifically." Snake pointed between Junpei and June.

"Oh, you mean Jumpy and me?" June perked up.

Ace, at least, understood what Snake was getting to. "You did say that you were childhood friends, didn't you?"

"You went to school together?" Lotus seemed to not buy that. Junpei didn't blame her, but he also couldn't help but feel a little irritated at her pressing. Now he knew how Snake and Clover felt.

"Yeah..." June looked at Junpei as if she was waiting for him to take the lead.

He felt a little put upon and uncomfortable but he nodded in agreement. "Yeah." There was no reason to lie to them, after all. Snake and Clover had explained their relationship. Honesty allowed everyone to work together better.

"You think we can figure Zero out this way?" Santa seemed disinterested in their relationship as a concept and more as some kind of tool to suss out what was going on.

"Huh, you're...not wrong." Seven seemed like he figured out what Santa was trying to say. "If we draw lines of connection between the victims, we can sniff out the perp. Easy."

"Does any of this ring a bell?" Lotus asked both Junpei and June.

June blinked at her, confused. "Huh?" Junpei, however, remembered what she was asking them.

"Oh, uh, I don't think so. We were friends in elementary school, really. I don't think either of us knew anyone with the means to buy a ship this big." Or someone who could or would set up a murder puzzle game on said ship.

Lotus looked put-off by how quickly he answered. Even June, who until that moment hadn't understood what she wanted, seemed surprised and a little amused. "Oh, no, Jumpy is right. I don't think there were any particularly rich people who attended our school."

"Well we can't assume that Zero is a rich individual." Ace's matter-of-fact theory caught everyone off guard. "I would say it's more likely that the people running the Nonary Game are a large organization and Zero is simply the representative."

"What kind of organization would do this?" Seven seemed unconvinced by Ace's theory. "That's just an investigation waiting to happen. One person can hide their tracks better than four or more."

Ace shrugged. "It could be the military or maybe a research group. Perhaps this is even some kind of psychological experiment. A stress test for human ingenuity and problem solving."

"If it is an experiment, it's fucked up." Santa waved a hand towards door 5 and the mess behind it. "A man is dead! What kind of data will a dead subject get you? Jack and shit." The thought of the ninth man's demise hung heavy over everyone, immediately bringing down the energy in the room. Santa continued through gritted teeth, "Whoever Zero is, they're fucked in the head. This is hell. We're in hell."

Despite the time limit they had, the need to consolidate information and try and figure out the who and why of their kidnappings ate through a fair amount of ten o'clock. Conversational topics ranged from alternate routes out of here to even just waiting it out and calling Zero's bluff. Junpei was aware of time passing but he couldn't shake the feeling that it didn't matter in the end. They would finish their discussion and then move out. It would be fine.

Thankfully, Santa had enough of everyone wasting time chatting. "Oh my god, okay. Shut up. All we've done for the past half hour has been talk. We need to go." He threw his hands up in frustration. "We need to get the hell out of here. You wanna drown? I don't! We've wasted an hour and a half talking and fucking about. I, for one, don't plan on wasting another goddamn minute." The energy in the room went from tense to electric and, unlike the last time someone suggested they go through the numbered doors, nobody argued with him. Not even Lotus.

In fact, she agreed with Santa, even if it seemed to almost pain her to do so. "You're right."

"Very well then. I suppose we only have one avenue of action," Ace said.

"Man, I hate havin' to jump when Zero says 'jump'." Seven grimaced at the numbered doors.

"Better than sitting around with our thumbs up our asses," Clover rolled her eyes, even though she seemed uncomfortable with the thought of going through the numbered doors as well. Her bravado was just that: a front.

"At least Snake's card gave us extra information about the rules of the Nonary Game," Lotus said.

"Agreed. So long as we follow those rules, we should...most likely be alright." Snake changed his wording mid-statement. The uncertainty of what he was saying wasn't lost on anyone but it wouldn't do them any good to dwell on the possibilities.

"So...who's going to go in which door?" June asked.

They could only have a maximum of five people in one door, a minimum of three, and the digital roots they had to reach were four and five. Between the eight remaining people, they could feasibly go in both doors with those limitations but it would be an uneven split and that couldn't guarantee that whoever was in whichever room would move on first. And there was the issue of who would be going in door 5, past the remains of the ninth man. That in and of itself would be a trial.

Lotus was quick on the draw. "I am not going in door five." Junpei didn't blame her, really. He'd only opened the door and the sight and smell nearly put him out of commission.

"Now is not the time to be selfish—" Ace started but Lotus cut him off.

"Call me whatever the hell you want, I will not be going in that goddamn door!" She was firm enough that Ace backed up a little. Smart man.

Before Ace could say something that might get him smacked, Junpei agreed with Lotus. "I don't think I can go in there."

"Me neither." Santa sneered at Ace, daring him to challenge his decision. "I just bought these shoes. If I get blood and guts on them, I'm gonna be pissed. They weren't cheap."

Ace, obviously outnumbered, shook his head in defeat. "Alright. I suppose that means we have our groups?"

"Yeah." Junpei did some quick math in his head. With him, Lotus, and Santa going through door 4, that meant that the person they needed to make a digital root of four was June. That left Ace, Seven, Snake, and Clover to go through door 5. While he didn't like that Clover was going to have to be subjected to the ninth man's remains, he also didn't know what lay behind that door. Door 4 was something he knew well enough to...

His head hurt.

"June," Santa snapped, getting her attention, "you're with us. Everyone else should be a digital root of five."

Everyone did the math in their head or on their hands. Like Santa said, that was how they had to divide the group if they wanted to all go through the doors. And, as selfish as it might seem, it did mean Junpei could spend time with June—with Akane. He hadn't seen her in so long and he was so worried she might get hurt.

If Lotus was going to be selfish—and Santa—then Junpei could as well. He just wouldn't make it as obvious.

The group going into door 5 decided that they would go first, just to test if the RED and DEAD systems worked like how Zero said they did. Junpei was certain this was more of a way to assuage their fears but he couldn't fault anyone for worrying. It's not as if they had concrete evidence Zero wouldn't fuck them over or anything. All Junpei had was a gut feeling and that wasn't going to keep everyone else from thinking they were going to just straight explode because the Nonary Game was unfair.

One-by-one, Snake, Clover, Seven, and Ace verified their bracelets at the RED. Then, face set with grim determination, Ace grabbed the lever and looked back at the group going through door 4. "Now then. Goodbye."

Lotus met his eyes and, in a soft and concerned tone that Junpei hadn't heard her use before, only said, "Good luck."

Ace didn't respond, only pulled the lever. The door swung open like the mouth of some starving beast, already having devoured one of them. The rancid smell of the ninth man's remains wafted out and everyone held back vomit as best they could, all of them wrinkling their noses and covering their mouths. Despite their hesitation over navigating through his remains, all four of them couldn't afford to waffle for too long.

It was Snake who finally pushed them to move. Being blind, he didn't need to worry about seeing the carnage—though the smell was likely just as bad, if not worse—so he stepped in the hallway, past the door, and began to make his way down the hallway. As he walked through the blood and gore, his shoes making wet noises and kicking up the viscera, he turned back and tilted his head at his companions. "Are we going? We need to hurry."

"Your shoes—"

"It's fine." Snake cut off Clover, his voice sharp. "Do you plan on dying like he did? We cannot afford to waste time."

"Right, sorry."

As if they remembered they only had nine seconds before the door closed—and eighty-one seconds before they suffered the ninth man's fate—they all entered the door before it swung closed. Everyone left behind scrambled to press themselves against door 5 so they could make sure that group was okay.

"How's it going?" Santa shouted. "Did you find the DEAD?"

Junpei could hear the ominous beeping of their watches. His stomach sunk into his feet. "The detonator."

"Like the ninth man." Lotus sounded like she was going to be ill.

"Do you think they're okay?" June asked. She was tugging on her hair, a nervous habit she apparently hadn't gotten rid of since Junpei had last seen her.

Though it hadn't been in response to any of their questions, Seven did say something. "There it is!" Thank god for his extremely loud voice. Even if he wasn't intentionally shouting, being able to hear Seven through thick metal and across a hallway was actually a relief. "That's the DEAD, isn't it? Get over here so we can authenticate!"

The beeping of the detonators stopped. It seemed like Zero hadn't been lying to Snake. The DEAD did deactivate them, preventing them from blowing up. Everyone let out a breath, even Junpei, who was surprised he was so tense.

On the other side of the door, the group there also were sighing in relief. "Well, looks like we're in the green." Seven chuckled, trying to make light of what had, until that moment, been a life-or-death situation.

Now that they weren't deafened by their own heartbeat, Junpei got close to the door again and yelled out, "You guys okay?!"

Clover was the one who answered. "Yup! The DEAD works!" She had some lungs on her. Even with the metal and all, she wasn't too muffled. "Speaking of: lemme tell you what you're looking for. The DEAD looks like the RED but blue! Like the RED, you verify your numbers and pull the lever."

"Thanks! That helps a lot!" Junpei shouted back. It already had, judging by how June, Lotus, and Santa seemed to have released some of the tension in their body.

"We should move on now. Be careful!" Ace's voice was just as clear as Seven's. Maybe they'd put all the screamers in one group.

Junpei stifled a snort of amusement, instead choosing to just reply to his warning. "You too!"

Content that the RED and DEAD system worked like they were told, the four of them walked to door 4 and gathered their nerves. Junpei was the first one to authenticate, somewhat relieved when the asterisk appeared on the display. Santa, Lotus, and June followed suit. Before he pulled the lever, he looked at everyone there, trying to gauge their emotions. "Ready?" They nodded at him and he pulled the RED's lever. Like door 5, the metal doors swung open, screaming like they were starving. "Let's go!" The four of them walked in the door and made their way down the hall as they swung shut behind them, trapping them in the numbered room.

Junpei looked down at his left wrist, to the bracelet. The beeping that had preceded the ninth man's death had started up and beneath the blue number 5 on the display was a red skull that flashed in time with the noise. The detonator was active. They needed to find the DEAD as soon as possible. Junpei didn't want to waste any time standing around. Eighty-one seconds wasn't anything to sniff at, but it was still a minute and some. That wasn't a lot of time.

"Where the hell's the DEAD?" Santa was panicking. So were Lotus and June. Junpei wasn't calm, but he wasn't as upset as the others.

"How the hell would I know?" Lotus snapped back.

"We need to find it!"

While they were arguing, Junpei was running as fast as he could. The DEAD wasn't by the entrance, so it had to be further in. Behind him, June, Santa, and Lotus seemed to understand what he was doing and followed quickly. They ran like their lives depended on it. To be fair, their lives did depend on them running quickly, but it was astonishing to watch Lotus tear down the hall in heels like that. She wasn't falling behind in the slightest. In fact, she was very close to overtaking Junpei, even with his head start.

The hallway they were in had about nine or eight wooden doors on either side. While the others looked at the doors, unsure if the DEAD was in any of them, Junpei wasn't even straying from his path. The DEAD was at the end of this hallway. Santa rattled one of the doors, swearing loudly. June tugged on a doorknob in a panic. Lotus was kicking one of the doors, also swearing.

Junpei finally saw the DEAD and called out to the rest, "Down here! I found it!"

They rushed over and each verified their bracelet. Then, panicked, Santa yanked the lever and the DEAD beeped. The beeping stopped, the red skull went away, and the four of them stood there, panting heavily. All of them were so exhausted, the panic having turned their bones to jelly. Junpei scrubbed sweat off his forehead and wiped his hands on his pants, trying desperately to dry them off. Lotus leaned against the wall by the DEAD, trying to take weight off her feet. June was doubled over, breathing heavily and Santa was next to her, glaring down the hallway at the door they entered through.

When he finally caught his breath again, Junpei took in the area they were in, looking for the way out. Near the DEAD was a set of ornate double doors. On either side of the double doors were two smaller doors, identical to the ones that didn't open in the hallway. Junpei tried the double doors and they didn't budge. Then he noticed the keyhole and the symbol above it. It looked like the male symbol.

"Oh," June leaned over his shoulder and peered at the symbol, "that's Mars!"

"Looks like the male symbol..." Santa peered at it as well. "But it's another one of those annoying doors, huh?"

"I think there's a bunch of other doors and keys and cards, all marked with celestial symbols. We've seen Saturn, the sun, Earth, and now Mars." June brushed her fingers against the burnished brass of the plate that had the symbol on it. She looked thoughtful, her lips pursed as if she was connecting dots only she could see.

Junpei turned to the other two doors, the ones on either side of the Mars door. "Do you think these doors will open?"

"What do you mean?" Lotus had gotten her breath back. She fixed Junpei with a confused look, eyes flicking to Santa and June as well. "The other doors didn't open."

"Well, yeah, but those weren't close to the DEAD." Junpei made a gesture, drawing a line from the door they entered in to all the way down to the DEAD. "I don't think we'd be put in a dead end. It's not fair."

"You think this shit is fair?" Santa's question was barbed, an arrow of frustrated disbelief. "You think Zero cares about being fair?"

"Zero gave Snake actual information." Junpei wasn't sure why he was defending Zero—that was their kidnapper after all—but he knew he was right. "If they wanted us dead, they wouldn't have told us about the RED and DEAD. They wouldn't have told us about the time limit. They wouldn't have made it so both doors could be opened if we had eight of the nine of us—especially considering that nine wouldn't change the digital root of whatever group it was in. If the Nonary Game wasn't fair, we wouldn't be alive."

"So?! Who's to say that this fucker isn't just toying with us?'

Junpei placed his hand on the Mars door. "This. The keyhole is like the ones on A-deck. We're probably supposed to find the Mars key somewhere in here, so the most logical place is in one of these rooms. The ones further away were barred, right?" Lotus and June nodded. Santa didn't respond, too frustrated to speak. "These two are the most likely to be open. There's no harm in trying and, if I'm wrong, we can back up the hallway and try the rest of the doors."

"Who died and made you the leader?" Santa sniped. In spite of his complaining, he grabbed the doorknob for the door on the right. Junpei went for the door on the left. Lotus rolled her eyes but drifted to the right. June moved closer to Junpe. "Let's see if you're right. One...two...three!" At the same time, both Santa and Junpei turned their respective doorknobs and pushed their doors.

Junpei stumbled into the room beyond the door, startled by the lack of resistance. He turned back to see Santa standing in the open door frame. He resisted the urge to smirk at him—and probably failed.

Santa grimaced then rolled his eyes. "You're right this time." All the bite was gone from his voice. "Alright, let's see what we can find." Lotus pushed past him and went into the room, disappearing behind the wall. Santa just sighed and followed her, the door swinging closed behind him.

Neither of them shouted so it was probably safe and the door probably didn't lock behind them. That relied on a lot of uncertainty, mind you, but it was all Junpei could think about as he turned to face June in front of their room.

"You ready?" She nodded and he walked in the room with her behind him.

The room—B92, judging by the plaque on the outside of the door—was a single bed, single bath living quarters. There was a bathroom behind another door down the short foyer to the left. To the right was the rest of the quarters, including a couch and coffee table, a display case, and another door that led to a bedroom.

In the sitting room, Junpei could only stare at the antique furniture in the cabin. It looked so...extravagant. And the whole place was sinking. "What a waste," he sighed.

"Hm?" June looked over at him, then at the display case by the bedroom door. "What's a waste?"

"All this." Junpei waved a hand about the room. "It's so nice and it's going to be under tons of water when we're gone."

June looked about at the furniture and then asked, "Do you think we could sell any of this for some good cash?"

That caught Junpei off-guard and he snorted. "Do you want to carry any of this for however long this Nonary Game lasts?"

June stifled laughter and shook her head. "Not really."

"Me neither." Junpei stared at her, unsure why it was that being in her presence was comforting. He hadn't seen her in years, so why was she so important to him? What about Akane Kuroshiki was compelling enough that being in the same room as her made him feel at ease?

He didn't have time to be a mushy idiot about his childhood friend. He had to find a way off this damn boat in one, unexploded piece.

Something on the coffee table caught his eye and he picked it up. It was a box of matches. Or, rather, a box of match, as in singular. If he was going to use this for something, he had to make it count.

Speaking of fire and the like. "Are you okay, June?"

"What do you mean?" She blinked at him, obviously confused.

Junpei stepped forward and pressed the back of his hand against her forehead. She was cool again, or cool enough to not be in danger. Not like before. "Your fever. I'm glad it's gone away."

"Oh," she blushed and pulled from his hand, playing with her hair. "Uh, thank you. I'm feeling much better."

"I was worried." Junpei slid the box of match in his pocket and started rummaging in the display case, looking for any kind of key or clue or maybe some dynamite.

Behind him, June made a soft noise, then asked, "Why do you think Zero chose you and I?"

That was a really good question. Snake and Clover were siblings so that's their excuse. They lived in the same place and everything. Junpei and June hadn't seen each other in years. Nearly a decade, even. What were the odds? Slim to none.

"No clue." He stood back from the display cabinet and closed it, looking for anything else that looked suspicious. "How about you?"

"Do you think Lotus was right? That maybe someone we went to class with is Zero?"

"Uh," it was a good question. When Lotus brought it up the first time, Junpei had dismissed it purely on the basis of them not knowing anyone quite as rich as to buy a whole goddamn boat. If Ace's theory was correct and Zero was just the face of an organization running the Nonary Game, then all bets were off.

As much as Junpei would have liked to say something reassuring, he couldn't. All he could think about was how, if it was someone they both knew, someone from school, Junpei wouldn't know. He barely remembered elementary school, his school memories full of college woes and high school embarrassment.

"I dunno."

June seemed to pick up on his concern because she walked alongside him as he went down the foyer towards the bathroom. "As awful as this is, I'm glad you're here Jumpy. It's nice to see a friendly face."

"You too." Junpei finally noticed the weird abstract painting by the bathroom door. It gave him pause as he stared at it, trying to make sense of the monochromatic blobs. "Hey, June? What do you think this is supposed to be?"

She squinted at it as well, leaning forward so she could get close. Then she backed up and tilted her head. "It looks like some kind of elephant demon sucking a person's brain out."

That was not what he was expecting but it seemed very much like something she would say. She always had a strange sense of humor and a wild imagination. He tilted his head and squinted, trying to see what she was talking about. He couldn't.

"Your mind is a truly fascinating thing." That got a laugh out of her. Something in his chest loosened.

There wasn't anything in the bathroom of any worth. The shower was normal, the shower curtain was normal, the water didn't work, the toilet bowl and tank were completely normal. A boring, normal bathroom.

Junpei wheeled out of the bathroom and back to the sitting room of the quarters. The sitting room didn't have anything else for him but maybe the bedroom? He opened the door and, like before, June followed behind him. The bedroom was a small thing, L-shaped with a made bed, wooden vanity, and nightstand in it. There was nothing in the nightstand, unfortunately, and when he had finished rummaging around by it, he turned around to see June staring at whatever was in the picture frame above the bed.

"What's up?" He walked behind her and peered at the picture frame. Instead of a picture or painting or something, there was a map of a large ship. The same ship they were likely on, though it looked like it specifically was a map of B-deck. "Oh."

"It's the ship's interior!" She pulled it from the frame and passed it to Junpei, who gave it a quick look.

"Nice find. That will come in handy. Especially because look!" He pointed at where they were behind door 4 and traced where the double doors at the end of the hallway led into a hallway near a stairwell. Then he backtraced towards the area that door 5 dumps out. "Both doors lead to the same place."

"Oh! You're right!" June pointed as well. "They all end up in this one hallway by the stairs." Then a strange look crossed her face. She leaned back and hummed softly.

Junpei folded the map up and slipped it into the file folder he had been carrying the whole time. "Hm?"

"It's a big ship."

That seemed like an obvious statement. "Well, yeah. Has to be to be full of puzzles. Can't do that on a sloop." That earned him a quick snort and a wry glare that didn't carry any bite to it.

"Looks like a cruise ship to me." June waved a hand at the furnishings of the bedroom. "Look at how nice these quarters are."

"If it is a cruise ship, it's purposefully retro. All these things look like they belong in a museum."

June seemed to lose herself in thought for a second before she reminded Junpei, "Didn't Zero say something about the Titanic?"

Junpei did but...no, wait. "They wouldn't have said that without having a reason to." Zero was too purposeful, too measured to just...say something for no good reason.

"I think this ship and the Titanic might be related, or at least similar." That made sense.

"You think it's a replica? The Titanic also had sister ships. It could be one of those."

"That's true. Still...why else would the furniture be like this?" She patted a hand on the bed, the firm mattress bouncing under the pressure. "One thing about that first theory is bugging me."

"What?"

"Well, with how terrible the Titanic was as a maritime incident and with the curse and all, why would anyone want to replicate it?" Wait, back up.

"Curse?" He hadn't meant to sound incredulous but...that was a step too far for him.

"Didn't you know? There was a mummy onboard the Titanic when it went down." June looked deathly serious as she said this. "The Priestess Amon-Ra was aboard. Stolen from a pyramid in Egypt, her mummy was supposedly responsible for the misfortune and death of any who handled her. Did you not know about this?"

Against all odds, he actually did. "Yeah?" The word was barely audible, almost a deflating exhale. He did actually know what she was talking about. "She was frozen solid, right?"

"Yeah!" June seemed almost as surprised as he was, though hers was less pained and confused and more genuinely delighted. "She hadn't saponified. She was still as lively as if she had laid down in the coffin moments before. And her body didn't thaw at the proper temperature either. Even at room temperature, she was frozen. A woman who wouldn't melt."

Wait. "Wasn't she from Egypt? That place is hot as hell. How didn't she melt?"

"Who knows? Maybe it's just a property of ice in the desert." That seemed more like a crackpot theory than the whole priestess mummy situation. "Who can say?"

"You're an interesting one, June." He meant it fondly and it seemed like she took it that way. She was beaming, almost seconds away from laughter. "C'mon now, let's get back to searching. If I can't find anything, I'll go see if Lotus has killed Santa across the hall."

"I hope she hasn't. Santa isn't that bad." Junpei raised a single eyebrow. She amended, "I think Santa isn't all that bad. Just...rough around the edges."

Junpei rolled his eyes at her but decided to not say another thing. Instead, he poked around in the dresser beside the bed. Empty. He moved on to the vanity. "Bingo." A key. There was probably nothing left in this room for him to find. Junpei looked at June. "I'm gonna...go across the hall, okay?"

"Be safe!"

What was Zero going to do? Kill him on his way through the hallway? But Junpei kept that thought to himself and just waved back. "I'll do my best."

Across the hall was a nearly identical room that Santa and Lotus were searching through. Or, rather, Santa was searching through. Lotus was leaning against the foyer wall by the bathroom, staring at the picture on the wall. It was missing several parts of it like it was some kind of slide puzzle.

"Any luck?" She asked Junpei as he came in.

"Found a couple things. Plus a map. Both numbered doors dump into the same hallway." When Junpei mentioned the map, Lotus perked up. He pulled it out of the file folder and handed it to her, tracing the path he showed June earlier.

"Zero." The way she said their name made it sound like some sort of oath. If there was any woman cursing anyone, it wouldn't be an eternally frozen mummy. It'd be Lotus. Junpei shivered.

Lotus handed back the map and Junpei tucked it back in the folder under his arm. He was actually really surprised that he hadn't dropped the damn thing yet with all the running he'd done. "Anyway, what's going on here?"

"Jack and shit!" Santa said as he rounded the corner. "Everything is either locked or missing pieces."

"Well it is a puzzle room. We just have to find the keys and pieces." Santa glared at Junpei when he pointed that out.

"Well then what's the lovebird suite look like?"

Junpei tried to not blush. "Looks like it's identical to this one save a few details." He waved a hand at the picture.

"I hope it's not some kind of 'spot the difference' nonsense." Santa shook his head. "I don't have the patience."

"Lucky for you, I'm your gofer. You can stay here and sit on the couch while I do all the heavy lifting." Junpei was joking, mostly.

"Ok." Santa didn't seem to realize that. Junpei didn't have the energy to correct him.

The bathroom was identical except that the shower curtain was missing. Toilet—bowl and tank—were empty, no soap, no water. In the sitting room of B93, Santa was reclining on the sofa. Lotus was still leaned against the wall by the bathroom, seemingly unwilling to sit in the same room as him. Did something happen?

Junpei wondered, for just a moment, if his comment about Lotus killing Santa hadn't been just speculative exaggeration.

This display case wasn't empty. Inside were a few nice looking pieces of pottery and glasswork and a single tile with a blobby looking black and white pattern on it. That was probably part of the picture in the hallway. Junpei moved to open it but Santa called out, "It's locked."

"I've got a key," Junpei tried the key from the vanity. It didn't fit. Behind him, Santa laughed mockingly. "Ha ha. At least I'm doing something."

"Well, between the empty bathroom, locked display case, and dark-ass bedroom, what else could I do?" Junpei looked at the bedroom when Santa said that. Like he said, it was dark enough that looking for something inside of it would be a hassle.

"Did you try the light switch?"

"'Did you try the—' do I look like an idiot?" Junpei held his tongue. "They don't work, genius. There's this candle here but without matches it's pretty useless."

Lucky then that Junpei had a box with one match in it. He struck the match and lit the candle, coughing as the sulfurous smell of an igniting match wafted into his face. Then he turned and gave Santa a smug smirk.

"Puzzle solving must be so easy when the solution is light candle with match."

"The matches were in the other room. There was also a key. The rooms are paired for a reason, they're halves of a whole." Junpei picked up the candle by the stick and entered the bedroom. It didn't give off much light, but it was better than nothing. He set the candlestick down on the vanity and then, to spite Santa, tried the switch.

No dice.

Well he had gotten the map and a key from the bedroom in B92, so the bed and the picture frame would be good places to check in B93. The candle didn't help much with determining details so whatever was in the picture frame above the bed was swathed in shadows. It didn't look useful or like some kind of puzzle. On the bed, however, was a folded cloth. Junpei picked it up and it rapidly unfolded to reveal it was a shower curtain with a hole in it. He struggled to fold it back up so he could carry it to the bathroom but as he was doing so, the candle burned out. The room got darker.

"That lasted." Lotus was standing in the doorframe. She seemed thoughtful. "Did you find anything?"

"Shower curtain with a hole."

She grimaced. "Pervert."

He hadn't been the one to cut the hole in it! She was just being rude. Junpei bit back on his reply and just headed back to where the light from the sitting room poured in. The candle hadn't lasted terribly long despite how large it had been. Junpei looked at it and realized that, not only had the wax melted very quickly, but the candlestick's spike was shaped weird. It had teeth and was a little too long to be just to hold a candle.

Oh, duh. It was a key.

Speaking of—Junpei pulled the vanity key from his pocket and put it in the lock for the vanity in this room. It turned and inside the vanity drawer was a tile like the one in the display case. Jackpot.

The vanity key had served its purpose, as had the match and box, so Junpei left them in this room and grabbed the candlestick key and tile. The tile was just small enough to fit in his pocket so, between the file folder under his arm, the shower curtain gripped tight in one hand, and the candlestick key in the other, he still had enough hands to continue solving puzzles.

"You look like a little kid bringing in groceries." Junpei shot Lotus a dry look. "Don't give me that look. You're carrying too much. I'll take the shower curtain to the bathroom and hang it up. That way you don't drop anything important."

He handed her the shower curtain and watched as she turned round the corner and into the bathroom. Then he walked over to the display case and inserted the candlestick key and turned. There was a click and Junpei could pull the sliding door back to get at the tile.

Man, this puzzle shit was easy.

Sliding the second tile into his pocket with the first, very careful that they didn't hit together too hard, Junpei closed the display case and set the candlestick key on the coffee table, where it had stood when it was just an unlit candle. As he stood up, he saw Santa glaring at something small in his hand. It looked like a bookmark. Then Santa shoved it at Junpei.

"Here." It wasn't an unkind gesture, just an abrupt one. Gift giving didn't seem to be Santa's forte, in spite of his code name. Still, the suddenness of the action and how genuinely sullen he looked threw Junpei off-kilter for a moment. He gaped at the bookmark in his face.

It had an accurate watercolor drawing of a four-leaf clover on it and a red ribbon tied in a loop through a hole in the top of it. Overall it was a nice bookmark.

"Huh?"

"I want you to have this," Santa reiterated.

"No, I get that. It's more...where did you get this and why?"

Santa rolled his eyes. "It was in the couch cushions, against all odds. Won't be much use but, hey, any ship in a port." A poor choice of metaphors.

"Why don't you hold onto it then? My pockets are full of puzzle solutions and keys and shit." Junpei pulled the corner of a tile out of his pocket to show Santa, who just rolled his eyes.

"You know what I hate the most?" Oh boy, another out-of-nowhere conversation about something weird. After June's tangent about the Titanic and the Priestess Amon-Ra, he was pretty worn out from conspiracy theories about curses and so on. He didn't interrupt Santa though. Some small, headache-induced part of him wanted to hear him out. "Four things: hope, faith, love, and luck."

For a second, Junpei didn't understand what the hell Santa was on about. Then he realized it probably had to do with the clover. He tilted his chin at the bookmark and raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? What's the bookmark got to do with it?"

Santa seemed to reconsider how he was phrasing what he was about to say for a moment. Then he sighed. "It's what the leaves stand for on a four-leaf clover. Hope, faith, love, and luck."

"Pretty pessimistic of you."

"Take the damn thing. I don't wanna be anywhere near it." Santa shoved it at Junpei again.

Junpei refrained from mentioning how, if he had it, it was still going to be near Santa. Instead, he took the bookmark and put it in the file folder so it wouldn't get crumpled. "Thank you."

His thanks seemed to throw Santa off-guard a little. "Uh, yeah. Yeah." There was a long, awkward pause. In the background, they could hear Lotus struggling with the shower curtain. She was swearing softly. Maybe he should help her...

"Hey, Santa?"

"Huh?"

"Is that the only reason you hate the clover?"

Something flashed across his eyes, something dark and heavy. "Nah. I mean, it's not the only reason I hate it. There's also the number four."

"What, like the Four Horsemen?" Junpei snorted.

That seemed to lighten the mood a little. "C'mon, that's some Dark Ages shit. I'm a modern man with modern values!"

"And modern superstitions too, it sounds like."

"You're putting words in my mouth, Jumpy." Hearing Santa say that nickname, even in jest, set Junpei's skin crawling. He did his best to not let his discomfort show on his face. "I don't like four coz it's half-assed. Middle of the road number. Nine is way better anyway."

Well that wasn't suspicious at all. "Yeah?"

"You know anything about gambling?" Change of subject it was then.

"Like in casinos?" Junpei was willing to play along.

"Yeah. In baccarat, nine is the king. Top hand. It's called Le Grande. Four's a piss poor number, only coming out above three, two, one, and zero. But a nine is a guaranteed win, more or less." Santa rubbed the back of his head as if he was ashamed of knowing shit like that. Junpei, on the other hand, found the fact that he could pull card game rules out of thin air fascinating. All he had rattling around in his head were test questions and trivia that only got used as a party trick while drinking with classmates. And math, which was helpful at the moment, but when would he need to know digital roots outside the Nonary Game?

"Actually, the Nonary Game is a lot like baccarat." Lotus, apparently having finished fighting the shower curtain, was standing between Junpei and the door to the hallway, looking contemplative.

"Huh?"

"Of course, baccarat doesn't use any of the stupid digital root junk, but the importance of nine is shared. In the end, a hand is only as powerful as the one's digit."

Santa seemed surprised about the conclusion she was drawing. "Huh...you're right."

"Having nine in the Nonary Game is a winning hand. The door we need to leave though is a nine isn't it?" Oh, she was right.

"Oh." Santa got it too. "Oh it is!"

"That's probably why it's called the Nonary Game too. Nine and all." When both Santa and Junpei only gave her a blank stare, she sighed. "Nona. It means 'derived from nine'. Like Nonary. In the same way, every other number has words like that as well. Una, as in unicorn, is one. Bi, like bicycle, is two. Tri, like triangle, is three. Quad, as in quadruped, is four. Quinti, sext, septim, octo, and nona."

"Neat linguistics lesson, but what does that have to do with this?" Santa gestured at the room, probably the whole ship.

Lotus just sighed and shook her head. "How many people were originally captured?"

"Nine?" Santa still looked confused.

"How many hours do we have to escape?"

"Nine." In spite of Santa's continued confusion, Junpei understood it. He gaped at Lotus.

"And what's the door that will give us our freedom?"

"The ninth!" Santa finally understood.

"The Nonary Game is a game of nines, hence nona." Lotus folded her arms.

While Junpei and Santa digested this information, the boat settled. The sound was almost alive, like some kind of gigantic organism filled with smaller, less-important organisms bustling around, trying to save themselves. It made Junpei think about bowerbirds and remoras. It made him think about anteaters and ants. Zero was laughing at them. He could hear it in the sound of creaking metal. He swallowed heavily.

"I'm gonna go see what the shower curtain was for." Junpei excused himself.

"Good luck," Lotus waved at him, a lazy flap of her hand. "It's just a random hole."

Nothing was ever truly random in the Nonary Game.

The hole in the shower curtain aligned with a tile on the back of the shower. Third across, fifth down from the far right. That didn't seem like nothing.

Junpei left the bathroom and opened the door to the hallway outside. "I'm gonna go see something in the other room."

"Don't die!" Santa said. He was being cheeky but, really, it was the same kind of response June had given when he came over to B93.

"No promises." Junpei figured that was, as before, the best answer he could give in response to something like that. If Zero wanted to whack him in the hallway, there was nothing anyone could do about it.

In B92, June was sitting on the couch. When Junpei came in, she leapt to her feet and ran to see him. "Did you find anything?"

"The rooms are nearly identical save this," Junpei pointed to the picture. "I'm looking for one more tile to finish the picture on that side and I think it's in the bathroom."

"Do you need any help?" She bounced in place on the balls of her feet.

"I don't think so?" That seemed to disappoint her. "But I'd welcome the company!" She brightened up again.

In the bathroom, Junpei counted the tiles. "One, two, three. One, two, three, four, five." The green one with the stripes. Junpei worked his nails under the edges of the tile and wiggled it free. On the back of it was the final piece of the abstract painting.

June looked as excited as Junpei felt. "Is that the last one?"

"I think so. You want to come over to B93?"

She shook her head. "Thanks, but no. I think four people in a room this size is a little cramped. Just call for me when you find the Mars key." When, not if. June had a lot of faith in Junpei. It made him feel...nervous and excited. He didn't want to disappoint her.

"Will do." He hurried across the hall and started placing the tiles in their proper place. As strange as it seemed, June's weird comment about it being an elephant demon sucking someone's brain out helped Junpei figure where they should go and how they were oriented. When he finally finished the painting, he stood back and admired his hard work. The painting, frame and all, slid down to reveal a small niche and...

"The Mars key!" Junpei snagged it from where it was sitting on the hidden alcove and turned to show Lotus and Santa. Both of them looked relieved, though Santa's gaze kept flicking down to the painting, his face crumpled in thought.

"What is this supposed to be?" He was speaking to himself but Lotus and Junpei both heard him.

Lotus stared at the picture for a moment, her expression a mirror of Santa's. Then her eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Oh. I think I've seen this before."

"You have?"

"In a book." Huh... "There's a British biochemist named Sheldrake. This picture was in a book talking about a theory he had."

"A theory?" Junpei asked. Something about this conversation, about the name Sheldrake, was familiar. It was familiar in the same way that the puzzles in this room had been easy to solve, almost as if he had done them before. His headache, ever-present and painful, flared up again but he fought back a wince. They didn't need to worry about him.

"Yes. Morphogenetic field, which relies on the theory of morphic resonance." Lotus waited for him to ask her more questions.

Junpei was suffering from a case of deja-vu. And an excruciating headache.

"Haven't...haven't you already said that?"

That surprised her. "What are you talking about?"

"Morphogenetic fields. Morphic resonance theory. Haven't you already explained that?" His head hurt so badly. He wanted to cry.

"No?"

"What are you on about, Junpei?" This time, Santa was the one pressing him.

"The morphic resonance theory is about storing information in the morphic field." Junpei gestured at the picture. "There was an experiment about using the morphic field to transmit information across space and time. It had to do with how many people understood that this was a heavily filtered picture of a dog. Before the solution was aired on British television, the percentage of people who knew the solution was sub-ten percent. Afterwards, using a sample of people who wouldn't have access to British television programs, the percentage of correct guesses doubled."

Lotus stared at him like he had grown a second head. Junpei could barely see, his head hurt so badly.

"Junpei," Santa's voice was low, quiet, measured, "Lotus hasn't said any of that before. Are you sure you're okay?"

Junpei pushed past them, into the bathroom, and emptied his stomach in the toilet. The pain was almost blinding. He laid his head against the cold porcelain and thought, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

What did they mean, she hadn't said that before? He had heard her. She had talked about Sheldrake, about information stored somewhere in the aether, about the experiment. She had mentioned how, supposedly, the morphic field was like a database of behavioral patterns and unspoken information that people could subconsciously access. She also said it was likely the TV experiment had falsified data for more impressive results or that their control group wasn't really all that controlled.

But both of them seemed like this was the first time they had had that conversation. Both of them looked like he was saying something insane.

What was going on?

The more he thought about it, the more parts of this day weren't making sense. The ever-present sense of deja-vu during every puzzle and conversation. The dread and relief he felt when he saw June for the first time and how he had cried. How he had known the doors in the hallway weren't anything. Why he was so sure Zero wasn't fucking with them regarding rules and the fairness of the Nonary Game.

Why did he know all this? Why did it feel like he'd done this once before?

Eventually, panic slowly leaving his body, mouth sticky, nausea passing, he tried to flush the toilet. Nothing happened. "Right. The tank is empty." He just lowered the lid and left the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Turning to Lotus and Santa—who had stopped talking as he exited the bathroom, exchanging worried glances—he gave them a weak, ill smile. "Sorry about that."

"Are you okay?" Lotus didn't move to check up on him, but her shoulders tensed up as if she might have wanted to.

"Yeah, uh, I think so." Junpei tried to sound casual. He failed, his voice scratchy from hurling. "I've had a headache for the last hour or so and it finally caught up to me."

"What about what you said? About the whole morphogenetic field, or whatever?" Santa pushed.

"Deja-vu?" Junpei shrugged. "I thought we'd talked about this but I guess it was something June had said earlier about the picture that made me think that." They exchanged a look but didn't press him. "We've got the Mars key now. We should grab June and go through the door. I wanna get out of here."

Without another word, the two of them followed Junpei into the hallway. Junpei stepped into B92 and gestured for June to follow him. "We got the key."

"Are you okay? You look sick." June laid the back of her hand across Junpei's forehead. It felt good. "You're a little warm."

"I threw up a bit," Junpei admitted. "It's fine. I just have a bad headache."

"Do we need to rest?"

"No." He didn't mean to be so harsh but... "We have the key, we should move on."

June nodded and followed him into the hallway. With everyone there—probably exchanging glances and unspoken questions about his health—Junpei opened the Mars door and walked through.

There was a large hallway, like the map said. What the map didn't show was the large metal grate that barred them from crossing to the other side, by where door 5 let out. Junpei let Santa struggle with the grate for a bit while he looked at the elevators to the right of the doors they just went through. There wasn't any kind of keycard reader, like there had been out on B-deck by the grand staircase, but also the buttons weren't lit. They wouldn't be able to use them. That just left the door across the hall.

The...kitchen, right? That's the kitchen. He knows that's the kitchen.

Why does he know that's the kitchen?

"Dammit!" Junpei heard Santa kick the grate and hiss in pain.

"Did you try asking nicely?" Lotus asked him.

"Shut up." They were getting along well, just like before.

"The elevators aren't powered." June had pressed one of the buttons. "Do you think there's a keycard reader for these on some other floor?"

"The only other floor they'd go to is C-deck and I don't know where these would even let out." Junpei mused. He hadn't moved from the door he was standing in front of.

"Well if the elevators don't work, we came from back there, and the hallway is closed off, this door is our only choice." June walked over to Junpei and the kitchen door. Lotus and Santa followed suit.

"Not much of a choice, is it?" Santa griped.

Junpei didn't even bother waiting. He just threw the door open and entered the room beyond.

It was a kitchen. Galley, really, because that's the ship word for it and all, but it was what he assumed it would be. What he remembered it was.

There were counters covered in things, stacks of various plates on a service counter across from an empty sink, a grill that still had a coal fire going in it, an abandoned stove with pots on it. Set into the counter, by an area that had cutting boards and rolling pins on it, was a keypad on what might have been an oven. There were two doors that looked like extensions of the kitchen and one door with a keycard reader next to it on the other side of the partition that divided the service side of the galley from the cooking side. That was probably the way out.

Junpei's head hurt but he kept himself together. He couldn't fall apart just yet. He was only experiencing severe deja-vu. It didn't mean anything. He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose.

"Damn. I was hoping this would be easy." Santa looked at the clutter. "It's another puzzle room." His gaze wandered back to Junpei, as if he was indicating that he should get to solving. It was...relieving to be treated like that, as strange as it might sound. Santa choosing to, once again, leave the heavy lifting to Junpei meant that he wasn't holding his strange outburst against him.

"Well the exit's over there," Lotus pointed at the door with the reader next to it.

"Where's the keycard?" June asked.

Junpei knelt down and pointed to the oven. "My money's on in here. We just need to find the combination."

Lotus sighed heavily. "All right, I guess we should split up. Just don't hurt yourself. I'm not bandaging you up if you cut yourself on a rusty knife or something."

"Thanks mom." Santa laughed as Lotus swatted him with the back of her hand. Junpei was too lost in thought to really make any sort of comment about it.

June gripped his arm and gave him a worried look.

"I'm fine. I'll...be fine. Thanks." Junpei patted her on the hand and smiled, hoping she bought it. She didn't seem convinced but let go and nodded. "Let's get to looking."

Santa was looking at half of the galley, peering at one of the two doors like it personally offended him. Lotus was on the same side as the entrance door with Junpei, looking at a paper on the service counter. June tried the door nearest Lotus and Junpei and seemed surprised when it opened, so she went in.

Junpei tried to collect himself as he walked over to Lotus. "What're you looking at?"

"This," she pointed at a voucher on the service counter and read it aloud. "Appetizer nine, meat dish ten, soup A, seafood dish F."

"That's..." Junpei didn't know what he wanted to say, but looked at the plates stacked on the service counter and tallied them up in his head. "Is that supposed to be this?" He gestured at the plates.

"Well these here," Lotus pointed to the square plates, "are the appetizer plates. That's nine. These," she pointed to the deep plates next to the appetizer plates, "are soup plates. That's ten. These," she pointed to the shallower, bigger plates next to the soup plates, "are seafood plates. There's fifteen of them. And these," she pointed to the stack of plates that had a higher lip than the seafood plates, "are meat plates. There's sixteen of them."

"Wait, but..." Junpei looked at the note again. Appetizer plates made sense. Nine. But soup, seafood, and meat were using numbers, and wrong ones too. Unless... "Do you think these three are using hexadecimal?"

Lotus looked at the note, then the stacks of plates, and back again. "You're probably right. A in hexadecimal is ten in base-10. Base-10 is the numerical system we normally use." Junpei nodded at her, letting her know that, yes, he knew what base-10 was. "Hexadecimal is base-16, so it goes one through nine, then A, B, all the way through F, then ten is sixteen in base-10, and so on and so forth. So if you compare this voucher to base-16, it's correct."

"Huh." Junpei looked at the lock on the oven, then back at the plates. "Zero really likes math."

"Who wouldn't? Numbers, even if they're in good old base-2, are reliable and simple. One plus one always equals the same thing every time." Lotus smiled fondly. "They're consistent and I, for one, like consistency, don't you?"

Base-2...isn't that binary? That's what's used for programming. No wonder Lotus liked math.

"I'm more of a fun facts guy than a numbers guy, but yeah, I can understand it."

Lotus rolled her eyes at him and waved him off. "Go figure something useful out."

"Yes ma'am." Junpei gave her a sarcastic salute and walked from the service counter to the door June had gone in. Inside the room was a pantry filled with very large cheese wheels and other metal shelving units covered in cloth. June was looking at the cheese like she was debating cracking a wheel open and eating it. "I don't think any of this is any good."

June jumped and let out a started squeak. "Oh! Don't do that!"

"Who's the jumpy one now?" Junpei teased.

June pouted at him. "Not funny."

"It was, a little bit." Junpei turned his attention back to the cheese wheels. "But you have to admit that I'm right. About the cheese, I mean."

"Well, not really."

Junpei shot her an exaggerated scandalous look. "Oh?"

"There are some cheeses that, until the rind is broken, can actually keep for decades." June smirked at him.

Junpei just chuckled. "Yeah, but not centuries. If this is actually the Titanic or whatever, this cheese is from, what, nineteen twelve? Later than that, even, because cheese is made through like...fermentation or whatever. This is ancient cheese. I don't think it could survive the ravages of time."

June leveled her gaze at him, mock sternness broken quickly by her laughing. "Fair. Still, I wonder what the insides of these wheels look like?"

"Dust, probably. Mold. The faintest hint of powdered milk."

June laughed again. "Maybe. Who knows? I certainly don't want to open them, even if I could." "I guess that makes them Schrödinger's Cheese then. They're both cheese and dust until observed by someone." Now he was just showing off.

Something strange—not quite sad but not quite angry—flashed across June's face. As quick as it appeared, it was gone, and she pointed to a wheel on the second-highest shelf. "Oh, look. There's something back there."

Junpei craned his neck to look and, yes, there was. The two of them moved the wheel and found that it was a bottle of oil. "Well this will come in handy." Especially if any hinges needed lubrication.

"It can't hurt." June held her hands out. "You want me to carry it? You did so much in the cabins that I'd like to help." He handed it to her and she held it in both hands. "Thanks."

"No problem. I've only got so many pockets and if that leaks, I'll never get it out of my jacket. Or my pants." He tried to make light of it but he genuinely did appreciate her offering. He'd been feeling like he'd been carrying the weight of the ship on his shoulders this whole time. Knowing that someone else was willing to bear some of the burden meant a lot.

Junpei looked at the other shelves. Most of them were filled with canned goods and other preserved items. Pasta, powdered milk, spices. All in bulk. He flipped up a sheet and found one of the shelves had a small, wooden box on it next to several unlabeled, rusty cans of something.

Oh.

Junpei opened the box and revealed a rusty knife. Didn't he see a whetstone by the sink? He grabbed the box and put it in his jacket pocket, aware of how bulky and awkward it looked. As he turned back to June, ready to leave the pantry, he noticed she seemed lost in thought.

"What's up?"

"Oh, nothing," she said. It was very obviously something. "Just thinking about Futility."

Junpei had an inkling of what she was talking about. Same as he knew what Lotus was going to say about the morphogenetic field test. She wasn't talking about rusty knives or cheese that wasn't cheese or puzzles that lead to puzzles. "The book?"

June looked confused but delighted. "You know about it?"

"A little bit, yeah." That was an understatement. He remembered her talking about Futility. He just..didn't want to upset her like he had Santa and Lotus. Keeping his headache and precognition to himself seemed the best way to do just that. "I know that it's very similar to the way the Titanic sank, fourteen years before it happened. People think that Morgan Robertson predicted the whole deal."

"That's a lotta bit!" She didn't seem too offended that he knew things. That was good. "While the similarities between the events in Futility and the sinking of the Titanic were eerily similar, there are two other novels that bear striking resemblance to various events. Both of these, however, were written by Wlliam Thomas Stead."

"Oh yeah." Junpei remembered Stead. "But weren't his stories only superficially similar? Robertson's Futility, while probably coincidental, was closer to the actual sinking of the Titanic in terms of overall details, although he could have changed the details to up sales."

June frowned at him. "Sure, he could have changed details, but Stead's works were more interesting. You see: Stead was a passenger on the Titanic. It's said that he was possessing his past self to write down what happened as best he could, and that's why his works bear resemblance to the Titanic."

"Automatic writing, right?"

"Yeah! Of course, there's no proof, but isn't that interesting as a thought? That the future could be so traumatic that you send an aspect of yourself to the past, if only to warn you."

"He still got on the ship," Junpei pointed out.

"Yeah." June deflated a little. "Some things just can't be changed. They're fixed events."

Unsure of what to do after that, Junpei nervously looked at the door, then back at June. "I'm gonna go sharpen this knife. Are you good in here? I don't think there's anything else to find."

"Oh, I'll be out in a moment." June smiled, less sincerely than before. That strange look, the one that reminded Junpei of how he felt when he woke up on the D-deck, crossed her face again. "Just remember what Lotus said. Don't cut yourself."

"I won't." Junpei smiled, mostly for her benefit, and left the pantry.

Sharpening the knife took more time and effort than Junpei would have assumed. To be fair, he wasn't sure exactly how to perform upkeep on cooking utensils and the knife was very rusty. Still, the fact that he had managed to get an edge on it anyway, in spite of how genuinely ruined the blade was, was a feat in and of itself.

As he was sharpening the knife, Santa came up alongside him and watched him for a moment. Then he asked him, "You feeling better?"

"Hm?" Junpei stopped for a second so he didn't hurt himself—and to rest his poor arms—and looked at Santa. "Oh, yeah. I think puking helped."

There was a period of silence, then Santa said, "The door over there, the freezer I think? The bolt is jammed. It's rusted shut."

"Well lucky for you, June and I found some oil." Junpei wiped the blade of the knife off and checked the edge. It wasn't going to gut anyone, but it probably could cut through cooked meat with some effort. Good enough. He didn't want a dangerous knife out and about. Not with Zero around. "June has it."

"June has what?" June came up behind him as well. Junpei put the knife back in the box and latched it, shoving it back in his pocket.

"The oil. Santa says the bolt on the other door is jammed. You wanna check it out?" June nodded and the three of them walked over to the other door. Lotus followed behind, even though she wasn't doing anything.

Like sharpening the knife, oiling the bolt took effort. Cooking oil was not industrial oil, nor was it any kind of mechanical lubricant. It was just slimy and slick and, when Junpei was done wiggling the bolt free of the plate, he wiped his hands on his pants, leaving dark streaks.

So much for keeping them clean.

Grabbing the door handle, Junpei pushed it open. Past the door was a freezer filled with shelves of meat and other frozen goods. None of them were edible, probably, and the whole place was bitingly cold. On the wall opposite the door was a cabinet and there was some kind of hatch on the floor. Junpei shivered, his breath coming out in puffs of white.

"F-fuck it's cold." Santa looked around, bare arms wrapped around himself. Goosebumps raised on his skin and he was hunching over to try and keep from shaking too much. Why he had decided to come into the freezer was beyond Junpei, especially since he and June were better dressed for not freezing to death. That's why Lotus had stayed outside when...

Wait.

Just as Junpei remembered why all them being in the freezer was a bad idea, the door swung shut behind them and there was a snapping sound. The pipe by the door had burst and the water—warm in the pipe—had frozen over the knob, making it impossible to open from either side.

Santa lunged for the knob and drew back, hissing in pain. The palm of his hand was a bright pink, the freezing cold metal having burned him on contact. "Lotus?!"

On the other side of the door, Lotus tried to push it open. Then she slammed into it with her full weight. Junpei heard her suck in air. She probably hurt herself too. "It's not opening from this side!"

The door swings open, Junpei remembered. If the ice freezing it in place is keeping it from moving, then even Lotus tackling the damn thing wouldn't make it budge. Hell, even if Seven tried it wouldn't go anywhere. They had to make their own way out.

How though...

While Santa yelled at Lotus through the door—her saying something about how she genuinely couldn't help them and him shouting about how they were gonna freeze to death—Junpei opened the cabinet and started searching for something, anything to help.

Slabs of meat weren't useful, save the extremely hard chunk of frozen chicken, which could be used as a bludgeoning weapon, but something else in the cabinet caught his eye. A large bag of something extremely square shaped that radiated cold.

"Dry ice." Junpei pulled the bag's knotted handle and carefully dropped it to the floor. The freezer was already cold as shit. He didn't need to suffer dry ice burns on top of that.

"H-hey," Santa startled Junpei. "Isn't dry ice just frozen carbon dioxide?"

"Yeah?" Junpei tried to wrack his brain for any information he had about dry ice. All he was getting were a recipe for a dry ice bomb and the fact that dry ice is a sublimate. The former was useful, if he could find the things he needed. "It's got specific needs to become a l-liquid." Even with his vest and long sleeves, the cold was starting to take its toll on Junpei. He knelt down and used the frozen chicken to start smashing the dry ice block into smaller, more manageable chunks.

"The sublimation point of carbon di-dioxide is negative one hundred and n-nine degrees fahrenheit. In order to m-make it a liquid, it needs to be under pressure, like diamonds a-and graphite." June, in spite of the cold, seemed proud of herself.

It would've been a more impressive fact if they weren't freezing to death, trapped in a freezer. "Queen of Knowledge st-strikes again, huh?"

June's amused smile turned into another thoughtful frown. "Oh, h-hey Junpei?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember w-what I said ab-about the mummy?"

Santa looked as confused as Junpei felt. Junpei, however, was connecting dots. "About how sh-she wouldn't melt?"

"Mmhmm." June wrapped her arms tighter around herself and jammed her hands in her armpits. "I just remembered s-something interesting about that." When nobody—not even Santa—stopped her, she began to explain. "So there's this type of i-ice. It was sup-supposed to be something in a science-fiction book, but it was ice that had a melting point of ninety-six degrees fahrenheit. It's a p-polymorph of standard ice. They called it ice-9."

While the conversation was familiar, it was the repetition of nine that really caused Junpei's stomach to leap into his throat. There was just no escaping nine in the Nonary Game, was there?

"S-so what? Do they know wh-what caused it?" Santa asked through chattering teeth.

"No. It just h-happened. Something about the structure of the ice was different and that's wh-why its melting point is higher. Kinda like glycerine."

Junpei did remember this one better, even though ice-9 should have been the one to stick out to him more. "Nineteen twenty, right? Wh-when glycerine started crystalizing all over the world when c-cooled to sixty-four degrees fahrenheit or lower?"

"Y-yeah." June nodded at Junpei.

He stood up and looked around for anything else to help with his dry ice bomb. There was a piece of pork on the metal shelving that had what looked like a tag in it. That had to be something useful. "What's th-that got to do with ice-9 and th-the Priestess of Amon-Ra again?" Junpei shoved the pork in his pocket—he was giving up on keeping his clothes clean at this point—and continued searching the shelves.

"P-probably the same phenomena," Santa offered. "L-like ice-9 deciding to freeze with the structure that allows it to h-have a higher melting p-point, the glycerine crystallization happened the s-same way."

"Morphogenic fields." June made a noise of confusion so Junpei explained. "Lotus was...there was this b-biochemist. It's about in-invisible fields that carry information. If it ex-exists, then who's to say humans are th-the only ones who can store or r-retrieve information using it."

"B-but if ice-9 is the same, why haven't the oceans f-frozen over?" Santa asked.

"Salt." June's answer didn't seem satisfactory, but Santa didn't press her.

Instead, he chose to focus his confusion on Junpei. "Wh-what are you doing?"

"Dry ice bomb." Junpei lifted the hatch and let out a hissing, "Yes." There was an empty bottle and some rope—cold to the touch but not frozen stiff—in the hatch. He started shoving chunks of dry ice in the bottle using his shirt sleeve as a glove.

Santa looked at the dry ice, then the door. "Do you plan on b-blowing us up too?!"

Junpei wrapped the rope around the bottle so he could hook it on the door handle then removed the cap. "Hop in th-the hatch. We can use the d-door to shield us. It's big enough."

"You're f-fucking crazy." Santa still got in the hatch, helping June step down as well. Junpei added the warm water to the bottle and, as the ice began to turn to gas, capped it off and tied it to the doorknob.

It was a really good thing he had been so gentle. Just one tap and the bomb would have probably taken his hands off, at the very least. Junpei picked up a chunk of dry ice left over from making the bomb, hunkered down by the hatch, and threw it against the bottle. The second that the ice left his hand, he ducked into the cellar and pulled the door down. A deafening sound rocked through the freezer. Junpei threw the hatch up and rushed to the door, sliding a little on the ice-covered floor. The door handle—now free of ice—moved in his grip and he shoved the door open, ecstatic to be free of the freezer.

"Oh thank fuck!" Junpei leaned against the wall, shaking his hands to try and get feeling back in his fingers. Behind him, June and Santa rushed out as well, their faces bright pink.

Santa slammed his hand down on the grill and started screaming. It seemed like an extreme reaction to nearly freezing to death but also...Junpei couldn't blame anyone for acting odd. He was probably the worst offender today. Santa swore and kicked the grill, pulling his hand off. Now his skin was pink for a different reason.

Lotus, who had been leaning against the service counter, looked at them with surprise. "What the hell was that noise? Is Santa okay?"

"Bomb and probably?" Junpei's first instinct on escaping was to assume that Lotus had purposefully closed them in the freezer, but the smarter, louder part of him—the part that knew things that hadn't happened yet—knew that if she wanted them dead, she could have just bolted the latch shut. She didn't, she just also didn't do anything else to help.

"Fuck!" Santa swore one last time.

"Feel better?" Lotus asked. He shot her a scathing look and she just held her hands up defensively. "Just asking."

"Shut up. I'm gonna go stick my hands in the sink."

"Yuck." June grimaced.

"Well, better that than let my hands hurt forever." Santa walked off and June followed him, probably to try and warm her hands up too—or make sure he was okay.

Junpei turned to the grill and threw the pork on it. Lotus, confused by his actions, came over and looked at the slowly cooking meat. "Hungry?" Her tone was teasing and light.

"Not for this." Junpei poked it with a barbecue fork, testing to see how soft it was. "There's paper in this. I figure I can cut it out if it's not frozen. Plus, I don't know how old this meat is. I'm not taking chances." One side was pretty cooked so Junpei flipped it over. It did smell good, kinda. Junpei poked the meat again. Still a little cold in the center.

When he figured it was done enough he skewered the meat on the barbecue fork and walked it to the area with the cutting boards. Then he began to work on removing the piece of paper with the kitchen knife he sharpened.

He'd done an okay job getting the edge back on the knife but it cut like a pair of safety scissors through cardboard. It took Junpei several moments to finally work the paper free and by then his hands were covered in meat grease. Maybe he should also submerge his hands in the sink water. Yuck.

The paper read: C + 10 + F

Of course hexadecimal was going to be important. That's why the voucher with the plate numbers was there. C was twelve, ten was sixteen, and F was fifteen. Twelve plus sixteen plus fifteen was forty-three. Junpei punched it into the number pad lock on the oven and was rewarded for remembering something Lotus told him. The oven opened.

"Hell yeah." Junpei pulled a blue and black keycard out from in the oven. It had a familiar symbol on it. "Hey June? Isn't this the symbol for Saturn?" He stood up and handed it to her as she walked over.

June looked at the card with wonder in her eyes. "Yes! Do you think this is the keycard to leave?"

"I don't see anything else we could do, so probably." Junpei wiped his grease-covered hands on his pants again and grimaced. These jeans were never getting clean after this. Ever. "Why don't you give it a try?"

June and everyone else walked over to the reader near the door and she swiped it. The light flashed green, it beeped, and she grabbed the door and threw it open. Finally, they'd managed to escape the kitchen.

#the sheepy writes fic #Schrödinger's Cat Fic #999 #zero escape #ze #999 spoilers #long post #every chapter will have links to the song for the chapter but also I'm not posting a chapter total until I'm fucking done #also im only using vocal synth songs for chapter titles because i wanna spread the love for them #dont say shit if you notice the small sample size in producers i couldnt find appropriate ones lmao #part one of chapter one #coz i hit the 15K line and went ''maybe i should split this up''#chapters after this one will be shorter...maybe #i cannot say coz i do not know lmao

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xbunnybunz · 3 years

Text

Sick Days [BEN Drowned x Reader]

Summary: When a creepypasta manages to crawl into your home through a computer, people usually scream and call the police. You? Well, it's just another normal day for you.

Genre: Fluff, Horror, Humor

Date: June 20, 2015

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You sat in your room with the expression of utter boredom painted on your features, your hand absentmindedly tracing patterns on the table next to your open laptop. You grunted as your computer went into hibernation mode again and tapped the spacebar to reawaken the screen. Your bedroom window was wide open, allowing the evening breeze to float into your adobe and gently rustle the papers on your table. Fading streaks of sunlight peeked through your fluttering curtains, caressing your body with soft warmth.

Despite the serene atmosphere that had settled into your semi-messy room, your features were soon twisted into a grimace. The fingers that had been trailing along the table began drumming a steady rhythm, growing quicker and more impatient by the second. You glanced at the clock for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, and read the blaring red numbers 6:23 PM. You scowled, annoyed. "Ugh, where is that little rascal?" You muttered, tapping your keyboard again and watching irefully as your homescreen popped up again. Ben usually arrived before sundown, but the sun was already halfway down the horizon. Ben probably would've taunted you for being so worked up over his absence, and you, being a little short tempered, would probably fall for his teasing and would have exploded into a mess of jumbled profanities. Though many would describe your actions now as "eager," you recalled how petrified you were when Ben first popped out of the fossilized desktop your dad insisted they brought when your family moved. That day, your mother and father had been visiting a sick relative in the hospital, and couldn't come home for the night. You, feeling free and a little daring, decided to stay up the entire night watching horror flicks in your livingroom. Although you felt the terror of eight marathoned horror movies shake you to your core, you persisted, jumping at every little noise from the movie and from your creaky home. That's why, when you witnessed the forgotten computer in the corner of the livingroom fizz and flicker on and off, you froze in unfathomable fear, merely staring as a deathly pale hand clawed it's way out of a jumble of binary code and pixels. By the time a head of tousled white hair and pitch black eyes with crimson irises emerged from the screen, you were already halfway out the door, knowing better than to trap yourself in your own bedroom. You would've spent the night at a neighbor's house, but your closest neighbor must have been at least a mile away- being that your family decided to move into the suburbs. Unfortunately for you, who was secluded in the pitch black of the night with god-knows-what in your house, it was pouring outside. In your mad scramble for salvation, you had not grabbed the keys to your house. You had originally settled for the plan to stay in the freezing rain, (it was definitely a safer bet than being in the house) but alas, the hours spent watching scary movies finally took its toll on you, and had made you paranoid to every small rustle and crunch. (In truth, it was just the trees.) This terror had driven you to crawl up some old growths of ivy on the side of your home, feeling blessed to find your bedroom window open just a crack- allowing you to pry the rest of the window open. Halfway through your window, you looked up- only to become blatantly horrified. There the white-haired boy was, floating in the middle of the room with bleeding eyesockets- as if he had been waiting for your arrival. Overcome with panic and surprise, you allowed the wet soles of your feet slip out from under you, sending your drenched body sailing face-first towards the hardwood floor of your bedroom. Your nose took the brunt of the fall, and erupted in a mess of blood upon impact. The pain of a shattered nose did little to deter you from the thing in your room. Holding your nose with both hands, you scrambled to press yourself against the wall- as far away from that demon-ghost-thing as possible. But when you looked back up, you were shocked to find it trying desperately to hold back laughter, it's eye twitching from the effort. The corner of it's mouth was twitching toward a smirk, and it's eyes were betraying it's stoic expression- it wanted to laugh at you! You shot to your feet, prepared to duke it out with the hovering monster- only to slip a second time on the rainwater that you had tracked into your room. This time, your head collided hard with the frame of your bed, and you blacked out. You woke up the next morning with a wrapped head and a bandaged nose. It turns out your parents had returned from their little trip and found you lying in a puddle of your own nosebleed- which sounds as humiliating as it felt- and had patched you up. After you told them about what you had seen, your parents merely laughed and gave you an affectionate pat on the head, claiming that the stress of moving and lack of sleep had to do with your "hallucinations." You would've believed them, if it wasn't for the fact that the boy showed up in your room again. You fell asleep while using your laptop and when you awoke, you found the pale-haired boy freeing his foot from your computer screen. Though you were sure that the white-haired monster returned to finish you off, you found him simply pointing his finger at your wrapped up face and cackling at you, tears budding in the gaping holes that were his eyes. You felt your face burn with embarrassment, and though you should have called for help, you simply sat there, allowing the strange being to laugh at your misfortune. After what felt like an eternity he retreated back into your computer, still snickering- leaving you bewildered and dazed. He later introduced himself as Ben Drowned over a cyberchat website named "Cleverbot," and you learned his story, as well as the fact that he could teleport just about anywhere that held an electronic device. Later that night, you awoke to a flooded room. With your heart pummeling with fear, you gasped and flailed for breath, desperately searching for a way out. You were less than pleased to find Ben on the screen on your open laptop- which was, for some reason, still working under water. His shoulders shook with muted laughter, doubling over with the hilarity he found in your pitiful predicament. As soon as it started, it was gone. The water that had once filled your room was gone, leaving everything unscathed in it's wake. Once you found mobility in your limbs again, you stormed to your laptop (which still contained the laughing freak) and took out the battery, taking away the laptop's source of life. You stormed about your house, rampaging in the middle of the night to turn off or unplug any source of electricity you could- the phones, the computers, televisions- even the dusty desktop. Despite the complaints of your confused parents, you were at peace. Since you had cut off any source of electricity, (other than the lights) that pesky elf hadn't bothered you- probably because he couldn't. However, your happiness was short-lived. Upon returning from school one day, you found that your parents had somehow reconnected everything before going to work- leaving you with two things: electricity, and an angry Ben. You had no idea how you did it, but you managed to convince Ben not to suck you into the netherworld or kill you- With minimal damage to the house. Before you placated him, Ben had flown into a livid tantrum, tossing tables and pictures to-and-fro with some unseen force, only ceasing when you promised that you would keep all electronics plugged in- thus allowing him to drop in any time he liked. Since then, the white haired boy with red irises visited routinely each day without intentions to scare you, though you were still unnerved by his presence at first. As if he sensed your uneasiness, Ben began to annoy you. Ceaselessly. Day after day, he knocked over decorative vases, messed up your room, taunted your occasional bad grades, and in all: irked the hell out of you. Yet here you were, waiting for his arrival like some kind of goddamned puppy. "What. Ever." You hissed through clenched teeth, standing up from your computer table, "Maybe he got bored of me. He's been visiting me for... God knows how long already...Good riddance." Despite your words, you felt a twinge of sadness prick your heart like a fine-tipped needle. Though he was undoubtedly aggravating most of the time, you had liked him company. Just a little. You sighed, the beams of twilight cast your shadow across the floor. "I should prepare some microwaveable dinner, my parents are working overtime today." As you sulked slowly towards your bedroom door, a loud crash and the sound of loud static pierced your eardrums, making you leap several feet into the air and scramble for the doorknob, storming downstairs to find the source of the noise. You were both annoyed and relieved to find Ben crawling out of the screen of the old desktop, though your annoyance went out the window once you spotted his shaking arms on the edge of the screen, as if he couldn't support his own weight. You extended a hand out to him, flinching as he finally managed to haul himself out of the mess of codes, landing in a heap on the floor. "Ben?" You inquired, peering at his crumpled form. "Are you okay...?" You knelt down next to him, touching his shoulder gently. "Ben?" At your voice, the creepypasta turned to look at you weakly before sniggering quietly- which worried you a bit. "What are you doing in my house?" You raised an eyebrow. "Ben, this is my house. Not yours." Ben, who had a pinkish hue to his pale cheeks, took a look around before the realization dawned upon him. "Oh, right. I'll be going then." You watched as the usually boisterous entity struggled to get back onto his feet, only to fall down again. This time, however, you caught him. Once his body made contact with your arms, you nearly shrieked. The back of his neck was burning hot, and the rest of his body was strangely warm- just like an overheated computer. "Ben-" You adjusted your hold on him, (he was a lot heavier than he looked) "Ben, are you sick?" Ben glared at you weakly. "No." You sighed, exasperated. His pride was going to be the death of him one day. You placed a gentle palm his forehead, cringing at the impossibly high temperature you felt. "Ben, you have a high fever. A bad one." The said person clicked his tongue and turned his face away, looking irritated. "That explains why I felt like shit the whole day." You couldn't help but snicker as you carried him to the couch, "That also explains why you didn't think of visiting me today." "Get off your high-fucking-horse, princess." Ben scowled, trying in vain to look threatening. "You should be thankful that I visit you everyday." You rolled your eyes, placing him softly on the couch. "Yeah, yeah. Thanks for gracing me with your presence everyday, dumbass." You swore you heard Ben grumble something under his breath, but you were already too far up the stairs to hear. You returned with several pillows, a thermometer and some pills from the bathroom cabinet, determined to nurse Ben back to health. Though he was an annoying turd most of the time, there were rare moments where he comforted you in times of need- though most of the time, his offers to help just involved murdering someone, which you kindly refused. ("Killing people isn't the solution to everything, you freaking moron!") Now, it was your turn to help him. With an abundance of pillows in your arms, you urged him to sit up for a second (which he did with an anguished groan) and slipped four or five behind him, ensuring his comfort. You went into the kitchen and returned with a damp cloth and a glass of water to drink with the medicine. To be honest, you weren't quite sure if human medicine worked on creepypasta such as Ben, but it was all you had. "Ben, come on, you need to take some medicine." He scoffed at you. "Get your Earth pills away from me. You know just as well as I do that those won't work for me." You knelt next to him on the floor next to the couch and uncapped the bottle, shaking two pills out of the container and nudging him up. "You're right. I don't know if it'll work, but it's the only thing I have, so just suck it up and take them." "Get away from me." He hissed. "Ben..." You said, your tone threatening, "Don't make me unplug everything again." At this, Ben's hollow eyes narrowed, the red specks of light in them piercing into your skull. "You wouldn't dare." You gulped, feeling a cold sweat accumulate at his intense gaze. You steeled yourself and glared right back at him. "Try me." Grudgingly, Ben accepted the pills and sat up. Before you could stop him, he threw the pills in his mouth and began to chew. You froze, holding the cup of water in your hand and staring at him with wide eyes. You had made the same mistake of chewing those pills when you were younger, prior to figuring out that you could use water to wash them down. To be frank, those pills could cause more damage than a fever if not taken with water- they were horrendously bitter, and nearly caused you to puke. Just as you thought, Ben gradually stopped chewing, turning even paler than he already was- if possible. Though his face showed no emotion, you could almost feel the bloodthirsty aura that washed off of him, obviously not too pleased with the taste. You wasted no time in shoving the glass of water in his hands, urging him to drink. The water was gone before you could even blink, and Ben held the front of your shirt with an intent of death in his eyes. "You-" He stuttered, his face tinted red from anger, "You-" You braced yourself for whatever might come, but surprisingly, the grip on your shirt loosened, and Ben flopped back down unceremoniously, letting the pillows swallow his lean body. "Oh, whatever... Why would humans invent something so horrible to heal a sickness? If anything, that just made me sicker..." You smiled nervously, feeling the slightest bit guilty. "Er, it's my fault... I should have told you about the water sooner..." Ben scowled faintly. "Damn right you should've." You whispered a low "sorry" before wringing the wet towel, placing the cool cloth on Ben's head. This pulled a sigh of satisfaction from his lips, his eyes fluttering closed with contentment. You uncapped the thermometer, clicking the "ON" switch before turning back to Ben. "One last thing before you rest, Ben. I need your temperature." Ben didn't even bother to open his eyes or complain- which surprised you. Without hesitation, he simply opened his mouth. You found yourself smiling endearingly at his actions: it was like handling a stubborn child- all you had to do was get past his hard shell. Taking Ben's temperature was a little bit of a struggle, since the digital screen glitched and spazzed out once it made contact with him. However, once you had taken his temperature, your eyes nearly bulged out of your head. The little pixels, occasionally glitching, read "105.7° F. " After discovering this little fact, you urged him to sleep for a bit- feeling a bit panicked. After the third time of telling him to just relax and sleep, Ben snapped at you. "If you tell me to go to sleep one more time, I'll call Jeff up here and tell him to put you to sleep." Though you knew this was an empty threat, it still shut you up. You had heard a lot about Jeff the Killer, and though some of your friends were obsessed with him, you weren't too keen on meeting him. After turning on the fan in hopes to cool Ben down, you settled back next to him on the floor, watching his uneven breathing. After a few moments of staring, Ben's eyes snapped open, feebly glaring at you before it turned into a smirk. "Sweetheart, I know i'm good looking- but if you're gonna stare, at least do something that can excuse you from it." You blinked and furrowed your brows, feeling embarrassed but relieved. It sounded like he was feeling a bit better- but was that really a good thing for you? Silently, you lifted a hand and began combing it through his silvery hair, knocking his hat astray. However, Ben didn't seem to mind. In fact, he completely ignored his hat and turned away from you, as if he were hiding his face. Despite his best efforts, you spotted a pinkish tint on his cheeks that extended to his ears- and you were sure it wasn't because of the fever he had. You watched him with soft eyes and continued your small ministrations, wondering how he had gotten sick in the first place. Before long, Ben had fallen asleep to your touch and the low hum of the fan. Sighing breathily, you gave the sleeping boy a thoughtful look. You didn't understand why he had kept the routine of visiting you everyday, but you weren't about to complain. Moving was no easy task, it included making new friends and leaving the old ones behind. Your socializing skills weren't your strongest suit, and although you tried your best, it was difficult to keep a conversation with someone at school- you feared their judgement. Though you knew most of the people at school didn't mean any harm to you, it was still a little scary for you to be cast out into a new environment so suddenly, it made you feel vulnerable. And although Ben had scared the pants off of you at first, you slowly began to realize that your arguments and chats with him didn't make you tense or anxious. Perhaps you could even go as far as to say he made you the slightest bit happy. You continued to play with his hair for a little while before removing your hands, observing him carefully. It was true that Ben was relatively handsome, though you would rather die than admit that to him. His white hair and pale complexion gave him the look of a hauntingly beautiful angel, though his eyes were dark and devilish, always seeming to hold only the most malicious of intentions. While he was awake, his countenance was usually twisted into a smirk or a sneer- which didn't exactly make him more attractive, but definitely did not take away from it, either. However, as he was asleep, you couldn't help but notice how strikingly bewitching he looked without the usual grimace. His long, white eyelashes brushed against his cheekbones, colored pale pink with his fever. Though you hadn't noticed it previously, it was almost unnerving how captivating Ben was. With his sleek, graceful features relaxed, you almost wouldn't have been able to guess that he was such a cunning gremlin while he was awake. You couldn't stop your eyes from wandering to his lips, which were slightly parted with his steady inhales and exhales. Just like the rest of his body, his lips were deathly pale, and slightly chapped- though they still looked inviting. You blushed and averted your eyes upon realizing how inappropriate your thoughts were. Ben was horribly sick and helpless, yet here you were, daydreaming about... A kiss... You covered your face, feeling humiliation wash over you in waves. Ben would probably laugh himself to death if he knew what you were thinking. The mere thought of being with Ben was impractical within itself, since there was no way monsters like him were even capable of feelings, right...? Your train of thought was halted when you heard the silverette groan lowly from across you. You peered out from your hands with questioning eyes, wondering if you had woken him up with the intensity of your staring. (Was that even possible, though?) He wasn't awake. His eyes were still sealed shut, but his mouth was twitching, as if he were trying to say something. You leaned in closer, watching attentively. Did he want water? A colder towel? More pillows? Suddenly, much to your shock, your name erupted from his lips, sounding like a cross between a groan of irritation and a plea. Then, he was silent again. You felt a warmness in your body emitting from the center of your stomach, and before long, you found yourself smiling at Ben. He was asleep, so it wouldn't hurt too much, right...? Slowly, you leaned forward and brushed back some of his soft locks, marveling at how pretty his face was. With such a small distance between you two, you could smell his scent- a distinct smell of static and coconut. Gently, you pressed your lips to his cheek, feeling the warmth of his soft, feverish skin on your own mouth. As you pulled away, you found a hand on the back of your head, pulling you back in. Wide eyes registered as Ben tilted his head, and his lips met yours, watching your bewildered expression with groggy, half-lidded eyes before he closed them, pressing his lips harder against your own. His mouth was burning hot, no doubt it was because of the fever, but it made the kiss even harder to resist. With flushed cheeks, you allowed your eyes to slip shut as well, returning the gentle pressure lightly. You noted that Ben was being unusually careful as he cupped your face, as if you were made of fragile glass that would shatter at any moment. You smiled at this, and brushed the side of his cheek with the back of your hand endearingly. He pulled away and you opened your mouth to speak, but before you could get a word in, his lips descended upon yours again, his tongue sweeping over your already open lips and tickling the roof of your mouth. You squeaked a bit at this, and he pulled back, his hand still on your cheek, opening his eyes to take in your reddened face and light panting. And then you saw it. It surprised you more than the kiss did- and perhaps more than his first appearance did. Ben smiled. It was a genuine smile, albeit small, unlike the smirks and half-grins he gave you all the time. This time, his lips curled naturally, softening his scarlet eyes a twinge. The hues of twilight poured in from the window and washed over both of you, bathing both of you in a beautiful gradient of a fading pink, yellow and orange. You should have scolded him for kissing you while he was sick, but you couldn't find the heart to ruin the mood. Instead, you smiled back at him, leaning into the hand that remained on your cheek. There, in the wake of the lingering sun, you discovered that what once was your greatest fear was also your greatest treasure.

#creepypasta #ben drowned #legend of zelda #fanfiction #reader insert #ben drowned x reader #old work

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