This chapter is dedicated to Shelby_Painter for always voting whenever I publish a new chapter! Thank you so much! (Also wow she's a huge star now!! Go follow her!)
Mariola found herself underneath glowing stars.
Sitting up quickly like the fold of a lawn chair, Mariola scrutinized her surroundings in the dark.
She found that the glowing stars were actually stuck on a ceiling of a beige-painted room with wooden furniture lining the walls.
The unfamiliar place didn't look like another medical ward or a prison underground...but Mariola wasn't going to take any chances.
Swiftly, she ran quietly to an open window, her bare feet cold against the wooden floor, and stuck her head out like a giraffe.
The soft sunlight tickled her skin, and Mariola allowed herself a second or two to feel peace as she stared at the rising morning sun—then she stuck one foot out of the window and then slowly the other foot.
"There's nowhere to run, Mariola."
Her left foot halfway to freedom, the girl turned around to discover a shadowy figure in the corner of the room.
"You do know that there is no exit, other than to go up," the figure continued, stepping into a shaft of watery light and revealing a slightly wrinkled and very worried face of a woman.
"Oh my goodness! Loma, don't scare me like that!" Mariola slowly put her cramping legs off the high window and tried to think how she could possibly have missed this stout woman in the corner of the room.
"Well, excuse me! You don't scare me like when you just disappeared off into the woods!"
The woman raised her right eyebrow and flung her hands on the handles of her hips. "Where did you go? What were you doing?"
"Last night..." Flashes—trees, lockers, people—burst then faded away. "I don't remember." Mariola scratched her scalp as if trying to activate her hippocampus.
"Try to think harder. Where were you?" Loma quickly switched from demanding to a worried mother.
"I-I don't know," Mariola reiterated, climbing back onto the bed and putting her face between her hands. "I can't...remember."
Loma cursed.
"What was that?"
"What was what?" Loma asked, furrowing her eyebrows, sighing through her nose.
"That word," Mariola said. "Is it a curse word?"
"Oh. Yeah it was a popular curse word back when I was in the Outside. But what does that matter now?"
Mariola slouched her shoulders and looked haggardly at her only friend. "The Outside? What's that?"
Loma sat down by the hapless girl, bouncing the mattress as she leaned close and whispered, "You didn't have any memories before you came here, right?"
Mariola nodded mutely and slowly, unsure if the question led to a good or bad conclusion.
Loma tsked and cursed that word again; then she muttered, "I know I'm not supposed to do this but..."
YOU ARE READING
Champion of the Bots ✔️
מדע בדיוניInside a glass pyramid lies an evil man named Sir Eden 💠 On a plane far far up in the sky is his worst enemy. Every year they recruit an army to battle each other in the world's largest virtual reality tournament 🌐 Whoever wins earns freedom. Ren...
