Datagene: Code Trinity

Chapter 3

Joelle POV

"So why were you guys in the janitors closet?" I asked, walking with the two people who fell out of there. They had seemed nice enough. The girl was Rhea, and the guy was Kris. They were nice enough. 

"Well we've just entered the game, and so that was where the game dumped us." Rhea said, scrolling through the contents of her holo. "Maybe as a joke, but this game is no joke." 

"What are you looking at?"Kris asked, peeking over Rhea's shoulder. "Is that a map?"

Rhea nodded. I scooted closer, trying to see. It was a map, with multiple blinking dots. They all moved, and I saw the one that was differently colored. It must have been Rhea's dot. "Can you see Meyers on there?" Rhea nodded, but it was a nod that seemed to say that something was wrong.

"Meyers' dot keeps blinking out." She pointed to another different colored dot,  And then appearing in another place." There were nine sections of the airport, each seeming to be for different regions of the virtual world. "I'm tired. Do you guys want to sit down?" We all nodded and went to the nearest waiting area. We all plopped down onto the cushioned chairs with Rhea in the middle. 

"Anyways, how did you get here Joelle?" I heard Kris say. "And how long have you been here for?"

Umm... I thought back, trying to remember since a lot of it was a panicked blur. "I was in one of the VR booths in a small arcade that's run by my brother, and I was playing a game. But then a huge error bubble popped up, saying that I was being redirected. It was code error number....." I paused, trying to remember what the error number was. "It was error number nine six... five seven.... eight? No, nine. Then I realized my user menu wasn't working, and then I was at the starting screen of Datagene."

Rhea looked suddenly at me, and then back to her holo. She pulled up a photo that she must have managed to screenshot with her holo before it froze and stopped working. It was in big bold red letters, Code Error 96579. Redirecting.... The same screen mine had before it had redirected my avatar. An idea popped into my head. 

"This might sound kinda stupid, but maybe we can try visiting the sections of the airport in the order that the number code says. There are nine sections labeled one through nine and there aren't any numbers outside that range in the code error number. We might as well give it a shot." 

"That actually sounds a lot like what Halfbyte does in a lot of their games. Put clues to answer the level before the level, trying to get you to notice." Kris said. "Let's give it a shot." 

"When I had talked to you about Datagene when you used to play it you said it was like a game where you shot people to pieces. The type of game that breeds the future's psychopaths." Rhea scoffed, and Kris shook his head. 

"That game that breeds future psychopaths was called Glitch Campaign. The Datagene series is more like a puzzle series with the occasional casual fight to the death." I could hear the sarcasm in his voice and I laughed quietly. Rhea looked annoyed at both of us and then turned back to the holo. 

"Okay. We'll try what Joelle suggested. We're running out of time anyways." Rhea said standing up. "Let's go." She started guiding us to section nine of the airport. 

A/N: Sorry that this update is so short I've decided to make shorter chapters (between 400-600 words) so it'll be easier to update because a chapter that's between 800 and 1200 words is kinda hard to keep up with and takes longer to write. So more updates and less anxiety for me! Everyone wins. Also I'm the kind of person who starts a bazillion projects and then spends the next eternity trying to finish them so I'll sometimes not update due to other projects I have running right now. Plus school's starting so yaaay. I'm going to die from either school stress or frustration with school. Makes me want to question the education system but whatever. It won't change anytime soon. And I'm not gonna die. That was just my really dry and dark humor kicking down the door. I hope you have a good day/night/afternoon/whatever time of day you're in! Bye!!