AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Human legs. So he had sent her into the Dark Reality... She looked around, but it seemed Loir had dropped her in a waiting cell. There was nothing but mirrors around her, sending her reflection hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Eden stared at her other self. A tall feminine silhouette, with short white hair and golden eyes, in a white bodysuit. Ghost had her traits and her body shape, but none of her imperfections. Ghost had no wrinkles, no bumps on her skin, no color on her cheeks.
Suddenly, a robot-like voice began talking around Eden. She frowned. It did sound Russian, probably the server’s automated welcome system. She agitated her fingers, checking that everything worked. They moved exactly as she had intended them to.
Eden took a deep breath and violently kicked a mirror.
A large crack appeared, and everything began blinking in red around her. The Russian voice became louder and more pressing, but Eden kept kicking until it came flying off. Suddenly, everything around her exploded in all directions. She began running before her feet touched the ground. A green pathway appeared in front of her, and a voice resonated in her inner ear.
“Welcome, Kitty.”
“Stop messing up and help me!”
“Follow the white bunny!”
“...What?”
Eden kept running on the green path, trying to look around. The environment was forming in real-time around her. Walls suddenly appeared in front of her, like the universe was building in an accelerated motion. Those walls kept glitching, making her think the environment was unstable. She followed the green pathway, realizing she wasn’t alone. She really did have competitors... Eden accelerated and kept looking around. Wasn’t it ready yet?
Suddenly, she noticed it. Like a bundle of pixels, a white rabbit was down there, below the green pathway, hopping around. Eden hesitated. This server’s defense system wasn’t ready yet. Aside from this green pathway, there was nothing around her, just a dark universe. That rabbit looked like it was floating. As she felt more people coming up behind her, she jumped down.
For a second, she was scared Loir had tricked her, but then, her feet met something hard. Eden landed a bit unsure; although she couldn’t see it, there was definitely something under her, keeping her from falling more. She raised her eyes. About thirty silhouettes were still on the green pathway above her, but the white rabbit was right there. She shook off her worries and ran after it.
A couple of seconds after that, the green pathway above her disappeared. All those silhouettes fell, most of them screaming. Eden ignored them and kept running, following the rabbit. The security system was almost done. She heard people falling on the path behind her, but she was at the front and kept going.
That’s when an alarm rang, and she stopped. The rabbit disappeared, but there was no need anymore. The environment was done.
Eden looked around. She was in an actual room this time, a small one, almost like a closet. She opened the door in front of her, taking a glance through the opening. It looked like a library... and just as silent. She glanced around, but her opponents had ended up elsewhere. Eden slowly walked out of the closet, ensuring that no one saw her. She crouched down, making sure she was hidden behind a full shelf.
“...Loir?” she whispered.
“You’re looking for row 34, the black book on the seventh shelf. Anthropology aisle.”
Eden nodded and moved slowly, glancing at what was going on on the other side of those books.
This library wasn’t empty. People were studying, or at least they pretended to. Eden knew those weren’t real, but they looked very realistic. However, some mistakes were visible. A girl kept taking the same book repeatedly, like in a loop, and they were all reading books with pages filled with fake text. Not only that, but there were also inconsistencies, like the adult woman wearing a school uniform, or the dog at her feet.
Eden quietly slid against the shelves and tried to look up at the names; they were all in Cyrillic alphabet, making her grimace. This was going to take longer than anticipated...
She froze upon hearing someone else move, a couple of shelves further. She crouched down, waiting for the other to walk by. She hoped they wouldn’t get noticed and trigger more security...
Just as the thought crossed her mind, an alarm began ringing loudly. Eden grimaced. That idiot had been busted. All the fake people in the room turned their heads at once, some to an abnormal degree. There was no more time to be discreet. If it wasn’t the case yet, she’d be found too in just a few seconds. Eden began running again, not caring to be seen anymore, and jumped up, climbing on one of the shelves to get a better view. She heard a scream below and glanced down.
The security system of the server had been activated. The fake humans were slowly changing appearance, turning into giant creatures. Three of them had just changed into monstrous spiders. A tall girl was now some large snake, with a long reptilian body and fangs. Eden shuddered. The lady in uniform took the appearance of a clown with a scary smile, and the dog, a scary, growling wolf. Her heartbeat accelerated.
“Time for foul play,” chuckled Loir in her ear.
Above her, a ruckus broke. Eden covered her head as debris began falling, the roof of the library opening to reveal a terrible storm. The wind blew her hair to her face, and the rain poured down into the library. She couldn’t actually feel any water, but below her, it was starting to fill the room like a pool. Eden knew this meant she was going to run out of time. She looked around, ignoring the monsters down there chasing the other busted hacker or looking for more, and finally located a word on top of a shelf that could be Anthropology. It had to be it. She jumped down on the ground floor, ignoring everything going on.
However, the snake caught sight of her.
“Careful on your left, Kitty.”
She turned her head just in time to jump to the side, avoiding the nightmarish bite. The beast stood tall above her, hissing furiously. Eden glared at it. She wasn’t afraid of snakes, and she wasn’t afraid of such basic security systems. Those were dupes meant to help the server win time, have the hackers leave their own, or trap them there. She turned around, ignoring it, and ran toward that shelf, trying to locate the black book. She glanced at the full rows.
“There’s no fucking black book!”
“Oh... Did they camouflage it?”
She didn’t have time to look a second longer. A scream came up from a nearby aisle, and Eden began running again, circling in that area. The snake’s yellow eyes were still following her. She wasn’t afraid of the simulation, but she knew the real deal would be coming soon. She didn’t intend to stay for the security to increase. Rather than being kicked out, she was scared of being trapped and caught here.
