POV: Zoe
Typing as quickly as possible, she answered the questions that appeared on the screen. After the first question they got a lot easier, Zoe taking a quick look around the room determined that there should be about twenty bolts, considering most of the machinery had nails and screws.
She gathered that there were in fact bolts in the room due to the fact that there was a wrench on the table next to a laptop in the corner. The odd thing was, there was no reason that Zoe should think of the number 20, sure she knew that there had to be some amount of bolts in the room, but something seemed to come over her, and she felt the need to put in the number twenty. Not knowing the consequences, Zoe just types it in.
'Why not?' she figures, as she shrugged her shoulders slightly.
Ding!
Correct
Next question:
What is the color of the floor?
Looking down, Zoe sees that it is a dark grayish.
'Huh, well that was easy' she thinks to herself, while typing in gray wrong. Spelling it like graey, instead of picking between grey and gray. Despite this, the computer still dings, accepting her answer.
Not realizing that she typed it in wrong, Zoe continues to the final question.
Final question:
What is your favorite color?
"Well, this is a simple question" says Zoe, while typing in 'green'.
Ding!
Correct
Above the computer appeared the words:
Computers hacked: 1->2
Congratulations! 1 to go!
Zoe sighs with relief, but then a question came to her; 'How did the computer know what my favorite color was??'
As she was pondering this, a loud thud rang out from nearby, shaking her from her thoughts.
"I wonder what that was… oh no! What if Yin or Ren is in trouble?? I should go check it out"
Even after deciding this, Zoe still hesitates for a minute before she decides to go look. Walking over to the door, she opens it slowly while peeking out cautiously. Hearing a faint rustling from the room over, she quietly walks over.
Peeking into the room, she sees that it's a dark clothing store. Some of the lights are broken and there is a faint flickering coming from one of the lights in the back. She squints slightly, seeing some movement coming from the ground in the back.
Zoe rushes over, seeing that it's Esther, trying to get out from under one of the clothing racks. Completely forgetting that they are currently in a game, she subconsciously starts helping Esther get the rack off of her, worrying that she got seriously hurt, and wondering how in the world one of these heavy racks could have fallen on her friend.
"Oh my god! Esther, what happened to you?? How did this fall on you?" She asks, while helping her up.
Esther doesn't respond, staying eerily quiet. Zoe, finally sensing that something is wrong, darts her eyes up to Esther's face. Looking into her eyes, it dawns on her that Esther's eyes are pitch black, not the light brown that they usually are.
Then it comes to her,
"ohhhh shoot, right… Esther is the hunter…:" adrenaline floods through Zoe's veins as she starts to make a move to escape, but now it's too late.
Bam!
Esther, seemingly recovered almost instantly, swings the hammer directly towards Zoe's head, knocking her out.
Zoe crumples to a heap on the ground, and Esther, completely unphased, picks her up by the feet and begins to drag her away.
Walking with an eerie calm, Esther begins to take the unconscious Zoe through various hallways, back to the abandoned bathroom with the creepy machine inside. Seemingly having known exactly where to go, she walks up to it, then Esther carefully opens the door to the glass tube of the machine, and carefully places Zoe inside. As she does so, a strange force wraps around Zoe's arms and legs, suspending her in the middle of the chamber.
Esther then closes the door and just stands there, waiting for something.
After a second or two, a system message pops up.
Ding!
Player: Zoe has been captured
Time till corruption: 10 minutes
A small tracker appears, a blinking red dot, over the top of the machine that Zoe is in.
Ren and Yin, who were on completely opposite sides of the mall, hear the ding. They read the message and look around, noticing the tracker pointing into the distance. Both come to the same conclusion; 'we need to save her'.
Yin, who was wandering through an office-like space, immediately turned around and took off in the opposite direction, toward the tracker.
Ren, who was much closer, as she had wandered back into the food court to map out the area more thoroughly. She simply walks out of the food court before picking up the pace down the hall in the direction of the tracker.
Despite being in two separate places, they both manage to make it to the room at the same time as unfortunately Ren had gotten distracted, reading an old piece of paper on the floor. They meet up next to one of the doors leading into the room.
"Perfect, I was wondering if both of us could see the tracker or if it was just me" Ren says, her voice quite low, worried that Esther may be near here.
"Nope, it seems to be a universal thing" Yin confirms, nodding her head slightly. Following Ren's lead, she lowers her voice as well. Looking around cautiously for a moment, she continues, "this game is really odd, what do you think it means by corruption?"
"I'm not sure, but it doesn't sound good, it took us a while to get here… we only have 5 minutes left." Ren murmured, in thought as to how they would save their friend. She looks around a bit, as if trying to come up with a plan.
"Seriously, this place is like a maze, the only good thing is that I didn't see Esther on the way here." Yin agrees, it did take them quite a while to get here, or at least, longer than she would have liked.
"Yeah, me neither, my best guess is that she's guarding Zoe." Ren replies, a light coming to her eyes as some of her plan comes together. Realizing that whatever being was controlling Esther would certainly set a trap around their friend.
"That's what I thought too, I've never been in this room, so I'm not sure how we can sneak around her. Do you think there are any windows that we can peek through? You know, get a better look at the surroundings before we go in?" Yin asks, trying to think of anything that could help.
"I didn't see any windows, but I think I saw a vent on the other side while I was making my way here." Ren suggests, pointing in the direction that she had just come from.
"Great, we should go check that out, but let's be super quiet, we don't want to alert Esther that we're here." Yin reasons, already heading in the direction that Ren pointed.
Ren, nodding her head slightly, catches up to Yin and quietly guides her in the direction of the vent.
Quickly and as quietly as they could Yin and Ren sneak around the other side, seeing the small, slightly rusted, busted open vent, Ren crouches down and peeks in. A gust of warm air hits her face and she recoils slightly.
After getting more used to the heat she peeks in again, next to her, she sees a glowing red machine, with what seems to be a body inside. Figuring that's where Zoe is, she turns her attention to the rest of the room, looking for Esther and anything else that could be strategically helpful.
Looking more to her left, she sees that Esther is standing there, perfectly still, facing one of the doors into the room, poised to attack the moment someone opens the door.
Glancing around a bit more, she realizes that the room appeared to be a bathroom, toilets in stalls on one side, showers on the other, and nothing to use as a weapon anywhere in the room.
Quickly ducking away, Ren sighs in annoyance
"What did you see?" Yin questions quietly and curiously. Trying to peek her head a bit in too.
"Not much, it's a bathroom basically." Ren whispers back, while leading Yin away from the open vent. "We don't have much time, and Esther seems prepared for us to go try and save Zoe."
"So what do we do? What's the plan??" Yin's voice tinged with a hint of worry.
"Well, our best choice is for one of us to be the distraction and one of us sneaks in and saves Zoe. The machine where I think she is right next to the vent, and Esther doesn't seem to have realized that there is an entrance right there." Ren explains, pointing out the key part of her plan. If they could send someone through that vent and rescue Zoe before Esther noticed, then they might have a shot at making it through this.