(Preshow) Preshow Facility

[Corporal Light]

Teleporter ---> Hallway

His vision returned with the flash of red light in his eyes. His head was swimming, the air sucked out of his lungs along with what felt like the majority of most of his lunch and his internal organs. The urge to vomit was overwhelming, and he would have done so right then and there if he wasn’t more focused on the throbbing inside his head. He leaned forward, groaning in pain. He didn’t remember the Coruscant portal being THAT turbulent and diarrhea inducing. Hell, he remembered it being almost like swerving around in space with a thruster: floaty, free, and not so out of control that you just end up spinning all over the place until you grow so dizzy you want to die.

Eventually, he recovered enough to consider walking as a viable option. He looked around his new area only to find that he was just in a simple hallway. There were several junctions that obviously lead to several locations, but other than that, it was the simplest, probably the blandest hallway he had ever walked through, and he had been on the Ishimura. A dull, stone grey coloring of the walls with few decoration aside from the yellow carpet on the floor, it was like walking through an abandoned castle that had been left to rot decades ago and everyone who had once been in it had taken away everything that could have made it glamorous or interesting.

He quickly deduced that it was most likely the time limit. Roger Arthington HAD told him that he was lucky to even be able to sign-up just due to how soon the event was going to take place. The Syntech people were probably cleaning house already, considering they had more or less gotten everyone who was going to register registered.

That’s why he felt kinda bad having to walk over their nice yellow carpet while covered in blood. As he moved on it, he left a long, long trail of bloody droplets and footprints as the blood covering his RIG practically melted all over it. He hoped that whoever was cleaning the place up got paid very well, because he suspected they were going to be working overtime with the amount of blood stains he was leaving everywhere.

That was when it occurred to him. The place was a pre-show facility, so therefore it would have accommodations for its contestants. That most likely meant that there were showers of some kind that could remove the blood all over his armor. At the very least, doing that would prevent him from tracking footprints everywhere, if not stop accidentally scaring people by looking like a fucking boogeyman.

He chose a random corridor to face and followed it. Hopefully, he’d run into someone whom knew the layout of the place better than him.

Hallway → Library.

Well that failed in the most spectacular fashion possible.

He had run into a few syntech employees who were chatting right outside of the library and facing directly away from him. He probably should have realized that walking up behind one of them and asking them for directions while being quiet or otherwise revealing his presence was not the smartest thing to do. All of them more or less collectively shat their pants and excused themselves from the area upon noticing the state of his RIG.

Clarke sighed. This is not going to be an easy thing to accomplish, is it?

He turned towards the entrance to the library, peeking his head inside just enough to avoid anyone detecting him outright. Shelves of books of various genres lined the walls. There was a distinct “book” smell in the air, one of ink and dust. Holographic computers stood on tables directly in the middle of the room, with a sign reading “Dataverse Devices” hanging up above them. Candles and lanterns strewn around the corners and ceiling provided adequate, cozy light to the room to provide an atmosphere perfect for reading. A few people were already inside, most whispering each other to preserve the quiet or picking out a book to read. One, in particular, looked like someone straight out of a medieval, high fantasy setting with his leather armor, unkempt, long blond hair, and sword carefully tucked within his holster.

He must be one of the contestants, Isaac thought.

It was his only chance, really. The medieval man was probably the only person who wouldn’t go running in the other direction upon seeing a blood-covered space engineer come romping towards him.

He slid into the library, his words evading him for the moment as he walked toward the man. Once he was close enough, he spoke to him.

“Excuse me,” he said, trying to stay quiet. This WAS a library, after all. “You know where I can find a place to clean my armor? It’s covered in blood and I don’t want to leave stains everywhere I go.”