Crossover Escape: Gotta be more than Lucky to survive

1.26 Videos without answers

Luca raised a brow as the video started to play, it was not at all what he’d expected. It wasn’t a video of the pyramid – or rather cube. It wasn’t even inside the mountain base. Unless Luca was mistaken it was in fact  of the area directly in the middle of the main WIC compound. In which case Luca really didn’t know why Rӓv had that footage. Then it clicked, Rӓv had looked into the incident when Luca had first reached the compound.

With that sort of context Luca moved to the later part of the day and when the eclipse occurred, he waited with laser focus. Nothing, Nothing, Noth… Luca narrowed his eyes as the three scientists appeared on screen crossing the open area. Luca waited a moment longer and the screen went black. Luca slumped in his chair only to jerk forward as the image reappeared with a strange hue. Luca might have thought the effect to be a night vision enhancement except the hue was purple and not the typical green. Still Luca perked up as the sight of the three scientists. There was no sound on the video, which was a bit unfortunate, but Luca would settle for a visual. The scientists walked normally before suddenly turning to look to their left. They were a bit far from the camera to see their expressions, but the body language was enough to indicate terror.

The three turned to run and then they stumbled in place as huge creators appeared in the ground. It was the moment when the real scientist was picked up from the ground by an invisible hand and then dropped as she screamed before vanishing mid-air that had Luca wincing. Invisible source. Of course it was invisible. The other two scientists met a similar end and Luca was left without the answers he desperately wanted.

Though he was then left with a different question why if the thing was invisible had it needed to darken the area and interfere with human sight? Was it just invisible to recording or reflections but visible to the human eyes, like a mirrored effect? Luca set that thought aside for the moment and hoped it wasn’t a problem he would have to deal with. After checking three more recordings Luca realised that it appeared at the same time each day and so as long as they avoided going out during the attack cycle.

Luca moved on clicking through videos one by one until he came to a slow pan of the cube. The cube turned further, and Luca found himself looking at group of academics. Pulling his phone out Luca did a quick google on some of the academic’s names that Rӓv had mentioned pulling up a few photo’s he compared them. Yep, found the missing brains. Luca was certain that this was not going to pleasant or fun by any stretch, but he needed more information.

The video started. A group of thirty or saw approached the black cube. If Luca hadn’t spent so much time examining the damn thing, he might not have recognised the cube. The creepy veins that Luca had noticed covering the cube were completely absent. The thing just looked like black rock it was positively cute by comparison.

The party had a series of guards and the academics in the middle while the crazy relic hunter led the way. They were equipped with a lot of flashlights. Whoever held the light moved at the right edge of the group as they entered the first entrance.

The light bobbed on the wall as they walked. Then before long they came to a larger room. Luca c****d his head as they progressed without running into any traps like what Holly had mentioned. The larger room had streams of glyphs in sort of poetry format on the walls. The linguists approached and said something before the group jerked around to look back. The camera swung wildly one way and then the other. When it turned back one of the linguists was standing in place with his mouth open presumably screaming with a blood splatter on his face and the other linguist was gone.

“No guesses on where the other guy went.” Tails had moved to lean over Luca’s shoulder and winced in sympathy as one of the guards dragged the linguists back while his partner covering him had the floor open beneath him and the snap close just above his knees. The second linguist shouted something else by the movements of his mouth and then the camera swung around showed a door opening on the other side. The camera turned back just in time so see the guard who rescued the linguist execute the trapped guard.

Luca turned his head away at the cold-blooded action even if he understood it. In the next tunnel there were traps. Arrow traps, pitfalls, swinging blades, and a pour of what looked like toxic sludge. Near as Luca could tell the party lost at least five more people to the traps. The next puzzle room had another entrance going into it and required them to pass an obstacle course to exit. It wasn’t as nice a course as the one they’d practiced on. It had flying blades and what looked lasers in place for failures to complete the course. Though Luca spotted a few ways to do the course a bit outside its original path that would be safer by far. Though Luca doubted they’d manage to get the same path.

The next corridor was free of traps but there was clearly something in it as the camera kept swinging wildly about and several of the guards vanished in a shower of blood. Still the camera never managed to track the cause. The group hurried through the corridor and reached the next room which was a brief rectangle with another entrance directly opposite with a maze painted on the wall beside the door. After the group entered the door Luca realised it wasn’t a picture but a map.

By the time they cleared the maze the group was down to only ten, the relic hunter was limping and on three guards had survived. The next room was a physics puzzle then a maths puzzle which they surprisingly made it out of with only the loss of the original camera holder. The remaining linguist picked the camera up after something was said by one of the guards.

After a chemistry puzzle, a sliding puzzle with buzz blades and another linguist puzzle the five remaining people reached the main chamber and the view of the crystals. Then things went bad. When they stepped into the room the crystals lit up and the light poured down the pedestals. It reached the ground and spread out in the form of veins. When the veins reached the first guard they separated from the ground and wrapped around his ankles before rapidly winding around the rest of the body. The guy’s mouth was opened in a silent scream before he was swallowed completely then the veins collapsed back to the floor and slithered towards the next person. At which point the two remaining guards turned and grabbed the camera before running back the way they came. A white flash overtook the screen for a moment that appeared to come from behind them.

The camera shook and swayed in the guards hold occasionally catching images of the other academics attempting to follow them. The second guard used the academics as shields and fodder as the traversed back through the puzzles and corridors until the exit was in sight. At which point the camera jerked again in the guard’s hand before the exit started to get further away. At some point the second guard had also disappeared. Just as the exit light began to fade the camera was tossed through the air until it rolled out of the entrance.

Spotless black leather loafers appeared on the screen before a soft white hand reached down and picked the camera up. It panned past a well pressed suit and then the recording was shut off. Luca dropped back against the back rest of his seat and contemplated how bad life could get if he surrendered to s*****y to an underworld boss.

“Are there degrees of dead?” Luca mused aloud.

“I think we are likely to find out,” Tails muttered.

“The appeal to just assassinate the underworld is suddenly much higher.” Luca blinked and tilted his head back to find not just Rӓv who had spoken but also Holly and Ghost clustered behind him having crowded up to Tails at some point.

“I would say that after seeing that now is the time to back out but I think our other option is the equivalent of accepting life as the living dead and I’d rather not.” Luca covered his eyes as he spoke he somewhat wanted to unsee what he’d just seen but since that was not an option he needed to move on. They had a lot to figure out and not enough time to do it in a way that no one got dead in the process.

“Da, can only go forward now. I got fun stuff from hive though.” Ghost waved a hand in a balancing gesture and Luca snorted in amusement well so far as trade offs went it wasn’t bad. Particularly if the fun stuff helped them with their coming challenge.