Quarantine Quest

>>1605232
bump
>great description of cold btw, I'm from a cold place and that's what it's like

>>1605232
This makes me FEEL cold. Keep it up OP.

>>1607736
>>1607823

A bit of a relief to get a response, thanks for taking interest.

_______

Silently bemoaning your decision to go out and take proactive steps towards getting some exercise for once, you feel an odd prickly tingling sensation pass over you in a wave. It's a bit like the feeling you get upon stepping into a bath that's just a little too hot, that moment your nerves take to decide if you're being scalded or not.

It washes over you from head to toe, like you've just been encased in an invisible, immaterial downward descending column of *something*.

You stop dead in your tracks, icy trickles of half melted snow sliding over the tops of your boots, breath puffing out ahead of you in a big, surprised gust.

What the hell was that?

You look up. There are clouds, entire nebulae of slowly descending snowflakes...nothing seems especially out of the ordinary...

Except...

Except you no longer notice the icy cat's paw touch of snowflakes landing on the back of your neck, nor the cold brush of the wind. Everything's gone very still. The snow is still falling, that much is certain, but now the flakes are descending all around you rather than on top of your head and neck and shoulders.

You seem to be stuck in a column of odd tingly air where no drifting white flake dares to enter. They still fall in erratic patterns to your sides, spiraling around you like iron filings avoiding the negative pole of a magnet.

You take a breath. Lick your lips. You feel a crackle of static sting your tongue. The weird tingly sensation is growing stronger still, intensifying with every moment. The hairs on the back of your neck are standing up straight and beneath your woolen hat you can feel a similar electrical zing tensing the hair on your head and tightening your scalp over your skull.

What is...?

You look down at your bare hands. You forgot to bring gloves like a fucking idiot. A pale arc of static, almost invisible against the snow, runs between your thumb and pointer finger, breaking off with a little *snap* that you more feel than hear.

That visual slams it home for you.

You're about to be struck by lightning.

A brief moment of disbelief passes with glacial speed. You stare dumbly down at your tingling hands, at the hairs on your arm standing straight up and bristling with staticky sparks. You probably look a bit like a deer staring dumbly at the headlights of an oncoming eighteen wheeler.

Then panic. Sharp and painful and scary like the stab of a knife in a dark alleyway. Like being hit from behind. Like something tugging on your foot while you're swimming in murky water.

You're about to be struck by lightning. Fuck, shit oh Christ what do you even do there was stuff in school about this but that was years ago oh fuck this might kill you fuck fuck was there a special position you had to take???

What the fuck do you do now?!

>>1607933
try to relax, maybe if you're calm you won't go into cardiac arrest? I don't know how it works.

>>1607943

You stand uncertainly in the snow, thoughts racing in a thousand different directions, each one more erratic than the last. Run, dive for cover, put your hands over your head to protect it(?) and so forth. On they go, panicked suggestions without number.

You take a deep breath, the freezing air stinging your lungs, heart thrumming in your chest like an overworked engine, one slipped piston away from exploding entirely.

It suddenly occurs to you that lightning really shouldn't be acting this way. Lightning strikes the highest thing around, right? Well...you're in the bottom of a valley, with hills and ridges on either side. Shouldn't the lightning be hitting the trees up atop those high places instead of maliciously zeroing in on you?

You force another calm breath. Relax. Maybe if you're calm then it wont hurt you so bad. You remember reading somewhere that lightning only kills about half the people it strikes. That's not the worst lethality rate you've heard of...better than Ebola at-

Something bright and infinitely powerful consumes the world around you before you can think any further.

And suddenly, before you can even comprehend there being a difference, you're somewhere else entirely.

>>1607967
look around cautiously, look for a vantage point, look for people, is it warm here?

>>1607969

You are somewhere else.

A room.

A white room.

You're sitting on what look to be ceramic tiles, cool to the touch and utterly smooth. Like the bottom of a bathtub.

It's warmer in here, almost hot. Your coat and heavy pants and boots, all damp from the snow, feel almost stifling in this new...place.

You look up, from the tile floor. It takes some effort. The tiles look very odd. They're joined together almost perfectly, the seams virtually invisible, something about their quality telling you that it would be almost impossible to break them.

As you tear your gaze away, you suddenly recall an old movie about the space shuttle you saw when you were young. These tiles remind you an awful lot of the hardened ceramic tiling on the outside of the shuttle.

There's just enough time for thoughts to form in your mind about just *why* tiles like these might be in a room like this, then they're knocked aside by...

The room has a glass front. Thick glass. Like the bulletproof glass the Pope has on his personal car. Like the sort of stuff prisoners look through when they get visitors.

And on the other side of the glass there's a control room. Tiered rows of computers and linked desks, with an aisle in the center that leads to a closed steel door.

A control room, kinda like the ones NASA directed the Apollo missions from. A control room manned by...

Your brain seizes. Thoughts freeze. You're acutely aware of your mouth dropping open as something large and uncomfortable within your mind takes a large step out of synch.

What...

What the fuck are THOSE???

>>1607999
Well, what the fuck are THEY? Can we get a description up in here?

>>1607999
not much interaction but I'm not complaining, I like it so far
>>1608009
glad you're still here too

>>1608010
I happen to really enjoy hiking in weather colder than a witches' tit.

>>1608012
I enjoy it sometimes, but more often than not I am forced to walk to places in below freezing temperatures in snow and ice at least a foot and a half deep.

>>1608022
Oh come on, that sort of tramping is bracing, it builds character!

But yeah, you may want to consider shelling out for some snow shoes if you're making a habit out of it.

>>1608009
>>1608010
I'll try to include more interactivity from now on, since we've reached the part of the story where the player gets to make choices that actually matter.

_______

There are monsters on the other side of the glass, both familiar and utterly alien at the same time, a confusing mash of incongruity assaulting your mind.

You don't know exactly how to describe them but for the painfully obvious. They look like animals playing dress-up, like Beatrix Potter's creations entered the space age, like...like...

You shrink back against the farthest wall, into the furthest corner, a sense of desperate terror sinking into the very deepest parts of your soul as you realize, completely and utterly, that this is all real.

The things...animals...monsters...on the other side of the glass seem just as stunned as you are, all frozen in a collective state of shock.

They're all dressed differently, you realize faintly. One in a lab-coat, more in utilitarian gray overalls, like fascistic janitors, another in what looks suspiciously like a military uniform.

Whiskers tremble, mouths full of sharp sharp teeth drop open. The air is filled with a staticky, ugly sense on all sides that something has just gone dreadfully, permanently wrong.

Finally, towards the front of the room, one of the creatures stirs. It's dressed in a lab coat and bears an unmistakable resemblance to a deer. It's even got the big spade shaped ears, perked in alarm, round brown eyes held wide open in unhidden terror.

"...Major Bao?" The monster asks in a voice that's clearly female, croaky with shock, barely above a whisper.

Oh God. They talk.

A numbness settles over you, a sort of mental anesthesia that robs the world around you of its edge. Like some deeply buried part of your brain has come to the realization, before the rest of you, that if you decided to think too hard about this, you'd go completely insane.

"That can't be him." A monster next to the deer(?) says. This one looks like a sheep. A...fuck...it's even got the weird slitted eyes. Fuck.

Behind them, towards the back of the room, over by the closed steel door, one of the monsters begins to move. It's the one in the military uniform(?). It has the silvery gray fur of a snow leopard...the long swishy tail too.

It wears an ugly expression of shock fading directly into something more disturbingly primal. A grimace lifts one corner of the monster's mouth, revealing sharp white teeth.

You try to squirm further away but fail. You're already in the corner, backed up as far as you can go. Fuck.

Fuck.

What now? What do you do?

What *can* you do?

>>1608195
Try to talk to them and figure out what's going on.

>>1608706

You force your mind to clear, your throat and tongue to unlock. In the control room the monsters are beginning to unfreeze. Some simply stare in mingled horror and fascination, another rushes to the back of the room where you can see a red telephone sitting on the wall. It looks serious, like the sort of thing the President might talk to other countries on when he's trying to avert nuclear war.

"What did you do with Major Bao?" The monster in the uniform demands, voice flat and utterly, utterly hateful. Her amber eyes have narrowed to slits, her lips are fully pulled back now. You can see her teeth. She has fangs like ivory needles, her tail lashes behind her.

"I don't know what you're talking about! I'm not supposed to be here!" You cry, forcing the words from your mouth with a herculean effort.

The leopard(?) monster lets out a throaty snarl in reaction to your words and throws herself against the glass. It bows alarmingly inward with a hollow boom that scares a yelp from you.

"Colonel!" One of the other monsters protests from behind the angry snow leopard, "you'll breach containment!" It's the deer, standing up over her desk, shivering from head to toe, eyes wide and shimmering. She looks like she's about to cry.

"Open the glass." The leopard snarls in response. She seems set on her current vengeful path.

"Listen to me," you plead, not daring to unglue yourself from your spot in the far corner of the white tiled room, "I don't know anything about Colonel Bao or...or any of this. Please. Please." You fall silent, hyperventilating, terror locking your vocal cords once more.

"Fucking murderer," the leopard (*Colonel* leopard, some small corner of your mind that's already gone completely insane reminds you) growls, fixing you with a glare that chills the blood in your veins, then turns her attention to the deer. "Open this glass, Doctor."

No response from the deer but silent trembling refusal.

"Open the glass," the leopard repeats, "or else I'll open it for you."

You watch this with silent horror. You think you might be able to distract the leopard and get her attention back on you...maybe. Either that or you'll just piss her off.

One thing's for certain. If that glass opens then you're a dead man.