Laboratory

All was frozen and we were both was still. A voice shouted;

"That's enough!"

We both fell on the ground. I landed on my knees and my enemy fell on his back along with my sword in his mouth. Sooner or later we both were healed because we both didn't feel any pain, I vigorously twisted my arm a full circle and it was fully intact. My opponent took my sword simply spat the sword like a dog, rose up, dusted his knees and he walked next to the other person who appeared beside us. He snapped his fingers and the entire desert vanished, it replaced itself with a lab. The room was massive and smelled of gardenia. There were all sorts of things everywhere; there were test tubes, beakers, pipettes, a computer, a tiny bed, tons of cans of soda, broken glass and many more. It was a real mess but it smelled fairly nice. I rose up and walked up to the counter with the computer on it, my opponent and the mysterious person walked towards me.

"Wonderful! Results were splendid; honestly I was expecting you to fail this test miserably. Tsk! Get away from me."

He kicked away my opponent. He fell to the floor with a saddened face; I couldn't see his face properly so I glimpsed at him. He had red crosses in his eyes, his arms had unusual cuts and he saw me staring at him so he quickly pulled his sleeves down.

"Allow me to introduce myself, I am Keeper, I am a collector of some sorts," he said.

I replied with, "I do not care who you are, all I want is answers. Where am I? How did this place change? Why did your crazy friend not help me? Why was I in that moment every single time repeating it over and over again?"

He smiled and gestured with his right arm for me to take deep breaths. I calmed down and took breaths, it was indeed a little hard to breath and Keeper walked over to his fridge, opened the door, reached for two colas and tossed one at me whilst he kept the other one to himself. My opponent on the floor reached his hand for the cola in Keeper's hands. Keeper tightened his fist knocked him to the ground once more.

"Hey! What the hell?"

I ran to him and fell on my knees, I gave him my cola and he pushed it away and shook his head in fear. I told him it's alright and to drink it. He smiled at me and drank the entire bottle, I asked him his name.

"Its name is Cham, he is my puppet. He is a very viable puppet though, he can murder anything and anyone with the right amount of motivation or otherwise he is weak and useless. He has been a sitting duck ever since I made him. He is also a mute, he hasn't spoken a word," said Keeper.

"What do you mean? He said 'impressive' when I walked to him on my first encounter with him."

Keeper raised his eyebrows in disbelief and then smiled. He grabbed his cola, drank a bit and tossed it into the garbage.

"That's very interesting; my speculation is that he has grown fond of you. That's why I never saw a killing intent in him, then again with the previous subjects I didn't see anything either," Keeper said.

"Previous subjects?"

"So let me explain from the beginning, you are not the only person we had here. We had multiple subjects here. Surprisingly you were the first to actually pass through the trails with ease, we would make the subjects spawn in this simulation of a desert and then have them figure out on how to escape this place, but surprisingly you were the first subject to sane enough to go on head to head with my puppet. Normally, the exit was to grab the scorpion and rip it apart bear hand and take its key, it was a very bizarre and yet strange approach, maybe I should've changed the exits but there is not-"

"Wait! You mean the scorpion with a crescent on its body? It gave me a broken blade," I interrupted him in between.

"That is rather peculiar...Any who, your next destination is Fluorescent City. You will find most of your answers there of how u got here, who you are, etc. You can take him with you, he will protect you."

I didn't want Cham to go anywhere near Keeper, so I asked him where his room was so I could grab his stuff. I felt guilty after almost breaking him so I went to his room, surprisingly there was only a closet. Not a single bed, piece of décor or even some garbage. I opened his closet, to my surprise once again there was only five couples of the same shirt and trousers that he was wearing now. But among all these things there was a box with a crescent on top of it. I reached to grab it, Cham swooped in out of nowhere and grabbed it. I was a little shook but I didn't want to ask him anything. I realized I might have to figure this out all by myself.

We both came back to the room where Keeper was, but he was long gone. I didn't know where he disappeared off to. Cham grabbed my hand and pointed at a mirror, the mirror had ripples every time I touched it. I was utterly confused with what I was supposed to do; Cham grabbed my hand and ran into the mirror. We phased through it and my head started to hurt as we were phasing through it. I saw a lot of images in my mind. After a couple of seconds we fell on the floor. My head hurts from going through that and I looked behind me, the mirror in the air vigorously shook and shattered. Cham soon pulled me back; he tapped my head and gestured to me saying 'No.' I do not know what he meant by that, but we both dusted ourselves off and we rose and found ourselves outside a bar. I was very confused to how we got here, and what that mirror was. So Cham gestured that we go inside the bar, we both walked together and reached the door handle and we were instantly shot in the air send us back. I landed a tough blow, my ears were ringing so I rose and looked beside me and Cham's eyes were flickering and struggling to get up. My vision was hazy, but I saw a smiley face in front of me.