Chapter Text
Leaving the Hollow is disorienting.
'Winning' the Hollow doesn't sound right- they haven't really won anything, as far as they can tell. Answers, maybe, but if so not enough of them.
Adam's sure of a few things when they wake up: that something has spooked Kai. That the other team sure seemed to know it was a game all along. That it's still instinctive to draw closer to Kai and Mira as soon as they're standing.
That he still doesn't remember very much at all.
They don't question it when Weirdie (they really need to learn his name, now) waves them off the stage and down a back corridor, taking the trophy from Kai with a grin. The three of them crowd each other in the hallway, treading on each other's toes, silently desperate not to be separated- and Adam knows that's kind of weird, that they probably aren't (weren't) really this codependent outside of the Hollow.
Weirdie stops and beckons them ahead at the flashing EXIT sign, and it's the rush to get through it together that dooms them.
They enter as a group in a stumbling run. Seconds later, the door slams shut with an ominous mechanical noise, cutting them of from Weirdie, and it's- it's not an exit.
It's an apartment, and the absolute strangeness, the disconnect from expecting to be on their real way out, freezes them all for precious seconds.
The door makes several more ominous noises before Kai manages to turn back to try and open it.
“Locked,” he pants, confirming what they already know.
“Weirdie!” Adam shouts, shouldering hard into the door, forgetting that he's no longer their strongman. “You have to let us out! Tell us what's going on!”
There's no answer.
“Weirdie!” Mira shouts as well. No answer. They still don't even know the man's name.
Or, well, Adam doesn't. It's possible the others have more memories than he does. That's an uncomfortable thought.
“Guys?” Kai's gone the other way, further into the apartment, although he doesn't leave their sight. “Um. I think- I think this is supposed to be our- home.”
At the uncertainty in his voice Adam and Mira abandon the door (still no answer) and go to join him.
It's just an apartment. It's nothing special. Just a one bedroom apartment; the room they're in contains a galley kitchen, a table and three chairs, and a couch. There's... nothing.
Well, not nothing. Nothing that triggers any memories. The refrigerator and pantry are fully stocked. There's two bunkbeds in the bedroom, and a closet full of outfits identical to what they're wearing, and a bathroom with towels and toothbrushes he doesn't remember but that look like what they might each choose. Probably. There's dye that matches Mira's hair.
There are no windows anywhere, and no other doors. There has to be a ventilation system (he hopes) but they find no sign of it.
“Well,” Adam says, surveying the place. “This is worrying.”
“That,” Kai says, backing out of the bedroom to flop onto the couch, “Is an understatement.” He tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling as Mira joins him and Adam begins to pace.
There's... not really anywhere to pace to. The room is not that large.
“I still don't remember anything,” Kai says to the ceiling. “I mean, I remember starting the game and the rules and stuff now, but nothing before that.”
Adam's back at the main door. He's distantly surprised that there even is a handle on this side. He tries it again, just in case, but still nothing. He kicks it, which also does nothing, but he'd thought it would make him feel better. Since he still expects to be stronger than he is, it doesn't. “I don't, either.”
Mira blows her bangs out of her face when they both look at her and slumps further into Kai's side. “Nope. Nothing. I'm not even sure these are our real names.”
“I don't think they are,” Adam says slowly, pacing back towards the bedroom door. He stops at the threshold and goes back the other way again.
He still doesn't want the other two out of his sight. He can't- he can't seem to shake these protective instincts. He doesn't have anything else.
Kai's eyes are closed. Where Adam is all restless energy, Kai just seems exhausted. He slowly pulls the slip with his name on it out of his pocket and hands it to Mira to examine.
It takes everyone a second.
“Wait,” Adam and Mira say at the same time, then look at each other. Adam goes first. “M-maybe that's the only way it could get them into the game? We're wearing the same clothes...”
“Or they're just not our names,” Kai slurs at the ceiling.
Worried for him now, Adam abandons his pacing to join his friends on the couch. He sits down on Kai's other side and Kai immediately relaxes into him.
“Hey, are you okay?” Adam asks, shaking him a little.
Kai opens his eyes. They're not focused. “Mm. Tired.”
Adam hesitates. He wants to tell Kai to stay awake, but. They're out of the Hollow. There's no reason for that anymore. That he knows of.
...That he knows of.
He meets Mira's eyes.
“Get some sleep, Kai,” she says softly. “We'll keep watch. We need you.”
Kai's eyes slit open further. “You what.”
“We need you to look at the door when you're rested,” Adam says, and then recoils at the glare Mira shoots him. “A-and we need you, as well. Just, like, generally.” After Vanessa and her team, it seems important that they tell Kai that.
Even if it's weird, not knowing if it was true before today. Adam wants to think it was, but after everything that happened in the game it probably doesn't matter now anyway.
Kai mumbles something self-deprecating in response but he's out in moments.
“So,” Mira says, once Kai's breathing is deep and even. She slings one arm along the back of the couch, stretching behind Kai's head to rest a hand on Adam's shoulder. “What do we know?”
“Each other?” Adam offers weakly, and they both laugh quietly.
“They said we were Champions,” Mira says when they've both been quiet again for a little bit. “That implies we've played before.”
“Together, do you think?” Adam asks, but he doesn't really need an answer to that. He leans into her hand and, consequently, into Kai. “How long do you think we've known each other?”
“I don't-” Mira sighs. It's a few minutes before she answers. “Anywhere between a day and a lifetime, Adam. I don't. I don't really know.”
They both fall silent after that. Adam isn't sure what Mira's thinking, but he knows that for him, every minute that passes cements that this is real. They're out of the Hollow, but they're trapped, and while that was technically true already they didn't know it.
“Do you think we're still in the game?” Mira asks abruptly.
Adam's breath catches. “I don't know. I hadn't even thought of that.” It's possible. It's likely, even. He has no idea how they would check.
Suddenly Adam can't be sitting anymore. He shifts Kai carefully into Mira before going back to the door, fruitlessly trying the handle again and then returning to kicking it in frustration.
After the third kick the apartment lights begin to dim and they both freeze.
There weren't any light switches- he doesn't know who's in charge of their lights, but it isn't them. They both wait, tense, for some time after the lights go out completely, but nothing else happens.
The room is pitch black. Adam shakes his head, willing his eyes to adjust, but there's no ambient light anywhere. Like they weren't unsettled enough.
He picks his way carefully back to the couch and nearly sits on Kai. “Okay, now they're just messing with us.”
“I literally can't remember a time when they weren't messing with us,” Mira points out dryly, which isn't really funny, but it makes him laugh anyway.
They take turns sleeping on the couch that night. Well, Adam and Mira do, anyway. Kai seemed so much worse off than them that they let him sleep straight through.
“Do you think it's just harder on some people to play?” Adam asks once when they're switching off.
Mira hesitates. “Maybe? He couldv'e just been up all night before, or something.”
Adam hopes that's all it is. There's nothing he can do about it now so he keeps trying the door whenever he's on watch, but it never moves.
Kai wakes up when the lights fade back on and immediately starts investigating both the door and the surrounding wall.
“Huh,” Mira says from the kitchen- she ate hours ago, so that they could be sure she hadn't had any adverse reactions to the food by the time Kai was hungry. She'd showered, too, once they realised they could. “Hey, Kai, you realise you're the only one of us whose powers weren't from the game?”
“What are you talking about,” Kai says, distracted, “if I still had firepower I'd be trying to weld this open.”
“You... don't weld things open...” Adam starts, then sighs and goes back to checking the walls for weak spots. Tapping on and hitting them isn't producing any variance in noises but it is definitely irritating him. “She meant that you can fix stuff, Kai. Like with the jet.”
“And the spiders,” Mira called, before frowning down at the food she's grabbed out of the fridge. “Hey, you don't think any of us have food allergies, do you?”
"I hope not- what do you mean, with the spiders?" Adam asks, thoroughly distracted.
"Kai fixed the spider," Mira says calmly, picking up the bowl of fruit and climbing over the couch to sit down instead of walking around it like a normal person. Or, well, what Adam assumes is normal from his sample size of... them.
"Yeah I did," Kai says, paying no attention to what he's agreeing with and accepting the apple Adam hands him without looking.
"Seriously, we'd remember any serious allergies, right?" Mira asks. "We remember basic stuff, mostly. Like how to prepare food, and survival stuff, and... I don't know, how to read and write?"
There's a bewildered silence.
Then all three of them scatter to hunt for any books or paper.
"There's nothing here," Mira says, distressed, when they meet back at the couch several minutes later. "How do we even-"
"Our names," Adam says suddenly. "We didn't have any trouble reading our names. And Mira, didn't you find something you could read back in the lab?"
She shakes her head. "I mean, the map, but the map didn't have words. There were research papers and stuff, but it was all handwritten, nothing was legible... I don't think there was really anything in the way of legible writing in the game besides our names." She hesitates. "Or... maybe that stuff in the lab was supposed to be legible."
Adam winced. He'd thought of that too, but he hoped they were wrong.
"Okay." Kai's hands are gripping his hair. "Okay, okay. I mean, I can still fix stuff, right? So it's not like we forgot everything we knew." He glances between them. "Right?"
Kai hasn't fixed anything since they got back, but that probably has more to do with opportunity than with Kai, so Adam says, "Right," and sits down. At the table, this time, so that he can see the others. "Yeah, you're right, Kai. We can't freak out about this, we need to keep trying to find a way out."
Kai's face falls as he exhales. "I don't think there is a way out."
Mira blinks at him and says, "There has to be."
"We got in," Adam says firmly. "That means we can get out."
Kai shakes his head. "Yeah, but, I mean, probably not without help. This door is... really complex. It's more than one door, it's part of the wall, and it's really heavy and really, really locked. I don't think we're going to be able to open it."
Groaning, Adam lets his head fall onto the table. "Great. So. We're trapped and hopeless."
"Yeah," Kai admits, joining him at the table. "Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't know what else to try."
"Not your fault," Adam mutters.
Mira doesn't join them at the table, but she does twist to rest her arms on the back of the couch so she can join their conversation. "I actually wish someone had, I dunno, taunted us or something just so we had some information."
"Do you think the game actually glitched?" Kai asks. "Or was that just to get us to hurry?"
"We were already hurrying, though," Mira reminds him. "We thought Adam was dying."
"You what?" Adam says, startled. He knew they'd made Vanessa's team think that, but he hadn't realised that they'd thought it. Although with the number of scares they'd had he shouldn't be surprised.
"Oh hey, there's something we can do," Kai says. "We could bond without thinking anyone's dead." He pauses. "Unless you guys think we're dead."
"We're not dead," Adam and Mira chorus tiredly.
"We could be dead," Kai argues. "Most of our memories are from inside a game. Anything's possible."
"We're not dead," Adam repeats firmly.
Kai picks up a banana and levels it at him. "You have no way to prove that."
"I never had a way to prove that! And you never had a way to prove we were!" Adam groans. "Whatever. No one's dead. What did you actually want to talk about?"
"I dunno, I guess just general getting to know you stuff?" Kai shrugs. "We all know each other but we don't really know each other, you feel me?"
"That's because-" Mira starts, but Adam waves her off.
"Let him try," he says wearily.
"Awesome!" Kai says. "So. What's your favorite color?"
Adam picks his head up to glare at him. "I have no idea."
"Oh. Right." Kai looks dejected. "We don't even know how to know what we don't know."
"I know that sentence should be taken outside and shot," Mira offers flatly, before perking up. "Hey, I know something we know! We know we had a chance to choose powers, right? And there were all kinds of cool powers." She pauses dramatically. "And Adam chose to punch people."
"Hey," Adam says. "I think I ended up being pretty damn useful."
"You totally did," Mira agrees. "You still chose punching people for a power."
Kai snickers. "You totally did, man."
"At least we knew what I could do right away." Adam scowls and picks at the hem of his shirt. "I thought you guys were dead when you were figuring out your powers."
The silence creeps back in. Adam tugs at his shirt more. He kind of hates it now- he knows it's the game logo, even if he doesn't know how or why he's wearing it- but all he has to change into is identical shirts. Too bad neither of his friend's clothes will fit him, or he'd wear one of theirs.
He gets up to pace again.
That's how time passes, ultimately. At some point Kai and Mira relocate to the bedroom and he follows them, reluctantly, and paces in there instead. Mira enlists him briefly to push the bunkbeds together in the corner (they don't let Kai help, when he offers, and he's confused but listens to them) and then she and Kai start stripping the bedding from the top bunks to build a fort out of the bottom bunks.
When the lights start to dim again Adam joins them in their blanket fortress. It's more of a relief than he'd expected.
"I'll take first watch," he tells Kai, who's huddled into the corner with all of their pillows and one of the blankets. "Wake you for second?"
"Yeah," Kai says, and Adam catches his eyes darting back and forth before the room goes entirely dark. "Did this happen last night too?"
"Yeah," Mira says from the foot of the bed. Adam hears her scooting closer to them. "And your eyes never adjust, 'cause there's no light source. It's really annoying."
Kai makes a small noise that he can't readily identify, then, "If we can't see anything, how are we even keeping watch?"
Adam shrugs and the bed moves with him. "We've got ears." He picks at his shirt again.
He feels Mira moving up behind him before she rests a hand on his shoulder. "Adam, if it bothers you that much, just take off the shirt. You already know we don't care."
"I'd rather not," Adam says shortly, and feels hesitation in Mira's frame behind him.
"A-adam?" Kai says, very quietly.
Adam inhales, holds it, and exhales again slowly. "It's... nothing."
"It's not nothing," Mira says. "It wouldn't be upsetting you if it was nothing."
He has to take several deep breaths this time. "We were being watched. All that time." His hands twist further into his shirt and his breath comes faster. "Every mistake we made, every time we thought one of us was dead, people were watching that. Everything we've done has had an audience that we didn't even know about. I can't-" He can't calm down, for one thing. "I can't get past that."
"Weirdie made it sound like we agreed to it," Kai says hesitantly.
"Yeah." Adam's hands move from his shirt to his hair. "Yeah, he did make it sound like that. But did we? Do you remember agreeing to it? Because I don't, and okay, maybe... maybe we were different before, we don't know. But I know that I, right now, the person I am now, would not make that agreement. Would you?"
Silence.
"I would," Kai says at last, voice cutting sharply through the dark. "It would depend on what I was offered, but yeah, for some reasons? I think I would. Mira?"
"There are things I'd make that deal for, yes." She presses harder on Adam's shoulder. "But we're different from each other. We aren't thrilled either, but it clearly upsets you more than us."
No kidding. Mira's actually taken a shower since they've been here. Adam can't even take off a shirt he hates more with every passing hour. He has no idea where Kai falls on that scale, but Kai...
Adam doesn't like that his mistakes and insecurities were on display to who knew how many people. Kai had been tricked into trusting someone and then betrayed, and now he knew it had been broadcast. Yeah, Kai had long since said he'd made mistakes, but he'd admitted it to them, not to some mysterious studio audience. Adam hates this, but Kai has arguably had the worst time of it. And Kai just said he'd agree to it in certain circumstances.
He can't justify asking Kai what those circumstances would be, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to.
"Let's just get some sleep," Adam says at last, defeated. "I'll... figure something out later."
The lights come back on before they make it to third watch this time. That doesn't necessarily tell them much, since no one has any kind of timepiece, but Adam and Mira agree they're pretty sure the lights didn't stay off as long as they had before.
"Great," Kai mutters, flopping onto his back on the bed. "Now they're trying to disorient us even more. What do you even want?" he asks the ceiling.
"And why?" Adam says, getting up and kicking the bunk beds in frustration. It doesn't help but it makes him feel a bit better. Well. For a second, it does anyway.
That's how the next few- days? Probably, but who knows- pass. They keep watch and sleep when the lights are out, they eat and talk and pace when they're on. Adam checks the door so many more times it's essentially a nervous tic at this point. He can't help it. Kai starts doing it, too, and Mira takes over checking the walls.
The bathroom door doesn't have a lock, which doesn't help Adam's growing paranoia.
Eventually he gives in and changes into one of Mira's shirts in the dubious safety of the blanket fort. It doesn't fit, at all, but he tried one of Kai's first and that had been even worse, so. He'd live with the uncomfortable fit.
The only silverware they have is plastic sporks, so. That's fun. All the dishes are lightweight wood that doesn't break even when they take turns throwing plates and bowls into a wall. (Okay, that might also just be for something to do. And for dealing with some pent up emotions. Look, they can have more than one reason to throw dishes, all right). Adam tries to break a chair leg off to use as a weapon the second day and, to his disappointment, can't manage it. They could always throw the whole chair at someone, he supposes.
The Ishibo might have ultimately just been a pretty cool stick, but it was a stick that had really packed a wallop, and Adam definitely misses having it on hand. Between that and the loss of his super strength, he feels disarmed and off balance nearly all the time. It's not so bad for Mira- her powers wouldn't help them here anyway- but he catches Kai trying to start fires more than once.
Kai's still tired much more often than they are, but he doesn't seem to have noticed the discrepancy and they're careful not to point it out to him. He eats less, too. That might be a good thing right now- they don't seem to have made a dent in their food supply, but it can't be infinite- but it's what it could signify overall that's worrying.
(Because obviously, they don't have anything like prize money now, but- why might they have signed up for a tournament in the first place?)
They can't tell for sure, but they think the dark-and-light periods vary every time. After realising what had felt like days in the Hollow actually translated to about five hours they already didn't trust their sense of time passing and now it gets worse by the day. That has to be intentional.
Conversations are... weird. They just don't have much to talk about. Nearly everything they remember is out of their shared experiences, and discussing their preferences is usually quickly strained and depressing. A few times Kai thinks he's remembered something, like that his favorite color is blue, only for the resulting conversation to reveal it's something they learned in the Hollow.
Also, Kai's favorite color changes every other time they ask him, which is amusing if it's just a Kai trait but worrying if it's a result of memory loss. Neither Mira nor Adam can settle on a favorite anything so they can't really tell.
"The manual in the ship," Mira says suddenly in the dark one... night, he supposes. "Kai read the manual in the ship!"
"Well, that's one out of three," Adam mutters. He's still sitting on the edge of the bed. It's Mira's watch by now, but Adam hasn't been able to sleep. "I left then, remember? He's the only one of us who even tried to read it."
"But he did read it," Mira insists. "And like you said, we didn't try. Maybe we could have."
Adam sighs and tilts backwards onto the bed, looking up at Kai (who is still dead to the world) and Mira when he comes to rest on his back. "We'll find a way to check. You know, eventually."
Mira doesn't grace him with a reply, moving to take his place on watch instead.