Chapter 5
Wait, that was it? The entire round was actually just speed dating?
I was more confused than ever.
Suddenly, there was a bright flash of blue light all around us, and I felt the same strange humming feeling in my skin as before.
The humming abruptly stopped, and when I was finally able to blink away the residual flash and focus my eyes again, I noticed we were back on the transporter pad on the ship.
I stepped off the pad and moved back into the common room, and I realized the lounge area was back. All the TVs, couches, chairs, and even the air hockey table were all back in their original places.
The only difference was, the long counter with food was completely gone. Instead, there was a massive table in its place, a bit further from the wall. There were ten chairs all positioned around the table, and each spot had a large plate, silverware, and glass cup set in front of it.
And the table was absolutely laden with food.
I noticed thick, juicy steaks, warm, buttery rolls, fresh salads, steaming vegetables, different flavored jello, and there was even a whole rotisserie chicken set at the center of the table.
“Fuck yeah,” Kyle said from behind me when he noticed the food. “The feast of champions.”
Kyle shoved past me toward the table, closely followed by his two goons whose names I still didn’t know, Annabelle, and Clarisse.
The rest of us remained where we were and watched as the group loaded up plates, sat down, and began to dig in.
The food looked mouth-watering, but I wasn’t about to eat anything without first ensuring it wasn’t poisoned.
And clearly the others had similar ideas, because they waited with me.
The aliens had yet to try anything like that with us, but for all I knew, it was all part of their game and merely meant to lull us into a false sense of security.
Kyle had piled his plate with an obscene amount of food, and he mocked us for just standing there while he ate.
Clearly, he’d gotten over his earlier irritation with me, and he focused most of his energy on scarfing down his meal and bragging to the others about how easy these games are going to be.
The cocky idiot.
I ignored Kyle’s snide remarks, and I silently counted in my head. Once I’d reached seven minutes, I finally felt it was safe enough to join them. If the food was actually poisoned, it more than likely would’ve taken effect by now.
The others followed behind me as I grabbed a plate and began to load up on food as well. I grabbed a little bit of everything, even the jello, even though I wasn’t typically much of a jello guy, but this stuff looked different, almost creamy.
I took a seat as far away from Kyle and the others as I could get, and I was soon joined by my own group.
Tyler sat down on my left at the end of the table, while Sadie sat to my right. Then Claire seated herself across from me, and Parker plopped down across from Sadie.
“So, what do you think of the game so far?” Tyler asked me as he took a bite of his chicken.
I could feel the group’s eyes on me as they waited for my response.
“I think there’s got to be more to it than just what we’ve seen so far,” I replied.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Tyler agreed with a nod.
“Do you think the aliens are toying with us right now?” Sadie asked.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I don’t know what their end goal is here, but we shouldn’t let our guards down.”
“You don’t think it’s actually just a dating game?” Claire spoke up, and her question was directed at me.
“I suppose it could be,” I relented. “But the stakes have felt far too high for it just to be a simple dating game, you know?”
They all nodded.
“Hey, Davis!” Kyle’s voice drifted from across the table. “Are you guys stressing about how a couple of pussies like you are going to win a woman in the game?”
He laughed like he’d just made the most hilarious joke in the world, while his own group laughed with him. Then they went back to bragging to each other.
I ignored his interruption, but I did roll my eyes and glanced at the group of people around me, and they all looked just as unamused as I was.
If I was going to have to participate in a bunch of stupid alien games, at least I could do it surrounded by a few levelheaded people.
I turned my attention to my plate, and I cut off a bite of steak and popped it in my mouth. It was perfectly cooked, with just the right amount of pink in the middle, and the seasoning was to die for.
Which was ironic, since I supposed there was still the slight possibility it was poisoned with some form of slow-acting substance.
But I guess it was either this, or I could slowly starve to death.
Next, I tried the jello, and I was surprised to find it did have a sweet, creamy texture to it, and it was very good. I had a bite of the salad, and the lettuce mixture was fresh and crisp, as if it’d been picked that morning and washed in frozen Arctic water.
The dressing on the salad was nothing I’d ever tried before, and it was an odd mixture of tangy and sweet that seemed to work well together and tied in all the other components of the salad perfectly.
I dug in, and it wasn’t until this moment that I realized just how hungry I actually was.
What time was it anyway? The game had lasted at least an hour, so maybe it was a little past noon?
If that was the case, then why was I so hungry?
Eventually, we all finished our meals, and of course, Kyle was the last one eating. Leave it to him to make a production out of everything he did.
As soon as Kyle set his fork onto the table and leaned back in satisfaction, the robotic voice came back on.
“Congratulations, you have completed the bonus round.”
Bonus round? What the hell did that mean? And what exactly was the bonus round anyway? All we did was eat lunch.
Kyle and his goon squad all gave a little self-satisfied cheer while the rest of us glanced at each other in confusion.
It couldn’t have been that easy, could it?
“Return to your rooms for bed,” the voice continued. “You’ll receive further instructions in the morning.”
Return to our rooms? It’d barely been a few hours since we were on board the ship. I stood up and moved to the closest window to peer outside.
Holy shit.
Everything was dark, and I could see the stars high above me and the city lights down below.
It was nighttime.
But how was that possible?
Maybe what I was looking at wasn’t actually real, and it was just some sort of projection. Or maybe time moved differently while in ‘the games.’
It’d certainly seemed to be all over the place during the speed dating round, and I’d attributed it to whether or not I seemed to click with the woman I was speaking to at the time, but perhaps there was more to it than that.
“Am I actually seeing what I think I’m seeing? Is it actually dark out there?” Sadie’s voice drifted from behind me, and she, along with the others, had come to look out the window as well.
“I have no idea anymore,” I sighed and shook my head in defeat.
I’d never said so many renditions of the phrase ‘I don’t know’ in my life, but now I seemed to be saying it almost every ten minutes.
It was frustrating not being in the know.
Even though we all lingered in the common room, I noticed the robotic voice hadn’t come back on to repeat its instructions to return to our rooms. I wondered if it was just programmed to say that at the end of each day, but we were free to go to sleep when we chose.
I didn’t want to stick around and find out, though.
“We should probably get back to our rooms,” I said as I turned to the others. “Just in case.”
They all nodded their agreement, and we moved toward the hall where our bedrooms were located.
“Aw, are you pansies going to bed so soon?” Kyle called after us in a mocking tone. “You don’t want to stay up with the rest of us big boys and girls?”
God, he was annoying.
I ignored him and continued down the hall toward my bedroom, and I could hear their laughter follow after me.
We all paused outside our doors and said goodnight before we disappeared into our individual rooms.
I locked the door behind me.
At this point, it wasn’t even to keep the aliens out, who, I was sure, would easily have some hidden access point to get inside anyway.
No, I just didn’t want to deal with Kyle.
There wasn’t any visible light switch that I could see, but the room lit up as I turned around and moved toward my bed.
Interesting. Were they some sort of motion-activated lights? I hoped not, because that would get super annoying if I tossed and turned at all.
The bodysuit was still on my bed, but someone, or something, had come into my room and folded it neatly. I yanked my blue tie off and stripped my jacket and shirt off as well.
I was just about to shuck my pants off, too, when I felt something in my pocket.
That’s right, I’d completely forgotten about the strange metal piece I’d grabbed from the tip jar.
I pulled it out of my pocket and sat on my bed to study it.
It was surprisingly heavy for its small size, and it appeared to be made of some sort of shiny, black metal I’d never seen before. It was short, thick, and slightly U-shaped, with multiple little divots and protrusions.
As if it was supposed to connect to something.
It was honestly, probably, just a random piece of junk, and yet I couldn’t get the fact that I’d found it in the tip jar out of my head.
It had been nestled under wads of cash and among various coins. Its placement felt very deliberate. Like it had been purposely hidden there.
Now, whether I was actually supposed to have found it or not… that I wasn’t sure.
But I didn’t seem to have a use for it now, so it was pointless to carry it around with me and risk losing it or even being caught with it.
I stood up and glanced around my room for a decent hiding place.
Clearly, something frequented my room to lay out clothes and straighten things up, so I needed to be smart about it, but there weren’t very many options.