Muzak was playing.
Terrible, terrible muzak. Elevator music muzak. And all the while the row of supposedly dead contestants bobbed up and down in their shiny blue tubes, completely unaware of their surroundings.
Well, at least it was better than "Friday."
DING!
In perfect synchronization, the tubes opened, spilling out seven thought-dead contestants, sending them coughing and sputtering, some still under the effect of anesthetics. Da Zeke was the first to rise to his feet, dark circles under his eyes and his skin even paler than normal. Meanwhile, Leslie was coughing and sputtering up water and once she rose to her feet started vehemently cursing at seemingly nothing.
"*BEEP* YOU! I WAS HAVING A REALLY *BEEP*ING PLEASANT DREAM YOU *BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*"
Knowing Leslie's hobbies, one could probably guess what sort of dream she'd been having.
It was obviously about cats. Just kidding.
What's-her-face rose to her feet, groaning. "Ugh. Where are we? Who's yelling?" What's-her-face wiped the sleep out of her eyes and proceeded to turn and see Da Zeke staring at her. "Do I have something on my face?"
"Who are you again, eh?" Zeke asked.
What's-her-face scratched behind her ear. "Uh, I'm Lauren. Don't you remember me?"
"Nope."
Midnight, in the meanwhile, looked incredibly unkempt, same with Aurora. Both appeared to be still under the effect of anesthesia because they kept stumbling around and slurring their words, unlike their usual elegant/fancy/creepy talk.
Matthew stood up, and proceeded to trip over James, who was snoring loudly on the floor. "Okay, what the hell is going on here?" James asked as the only sane person alive in the dark corridor. "Is everyone alive?"
"I'M ALIVE AND PISSED!" Leslie whined, kicking the empty stasis tube and stubbing her toe. "OW, THAT HURTS!"
"Dunno bout yuuuu gays, but Ah-eeem gooonnna take a nup," Midnight slurred, before falling flat on his face.
"Ugh..." Aurora groaned. "Don't do that, Midnight, it's unladylike..."
"I have no earthly idea what is going on," James just said blankly.
Da Zeke proceeded to pull off his toque and place it on the ground. "I claim this floor in the name of Da Zeke. Fo-shizzle. Yo."
"Hello?" Lauren asked. No one acknowledged her.
"I HAVE...PEOPLE TO RESCUE...THE BATCAVE...CALLS...ME..." Matthew nearly fell over, only to be yanked up by Leslie.
"YOU! MAKE OUT WITH HIM! NOW! I'M NOT ABOUT TO LOSE THIS!"
"EVERYBODY JUST SHUT THE HELL UP!" James bellowed, and everyone stopped doing what they were doing. "We need to figure out where the HELL we are and how the HELL we got here?"
"Da Zeke approves!" Da Zeke grinned, flashing two thumbs up.
"God, I missed you being dead," James groaned. "Everyone come together now. What's the last thing you remember before turning up here?"
Da Zeke pointed at Aurora. "Her drowning me."
"I did...no such thing," Aurora slurred, incapable of doing much as everyone else glared at her.
"Well, she wasn't the only one to kill a teammate," Matthew commented. "Belinda killed me with a shotgun. That's the last thing I remember."
"I was the only one directly killed by Adrian," Lauren added. "That's impressive, right?"
"I was killed by a needle! A freaking needle!" Leslie growled. "Now normally I like needles, particularly in the right places, acupuncture, ya know, but-"
"I miss Peter, Michael, Jairo, and Leanne," James groaned. "I want someone else here that I don't have to snark at."
"Is snark some kind of snack or something?" Da Zeke asked.
"Yes, it involves taking two hamburgers and placing a hot dog between them," James snarked, and then realized he'd just given Leslie an opening.
"Do go on," she purred, grinning like the psycho she was.
"It didn't mean to...I'm not...shut up."
"I bet Zeke could make you a real good snark, right?" Leslie continued, her grin only growing.
"I like waffles," Midnight contributed. "They're square."
The door hissed open and the campers turned their heads to face the looming figure before them, and the guards filing in after him.
Chef.
"Alright, maggots, listen up!" he yelled. "It has come to my attention from my employer that you all actually need to be fed. So you've all seen the show, right? You know that it's my job to cook shit for you guys? Not literally. Well, I actually once did that literally, it didn't turn out so well."
"Too much information," Aurora gagged.
"Anyway, you'll be served food by yours truly in the room directly next to this one! And then YOU'LL GO RIGHT BACK INTO YOUR PODS! ANY QUESTIONS?"
"Yes, where exactly are we-" James began.
"SHUT UP, SCRAWNY BOY! DID I SAY YOU COULD ASK QUESTIONS?"
"Uh, yes-"
"WRONG! YOUR EARS MUST BE CLOGGED BECAUSE I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
"Don't listen to Chef, we're not gonna get anything out of him," Lauren whispered to Da Zeke.
"You're pretty, what's-your-face."
"Lauren."
"No, I'm pretty sure it's what's-your-face."
"SHUT UP! YOU WILL GO INTO THE MESS HALL AND YOU WILL EAT! THEN AND ONLY THEN WILL I ANSWER ONE QUESTION, AND ONE QUESTION ONLY. ARE WE CLEAR?"
"YES SIR!" all the contestants shouted at the same time, and Chef pulled out his machine gun, his shades still covering his eyes, glaring menacingly at them as they filed into the mess hall. Midnight stumbled in after everyone else, with even worse coordination than Matthew. Considering Matthew's cape had been lost, Matthew was actually faring much better. Tripping over much less stuff.
After getting their slop, the campers divided up into groups. Midnight and Aurora ate together, or rather, Aurora ate while Midnight still attempted to recover and in the meanwhile had his head in his soup bowl. Everyone else was sitting together, although Lauren appeared to be invisible among them.
"So what do we do?" James asked. "We can't just sit around here and do nothing. We don't know what's going on, but all of us have apparently died, but I feel alive."
"STAYING ALIVE, STAYING ALIVE, AH AH AH AH, STAYING ALIVE!" Da Zeke started singing totally off-pitch, only to have a shoe thrown at him by Aurora.
"So are we dead or not?" Lauren asked.
"So do you guys think we're dead or not?" Matthew asked, causing Lauren to fume. "I got shot by a shotgun."
"I got a needle to the throat," Aurora and James said at the same time.
"Same!" Leslie called.
"What's with all the needles?" Da Zeke asked.
"Blowguns," James clarified.
"So how are we all here?" Lauren asked.
"So why are we all here, and how?" Matthew asked dramatically. "It's intriguing..."
The sound of gunfire caused all heads to turn. The guards at the door looked outside and screamed at what they saw.
The intercom turned on.
"Give 'em hell, shisnos."
Adrian had heard the voice once before.
Wait...no no no no no...not again...
Leslie quickly tackled the nearest guard, while Da Zeke followed his namesake and bit the guard in the hand, who promptly tried to shake him off, only to have Da Zeke still bite down while being swung through the air comically.
Lauren simply walked up to one of the guards. He didn't notice her at all. She smirked, and wrestled the shotgun from him and shot him. "DO YOU NOTICE ME NOW?"
"Hurk...blegh..." was the guard's response.
The sirens began, and a full-scale riot had begun. Lauren wielded the shotgun with deadly, Belinda level accuracy. Da Zeke just bit people for the fun of it. Matthew actually seemed to be doing decent without his cape. Edna Mode would be proud. Aurora took a gun off of a dead guard and used it moderately well. Leslie was just tearing through everything and everyone. James had snuck out, trying to find the control room and avoid Chef or any of his guards.
Midnight just sat there like a vegetable.
"Something's up..." he grumbled. "Chef has an...employer? I need to check this out."
James crept through the corridor, and from his right he heard Chef barking orders. "GET TO THE CONTROL ROOM! GET THAT SONOFABITCH OUT OF THIS FACILITY, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"
"SIR YES SIR!" the men replied, running off. James turned to see Leslie crouching next to him. He very nearly screamed.
"Shhh, everything's okay, we're all here to help you," she said, gesturing to all the supposedly dead campers, who James hadn't noticed before.
"Go...away..." he hissed.
"No man, Da Zeke has got this!"
"These guys have weapons! And they know how to use them! You people DON'T! So just go away!"
"We're all in this together. No matter how much we hate each other, no matter how much we may despise each others' company, we're going to have to work together to escape," Aurora said.
"Where am I? What? Why do I have an urging for waffles?" Midnight asked, back to his normal self, free of anesthetics.
"Da Zeke has got this, I told ya," Da Zeke said, and proceeded to stand up and take his shirt off. He threw it at the guard, who looked down.
"Huh?"
Da Zeke proceeded to initiate a battle cry, running past the guards. Now, generally, they would have just shot. But the sheer audacity of him throwing his shirt at them before running across their line of fire while shirtless just caught them off guard long enough for Zeke to make it across. His namesake would have been so proud of him.
Leslie proceeded to attack the guards from behind, her usual cat screech at the ready. The two guards were down in seconds.
Everyone followed as the campers unleashed their battle cries, mowing down guards in no time at all. Matthew punched one in the face, and James calmly led the army of psychos up the stairs. They followed the ominous glowing light on the floor, using their remaining weapons to their advantage and killing anyone who dared oppose them.
They were all lunatics. But they were incredibly competent lunatics.
The door hissed open to the main control room and a figure turned to face them. And apparently it was Chef. But as he turned he morphed into a slim man with pretty eyebrows.
"Who are you?" Midnight demanded. "What the hell is going on here?"
"Tell us now, or we'll kill you," Lauren growled.
"Just checking in. Dear Worf, this place is weird," the person sighed. With a snap of his fingers, he rippled and vanished.
There was silence for a few seconds as they tried to register what had just happened. "Did he just teleport?" James asked rhetorically.
"Yes," Da Zeke replied. "Yes he did."
"That was rhetorical," James snapped. "Now what do we do?"
There was silence at this, and he looked around. "Hello?"
"Oh, I thought that was rhetorical," Leslie said, grinning.
"I hate you guys."
"We love you too," was Midnight's response. "Oh, by the way, I found out something about the ground. It's not real. It doesn't have as much detail as I thought it would. Something's up here."
"How do we get out?" Lauren asked.
"So how do we get out?" Matthew mused, stroking his chin. Lauren glared at him.
James and Leslie pulled up the blueprints. "Hey, this is similar to the control room on Pahkitew Island! There's an escape pod in here we can use to get out."
"Wait, does that mean the island is mechanical?" Aurora asked.
"I don't know. I was in the fun zone, eh," Da Zeke shrugged.
The door slammed, and the contestants jumped in panic before James started pressing buttons. "Okay, let's see here, buttons, buttons, escape pod, escape pod..."
He pressed a button, and the door to the escape pod opened. "Huh. Lucky break."
The campers started screaming and flailing, trying to get into the escape pod, but in the end all of them made it in. However, they were all compressed very tight. The escape pod launched.
"Get your butt off of my face," James mumbled to Midnight.
"Please don't," was Leslie's enamored response.
The escape pod launched and as they traveled upward James thought he saw something in the sky but he ended up dismissing it as being nothing.
The hell...is going on here. What...who...
They screamed as they saw blue sky, felt sunlight on their faces through the window, and James calmly piloted the escape pod so that it landed in the forest, far away from the underground facility from which they had been held. The doors opened and the campers tumbled out into a dogpile, all except for Leslie, who just watched in glee.
Outside, Michael, Peter, Leanne, Jairo, Janet, and Belinda just stood there in shock.
"What the..." all of them said in unison.
"We weren't dead, we were just being held captive by Chef in an underground facility for some reason and I organized a breakout that went perfectly and I honestly have no idea what is going on," James explained.
Michael just looked at the others and shrugged.
"Huh."
