Dylan Anderson, the Ultimate Medium

The first thing Dylan noticed was that it was… really, really cold. And...wet? Why was he cold and wet?

Opening his eyes, he rolled over, glancing around. For a moment, he was relieved to see that he was in bed, he'd just… left the window open, allowing snow to drift into his room, some of which had settled on him while he slept. He wasn't entirely sure why he'd opened the window in the first place, but it was clearly just a silly mistake.

Once his brain had a moment to catch up, he realized that while he was in bed in a cozy room with a fireplace crackling merrily in the corner, this was not his room. He'd never had a fireplace in his bedroom, nor did his desk or dresser look anything like the simple, generic furniture standing neatly around the room. These walls were bare, with none of his posters or pictures from his room at home. Perhaps most glaring of all, there were no shelves filled to the brim with books and the spiritual tools he used in his work.

He sat up, knocking the snow off of himself as he got up to close the window. It would be hard enough to figure out his situation without the icy cold air numbing his face and making it worse.

This was not his room. This was not his bed, nor his fireplace, and the high stone wall he saw outside the window was not the cheery neighborhood he lived in. He did not seem to be trapped, as the window was large enough to climb out of if he was desperate. Considering the storm outside and the barely visible wall beyond, perhaps that was a false hope. There were two doors on the side of the room opposite the window, and Dylan decided to test them and see if they were locked.

Moving as quietly as he could, he stepped over to the two doors, unsure which one to try first. His situation was so bizarre, Dylan thought it best not to make any hasty moves. He carefully laid his palm on one door, then the other. It seemed like an important thing to do to test the unfamiliar doors. At least… until he remembered that this was how to test for a fire. If there was a fire, there would definitely be more smoke by now.

Dylan rubbed his temples in frustration. Why, exactly, would there be a fire, anyway? As far as he knew, kidnappers didn't tend to randomly start fires. He took a deep breath, trying to force himself to focus. He had enough experience speaking with people who'd been violently killed to have some idea of what to look out for, right? He could do this.

The doors. Start with the doors. Don't open them yet, just test the handles to see if they're locked. No one would notice the doorknob turning if the door didn't open, and in case there was someone watching his room, he decided he should be careful of doing things people would notice. He tried one knob, then the other. Both moved freely, which presumably meant they would open. Good. That was a good first step.

Taking another quick look around the room, he frowned. This place looked to Dylan kind of like a dorm or a hotel room. The space saving layout and generic furniture both gave off that distinct impression, even if the fireplace seemed like an extravagant and unusual fixture for a hotel room. If this was a hotel, though, he could guess that the door to the right, leading into the indent of the L shaped room, would be the bathroom. It was worth a try, right?

Dylan opened the door a little and peeked in, then opened it the rest of the way once he saw that he was right. It was simply a bathroom. Small, very clean, with generic decor and an overly nice shower head, it looked comfortable in that sterile way hotel bathrooms tended to be. There was a little bar of soap that looked entirely untouched in the soap dish by the sink, and fluffy white towels sat folded on the shelf above the toilet.

When he was satisfied with his examination, he closed the door as quietly as possible. Was he right about being in a hotel, then? He couldn't remember staying in a hotel or why he might have needed to do so in the first place. Other than the memory loss however, all signs pointed to this place being nothing more than a hotel room. Maybe he'd hit his head?

That just didn't seem to make sense either. He couldn't feel a bump on his head at all, he didn't have a headache, his vision was fine… if he'd hit his head hard enough to lose memory, there should have been some other symptoms, right? But he couldn't think of another explanation. Either he'd hit his head, or he'd been kidnapped.

With that in mind, he took a deep breath and peeked out of the other door. At first he wasn't sure what he was seeing on the other side. Before his eyes was a shiny black ring shape that looked like it was made from glass and bordered by some kind of plastic. He blinked a few times, and tried to widen his field of view, until he could make sense of what he was seeing. There on the other side of the door... was… a woman with a camera pointed directly at him.

"Whoa, hey, don't hurt me!" He shouted, retreating back behind the door and locking it.

Only after the fact did he realize the woman had tried talking to him. Dylan wished he'd caught what she was saying, but it didn't seem safe to peek out and ask. What if she was the kidnapper? Or worse? Why was she holding a camera? To make a video ransom note? His family wasn't exactly well off, so it didn't seem like it would be worth it to kidnap him.

What if this was a snuff film? He'd heard of those. They weren't supposed to be a real thing, but maybe they were, and maybe he was about to find that out the hard way? Lots of people said mediums and spirits weren't real either, how could he be sure this was different?

The thought gave him an idea. He could try to contact any spirits in the area and see if they knew anything. Without much else to go on, it was the only reasonable action, especially considering there was someone right outside his door who could be waiting to kill him. Dylan wedged a chair under the door handle, then went over by the bed so that he could be out of immediate view if his captors got the door open. Trying to contact spirits left him incredibly vulnerable, it was best to buy himself enough time to snap out of the trance and defend himself.

That done, he sat cross legged on the floor, leaning against the bathroom wall, and closed his eyes. If there were a spirit in this room, he'd be able to speak to them normally, but he couldn't feel any presence within the room he found himself in. That meant he'd have to reach out to the surrounding area. If this place was host to some kind of twisted snuff film production company or something, there'd have to be at least a couple of spirits hanging around, right?

The Ultimate Medium took a few deep breaths to calm himself down, trying to ignore the way his heart was hammering in his throat long enough so that he could slip into a trance. Reaching out to any spirits in the area, he was startled not to find a single soul. It wasn't entirely unheard of for there to be no spirits, but in a place that seemed to be host to kidnappers, it seemed unlikely. Still, he couldn't deny the fact that there were no spirits to reach. No spirits generally meant no violent or otherwise sudden deaths in the area, at least not for quite a while.

That made him feel a bit better about the situation, which in turn made him feel silly for having slammed the door in the girl's face. Maybe she knew what was going on. He should have at least tried to check, right?

Standing, he removed the chair from the door, and peeked out again to find the woman looking thoughtful just outside his door. She smiled, but it was something of an odd smile. Maybe she was nervous? Dylan could certainly understand that. "Oh, good. You changed your mind?"

"Huh?" Dylan stared in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"I was knocking and asking you things." The girl replied in a voice that seemed to imply he wasn't very bright. "But you wouldn't come out."

"I couldn't hear any knocking or questions." He replied, frowning at her. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure! Why wouldn't I be?" The woman looked very offended by the question.

He shrugged. "Well, maybe the rooms are soundproofed?"

"Soundproofed?" She considered that for a moment. "Maybe so. That'd make sense for a scenario this elaborate. I wonder if this is even a real ski lodge or if it's just made to look like one?"

"A ski lodge?" He looked around at the wood paneled walls thoughtfully. "That might explain the fireplace..."

"Fireplace? There's a fireplace in there? Lemme see! What's in there?" His new companion pushed past him into the room without waiting for a reply.

Dylan shrugged, lingering in the doorway, just in case. This woman didn't seem threatening, but she was certainly odd. He thought it best if he stayed near the exit, in case she turned out to be dangerous. "It's a pretty generic room, other than the fireplace."

"Mine doesn't have a fireplace." She commented, holding the camera up to her face again, apparently filming the room. "Or windows, for that matter! Why do you have a better room than me?"

"Uh." Dylan had no idea how to answer that. "I just woke up here, I don't know. Who are you, anyway?"

She turned, letting him finally get a proper look at her instead of the camera. She looked to be about his age, in jeans and a leather jacket. Her blonde hair was streaked with purple and black, and her face, now that he could see it, was quite pretty despite an unsettling quality behind her bright eyes. Dylan felt as though she was looking right through him.

"I'm Shaddastra Middleditch." She replied with a smirk. "You've probably heard of me."

"Uh… should I have?" He replied, baffled.

"I'm the Ultimate Filmmaker! Youngest person ever to win a major award at Sundance?"

"I'm sorry, I don't really pay attention to that sort of thing. I don't have a lot of time to watch movies." Dylan wasn't sure if Shaddastra was just very excited about her achievements, or actively full of herself, but either way it made him wary. "Actually, I'm an Ultimate, too. The Ultimate Medium. I tend to be travelling too much to have time for movies or TV."

"Wait, you're an Ultimate too?" Shaddastra put the camera back up and fidgeted with the controls, pointing it right at his face, even taking a few steps towards him. "Weird. Maybe someone is collecting Ultimates or something? That's kinda cool! Fucked up, but cool."

Dylan shrugged. "I guess... maybe? I dunno why they would do that, though. And why just us two?"

Shaddastra's eyes lit up. "Maybe there are more of us. There's sixteen doors here and all of them are locked. That's an entire incoming class of Ultimates!"

He frowned and poked his head out into the hall to have a look around. She was right that there were an awful lot of doors. "Was my door locked?"

"Sure was, yeah. Probably like a hotel door, locked on the outside and open from the inside. My room had a key card on the desk, doesn't this one?"

Dylan looked over at the desk and picked up his key card. "Oh, right, yeah. I guess it does."

"Hey, can I ask you a question? Why is there snow in here?" She gestured at the mostly melted slush on his rug.

"The window was open when I woke up." He replied awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. "I dunno why."

"Oooh, the plot thickens!" Shaddastra grinned and went to check out the window.

Dylan sighed. "Hey, would you mind if I closed the door on you in here? To check if the room really is soundproof?"

She whirled to glare at him. "Like hell I'm letting a stranger shut me in a room after waking up in mysterious circumstances! Haven't you ever seen a horror movie before?"

"Oh. Uh. Sorry." Dylan made a face. "I didn't think of it like that."

Shaddastra nodded. "If you want to get out of here alive, you should follow me. Horror is one of my favorite genres. I know how to navigate this sort of thing."

He started to ask why making fictional horror movies would be helpful in a real life kidnapping, but decided against it. She seemed pretty fierce about this. "Alright, what should we do next?"

She headed toward him and the door. "There doesn't seem to be anything in here. There's a set of double doors just down the hall there. Let's hit those and see where they lead! They're the only open doors, anyway, and it doesn't look like they go to nothing but a bunch more hotel rooms."

Dylan peered in the direction Shaddastra indicated. Through the glass windows of the double doors in question, he could see a wider hall with benches against the walls and a few doors on either side. At minimum, it looked a lot more inviting than his room or the narrow hallway outside of it. "Alright, yeah. Let's go."

Shaddastra nodded, and the two of them headed out of Dylan's room and down through the double doors. Just as the two were peering into a room full of couches, a cheerful sound echoed throughout the whole building. It sounded like the chime of an announcement through an intercom system.

"What the hell?" Shaddastra muttered, looking up for some sign of speakers.

"Ahem. This is an important announcement from your school principal!" Squeaking over the sound system, sure enough they heard an announcement being made, the voice delivering it bafflingly high-pitched yet somehow ominous at the same time. "To start off this Ultimate School Trip, you must all come to the lobby immediately, please!"