Disclaimer: Well, I do own quite a few of them, but not Donna.
.8. Found and Lost
"Ace? Ace?!"
He came to and abruptly sat up on the moss. The night was still dark and silvery, but three slim creatures had disappeared somewhere. Gold was bending over him, alarmed expression on his face.
"Blimey, I thought they killed you!"
"Who? Who were they?"
"Faerie," Gold answered. "The elves."
His voice was full of comical disbelief. In any case, it had comical potential, irretrievably squandered by pounding inside Ace's skull.
The boy rubbed his head and groaned quietly. "Elves? What, like Santa's Elves?"
"Not really, no," said Gold.
"They used to be friendly," spoke a voice of a young girl. With effort Ace turned his head and saw her sitting by, on a tuft of moss. Her knees, showing through the holes in her tattered overalls, were scratched and covered in scabs. She had lost a bow on one of her pigtails and her sandy hair fell over her shoulder. She had huge eyes, moist with tears. "The elves. They used to be friendly. Always. The fair folk. The Faerie."
"Where's the other crackpot?" Ace muttered. "Boudicca?"
"You mean Boadicea?" the girl asked.
"I mean the bloody wild woman with her face painted blue," Ace answered.
"She disappeared. Said she had something else to do."
"What do you mean disappeared?"
"She just did." The girl shrugged. "Like me mum. She just vanished, that's all. Said she'd be back. But she didn't come back."
"What's going on here, Gold?" growled Ace.
"We have crossed into another game," answered Gold. "She's escorted us through into a different adventure. She said we should be reasonably safe here, although the 'flipping buffers snuffed it' – her own words – and she'd be back for us once she's taken care of something."
"As far as I'm concerned she may as well stay vanished. Bloody bulldyke!"
"Ace, a kid," whispered Gold.
"Stop whispering," said Ace angrily.
"I'm not a kid," angrily said the girl.
"See, she's not a kid," Ace repeated. "I bet she's a fucking dwarf."
"You are a dwarf!" screamed the girl and punched Ace's shoulder, hard. "F... fudging!"
"Oww, dwarf's attack!" yelled Ace.
"You are her age exactly," Gold shook his head. "You are a bloody ten year old brat! Can't you see what's going on here?"
"No, what?"
"There was some serious malfunction to the Emporium Everdream. We can't leave the adventure. None of us can. The people who managed to do it somehow, and had promised to come back to get the others, never did. The adventures are screwed up completely; you can jump from one to the other; and that should be impossible. And you know what? I'm pretty sure Corrie's mum didn't program kidnaper elves. Just like I didn't program miss Blue Face."
Ace kept quiet for a while, massaging the elbow he had bruised falling down.
"Either you are right, or I suffered a synaptic shock, and you are just my hallucinations, both of you," he muttered finally. "Cause, have you seen that?"
Gold looked over his shoulder at a row of gigantic toadstools; toadstools with chimneys and curtains; toadstools with windows and doors, and little picket fences in front of them. He let out a loud sigh.
"Ace, that's a School. That's Corrie's adventure; she was here with her mum when all went fuc... fudged up. Elves, toadstool houses, unicorns and little ponies – it's just a chick's fable. I'm sorry but it's not a pot trip. And as for hallucinations – can they do that?"
He punched Ace's bruised elbow, rousing a loud yell of pain and fury.
"Are you bloody mad?"
"No. I just had enough of your moaning. Would you do something useful, finally? Like, help me thinking, or try to find the way out?"
"What do you mean try to find a way out? Call for the gate and..."
Gold looked at him with such disdain that Ace swallowed the rest of the sentence.
"Did you try to call the gate?" he asked after a while, really quietly.
"Halloo?!" Gold raised his hands and spread his fingers. "Did I? Corrie, did you? Of course, we tried! You're the only person here who fuc... fudging skedaddled into the forest instead of simply trying to leave the game. The adventure doesn't respond to verbal commands. There's no gate, there's no way out."
"So, OK, you're right, it is some sort of malfunction," admitted Ace. "But... they will get us out, won't they? They'll see what's going on and they'll switch the game off. Or they'll remove our sublinks. All we have to do is wait till..."
"Nobody's coming," said Corrie, sticking her fingernail under the scab on her knee. "I'm in the adventure for over three days now, and mum had just paid for 24 hours. And nobody has come."
"I'm wondering what's going on with our bodies."
"Ace!"
"If the software went tits up, it's possible that the hardware malfunctioned as well," Ace said gloomily. "Sublinks. Game beds. Whole chambers."
Gold's imagination offered him a vision of his own deserted body, all charred in the area where the sublink was touching his skin, covered in burns and blisters, trying to send impulses of agony to the brain submerged in an artificial dream. He shivered and shook his head in a silent denial.
"You think too much," Boudicca's voice rang over their heads. "Especially you, King Arthur's squire. Would you like your dreams to come true?"
Gold and Ace jumped up and Corrie screamed; after a second, however, her scream turned into a piercing squeak of joy, only a ten year old girl is capable of uttering.
"Mum?! Mummy! Oh, mummy!"
The Warrior Princess came back leading a group of five frightened and ragged people. Four of them wore completely vacant expressions; they were looking around as if not sure whether they were awake or dreaming. Corrie's mum was one of those lost souls – a plump blonde, smeared with mud and dried blood, her short hair messy as if she just lifted her head from the pillow. She was looking down, at Corrie who clasped her arms around her mum's waist, buried her face in her body and sobbed with joy. The woman didn't even lift her arms; she didn't try to hug her crying daughter. Gold nudged Ace and indicated this strange reunion with a jerk of his head.
"What's wrong with them?"
"Nightmares," answered one of the newcomers, a dark-skinned man in his thirties, stepping in front of Boudicca. He was covered in mud and badly battered as well, but his eyes were not as glossy and vacant as the others'. He crouched down shaking Ace's hand. "Simon."
"A... Ace," the boy answered. "And this is Gold."
"So, there's eight of us now," the man said. "Not counting Donna. Donna is a projection. I suspect she's an emergency protocol of some kind; a safeguard in case... well, in just such case."
"Do you mean Boudicca?" Gold stammered.
The man guffawed shortly, barring his brilliantly white teeth.
"Boudicca, that's not bad. Didn't think of it myself," he said. "Her name's Donna. At least, she says so."
"And... them?" Gold pointed to the other people who arrived together with Simon – two teenage girls and an elderly man. The three of them stood almost completely still and had the same frightened and cold look in their eyes as Corrie's mum.
"Leena and Katje." Simon waved his hand in their direction. "As far as I know the chap's name's Doug. I know nothing about this little one's mum; she's been impersonating a shop-window dummy ever since we've found her."
"Alice," murmured Corrie hugging the quiescent woman. "My mummy."
"Sorry, kiddo."
"What happened to her?"
Simon shrugged his shoulders. "I've no idea. Maybe she's in shock. The adventure we've found her in... it wasn't pleasant. We barely managed to escape. Leena and Katje became quiet when Donna led us through to this forest; I saw them talking to a man, didn't think much of it. A moment later they've turned into zombies. And Doug, he switched off just a moment ago; not that he was of any use before. We've let him out of our sight just for a minute. He must have hit a very nasty memory."
He rubbed his hands together and vigorously slapped Gold on a shoulder.
"So, guys, the good thing is you did not reset. We're gonna have to cooperate to get out of this alive."
Gold and Ace exchanged surprised glances and then turned to Boudicca, hovering above them with her head tilted and unreadable expression on her face.
"Is... is that true?" stammered Gold. "Are you an emergency protocol?"
She gave him an absent-minded look.
"I'm not a bloody protocol," she emphasised. "Simon, call me a protocol again, and I'll kick your ass."
"She's kind of rude, for a protocol," Simon murmured.
"Will you help my mummy?" Corrie asked quietly.
"Rude..." whispered Boudicca. "And not ginger... Not ginger... Ginger... Found it... And lost it..."
"Bloody hell!" Simon summed up. "Now she's crashing. Hey, Donna! Get a grip on yourself, girl! You said you'd get us out of here."
Boudicca blinked quickly and shook her head as if trying to push away a momentary befuddlement.
"Something's starting in another adventure," she said with complete clarity. "And there are people there. Wait for me here and don't think! Don't recollect. And certainly don't exchange ghost stories. If you stop provoking intense emotions, you'll become invisible. Lost, do you understand? They need intense emotions and I am not strong enough to hide you all."
"They?" Ace repeated. "They who?"
"Just take Alice, the girls and Doug to one of those... mushrooms." There was a glimpse of amusement in Boudicca's voice. "And be quiet. I'll be back for you. Oh, stop crying, kid. We'll save your mum. If you stop crying, I promise it'll be all right."
"No, wait, just a moment!" Gold yelled after the Warrior Princess disappearing in the woods. "Just tell us what's going on here! Hey, Boudicca? Donna?"
"Don't waste your breath," growled Simon getting up from the ground. He grabbed Alice's wrist and dragged her along behind him. Corrie trotted at his side, large tears rolling down her cheeks. After a moment of hesitation, Gold reached out to Leena and Katje. Probably for the first time in his teenage life Ace didn't even try to squeeze in between his friend and two gorgeous girls. Instead, he grabbed Doug's elbow and cautiously led the older man towards the nearest toadstool house.
Dark, slanting eyes were watching them from among the ferns.