KIMURA SATYA HAS BEEN FOUND GUILTY.
[EVENTUALLY EVERYONE RUNS OUT OF TIME]
It’s just the rat’s sense of humor to remove her from one cavern and toss her into another. When Kimura gets to her feet, wobbling and unsteady, it’s only to take in the uncomfortably close rock walls and the abyssal depths beneath her. Her only salvation from either is the platform she’s standing on—a narrow treadmill—and, far ahead, close enough to the treadmill’s end to touch, a tunnel that seems to slope upward, a glimmer of light in its depths. At the mouth of the tunnel, dwarfed by the size of the cavern, is her partner in crime, just standing there with an unreadable expression from the backlighting. She wants to shout but her voice is a rasp and the only thing she can do is take a step forward even as pain lances through her stomach.Â
Wearing its customary shit-eating half-stitched grin, the rat slightly twists a dial before it, and the treadmill creaks slowly into motion. Kimura stumbles from the sudden movement but manages to keep her footing and breaks into a full sprint—she can do this, this is all she could do. Steadily gaining ground despite the increasing speed, she halves the distance to the tunnel, and then she’s a quarter of the way there, then almost close enough to reach out a hand—
The rat scoffs and twists the dial all the way around before the pieces break apart in its paw. Not expecting this display of poor sportsmanship, Kimura’s legs are torn out from under her and she falls back on the treadmill on hands and knees.Â
(No—this wasn’t how it was supposed to go, she was supposed to be all-powerful, invincible! How many times had she claimed she wouldn’t die in here? It’s all a cheat, a con, she’d won this stupid game, she’d done everything right—!)Â
There’s not even time to regain her footing. The treadmill spins a complete loop in only a few seconds, and there’s nothing to grab onto, nothing to slow her fall as it throws her off the back and into the dark. There is no sound of impact, only the tired whirling of overworked machinery.