Doomsday Wonderland

“My memories are affected by the queen. Silvan is in danger. I have to follow Meme’s guidance to fight the brain. Don’t look at the queen…”

“My memories are affected by the queen. Silvan is in danger. I have to follow Meme’s guidance to fight the brain. Don’t look at the queen…”

In the empty underground space, Lin Sanjiu’s voice echoed again and again. It gradually drifted through the air and dissipated into a blur.

It has only been 30 seconds since she dashed out of the box, and Meme had replayed the recording a few times now. He had to intensify her impression of the memories before her older memories faded away completely. Things worsened as the seconds went by, and with the slightest delay from Meme, Lin Sanjiu would forget what she was doing.

She forgot and remembered again and again along the way. She felt lost and scared because of the constant and endless cycle that felt endless. While her eyes were blinded in darkness, she followed Meme’s guidance and ran forward arduously until she heard the boy suddenly say, “Stop!”

“…fight with the brain, fight with yourself…” Her own voice came from the tape recorder on her shoulder again.

“At 10 o’clock, approximately several meters away… is captain!” Whether it was fear or his injuries, every word that came out of Meme’s mouth sounded difficult and strained.

“How is he? Is he okay?” Lin Sanjiu asked before her memories faded.

Meme gulped nervously.

“What’s wrong?”

“…Do you remember the brain called queen?”

The moment his voice subsided, Lin Sanjiu’s recording finished again, and in the blink of an eye, she forgot the word ‘brain’ but still had the impression of fighting against something big. “A little bit… Is Silvan okay?”

“At least… At least from the look of it, captain doesn’t seem to be hurt, but when I crawled over earlier, captain had been standing in that exact posture, not even a strand of hair moving… No, don’t go over there…”

“Why?” Lin Sanjiu remembered that the boy cared for and admired Silvan. It seemed like the memories unrelated to that thing remained intact.

Meme went silent for a few seconds. In the dead silence of the empty underground space, she could clearly hear the boy’s heartbeat. Beat after beat, it pounded against her back. His body was heating up terrifyingly but his limbs on her shoulder were cold.

“That brain, that brain… is so big, I cannot even see where it ends when I look up,” Meme muttered softly.

‘He has to look up?’

Goosebumps rose all over Lin Sanjiu’s back. “Are you saying that the brain is very close to us?”

Meme sighed in trembles.

“It is only a few steps away from captain… and it is getting closer.” His voice trembled like it was going to shatter into pieces at any moment.

“How is that possible? Isn’t the thing huge? If it’s getting closer to Silvan, why didn’t we hear anything earlier?” Lin Sanjiu said with surprise.

Meme exhaled and quickly pressed several buttons on the tape recorder. While the tape was being rewinded, he said softly, “It has not move from its place.”

“What do you mean?”

“I… I can’t describe it well. The brain is still where it was when I left, but… it now seems soft and elastic. I-it is slowly extending itself towards captain, like a person trying to extend their lips.”

The analogy made Lin Sanjiu shudder without reason.

However, after the shiver faded, she already forgot why she even shuddered. Why was there a cloth in front of her eyes? Where was she?

While she was feeling lost, her own voice came into her ears, as if it was pre-recorded. ‘My memories are affected by the queen…’ Lin Sanjiu listened to the recording for a few moments before someone tapped her on the back. “Hurry, let’s get captain back here!”

Only then did Lin Sanjiu realize she was carrying a person, a boy named Meme. She did not get the chance to ask what happened to Silvan, forgetting that she asked that question before. She followed Meme’s guidance and slowly made her way further ahead.

“Two more steps ahead, but don’t make such a big stride. We are already in front of the brain, can you smell the stench?” Meme was so nervous that his pitch grew higher.

Lin Sanjiu was blinded but her other senses were enhanced. She endured the strange smell while her hands groped the air in front of her a few times. Her fingers then felt something in the air that felt like human skin. She immediately grabbed it.

“No!”

Meme was a fraction of a second too late with his warning and Lin Sanjiu failed to catch Silvan.

A slippery and somewhat elastic sensation that felt like a soft shell with an irregular surface landed on her hand.

Following Meme’s uncontrollably cry, she again forgot what she was doing.

“Duck! Take captain with you! Back off! Back off!”

In one ear, the boy’s cries sounded, while in the other, she heard her own voice. Lin Sanjiu convulsed and retracted her hand. She felt the thing shrink back as well. She had no idea what she had touched or why she was carrying someone on her back. Amid the muddled thoughts, she instinctively raised her hand to the towel with the intention to remove it for a clear look.

“Stop! Grab captain quickly!” Meme was halfway through crying when he suddenly began struggling. His voice was muffled because of fear and anger. He leaned over her shoulder heavily, and the weight threw Lin Sanjiu off balance. Before she could untie the towel, she was dragged forward to the ground.

She could not see anything once she was thrown off balance. She fell forward, and her face landed on something cold and slippery. The slime covered half of her body immediately. Within the heavy stench, the thing sluggishly wriggled and the soft exterior shell slowly opened up in her shape.

“It opened its mouth!” Meme shouted loudly as the recorder continued to replay. He only shouted out four words, and each word sounded more distant than the last. He seemed to be quickly rolling away, his voice becoming softer. “Quick, grab me! It’s trying to suck me into its other opening! Don’t let the captain get sucked in too!”

Lin Sanjiu had raised her hands to remove the towel, but she now clenched her teeth and forced herself to stop. “Don’t look at the queen. You must fight your own will. Don’t follow it.” The recorder was just playing this particular phrase.

She panted and crawled up from the ground and jumped over to Meme. With her eyes blinded and her sense of direction affected, she did not know where she would land. She crashed into a person and both of them fell to the ground together. There was a cumbersome buzz in the back of her head; it seemed like the crash was quite heavy.

Meme’s final shout and Silvan’s painful gasp entered Lin Sanjiu’s ears together.

Silvan woke up in an absent-minded state. “What? Where am I?”

There was no time for Lin Sanjiu to explain, as the memories that her recorder was jolting started to fade like the mist. She shouted in a hurry, “Don’t look at the queen! I’m going to save Meme!”

She pushed herself up and jumped.

“Wait! Get down!” Silvan grabbed her by the ankle, his words heavy and rushed.

What was this about?

“Hurry!”

Silvan acted right away, probably because he did not see an immediate action from her. His palm hit Lin Sanjiu in the knee, and her calves weakened right away. With a quick tug, she was slammed on the ground again.

When her face was buried in the ground, she faintly saw some blue light through the seams of the towel. Something flew by the back of her head and left a chilling sensation in her.

Right after that, a sharp and painful wail tremored from the deepest part of their brains. That boundless and silent voice felt as if a ton of weight had pressured their thoughts in an instant. The queen struggled and rumbled, and the ground trembled ceaselessly. Amid the rising dust storm, Lin Sanjiu tensed her body on the ground and asked softly, “What was that?”

“If I did not momentarily glance behind me, I would have forgotten about it. When I came out, I left a Protection Pillar that would be activated once I was attacked by some external force,” Silvan answered while breathing heavily.

The attack from the Protection Pillar was actually aimed at Lin Sanjiu. Fortunately, Silvan tripped her just in time to save her life. The queen was too big, filling almost half the empty underground space, and it was without a doubt what the blue light hit.

[Protection Pillar!]

A wooden log from the Indian tribe. If it could stand straight, once it is released, it will bring protection to the person who held it and will reflect any kind of damage. However, it is old and dirty, shaped like a cylinder, and whenever it stands, it will fall and roll away almost instantly. Legend has it that only descendants with the bloodline of that tribe who also have a sincere heart can make it stand through prayers. In the hands of others, it is as useless as garbage.

The Munitions Factory gave it a metallic coating just so they could sell it for a good price. They even added a ring of amplifiers and a tripod for all terrains. The price of the Protection Pillar increased a hundredfold because it would never fall again.

Even though the blue light hit the queen, it only left a scratch on the surface. The heavy and distorted voice wailed in their minds for a while before slowly calming down. It seemed like the damage inflicted was not serious at all.

Then the ground shook again and in an orderly interval this time, as though the big thing was moving backwards little by little.

“Meme! Meme was sucked inside! But you cannot look at it,” Lin Sanjiu shouted while her memories were present.

Since the two of them could not see, they had no way of understanding the situation. The last shout from Meme was more than 10 seconds ago, and the boy went silent after that. Their only pair of ‘eyes’ was gone.

Lin Sanjiu summoned the [Tornado Whip], got up, and tightened the towel around her eyes before walking in the direction where she remembered Meme’s shout last came from. Maybe it was a bit of overthinking, but she felt that after the queen was hurt, her memories were able to stay for a little longer.

Having no other option left, she had to resort to a stupid way to test her luck. Since that thing was huge, the odds were higher. A blind cat would run into a dead elephant!

“Hold on, you don’t have to rush over. Your artist is here. Turn around first,” Silvan called her back in a stiff voice. He sounded like a rock in winter.

Lin Sanjiu was stunned for a moment, a cold sensation rising from within her heart, but she still turned around as she was told.

“Take off the towel.”

She hesitated for a moment before removing it.

The moment where she regained her sight made her heave a breath of relief from the bottom of her heart. The tape recorder had fallen on the ground and was still spinning, playing her own voice. Silvan was sitting still on the ground, and along with his wounded bare body, he looked like a statue. A soft light somehow shone in the empty space. The artist was standing a little further away from them, holding a canvas in his hands.

This time around, he drew the queen on the canvas. The canvas, seeming to have absorbed something, now looked complete. The big brain occupied half of the empty space, and on the crooked sulci of the brain was a black seam with a little bit of blue glistening; it seemed like he was portraying the wound shot by the blue light.

Lin Sanjiu could not move her gaze away from the painting.

A tiny headless body lay on the ground quietly like a thin fallen leaf.