Vikram

Hi…So you’re the new one? Nice to see you…What’s your name? The guy with a beard bends and asks those questions to Amulya. She turns around and replies to him, “Hi…Sir, my name is Amulya Arora and I came here just now By the way what’s your name sir? She asked him without any hiccups. He told his name with a smile, “Yeah…My name is Vikram-.” She cuts him off halfway while he was talking she jumps with excitement and asks about each and everything she had in her mind, she starts with those machines and goes on talking about the technology…Then a hand comes behind and pulls her, A guy wearing a black suit with a red tie and a black hat Blue square spectacles, and a clean shave, leans close and tells her to not do this, “ Hey, Calm Down kid! Don’t eat Vikram, take this and go to your room…And Eat an Apple.”Hearing this Casey starts giggling, That well-dressed guy looks into Casey’s eyes but he wasn’t able to maintain eye contact as Casey looked back at him.

Then Casey introduced that guy to Amulya, she said, “Amulya this is Rohit, Rohit Rosham, Brother of vikram…He is a Doctor in the outside world and Loves reading Novels. He was the first one of us to wake up from the Loop and we found him sitting near the lift when I and vikram came from the Loop.”

While Rohit was walking away, Amulya goes in front of Rohit and says, “Oh, your Rohit, nice to meet you, man. Hatsu Katsu” Rohit with a poker face, “It's fine just go to your room and rest, It seems to me like this loop thing which we came out of has an effect on a person’s mental health, everyone here has fought that loop mentally and came out from it. So now go eat an Apple”.

Amulya starts walking towards the lift inside the big building where everyone stayed and she heard something from Casey, Casey says, “ Vikram…I can’t find those two, the only chance we can find them is when we play the game…It's mandatory for everyone to get involved in the game so those two should play.” Then Rohit suddenly looks at Casey and whispers to her, “Hey, it's luka chupi so we won’t be able to find them, It would be tough to find but let’s split into teams and try.” Casey said with a very low tone “Yeah.”

Amulya goes into a lift and there she saw so many buttons she took 5 mins in finding her floor, she finally goes to her floor and for a few minutes she tries to open the door with the keys on the wrong door and a guy from inside opens the door, she was embarrassed and tells him sorry about the stuff, The guy smiles, He was young and with a very symmetric face, he wore a black t-shirt and grey shorts, he had his hair covering one eye and he had a very charismatic face, Amulya kept on staring at him… Suddenly the moment became a bit tense and awkward…She laughed, and while she laughed even that guy laughed.

He then invites her inside the room, “He tells, “Hey, so you’re the new girl, Nice to see you here come inside…That girl goes into that apartment and she sits on the sofa, She starts asking a lot of questions as an extroverted person who loves everyone, but the guy just stops her and tells her to sit calmly and he goes to get some coffee for both of them, Amulya stops asking any questions and she doesn’t talk till she completes the coffee, she just doesn’t talk while she was drinking the coffee, She drinks it in a go and keeps the cup on the table.

That boy asks her, “Hey, what’s your name and how did you come here?”, Amulya replies to him, “My name is Amulya and I came here from that lift and what about you?” that boy sipped some coffee and started saying that, “Ohhh…So rude of me without telling my name I asked your name, My name is Kash Agarwal, Even I came from that big lift Ze hahaha, I was one of the first members here”.

Amulya was frozen and she just kept looking into his eyes while he was not looking at her but when he saw her she quickly started looking somewhere. Kash started looking straight into her eyes and he asked her, “What makes you wake up from the loop?”. Amulya was peaking into the cup if something was left or not and kept it at the table with grief, Kash bends over and catches the coffee cup while catching it Kash’s hand touches Amulya, She quickly removed her hand from the cup, she swung her hand so hard that Kash’s and Amulya’s head struck each other. When Amulya’s Head struck Kash’s he dropped the cup and that cup broke into pieces, Amulya quickly apologized and quickly bent and kneeled down on the ground to clean the Shattered cup pieces, She wasn’t able to look towards Kash after hitting him in the head, on the other side of the floor kash was picking up the other cup pieces, they unknowingly moved towards each other and at the last remained piece of cup their hands touched again. They both smiled and Amulya left that piece.

Amulya sits on the sofa and Kash disposes of the Cup and comes back into the room where Amulya was sitting, Kash Asks Amulya with some curiosity, “What made you wake up from the loop?”.

Amulya said, “I asked for chicken and they didn’t give me, and when I asked for more they DIDN’T GIVE!” with some enthusiasm. Kash burst into laughter and was genuinely smiling, he then went on saying that he didn’t laugh this much in a long time. His laugh was very charismatic.

They both were having a really nice time but Amulya was a little embarrassed so she tried to switch topics by asking him how he came out of the loop, she said, “Woah, how did you come out of the loop?” and he replied her saying, “It’s a sad story, I was repeating

my dad’s death in a car crash and it was really hard for me to go through it again and again so I came out of the loop pretty early.”

“By the way are you ready for the game today?” Kash asked Amulya.

Amulya intentionally asked the rules again to just keep the conversation flowing, she actually got to know about rules from Casey yet she asked, “Ohh…Explain to me what game it is?”

Kash replied, “It’s just a normal game of hide and seek, just hide and see from the shadows and you will get to know the game.”Amulya slowly gets up and says bye, leaving from there so that Kash doesn’t feel annoyed or bored.

Kash said, “Bye…Amulya see you soon!”… Hearing her name from Kash’s mouth made her so happy that at that moment Amulya said the most daring word in her mouth, She said, “Kash come closer I want to see your head.”

*She kisses the wound and smiles.*

Kash was shocked by that action, he blushes and asks Amulya, “Ohh…What’s this!?” Amulya replies with a smile, “My mom said kissing a wound will heal it quickly.” She smiles and leaves.

Amulya enters her room which is just opposite Kash’s room, it’s a big apartment with a big hall, a kitchen, a wending machine with different food items, invisible fans, and lights, big double-sized bedrooms, three washrooms with different designs and she directly takes two burgers, stuffs it in her mouth and jumps onto the bed and directly goes to sleep with a smile on her face.

A few hours later, she hears a voice… an old man’s voice saying the game will start in 5 mins…then she starts hearing a robotic voice counting numbers backward…300…299…298…297. She immediately wakes up and goes to the top of the building; she just keeps on running on the stairs and hides behind a penthouse in the building.

A few seconds later, she hears the footsteps of two other people, she leans and saw Vikram and Kash. Where Kash’s legs were tied and his hands were partially tied, Vikram said to Kash, “No, hard feelings man…It’s nothing personal I guess today is your day, Hope we aren’t caught” Kash replies to Vikram, “Don’t you think it’s unfair not just for me but for everyone?” Vikram quickly ties Kash’s hands and a few minutes passed both are standing on the edge, where Vikram was covered with Kash as a shield. A 9 feet humanoid robot comes and Vikram jumps over that robot with kash covering him and tries to touch the button behind that robot but the robot escapes it and touches Kash. kash shouts in despair “No…Don’t do this to me” really loud. The robot slowly walks towards kash and kash was cornered towards the wall, He turns his head towards his left and he saw Amulya hiding in the corner, he cried his mouth out…He asks her to help but she was shocked by the incident and she couldn’t move a single muscle…That robot catches Kash’s Hair and pulls him, At first he resisted but then his eyes were closed and it seemed like he went unconscious. A drop of rain falls on her and while Kash is taken by the Robot, She saw him taken away and she couldn’t do anything…The rain kept increasing and that robot kept him on its shoulder and took him…At that moment Amulya started to think about the moments she spend with Kash and she just kept on crying, she didn’t want to lose him…She Cried really loud, Vikram saw her and just left without her there without any emotion on his face…While Amulya fell to her knees and kept crying.

To be continued…