Chain Cut

The lift doors open from the other side and an Robotic voice says, “Congrats, you have passed level 1. Get ready for level 2.”

People looked around and they noticed, this wasn’t the same city in which they played before, it was opposite to it, and this was like 30 years in the past.

Ae cha and others walked inside and we saw it was like a colony but there were no people in it.

Amulya rushed towards the shop which was full of Parle-g biscuits, Frooti’s, thumbs up, limca, Goldspot, dairy milk, Britannia cakes, and a lot of local snacks like Murukku, sev, Khara boodi, puffed rice and a lot of goli sodas.

In that small shop, they were candles, matchboxes, soaps, toothbrushes, and toothpaste powder like Colgate,faruki...Etc but this shop was like a small box that was not even equal to a single room. While cris and fizza were walking towards the gate and they saw…It was written, “IDPL COLONY”.

Cris turned towards Fizza and said to her, “Wow…We are in Hyderabad, India. But everything looks so green and the air is so clean, what is this? I lived in this city and this feeling is so good.”

For that fizza looked towards cris and said, “Yeah…Even I was born here even though I never visited this place…This colony looks alive and fresh! I can’t see an automobile it’s all cycles and rikshaws…What year are we in.”

Then Ae cha went running towards Cris and Fizza to show a crossword puzzle from a newspaper which said, The Hindu, Saturday, October 19, 1974…And this is the latest paper out here…That means today is the 19th of October, 1974. It's not just that, every newspaper here like Eenadu, Andhra Prabha, Times of India, The Hindu, The Deccan Chronicle…These papers have 1974 on them.

Suddenly a mechanical voice was heard and it said, “In this round, everyone is going to play a game called, Chain Cut.”

Everyone had a very confusing face…Few were talking about where is this voice coming from and few were talking about the game.

Then the robotic voice continued, “For those who don’t know the rules of this round. Here are the rules.”

The lift’s doors opened and a robot with a height of 10 feet came from the lift, The robot was like a human except for its eyes…It had Yellow eyes, pink long hair and looked feminine.

The robotic voice continues, “A person will be named starter who will be announced at the beginning of the round, and that starter should stay inside the red room which is just opposite the small shop.

The remaining players are known as Players…Anyone from you guys can be named as starter including the robot.

The main goal of this game is to eliminate the robot…There will be no time limit, the game goes on till a person is eliminated. The starter will chase and touch a player, if the starter touches a person that person is out and that player needs to run toward the red room, the read room is a safe zone…And that person who is out will be named catcher, both the starter and catcher go inside the red room, if they fail to go inside and any player touches the starter or catcher that player will be eliminated, If they go inside the red room without getting eliminated they are safe and the game continues…Both the Starter and the Catcher need to hold their hands forming a chain and need to catch another player once they have touched the player there is no need to be in the chain but they have to run towards the red room to avoid elimination. And now the player will become Catcher. Now the starter and the other two catchers need to hold hands and catch another player. If the chain is broken in between the players can touch them and catchers or starter will be eliminated, once the chain is broken they must go inside the red room to be safe, forming the chain once broken won’t make them safe. The last person to become the catcher will be eliminated; The Starter and the Catcher who is at the end of the chain can need to hold only one hand while the other people need to hold two hands.

The Starter will be announced 5 minutes before.

Cris called everyone and said, “ I got a plan…But it will work only if Starter is one of us…But before that let's all form a huddle and I will tell you the plan.”

Everyone formed a huddle and Cris began to tell the plan, “ If the starter is one of us then let’s all become catchers excluding one person…That person needs to hide and we will catch the robot at the end, That way…we can Eliminate the robot and clear the round. Will everyone agree to it?”

Everyone started talking among themselves, Fizza asked, “ but then who will tell this to Casey, Rohit, and vikram? Amulya replied, “I will tell Casey and Rohit, let's hide vikram.”Everyone agreed on the point of hiding vikram…Cris Said then let’s go.

Amulya went to the room where Casey, Rohit, and vikram were there and told this plan to Casey and Rohit, they agreed to it as Amulya lead them to the next level.

Amulya then untied them including vikram. Vikram looked towards Amulya and said, “Keep those two safe, they are my only family.” Amulya smiled at him and said yeah, they will be safe…I promise.

That robotic voice said the name of the starter and it was, “Mia Perez – A human.”

A few people asked who is Mia Perez and a few called Mia Perez’s name Everyone was happy as the starter was a Human…

The robotic voice then said the game will start in 15 minutes, everyone was standing near the red room while the robot was frozen near the lift and then Ae cha went near Mai Perez and asked her about how she came out of the loop and what happened.

Mia Perez asked Ae cha the usual question, “Why are you refereeing yourself as Ae cha?”…Then Ae cha replied to it, “It’s a habit since childhood which Ae cha can't let go of and it's hard for Ae cha to use ‘I’ instead, it feels like Ae cha’s talking a different language. So you tell Ae cha your story.”

Mia Perez began to say how she woke up from the Loop,she began saying, “To know this story you need to know what happened in my life 6 months before that day, In the year 2019, this all started the day I found this iPhone 6s…A new phone which had a sim it…I found this phone near my house garage, There were a few selfies of this guy.”

Ae cha asked, “A guy huh!! How does he look?”

Mia blushed and said, “Cute. Haha, I got a text from this phone which said, “Hey, did anyone find this phone text me back?”

I saw that text and replied, “Yeah, I found it near my house garden but apparently his phone fell into a deep small hole, He just texted to try test his luck…Then I asked if I should return it, and he said it was fine .It was a defective piece from a factor then later I got it to know more about him…The shocking part was he lives in Hyderabad, India and I found it in Mumbai, India.

We both came to the conclusion saying some bird or eagle might have picked it up and dropped it…Later we began to chat daily, He said he was 16 years old but he use to talk about very old stuff…I never pointed it out or anything but he was an anime fan I don’t think he has watched new animes but he use to talk a lot about the attack on titan.

Like he once said, “I have a theory Annie might be the female titan…” I was shocked how he was making the theory of a known fact and once he was like, “Hey, you know after naruto ends an anime called boruto will start it's just a theory no Jutsu I got from the sources, I hope it happens. I hope hinata doesn’t die” .

I have watched very few anime so I wasn’t able to understand him but you got the point right, He was an anime lover. I slowly began to wait for his text, I always tried to contact him on social media, but I wasn’t able to send him a WhatsApp text, He never found my Instagram or my Facebook…I once found this Facebook account which exactly matched him filled with anime stuff even that guy looked like him but he said he didn’t have any of those social media.”

Even though we never meet each we had that bond we use to text before going to sleep, when we woke up, and when we use to eat, once I tried to call him, the phone was ringing for 2 minutes we spoke for that one time and he had a nice voice. I wasn’t able to contact him from any other phone, it was possible from that phone only…

Then one day he told me he was coming to Mumbai on his school trip…We set the meeting point, the gateway of India. That was the say I was looping.

That day I woke up, I went to the gateway of India all dressed up…He never saw me, but I saw him, so I thought I will see him and recognize him, That day was my 18th birthday… I searched for him till 7 pm…I couldn’t find him…That was the day I was looping…My texts never went to him, I called him, and I tried from different phones but then I gave up…I asked so many people about him, but no one even saw him, and Not even a single student from his school was there that day, I was looping that day again and again but then it hit me…That we never texted again and this was in the past. But It still hurts me.” Ae cha was crying after hearing the story. Then Ae cha asked,“You never to mention his name, Mai.” Mai said his name was Liam Parker.

A robotic voice said, “Game starts now.”