Welcome to the Hotel of Dreams

Ulrich got up and got breakfast, sitting alone for the majority of it. Silvia was gone, talking to the two Indian looking people, and Timothy was also gone. For obvious reasons.

He ate the sugary cereal that Timothy had the day before. It tasted pretty good, once you ignored your teeth rotting at a pace he couldn't even comprehend.

When he was about halfway done, Amber made her way next to him, eating her toast with nothing on it.

"Hey." She mumbled, her elbow on the table and her head in her hand.

"Uh, hey?" Ulrich replied, confused. "Why are you here, exactly?"

"Beats me. Guess I got tired of hearing all the actor talk."

"You're not an actor?"

"Nah, a barista. My girlfriend is the actor. The blonde one."

Ulrich looked over at the table next to him, and Lloyd was talking to Aurora and Gemma, leaning back on his chair with his pristine white sneakers on the white table.

"So." She sighed. "What do you think is gonna happen today?"

"Somebody's gonna die?" Ulrich asked, not knowing if it was a sort of trick question.

"You are hilarious, sir. But also right." She sighed.

And just as she said that Leonie's voice made its appearance, shrill as ever.

"O-Kayyyyyy, criminals! Are the nineteen of you ready? Meet me outside the sleeping area, about three minutes ago!"

Once the nineteen of them did as she instructed, she appeared from the vault yesterday's challenge took place, while wearing a low-cut ocean blue dress, with an admittedly beautiful pair of Sapphire earrings coming off her. Kalea was wearing a black sports bra with purple butterflies draping off it, alongside an excessive amount of eyeliner.

"Good day, criminals!" Leonie screamed, while Kalea just waved with the energy of a sloth on sleeping pills.

"Now, I should hope the nineteen of you are just salivating to explore the district building, and fifteen of you will be getting that opportunity. But for now, a quick tour of the building should be more than enough."

Leonie walked forward in a merry stride while Kalea walked behind her struggling to keep up, and the nineteen of them followed, while Leonie began her tour.

"To your left, our wonderful swimming pool." The dim neon pink lights gave off a dim hum as it bathed the peanut shaped pool of water in a vague pink light.

"Now, the pool can be a place to relax, meet up, buy some Demon brand lemonade for five coins, or just three Tua for our viewers at home. Or maybe even finding a romance. Or just look at everyone in bikinis and shorts, available for twenty coins. But hey, skinny dipping is perfectly fine by our standards."

"Up next, the food district." Kalea continued. "Here you can use your coins to get some good food, such as Red Hot Chilli Noodles, Lesser Jake's Ice Cream, and Bizarre Albert's Bizarre Barbecue."

"To name but a few!" Leonie yelled as soon as Kalea stopped talking. "Explore at your own leisure and order every meal as if it's your last! Because who knows, it could be!"

"And our final stop before the challenge site, the Bear Spectre arcade! Home to the latest games like Road Warrior 5, Depression Cog: Attempt, and Dissolvey Haemoglobin: Actor Repeat! Plays are a single coin, so make the most of them!"

She turned around with a grand smile, looking even more evil than usual. She nudged Kalea, who was staring off into space, and the smile struggled as she fumbled around in her pocket.

"And more. Lots more, so be sure to enjoy everything the city has to offer, and a roaring thank you to all of our wonderful sponsors who make this city possible." She looked up from the paper at the nineteen of them, with an expression as blank as her reading, and then at Leonie as she was breathing heavily.

"Well, it's time to get to the challenge site! It's just past this street, so let's make our way over there!"

As they all passed the rows of bland apartment buildings, a building bigger than all of them started to creep out to greet them. Golden gates surrounding a luscious bright red paint job, and all as big as the apartment complexes surrounding it, except with pointed spirals coming from the roof.

"So what's this, exactly?" Eric asked, still slouched over with his hands in his pockets while the others looked on in amazement.

"This, my dear Eric, is the Reverie Mansion. In the planning stages of the district building, it was to be a romantic location for the elites to reside, but that never came to fruition." Leonie replied rapidly, dramatically draping her hand over her head.

"And I suppose the reason we're here would be that it's the location of our next challenge?" Huang asked.

"Correct." Kalea sighed.

The interior of the mansion was just as luscious looking as the outside. Walls painted the same red, golden handrails being held with extravagant golden spirals that looked like hell to make. Spiral stairways going up to the other floors, decorated by a lavish carpet, of the same red. And attached to the ceiling, a golden chandelier adorned with blood red crystals.

Akemi tried opening one of the doors at the top of the stairs, but they wouldn't budge.

"Damn, they really love that red shit, huh?" Eric whispered to himself.

"Who likes red, exactly?" Cyrus asked.

"Hm?" Eric suddenly fixed his posture as he said that, and then went nervously back to slouching with his hands in his pockets. "It's what the council uses on everything. You see it all the time on level four."

"I suppose that makes sense." Cyrus nodded a few times with his arms crossed, and then went back to looking at the entrance, and the giant screen above its doors.

"Ever so close!" Leonie exclaimed, springing up from behind Eric, causing him to leap forward and headbutt the wall. Leonie continued like she didn't see that and continued her explanation.

"This particular shade of red is but a few tones away from being the council red. About as close as you can get without a police squad at the door. But I'm sure you know about that already!"

"I knew…some of that." Eric replied, soothing his head.

"Well, I expected that." Her face suddenly shifted to a mocking scowl. "I always expect you to know that 'Eric'"

Her face returned to its normal joyful expression as she moved in front of the giant metal door in the middle of the room.

"Okay, okay! We all get a good look at the mansion? If so, come with me as I discuss the next challenge."

She jumped over the desk, underneath the staircase and punched some numbers into a keypad in the back, and the wall behind the desk lifted, revealing a giant metal door.

"In the planning stages, this mansion was to be the most wonderful place in the world. Bridging the gap between levels four and five, a true monument to humanity's success. However, the place was cancelled. But as you will see, the mansion has lavished halls, five storeys, and a top of the range security system!"

She went into the metal room with Kalea, and the metal door slammed like it was trying to slice them in half.

"Anyway, here's how the challenge will go!" Leonie yelled on from the screen. "This mansion has eighteen keycards hidden within it, all of which have a ten-digit code for the door. Whether you find the codes or guess the code right doesn't matter, just that you get into the room. And the last person to get in here? Well…I doubt I have to spell it out."

Leonie stepped aside and let Kalea take the floor.

"Alongside that, all of you will be put to sleep and wake up on random floors. Here, you can see the floor plan and where you will be placed."

Kalea's face was replaced with a rough floor plan, and rooms with stick figures within them. Four on each floor minus the first, which would house three.

"On top of that, you can enter a number of coins to give you a higher chance of entering closer to the door."

"And there are coins to be won, to be sure to bet with pride! And I will be glad to see the eighteen of you once you arrive. Laters!"

The screen shut off, and everyone's watches started buzzing. Ulrich checked his, and the bunny asked him to enter an amount in coins. He entered 50. That was good, probably. The bunny gave an excited look, before the watch shut off. Ulrich touched it a few times, but it was pretty dedicated to not being switched on.

Ulrich looked up from the watch, seeing a colourless gas seeping through the floors. A few people were panicking, Huang was hugging Vanessa, and Wendy fell over. Then Micah, then Gemma, Silvia.

And then he felt his own eyes get heavy.