The First Encounter Part 3
Day Three
Date: 03/01/01
Location: The Broken Bridge
Mission Duration: Six Days
Objective: Reach the City Gate.
Subject Name: Samira Ali
Subject Age: 19
Previous success rate: 85%
Expected success rate: 34%.
Failed Subjects: 210
Successful subjects: 5
Samira sat in the driver's seat, the hum of her sleek, unfamiliar vehicle serving as a constant shield against the world outside. The past two days had been a storm of new information and chilling realities. She had awakened in an alien world, solved a complex puzzle with the help of the System's new skills.
It didn't take her long to find a single vehicle separate from the rest with a clean exterior, and she realized it was her assigned vehicle, as the system had indicated. After receiving from the system some time to rest or explore the city, she began roaming around, hoping to learn more. Also received her second mission to reach the city gate
The System's mission was clear: Reach the City Gate. The six-day deadline felt long, but after what she had experienced, she knew that every step in this world was a test. Her car, had a map also on the windshield, a green line showing the path she needed to take. She drove slowly, her mind working to understand the city's destruction.
Unlike Thomas, she wasn't just seeing rubble; she was seeing a failed system. Her Data Analysis skill was always active. She could see the ghostly outlines of the city's original power grid, the flow of data that had once connected every building. Now, those lines were broken, full of errors and dead ends. She saw the structural weaknesses in the shattered skyscrapers, the points where a program or a force had been used to make them fall. The city had not just been destroyed; it had been dismantled, torn apart by a cruel and logical force.
She was completely alone, but her mind was too busy with the city's puzzle to let the fear take over. She was trying to read the city, to understand its language of destruction. The System had given her the skills for this. She had to use them.
After about two hours of driving, the green line on her map changed. It turned yellow and started to blink. A new message appeared.
{Obstacle ahead. Main route blocked. An alternative path must be found.}
Samira slowed the car and came to a stop. Ahead of her, the main road was completely blocked by a massive, fortified wall. It wasn't rubble from a fallen building; it was a strong, metal wall that seemed to have been put there on purpose. It was part of an old, military or police looking checkpoint. The gate in the middle was closed and completely unpowered.
"A gate in the middle of the road? The logic on which the city was built is not a simple one," she said to herself, her voice small in the vast silence. She got out of the car, her new dexterity making her movements quick and graceful. She walked up to the gate, her data analysis skill revealing a flood of new information. The gate was part of an old security system. It was locked with a very complex code. The system was dead, but its rules remained, like a program that was still running in the background even after the power was cut.
She looked at the control panel next to the gate. It was a complex mess of strange symbols and buttons, all dark and without power. Samira's mind saw it differently. She saw a puzzle. A piece of hardware that was waiting for a solution.
{New Mission Available}
{Repair Control Panel}
{Time Limit: 1 hour}
{Objective: Open the City Gate}
Rewards:
20 points
1 level up
{And a piece of information about your abduction.}
Penalty:
{Failure to complete will result in a time penalty of 12 hours added to your mission duration.}
The mission was perfect for her skills. The reward was what she really wanted. A piece of information. A part of the reason why she was here.
She got to work. Her data analysis skills revealed broken wires and burnt circuits inside the panel. Although the materials the wires and circuits were made of were unfamiliar to her, she still needed to fix them. She understood the problem as if it were a common issue she had dealt with her whole life, but she had no tools. Then, her logical comprehension skills kicked in. She realized the system's interface could serve as a set of tools. Using her mind, she could repair the panel's broken code and reroute the power to bring it back to life.
She began her work, her fingers moving through the air as she traced lines of code visible only to her. She discovered a power line that had been severed and used the system's interface to mentally reconnect it. The panel hummed to life, and a dim green light appeared. She then moved on to the next challenge: a series of complex codes that had been scrambled. Using her logic comprehension, she solved the puzzle and restored the code to its correct order.
Her work was slow and meticulous, like debugging a vast and complex program. With every line of code she corrected, the panel came to life bit by bit. The symbols on the buttons began to glow, and the lights grew brighter. The Intelligence attribute the System had granted her was a powerful tool, sharpening her thoughts and accelerating her clarity. She was a genius in this alien world.
Just as the timer on her screen showed only five minutes remaining, she finally finished the last line of code. A loud chime echoed through the silent street. The gate's heavy metal doors began to move, slowly opening to reveal a path to the other side.
{Congratulations, you have completed the mission and opened the City Gate.}
{You have leveled up.}
{You have been awarded twenty points.}
{New Skill Acquired: Technical Mastery (Level 1)}
Samira felt a deep satisfaction. She had solved the another puzzle, not with force, but with her mind. She had proved that she was a valuable part of this new world. But the best reward was still to come.
{Accessing reward...}
{Information Packet: The Purpose of Human Abduction Part 1/4}
A new screen appeared in front of her, filled with information. Her eyes scanned the words, her mind racing to understand.
{The Langkatans, the inhabitants of this planet, were a peaceful race that destroyed their world after an A.I. invaded their planet and implanted in their minds what was called the System. This System granted them strange skills previously unknown to them, which supported their daily lives as a form of enhancement. As a result, a portion of the population became savage monsters, and the regular animals mutated.
The remaining survivors of the Langkatan race, who did not transform into monsters, fled to outer space and sought a solution to their predicament.
They needed to find a new world to live on, but they could not, as the AI was a parasite. By coincidence, they discovered another dimension with an atmosphere similar to their planet, inhabited by a species called Humans on a planet called Earth.}
{You will unlock more details when you complete your next mission}
"At least this is something I didn't know before, she whispered. With a sigh, she turned toward her vehicle, still contemplating the valuable information she had received and hoping to gain more from the next reward—one that might reveal why and how she ended up on this planet.
Before she even reached the vehicle, she heard a howling sound behind her, just as she had opened the gate.at the same time she saw a message biking in front of her:
{Urgent mission is available to you now}
A/N
In the previous chapter and this one, I introduced the second character, Samira, the second human to pass the test. Please comment if you would like more details about Samira and the other characters who have been abducted from Earth.