Looking for Answers, Finding Only Questions

The air seems to drain from the room, as you both stare at the black obsidian. No escape is coming. It's as though you are all buried deep within the earth. The only thing that stops the numbness is the feeling of Rebecca's warmth as she runs into your arms. "We're trapped, we're going to die here."

Your arms rub along her back, your voice shushes her, not because you disagree with her, but because part of you senses that hysteria will only hurt all of you. You try to be a pillar of strength, even though that was never your role in this relationship. In a way, that's a victory for the app, as you try to contain the emotional turmoil. "Stop it, thinking like that will only hurt us. We have to believe we'll survive. I mean, we lived getting here. We can keep on going so long as we have the means to live."

She quiets after this and you sit her down on your bed. She still cries, so you decide to try to calm her. You lay her down and she does not struggle, and you sit with her until she quiets down.

"Is everything ok now?" She shakes her head, unable to will words from her mouth. You look at her with understanding. "We should really keep looking. Trying to keep a stock of what is happening. I'm going to leave now, try to relax on my bed." You stand up and look down at her. She nods, her eyes still tearing up.

The exploration doesn't yield any valuable insights. It's odd. The lights are still on despite no connection to a power grid. As you change the thermostat, the AC kicks on despite no outdoor unit. The fridge is full of the food you had just bought, the pipes produced water from nothing in both the kitchen and bathroom. The toilets worked, no sewer needed. It was like the world still existed, just beyond the glass. Like any moment some rescuer would break through and say that it was odd that you were trapped here. But none came. And that led to only one conclusion. It was magic, all of it, the cursed app was keeping you alive, giving you the barest hint of normalcy, all while it worked on breaking that normalcy.

There was one wrinkle to it though. The phone hadn't worked, but as you tried to look at stuff on the internet on your phone, you were diverted. Instead, porn filled the screen, many women and one man, sometimes only women, sometimes only one man and one woman. Turning on the tv resulted in the same thing, the channels changing, the films changing, but the subject matter remains the same. The computers were the same, the internet only leading to more and more videos of porn. The other things seemed to be completely normal, opening a game would just open it normally. You could play solitaire. It was as though the app wanted you isolated from the outside world, no news to know if anything happened, no way to communicate.

Finally, you ended up in that black room again. You didn't want to leave any stone unturned, so you came here. No hidden entrance, no special purpose when you came here alone. Just the circle with it's black box in the center. You breath deep and go to the box. You wanted to know, even if the others didn't. You opened the box to see the outfit you had seen in the app before, the completely normal maid outfit. Like one that any housekeeper at a hotel would wear. It had sensible shoes, and the only hint of eroticism was the thong underwear that would be covered by the full skirt. It wasn't exposing. Why would it do that, why would it be so cruel only to show this small kindness?

You, Sephora, and Rebecca all gathered in your room. You all talked about your discoveries, and the only thought was simple. You had to wait. The thing that would run out first was the food, and you had at least a couple days worth. That was assuming that the air wasn't slowly growing more and more carbon dense, but the AC running should stop that, if the magic wasn't fucking with it somehow.