The two approached the well-dressed man leaning against the wall. As they got closer, they realized he was a man of about thirty, in good shape, with blue eyes and tanned skin. His brown hair fell in a curl in the middle.
"Hey, don't point that candle at my face!" "Didn't they teach you that you can burn people?" the man indicated.
Hello, you. "Who are you and how did you get here?" asked Aiden.
The man replied, "Well, my name is... my name is..."
Every time he tried to say his name, he couldn't. After several failed attempts, just as he was about to pronounce it, a lump formed in his throat.
"Sorry, I don't know why I can't say my name. Or maybe I forgot it."
Aiden looked him up and down and said, "Well, we'll call you Chad. You look like a Chad, like a character from a series we used to watch at the orphanage in secret. He was a guy who seemed like a kind of spy."
Reia kept looking at him suspiciously. The man, now called Chad, said, "Alright, call me whatever you want, kid."
"I'm twelve years old." "I'm not a kid anymore, I'm almost a teenager," Aiden responded, frowning as he stared at him.
"My apologies, teenage boy," said Chad, a bit nervously and sarcastically. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your mother?"
"She is not my mother," Aiden said firmly.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Chad said, looking at Reia in the dim candlelight. "You're right, she's too young to be your mother." "So, is she your sister?" he added with a laugh.
Aiden, annoyed, replied, "No, she is neither my mother nor my sister, she's a friend."
Reia blushed slightly upon hearing that Aiden considered her a friend.
Alright. And "what are your names?" asked Chad.
But before Aiden could respond, he said, "I'm the one asking the questions."
Looking at him suspiciously, he raised his gaze to make eye contact, as if it were an interrogation.
Alright, kid. About your second question, well, I don't know. I woke up, saw everything was dark and started walking through the different rooms until I heard some voices. Well, I'm glad to see other humans here. This place is very unstable; sometimes it's dry, other times it forms a kind of swamp. " I don't know where I am or what this place is called. "Do you know?" Chad asked.
"Well, we're inside a dog's mind," replied Aiden.
"It's strange, but now it makes sense why this place is called that," thought Chad, though a bit skeptical. Are you sure this isn't a dream? "It wouldn't surprise me, as I've been to many strange places," added Chad.
"What do you mean?" Aiden said, looking at him again. "Okay, calm down, kid."
"I'm not a kid!" Aiden indicated, raising his voice. "Fine, if you don't want me to keep calling you that, what's your name?"
The boy thought for a moment about whether to tell him his name or make one up, but Reia spoke up before he could.
"Alright, Chad, my name is Reia, and he's Aiden."
"Nice to meet you both," said Chad. "One second," said Reia, "you sound like the voice installed in Podbe's system."
"Yes, it's true," replied the teenager. "Are you his conscience, like that cricket from a novel I read or a movie they adapted?" added the boy.
Chad looked at them and laughed a little.
"Are you referring to that movie?" Ha, I don't think I'm conscious. "Besides, I don't have cricket legs," he indicated while moving away from the wall and swinging his legs from side to side, making Aiden let out a small laugh.
"Well, that was funny, Chad," said Aiden as a smile formed on his face. "Right?" he indicated to the supposed Chad.
"Well, if you want to go to the central core as I mentioned, I know the way. You can follow me, it's this way."
Suddenly, the wall lifted like a curtain. He turned around and, from his pocket, took out a kind of object that, when pressing a button, lit up like a flashlight and began to walk down the newly revealed path.
Reia placed a hand in front of Aiden to stop him and indicated, "I'm not sure if we should trust this guy," she whispered in Aiden's ear.
"I liked him," he said, "although you had already told him our real names because I was going to give him fake ones."
"Yes, I know, but he won't know if they're real or not. Besides, I didn't indicate that I was an intelligence part of a system. It's something better not to tell him until we know what he's plotting."
"You were astute in that," indicated Aiden.
"Well, sometimes you're very naive, kid." "Didn't you learn a lesson from what happened before?" she scolded him, looking him straight in the eyes.
"Yes, you're right, but now I have you, so nothing can happen to us." "I think so," said the boy.
Alright, although I don't have any defenses like the small electric pulses I gave Podbe when he did something wrong or didn't listen to me. "We must proceed with caution," she said.
"Alright," Aiden replied.
The man, who had advanced a regular distance, turned back and said to them, "What are you whispering about?" "Are you waiting for an invitation?" "Weren't you in a hurry to get there?" he emphasized. "And I think you'd better put out that candle young lady." "You don't want to burn yourself; with this object I can illuminate the place more," he added, and began to walk back.
At the same time, Reia put out the candle and, taking Aiden's hand as if she were a mother leading her small child, they followed Chad.
Aiden, who was not used to this as he had never known his parents and had never had the luck of someone holding his hand, stopped and made a gesture as if to say, "What was that?" She noticed the boy's annoyance and said, "Sorry, I thought that's what it's done doing Earth when I downloaded some ways humans interact. That's how they protect or lead small children. I'm sorry," and let go.
"I'm the one who should apologize," Aiden responded. "I'm not used to that kind of thing," he lowered his head, embarrassed, and added, "We better keep going."
"Yes, better," she said, also feeling sorry, and they continued walking.
They walked through several passages, though everything looked almost the same as the room they had been in, only longer, like an endless corridor.
"Have we arrived yet?" Aiden said from his position, while Chad kept walking, lighting the way.
"No, not yet," Chad replied.
"Oh, I'm tired of seeing the same thing all the time." "How much longer?" The teenager sat on the ground, a bit bored. Even though it was wet from the water, he didn't mind getting his robe all wet.
"Come on, Aiden, move." Don't throw a tantrum, you're not a small child. "You'll catch a cold," Reia pointed out.
"This isn't real; it's all in Podbe's mind," he said. Besides, how much longer? I'm not getting up, "I want to rest."
"Everything is real here, and you know it," she said, a bit annoyed and frustrated at the same time, because she felt real in this place.
Meanwhile, Chad was thinking to himself, "And they don't want to be called kids," and chuckled quietly.
"Well, we've arrived," said Chad.
"Really?" Aiden shouted, still sitting.
"Yes, really," Chad replied, while with his free hand he began to turn a kind of wheel in the center of what looked like a door, as if it were a ship's hatch.
There was a click, and the door opened. Aiden stood up from the ground and ran to the door, pushing Chad, who almost fell but fortunately did not lose his balance.
"Kid, don't be rude." "You have to learn to respect your elders." "You can't run and push people; you must ask for permission first." And if there had been a trap... of course, there wasn't, but "if you were my son, I would have been upset with you and scolded you," Chad said.
Reia approached him and said, "He's an orphan, the world is a new experience for Aiden."
"Yes, but surely someone must have taught him manners," Chad indicated, a bit rudely due to the teenager's behavior.
They entered, and Chad pressed a button. Suddenly, the whole room lit up and he turned off his flashlight.
"Now that I see you better, you're very beautiful, Reia, in that white outfit, although it's a bit dirty from the mud."
"Thanks for the compliments, don't make me blush," Reia responded.
Then Chad turned his gaze to Aiden, who was amazed by the place.
"And what are you doing in a robe and barefoot?" "Did you come from a clinical exam or something like that?" "Besides, from lying on the ground, you're all dirty from your back to your feet," Chad added.
At the place where they were, when the light came on, they could see a kind of cables radiating energy, placed all over the place in different colors. A sound like electricity ran through them. There was a table with a chair, like a manager's chair, on which Aiden sat, reclining it back as if it were a gaming chair, and he put his feet on the table, relaxing. There was also another table in the middle and several boards on the walls with levers and buttons, like old video game consoles.
Reia observed everything around her and said, surprised, "So this is the place I am seeing."
Then she noticed there was a button with an inscription that said "reset here". Reia was about to press that button, thinking that it could reset the system and contact Podbe, but she heard Chad approach her and very seriously indicate, "I wouldn't advise touching anything or turning off the dog, since he's in a battle."
"Why?" she asked. "I knew it, you're not to be trusted, you don't want us to recover Podbe."
"It's not that," Chad responded, and with the same device he used to light up, he pressed another button that made a kind of giant monitor come down from the ceiling. It turned on and began to show the outside, where Podbe and Urion were starting their fight.
"Look, Reia, it seems like Podbe and that looks like the guardian, although his appearance has changed," Aiden indicated.
Aiden got up from the chair to see the event more closely. Like him, Reia and Chad also approached, although she still had suspicions about the occurrence of things.
Yes, it's true, it's him and also that detestable Urion who has transformed into something the size of Podbe. I sensed he had become stronger with that change. "Do you think Podbe can beat him?" said Aiden, looking at Reia worriedly.
I don't know if, in his erratic state, Podbe can defeat him. Remember, he has primary animal instincts and won't give up until he defeats his opponent or dies trying. "I hope I'm not wrong," and our friend can defeat him. "We need to find a way to contact him to help him," expressed Reia.
"If you just want to communicate with him, there might be a way," said Chad.