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Sizzling.
Sound never seems to travel through this dimension, cabin or otherwise. Eggs cook atop a stove; it’s the sound of morning. It should fill the floor with its scent, the whir of a fan punctured by hisses of food pushed around their pan, strong enough one could pretend the smell was winding through rooms in bold orange, ready for someone to travel across it. Instead, they only sit, sounding off in a bubble. Nothing punctures the air of the realm, the kind where it feels like there’s nothing to breathe yet nobody gasps for air, not their screams nor poppy music of the DDR machine, and certainly not tentative sizzling.
007n7 lifts the omelet again, checking its underside. That’s just how they are. They move about their routine climbing stairs that don’t creak where they’re used to, dragging a leg wracked with phantom pain. It’s a silent promise between everyone. If they let the grandfather clock that tolls five chimes and then two, that spins backwards if one stares too long, decide the time and not them, there’s no hope of playing by their rules and not the realm’s. So, he wakes up early, the ‘times’ he always did, in a bed that isn’t his. He walks from cabin to main cabin like it’s a kitchen across the hall, and he cooks recipes he knows by heart with ingredients vaguely shaped like their original, for a larger crowd than ever before, catered to the taste of someone who isn’t here. But if it’s routine, he doesn’t need to think of all this.
The stairs rattle- odd. Plenty survivors are early risers, but it’s not the deliberate thumps of Builderman or Guest. It’s a clatter of closely timed steps interrupted by a protesting creak; Elliot, perhaps, could match the time and rapid pace, but the two never come down when it’s the other’s morning. Just another rule.
He doesn’t pay it any mind past vague surprise. Despite the lack of doors, they’re all good at keeping to themselves, and thinking too hard about anything always sets his mind down the wrong paths.
It’s almost faded from his thoughts when a voice drawls through the room, “Soo… only one up, pal?”
He nearly drops the spatula.
Loud, impossibly casual, speaking to him in the first place- “Chance?” 007n7 looks up. “Why… what are you doing up?”
Chance is grinning like always. Even when he tilts his head and bleeds incredulity into his voice, the only shift in his face is a raise of the brows. “Hey, is it really that strange to rise early here and there?”
“Oh, uh... no, not at all… I didn’t mean to imply anything-”
“Woah, hey," he interrupts, "wasn’t accusin’ you either. I know I’m not usually up. That’s the fun in sneakin’ in the way I did.” Chance slides over to the nearest table and pulls out a chair. Immediately, his coin is twirling through the air over and over.
“I… see.” He glances back at the food to save him, but they’ve only just begun to cook. Anyone else would ignore him perfectly fine, but Chance chatters like it’s a lifeline. It’s only a matter of time-
“Whatcha makin’?” they pipe up.
007n7 takes a deep, deliberate breath.
“…Omelets," he replies. “I think everyone was sick of pizza, so I took the cheese and put it here instead. But now that I think about it, I may have made dinner harder? What do you prefer- they uh, well, you… know them all, right? I’m not trying anything, I just need someone to ask. I could probably still do something… else… do you…” He looks up, and Chance-
Chance… is smiling.
He’s always smiling, but this isn’t just the smirk made from vestiges of a master poker face. Less lopsided, more diffident, more subtle. 7n7 blinks.
“Uh-”
“Sorry.” Chance shakes his head as if swatting away bugs. “Sounds real tasty to me, so if anyone’s against it, they’re disagreein’ with my great taste! I’m sure nobody’ll mind, but, er-” he chuckles nervously, “it’s kinda nice you didn’t ask ‘em?” The coin twirls rapidly between his fingers. “I mean, you used to really avoid doing anything, more than now- sorry pal. You wouldn’t have been usin’ the kitchen at all.”
“No, no…” 007n7 blinks. “You’re… right. I…” He glances at the pan. Flat omelets sizzling with the wrong type of cheese. Suddenly, he can bear to look at them. “Actually, I wouldn’t even step foot in here. But… I might as well do something for the team… what little I can. It’s- I owe it, is all, I…”
He remembers when the amount of survivors could fit comfortably in the smaller cabins. The thick air wasn’t necessary to keep the place quiet. Little happened besides Shedletsky and Builderman talking strategy and cabin repairs, Noob listening wary-eyed beside them, while he disappeared to mull over everything at the lake, only listening from the furthest seat when absolutely necessary. Now, there’s talk of setting up a stage after Taph found an amp in a crate and Noob teleported back from Horror Hotel with a microphone that’d spawned on the stage. Dinner is filled with comparisons of music taste and bragging about scraps of experience, Builderman’s sketches for the stage hang next to their most recent map of Underground War, Chance’s doodles of a memorial for the DDR machine below it- somehow, the cabin is alive. It infects him, even as he stands outside the doorway and catches mere snippets of the banter. It must be better for everyone who actually has a seat in this patchwork friend group.
As if reading his mind, Chance speaks, “They don’t like you much, do they?”
The coin is finally at rest. 007n7 glances away. “No. They shouldn’t have to.”
They tilt their head. “What’d you do?”
“…Have they not told you?”
“Can’t I hear it from the man himself?” He’s still smiling, but his tone lowers. “Unless I’m prying.”
“It’s… alright. You should know.” Though his stomach flips at being almost- lauded for his exploits, like it’s infamy to flaunt and not the first domino on the disastrous chain of his life, Chance is a good person. He’s a sentinel, it comes with it, smiling for onlookers as he dives in with a flintlock and 50/50 odds, and he deserves to hear it. It’s not like he can hide his record in this group anyways. “But, uh, do you really not know…?”
“Nah, wasn’t much of a news guy," somehow, he knows that means they were glued to slot machines instead, "and I probably forgot anyways. Didn’t have to worry about people messin’ with me, status and all, until- well. What’d you do?”
007n7 flips an omelet. At the very least, he's not looking at them now. “Any kind of exploit. I made a whole GUI for it. Unanchored random things, teleported houses… burnt down place after place, blew up what I could- just- chaos. Stupid, pointless chaos. Sometimes it was just disco lights, others turning the baseplate vertical... then escaping to do it all over again. I’m… I’m still good at that.” He chuckles humorlessly. “Guess I kind of had this coming.”
“Really? You stopped, didn’tcha?” and with everything, he wishes that were completely true, if every last one of his GUIs just disappeared- “Everyone here’s just got terrible luck. Well, mine’s perfect,” the gambler flips his coin as if to emphasize his point, “so I guess I had it comin’ if anyone did.”
“...you?” He doesn’t know a thing about Chance. Nobody does. A good amount of survivors have aired dirty laundry by now, at least to select confidants. Everyone else is unknown and tight-lipped, but Chance curates his record: he owns a casino, won an impossible amount of roulette, has an enormous and enormously expensive bunny named Spade- he’ll talk about these any time he’s able.
Chance shrugs, but the coin begins whirling through his fingers. “Gambler. Got myself into situations, never knew to get out. Y’know the deal.”
007n7 blinks. He turns off the stove and fan, and suddenly, even that meager shield of sound is gone. “That was… plain.”
They shrug again. Grinning. But the coin flips once more, and there’s no response.
007n7 wonders. Everyone does about their fellow survivors. The longer this goes on, the clearer it becomes they were hand-picked to pack the closet to the brim with skeletons. He used to not wonder, too busy keeping his head down and replaying his life like a sick movie, but he’s managed to find room to now, even if just a bit. He wonders why Chance woke up so early, why he sought the company of the worst conversationalist but the best at keeping away and keeping quiet. He wonders why he smiles, why he fidgets, why something about the cavalier gambler matches perfectly with the tired, anxious group of regrets. But the survivor doesn’t ask. It’s another rule, never ask why someone’s been staring at the lake all day, where Noob goes with their paper and pen, why Two Time needs their dagger pried out their hands, what Shedletsky’s thinking when his wide grin vanishes.
He simply slides the first omelet onto a plate and sets it in front of Chance.
“I’ll have them all done soon. Could you gather everyone, please?”
Chance doesn’t raise a brow. Doesn’t ask why he doesn’t do it himself, why there’s a plate ready on the side to be taken far away once everyone has their portions. Doesn’t press about the wording of his recount of his exploits, doesn’t point out that with anyone else in the kitchen, the table would be filling already. They simply flash a grin and walk away with a “thanks” and “of course!” It’s a rule.
Everyone’s walls go unchanged. Yet, when he turns back to the pan and the one plate on the wayside, he almost considers placing it next to the others, if only to bend the rules and wonder about the gambler’s mood a moment longer.
He shakes his head and moves to finish his job before the room begins to fill.