"We should lead with 'we're just as confused as you are'... Hey, link real quick?"

Alice makes eye contact. The emotion at the front of her mind is curiosity.

Nervous confidence. I have a gun. 9mm. Not loaded right now. I know how to use it. I won't unless there's about to be blood spilled anyway, extreme circumstances, but I do have one.

Aaaand can she bundle up and send her intuition about how long it takes/risky it is to load-aim-fire in various situations?

Alice responds with some mild surprise before she sends a sense of where all the knives secreted around her body are. Two on the inside of her thighs one in her right boot, and the small one disguised as a hair ornament. She also sends how long it takes her to get at any of them.

She nods before breaking the link. "Good to know we understand each other, yeah? How much you want to bet either of us is better at defending ourselves than those two guys put together?"

She laughs, "Zahn indulges me on occasion so he isn't completely untrained, but I'm a far and away better than him. I can't speak to Nick."

"Wouldn't surprise me if he had hidden depths in that direction, but he's never talked about it. Offered to go shooting with him once, he said no. Anyway, let's go see if they've made any progress."

Zahn as it transpires has figured out how to enter the lessons system, it's under the interface section. He's busy learning about stain removal.

(Nick is randomly trawling the bits of the encyclopedia he can actually view, copying interesting sounding tidbits into his laptop)

"Having fun with that, Zahn?"

"Not really, I mean I guess it might be potentially useful at some point, but I don't really expect to urgently need to know this."

"Yeah, I was being sarcastic. Anyway, I think we should all pop upstairs real quick when you two are at a good point for a break. See if anyone else has showed up, explain things if they have."

"Sure, let me just get to the next checkpoint, I think it'll be another minute or so."

She goes to have a quiet conversation with Nick. "Hey. You're on the edge of freaking out, I can tell."

"Hardly. I'm just - really annoyed at our shiny new alien overlords and trying to think of what they want."

"There's a good chance that all this craziness, all the wrong of being kidnapped and how things are laid out, is because they're just not good at understanding us. Not that they're necessarily hostile. The links, too, I've done several. I don't feel any different, besides wanting to share a little more in that exact moment. I think - they're going to be helpful if we have to live here."

He sighs. "Forgive me for trying to subvert what I think is some kind of alien manipulation. I- It cuts off if you get too stressed about it, yes?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." He looks up. The deep carpet of anxiety, tension turned to purpose, nearly makes Walta stumble. She feels a well of sympathy. And then Nick hiccups, ending it, blinking rapidly. "Well then! Let's go have a peek at our hypothetical newcomers."

"Alright, all done." Zahn stands up and they walk back upstairs and open the kitchen door.

There are five people in the lounge - One of the guys is holding a beer bottle, and one seems to be some kind of sports player if the muscles are any indication. The two girls are chatting over nachos in a corner.

Buff guy says, "Hey! How's it going? You guys the organizers? Those were some pretty sweet special effects, but I gotta ask, was there anything... Iffy in those drinks?"

"Actually... we're guests like you. I don't know if you've looked out the window but the sky is a bit greener than you've probably come to expect and there's some other evidence that we're not on Earth anymore."

He nods and winks. "I gotcha. This is part of the puzzle, right? Like an Escape The Room?"

"As much as it's hard to believe at first, this is tragically and unfortunately real."

"...Alright."

The last guy, the best dressed person here, says, "Then present your evidence. The elevator ride and the sky itself could be some kind of elaborate screen. Illusions can be very powerful. Do you have anything else?"

"Well, the shape of the building is different, there's a large wall surrounding the building, we now have telepathic powers, and the computer system has an encyclopedia with entries that are strongly suggestive of not being on the same planet."

He scoffs. "Telepathic powers."

One of the girls in the corner replies, "Naaah, it's true. I felt it earlier. Mina, you felt that right?"

"I think so. But it might have just been the weed."

"It took us a little bit to discover it but it's pretty easy to do once you know it exists, it works based on eye contact."