In the labor supervision area of a gritty Seattle prison, the laundry room hummed with activity.
Two inmates stood on opposite sides of the assembly line, stitching sheets with needles and thread. The sheets glided along the conveyor belt, grabbed by the calloused hands of another group of prisoners, and tossed into industrial washing machines. The machines rumbled, churning heavy, soaked linens as inmates hauled them to the dryers.
Once dried, another crew armed with irons tackled the wrinkled sheets, smoothing them out with practiced precision. The assembly line ran like clockwork—until the final step.
Whoosh.
Eggplant folded the freshly ironed sheets with care, stacking them neatly in a cart. Not too many, not too few—just enough to fill it.
Creak, creak, creak.
He stayed silent, snapped the cart's lid shut, and pushed it toward the prison area's exit.
"Inspection!" barked the guard in charge, rising from his chair and signaling Eggplant to halt.
Eggplant's jaw tightened. He released the cart's handle and stepped back.
Thwack!
The guard's baton flipped open the cart's lid. He grabbed the top stack of sheets, shook one out, and held it up. The fabric was pristine, still warm from the iron.
"Just pressed," Eggplant said, his voice steady despite the lump in his throat. "Looks good, right?"
"Hmm." The guard nodded, tossed the sheet back, and waved him off. "Move it."
The lid slammed shut. The guard took the cart and wheeled it toward the storage room.
Click. Thud.
The storage room door locked behind him.
A moment later, a faint rustling came from the cart.
Then, a soft click.
Winter Melon poked his head out from the pile of sheets, whispering, "Eggplant, I'm in the storage room…"
Score!
Eggplant played it cool, looking like just another inmate delivering laundry. But the plan was slicker than that—they'd used the sheets to smuggle Winter Melon into the storage room outside the prison's secure zone. A classic bait-and-switch.
The goal? A jailbreak. The problem? The manhole they needed to escape through was deep, and they'd need ropes to reach the bottom. In a prison, though, ropes were a pipe dream—too dangerous for inmates to touch. But a narrow ventilation shaft had caught their eye, connecting the laundry room to the storage area.
So, they'd hatched a plan: work the laundry shift, sneak sheets through the vent, and set up for the breakout.
Buzz!
Winter Melon's head barely cleared the sheets when the Twitch chat exploded.
"Holy crap, that's intense!"
"My hands are sweating just watching that guard check the sheets!"
"Eggplant's heart rate hit 130—more clutch than a 1v5 showdown."
"This game's got me on edge!"
"Yo, I need oxygen after that."
"Feels like a freaking spy flick."
"Breathe, people, breathe!"
"Thanks, Breathman…"
Eggplant exhaled, relieved, and hopped on the team voice chat. "You good, Winter Melon? Find the vent yet?"
"Lemme check…" Winter Melon replied, creeping out of the cart.
The storage room was cramped, packed with neatly stacked sheets, quilt covers, and pillowcases. After a quick scan, Winter Melon spotted the vent—high up near the ceiling, narrow as hell.
"Got it!" he said, hustling over.
But the vent was too high and too tight for one guy to shove sheets through alone.
"No dice," Winter Melon grumbled. "Can't reach it."
Eggplant frowned. "Aren't there shelves in there?"
"Yeah, but they're welded to the floor," Winter Melon said, tugging at a rack. "No go. You gotta get in here and boost me up."
"What the—how am I supposed to get in?" Eggplant snapped. "You think I'm gonna hide in another cart? Who's pushing me?"
"Chill, turn around," Winter Melon said. "I see you."
Through the storage room's narrow glass window, Winter Melon peeked at Eggplant in the prison area. They were only a door apart.
"I'll unlock it from inside," Winter Melon said, already fiddling with the lock.
Eggplant glanced back and saw Winter Melon's head poking through the orange-red door's window. But then he froze.
Another pair of eyes was watching—a guard, parked right outside the storage room, his back against the door. Winter Melon's blind spot.
Oh, crap.
"Don't open it! Stop, man, stop!" Eggplant hissed, his heart rate spiking.
The guard was inches away. One sound from that lock, and they were toast.
But Winter Melon was already twisting the handle.
Crunch—
Thinking fast, Eggplant spun and smacked the inmate next to him square in the face.
Wham!
"What the hell, man?!" the inmate roared, swinging back.
As the two squared off, the guard's head snapped up. He bolted toward them, baton raised. "Break it up! Get down!"
Meanwhile, Winter Melon dove under the window, curling into a ball, his breath ragged. "Holy… holy… holy…"
It all happened in a split second. A heart-stopping moment.
From the guard's blind spot, Winter Melon hadn't seen him stand up. In-game, the players only saw their own perspectives, with shared cutscenes and select camera angles. The rest? Voice chat, quick thinking, and pure instinct to handle curveballs like this.
If Eggplant hadn't caused a distraction, Winter Melon's lock-twisting would've doubled their sentences—or worse.
Twitch chat lost it.
"That slap was clutch!"
"Eggplant's reflexes are insane!"
"Top-tier play! MVP!"
"I thought they were done for!"
"This game's too real. I'm shook."
"Eggplant's got 17-year-old reaction speed!"
"Freaking epic!"
The perfect teamwork. The tightest sync.
They were dancing on a razor's edge, one slip away from disaster in a fortress of iron and guards. Escape demanded unity.
Eggplant's quick thinking saved their hides. The scuffle didn't land him in solitary—the guards broke it up fast. On Winter Melon's advice, Eggplant then "accidentally" broke a washing machine, luring the guards away.
From there, it was smooth sailing. Winter Melon got Eggplant into the storage room. They stacked up, using each other as a ladder to shove sheets through the vent.
Night fell. Lights out. They crawled through the vent, slid down their sheet-rope, waded through the sewer entrance, and pried open cold iron doors, clearing one hurdle after another.
Finally, they reached the manhole.
They'd escaped the prison zone, but one problem remained: how to climb the narrow, deep shaft?
…
"No way… you sure this'll work?" Zoey Parker asked, skeptical.
"Probably," Gus Harper replied with a shrug.
"Probably? You designed this game!" Zoey shot back.
"I did, but I didn't lock in a specific climbing move," Gus said.
This was no ordinary game—it was built for the IndieVibe X2 somatosensory cabin, with tweaks to match. Thanks to Luke Bennett's upgraded AI, the NPCs' logic was sharper, letting Eggplant pull off that distraction. The motion system's overhaul meant players could even parkour up the manhole walls with reverse jumps.
But Gus played it safe. He and Zoey locked arms, back-to-back, like climbers roped together.
Gus braced his feet against the left wall, Zoey against the right. They hung there, suspended, balancing each thousands of dollars in budget tech.
This was wild.
Zoey felt a mix of thrill and nerves. "Don't look down," Gus said. "Think of it like a trust fall. On three, we step up together."
"Got it," Zoey said, swallowing hard.
"Ready," Gus said, taking a breath. "One, two, three—go!"
Scrape!
They inched up together.
"One, two, three—go!"
Scrape!
Again.
"One, two, three—"
"Ah!"
Zoey slipped. The balance broke. Dust and grit rained down the shaft.
Zoey caught herself with one leg, panting. "I'm sorry, I'm freaking out…"
The IndieVibe X2's immersion was unreal. The jailbreak's tension, the high-stakes climb—it had her shaking.
"It's cool," Gus said, calm and steady. "Don't look down. Look up. On three, step up."
Zoey's position was off, so she needed to adjust to restore balance.
"Ready," Gus said, gripping her arm. "One, two, three—go!"
Scrape!
Scrape! Scrape!
Jada Brook and Yin leaned on each other, climbing slowly. "Easy, easy, we're almost there…"
Ethan Vance and Old Horse pushed upward. "Man, this is intense. I'm sweating buckets…"
Chloe Quinn and Caleb Knox moved in sync. "Caleb, I'm slipping—help!" "Hang on, Chloe, we're close!"
Yin and ShuBro powered through. "ShuBro, keep it up! We're winning this!"
Team after team climbed, encouraging each other up the narrow shaft.
Twitch chat was floored.
"This is next-level teamwork. Only real friends pull this off."
"I'm tearing up. This is friendship."
"The interaction in this game is unreal."
"No wonder they didn't use AI teammates. This vibe is irreplaceable."
"I need a bestie to play this with…"
"Best co-op game ever."
"Thank God for a happy ending. I couldn't handle another gut-punch."
The screen dimmed as Eggplant and Winter Melon reached the manhole's platform, collapsing in relief.
"We made it…" Eggplant said, catching his breath.
"You afraid of heights?" Winter Melon asked.
"Kinda," Eggplant admitted, eyeing the screws on the manhole cover. "This is a joke, right?"
Winter Melon smirked, touching the screws. "No biggie. I can unscrew 'em with a wrench."
"Then we need the workshop," Eggplant said.
They nodded, but Eggplant's voice cut through, half-joking, half-dreading: "We're not climbing back down, are we…?"
Winter Melon chuckled. "Looks like it."
"...Dammit."