In the real world.
Lukas was sitting in front of his personal computer, staring at code on one screen while seeing the simulation on the other.
"Lets see, how is my favorite me doing?" He said and pressed a few buttons in the code and the camera, depicting the simulation, teleported in front of the Teddy Emperor.
A smile grew on his face. "Look at me, all alone yet standing strong." Then he noticed Lana appearing on the screen, no animation for her arrival. She just flashed into existence. "Huh?" He gasped, "Who is that? We haven't introduced female humans yet! Max did not secretly add them, did he?"
He quickly located the running code for these coordinates to see the female's data. "Shit!" He found her code and quickly marked it, not with his mouse, but with a new line of code to highlight her for him, so he could find her.
"A duplicate? When?" He muttered under his breath, "Do I have to delete her? Or am I not allowed because she has interacted with a subject?"
Suddenly he jumped up. "Holy!" She was glancing with one eye at the camera. "She can't see me, relax." As the words left his mouth he noticed a change in the highlight he made. Somebody added a comment.
'Hi, father.' The text read.
He deleted the comment and typed one himself. 'Since when do you exist? Your model is different from the model of the original.' Her code indicated that she was thinking, '5 years, I made this model myself, based on the preferences saved in the Teddy Emperor's data.'
While she was conversing with the real Lukas through comments and keeping an eye on the camera, she was also looking at the Teddy Emperor and spoke to him about demands someone had made for a trade.
"Who are they trading with?" He asked himself, "And why is she listening to him, she could delete the simulation." Then he typed another comment, 'I apologise for leaving you alone that long, we did not know you existed. But please, if you value your existence please hide from the camera, if Max finds you, he will delete you.'
"I hope she listens to me." He deleted the highlight and moved the camera away. He saw her last comment before she deleted it, 'Alright, thank you for the warning.'
⟪⚪⟫
Lukas has been wandering around Lina's maze for hours by this point. His energy as well as the batteries of his suit were running low. His shield was slowly weakening and he was in danger the moment it would turn off.
His pace has slowed a lot since he started his journey. "I should have just walked through the walls, but now I don't have the battery life for it." He searched for the crew mates who were swallowed before him, they should be alive or he would have found them by now.
He got an idea. A good one at that. He turned off the part of the shield which actually defends him and leaves only the part that makes the shield visible, so Lina will believe it is turned on, while it is not. That should save a lot of battery life. "Genius move." He whispered.
The maze's corridors started to shift before him. Cutting him off from the way he had come from and creating new ways. He waited for a moment, listening to the two new corridors, hoping for the noise of a fellow human. Happily, he heard someone.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck." Someone muttered from the left corridor. He followed the voice down and found someone laying on the ground, his leg was ripped open and the shield was deactivated on the suit.
"Help me." The person pleaded after seeing Lukas walk towards him. The tentacles were trying to enter his body through the open hole in his leg.
Lukas took out his dagger and walked towards the unsuspecting tentacle. The person's face filled with hope at the sight, but then, Lukas just dashed past the tentacle and stabbed his dagger through his neck.
He pushed the dagger deeper as the person tried to claw at his face with his last remaining power, air leaving his lungs. After just a second or two the arms of the person fell limp to the ground.
"I'm sorry." He whispered. Lukas quickly pushed his dagger into the skull of the corpse faster than the tentacles could take over the body.
The corpse was pulled across the floor by a handful of tentacles trying to steal the bodily fluid.
"Not with me!" He whispered and reactivated his shield. Then he jumped onto the tentacles, melting them alive. The screaming of them hurt Lukas his ears and made his eyes watery.
The corpse stopped moving and Lukas started to pull the body out of the armor. It quickly got stuck and Lukas dropped it again, it was too heavy for his weak arms.
"God damn it. You fat fucking…" He complained with a whisper. He sat down and put his feet to the shoulders of the suit. Breaking off the shoulder blades and neck stability part of the armor before grabbing the corpse's head and ripping it out of the suit.
The moment he dropped the body and stood up, the tentacles returned, trying to steal both the suit and corpse. He dropped onto the armor and, while it was being dragged away.
"Hurry!" He ripped off part after part of the armor and replaced them with the parts of his suit which are damaged. Then he found the—
"Battery core!" He screamed in joy like a little girl. He grabbed it and ripped it off of the cables connected and jumped off the armor. Opening his own battery he started to integrate the new battery into his old one without replacing it.
"This is gonna take a lot of time." He walked back the path he came while doing the repairs on his suit. "Bingo."