The lunch lady of hollow ridge playthrough

Turn 7 of 32

you dont mind it as you all head to sleep. you all wake up at the same time the next day and start the day by trying to escape again. still no exit. you all head to the kitchen and grab the frozen eggs and bacon. you all start to cook the food like your about to serve kids. while this happens, you voice changes to one of a older southern woman with a drawl. when Priya talks, its the same voice.

You sleep without deciding to, and wake without deciding to — Day 3, morning light, and all around you the dormitory rises on the same unseen bell, twelve women sitting up in twelve identical beds at the identical second. Nobody comments on it anymore. That frightens you more than the book did, and you file it away with the pride.

The escape attempt is Dana's idea, and you all go along with it one more time: the welded shutter, the cinderblock doors, the long walk down the valley road nobody will take. Nothing has changed overnight except the tire tracks, which the wind has finished erasing. 'Somebody's coming,' Dana says on the walk back, and for the first time you hear her saying it to convince herself.

The walk-in yields eggs and bacon, frozen in bricks, and twelve women fall into the assembly without a word being spoken. Cracked eggs, laid bacon, the griddle hissing — you cook it the way you'd cook it for a line of children, trays squared, portions even, and the rhythm feels so right that you almost forget to watch for anything at all.

Then you speak. 'Bacon's done, pull it off.' The voice coming out of your mouth is not yours. It is older, lower, thickened at the edges by a southern drawl that has never lived in you, warm as sweet tea. You stop, hand still on the spatula, and run your tongue over your teeth as if you could find the accent there.

'Y'all mind the eggs now, they burn quick,' Priya says beside you — the same voice. Exactly the same voice. Her hand comes up over her mouth too late, and she stares at you over it, and her eyes are shining, and she backs away from the griddle shaking her head, out through the kitchen door, and you hear her breath going quick and ragged somewhere in the corridor.

Nobody else stops working. Talia flips bacon. Dana portions eggs. And when you open your mouth to call after Priya, the drawl comes out again, patient and unhurried, like a woman who has fed children for thirty years and never once raised her voice.