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For every day that Facility B had had subjects in its walls, the Chromatic security wards were awoken at precisely 0800 hours by a simple piercing alarm. Every day apart from today, that was. The first alarm went off in the halls of the Red block at the assigned time, but there were no bootfalls as armed staff made their way into the halls in preperation for the newly arisen subjects. In fact, there were no noises from the staff at all.

Then, two minutes later, Yellow and Blue subjects were awoken simultaneously, the alarm warbling slightly; something which again had never been heard once in all the years that Facility B had been running for. Another minute and a half would pass, and then Purple ward's alarm would finally arise from its slumber, offering only a few pitiful mewls before quieting down again. Once it had stopped making noise, the other three joined it in its silence, leaving the facility deathly quiet.

It was undeniably eerie. The cameras, which normally held an unblinking red light sat unpowered and silent, unmoving and unwatching. Everything was still and silent apart from the subjects. The canteen was empty- the kitchen abandoned by its normally masked staff, but the security protocols that held the subjects in place certainly had not lifted. Every door, every barrier was slammed down, with only the recreational areas open and avaliable.

Power fluttered, off and on, the lights switching between their fully powered white flouresence and their low-powered red illumination. The air vents choked and juddered, and the water pumps were evidently fritzing as well; water fountains occasionally letting a comfortable jet out, and equally occasionally providing but a small dribble.

It seemed that, for now, the lunatics were in charge of the asylum.

Jeremiah woke up, at about the same time he normally did. Or, rather, he was barely nudged by the pitiful whinge of the alarm in his cell, and it took him a couple of minutes to actually realise he was conscious, and another few to come fully awake; a few more seconds to recognise he was late up, and maybe a couple more seconds after that to understand that something was not right about the situation, given that the guards weren't on his arse for sleeping in.

Speaking of which, were they gonna come around any time soon? As if tempting them to, he decided to do some pullups instead of following the schedule... and after five minutes and his sixth set, they were still absent. And speaking of which, his cell door was open, too, wasn't it?

'¿Qué diablos está pasando?' he asked himself, finally moving toward the door and pushing it. Sure enough, it swung on its hinges, allowing him out into the corridor. Looking around... the lights were flicking between their usual white colour and the red they used when low on power. Air vents sounded nasty as hell... anything else? Shit, probably, but he'd go for that when he felt like it.

'Ay, anyone else up yet?' he yelled out, trying to get at least a few people's attentions. There were others in this building, right? He knew he'd wanted to bang some of them for a while, but... well. If he was the last one in, that just meant he had the run of the place. Heh... what a shithole to be left alone in.

Seriously though, the lack of staff was creepy as shit.

FY-1387-EM

A vast, open field, seemingly endless with no chance of providing any form of cover. No trees, no man-made structures...nothing. That’s what Eliana was up against. That, and the terrifying creature in close pursuit. To make matters worse, she didn’t get any faster with each step, but quite the contrary, rather. The distance was slowly closing between her and her tormentor, regardless of how fast she attempted to run. Her mind was practically screaming at her to go faster, but her legs weren’t obeying such orders. It was frustrating to say the least. That’s what she felt: frustration and fear. An odd combination, really.

During a lapse of judgement, Eliana decided to look back behind her. That mistake proved to be fatal when she clumsily missed a step and unceremoniously fell down to the ground. The landing hurt a bit, but it wasn’t anything to complain about. Her pursuer, however, was just about to change that. In a last ditch attempt to save herself, Eliana raised her arms in front of her as if that would somehow protect her. She then saw the creature leap in the air screeching and moments before it landed on her, Eliana woke up startled and covered in sweat. She blinked her eyes for a moment, realizing that she was in the safety of her room. No creature in sight. Well, not in the form she had just experienced. The alarm was annoying enough to make her get up and out of bed. She rubbed her eyes and stretched her arms over her head, and then she waited.

However, some time passed and she was still waiting. Slightly confused, Eliana approached the door and noticed it was unlocked. She pushed it ever so slowly and peered down the hall in one direction. O que está acontecendo? she thought to herself, not having the slightest clue where anyone was or why her door was unlocked. She then took a step forward, placing herself in the hall with her back against the wall. Maybe they were running late?

Sam had been laying in bed awake for a few minutes before the alarm went off. After all his years spent here he had gotten very used to the routine. Now that the alarm had gone off the usual security detail would come to escort him to breakfast. Not that he would ever try anything, Samuel had accepted long ago this was his new life. Much like how one may come to terms with a loved one slowly dying of a terminal illness and being bedridden. They may not be dead yet, but one could reasonably accept that they'll never return to who they were to make life easier. In that same way Samuel accepted he would forever be a prisoner, doing the same thing for the rest of his life.

But today was different, because Sam did not hear the usual footfall of his escort team. In fact, he didn't hear anything at all. He got out of bed and looked at the security camera, it was off. "Um, hello?" Walking over to his door he found it had opened as it always had, but this time he was alone. What was maybe more concerning than the guards not showing up was he couldn't see any of the other red prisoners in their cells. "Maybe they all just got up before the alarm and left?" It sounded ridiculous even as the words came out of his mouth.

Sam wasn't sure if he was the only one left in the facility, or if he was then why he was the only one left behind. There was only one way to find out though. He pushed his door open, on alert in case any of the security systems decided they were still working. But there was nothing, only more silence. His first stop was yellow block since it was the closest to red. He walked down the hallway slowly, checking cells as he passed. "Hello? Anyone here?" He called out and walked, his right hand was covered in a him layer of frost, ready to attack with his cryokinesis should anything threaten him.

@Asesina

FY-1387-EM

No, the guards were most certainly not running late. With their numbers, someone should have been there by now. Something was going on, and Eliana wanted to get to the bottom of it. This curious nature of hers had landed her in hot water before, but she didn’t care. This wasn’t something she should be taking lightly. That much was made evident when she heard a male voice from the direction of the red wing.

"Hello? Anyone here?"

He sounded inquisitive, and on the same level of confused as she was. That complicated things a bit. Wasn’t anyone else around over there? Eliana peered in through some doors, but she only saw empty rooms with not a soul in them. It seemed as if no one else was here neither. Her heart started beating a little faster. Being left behind was not a good thing in certain cases, and that odd feeling in the back of her throat was not reassuring at all. Eliana neared the corner and stood still, holding her breath. She listened to the man’s footsteps as they grew closer, momentarily wondering whether or not to rush him and take him by surprise. But she realized that to even entertain the thought was terribly foolish. Who knew how he’d react, and what advantage he had over her. It was then Eliana decided to slowly walk out of the corner, her hands on either side of her chest as to not startle him. She would either be greeted or she’d be attacked, and she was obviously hoping for the former.

@duskshine749

Wha- oh, shit, somebody else was here. Which, actually, that really was it, huh? No other guards... and so far as he could tell, nobody else had come out of their cells yet beside him and this other guy. With a hoodie. Lucky fucker probably had a television in his room too. Not that that mattered right now, but...

'Ay, hermano,' he called out, heading over to the guy. Did he recognise him? Twig like this guy, he'd probably remember seeing him around. 'You just get up too? 'Cause, uh, I'm pretty sure the guards need to get their arses in gear, yeah? Folla perezoso. Hah. That was a joke, but uh...' He gestured around as if to say "noone else is laughing", because obviously they couldn't if they weren't there. If a joke falls flat in prison, does anybody laugh at it?

'The hell you doin', anyway?' he asked. 'You look like shit, like you ain't slept in ages- have you slept in ages, mate? Or have you been on drugs for months or something?' Shit, looking at him now... he could have been. He didn't know if the guards used tranqs on inmates regularly, even if he knew what it was like to get shut down every so often, but this guy sure did look like he was coming down from something narcotic.

@Nyxira

---

The air was unmoving and the room was a bit warmer than usual, but that didn’t really affect Colette as her eyes remained closed. Her head was tilted on the pillow, her chest rising and falling in slow rhythm. She had spent several hours the night before typing away on the computer, working on another short story the world would never see. It was easy for Colette to get lost in the worlds of her imagination. On occasion this had made waking up in the mornings difficult, but Colette long ago stopped caring about a strict schedule. The facility told her when various activities took place, and so she no longer kept her own schedule like she had before in captivity. She wasn’t lazy, but she had become accustomed to the overhead alarms every morning.

This morning, however, the pitiful noise that came from the speaker was not enough to get Colette to stir. For the first time, she was able to sleep in even though it was not her intention. Her eyes fluttered open as the still air was disturbed by noises coming from outside. Unlike the heavy strides of the guards, it was quiet conversation. Colette sat up in her bed, pushing the heavy weighted blanket off her torso. She rubbed her eyes and finally took notice of the red light illuminating her room. She looked about from her desk, where the computer lay powered down, to the shelf with the fake planets and completed 3D puzzles. Everything was basked in a dim red light.

“Ce n'est pas bon.” Colette swung her self over the edge of the bed and put on her shoes before doing a quick half skip to the door. She placed her hand against it, ready to try and open it. She stopped herself and looked around the room once again. The camera caught her eye as it pointed towards the ground, powerless. She tried the door, and surprisingly it opened with no effort. Pressing her head against the ajar door, she tried to see who was speaking out in the hall. It was hard to see who specifically, but she did see two figures a little way down. They didn’t look like guards, one appeared to be wearing a hoodie. Perhaps they would know what was going on.

Colette was a little hesitant to leave her room. Even though it was years ago, she remembered what happened the last time she tried to escape. She was mostly unharmed, but the facility was not nice about it. She wasn’t trying to escape this time per se, but perhaps it would be an opportunity. With a quick breath Colette opened the door completely and stepped out into the hall. It was long reaching a fair distance on either side. From what she could see, many of the doors to her neighbors were open. Colette knew some of them, so perhaps they took the opportunity to escape before she even woke up. In any event, Colette and the two figures down the hall had missed the initial exodus.

Colette walked down the hall until she was able to get a clearer view of the two figures speaking. She recognized one of them, at least from the few time’s she saw him in the common areas. He made it no secret that he wanted to leave and while Colette thought his outbursts weren’t helping his case, she sympathized with him. She never got his name, since the few times she’s seen him, she tried to avoid him. The other, the one in the hoodie, Colette did not recognize. He seemed a bit dazed, but was standing just fine. It never occurred to her to request a different set of clothes. The grey uniform is all she was handed. When she approached, she only caught the tail end of their conversation. It seemed like neither of them knew what was going on either.

“Excusez-moi. Excuse me.” Colette said as she walked up to the others. “I think I missed the emergency. Where did everyone go?” She knew that neither person would likely know any of the circumstances that brought them to where they are, but at least now they also knew how clueless she was.

---

1801 was getting anxious. As usual, he’d been jarred awake by the facility's alarms and the sudden activation of its fluorescent lights. Today however something was definitely wrong, the alarm had an odd quality to it and the lights flickered violently. Neither occurrence was all that unusual all things considered, at least not compared to some of the other shit that happened in the facility, but compared to the usual monotony of the morning routine, the difference was patently obvious. Even more worrying was the silence. Normally at this point, the hallway would be filled with the sounds of facility staff going about their business but today it was almost dead silent.

Still, it wasn’t like 1801 couldn’t think of a perfectly mundane explanation. There were plenty of people in the facility who could affect energy and maybe one of them had done something that was messing with the power and dampening sound. Looking up, he confirmed that the usually ever watching camera now appeared lifeless, consistent with his previous assessment. 1801 was still pretty worried, and more concerning explanations to the present situation continued to surface in his mind, but for now he tried to comfort himself with the idea that if he just got ready and waited a bit things would sort themselves out.

Getting up 1801 dressed himself in a dress that definitely needed a wash, noticing the open doorway as he did so. It struck him as odd that he couldn’t see any staff outside or that the door had opened in the first place as he was pretty sure they were meant to do the exact opposite in the event of power issues. Then again, the facility staff were probably off dealing with whoever had done this and he was probably wrong about the door locking thing, it wasn’t like the staff would want to trap him in an enclosed room, at least not outside of scheduled testing.

“Yeah, that’s probably it. The simplest answer is usually…” he trailed off, “Ahhh… Test one. Test two. Test three.” Strange, his voice sounded normal, wasn’t there a sound dampening effect or something? Even if the staff were elsewhere surely with the doors being open he should be hearing others. Should he call out? What if it was something more concerning than he'd hoped for?

“Hello? Anyone here?"

As if responding to his thoughts and echoing the question he hadn't yet decided to ask, 1801 heard a voice. It sounded a little ways off, from the direction of the red wing, and didn’t seem to indicate that whoever it was had any company or was any less confused than he was… still two confused people was probably better than one.

After a moment of hesitation, 1801 peeked out of his room, just in time to spot a woman dressed identically to himself round the corner. 1801 was pretty sure he recognised her but didn’t really know anything beyond that. In any case, she probably wasn’t the voice he’d heard before which meant there were now three people who didn’t seem to know what was going on, himself included. Then again that was 50% more than two people and possibly the beginning of a trend so he’d take it over nothing.

“Um- Good morning,” 1801 supplied after catching up to his neighbour. Probably not the most appropriate greeting given the circumstances, but he wasn’t good with people so it’d have to suffice.

After a bit of walking a woman rounded the corner. She was about Sam's age, maybe a bit older, more importantly though she was wearing the same type of outfit he was with a yellow patch as opposed to his red one. Before he could greet her though another prisoner revealed himself. This boy was a good deal younger than he was, he had to be a teenager. He greeted them with a good morning, not what Sam would have gone with but this was a strange time so he didn't blame the kid.

"I'm glad I found some other people, there was no one left in red ward, I thought I might be the only one here." He let his guard down slightly, releasing the frost that had accumulated on his hand. He still kept alert to his surroundings though, whatever made everyone else in the facility disappear could still be around. "I don't suppose either of you know anything about what's happening, do you?" It was a long shot but he might as well ask. Worst case scenario they both have no clue and nothing changes.

"Oh, I'm Sam, by the way." While Sam had accepted from the moment he got here that he was never going back to his old life, he had always refused to forget his name and only go by his number. That must have been the small part of him that had hope of returning to the outside world one day. And right now that part of him was gaining confidence.

@TheMushroomLord @Asesina

FY-1387-EM

It was quite the relief to find another one of them in the hall. Eliana picked up on their small talk; she had easily learned a bit of English in the past and being that she was a prisoner now, she had nothing but time to listen to just about anyone in the facility who would speak around her. But none of the guards were around. When she first arrived on site, they established various hand-signals so they could communicate back and forth with her. Just the basics, nothing complicated. On the other hand, whenever she had her medical appointments, she was afforded a tablet so that she may communicate with her doctor more in-depth. All under the watchful eye of a guard, of course. They were not taking any chances.

The young woman lightly tapped on her throat while simultaneously shaking her head, indicating she was mute. She then addressed the guy named Sam by mouthing the words “I need” as she pretended to write on her hand. She was hoping they would get the gist of what she was trying to communicate. For one, she could have a fighting chance, and she would also be able to get her point across a lot quicker. Eliana obviously knew sign language, but there was a high probability that the same could not be said of the other two currently present there with her.

@duskshine749
@TheMushroomLord

So, first off, the hoodie kid was definitely on drugs, possibly being force-fed them. Might be from one of those Middle East countries? Second, another lady was showing herself now - French, apparently, and pretty hot. The sort of chick he'd try and get down with if this were normal prison hours- had he tried to do that before? He didn't fuckin' know, there were so many people in this place.

'Yeah, man,' he confirmed for the squirt, 'shit's all kinds of wrong right now. I mean, it's not just the fuckin' guards - where the hell are the other inmates? Why's it just us? Like- ¿Qué carajo? ¡Esto es tan jodidamente estúpido!' This was pretty fucking annoying now - or, well, he was painting it like that so it didn't get too creepy. He couldn't be freaked out if he was angry, right?

'Mira, vale, escúchame- er, listen to me.' Fuck, they didn't know Spanish, probably. Shit. 'Here's what we're gonna do, right? We're gonna go to the cafeteria, see if we can still get brekkie, yeah? Probably we need food, and probably if anyone else is alive, they're gonna head there for food, because they're gonna be hungry too. I know I'm fuckin' hungry, anyway,' he finished off, scratching his stomach. Yeah, that made sense. A bit of something to put them on for a bit. So, cafeteria, that was... that way, yeah.

@Nyxira@Randomness

---

1801 shook his head when asked whether he knew what was going on, he'd been hoping the red ward would have had that information himself. The fact that there apparently weren't any other red wards around either was concerning, if anyone could have done this they'd probably have been in the red or maybe yellow wards, but that didn't seem to be the case.

He had seen Sam emerge with frost or something similar formed around his hand, so whatever he did probably didn't include making people disappear or messing with lights. In any case, even as socially clueless as he was 1801 had been around long enough to have an idea of the ways people tended to act after making big displays of power, accidental or intentional, and neither of his fellow inmates seemed to fit the bill.

1801 noticed his fellow yellow ward signing something, he was pretty sure he'd seen her making similar gestures before and had gotten the impression it was how she communicated, but he hadn't paid enough attention to know for sure. The first sign he wasn't about, was she saying she couldn't breathe... he wrenched his mind away from that line of thought, he already felt on the verge of freaking out as it was.

The second sign was significantly easier for him to interpret, it looked like she was saying she wanted to write something. Eger to help 1801 quickly ran back to his room across the hallway, grabbing a notebook and a fist full of stationary. It didn't occur to 1801 that he might have misinterpreted the sign or that the book was half full of his working for a variety of subjects until in less than neat handwriting until he was already offering the book up.

Suddenly feeling self-conscious he decided that it was a good time to shift the focus back to their names. "I'm 1801," he said, sounding out each number, then remembering Sam had provided the other kind of name he added, "Or, um- Felix?" He hadn't intended for it to come out sounding like a question but didn't quite have the confidence to give the seldom-used name in any other way.

---

The younger looking of the two ducked behind the other. Colette let out a small apology as he poked back out and explained that he didn’t have any idea of what was going on. The older man more or less was in the same situation. The two of them confirmed what Colette already knew, which was nothing.

Despite it not being anyone’s fault, she still let her mouth relax into a soft frown. After years of strict schedule keeping and immaculate upkeep of the facility, its staff, and the people they held contained, it was very unsettling that everything went dark seemingly overnight. How was it that she slept through the probably dozens of footsteps of the other captives leaving through the halls, but woke to these two talking? It didn’t matter now. But the older of the two gentlemen brought up a good point.

“Oui. Je suis d'accord.” Colette collected herself and stood up straight. She put her hands together in a soft clap. “That must be where everyone went. C'est une bonne idée. Someone there must know what is happening.” Besides finding someone else who might know what was going on, Colette was also starting to feel hungry. Some food would do some good and hopefully bring some certainty to the confusion. Normally, that is where many of them would have been corralled to anyway. At the very least, there weren’t many ways they could wander. If she remembered right, the cafeteria would be at the end of the hall where the other wards met nearby.

“Oui.” Colette confirmed with the new comer as she decided to start walking that way. Despite the hall being bathed in red light, there was a small sense of normalcy at the moment. Wanting to break up the short silence, she spoke up once again.

“By the way. My name is Colette. I think that would be easier to remember than a number. I don’t think I ever got either of your names. May I ask what they are?” Colette turned her head to face the others. Colette could not help that making as many friends as they could in this situation would be a good decision moving forward. She was still uncertain of what was to come.