Jace took in the room once he’d passed through the door, no one answering his call. He must be here by himself. Or at least he must be the only person out so far, given there were a few other doors. The rest of the room didn’t have lighting from any windows, so it was just as dim as the bedroom had been. It was equally decorated, though these things seemed far more generic compared to the uncanny familiarity of the room with all his things. It did seem kinda like it was trying to be a nice space… but it was just unsettling, honestly. Like a rec room for a college, but somehow more depressing.
Jace hummed a little to himself in thought as he glanced over what was around and started to wander the room. His eyes lingering on the sealed metal door, but moved on to other decorations and details. There wasn’t much he could do about that now. Maybe it would open when he finished whatever tests they were doing and he could leave? Hopefully. This place gave him the creeps.
His attention flipped between everything at a relatively fast pace, not really settling on any one thing as he took in the room. It really was furnished like a dorm center. It reminded him of the one from school they called the Clubhouse, where he used to play pool or chess with his friends, or mess around with the communal keyboard. But his attention, while quick to jump, moved faster than it had for everything else when he heard one of the doors open. He hadn’t moved far, barely having a minute to explore the common room, and he started at the sudden noise behind him after the bout of relative silence. Jace twisted in the direction of the sound on his heel, hair and scarf following the flow of his movement. The strands flapped out where inertia carried them like the overdramatic curtain his hair could be.
Jace blinked on seeing the newcomer. He wasn’t sure what he expected exactly, but given the place and how on edge he felt, the worst case scenario had been on his brain when he’d whipped around. And then there was just—a dude. Not a bad-looking dude. But not a scary one either. He took in the new guy: he was about his height, a bit older, dark brown hair that looked like it might be slicked back, and a five o’clock shadow. He looked just as surprised to see someone else there as he himself felt seeing him, though the other guy recovered first. He even managed to sound nonchalant. “Uh—howdy! And I guess so…? I–.”
He intended to say more, but a second door jostled and then opened, a young girl spilling out from her room. She was tiny, or at least smaller than he and the other guy were, and where the guy looked way older than him, she looked far younger. She had long-ish blonde hair in a ponytail, big round glasses that only enhanced her baby-face, freckles, and green eyes that seemed to dart between them in an almost nervous way while she waved, too-large sweater-sleeve flapping.
She’d hardly spoken before the next door opened, and another girl, taller than the other one, stepped out and approached them. She looked his age, had blue hair cut short, bright blue eyes behind pink frames, and a blue scarf around her neck and over her uniform like his own red one. She definitely had a theme, didn’t she?
Jace gave her and the blonde girl a nod, but another door opened to draw his attention, and yet another person spilled out. This guy looked younger, like the blonde girl, and he was breathing shallow. He had dark hair and blue eyes behind dark framed glasses, and wore a red sleeveless hoodie over his uniform.
Concern needled at him seeing how worried the guy looked. Well. They all were to some degree, weren’t they? He certainly wasn’t feeling good about any of this or what the Wizard had said right now, but he did feel better knowing there were other people here. That probably meant they’d be safer. Hopefully they could all help each other.
“Uh—hi!” Jace clapped his hands together, light so they only snapped when they connected. He glanced over each of them with a smile, with only a hint of a waver. Meeting so many people and in such a tense situation was enough to throw him off-kilter, and he could feel it in the stiff way his hand jerked to move and the shuddery beat in his chest. “Um. I think we might all have the same questions, probably?” He waited a few seconds, to make sure they weren’t interrupted by anything, be it the TV or yet another person showing up.
That seemed to be all of them, and the screen stayed black. “So. I’ll go first! My name is Jace. And what I remember is waking up in that room.” He pointed back to where his door was. “I don’t remember how I got here, and I don’t know where here is, either. And then that Wizard person was talking on the TV, and said something about this being… an experiment?” He frowned briefly, before looking at them all again. “Was it the same way for everyone else?”
The common room itself reminded Drake of his days in community college. Sure, the student commons on campus were a lot more maintained than this place was, but the setup was nearly identical. The inclusion of the piano was an unusual touch, but he wasn’t here to judge people’s sense of interior decorating.
He was somewhat relieved to find that he wasn’t the only victim of this so-called Wizard. He did find it odd, however, that the others were quite a bit younger than himself, especially that blonde girl; she barely looked like she was out of high school. It made him curious as to what sort of ‘experiments’ they would be subject to, and at the same time, it made him not want to linger on the possibilities. Rather, he wanted to focus on escape, but the looks of that big steel door discouraged him from actually acting on it. For now, he’d play along, and pray that an opportunity for freedom came later…
As the first guy introduced himself, he checked his pockets to see if the kidnappers had the decency to leave him a pack of smokes and his lighter. No dice.
He caught the boy’s last question as he looked up. Hesitantly, he nodded. “Yeah, that’s what happened to me, too. Can’t remember a thing from yesterday. Let’s see, I… I was in my apartment, on my couch, and then…” Nothing. He remembered sitting at home, watching TV, but that was it. He was starting to panic, and he hated it. He took a deep breath, exhaling out the anxiety and grounding himself in the present reality (which wasn’t easy, considering the present reality sucked). One thing at a time…
“Okay… first thing’s first, my name’s Drake. As you can probably already guess, I have no idea where we are, who put us here, or what kind of ‘experiments’ they want us for.” A pause. “…I was gonna say something else, but I’m kinda freaking out right now.”
Squeezing the bat plushie to her chest with one arm, the other raised a sleeve to push her glasses up further on the bridge of her nose. Chloe finally got a good look of the room; it smelled like someone had dumped a gallon of lemon-scented bleach all over the place, and looked like some kind of prison with it’s lack of windows, concrete wall, and giant metal door. The furniture had no feeling of comfort at all. Especially not with that big, glassed-in television set, which Chloe feared would turn on any moment and that creepy voice would start to talk again. Experiments... This wasn’t... really a school at all, was it?
Others started to file in, and soon the room was a lot more lively. The panicking boy made Chloe jump a bit, getting a little more startled by his line of questioning. The blue girl looked familiar, however... she couldn’t put a finger on where she had seen her before. “U-Um...” It was a quiet sound, almost under her breath. Trembling, she gave another stressed squeeze to the plush.
It seemed that a lot of them were much older than her. The panicked boy, however, looked to be about the age of some of the boys in her class back home. She wasn’t sure if she should be relieved at that. Yeah, this definitely wasn’t some fancy school.
Hearing Drake and Jace introduce themselves, she took note of their names. Jace seemed to scare her a little less than Drake did, for more obvious reasons. She felt a little bit better knowing that they were at least friendly, and as far as she could tell, in the same situation as her. She agreed with the blue girl; at least she wasn’t alone here.
Finally, she piped up, stepping a little forward and lowering the bat. “M-my name is Chloe... It’s uh, I guess nice to meet you... or maybe not really... since this is-is kind of scary. I-I don’t remember how I got here...” She was trying really hard to keep it together, but tears were already forming at the corner of her eyes the more she thought about it, threatening to spill over at any minute. Using her oversized sleeve again, she pushed it under her glasses to rub at her eye. That didn’t stop her voice from breaking as she spoke, however. “I-I... I don’t want to be part of any experiments. I want to go home and see my dad again.”
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