[center][color=c07f4b][H3][I][b]F I N G E R T R A P[/b][/I][/H3][/color][/center]

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[indent]Carrie dreamt of fire. It had been the only thing on her mind in recent days, only tonight, the dreams lasted longer, and they felt warmer. It was like she was there again, scuttling through clouds of smoke to pull her mother from the burning house that claimed her life. She wasn’t reliving the events, no, she was dreaming of them; Dwelling on the memories of that evening and their finality. She hadn’t realized she was dreaming until she woke up from a particularly heavy night of sleep. 

A message on her phone. It was jarring, but out of sheer habit, Carrie hauled herself out of the bed she was in, into a standing position at which point she realized she was less awake than usual, and not at home. Carrie flicked her eyes across the room she was in, and felt confused. It was an awfully fancy room, better than anything she had at- Oh. 

Right.

Carrie grabbed her phone and looked at who texted her. No recipient. It was a video, she opened her phone and saw that it was her consenting to being taken here. It made sense now, her memory was starting to come back, and Carrie remembered that she met someone from here. What were their names? One sounded like hers, the other was a longer name… Kassidy? Karen? It would probably come to her at some point. Carrie slid the phone into a pocket and continued looking around, getting more used to her surroundings when something chirped at her.

She turned and saw a floating object that looked like it had a pug’s face. Big eyes, stubby nose, maybe not like a pug. It looked funny, though. [color=c07f4b]”The hell is-“[/color] Carrie was stopped when the ugly little machine starting blurting out words. “Ms. Mullen” this, and “personal assistant” that. So it was a robot. Like an Alexa or something. Pretty cool, actually. Then it told her to get dressed and get moving. Well, okay then.

Carrie spent the next 30 minutes looking through what she had with her and taking a shower. It was pretty easy to “put on her face” as they said when she had four hands to work with. One hand to comb her hair back, two fidgeting with a shirt and the other holding her phone watching the full video of her consent. This room she had to herself was [i]nice.[/i] Back home, if you turned the sink on then the shower would lose water pressure for a while, but that didn’t seem to happen here. Whoever stole Carrie away to- where were they again? Italy? Wherever they were, someone seemed to snatch up a lot of her belongings beforehand. She even had the jacket she used for blending in back home. Carrie recalled that there would be other mutants here, so she wondered if she would actually need it.

Then again, she didn’t actually know anyone here, and it felt weird being away from home, let alone in another country.

She put it on anyway, a large, old Carhartt jacket that would definitely look out of place in a place as fancy as this. Carrie slid her front arms through the sleeves and folded her back arms so they wrapped across her stomach. She then zipped it halfway up. To someone else, it would have seemed strange, but Carrie felt comfortable putting it on; From what little she knew about this place, there would be strangers around. While she didn’t mind strangers, she wanted to seem normal at first. Hopefully no one would say anything about that, right?

Right?

Carrie asked to funny-looking robot for directions and headed that way, towards where other people- other [i]mutants[/i] would be.

[center][color=77B0E2][H3][I][b]C L O U D C H A S E R[/b][/I][/H3][/color][/center]

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In times of waking up in a strange room with a lack of your own memories, there were usually one of two things that a person did. 

In case number one, the first instinct was to simply lie there as you took in your surroundings, looking around and seeing where everything was as you tried to rouse your brain into remembering just what the hell transpired in the correct sequence that could possibly lead you to this exact situation. The other thing people usually did in this situation was the get up and panic, knowing that something had to be terrible wrong if they went to sleep and woke up in a place not even remotely familiar to them. Nathan Kay, being an individual possessed of immaculate individually, did both. When he opened his eyes, he was expecting to see swirls of colors that he had seen countless times before, and while Nathan did see swirls of colors, they weren't quite the swirls he was used to seeing. The vague shapes that the colors curved around were not the curves he recognized in his mind. This was not a place of familiarity any more than the feeling of absolute fatigue was familiar.

Nathan didn't stand up or roll out of bed upon realizing this. No, his first inclination was to stare forward and assess the situation: He felt like shit, like he was drugged. What was he doing before this? He was in a public setting... Something with a lot of people in a crowd... [i]Where?[/i] Nathan couldn't remember. Could it be that someone had found him? Was this some kind of imprisonment for his actions in the past? Had Blackhawk not been-

[i]Blackhawk. Cloudchaser. Candles, sadness, [b]Jotun.[/b][/i] Something stirred in Nathan's head. He could swear he remembered something. He met somebody, and that was related to him coming here. Rather than stand up, he [i]floated[/i] up. Directly up out of the bed and into a cross-legged position a few feet above the bed he was in. The room proceeded to shake slightly as he stretched his powers outwards to better understand the room. A door, windows, a bed, and... Something mutant-related. When Nathan turned, he could see something floating by his bed, it glowed like a person but it was shaped more like a trash can. Patterns danced across it like an ocean of white hypercubes shrinking and growing infinitely. Mutants. Mutants Mu- Nathan had seen that pattern once already, someone else had it. Who was she? Karen? 


[i]"Do not be alarmed, Mr. Kay. I am your personal assistant while you are attending Istituto Nova per Giovani Eccezionali. If you are struggling, I am a robot. Not a mutant."[/i] That lifted some of the fog out of Nathan's mind, he came here willingly. He was told this was a safe place for mutants.

[color=77B0E2]"Okay... I remember this. Yeah- Yeah, I get it now. Okay, robot. Now what."[/color]

[i]"There will be an event taking place soon, which you will be required to attend. You have time. If you would like, I can accompany you until you're adjusted to the surroundings."[/i]

[color=77B0E2]"Nah, I got it. Just tell me where to go."[/color]

The robot gave Nathan the directions after he grabbed a shower, at which point he found the door and floated his way through the halls. He could see faint traces where another mutant had flown through the walls, which would hopefully be there when he came back so he could find his way room easily. He passed by other mutants, and it was very clear that he himself was one with the way his feet didn't touch the ground and the way his eyes fumed with white smoke. He was starting to remember things more now, and had a feeling that this would be a good things. Nathan had been drifting aimlessly for a while before he came here, and honestly, he wasn't sure he was even going to eat that day. As long as those people he met beforehand agreed not to spill secrets ahead of his own decision, this would be easy. He felt confident.

Eventually he found a room with some other mutants... One glowed with a pattern that didn't stay the same, and another looked like the was made of Lichtenburg scars twisting around each other in the shape of limbs It was almost blinding to see this many mutants in the same room at once after so long. There was a third who looked as if she was a mix of both other mutants. Everything else was a murky blur to Nathan. Not that this was unusual.

[color=77B0E2]"Yo."[/color] Was all he said, as he took a spot by some chairs, floating above the ground in a cross-legged position. Others in the room might have noticed a faint trace of something moving through the room, like a weak brush of the wind or something prickling against their skin.

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