[h3][hr][color=#38547C]Keaton Plasse[/color][/h3][hr]
Stepping out into the hallway was surreal. Suddenly, Keaton was transported into a world where everyone blended in—where she didn’t feel like she constantly had a target on her back. The mixture of ages and genders was swathed in an equalizing white that blanched everything around it, and the only major difference between her group and the people moving through the halls was that her group wasn’t moving.

She swallowed, then forced herself into motion. “Left,” she said at the intersection where a college-aged man was engaged in discussion with an older woman with glasses, their hand motions rapid and animated. “Right,” she said at the turn where, in a chair on the side, an anxious-looking middle-aged man poured over calculations on a clipboard. 

Everyone around them seemed so normal, so innocent that it made her sick. Were these the people who had made the decision that housing prisoners with literal children was for the greater good? The ones who’d carried out the atrocities in the room she’d just exited, and the ones who’d orchestrated the grand experiment that was the Promise? All because of differences that she—that [i]they[/i]—were born with?

It wasn’t until they’d entered the elevator that Keaton finally turned around to look at everyone. Nic and Natalie looked tense, which was to be expected. Archie and Eli looked almost professional, their height and stern faces making them seem older than their years. And Lynn, well, stood out. When had her hair started flickering again? 

Thankfully, Archie took up post in front of the tiny girl in the corner, largely masking her to the two scientists who entered the elevator after them. Keaton backed away from the buttons, stopping beside Eli. They didn’t notice.

More staff entered and exit, and then they were on the thirty-fourth. She stepped off first, leading without looking back, trusting in everyone in the group, maintaining a brisk pace that was just the right amount of “normal” and “don’t question”.

She almost jumped out of her skin when the alarms started.

The world came crashing down for a second, but then the message continued and, no, they hadn’t been discovered. It was completely unrelated, and this was probably the best case scenario. In fact, it was so good for them that she had to consider for a second whether the alarm was premeditated. Cara? Their mysterious benefactor? But there was no time for that.

“This way,” Keaton said after Archie spoke, dashing down the hall. Staff ran alongside them, but they quickly split off, turning into a side hall with a dead end. 

The door needed a key card—something omitted on all the maps. Keaton felt a wave of anger, but it left quickly, and she backed up from the door. “Key card,” she said hollowly. Yes, she could blame Packet, but she could also blame herself. What kind of server room wouldn’t have security?

Nic’s circles and directions raised Keaton’s brows. “He’s right,” she said, surprising even herself. Somehow, this mysterious newcomer knew exactly were the trigger mechanisms were, but that was a question for another time.

As Eli did her best to calm an increasingly reptilian Archie on the side, Keaton watched Lynn and Nat work on the door. Neither were particularly precise, but soon enough Natalie had one arm through the door.

Something rustled at her feet, and she flinched to the side. It was… a tumbleweed? 

Eli.

Keaton turned, then froze. The moon hung above Eli and Archie, and sand and shrubbery stretched down the hall. But, Archie looked no larger than the last time Keaton had glanced over, so it was working.

“Let’s go. Give them some space, maybe,” Keaton said, pressing the group forward once the door was open. The alarms were still blaring, so Eli was just buying time.

Inside the room were rows of nondescript metal shelves humming quietly under bright lights. Servers sat in them, packed as tightly as space would allow without trapping air, and wires lay densely coiled and tied against the shelves. The vents and ducts along the walls and ceiling of the room were what had singled it out as a server room in the blueprints, and though Keaton was sure that this wasn’t the Promise’s only server room anymore, she was relieved that not all of her research was outdated.

She made a beeline for the laptop perched atop a ledge on one of the shelves, flipping it open. “ADMIN” blinked out at her, prompting her for a password, and she exhaled, then ghosted her fingers over the keys, pressing the ones that felt just a bit [i]more[/i] than the others.

[indent][b]1 9 3 9[/b][/indent]
She paused, then realized the next character had to be a symbol or capitalized letter.

[indent][b]W a y n e[/b][/indent]
After a brief load, the Promise logo stared back at her, bold and corporate. “We’re in,” she said, scanning the applications on the desktop. The server folder titled “Promise” stood out, and she opened it. Inside were more folders, and she immediately tried to click the one titled “Research.”

An error window popped up: “Access Denied”. 

She grit her teeth. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. “This laptop doesn’t have clearance. It’s set up for managing data storage and probably only has basic clearance.”

She looked over the list of folders again. Data Exchange—for Earth, and others? Unsure. Finance—probably only low-level files. Quality—the important documents would be in Research. Facilities—

She clicked, and it opened, spilling into a list of folders denoting different areas of the Promise. These folders would be largely useless, full of manuals and spreadsheets to track maintenance and construction timelines, but the one thing about facilities was that they needed references. Maps.

“Facility Drawings”. There it was. And inside, a collection of empty floor maps for different areas of the Promise., with one key file titled “Spire.” 

An image popped up when she clicked it, white and concise. The file contained pages of eagle eye views of floors, arranged in floor order and labeled with room numbers and general use names. Up Keaton scrolled, past where the blueprints she’d referenced ended to where the real mysteries of the Promise began. And, just a few floors above where they stood now, there was a floor where rooms weren't denoted, where the entire floor was instead filled in with gray and labeled with one word in capital letters: “QUARANTINE”.

“This…” Keaton’s stomach swam as she stepped back to allow the others to see. “This is where they’re keeping the test subjects.”