[1-A]The floor felt cool against her feet as she padded along, quick and nimble.

  But quiet, always quiet.

  The darkness crept up behind her as always and shied away in front, a bubble of light that let her see her path. The food room always felt so far from the safety of her home but she couldn’t live on treats alone and so she had to beat back the darkness once again.

  The noises in the dark made her heart beat faster, but thankfully they were never close, always some unknown distance into the dark. She wished she could find them, the Others, and beg them to let her stay safe and secure in her home again. They had never interacted with her before, always hiding behind the foggy wall, but perhaps she had done something to drive them off and she could say sorry. Anything to not have to venture into the darkness, to have them fix the crack in the wall to her home. If not for her trinket granting her a small bit of light she would likely be stuck in her home regardless, unable to brave the darkness, doomed to hunger.

  Reaching the Food pce, she pushed her trinket inside to let it light up the rge space. As the light brightened the area, she scooped up her trinket again and padded through the maze of rge ft objects inside. Headed for the back area, a wall with a hole in it separating where she was with where she wanted to be, she scrounged through the wall fps looking for more of the powder that made the hunger fade.

  ‘Seems like the powder is running out, I’ll have to find another Food pce soon.’

  Going to the spout where water came out, she drank her fill and began padding back through the maze and out into the smaller longer area, her trinket held tight and the light flickering around her. She felt that she deserved a treat for making it so far, so she took a detour down an even smaller area, following her memories of where she had hidden a small stash of treats. Her supply in her home had run out and she needed to bring back more.

  The Others had always given her treats when she had figured out something important, before they disappeared. They always slipped it through a fp on the foggy wall. The treats were the only reason she had to believe they weren’t trapped behind the foggy wall the same way the small people were trapped in the little box in her home, the small people in the box had never given her anything. Though both the small people and the Others had never reacted to her in any other way.

  She wanted to help the small people, but she could never figure out how to open the box, so they remained trapped. She hoped they had enough food in that small box. If the wall had not cracked open when the Others had disappeared, she would have nothing left. The tube that had fed her up before the Others disappeared had also stopped giving her food, hence why she was forced into the darkness beyond her home.

  Running her hand along the smooth surface of the wall as she padded towards her stash, head full of thoughts about treats and looking at the Pages once she returned to her home, she was startled quite badly when the lights changed. Instantly she stopped and crouched to look around trying to find what had happened, but as she did a deep chill flew down her spine.

  The noises, they were closer.

  Close enough to be a danger. She had never encountered whatever made the noises, but there was no doubt that whatever it was, it had to be hungry. Maybe it had been trapped like her and had finally gotten free. She couldn’t stay here, she had to run home and close the wall. Hope that it couldn’t find her, or if it did then hope it couldn’t make it through the wall crack. She stood to start on her way back to her home, much more quickly than her walk here, when the noises caught her. A loud clunk through the wall she had her hand on.

  Her breath left her and she began to run, scrambling to get away as fast as possible. If the noises could break a wall, then nowhere was safe, but she didn’t pn to stay and find out. Running through pces at random, her trinket lighting the way as the darkness faded in front and chased her behind, she kept going until her legs couldn’t hold her anymore. Colpsing against a wall, the surface cool against her hot skin, she tried desperately to catch her breath, eagerly gulping down air.

  The noises had never been that close before, just on the other side of a wall. It seemed she wasn’t the only one running out of food and she didn’t want to meet anything that could make the noises she had heard. It might turn out whatever it was even considered her to be food. Once her breathing had slowed and she was able to stand again she got up and looked around. She felt it again, that chill down her spine. She had run so fast that she didn’t watch where she was going and now, looking around the long narrow areas that all looked simir, she had no idea where she was…

  Or how to get home.

  [1-B]Waking up with a bright light on your face was never pleasant. Sitting up to find that the whole room was a bright light was just disorienting. Fortunately, as his eyes adjusted to the light, he found himself in a really white room rather than a room full of light. Still unsettling, seeing as how it was empty of anything else, but better than lights in the face no matter where you looked. He looked down at his cryo pod, did a double take to make sure, then stood up and walked around it to make double sure.

  “Yup, not the one I went to sleep in”

  Well, crap.

  He knew that signing up for experimental cryo sleep could be risky, but they could have at least had the courtesy to leave him with his old pod, he knew how that one worked and could tinker with it. This new one they had given him looked like some kinda future tech thing he hadn’t the foggiest idea about. Very inconsiderate, whoever they happened to be.

  “Not like I would know, since there ain’t no one to say hello to!”

  He waited a moment, but it didn’t seem like yelling at the ceiling had changed anything or shamed whoever it was into coming out to say hi.

  Without much else to do at the moment, he sat down on the floor, which was slightly unpleasant given that it was metal and he was naked, and proceeded to make sure he was as in one piece as it was possible to determine. Whatever new fancy tech that pod had became very apparent when he couldn’t find any needle wounds from the injections he had needed to get for the old pod. Considering cryo was supposed to mean ‘no changing’ in his old pod, the mysterious ‘they’ either had to keep him out of cryo long enough to heal or the new pod allowed some kind of partial state. Whatever that happened to mean in cryo terms.

  Still, considering that he could still feel his heartbeat and didn’t feel like he had lost organs, not that he knew what that felt like in the first pce, he figured that he was in the best shape he was going to be in, the ck of obvious food and water in the room being a pretty sharp time limit. Examining the pod in more detail uncovered insights that it was, indeed, a cryo pod.

  “Can never be too sure with mysterious white rooms.”

  It also helped that if he could recognize some of the tech, he might be able to figure out the rest. Given enough time….

  A lot of time.

  Of course, he didn’t have that time right now so onto examining the rest of the room. Determining whether he was an experiment or simply abandoned would help him know if he had to annoy the crap out of whoever was watching until they did something or if he had to try to find a way out on his own. A quick sweep of the walls up close showed nothing obvious, and the floor was equally devoid of ‘interesting things’. Scanning the tops of the walls for obvious cameras also lead nowhere other than to conclude that either the ceiling was low for a rge mysterious room or he was getting taller. It took him nearly four hours of basically rubbing his entire side against the wall and slowly walking around the room for him to find anything worth getting excited for.

  One of the walls had a patch that was a lot smoother than the rest. Gss versus metal perhaps. Closer investigation found that nothing about it changed but the spot really liked it when he stuck his whole hand on it. After quite a few happy computer noises and a promise to buy it dinner ter, a portion of the wall popped open.

  Seeing as how he still didn’t know what was going on but leaning towards the ‘abandoned’ idea, he slowly approached the new door and peered through the crack from a low angle. It appeared to be a hallway and either had no lights or was quite dim compared to his bright room. It would be beyond obvious to anyone in the hallway that the door was open from the light spilling out. Still, he didn’t see anyone waiting on the other side and couldn’t hear any breathing or muffled noises of living things.

  ‘I’m gonna be pissed if I get mauled by robots.’

  Seeing that no one was about to come in and he certainly couldn’t stay here, he flung open the door, which turned into more of a slow whoosh than what he had pnned, and confidently strode into the hallway, a quip ready for anything waiting for his appearance.

  Unfortunately for the quip and fortunately for his dignity, he was greeted by an empty metal hallway and a lot of corners. Corners that didn’t appear to have any helpful signs or other indicators about where he should be headed next. He sniffed the air trying to get a feel for his new, dimmer, life outside the white box but it all smelled like air. No scents or chemical smells he would expect from an empty facility running on old air scrubbers.

  ‘The mystery deepens. Where the hell am I?’

  Unfortunate. He had been given training on survival in the wilds and survival in an unknown city as part of the cryo program, but empty metal halls were one of the few scenarios they hadn’t gone over.

  ‘Dunno why they hadn’t. Seems like empty facility was the most likely option for failure considering where I’m at.’

  The walls at least had some kind of marking on them, colors running in lines. Presumably following a line and seeing where it went was the best option. Well, an ok option at least, the best option was to not have a cryo experiment go wrong, but beggars couldn’t choose.

  Good thing he wasn’t a beggar because he was choosing the blue line. He liked its shade of blue and the fact it was exactly the same shape and size as the other lines.

  That and he really had to pee, so he hoped blue was some kind of water thing.

  “Can’t go wrong if even the colors travel in packs.”

  He just had to hope the colors liked the comfort of a pack rather than going for the safety. At least he could pee on anything that tried to eat him, that would show um.