SATe [✔]

[6] furciferous

Fight or flight.

Those are the two options for a human being when they are met with a terrifying force. Whether that be the dark, a person with a knife, even a wild bear in the woods; although I'm not sure how many people would choose to fight a bear, that sounds as though it'd make it more terrifying.

However, I feel as though I'd left out another possibility for myself. At least I imagine I must have left it out, because my body's natural reaction to a terrifying situation; like being locked inside a small white room, was to fall asleep.

I can only imagine it had happened immediately after the door closed, because my first conscious thought that I could remember was that man re-entering the room with files being held tightly to his chest, and an arm outstretched beyond the door. Despite feeling overly groggy and a little apprehensive, I had gotten to my feet in seconds and rushed out the door; with only a slight tug on my shirt by the man, to stop me from flying over the railing of the mezzanine we arrived on.

"Stay by my side, Bastian." The man says sharply as we take a turn to the left, "We have some things to discuss but I'd prefer to do it in a room you'll be more comfortable in. All you need to know is every member of the team is in the building and more than willing to hunt you down. And if anyone shouts for Franklin, give me a shove or I'll pretend I didn't hear."

I nodded briskly as my eyes darted around the room to take in as much information as I possibly could.

The mezzanine was made of white metal and looped around the entire room; a room which I hadn't expected to span so large when I considered the cell I'd been locked in. The room was circular and was split into clear sections; the mezzanine seemed to be access to a variety of cells and a hefty library that took up half of the wall space that could be seen through the glass windows. The centre of the room had an elevated platform and seemed to be the technological hub of the team.

As I began to look around, Franklin had started to walk me down the steps that connected to the mezzanine; seemingly ignoring my curiosity and focusing on something else entirely. At the mid-point of the stairs, I realised that we had to be underground; the entrance to this base was an impossibly large vault-like door that an average person would be suspicious of immediately. Either that, or they'd manage to transport me to the middle of nowhere and were planning to keep me here forever.

The ceiling was made of hard-wearing concrete, being held up by metal pillars that reached from certain points of the floor and connected to beams; all of which had been painted in a bright white; the beams themselves only being given colour by the green and purple LED lights than ran up them. Each hallway that trailed off of the main room had its own distinct set of light colours, either reds and oranges or blues and yellows; the end of these hallways being hidden from my view.

As we made our way up the platform in the centre of the room, I moved away from Franklin, who had started to occupy himself with a computer screen. He was gone long enough for me to investigate one of the desks in the computer area. Each of the six desks had four monitors on it with mechanical keyboards, mice that were cycling through a selection of neon colours, and more interestingly an array of personal effects were scattered on each desk. Most of which were haphazardly placed; framed photographs, tubs of pastel coloured pens, an assortment of black journals, jewellery trays, and cans of juice.