23 August, 0028 A.V

8:30am

~~Audra~~

"Wake up call for residents 501 and 502. Wake up call for 501 and 502."

Audra was shaken brutally out of her dreams by the sound of an amplified human voice echoing down around her. She forced her eyes open, the drunkenness of sleep still weighing her body down. All that she knew was that she was on a bed; she felt the mattress supporting her fingers as they explored the blanket that covered the rest of her body. As her eyes focused, her surroundings started to join together until they finally merged into one image. 

Above Audra's head, a gray concrete ceiling stretched from one side of her vision to the other. Oh, no. It seemed all too familiar- were the walls gray too? Was it all a dream? 

Am I still in the Tower? I can't be. Can I?

Her breaths became quicker, her chest working twice as fast to keep in time. She started to mumble nonsense, her vision once again blurring until she couldn't see anything clearly. Her hands shook without her being able to stop them. She couldn't move, frozen by her own fear. She didn't even hear the door just a few feet away.

"Oh great." A sarcastic voice resonated from just beside Audra's head. Two small, cold hands took hold of her arms, shaking her violently. "Calm down, you're not in the Tower anymore, I promise." The voice was a little softer, but not quite enough to be calming.

Nevertheless, the familiar tones of the voice gave Audra a reason to slow her breathing to allow her to reason through it. That voice... it's familiar. Not from the Tower. Who could it-

"Sorry for the rude awakening, but I got up at six this morning, so the amount of sympathy I have for you is slim to none." This sentence instantly told her who the voice belonged to.

"Sena?" Audra asked tentatively as if she were asking a favor.  Her vision cleared- for good, hopefully- as she twisted her head to look up at the source of the noise.

The familiar face of Sena scowled back at her, jaw clenched and arms crossed. Her fingers tapped on her arms in an irregular rhythm. "Yeah. Get up."

Audra swung her legs up from the cover of the blanket as she sat up. It gave her a clearer view of the room around her. 

The room was slightly cramped, but it was hard to tell by the lack of furniture. The room itself seemed to only be big enough for the bed that she slept on, a wooden side table that sat next to the mattress, and the miserable-looking brown couch that extended from one corner of the room to a few feet from the bed that she had slept on.

"I know it's not much, but we had nowhere to place you until you were tested." Sena motioned around them, her eyes resting on the couch before moving back to Audra. "It's a fifteen by fifteen, bathroom included- that's the door on your left- as well as a decent connection on comms. As an added bonus, you're not that far from the surface." 

"What-" Audra struggled to speak, trying to absorb all of the information thrown at her. "Where... where am I, exactly?"

Sena breathed out dramatically, clenching the bridge of her nose.  "Honestly, you and Conan are so different, it's insane," She muttered under her breath, before looking back at the girl in front of her. "You're in a bunker, in Level 8. Underground. Like, where worms and stuff are. You know."

Audra started to piece everything together. "That means that I'm in..." She didn't even know the name of the base that she had been heading to earlier that night.

"The Point."

"Yeah." It was all she could utter in response. The what? It was a ridiculous name, but that wasn't quite relevant enough to bring up at that moment. "How did I get in here?"

"You don't remember?" Sena asked incredulously, her eyes opening wide as her head tipped slightly to the side. "I know it was rushed, but I gave such a good tour..." 

"I'm sorry?" Audra apologized in confusion, not sure about what to say back. "I remember the tunnel, but not much after."

"You were tired, I guess. Long day. I get it." Sena seemed to feign her nonchalance, her lips pressing together stressfully. "Nothing much happened, I guess. The best tour in the world, some food, and not much else. You kids were pretty worn down."

Not much more was said by either of them for several agonizingly long seconds.

"Oh god, I'm about to miss a meeting," Sena gasped, checking the clock quickly. "Anyway, get dressed. Your clothes are in the closet next to the bathroom. They're not pretty, but they're all they had in your size that wasn't taken." Sena was already walking out of the room at that point, bringing her long ebony hair into a tight ponytail. "Watch the clock. You're needed up at the surface by nine."

With that, she turned and closed the door behind her.

Left on her own, Audra felt a little more lonely. The gray walls and ceiling were all too familiar, but everything else was new. A couch, a closet, a bathroom. 

As she finally stood, she checked the digital clock that hung above the door leading to the outside. 8:35. 

Beside the clock was a speaker, where the disembodied voice that woke her up just a few minutes prior probably emanated from. 

Grabbing the various items of clothing from inside the closet, Audra hastily threw them on after taking her previous clothes off. 

Seeing the Tower's standard attire laying on the floor was one of the most satisfying sights that Audra had ever seen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

8:50am

~~Sena~~

"They're not ready," Sena argued with the stubborn woman that sat opposite to her. "They've been through too much. They need time." Her teeth gritted together as her voice took a sharp tone.

"Look, Sena, you've been paid. You've done what you were required to do. We're grateful for your dedication to your job. You can leave the council room now." The woman's monotone voice matched her stern face. 

Sena hated all authority- friendly or not- with a passion, especially if they hadn't personally been on the front lines. The leader of the Deviants was no different.

Her name was Leanna Morgan, a woman of about fifty. Her background was in law until the Virus hit. Her law firm, like all other businesses, fell apart as customers disappeared. Law had been taken out of their hands by the newly created "Alliance", a joining of the major governments of the world to keep the virus contained and to prevent it from happening somewhere else. 

It was a typical story of most of everyone at the Point- they were important once, some even famous. Sena was pretty sure that one of the chefs in the kitchens was an Oscar-winning actor or something at one point. But with the structure of government and culture taken down and rebuilt, even the most famous of people might be forced to join the general masses.

"I'm not finished," Sena's demanding voice circulated around the large underground council room, even if it was almost twice the size of normal living quarters. She slammed her hands down on the circular table in front of her that took up most of the room's space. All fifteen council members seated around her grumbled and scowled at each other.

"Sena Oda, you're lucky we didn't arrest you when you reentered the Point. Yes, you retrieved the two necessary components of the rescue, but you brought back an extra. A spare." The last word was almost spat off of Morgan's tongue. "We don't have room for her. There was no deal surrounding her successful return. Our protocol is to place her back in the forest, and save the resources."

"Do you hear yourself?" Sena's voice rose. "These are children. You're treating them like supplies!"

"It sounds harsh, I know. I find no pleasure in throwing small children back to the Alliance but think about it logically. If we were able to accommodate every person that came by here seeking refuge, then we would. However, as we currently don't have those resources, we follow protocol." Morgan nodded to the council members, who seemed to have their own opinions on the matter.

Sena nearly growled at the woman, important or not. "Your importance to the cause means nothing here, Morgan. You're out of your element. Protocol isn't used here. If you want to talk protocol, go back to New York with the rest of the politicians." Her lip curled, giving the small woman a fearsome appearance. 

"That's enough," Cassidy muttered from the other side of the table. Sena nearly forgot that Cassidy was on the local council- she hardly ever talked about issues that didn't directly involve how the Alliance worked. Most civil issues were settled without her input, except when they voted on certain decisions.

Lennon seemed to have sensed the growing tension. "Cassidy's right. We need to get back on topic. Either settle the case or I'll settle it myself." 

Morgan cleared her throat daintily, placing her hands gently on the table in front of her. "That won't be necessary." She paused, staring Sena down until the silence became unbearable.

"We don't need to do it immediately, but I assume that they'll be in a decent enough mental state that they can start to contribute to the cause." 

Sena scoffed. "They're like zombies. They have lowered mental activity, little to no sense of self-identity, and I haven't seen any desire or want from any of them. It'll take them quite a while to snap out of whatever the Alliance did to them to keep them quiet." 

A hush fell over the council as Sena spoke. Morgan's grin turned lopsided and became more of a grimace as she continued. "We're lucky that the Alliance was decent enough to give them those intel boosters when they were toddlers, or they'd never learn how to read or write or count how many fingers they have. If they hadn't our job would be much, much more difficult. We need to give them time to adjust to real life, not training to shoot a gun or knock someone out with a single punch." At the end, Sena gasped for breath, her lungs begging for air. 

Not a soul spoke for several minutes.

Cassidy was writing vigorously on a pad of paper, her left hand scribbling what looked like notes with a pen. The only sound heard was the pen making contact with the paper as it rose and fell with the letters it wrote.

"Okay."

The young woman ripped the paper from the pad it came from, placing it on the table for everyone to see. Another council member had to stand up and walk around to see it. "We ran out of printer paper, so we may as well do this old-school."

Sena leaned in closer and saw a long paragraph, written in sharp, frantic handwriting. 

"It's for the nice, considerate politicians in New York," Cassidy explained sarcastically to the council when no one said anything. "A letter of sorts. This sort of research on rescued Known has never been attempted before, right? So if we retrieve the adequate amount of data from them as they recover, we can request for more supplies. It'll cover the cost of the three of them joining us tenfold." She paused, staring at all of them while biting down a smile. 

Morgan caught on quickly. "Therefore, we won't need them to join the military or workforce until they're fully recovered. We'll benefit from the three of them without spending ." Her voice was growing louder and louder as she spoke. The rest of the council gradually began to join in, voicing their own opinions and choices in edits for the 'letter'. Even Morgan begrudgingly offered a tip of advice.

Unfortunately, in the midst of a unanimous decision, there must always be a devil's advocate. 

"Essentially, they'll be lab rats." A voice abruptly put a halt to the excited atmosphere. It was Fenton, who had been characteristically quiet during the heated debates.

"You can look at it that way," A council member- Ruben Alverez- retorted. "Or you can weigh the positives and the negatives and reach an intelligent decision. If you studied science, you'd know." He seemed to figuratively stick his nose at the pilot on the far side of the table. Sena had forgotten that he was a renowned geneticist in his prime. It meant almost nothing now, as he didn't have the resources to use his talents.

Sena bit her lip, clearing her throat before anything more was said that might cause yet another argument. Even if she agreed with him, her opinion wouldn't help anymore; the council was too excited with their own genius. "Let's just put a hold on the letter." She glanced at Fenton briefly, and it didn't seem like he had slept much. His dark curled hair was messy, falling over into his tanned face. His eyes darted from one place to another. There was something on his mind, something that he knew. Something he wasn't telling anyone. Sena hated it.

In the years that she had known him, Fenton was always the man that knew the classified information before anyone cleared to know it was informed. His name was on every 'Wanted' list that the Alliance had, yet he hadn't been captured once. Sena trusted his judgment, especially over Lennon's, and even over Cass'. 

"We'll talk about this later," She mouthed to her old friend, and he nodded briskly back.

Without any announcement or further information, Sena left the room behind with more questions than answers.