Dan's POV

A bright light from one of the vehicles shined at all of us in the alleyway. Kyle looked back at us after he fell on the ground. He looked terrified of something.

There was an announcement that made it sound like all of us were about to be arrested, which didn't make any sense because we literally just got here.

Phil grabbed my hand and squeezed it, but he wasn't looking at me. He was watching Mark nervously searching for Jack.

Kyle slowly stood up and seemed like he was getting ready to walk back to us, but once he took a step in our direction, the door to one of the vehicles opened. Five people in black uniforms jumped out onto the ground and started chasing Kyle through the alleyway back to us.

Kyle dove behind Mark and Felix sprung off the ground. He walked up to one of the charging soldiers. "I don't know what you assholes need from us, but we need an ambulance for our friends here who are literally bleeding to death."

The soldiers hesitated for a second before walking past Felix to Cry and Thomas. One of them bent down and checked Cry's pulse while another walked up to me.

"You're all under arrest for disrespecting the Overlord."

"I'm sorry, for doing what now?" Percy asked.

"You're all wearing colors. To show our unity with the Overlord, we must all dress in black and white." The soldier took a second to glare at Phil, who was wearing all bright clothes. "It's rule number forty-eight in the Coalition Law Book. Not obeying that rule is punishable by five years in prison."

"Five years in prison?" Reagan repeated. "For not wearing your preferred colors?"

"They aren't our preferred colors," one of the soldiers continued, "it's what the Overlord wants of us. We must obey the Overlord's commands."

"Who's the Overlord?" I inquired.

Kyle groaned, "Who else?" He realized what he said a second after and asked, "You all know where we are, don't you?"

I shook my head. "All I know about this place is that we were thrown through a portal to get here."

"Uh, did you guys get the explanation of how time was moving outside of the orphanage?"

"Enough questions!" the soldier yelled. "We're taking the adults in to be questioned. We'll bring everyone who's injured to a hospital, and all the children can stay with them."

The other soldiers divided themselves up and started taking care of what had been yelled at them. Nate gripped my arm, but not tight enough to stay planted with me while the soldiers pulled him away.

Phil and I, with Mark, Felix, and Robert, were escorted to the floating machine. It came closer to the ground while we were loading into it and floated up again once everyone was in and the door was closed. I looked out the window and saw Nate, Jason, Percy, Reagan, and Kyle being loaded into a fairly large vehicle with soldiers carrying Cry, Thomas, Ethan, and Tyler.

There was a soldier sitting in the back of the vehicle with us, so the ride was silent. The only time anyone talked was when Felix awkwardly asked, "So, this car, umm, floats? That's...neat."

The soldier didn't reply and the only response he got from the rest of us was a bunch of confused looks.

Once the floating car landed, we were pushed out of it. The soldiers put my hands in front of me and tied them together with something that was glowing red and felt really hot.

I glanced at everyone else, and all of their hands were bound together with the same material.

I took a deep breath before I followed the soldier into a clean-cut, forty-story, windowless building.

Once inside, I knew it wasn't a prison. The soldiers had been telling the truth, as it seemed like the type of place suspects got sent to be interrogated.

The soldiers split all of us up and brought us to different rooms. My room had a table in the middle with a chair on both sides.

The soldier had me sit in the chair farther away from the door. He cuffed my hands to the table and started to leave.

He stopped at the door and turned around to face me, smirking. "Your interrogator is one of the toughest in the business. Good luck."

"Who is it?" I inquired, silently hoping the person would have a name I could make fun of so I could dodge questions that would raise suspicion.

"Officer Liguori." He smirked again, trying to intimidate me. "He won't go easy on you."

I stared at him while he walked away. Once the door was closed I laid my head on the table face down and grinned.

Liguori was PJ's last name, and if he was the person interrogating me, he'd probably let me off easy.

I bolted upright in my seat. PJ isn't an officer.

I quickly came to the conclusion that we either got placed in some weird alternate reality, or PJ was not the person coming to interrogate me.

I took a deep breath and tried moving my hands. I had a feeling it was in my best interest to escape this room before I met Officer Liguori.

My hands wouldn't move with the cuffs so tightly bound around my wrists. I tried scooting my chair, but it seemed to be bolted to the ground. I groaned and got ready to try to quickly rip my hands out of the cuffs when the door to the room opened.

I froze up and tried my best to look unfazed and calm. The person who opened the door walked into the room, looking at a clipboard and not really paying much attention to me.

"Alright, let's see here," the man spoke in a British accent, "you're under inspection for...wearing colors? The hell..."

I coughed to get his attention. Once he looked at me, I replied, "Would you mind explaining where exactly we are? While you're at it, who the heck the Overlord is and why wearing colors is illegal?"

The man stared at me in silence. I took those few seconds to take in his appearance. He was wearing an all-white uniform with a badge on the left side of his chest that read "L.A.P.D."

That was all I could gather from what he was wearing, but his facial features were what threw me off. He resembled PJ but didn't look at all like him based off of when I saw him last. He had the same eyes, but they seemed lifeless and sad instead of their usual excited glow. Dark bags were under his eyes and he had defined wrinkles on his face.

He also kind of gave off a midlife crisis vibe.

He blinked a quick few times before scanning over his clipboard. I heard him mumble a quick, "There's no way."

"Uh, no way of what, exactly?" I asked, staring at him expectantly.

His eyes stopped racing over the words in front of him. They stopped on something I couldn't see, and I noticed a flash of excitement race across his expression. "Umm, sir, what's your name?"

I narrowed my eyes at Officer Liguori. "Why are you asking that? I mean, I'm willing to bet my name's on the paper you're looking at."

He looked up at me, confused but intrigued. "This isn't paper. We stopped using paper about a decade ago." He turned his clipboard so I could see it while he sat down across from me. "It's technology you can write on. Kind of like a hologram you can touch, if that makes sense."

"I'm sorry, did you say that's been around for a decade?" I inquired, feeling my heart skip a beat.

Officer Liguori smiled at me, something it seemed like he hadn't done in a while. "Yes, the Overlord demanded that we stopped killing and replanting trees. She wanted us to just leave the trees alone and use something else, so she made this."

I glared at him. "I've been gone for a week at the very most. Don't you dare come walking into my life telling me this crazy tech has been around for ten years."

"Your name is Daniel Howell."

I raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, so what?"

He smiled and stood up. He paced around the room for a second before he pulled something out of his pocket. He put the little metal bar on the cuffs bounding me to the table. Once they touched, the cuffs fell off and he grabbed the bar again.

I pushed my chair away from the table and stood up. I looked at the chair for a second before looking back to Officer Liguori. I didn't get much time to look at him because he dove into a hug and seemed like he had started crying into my chest.

I heard him sob out, "You aren't dead!"

A/N

I sure do love being busy all the time

Sorry that updates are a mess, but I promise I will finish this story and not stop updating this close to the end

Love you guys and thanks for sticking with this story for so long!!!

Anyways, BUH-BYE BROTATOS!