The grey room was huge. There were black couches facing one another in the center, a black coffee table setting just between them and large lamps that leaned just to the sides of the couches. I had no idea what the room was for.

I looked around, hoping that I would see something that gave me some sort of clue as to what kind of room this was.

Jason was the first to move. He strode with confidence to the other side of the room, brushing his hand against the leather couch as we went. I watched after him as he stumbled in the poorly lit room and hit something hard on his way. "Ouch." I started over to him. "Holy shit!"

When I made it over to where he was standing, I finally saw what exactly he was talking about. I dropped to my knees and started feeling for a pulse.

A strangled sob escaped my lips and it sounded a lot like, "Jackson?!"

He didn't get very far. And the fact that we had found him in the one room out of the many that were in this building made it all the more eerie.

It didn't matter where I put my hand and how hard I tried to find one, there was no pulse. I leaned over, crying to Jackson's shirt, wishing with everything I had that he would open his eyes.

And almost as quickly as he appeared, he vanished right before my eyes.

"What?" I stared at the floor dumbstruck.

Heffburn wrenched me off the floor and gave me a good shake before setting me back on my feet. His face was angry and twisted, and I pulled free from his grasp before he could act out anything towards me.

His lips moved, but no words came out, it was like he was silently screaming at me. I stared at him in horror as he reached for my arm to pull it from my body. I turned around and sprinted towards the other side of the room, running face-first into Mathias. He bared his teeth, then, like a snake, threw his face forward and put his teeth on my throat. He bit down and I collapsed to the floor, Mathias nowhere to be seen.

It took Silas, Jason, and Rousseau to drag me from the room before something else I couldn't explain happened. When I got back into the hallway, I felt like I could breathe again and I gasped for air like a fish would water. The sounds surrounding me were louder too, and I hadn't even realized that everything was muted until the sound was back.

"What happened?" Silas screamed, "Sam!"

I closed my eyes trying to forget all of the sights that I saw in the room, the pain I felt in several different ways, ways I knew were going to stitch themselves to my feelings for as long as I lived.

"Stop. Shouting." I gasped the words between breaths.

Everyone collectively breathed out a sigh.

"Sam, are you okay? What happened?" Silas asked.

Rousseau snorted, "Thank your lucky stars everyone that you don't have a brain like our gifted friend here. That room was laced with something. Almost a form of poison that only your mind picked up on."

I continued my exhausting breath-catching while Rousseau asked, "What did you see?"

I closed my eyes and spoke, my voice raspy, "Jackson. Was dead. I couldn't. Find a pulse." He nodded, urging me to continue. "Heffburn. Tried to rip. My arms off. And Mathias. Tried to bite. My throat."

Jason snorted, "I supposed she stumbled into the bloody room of pain."

Rousseau considered it for a moment, make a low hum in his throat, "Well, perhaps. I wonder if all of the rooms are like that."

"We don't even know if there are even any more rooms. We have to get those blueprints," Emily chirped up.

Jason bent over and scooped me up into his arms, "Right. Carry on." My breathing slowly progressed from erratic to deep breathing, almost like I ran a marathon. And as more time elapsed, I inhaled shallow breaths until my breathing became normal again.

"Thank you," I whispered.

Jason looked down at me, his eyes glowing. "Look, love. I know you told Jackson that you loved him, and I believe it, I've seen it with my own two eyes. But I'm not going to stop having feelings for you, even if it means I'm going to get hurt."

I looked up at him, tears already springing into my eyes.

Love is a curious thing. Imagine this: two people sitting in a restaurant; they've never gone out with one another before. The man is sweating bullets and hoping that the woman doesn't notice. Let's call them John and Janie. Janie doesn't notice the beads of literal sweat that is pouring down John's face. She's too concerned about making sure that she doesn't have any food in her teeth. She wipes her mouth every twenty seconds and she feels every one of the crevices between her teeth to make sure that no pieces of the healthy-looking salad are stuck in her teeth. With anyone else, Janie would have gotten a burger or steak, but it's important to her what John thinks, so she eats the salad, semi-willingly.

As the night progresses, the couple doesn't know it, but the fate of the world is actually relying on whether or not they hit it off this first date. If they don't, if they realize that the other person actually sucks, then the human existence that we know and love will be gone forever. It's scary to think that the fate of the human existence relies on two people falling in this inexplicable feeling of love. 

Love cannot be confined using only the words in the dictionary, the space in which the emotion of love is held is infinite, since love knows no boundaries. Yet, the fate of the world relies on two strangers putting themselves out there and stabbing for a chance at love, a chance to be part of the whole fate of the world. It's beautiful.

And I didn't realize until looking up into those beautiful eyes that I wanted to be a part of that beauty, and I wanted to do it with him. 

A small smile played at my lips, causing Jason to return the gesture. "You're not going to have to try very hard, you know. And it's not like the feeling isn't mutual."

The smile fell off of his face, "What about Jackson?"

I cocked my head, "What about him?"

He scoffed and looked ahead of him. Heffburn was glancing at his watch, shaking his head and muttering about being late for dinner. Rousseau was muttering to himself, laughing at his own joke, then continued his one-on-himself conversation. When his chuckles turned to something maniacal, he snapped a rubber band on his wrist and scolded himself. Emily glared ahead, obviously knowing that she was surrounded by a bunch of idiots. Silas and Layla were talking about how she felt about Mathias, and how knowing his game changed how he felt. 

Jackson was nowhere to be found.

"Do you see Jackson?" I inquired, meeting his eyes again.

"Well, no."

And then all of the pieces fell together. All of those moments we spent together before all of this went down, and how even though Jackson was closer to me in the room, Jason's presence still occupied my mind. There was nothing that could keep me from thinking about him and I knew that if I was with Jackson in the future, my mind would always be on Jason. 

I shrugged, loving how our bodies created a friction when they rubbed together. "Then maybe the person for me is going to stay by my side regardless of anything that's happening. Maybe the person I'm supposed to be with forever isn't someone who shoots me in the leg and runs away because he thinks he's saving me." And if the hold that my eyes had on his could have gotten any stronger, it was in that one moment. "And maybe the person that I'll love for the rest of my life is with me right now."

His eyes shimmered with hope, and I knew that all too well, that feeling of hope when the time seemed dark. It was amazing what love could do. It wasn't just intended for a child to ensure that it would grow up with support and adoration, it was for every situation, where a man could hold his woman in his arms so she could physically feel his heart. And I knew in that one moment that I was going to love this man until the day that I died because there was no one else in the world who gave me this much hope. Hope that at the end of the day, I was going to come home to someone who loved me as much as I loved him.

We continued to walk down the hallway; my head rested against his chest as I thought everything through. Maybe it was supposed to work out this way, Jackson was supposed to have Emily and I was supposed to have Jason. 

"Why did you tell Jackson you loved him?" Jason whispered, his chest rumbling as the words escaped his lips. I sighed.

I knew that if I didn't convince Jackson that I had feelings for him, he would up and leave me with the feeling of regret. There was no way that Jackson was going to get very far. Sure, he may have had some idea of what he was doing, but I wasn't sure that he really did. Our little pack had so many things going for us. And I didn't want to toot my own horn or anything, but I played a big role in our survival.

"I didn't want him to die, so I told him that I loved him so he'd stay."

Jason nodded slowly. "I thought so. I just wanted to hear you say it."

He stopped walking. "We're here," Rousseau said in a raspy voice.

I could feel the tension radiating off of every person standing in that hallway. I slid out of Jason's arms and looked up at a huge silver door. On it, the words Records Room sat in faded black print. It was almost too obvious that this was the records room, like walking through that door would mean that we'd never walk back out.

Jason grabbed my hand, "Are you alright, love?"

I nodded, "Yeah. Mr. Heffburn, lead the way." He glanced back at me and flashed me a huge grin. He took several steps towards the door and cracked his knuckles, which concerned me.

"It would be my pleasure Miss Ford." 

When we made it to the door, a huge wave of fear washed over me, fear that I wouldn't have admitted to until now. I was right to have been afraid then. I didn't know what awaited me on the other side of that door.

And boy, was I shocked to find out.

***

"Sir!"

The man snorted and turned in his chair to his commanding officer. He was standing at attention towards him, giving him the proper respect that he deserved. "What is it, Jones?"

"The sensors went off, Sir. The levels of Chemical 1647 decreased rapidly, Sir. She was Room 10987."

The man smirked, triumph evident on his face. "She was, huh? Check the recordings of the cameras in The White Room. I want to know exactly where she's going. And, Jones?"

"Yes, Sir?"

The man stood up and closed the distance between the two of them. "If the cameras aren't up around Point Zero in five minutes, a have a vacant cell itching for another resident."

"Yes, Sir, Mathias." Jones' eyes went wide as he realized the punishment in store for him, "The team is working on it, Sir."

"Find out where Samantha is and inform me immediately." Mathias turned and stared out over the operation room, where a woman, resembling Samantha in almost every way lied on a table, her heart monitor telling the room of doctors that she was already dead. "One more thing?"

Jones hesitated.

"If anyone touches her before I see her, I'll fucking kill you all."