THE DIXON TWINS KNEW DISAPPOINTMENT. It greets them like an old friend. A welcomed intruder into their lives in which they have learned to live. So when their father stormed into their shared room on the day the world ended, telling them to pack the...
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"Pack your shit and get ready to leave."
Those were the words Daryl ordered to his two children before descending into the CDC where the fuel was being stored underneath their feet. Daryl had good survival instincts, so Ace knew to take his words literal and while everyone else was roaming their rooms, curious and fearful of the upcoming events they couldn't predict, Finch and Ace were throwing their things into their bags before it was too late. Nothing about this felt good, none of it, and Ace didn't want to be caught in the middle before it blew up in their faces.
He threw his things into his bag—clothes, hat, anything. Across from him, Finch neatly placed a few books she stole from a rec room on the top of her folded clothes in her bag, packing away anything she could find for entertainment that Jenner never would have used even with the little remaining time the man had left in this place. He doubted Jenner would leave the comforts of this building to go on a grocery run without backup now and would choose to 'opt out' like the rest of his colleagues had months ago.
Ace grabbed his dad's bag from his room last, relieved to find the man also believed this place too good to be true to actually unpack his things and found most of his things already inside.
And then the lights went out.
He heard confused muttering from the hallway outside the door and decided to poke his head out the room, finding the others grouping in the halls and Jenner making his way through them.
"Why's the air off?"
"And the light's in our rooms?"
Finch stood in the doorway of her and Ace's shared room, backpack hanging from her shoulders. "Why's everything turning off?"
"Energy use is being prioritized," answered Jenner, a bottle of whiskey in his hands.
Dale scrunched his face in confusion. "Air isn't a priority? And lights?"
Ace pressed his lips in a firm line, slamming Daryl's door shut behind him and followed after Jenner. "Keep up, old man," he spat at Dale, though his gaze was focused on the scientist in front of them, suspecting Jenner hadn't told them the full truth of what that timer represented. "Doc over here hasn't been telling us the whole truth it looks like."
Trusting his instincts was like second nature to Ace, and he knew better than to doubt Daryl's. The man had been living off his survival instincts since the day he had been born it seemed like, so Ace would be an idiot to start second guessing them now. His dad knew when to trust people, what situations were safe or when they were a lost cause . . . he taught his children to never doubt in their own instincts either. If something inside them told them to run, they run.
"It's not up to me," Jenner said as he entered the main room they were in before, leading the others with him. "Zone 5 is shutting itself down. I don't have control over that."
