The Enclave

3.Cisco

I was in a dusty vent above the auditorium. I was on my hands and knees, my butt had fallen asleep and I was desperately trying not to sneeze. I hadn't really given much thought as to how I was going to get out and I was pretty sure something had crawled into my pants.It was all my own fault.
And it was all just a mistake.

Seriously. And if anyone had ever asked me, I would've said the same thing. It was all just a tiny mistake.

At least that's what I thought.

It turned out to be a pretty big mistake. But, at first, it was just an ordinary day.
I sat up in my bed and sighed at my grey room. It was about as sunny as a cemetery. But that was fine, it wasn't like I spent all day in there.

Oh, wait.

I did.

I stood up from my bed, and it folded up into a cube. A second later, it was gone. I would've reacted, but I was much too sleepy to care.

I shuffled towards the left wall, barely noticing the momentarily bright blue tiles I left in my wake. I walked in something that didn't remotely resemble a straight line, but somehow managed to get there, the wall where the screen always was. Sure enough, a panel slid up and a screen popped out of the wall. I moved forward and a green light scanned my eye. After a while, my image appeared on the screen, along with all documented information about me.

According to the screen, I was this eighteen year old, curly haired Hispanic guy named Francisco. This 'Francisco' guy was apparently 6'2, had golden eyes and a strong allergy to daffodils.

Yes. Daffodils.

Doesn't get more manly than that. Though that didn't really matter, because it wasn't like I was going to encounter any here.

After I had fully registered this completely irrelevant information, the screen went back into the wall and was, once again, hidden by the panel.

I yawned and headed straight for the bathroom, barely pausing for the door to slide open automatically.

It was a small, grey tiled room with only the most necessary bathroom facilities. A toilet, a shower cubicle, a medicine cabinet, a sink and a mirror. I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and stood, with a towel around my waist, in front of the steam blurred mirror.

Yet another panel slid up in the wall, revealing a hidden compartment where my day's dose of Slimy goodness was kept.

The Slimies were the green, cylindrical, and obviously slimy capsules we were administered. Apparently they were supposed to keep us healthy. I didn't really see how, but I took them without question anyway. I was always barely awake when I took them, and let's just say that I wasn't really in the mood to do much of anything then.

I grabbed it out of the compartment and looked at it. In the moment that the camera went the other way, it slipped through my fingers and went down the drain.

Such good luck.

I stared at my hands and then at the sink, as if expecting it to appear in either one of them. I had never been particularly gifted in the way of hand-eye coordination, but usually I was at least able to hold on to the wretched thing. But it seemed like today just wasn't my day.

What I was experiencing, to put it bluntly, was a whole new kind of panic.

To say I was scared would be an understatement. I had been told that the pills were for my health, and I wondered if I couldn't live without them and I was going to die in a couple of hours. That would suck, since I had oh-so-optimistically planned to live till lunch. Not that that was something to look forward to.