Despair's last gambit

Chapter 2- First Blood

The silence lingered for a few minutes until Juvi found the courage to  break it. " We need to figure out who the traitor is." she said looking around at everyone. " If there even is one." Ayako interjected. Lily looked solemn before she spoke up " if I may,  in the last killing game there was a secret room which had the power for their bangles." she said before adding " If we can find it then we should be free to leave." Kichiro however added " no our priority should be to find a way out, no matter what else we do we don't stand a chance if we can't find our way out at the end.  Voices quickly came flying from all directions until Nizey slammed his fist on the table and silenced the room "  You know what guys, our lives are in danger and if you want to just stand around and argue until we die then you're damn well free to do so. But if you want to survive then we may as well just split up and cover as much ground as we can." It took a few seconds but slowly everyone was nodding in agreement. The sixteen were therefore divided into groups of four, each one being given a task: The first group was to look around for evidence of the traitor's involvement in their kidnapping and was made up of Nizey, Juvi, Ken and Sayuri. The second group was to search for any signs of the involvement of ultimate despair or cameras which could be used to broadcast the killing game, a task for which Ayako, Mieko, Cadence and Aiko volunteered. Group three was made up of Lily, Shinsuke, Yuko and Kazuo  who were attempting to find the secret room and power off the bangles.  The remaining members Kichiro, Blake, Brook and Ciara were seeking an escape route. With everyone having been assigned a task they split up.

The first group began their investigation in the meeting room, the room was still pretty decrepit since it had not been used since the killing game had taken place, a few weapons were scattered around the room no doubt to encourage the foundation leaders to resort to violence. Juvi looked around to make sure nobody was looking and knelt down to pick up a Kunai, placing it in her pocket and walking away. Nizey was looking around at the floor for footprints or any marks that the despair members may have left behind. Sayuri spent most of her time examining the meeting table and chairs in the middle of the room, never straying too far from them during her investigation. Ken on the other hand was examining the walls closely, searching for anything that may have been left behind when their unconscious bodies were being moved into the room. After having secretly picked up the Kunai, Juvi examined the door frame in the hope something had gotten caught or fingerprints had been left behind. Their efforts turned out to be fruitless, Nizey was the only one to have found anything concrete but even that was only a few boot marks, only serving to prove there had been at least three people carrying them into the room. As the four thought about their next move the timer began to run out, Ken looked out towards everyone as the last few seconds began to pass "good luck everyone!" He said defiantly before all four began to pass out.

The second group began by scouring the hallways, it did not take them long to notice the cameras that had been strategically placed around the halls so that every inch was visible, these had not been part of the original building which could only mean that ultimate despair had installed them and in turn they had been planning this killing game for a while, potentially months or years. Aiko followed on from the back, she was now by all accounts the former leader of the foundation and just another member of the killing game, she would occasionally pause as everyone turned into the hallways and faced the other direction before circling around and following. Cadence also noticed a few other changes ultimate despair had likely made, paintings depicting the dead bodies of their future foundation predecessors had been hung at various intervals; likely in the hope of driving them to despair or encouraging them to kill to survive.  The final place they managed to look was in the surveillance room, the screens showed the view from all of the cameras but no matter what Ayako pressed on the keyboards he was unable to cause any change , it was clear that the feed was being controlled from outside the room and then likely broadcast across the world. Just as they got ready to leave to explore further their timers ticked down and all four fell asleep in the surveillance room.