Tilly|✔️

Chapter 5 - The Outcasts

Walking down a hallway, completely alone, and in eerie silence, is not a pleasant experience at the best of times.

I'm not a psychologist or whatever the hell you call those people who mentally help you, but I think all you need is voided silence, darkened, metal hallways and heavy breathing emitting from yourself is all you need to boost heart rates, anxiety and paranoia.

Your brain has three instincts; fight, flight, and freeze. Fight is choosing to psychically challenge the opponent and/or given danger, flight is to promptly use adrenaline to run away from the opponent and/or given danger. Freeze is the lesser known instinct, when the body goes into a psychological paralysis, causing the whole body to abruptly stiffen in either shock, fear, horror, or other instances of overpowering emotion.

I should seriously consider getting myself a job as a psychologist when I break out of this place. Or rather, if.

Odd noises would occasionally fill the hall, unsettling me further - I wished I hadn't uncovered this secret, and everything went to the way it was before. But on the other hand, I didn't.

Suddenly, I heard the light creaking of footsteps. Panicked, I hid, fearing it was Nurse Grant out for my guts, as she had implied. I hid inside a disposal bin - not one of the greatest choices, but the place was rather void of places to conceal yourself.

A figure, wearing a long, blackened robe, passed. He or she stopped in front of the metal bin. They looked at it suspiciously, and I hoped they wouldn't look inside. Please don't look inside, please don't look inside...

Apparently, the figure thought no one was there, because he or she shook their head, and hastily walked away. I felt an instant wash of relief, and climbed out of the bin.

"Ah ha! Don't think you can fool me!"

The figure from earlier was running towards me in a desperate fashion. I gasped loudly, and threw my hands up in the air and squeezed my eyes shut, turning my head to that of a slight left angle, preparing for impact on a switcher blade or something, as I expected the figure to be one of Nurse Grant's comrades.

"Explain." The figure whispered, producing a long, slender, stick-like object, and poking me with it. On it, it had strange cryptic words written on it. The figure sounded like a female, and spoke with a Japanese accent.

"I am.........Tilly, but Nurse Grant calls me E-3456. I grew up in a metal cell, until I was starved and let out. I followed this outside woman named Nurse Grant. She put me into a deserted room that was very secure. She made me watch a video except the video was the "wrong" one. It showed a video of me and I was kidnapped and sent here and please just read this diary," I explained, breathing heavily. I had talked quickly in the last two sentences, but not too fast so the figure knew what I was talking about and hopefully let me go - or, if she was a comrade, lock me up in my cell again and inject that drug into me so I forget about all this.

"You're......an experiment?" The figure seemed oddly confused. "Experiment three thousand four hundred and fifty six? They still make experiments? But I thought none were made......since The Incident." The figure spoke wisely with a soft voice.

"What is the incident?" I asked innocently, not knowing hardly anything.

The figure looked around. "It's not safe to talk about that out here. Cameras, they're everywhere. Audio chips, too. They'll hear us, and catch us....just like that." The figure snapped her fingers. "All will be revealed very soon." The figure danced down the hallway. "Is it okay if I call you Tilly? E-3456 is a rather drab name, don't you think?"

"Um.....okay? Sure, call me Tilly." I replied, confused by the vague and mysterious figure.

"Tilly it is then. Follow me please, dearie." The figure said before dancing around the corner of another passage of halls.

I followed, many questions dancing about my head as gracefully as the figure. Who was the figure? Why was she speaking so cryptically? And what was The Incident all about....?

I had no given choice but to follow the figure and find out.

After an hour of walking down mundane looking hallways, with their grey and white painted variations dully patterning the walls all throughout where we had strolled, until the figure stopped. She tapped three times on the wall with a gloved index finger, and said a cryptic word in a whispery, sing song voice.

A green light flowed and danced throughout the wall in a strangely mesmerising fashion, and instantly a door slid open inbetween the metal. The figure stepped inside. I was skeptical about this, and hovered in the hallway. What if this was a trap?

"It's not a trap," the figure said bluntly. Had she read my mind?

"Yes. It's pretty easy. You have predictable thoughts. Well, for me you have. Because I have already asked them." The figure's startlingly blue eye winked, and she gestured a slender finger for me to come inside and join her.

I did just that, hoping that this wasn't gonna be a misleading lie.

But it wasn't.

The doors slid shut quietly behind us, and the figure optimistically threw out her hands.

"Welcome to The Outcasts!"