The Burden on Her Shoulders

The Morning After Part 1

Trigger warning: attempted r$!e and minor s3lF h4rM

The next night at dinner, Rosalyn had been awake for just a few hours. Andre forced her to come down to dinner. She was still weak, and Andre hoped she wouldn't have any reservations about eating the snake soup they would be getting for dinner.

She barely heard the bickering happening as a couple of Grays served the soup to everyone. But as everyone removed the lids from their bowl, the previously dead snakes came out of them with a hiss. Everyone jumped back from the table, and Rosalyn became uneasy at the dark magic that surrounded them.

She fell to the floor and backed up against a wall as the snakes slithered toward her. As they grew closer, the pain in her head increased significantly. She pressed right up against the wall, snakes mere inches from her when her eyes rolled back in her head and a bright white light shot from her palms.

When everyone was able to look back at the girl, the snakes were nothing but ash on the ground and she was hyperventilating, not having moved an inch from her place.

Andre and Dinah were the first ones to move. Calming the girl down before bringing her back to her room before they were called back for an emergency meeting.

~

They wait for Venable to speak, but she remains silent as someone walks down the hall. He walks around the round to where the woman stood. She retreats and he takes her place, studying everyone in the room.

"Someone is missing." He states.

"Rosalyn," Andre confirms. "There was an accident at dinner so she's resting. I'll fill her in after."

"Very well. My name is Langdon, and I represent the Cooperative. I won't sugarcoat the situation. Humanity is on the brink of failure. My arrival here was crucial to the survival of civilized life on Earth. The three other compounds - in Syracuse, New York, Beckley, West Virginia, and San Angelo, Texas - have been overrun and destroyed. We've had no contact from the six international outposts, but we are assuming that they, too, have been eliminated."

"What happened to the people inside?" Timothy asked.

"They were killed by those that somehow survived the blasts, radiation, and nuclear winter," Rosalyn says from the doorway, no longer being able to sit idly by.

"Yes. We are assuming they were massacred by the cannibals that live outside the outposts' borders. The same fate will befall almost all of you. In the knowledge that this very moment might occur, we built a failsafe - The Sanctuary. It is unique. It has certain security measures that will prevent overrun. All that matters is that The Sanctuary will survive. so the people populating it will survive, so humanity will survive.

"I have been sent to determine if any of you are worthy and fit to join us. The Cooperative has developed a particular and rigorous questioning technique we like to call 'Cooperating'. I will then use the information to determine if you belong."

"What is this, The Hunger Games?" Coco asks rudely. "This is bullshit. I paid my way in here, and that is the only cooperating I plan on doing."

"You don't have to sit for questioning," Langdon tells her boredly.

"What happens if we choose not to?" Andre asks.

"You stay here and die." He replies sharply.

Gallant raises his hand. "I volunteer to go first."

"No. I decide. You will be summoned when I'm ready for you. The process should only take me a couple of days, so you won't be kept in suspense forever. For those that don't make the cut, all is not lost. If the worst should happen and feral cannibals come knocking, down one of these." He holds up a vial of pills. "One minute later, you fall asleep and never wake up."