They're coming to take me away, ha-ha...

[Bjorn]

"All right, so far."  Bjorn looks around, studying the position of the guards, and looking for cameras or any obvious surveillance equipment.  "What about yourself?  Are you feeling better today?"

[Brian]

"Tired," she says.  "I had to do P-testing, and that's always almost pointless."  She shrugs.  "What does seeing myself gone, and my vision living on mean, anyway?  It's not like I can..." she trails off, and shrugs.  "I just try and relax.  Think that it's okay, and I'm safe here."

[Bjorn]

"On that note," Bjorn says quietly, moving his lips as little as he can, "what do they have here in the way of defenses?"

[Brian]

"What was that?" she asks sleepily.  Less ... than your ... mind.  Can you ... relax a little?

[Bjorn]

Okay.  Relax, let down the guard, reach out to Megan... "I said, does the food ever get any better around here?"  Goddamn, that was lame.  No, damnit, focus, relax, reach out to Megan...

[Brian]

Your bracelet doesn't react, as far as you can tell, but Megan's mental voice comes much clearer to you. How do you mean?

[Bjorn]

What keeps people from escaping?  I mean, other than the obvious -- the guards, and the tranquilizers, and so on.  But I have the feeling that there's a few people in here that wouldn't be easily stopped.   If you want to break out, what do you have to go through?

[Brian]

There's four areas like this one, she explains quickly.  "Not that I've noticed, except for breakfasts, and the Sunday dinners," she says more slowly, as though thinking about it.  This is the place where they put people who aren't entirely willing to be here.  You saw the doors in the corridors?

The image comes back to your mind of the bulkheads you saw when you were taken to the chamber where you retrieved your bracelet.

Well, that's where we are.  Section two is for people who were normal, but volunteered to try and get ... changed.  Section three is people who are like us, or were from section two, but want to work for the Workshop anyway.  I don't know what section one is.

And yes, some people actually do volunteer ... and they are trying to figure out how to give the abilities of what we do to other people.

[Bjorn]

"Breakfast is good?  For that, I should try to get on whatever the sleep schedule is here."  Has anyone ever managed to break out?

[Brian]

...yes, she thinks, but you feel the hesitance in the reply.  She nods to you.  "The sleep schedule's a bit weird.  Keeping us from knowing what time it is maybe excites our abilities, or something.  I don't really understand it."

Ezmereth escaped.  And I think ... Victor would have, if the situation had played out differently.  Someone ... I don't honesly know who, but someone broke in from above ground.  Since we've got no way to keep track of time, really....  Anyway.  He smashed straight through the earth, all the way down to Ezmereth's room.  Ezmereth escaped, and whoever it was was fighting past loyal metas to try and get to Victor.

One of the metas here finally did something to the attacker's mind ... said he was male, and then her mind snapped, and she started screaming that 'he took it from me!' over or over.  She was moved into this section for a while.  After she calmed down she was taken back to section three.

Ashnod didn't actually escape....  I ... snuck into some of the doctor's minds while they were testing me.  I do it, sometimes.  And I found out that he was released to try and lure someone out.  I guess the one responsible for releasing Ezmereth.  Victor was too powerful to be let loose.

As far as getting out, you'd have to get past ... the guards.  There's four here, at all times.  Two outside the door, which can only be opened from outside -- though I think if you get up to the walkway ... I'm not sure where that exit leads.

The main corridor floods with a gas that'll knock you out if you try brute force.

Once you get past that, if you can handle the guards, at that point, the loyal metas from section three will probably show up.  I know they've got at least ten, though I don't know what abilities they all have.  If you can get past them, then it's just the datapod.  After the datapod, it's a normal building, and the emergency exits will lead outside....  You also sense a trace of guilt from her thoughts as she relays that information to you.

[Bjorn]

Why do you feel guilty? thinks Bjorn, too unused to telepathy to strive for subtlety.

To himself (he hopes), he goes over what he's been told, his mind whirling.  Now, though, he knows why the guards are worried about him -- because he might very well be immune to the last line of defense.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to become bullet-proof, gas-proof, and how to blow through reinforced walls, and I'm set.

[Brian]

Megan yawns expansively, though the guilt in her thoughts only deepens.  I only know because I used to be in section three.

[Bjorn]

I see.  For what it's worth, if they'd been even a little more clever, I'd be in section three, too.

"Tired?  What's involved in the P tests, anyways?"

[Brian]

"Precog," she says with a shrug.  "Try and guess what happens, and be right.  Looking ahead just wears me out."

...thanks.  Are you planning on trying to escape?  You get a fleeting image of you slipping past guards, carrying Bridgett on your back from Megan.

[Bjorn]

"That's right," says Bjorn slowly.  "You said you could... see things?"

I'm going to try.  I don't know how.  It would help if I had some idea what I could do, but I will not stay here.