I had a quesadilla that morning. Though it really was last nights pizza folded in half, baked in with some old cheese. It was good as hell. The cafeteria was a large hall in what once was the entrance lobby, and the kitchen was behind the reception. I would sit in the corner with 6 other guys, behind the salads and sauces. We had a massive stock of decades old Polish sriracha they supplied in tiny bottles every Sunday. We hadn't run out of it in 30 years. Taste had varied from bottle to bottle.
Most of the halls were lit in white, sickly office lights, but the cafeteria had a large, ancient chandelier that hung with 4 small orangey bulbs. You could barely see your fork, but the vibes were immaculate. The heavy shadows and low light calmed us down after a day of nothing but bright white light. I'd at least rest my eyes and head, for the 15 minutes we had to eat.
I'd gotten up after about 20, put the tray away and went down the hall and up the stairs. There was a mess of doorways, a locker room I changed in, and another mess of doors. Wearing my rubber shoes, a blue coat and a hair net, I stood in front of a white door with a white paper on it. It had the time of the meeting, the attendees and the subject of the briefing. I still had 10 minutes to wait.
They told us again about the broken spell. About how we will be put to sleep, and shoved into a nightmare we have to somehow "solve".
It was done mostly for the kid, but, I also didn't know some of the stuff. The spell was apparently used as an interface before, but now that its broken, its completely quiet. And it used to make people sleep by itself. We have to induce a coma to get the persons soul to connect with the spell now.
There were three others with me. One of them I knew, he was the goalie of my football team. He wasn't very athletic, but he was tall as shit and barely fit into the elevator. His name was Paul. Oh and, mine's Phill.
The other was a kid I taught a class on soldering to a year ago. He was only 16. Phill was 24. The kid didn't really pick up much from me, and avoided classes as well as he could. He didn't seem to interested in any other job, and I guess he wound up fighting for his life in a nightmare instead. He seemed ecstatic about it, though.
The other guy was an older looking gentleman. He came around recently, about 2 years ago, and brought old cds and cassettes he found and kept across the buried outside. We had movie nights every day ever since. I'm sure they had them that night as well, just without him. Which wasn't that rare anyway. He was actually only about 45, though he straight up looked 60. Everyone looked much older I guess. The kid especially.
We came to a stop, and so did the elevator. The doors opened into a blinding light, and then birthed us into a small six by six room. On the right was a line of incubators. They were like the ones I used to work on, though I have not been in this room before.
They were cylindrical, mostly metal and plastic contraptions made to fit a man or woman of any size. They had a little window you could peak at, though most of the time you wouldn't want to. One of them even had the window taped over.
Two women greeted us as we walked deeper into the room. The wall on the left was glass, and a door in the corner led a to a room on the other side of it. Margarette was inside the room, poking at a console and taking notes. The woman that spoke to us I didn't know. She must have been new. She told us to keep strong, and that they were having difficulties, and to wait. I was almost eager to help them, but to be honest, I was nervous. So I waited.
The 16 year old Nicholas, Paul and I played cards on the dirty floor. Elliott went to watch the scientists work. He worked at the outside north wing, following awakened soldiers and helping in mapping and taking samples from the tunnels. He carried out a few cool missions out there, and generally kept us safe. He didn't look like it, but he was the best candidate for the pod treatment. Me and Paul were chosen randomly, and the kid signed up himself.
Nick was shaking his leg like crazy, and Paul was winning. In the end our game got called off by Josephine. She stood us each in front of a metal maw of the pods. The inside was padded, but dirty. The leather seat was torn open in a lot of places, and the stitches started to be more numerous than the seat. I knew what most of it did. How it worked. What all the wires sticking out of the seat did. I was never present in the loading of the pods though.
My head was spinning. It wanted to fall off my shoulders when I climbed into that thing. Instead, it got nestled into a fairly soft headrest. My jaw felt numb. The pod smelled musky and fresh, mostly from the cleaning products. The door shut, and gave me claustrophobia I never knew I had. My hands instinctually pressed against the door, and then let go. My eyes didn't shut, but they let go too. I was unconscious.