"Right. Now, onto the reason I asked Mister Daniels to exit the room. Mister Arzegotti, I'm quite sure you've picked up a fact about me that most overlook."

The voice subtly changes throughout the last sentence, as if the man behind it is turning off all the voice masking devices. However, something seems off to say the least about the bits of the voice that one could pick up on. The bits that didn't seem to change sounded slightly, robotic. Upon hearing this, Luca locks up, standing in the same place. His arms not moving, his chest not even expanding and contracting to denote breathing. Still as a statue.

"Mister Arzegotti? Your world is in danger. No danger that anyone on this planet had thought of, no government has prepared for it. No conspiracy wild enough to truly pinpoint the exact cause of this threat. Not a single-"

"Yeah yeah, ominous foreboding bullshit. Not meaning to be rude, okay maybe just a little, or a lot, rude, but maybe you could actually say what the fucking threat is instead of going on and on about what it isn't?"

A look of "Just a thought" flashes across Luca's face momentarily as he looks around for where the video camera in the room is, so he can look whatever's behind the voice in the eye (sort of) while it's talking to him. As he steps closer to the upper left hand corner of the containment room, the sound of his footsteps get mixed with a sloshing noise. Looking down, his nerves finally send the signal to his brain that his feet are getting wet. Staring at the puddle and back up, he finds what he was looking for staring right back at him as if it faded into visibility inches from his face.

The video camera.

"Now, I cannot let you in on the exact nature of the threat at this time."

"Typical."

"As I was saying, you must have noticed something different about yourself in your insignificant quest to find the exact angle I use to watch the events that occur within this room. I know what it is, however I want to hear it in your own words. Let's see if the treatment didn't disorient you too badly."

"Thank you for your concern about my well being, I'm sure it means a whole lot to you."

"Oh, shut up, will you? You're almost as bad as Mister Daniels. Almost."

A high pitched whistling sound can be heard on the other end of the room from where Luca's standing. He places his hands to his ears to block it out, but the sound only gets louder as it rapidly approaches the very spot where he's standing. As it reaches the exact spot that he's standing on, he ducks and see a small dart fly over him and lodge itself into a wall.

"Very good! You see, I felt as though your senses were too sight oriented, so I made the necessary adjustments to fit the most optimal form to take on the threat that at this moment cannot be named."

"So, you fucked with the way my senses work, and you're going to bring it up like it was nothing. What the actual fuck is wrong with you?!"

"You make it sound like I performed a complex procedure on you without your consent, which I most certainly did not do. You see, what I did was very simple, really. I merely programmed your brain to prioritize the signals it receives from the sense you call hearing, and to make the other four secondary. A simple procedure which has been performed on all of my volunteers, from the willing to the, not so willing..."

"May I ask-"

"No, you may not. The fact that you still have questions after I summarized the operation tells me that a further explanation would serve only to go over your head some more, and I cannot afford to waste my time explaining something to someone who won't even be listening to half of the words that I say. For now, you should go attempt to soothe things over with Mister Daniels, you are going to need him for your upcoming assignment, Mister Arzegotti. You are dismissed."

"But-"

"Dismissed."

The door that leads out of the room opens again, and almost moving against his will, Luca walks out of the room and into the hallway of this building that he's no doubt unfamiliar with. Stepping down the narrow hall, he sees a myriad of corridors at the end of the straight line, conveniently where Jared had disappeared when he was watching him leave. Each corridor branched off into two separate hallways, effectively leaving him with 12 options to where the man he was looking for went, and not a whole lot of time to find him before the voice decided it needed them again.

Hearing the sound of footsteps from the corridor directly behind him, he spins around on one foot in time to see someone go from one room to another on the opposite end of the hallway. Not catching enough of glimpse to make out the identity of the person, he decides to follow their footsteps into the room, hoping that they would know where to find Jared.

As he stepped into the hallway that he saw the person in, he could feel the temperature drop by about 20 degrees. Shivering at the sudden decline, he continues on to the first door on the left hand side, the door he saw someone walk through. When he approaches, he remembers that the door was unlocked when whoever stepped through it opened it, and assumed that it would be the same for him. Just to be sure however, he clenches his hand in a lazily formed fist and taps on the door lightly.

No answer.

Pushing on the door, it opens slightly. Deciding it the best option, he pushes harder, forcing the door open all of the way. Stepping into the room, he could hear a low vibrating sound. Then, he feels a slight hint of warmth pressing against his body, and finally he sees the lasers inspecting his physical frame. Could this be an adverse side effect of the operation, that being his senses possibly being delayed?

Or, worse yet, is this what the voice was intending?

"Thank you for your cooperation, Mister Arzegotti. You may proceed."

A synthetic, feminine voice said to break the monotony of the low vibrating sound that had filled the room and consumed his auditory receptors. Stepping further into the room, he sees three cots on the right and left side of the room, set up in the exact same pattern.

The two on the outside were placed across from each other, and the middle was placed in the middle of the gap, however it was moved closer to the door. The result was a V shape on both sides, each cot currently empty. In the corner of the room sat a desk, and at the desk sat the person he had seen come into the room.

Jared. Well, that was easy.

Approaching the desk, he could see what Jared was working on. In his hand was pencil, dragging against the stark white and pale blue of a piece of college ruled lined paper, staining the white a shade of gray in a trail of graphite. At the top of the page, he saw the only words he could read from the angle he was looking at the paper, in big letters:

"Dear Renee,"

"Jared?"

Angrily, the man turned his attention from the paper, and up toward Luca. The fire in his eyes flickered, before disappearing completely, drowning the emotion he was trying to convey in the sorrow that consumed the older gentleman's soul.

"Now what are you here for? Are you going to destroy any other part of my life?"

"I'm trying to save it, Jared."

Nope, the fire's back. Lit up in his eyes like a California wildfire, his eyes stare into Luca's, deep into his soul.

"Save it? Like you saved us by selling our asses out?! Oh yeah, you can manipulate so you're the good guy there, so you have no guilt about doing that, do you?!"

Rolling his head around his shoulders, still trying get a kink out of his neck, Luca takes a step back from the inevitable attempt Jared would make at assaulting him.

"I did. None of you knew what you were getting into. The only difference now is that neither of us know what's going to be waiting for us whenever we get the call. So, with that in mind, we need to be able to trust each other-"

"Trust each other?! I trusted you with my life, and you sold me and everyone else out! So tell me, how in the fuck am I supposed to ever trust you again?"

"Easy-"

"Oh, you have an answer for everything, don't you?"

"How about you let me finish? Think about it, Jared. If it all ends tomorrow, do you want to go out fighting for our survival, or go out arguing with me about shit that neither of us can fix. Even if you don't ever trust me again, no matter how many times you hit me, whether or not i die, it won't change the fact that they're all in jail. You're the only one who sold yourself the Man behind the voice for freedom. Now, you're realizing that freedom, isn't as free as you thought. And now, you have two options.

You could work with me, and we can make sure that there's a world that everyone else can return to...

...Or you can bitch and complain, and there won't be a future for any of us.

There isn't a middle ground this time, Jared."