Silence Falls

This was it! The big day has finally come! The Great Escape would certainly be executed today and there was nothing that could stop this speeding train from reaching it's destination. No high amount of tensing flowing through each member of this impenetrable plan could prompt any of them from turning their backs now, not when they were just one last day away from freedom after so many years underground.

Bam and Cris were already up that morning earlier than they normally would be. The feeling of apprehension was much stronger than the feeling of excitement for the both of them. Robotically, they fixed up their individual beds and paced around their room for what could be the last time until the large metal door to their room was unlocked by the patrolling staff on duty. Nothing was said between the two of them, their usual scattered thoughts a million miles away as they waited around in silence for their medication to be served. When they were finally let out for their morning pills, they both shared a strong nod of solidarity that spoke volumes even with Cris's small innocent smile that seemed odd to see considering the severity of their coming situation. Then again simply walking along halls seemed so much more different than it ever did before today, it seemed so final now, as if they were walking the path to the guillotine. They both looked at everything as if they were reliving their first time down there...or in this case, their last time. They stared at the many patients that moved past them along the way to the medication booth, at the many rooms left unlocked for inspection, and the white walls stained with dried blood in certain areas. They just stared at everything that was in their sights in awe. Were they really going to wake up tomorrow to see the sun's rays piercing through the lush trees behind a blue morning sky? Unbelievable, it seemed to them. Some things were just too impossible to believe.

After swallowing from their small paper cups brimmed with unfamiliar assorted pills, the boys turned to follow the line of other patients that were making their march towards the door where two short flights of stairs led to the cafeteria. As they reach that very same door, Cris's blue eyes were propelled to his right and spotted several boxes laid out in front of the only elevator that led to the surface above. Narrowing his eyes at the words printed on the sides, he read the bold letter clearly, feeling a rising fear draining his skin into an ashy white pallor. Taking in a few shaky breaths, Cris desperately reached out to tug at Bam's shirt until it earned him an irritable glare.

“Dude, what the hell do you want!?” Bam hissed at him, not wanting to draw any attention from patients or staff members. For once, he was actually doing his damnest to be a good boy. “Can't you see I'm not in the mood to deal with your shit right now on top of everything else!? Hold your shit together on your own, man!”

Huffing impatiently, Cris grabbed a fistful of Bam's shirt and urgently pointed in direction of the boxes to guide him to his current issue. With a growl, Bam followed his finger with his eyes...and just about almost passed out at what he saw. By this time a security guard was already digging in one of said boxes by then and produced a brand new high-tech security camera. Jesus fucking Christ, they were heightening their security on the very day of their planned escape?! What were the odds?!

Bam stopped in his step, only to be pushed forward by a large male patient who was holding a conversation with himself when he wasn't hitting the side of his head every 5 minutes. Cursing beneath his breath and running his hands over his face, Bam muttered to himself. “Oh man, Bert is NOT going to like this when he finds out.”

After entering the cafeteria, Cris and Bam quickly got their lunch trays and gravitated themselves to their usual lunch table with their group of friends including Alexis, Onika, Natasha, and Demi, who all- by the similar look on their faces- seemed to know exactly what was going on as well. All the girls looked up at once in need of some form of hope when Cris and Bam sat down, all four mouths immediately opening as their voices intermingled amongst each others. From what little sense the boys made from what they were saying, it wasn't just newly installed high-tech security cameras the staff were setting up, but much more than that. Both Demi and Natasha had witnessed new locks being installed on every single door in their dorm thus far, and not just ordinary kinds, but the fingerprint scans, keycards swipes, AND special custom made keys. Meanwhile, Alexis and Onika overheard a conversation between three guards that they were also planning to start probing through all the vents with the sole purpose of configuring some kind of high security tech throughout them as well.

“What do you mean by configuring? Are you saying they're trying to set up some kind of trap in the ventilation systems?” Cris asked the girls, his whole body shutting down in defeat followed by his temperature dropping to deathly levels. Oh god, this couldn't be happening, he mentally cried within himself, please God please, don't let this be happening! Please.

“I don't know what the fuck they're up to exactly, all I heard was that they were gonna configure some shit up there.” Onika said while anxiously ripping her pancakes to shreds because she didn't know how else to react to what they've all been bombarded with today. “We were all actually hoping you guys would know something about that stuff cause we don't have a single fucking clue as to what's going on all of a sudden.”

“Fucking fuck me FUCK!” Bam ranted, accidentally shouting the last word and earning some guards to look their direction. Onika swiftly threw what was left of her whole pancake at him as the girls joined her in shushing him. Cris reached out to console him by placing a firm hand on his shoulder and whispering calm words in his ear. Bam merely clenched his fist to try and rein back his erupting anger but couldn't hold back from banging one of them the tabletop loudly enough to have one guard stomping towards their table.

:Bam calm the fuck down! Your crazy may want to take a lovely trip down to solitary confinements, but the rest of us don't!” Natasha hissed furiously at him, her slender form leaning over the table so he'd hear her and not anyone else in the cafeteria.

Cris looked peered behind the girls to see a guard headed their way, his eyes widening in panic. “Oh shit, a guard is coming this way, you guys! Oh fuck, what do we do?!”

Every sat frozen, mentally screaming and panicking like a family of headless chickens inside the privacy of their heads but on the outside fighting to appear on their best behavior, unlike Bam who didn't seem to give a damn anymore.

“Hey! Asshole!” A guard shouted at Bam, who fearlessly stood up from the table with a level of murderous intent in his eyes like you'd never seen before.

Cris was horrified. Bam was his friend and roommate! He couldn't allow him to risk his life like this when they were so close to their escape. In a way he felt like he was his responsibility. “BAM N-”

Just before Cris could finish his sentence, a crippled patient who obtained a love for the smell of feet and had a knack for eating his own toe nails or anyone's else he could find for that matter suddenly belted out a bloodcurdling shriek from the table behind next to theirs, his hands shooting up to desperately dig into his head. Everyone in the cafeteria gaped in his direction in shock. The patient abruptly went silence before banging his hands on the tabletop, letting out another scream as he flipped over his lunch tray, and then jumped up on the table in the form of a crouch before taking off full speed across it's length towards the guard that had been approaching Bam, violently flung himself at him. The guard stumbled back in shock before letting out a scream as the patient helped himself to biting out a chunk of his throat and spitting it past Bam. Blue eyes wide in horror for brief moment, they narrowed when Bam noticed that not only that patient seemed randomly off, but so did his eyes. They were brown before but now...they were blue and green like..

Bam stood there motionless, watching the guards try to wrench the patient off of their comrade, before Cris grabbed him by his wrist tightly and yanked him back down into his seat as if nothing had happened. The patient was eventually pulled off of the guard and thrown to the ground like a rag doll. Bam and the others soon calmed down then, thinking the patient was going to be sent to solitary confinements next for what he did, but that didn't happen. The livid guard holding his seeping wound shoved the other guards aside as he lifted his boot up over the cripple boy's head. The patient stared dully into Bam's eyes as Bam stared into his uniquely color blue and green eyes.

Hermanni.

Suddenly, the boot came down on the patient's head like a watermelon exploding from the inside, blood and bits rushing along the floor. An eyeball managed to rolled unscathed across the floor til it bounced off Cris's shoe, the iris was deep dark chestnut brown...

Everyone sane in the cafeteria screamed in horror at the murder they just witnessed, everyone insane merely cackled in amusement or confusion. The wounded guard roar in triumph, earning congratulatory pats on his back by his fellow guard members who supported his cruel decision to the kill the patient instead of punishing him.

And that was how breakfast went that morning.

______________________________________________________________________________

Bert and Otep didn't emerge until around dinner time, and they didn't look all too pleased about the news of the patient either. Everyone at the table had been quiet since that morning, the hems of their pants still caked with dried blood. That patient was only a lunch table behind them when he was killed. The fact kept repeating in their minds like a broken record until Bert and Otep took a seat at their table.

“Heard about this morning with that patient. Are you all okay?” Bert inquired in a whisper, understanding that the trauma was still pretty fresh with them and could have left them in a state of catatonic shock what with how close the murder had acted out near their table.

Cris lifted his head from his mash potatoes to give both Otep and Bert a short reassuring smile. “We're alright, guys. It's nothing we haven't seen before. We just need to let this sink in and runs it's course for now like all the other times, and then we'll get over it.”

“No we're not!” Bam argued, glaring down at his dinner before aiming it at poor Cris who was only trying to be positive like he always is. Cris lowered his head to hide behind his hair in silence as Bam growled at him. “Tell him exactly what he missed out on this morning! Go on, fucking him tell what was in those goddamn boxes and then keep telling him we're all fucking okay!"