Mid-Month Rolls + Fun With Closets

[Cactus]

Dorian was lucky to be alive.

It wasn't his fault, really. The poor bastard had gotten in so far over his head that he didn't have a clue what to do anymore. It was all like a bad dream that he just couldn't wake up from; that there wasn't any escape from. He'd seen what happened to the last person who tried to get out and leave it all behind. It was horrific, and after everything he'd witnessed and seen, Dorian knew that he truly had no choice in the matter. He had to keep working here, and survive as long as he could, until he made a mistake and got murdered for it.

People had been killed for less, of course. Take Kaige, Rice, and McLocke. The three of them had gotten bored, read a fanfiction out over the speakers, and had ended up with cut vocal chords and one-way tickets to the SOTF island, the first time that adults had participated since test run 0.4. Kaige had been the only one who'd done anything of note, cutting down twelve kids before getting killed herself. It was a fate that Dorian wouldn't wish upon anyone, and had first-hand experience with, ever since his fateful encounter with those May 25th kids. He'd barely made it out of that alive, and he never of many of his fellow workers who hadn't. Ever since, Dorian had realized what he'd gotten himself into, and the formerly cool and collected computer programmer turned into a jumpy, nervous wreck of a man to whom doing a good job had become his entire reason for being.

So it was here that Dorian found that he, himself was the recipient of some unbelievably incredible luck, as Danya had not decided to toss him on the island, rip out his vocal chords, or castrate him in some terribly inefficient way. Instead, Danya had screamed at him and given him an assignment that in retrospect, wasn't all that bad. The verbal lashing he'd recieved had hurt, and it had hurt quite a bit. Dorian had been placed in charge, and had essentially fucked up. How could Danya have figured him to do otherwise? Dorian wasn't the 'leader' type, and to be placed in the position where he would have to do an announcement, and run the ship...

Dorian had wished for someone else to come and relieve him, and yet that had never come.

The big mistake hadn't been that terribly important - he'd simply forgotten the names of two dead students, and had neglected to inform the kids of their respective demises. An innocent mistake, he figured. He'd hoped Danya might never realize it. Of course, he was Danya, and he did, and Dorian had been fucked. He recalled the look of dread on the faces of every single person who was working at the time as he'd been called into Danya's office with the tone that Danya only reserved for the kids who won, or those who were about to die, and he felt as though he were walking to his own execution.

...and I hadn't even gotten my last meal...

It hadn't been as terrible as he'd expected, though. Sure, it was awful, and he kept expecting Danya to pull out a gun and shoot him in the forehead, but it seemed as though Danya had a soft-spot for poor old Dorian, and he simply reprimanded him and put him on bitch-work duty. Which, in this case, meant cleaning out one of the older supply cupboards that hadn't been cleaned out since the beginning of V2. It was, for a change, actually kind of nice. Dorian found himself relaxing in the large cupboard, going through thousands of papers and reports, deciding what to catalogue and what to keep. This was the kind of work that he'd signed up for originally, not realizing what it would eventually lead to.

If only Mom knew where her medical expenses were coming from, I bet she'd rather have myself whoring on the street than doing this...

As his thoughts turned to his poor old mother, Dorian put down the box that he was currently sorting through and sighed. Affected pretty severely from leukemia, Dorian was doing everything he could to try and pay for her medical expenses. At first, being a person who was not of means, he had tried working several jobs at once, using his engineering degree to the best of its abilities and running a small computer repair business out of his basement. It had sufficied for a time, but an electrical fire had destroyed his entire home, the insurance only covering the home portion of it, and not the business. As such, his business had gone down the tubes, and without a place to live, he'd lost one of his jobs, leaving him with barely enough money to keep himself afloat, much less pay for his mother's medical bills. Finally, he'd become desperate, applying at every single computer-related job that he could find, hoping that someone would offer him enough money to make things work. It had seemed hopeless, until one fateful day, he'd recieved a call from a man named Greynolds...

At the time, Dorian had jumped at the chance to make what appeared to be a ridiculous salary. Jim Greynolds seemed legitimate enough, and even though the young man seemed a little...young - almost as young as Dorian himself, he came complete with an offer that Dorian could essentially not refuse. At first, it had seemed like simple work, stuff that Dorian could do in his sleep, with the sole provisio that he had to be confidential about the whole thing, with random trips that could be taken at any point during the year. It hadn't seemed like a problem, and Dorian had worked on a large part of the system that SOTF used, without realizing what it would be used for, or how. Once he had...it was far, far too late. There wasn't a way out that didn't involve painful death, and Dorian knew that he was as culpable as the rest of them. "Following orders" didn't make him any less guilty, and even though he had absolutely no zeal for what he was doing, he was helping, and that was painful enough to process...

Pushing the horrible thoughts of what might happen to him if they were ever actually caught, Dorian reached into the box and pulled out the next item he was ready to sort through. Most of it had just been personal effects from deceased members of the SOTF organization, or things that people had filed away, to be looked at later. Of course, they never were, and now sat for Dorian to find. Danya had told him, he was to put everything in it's proper place, and to be absolutely thorough in his filing..."or else". He'd let the "or else" sit in the air, and it had so much resonance to it that Dorian had almost vomited on the spot just thinking about what it might mean.

The next object that came out of the box appeared to be a set of car keys, complete with a funny little pink frog and a USB flash drive attached to them. As he examined the keys in his hand, something caught his eye that was taped to the flash drive. As he picked it up and looked closer, Dorian raised an eyebrow. A small piece of masking tape was attached to the flash drive, with the words 'KAIGE - PRIVATE!' written on it in black marker. A chill ran through Dorian's spine as he realized just what exactly he was holding. Angelina Kaige had been one of the three terrorists who'd been condemned to death for reading the fan-fiction out loud during V1, and had essentially been the 'examples' for all of them to be on their best behaviour. Kaige had also been a woman who the majority of, if not all of the men working in SOTF had held an attraction for. Dorian was undoubtedly one of those people, and had often fantasized about Kaige coming in to his room at night, and...

Dorian shook his head. Kaige was dead, and in his hands, he held her own personal flash drive. He often observed her typing away at what he assumed was a private journal, but never knew just where she ended up keeping it. Eyeing the drive, he thought about what secrets it might hold on it. It was juvenille, sure, but Dorian had often wondered if Kaige noticed him, or who she was really interested in amongst the other staffers in SOTF. Hesitating for a moment, he tried to justify it to himself. If he got caught looking at it without doing his job, he would be REALLY screwed. But just to know...

It was Danya's own words that made up Dorian's mind. If he was truly going to be thorough, he would need to investigate the contents of the flash drive. She'd been working on it right up until her fateful announcement, and if he remembered correctly, it had been plugged in to her computer the entire time that V1 had been on, only being disconnected immediately prior to the system restore that they had done. If that were the case...it was likely completely unedited...

I'd better make this quick...

Palming the keys, Dorian rose from his seat in the storage room and hurried off to his workstation. Quickly booting up the computer, Dorian glanced arount the room. Danya was nowhere to be seen, and being it just about lunch-time, most of the senior staffers were away at lunch. The large display screens monitored the game's progress, with a map that showed the locations of every student still left alive. They were able to pull up the vitals at a moment's notice, and could analyze the biographical information as well. It was a solid system that they used - he figured that he should know, as he designed it.

...and here I figured it was all for a video game, or military training...so fucking stupid of me!

He'd made a few upgrades since V1, and especially after V2, that streamlined the interface and made things much easier to find and load up. Dorian was indeed a little proud of the system, just not exactly thrilled at it's intended usage. Pushing the thoughts again away from his mind, he nervously opened the little drive casing and stuck the flash drive into his station. Immediately, the dialog box to open the drive popped up, and he double clicked, looking to see what was on the drive. As it opened, his eyes widened. He'd hit the fucking jackpot. On the drive were files on what looked to be everyone, as well as a subfolder marked 'journal' and one marked 'personal'. It seemed that Kaige was quite the little writer. Searching eagerly for a specific folder, he almost squealed with glee at finding one marked 'Dorian', and double-clicked it. The folder opened to show eight different word documents, all numbered consecutively. Excitedly, he double-clicked the first one and waited for the document to load.

Finally, I'll get to see what she really thought of me...if I had a chance in hell...

What Dorian didn't notice was that as the file opened, it seemed to take a bit longer to display the contents. The file viewer seemed to take an extra few seconds, but he didn't think anything of it. Finally, the file opened, and Dorian eagerly clicked on it to begin reading, when quite suddenly, all of the lights shut down. With a start, Dorian jumped in his spot.

OH FUCK! THEY FOUND US!

Instantly starting to panic, Dorian forced himself to breathe as the emergency lights turned on. Danya had installed them as a precaution from any power failures or electrical surges. As the emergency lights went on, all of the screens in the large room seemed to flicker off at once, including Dorian's screen and the larger screens with the maps and displays on it. The blood drained from Dorian's face as he watched it all happen. The jig was up, they were fucked. What happened next, however, was something that he didn't expect.

The screens all sprang back to life, but instead of reverting to their previously displayed content, they were all showing...

"Street Fighter 2?"

The confused voice came from the door, and was Achyls, one of the more veteran staffers who was a little more confident and seemed to have a lot less of a concession with what they were doing than Dorian. The confused man was balancing a half-bitten hot dog and a can of Coke, and was staring at the screen with a vague recollection of something he'd seen before. Dorian couldn't help but admit that he, too, was confused. Why was Street Fighter 2 playing on the screens of the-

"Oh sweet Jesus, no..."

The blood flew out of Dorian's face so quickly that an observer might think he'd had it all sucked out instantly. It all clicked within his mind where he'd seen this before, and hie eyes flew from the screens showing a video game, to the screen in front of him with the same thing, to the flash-drive sticking out of his workstation. Dorian HAD seen this before. He'd been one of the only ones on duty at the time, but this was very familiar to him, and if it was what he thought it was, it was all his fault. In fact, he KNEW this was his fault. Trying the previous escape code that he'd discovered the first time around, he was alarmed when it didn't work, and by the time the speakers in the building AND on the island thundered out a massive "SHORYUKEN!", the sense of dread that built up in his chest rivalled anything he'd ever felt before.

Thanks to his lack of foresight, Dorian had accidentally re-introduced Jack O'Connor's virus into the systems of Survival of the Fittest, and thanks to the difference in system, the virus was affecting different parts, and was no longer as harmless as it had been before, nor as easy to get rid of. Slumping back in his seat as the sound effects played loudly and the video started to loop, Dorian struggled to take in a breath. This time, there would be no second chances.

This time, Dorian was fucked.

~~~

Rolls (oh nooooooooooooooooooooo!):

So folks, that brings us to the mid-month rolls for August. Believe that shit, it's already the fifteenth! Anyhow, the following poor bastages got rolled.

Sloan Henriksen
Andy McCann
Nick Jones (extension granted)
Ivan Roeghmills
Arthur Williams
James Brown Dennis Bernard

You all have three real-days to begin your deaths, and five TOTAL to complete it. If you need an extension, you can feel free to ask, but it may not necessarily be granted to you. If you want to use a Hero or a Swapper, please post in this topic with that information - as well, people who're dying, please post your topics of death here, too.

Heh, topics of death.

Anyhow, that's it for now! Happy killing, folks!