Pixelated (NaNo 2017)

Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX:

Grayson had dreaded this moment. He'd been staring at his message screen for a long time, reading and rereading his past conversations with Ariana. Everything had seemed so perfect.

Their poetry, the passion that flowed and breathed between the words they sent to each other; their questioning of the world they lived in, not because they were rebellious teens, but because they were genuinely curious; because they saw genuine faults.

But Grayson had never thought they would play out to be as intense and as real as they did. He always thought they were musings of melodramatic teenagers. Not truths that were buried in this compound itself.

And if that hallway existed so close to him, he could only imagine how many there were spread throughout the entire compound; he could only imagine what else the government was doing that none of them noticed because they were in their apartments all day, wasting away in front of a screen.

With a shaking breath, Grayson began articulating a message to Ariana.

Gray41: Hey, so I know this is going to sound really strange, but hear me out. It's my eighteenth birthday, and my parents offered to take me outside of our apartment and into the compound. I was thrilled, but it turned out it was to be casted into a television show that would give us a nice apartment and significantly higher scores (I know, I know: typical). When I was leaving, though, I stumbled into a hallway that didn't have apartments in it like the rest of them do. It had an interrogation room, with a table at the center that was spattered with blood, and four locked doors next to that room. I was only in there for I would say a minute max, because while I was in there, the most agonizing, tortured scream echoed through the hallway. I can't say what was happening, but I would bet everything in me that someone was being tortured. And I can only assume it is from the government. Look, I don't know any more details, but I don't think this compound is as safe as we've always thought it was. I think everything we've been talking about is entirely legit, and something is severely wrong with this place.

ArianaP7: I'm sorry, I barely know how to respond to this. I cannot believe that you found that in our compound; I cannot believe that anyone who here would be torturing another person. But at the same time, I kind of can. In regard to our discoveries, I agree. I think everything we've been finding is sketchy and incongruous, and I think it's time we take our research of it to the next level. We need to find concrete evidence.

ArianaP7: Regardless, are you okay? I can only imagine that'd be a slight bit traumatizing.

Gray41: I'm fine. A bit rattled at first, but I think it was a mix of terror, because I knew I needed to get out of that hallway as fast as possible, or else I could be in danger, and also shock that that was happening here.

ArianaP7: I can only imagine. I know that there isn't much I can do, but talk to me if you're not dealing well with it.

Gray41: I mean, I can't get it out of my head, for one. The pain in her voice; the way that it sounded was so raw and unfiltered, it wasn't even something I could conjure in my nightmares. And I can't stop thinking about all the implications it has.

ArianaP7: I know, it's kind of insane. I mean this calls into question everything that we do in our lives; it calls into question the very base of our existences: these compounds. Are they just distractions?

Gray41: Right. And I don't know who was being tortured, or what for, but I can't imagine anybody in this compound would have done anything terrible enough to deserve any sort of pain like what I heard. It was inhumane.

ArianaP7: You didn't hear anything other than a scream? Nothing that would suggest a reason why they were being tortured?

Gray41: No, nothing else. Just the scream.