In The Den of Addiction [Addiction 1]

A soft red glow permeated the dimmed metal room. The burnished surface of each and every inch of the walls hummed softly. The eight beds, spaced evenly across the walls held their occupants , still deeply asleep. The red orb in the middle of the room threw deep shadows up the walls. Nearly a mile above two figures held counsel.

"...And do we have the specs for the new classes?"

"Yes sir. They could be a problem."

"How so? And don't start with that we should just kill them out of hand thing."

"Very well supervisor. The waste-"

The other figure sniggered.

The other figure started again clearing his throat.

"The waste class is able to negate their aspect in whatever form it appears."

"So, we'll have to do a bit of cleanup."

"More than a little sir, if R&D is right."

"Paranoid bastards the lot of them."

"But rarely wrong."

The supervisor sighed. "Well, you have me there...Wake them up.

------------------

The room suddenly brightened with ambient white light, seeming to come from the smooth ceiling, and the orb in the middle of the room spoke in a cool female voice. "Awaken subjects." It said shortly, and suddenly, each of the six individuals found themselves jolted awake, as though shocked.

"Please stand by and remain in your beds." The orb said firmly. "Failure to do so will lead to your forceful restraint."

-------------------

Cinder awoke with the distinct impression that his head was exploding in slow motion. Hell, he wouldn't be surprised. His last memory was of someone pointing something that looked a whole lot like a gun at his head. Maybe this was just a really shitty afterlife. He considered the religious implications of the afterlife being a burnished metal ceiling and nothing else before sitting up and deciding that the whole afterlife idea had been wrong. There was no way he was dead, because he was wearing pants. heaven hell or nirvana, there was no way in hell that dead Cinder would be wearing pants, so the afterlife was out.

Now that he looked, there were people around him too. Some odd fucks sure, but people nonetheless. He had expected angels, aliens maybe. He wouldn't have been surprised with some fiery motherfucker with a wicked fro and a pitchfork. He was almost disappointed. You didn't get abducted every day, he was sort of hoping that it would be an adventure.

He had just about swung his legs over the side of the bed when the orb told him not to. He hovered between contrary behavior, and the desire to avoid handcuffs. Handcuffs won out in the end but only just. So he sat there...feeling a bit silly. He remembered having a yoyo but it was gone now. He idly searched for the dose of "Self medication" he had been storing in his back pocket, and found to his mild irritation that it wasn't there. Well, it seemed the headache was there to stay.

--------------------

Lyle awoke suddenly and uncomfortably. He felt oddly numb, and detached from himself. His body tingled. It wasn't pleasant, and he hoped that it would pass. The nature of his injuries, or rather their surprising lack examined, he began to take in his surroundings. Seven people, eight counting himself. Well that was interesting.

Lyles eyes drifted to the orb in the middle of the room. It bore his attention much more intensely than the other individuals around him. People he'd seen, people he knew. Floating orb of red energy stuff, not so much.

Even as the orb told him to stay put, lyle reflected that he hadn't the slightest intention to go anywhere until he figured out what was going on. That said, something else was bothering him. He knew his mind well, and there was something wrong with it. He felt...hollow. It was less of an absence and more like he was somehow aware of something new...something that couldn't be understood or filled. He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

---------------------

May awoke less with a start and more a wiggle. She reached for covers that weren't present and, finally opening her eyes she let out a little "Oh" Noise.

She looked around, blinked a couple times and said "Oh" Again.

She didn't seem to have a further comment.

She looked at the orb as it told her to stay in bed. "But..." She started before trailing off.

----------------------

"What the fucking shit!"

City awoke with a punch straight into the air. Some fucker had gotten him with a live wire while he was asleep again. He bolted upright, ready to throw his alarm clock at whatever fucknuts had screwed with his nap... His alarm clock was noticible in it's absence, and the absense of any of his stuff. He was in pajamas... Eight people were sitting around him.

City blinked. Well at least he was wearing his awesome purple pajamas with the fake tie. Bitches wouldn't fucking know what hit them. City realised that he was using his internal monolog to distact himself from the fact that he wasn't in his own bed. Also, the fact that everything was going just a little slower than it seemed like it should was a bit worrying. "What the fuck did I drink...." He wondered out loud.

"Questions will wait untill the appropriate time." The orb said.

"What the fucking shit?"

Elena woke with a start. She laid still for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. Tentatively, she raised her hands up so that she was staring at her palms, mostly just to see if she could move. They were still covered with blue and green flecks of paint. Had she passed out from the paint fumes? Unlikely, she thought. Oil paints smelled bad but they weren't exactly knock-out bad.

Slowly, she pushed herself up on her elbows and looked around. What a fascinating cast of characters we have here... She thought with a smirk. Getting to know them could be fun. Especially the frizzy-haired Gothic looking girl.

Elena sat up cross-legged in her bed, still groggy from her nap and thinking through a nasty headache. It was one of those horrible lurking headaches that don't actively hurt so much as they are a steady, dull, ache deep in the center of your skull. The orb told her to stay in her bed. She yawned and stretched.

"I don't think I've ever had anyone wake me up just to tell me to stay in bed." She mumbled.

-------------

"GAH!"

Kayal bolted upright and pulled her knees into her chest. The first thing she noticed was the fact that her spikeys were gone. All of her spikeys. She cursed under her breath and looked around, hoping to see them in a pile somewhere. It took her a minute to realize that she wasn't in her room. There were no creepy, worn out, stuffed animals with stitched-on button eyes. There were no lava lamps, bookshelves, band posters, none of the things she found comfort in. There were, instead, people and a floating orb. She curled her lip in disgust. She hated people and floating orbs.

She couldn't remember how she'd gotten here. Her chest was kind of sore, like someone had knocked the wind out of her. There was a hazy memory of being alone in her room, watching Adventure Time on her laptop. After that, it was all blackout. Maybe she'd been possessed and brought to some secret compartment in Hell. Yeah, being stuck in a room full of people was definitely Hell.

The orb told her to stay put. Kayla's first reaction was, of course, "Let me swing my legs over the bed and go jump on top of said orb!" She was distracted however by the trippy neon rainbow bitch in the bed directly across from hers.

Definitely Hell if things like that existed here.

-----------------

Wade propped himself up on his elbows, scanning the room for any immediate threats. Nope, none. Just a lot of people. Sighing, he sat up straight. How he got himself into this room with this motley-vomit-variety of people was beyond him. Too much drinking? No such thing, in his opinion, but a possibility. More likely than not he just thought some guy was looking at him crossly when he was drunk and got himself knocked out. Maybe this was a hospital of some sort.

The orb spoke, but Wade didn't pay it much mind. Instead, he reached into his pocket and frowned. Whoever had taken him had also taken his smokes and his whiskey.

"Anybody got a cigarette?" He asked. "And a light?"

---------------------

"eeeAHGEEip! [This is the author's best approximation of how you would spell the noises she makes]"

Olly hissed and sat up in his bed. "That's a pretty fucking RUDE way to wake up your guests, asshat!"

He wasn't entirely sure who he was talking at. The people around him seemed unlikely targets for that specific comment. Olly's eyes rested on the orb. Yes, that was perfect for the blaming!

"Stand by? Stand by. Stand the fuck by and wait for what? You to electrocute my scrawny little ass again? Nah, nah you're good. I'm out."

It hadn't occurred to Olly at all as he was standing up that there was no visible exit in the room. He had no idea where he was going or what the hell he was doing. But by Batman he was going to do it!

As Olly's foot touched the floor, there was a sound like a static spark, and a jolt of red energy rippled through his body. The bolts were'nt meant to be leathal, and indeed, barring some specific heart conditions, they weren't but what they were, was very painfull and rather debilitating. As Olly's higher functions fizzed out for a moment, two metal structures slid out on either side of his bed, centering him, before closing over his chest and knees, effectively immobilising him. It would be about three more seconds untill he would be able to do much of anything.

-------------

As cinder was just begining to freak out about the whole "Maybe in prison or something, what even is going on..." situation, he saw a guy across the room get electrocuted, before a couple of wierd robot....things sprouted out of his bed and hugged him. This speeded up the freaking out a bit.

"Holy shit." Cinder yelled, his voice a good half octive above normal.

--------------

Lyle's eyes widened. That had not been what he was expecting. Admitedly, he wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn't red lightning and metal defying the laws of physics. He sad rigidly on his bed then, determined that up until the moment he was told to, he would not be touching the floor.

Being controlled wasn't in his personality, but being electrocuted, even less so.

--------------

May looked confusedly at the now restrained olly. "Oh no..." She said unhappily. "He died!" She was silent for a few beats.

"Oh well." She said with a shrug.

-------------

City's mood was not the best at the moment. In fact, he would go so far as to say that it was pretty fucking grim. Someone had captured him, or something like that, his stuff was gone, and now someone had gotten tazed. This was no longer a laughing matter.

"Woah, slow down, what the fuck did you do to him?" City yelled at the orb. He resisted the urge to get out of the bed that was becoming increasingly confining to him.

-------------

"Questions will wait untill the appropriate time" The orb said. Then, with a whir, it seemed to switch gears.

"Welcome Homosapians. You have been chosen to become the new Titan Project contestants." The orb began. "All questions will be held untill the end of this message."

The orb paused for a moment. Then, it resumed it's speech.

"Welcome to the arena, you are no longer normal humans, but augmented humans created through interaction with a dimentional "Medium Layer" You are designated as "Addictions". You are the first group of this designation."

The orb seemed to pause again, and a laser grid suddenly swept the room. The orb whirred again.

"It has been determined that this group contains both new aspects, and roles of extreme potency. We look forward to your participation in the arena. A selection of your clothes and personal effects have been transported in order to provide you with a constructive environment. You will be fed periodically throughout the day. You will be allowed to practice your abilaties in the periodic training blocks. You will be allowed to exercise and communicate, under supervision, in the free blocks. These times will be announced as they occur and are subject to unnanounced change. Please stand by."

The orb pulsed a deeper crimson.

"Questions are now open."

If Olly had anything to say on the matter of being electrocuted and restrained, he couldn't currently say it because he was busy being electrocuted and restrained. The thought process in his head was something close to

This is a bad idea isn't it? OH SHIT. Ok, bad idea! BAD IDEA! Oh God WHY?! I regret this decision with every fiber of my being and then some. Oh this...this is ow. This is enough ow. Too much ow. Ow. Fuck.

His thoughts sort of short circuited towards the end, spitting out alternating "Ows" and "Fucks".

-------------------------------------------------

"Oh!" Elena flinched and shielded her eyes. She wanted to jump up and make sure the kid was ok, but he was also sort of the reason she didn't. "Are you...Ok let me not ask if you're ok, because you probably aren't. Are you alive?"

If the kid intended to respond, he was cut off by the orb's little speech. Elena listened patiently, digesting the information and pushing away the urges to attempt to help the kid whom she would now forever refer to as Sparky.

"Ok, so now I'm not an artist - I'm a work of art!"

--------------------------------

Kayla bit back laughter. She was more amused than even she would care to admit by this boy being fried. It led to a series of vivid imagined scenes in which most of the people in the room got electrocuted with various exciting results, ranging from lungs exploding out of chests to cool patterns of burns. She almost didn't hear what the orb was saying.

"Wait, what makes us so special? Like, I get it, we're super mutants now or whatever. But why are we freaks rather than, say, my neighbor or the mailman?"

--------------------------

Wade said nothing. He watched and listened, occasionally nodding to signal that he heard the orb and that he agreed the questions being asked were good questions.

"What kind of changes?" He muttered, half to himself and half to the orb.

Cinder blinked a few times. Well this wasn't great. I mean, shit. He was... mutated? I mean, nice X men-esque mutation or like... "So am I going to like....melt or something? And, I mean, Like where are we exactly?" He took a moment to internally congratulate himself on the fact that that sentence had actually made some sense.

------------

Lyle's eyes went through several stages of narrowing as the orb said it's peace. He tried to collect himself before he shouted something along the lines of. 'What the hell even are you talking about, kidnapping us and exposing us to radiation or whatever does not give us superpowers and furthermore...'

To be honest however, he was slowly realizing that his suspension of disbelief was going to have to be a bit higher in a world with red lighting and metal managing to act against gravity and logic. Instead, after a few moments processing, Lyle asked in an even tone. "Alright, so accepting for a moment that we are augmented or whatever, what are these aspect things? And moreover, if we are no longer normal, what is the difference between how we were and how we are now?"

------------

May was paying very little attention to the world around her. She did however catch the question part of the orb's speech.

"Can we paint or something now? This bed isn't comfortable."

-------------

City grumbled under his breath about being ignored. About halfway through the speech this evolved into a look of mild outrage. "what do you mean, under supervision?"

-------------

The orb whirred.

"Questions will now be answered.

Question 1, Every human in this room is currently alive.

Question 2, You have been chosen to become a titan project subject.

Question 3, The alterations vary between the classes and aspects, as well as person to person. As a whole your question is too broad. In order to approximate a more succinct answer, you will need to narrow the parameters of your question.

Questions 4 and 5, Your state will most likely remain solid for the vast majority of your time here. And your location is information above your current level of clearance.

Questions 6 and 7, The aspects, as they are called here, are the modifiers of the Class system, and the designations pertaining to the area of power that titan project subjects have dominion over, and you have been selected to be titan project subjects, and have been exposed to the medium layer.

Question 8, No.

Question 9, You will be supervised.

Olly had blacked out for a moment or two, coming to just in time to catch the second half of the orb's Q&A session. He sat up slowly, wincing at the residual burning sensation and involuntary twitching of his muscles. At this point he had come to the conclusion that he was not getting out of this, would probably never get out of this, and that he very distinctly disliked all of this.

"Alright," he said in a gravelly voice. "We're mutants. We're mutants how? I regain consciousness after you so rudely tried to kill me dead, and you're prattling on about 'aspects' and 'classes'. The fuck are they?"

-----------------------------

"Oh hey! You like to paint, too?" Elena smiled warmly at the little girl across from her. She looked slightly crushed when the orb spat out a simple, cold "No", but decided she couldn't do anything about it anyway and simply sighed.

------------------------------

These were fair questions, Kayla noted. She didn't have any of her own that hadn't already been asked or answered, so she simply rested her chin on her hands and looked at each person as they spoke respectively.

-------------------------------

Wade rubbed the back of his head, looking up at the orb doubtfully. "But why? What are we supposed to do now? You runnin' tests on us, or what?"