milliways_bar | (no subject)

Jordan is supposed to stay and wait for the guards to come back. But maybe her friend Lincoln's curiosity is finally rubbing off on her because she can't sit still. She's going to the Island, but the wait is making her crazy. She has to get out of this white room, but how? She can't go out the way she came, and there might be guards on the other side of the door. She's about to give up when she spots a cracked bit of ceiling tile. Standing on top of the bench, she can just reach it...

She nudges it aside, and getting a good grip, hauls herself up. I'm just going to take a peek, then I'll go back, is the promise she forgets as soon as she hears strange noises that sound like people talking. She heads towards the noises until she finds another loose board overhead. Maybe someone else has been this way before? She repeats the process that got her into the ceiling and finds herself rising up out of the floor. Weird.

This place looks like the evening commissary--a bar, as one of the censors called it--but unlike the one from the Institute. She takes a seat on a stool, wincing at how dirty her uniform is and staring helplessly at a menu. Where are the fruit smoothies? There isn't even a vegetable-protein frappe. Time is short, and she isn't at liberty to puzzle out all the words she doesn't recognize all on her own. She has to get back soon, or she'll miss her ride to the Island (not to mention the fact she'd get in trouble for exploring without permission if the guards discover she's left) and she so wants to know more about this place.

Won't someone help her figure out what to do?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I pretty sure it's new to everyone, if you want my honest opinion.
...
Lincoln? Not like Abraham Lincoln, is it?"

"Isn't he dead?" Jordan shook her head. "No, Lincoln Six-Echo. Have you seen him around? He's about..." she held a hand about half a foot over her head, "that tall, has blue eyes, and a mole right here," she pointed to the center of her forehead.

"Last I heard, yeah he was. Can't keep a good man down though, especially around here."

Mike scratches his chin and gives her discription a good deal of thought.

"Okay, I hate to say it? But I think that might just be a bit vague for me. I can tell you that I haven't heard anyone calling themselves Lincoln meandering around."

"That's okay," she shakes her head. "He's not supposed to be here any way." She looks down at her drinks. "I really wish he could be here, you know what I mean?" She thinks about this and realizes, given their conversation, that, yup, he probably does.

"Yeah, actually, I do. It's not a bad place, as places go. Good food. Good friends. What more could someone ask for?"

"Where do you go when you get off work?" She realizes she has no idea where or what someone who works in the Institute would go. They always just appeared when you needed them, even now. "Your friends...you...see...them?"

"Well, in a way you're kind of looking at it. I'm not technically on duty right this second. I'll run Happy Hour in a few. I just came down to do some reasearch first.

But um...I hang out with my roommate, visit my brother, spend time with my girl, swim, invent outlandish money making schemes. You know, the usual. What I really should do, is go home once in a while..."

"Home," Jordan says enviously. "I wish I could. But I'm going somewhere nice soon. It's better with friends, but it might become home. You can get used to anything, right?" She blinks, something finally clicking. "Happy Hour?"