"COME! ON! JUST! BREAK!" Fitri was doing his best to struggle against the padlock of the cage, but despite it's appearance it was sturdier than he could manage. He was the first to awaken in the cages, being used to waking early. No matter how hard he tried to rouse the others, however, they would not awaken. The one separate from them, in the back, didn't even seem to be breathing, something that worried Fitri to his core.

This latest bout of rattling, however, was finally enough to awaken his cellmate, as Mackenzie woke up with a sore back and the warm feeling of Fitri's red raincoat over him. Although that coat came with it's own musk at the same time, which didn't make it the warmest waking. Neither did the realization of his circumstances.

"What the...huh!? AM I IN JAIL!?" He panicked, flailing around.

"Ay, yo! I got you man, calm down! Take your glasses back!" Fitri gave Mackenzie back his glasses, something he removed to prevent them from getting damaged, as the young man looked around them, his expression draining from panic to horror.

"Where...where the hell are we?"

"I dunno...this room ain't got no windows, and that door's been shut the whole time I've been awake. I'm hearin' cars outside though! A lot of 'em too, so we can't be too far away from a main road!" He explained, perking up with that last bit of hope.

"Are...have we been kidnapped? Who the hell would want to kidnap me!?"

"Beats me, but give me some more time to bust this open and grab the chicks next to us, and we won't stick around to find out!"

"Next to us? Oh Jesus..."

As Mackenzie lamented their state, Fitri got back to work, banging and rattling against the flat metal of the large cage.

After another volley of slams, the waking duo heard a faint crunch. While that made Mackenzie perk up for a moment, it wouldn't last long.

"SON OF A - GRRRGH!" Fitri flailed, gripping at his shoulder.

"Are you okay!?"

"Yeah yeah! It ain't broken but it's damn pinched or somethin'!"

"Mmm, can you keep it dooown? My head hurts way too muuuch~." A sleepy voice eked out from the next cage. However, the waking Myeong-Suk quickly realized her situation. "Holy shit did I go to sleep in some kinda BDSM Club!?"

"No. We've been kidnapped." Layla said, rising from the ground herself.

"Wait, kidnapped!?"

"Have you been up the whole time!?" Mackenzie shouted.

"If you consider having a silent panic attack for the last hour 'up' then yes. You're just going to keep getting yourself hurt if you don't change tactics. See if there's something we can use as a pick, or like a crowbar."

"Wow, have you been kidnapped before?" Myeong-Suk asked, honestly impressed.

"Of course not, I'm just keeping a cool head."

"After an hour long panic attack?" Mackenzie snarked, not a fan of her attitude.

"Which now lets me keep a cool head. You gonna keep criticizing me, or are you gonna help?"

But, their efforts would be in vain, as even with all four scouring for any objects to help they could find nothing, even outside the cages. This room was picked clean.

"This...this must be a kill room! O-Or we were taken by some big nasty gang! W-Why else would it be absolutely bare?" Mackenzie was back to stressing in the wake of the groups failure.

"It might not be that bad, maybe we're the first people they kidnapped!" Myeong-Suk added in.

"What about that guy, then?" Layla pointed to the cage in the back, and the immobile, unbreathing young man that was chained to it. "He's been here long enough to have croaked already. Poor guy probably starved, if blood loss from that messed up arm didn't do it." While Layla wasn't pulling punches, she did sound mournful.

There was a metallic clank, as Layla hit the back of her head against the cage, leaning back in resignation. There was a beat of silence amongst them all, as the air itself felt colder.

"So, what's your guys' stories?" Myeong-Suk asked, huddling close to stay warm, as she was still in her less-than-cozy costume.

"We're going to die and you want to do story time?"

"Well, I still hold hope we'll find a way! Or that someone will come after us! And...if not, isn't it better to know the last people who you'll ever talk to?" She added on.

The space was silent once more.

"Well, I'm Fitri! Been in town a few years, hopped through a lotta places from LA to here. Sorry if my coat's a bit rank, I-I don't really got a place right now." He introduced, apologizing to Mackenzie.

"Honestly, I appreciate it...I'm Mackenzie. I'm kinda out on my own too right now, dad kicked me out, but he always turns back around...if we get out of here, that is."

"I'm Myeong-Suk! I'm 24, an Aries, and I know all the best clubs around here~! I transferred down to UWT from Seattle to get away from my folks, and it's been a fantastic time so far! This part's kind of a downer though!" She said with a forced laugh.

The three of them turned to the last member of the group, who let out a heavy sigh.

"Layla. I don't do much. Live on my own, go to UPS, work in tech."

"Well, I got friends at the shelters who'd notice me gone! And Kenzie, you got your folks yeah? Myeong-Suk too! Even if we can't bust out, someone'll notice we're missing! Layla, your teachers or classmates would notice too!" Fitri tried to encourage them.

"Doubt it, I take online classes, and only made a couple friends on a forced group project. They actually ditched me at a party before I went out and...well..."

"Oh right, I was down at the Silverstone for one too. Gosh how long has it been? Lemme see!" She reached underneath her chest to pull out a smart-flip-phone. "Haha! They didn't search between the girls! But I'm out of battery...shit..."

"Feels like it's been a few hours at least."

"I'll tell you what, it's nighttime at least." A new, soft voice entered the conversation.

"How'd'ya know that? There ain't any wind-HUH!?" Fitri realized who was speaking, as the mangled fifth prisoner woke up.

"Sorry to spook you all, how do you do? I'm Theodore D. Ford, but my friends call me Teddy." He said, giving as gentlemanly a bow as he could in his current state.

"How...you...you were dead, not breathing at all!" Layla questioned.

"Oh, that? Just a little trick, you could say. But I appreciate you checking!"

"Teddy! How long have you been here? Do you know who these people are!?"

"Hmm, a little under a month if I've been counting right. As for who they are..." He thinks about how much he should leave secret from their ears, but determined they should know the truth. "You may not believe all the details, but they're a group of human traffickers who have a very specific clientele, as they constantly look for new and unique sources of blood."

"Of blood!? W-What are they? Vampires or something?" Mackenzie stammered in disbelief, only getting an awkward and remorseful smile from Teddy. "Oh my god they're vampires aren't they..."

"Oh come on, vampires aren't real, they're probably just rich people who want the blood of the young or some other Illuminati nonsense." Layla justified.

"I mean you're not entirely wrong!" Teddy added on.

The conversation couldn't go on much further, as the door to the sealed room violently swung open. "Good evening everyone," The eerie suited man greeted. "Time is not of the essence, so please come quickly and quietly."

No words are said, and one of the lackeys he brought with him went to open Fitri and Mackenzie's cage, and Fitri prepares to make a lunge.

"DON'T LOOK!" Teddy tried to shout, but to no avail, as Fitri lunged fist-forward only to lock eyes with the suited man.

"Stop."

He froze in place, finding himself unable to move. The others all looked away, and as the two women's cage was opened, they tried their best to wriggle out of the grasp.

"Follow quietly." Eye contact was apparently not the only qualifier for the suited man, as all four of them went slack at once, standing from and walking out of their cages.

"A valiant effort, Mr. Ford, but meaningless." The eerie man and his lackeys left the room, confident in their subjugation.

But once they left, Teddy merely flashed a playful grin. "We'll see." With a grunt of exerted willpower, he twisted his chained hand, cutting it against the sharp iron of the cuff. As blood began to seep out, a slight sizzling began to come from the cuff, as Teddy braced himself for the pain.

When their faculties returned to them, a familiar and unwelcome sensation, the four found themselves inside of a pristine medical room, tightly strapped to individual benches. Before they could react, they each got injected with something by workers being watched by the eerie man. At the very least, they were all wearing proper medical PPE.

"What the fuck did you do...t-to us..." Layla tried to move around, but couldn't budge out of her straps before the effects of the sedative began to kick in.

"Only enough to make you compliant. Your minds must be as intact as possible." The four attendants moved to the back, and were handed strange syringes, one for each of them.

Myeong-Suk strained her attention as much as possible, seeing that each of the vials was marked with a letter. The one moving towards Layla had a syringe labeled N, Mackenzie had A, the one moving her way had C, and Fitri's was labelled R. "N-Nascar? No that doesn't make sense..." She muttered to herself.

As their minds became addled, struggling to form even a single thought, the attendants found the most serviceable vein and made their injections, slowly funneling the red liquid, dark enough to nearly look pitch black, into their bodies.

"Now you'll most likely feel a stinging sensation, followed by a warmth in the body. If you experience any other harmful symptoms, well, we'll find out come tomorrow evening."

At first they felt numb, still affected by the sedative. But quickly, far too quickly, their bodies were racked with pin-needle pains, rumbling shivers, twisting and cramping, you name it. In a matter of minutes, their temperatures reached a fever pitch so high that their breath was visible in the cold, sterile room, and they each started convulsing.

As the strange concoction worked further into their systems, they felt their bodies changing in some way they couldn't pin down, and their eyes rolled back and they began to salivate and foam at the mouth. While he didn't care much either way, the eerie man was concerned that he would lose each of the subjects that had, until now, been so hard to find.

But, a few minutes of pitch fevers and foaming spasms later, their symptoms calmed down, and each of the four laid unconscious but, thankfully, breathing.

"Hmm. That's...an interesting response."

"With all due respect, sir, what were you expecting?"

"Not sure. Strange lights, blood leakage, the usual strange science stuff. You can't tell me you didn't think about it."

"Honestly I expected one of them to explode, or have an alien chestburster moment."

"Ah, always a classic. Well, back to the cages for them, I'll update the White Queen."

Teddy sat in his cage, thinking of his next steps, when the door opened once more. Seeing the unconcious bodies of the youngsters, he barely kept his fury in check. "If you hurt them-"

"Calm down, Mr. Ford." The eerie man said from the back of the procession of lackeys. "Comatose and nothing more. For now. If our, shall we say, chemical seasoning does it's trick, then be secure in the fact they will be very well cared for by their new masters."

"Seasoning...are you serious!? You kidnapped barely-adults to season them!? Are you really so profit obsessed and bereft of ideas that you can't even hunt resonances on your-" A gunshot rang through the small room, lodging itself directly in Teddy's gut.

"I have taken quite enough guff from the failed assassin in a sweater vest." The eerie man's placid expression was accented by pin-prick irises of anger. "You're only kept here to be out of the way, an eyesore no one wants to deal with. But, maybe we'll get these cells some more use, just to taunt and torment you about our most 'heinous' of acts, from your standards, you backwards moral evangelist of a Kindred."

"Or you could just kill me, wouldn't that sate you enough?" He taunted, despite the new lead in his stomach.

There was a pause as the man took in a sharp inhale. "Neither the White Queen or the Gray King has requested it. Therefore," He turned to walk out of the room. "Your continued existence is not enough of a threat or boon to warrant attention."

He left, followed by the simple lackeys he had with him, and the room was sealed once more. "Good, that'll give me enough time. But...what about you all?" He looked wearily over at the four sleeping in their cages, breathing steady and audible, but rapid and ragged.

"Please...just survive the night, then we'll all be free."