Fade
Characters: Wu Setting: His room, cafeteria, early morning
He may have been one of the few people here who wasn't dragged back to the waking world by the alarm going off, though that was because of a simple fact: Wu hadn't gone to sleep. All night he'd been awake, sitting in the darkness, clicking through his terminal for anything new from the others, even cracking a bottle of cognac for a private drink. And even if the time had passed, to him it felt as if it was standing still.
He'd been stranded in solitude, left with ghosts from his own memories and the constant reminder that he was now one to so many other people. A ghost, a story, a forgotten man who had been a king. But even kings washed away against the course of time. It had been a long night indeed, there was too much time and silence to pay into his own reflection in the bathroom, remembering scars and forgetting the names and faces of people who'd sworn their lives to him.
So when that alarm sounded, offering any kind of reprieve from the purgatory of Wu's own mind? He leapt at the chance, uncurling from his seat on the bed and slipping into his chair. In the darkness of his room, the monitor's glare sent little pangs through his eyes as Wu read over the message from the administration, and when he had finished he sat stock-still for a long moment, just waiting.
He'd hoped to feel something from it, some note of apprehension, dread, suspicion over the crimes of Caroline and Ryan, even pleasure for whatever his impending reward might be. But there was nothing, a resounding absence of anything but a wan, weary resignation. If he thought that he could sleep, Wu might've ignored the message entirely and pulled the sheets over his head for the next few days, but it wouldn't come that easily. he'd need to be drunk, maybe drugged...
Knowing that neither option really was one, Wu stepped from his terminal with a whisper of a sigh as he moved to the closet and pulled the doors open. He'd been given seven outfits, just like everyone else, though to date all of Wu's had been business attire. Cream-colored shirts, dark slacks, power ties and polished shoes had been the norm, but now? Now he finally reached for the last of the hangers, pulling free a garishly red Hawaiian shirt and a pair of cargo shorts.
Somehow, these people had known he would want something like this. Somehow they'd predicted the day would come when he had no patience for crisp shirts, cuffs and collars, or a proper Windsor knot in his tie. Today was the day, and for all the care Wu put into changing out of his old clothes and hanging them up? There was utterly none to how he dressed himself before leaving, pulling the shirt over a bare chest and leaving it unbuttoned, stepping out of his room barefoot. He would fetch his 'gifts', see to this nonsense in the courtyard, and come back. And when the door was closed again? He could just... just fade away for a while.