Who: Stephen, Spencer, Shannon, Willard. [Open to rogues]
What: A new day means a chance to play hero.
Where: Carnival bunker.
When: Day 29 - Morning, 8ish.
Rating: PG.
Status: Active.


All things considered, sleeping on a cold floor wasn't all that bad. With a pillow taken from one of the cots, it was even tolerable, not that Stephen was looking to sleep well. Not after what those monitors had shown throughout the day and the sounds that had seemed to echo off the walls. There had been a fair amount of violence but he was no stranger to that. Christ, he had seen people eaten -- or at least seen what was left of them after -- over the last several months more times than he ever imagined possible. No, it was watching Connor trapped and helpless, while he was the same if only under different circumstances, that truly bothered him. Stephen got quieter after that particular monitor shut itself off. Not that he had particularly been vocal before, compared to the others. He forced himself to remain calm rather than reverting to the behavior of a caged animal. It was extremely hard, given that barely days earlier he had been terrified that Connor was dead and there was nothing he could do to save him, and now he found himself facing a similar situation. If not for that man mentioning earlier that a similar sort of experiment had happened before where people shown on the monitors turned out to be quite alive, Stephen wasn't so sure he could have found a thread of hope to cling to.

When his eyes opened a scant few hours later (barely after 8AM according to his watch) he didn't know what to expect. Something he wasn't expecting? The smell of fresh air. That alone had Stephen waking up quickly and his gaze immediately went to the doorway, brows raising at the sight of it open wide. Could it really be so simple or was it some sort of trap?

As he got to his feet he glanced around at the others still sleeping, and in doing so noticed the supply of food was gone. In its place were weapons... well, improvised weapons, really. Except for the machetes, one of which he picked up without hesitation. Countless weeks spent moving through rainforest made him very familiar with such blades. That thread of hope was very much alive and determination surged inside him. If the images on the screens were false then perhaps the others were out there, having been locked up similarly, which meant Connor was still alright. Even if that wasn't the case, what Stephen had viewed on the monitor hadn't explicitly shown the younger man to be dead. So either way Connor was out there. Somewhere. Stephen just had to find him.

Almost as an afterthought he picked up one of the crowbars. He remembered the cages, both from the monitors and from the day before that, and a crowbar provided the best chance of breaking into one out of the tools available. It was best he be prepared. If he couldn't find Connor, or God forbid he was too late (something Stephen refused to contemplate), he could at least help others. That was what he did, and it was what Cutter would do.

Stephen was too focused to stick around and wake up the others. It might be viewed as insensitive, but with what he had observed the day before he didn't doubt that at least a few of the others would rush out at the first sign of freedom and not look back, either for selfish reasons or to do as he was and seek out someone they cared about. The sunlight made him squint and pause when he first stepped out of the bunker and away from the door, but the sound of movement behind him had Stephen looking back inside. Which of them was it? Ah, the young man he had appeared in this place with and whose rambling sort of speech had painfully reminded him of Connor the day before. "I'd get out of there while you can... Spencer, right? Who knows if the door will stay open." And normally Stephen wasn't the type to just leave people behind, but he didn't exactly have loyalty to anyone in there.