[Sarah]

The siren blared suddenly. Ever door locked with a heavy click, and they all locked at once. You froze but the people around you became suddenly fluid. They created chaos above the noise and the lockdown. The man that had been sitting behind you pulled you by the back of your shirt out of your chair and onto the floor. He loomed over you and with little maneuvering you bunched and kicked, and your feet connected with his chest. You heard a crunch but kept pushing until the man stumbled away from you.

[Sarah]

There was someone else to take his place almost immediately. It seemed the new man did not notice or did not care about the state of the first offender. The new man was kneeling over you, his face only a few inches above your own. He placed his arm too close. His hand smacked down by your ear and you turned your head and sunk your teeth into his flesh until you tasted blood and you didn’t let go until the man began to pull away.

[Sarah]

You noticed only after he was off of you that he was being pulled away by someone else. Another inmate. Peculiar. Although with the look they gave you, you could tell it was because they’d seen the damage, you’d done to the first guy. The man you bit was struggling and shouting but you ignored him. You sat up and got to your feet. You knew you needed to tame the wild look in your eyes, but you hated being locked up.

[Sarah]

“Wait!” One of the inmates shouted. You looked for the source. He was the leader of one of the gangs in the prison. You couldn’t remember which, but his command meant something. The struggle stopped for long enough that everyone else began to notice. Your eyes adjusted farther than the danger around you and you realized the photons of light were behaving strangely. On the spectrum that the humans could discern there was no longer color. Objects were either absorbing every color or repelling every color.

[Sarah]

Your eyes were not immediately affected, but in the long term you knew you’d go blind to the spectrum that was being affected. That was if the color strangeness was not reverted soon. That was a problem. It was a bigger problem than this prison or its break. You thought the riot might’ve started because of the loss of color but you couldn’t remember when the spectrum shifted. “You stupid whore,” the man that you’d bit was cursing at you, but he was still being held back. He was a nonissue even if he was free.

[Sarah]

There was some fortune in being stuck in the cafeteria. There was fortune in being stuck not in a prison, but you were doing what you could with what you had. From the cafeteria there was open space. A considerable amount more open space than in any other part of the prison. The doors in and out had locked but you had two floors open to breathe, and the prisoners had that room to breathe as well. All you had to do was wait to be pulled out. That was if Darius hadn’t been handed a shit show upon color leaving the world.

[Sarah]

And there it was. The tug on your soul. His requirement that you come to his side. You took a deep breath and shifted through space to comply with his demand. “You okay?” he was asking. You’d barely come back into his reality, but he knew the signs of your presence.

“Never better. You?” you asked. He was in the central hub of the prison with the guards. It appeared they were rotating outward to secure the facility.

[Sarah]

“I wasn’t the one locked in with the prisoners,” Darius said dryly. He knew you well enough to know disaster had struck worse where you were than probably anywhere else in the prison. You tended to go out of your mind when facing confined places you couldn’t escape.

“I’m fine,” you assured him softly. You turned to take an inventory of the guards that were mostly standing around. Apparently, the useful guards were already inside the prison. The warden was in the middle of it though and coordinating with the teams he had on the inside. “You’ll find at least one dead in the cafeteria. His chest will be caved in. Another will have a nasty bite to his right forearm,” you explained when he finally made eye contact with you.

[Sarah]

“Fine?” Kai asked, incredulous, over the resounding silence. That was fine. It could have been a lot worse. You gave him a scathing look you didn’t mean and turned back to Darius. He had the presence of mind to close his mouth. Was this the first time you’d been violent for your own cause? You couldn’t remember. Most of the time you were trying to protect one of your human charges. You gestured for Darius to continue what he’d been doing before you arrived.

[Sarah]

“We’ve done all we can,” Darius said. He reached for you and you let him grab your arm and pull you closer. “I’ve asked the warden if he wants our help. He and his people have this covered and we’ll return after whatever this is, is done,” he said, gesturing to the air and the colorlessness. You nodded shortly and hoped they didn’t want you to know what was going on. There was, realistically, no more reason for you to know why the color was gone than reason for them to know.

[Color Harvested]