"Hello"
"Hey"
"Who's There?
A soft sob broke through the voices.
"Hey, sounds like somebody's hurt." Rufus felt for his backpack and jumped off the mattress, hitting his head on the top bunk. He was confused. Looking around, nothing was familiar.
An impatient voice snapped from the bunk above him. "Help me down, you idiot!"
"Yeah, that'll work." Rufus sauntered out of the room, backpack slung over one shoulder.
"What kind of an idiot has a bunk bed without a ladder?" Georgie flipped onto his stomach and wiggled awkwardly to the edge of the bed, dropping to the floor with a thud.
Mumbling a curse, Georgie pulled himself to his feet and followed Rufus out of the room.
Ethan stared hard at the bed above him, the blank walls, the tiled floor and the open door cataloging the things he didn't know against the things he did. He observed he was nowhere familiar. Ethan knew for certain that he wore size 10 shoes, had an IQ of 135 and never traveled without his toothbrush.
Sighing he heaved himself out of the bed and moved in the direction of the soft crying. Ethan found himself in an odd shaped kitchen/sitting room staring at a tall, gangly boy with a red backpack. The boy smiled.
"Hey. I'm Rufus" The boy stuck out his hand. Ethan shook it soberly.
"Ethan. Did you hear crying?"
Before Rufus could answer Georgie stepped into the room. "Yeah, in there." He pointed at a closed door toward the back of the main room.
Ethan and Rufus headed that way. Georgie turned toward the cupboards and began rifling through them, noisily slamming doors. Rufus threw him a disgusted look over his shoulder.
The door was unlocked and with a silent nod of agreement between the boys, Ethan turned the handle. The door swung into a room similar to the one they had woken up in. A plain bunk bed was shoved up against the wall opposite the door, with 2 small clothes dressers flanking the bed. Ethan realized that all the rooms were six-sided, ringing the sitting room which was also a polygon.
On the bottom bunk, curled into a tight ball was a small girl crying behind a curtain of long, jet black hair.
"Uh, hey, what's the matter?" Rufus was first to speak.
The girl rolled over and looked up.
Both boys stared.
Although she was tiny, they realized she was close to their age. They were not just dumbstruck by her heart shaped face, but by the aura surrounding her. The hair stood up on Ethan's arms.
"I'm Lucy. Lucy Fang. Do you know where we are?"
Ethan shook his head, Rufus shrugged. "No clue."
A small sob squeaked from her throat. "I'm scared."
"I'm not feeling so great myself." Rufus gave her shoulder an awkward pat.
Ethan tilted his head toward the open door where they could hear Georgie banging around in the other room. "Let's go out there. Try to figure out what's going on."
Lucy threw her legs off the bed, jumped down and pushed past the boys to lead the way.
"Hello." Lucy gave a wobbly smile when she saw Georgie. She got a grunt in response.
"Okay. I'm Rufus. That's Ethan and I have no clue who that bundle of joy over there is."
"Georgie Becket." Georgie mumbled around the cookies he had shoved in his mouth and dropped into a chair clutching the box, making no attempt to share.
Lucy curled up in the chair across from Georgie. Rufus slouched on the overstuffed sofa and Ethan pulled a hardback chair from the kitchen table to round out their circle.
"Anybody got any idea what's going on?" Ethan looked at each of them.
Lucy squared her narrow shoulders. "As far as I can tell, I woke up first. When I checked you were all asleep. The doors to the bedrooms we woke up in and two bathrooms are unlocked. There and there." She pointed out the doors. Ethan jumped up and tried the knob on the remaining door. Nothing. It was locked. With a final rattle of the knob he sat back down.
"There are no windows and no phones. I couldn't find any way to communicate with the outside" She sniffed. "I have no clue where we are or even how long we have been here."
Georgie chewed loudly. Rufus looked ready to pounce on him.
Ethan ignored them both, leaning in Lucy's direction. "Okay, we don't know why we are here, but what about similarities? Let's start with where each of us is from. I live in a small town outside of Kingston, Ontario ."
"Galveston." Rufus volunteered.
"San Francisco." The mention of home brought fresh tears to Lucy's eyes.
"Great, that solved nothing."
Rufus tilted threateningly into Georgie, snatching the box of cookies. "Look, Sunshine, unless you've got a better idea shut up or play along."
"Detroit." Georgie said in a sulky voice his mother would have recognized immediately.
Rufus offered the cookies to Lucy, then Ethan. When neither took any, he shrugged and threw one in his mouth.
"We have no connection geographicly. What next?" Ethan looked at the others.
"I say we break down that door. " Georgie still sulking nodded to the remaining locked door just as it opened.
Rufus jumped up; cookies flying. Ethan stood, legs apart, hands at his side. Georgie gaped like a fish, but still managed a scowl. Lucy sat perfectly still as if frozen.
The man who walked through the door smiled. "Welcome to the Hive."