Jessica Bodair's Story

In her dream, Camille was dancing in a grand ballroom. Around her, the walls were made of a gold so polished and thin, she'd thought they were glass at first, and were elaborately ornamented with shimmering crystals. Under her, the floor was a creamy marble swirl of gold and white, and if she looked closely, she could see small flecks of glitter shining up at her from it's surface. And above her, a large domed ceiling rose, supported by glorious golden arches The very top of the dome was cut open to reveal the velvety night sky, the moons surface shining like a silver coin in it's center. It's rays reached down into the ballroom and illuminated everything, bouncing off the glass-like walls, the crystals, the glitter in the floor, and the jewels around the necks of the dancing woman. Everything was washed in a gold and silver glow, and the music that coated the air was sweet and wonderful. The ladies around her were all dressed in old-fashioned gowns like the kind Camille had only ever seen in history books or movies with full, floor-length skirts, pretty pastel colors, flowers, and lace. They twirled about the room so gracefully it was as if they'd been dancing their entire lives. Camille now felt the soft silk of the dress she wore, spinning out around her in a deep sapphire wave, seemingly the only gown in the room that was not pastel. Around her slender neck, hung a necklace so heavily weighed down with sapphires and gold it was a wonder she hadn't fallen over already. Unlike the women around her, Camille's white-blonde hair flowed freely at her hips in long straight locks that rustled like liquid silver in the bright moonlight.

"Isn't it all Perfect Camille?" A voice spoke, and Camille turned her head to find that she was looking up at the perfect face of her dance partner. Something about his over-sized eyes struck her as familiar and she realized that this man was her brother. "John!" She exclaimed and smiled before answering his question. "Yeah, it's beautiful," she said, "but what's it for?" He looked down at her and grinned, the simple movement lighting up his whole face as he twirled her around and around. "It's for all of us Camille." He said. "Just to be happy."

Then something began to change. As she looked up at her brother, his radiant smile began to droop and formed into a frown, a crease appeared between his perfect eyebrows and he looked up at the domed ceiling. Her gaze followed his and she saw that a large black cloud was drifting towards the moon. A frown spread across her lips. The cloud was not perfect. Around her, the room no longer shone brilliantly and everything had lost it's luster. The music had been stopped and everyone had paused in their dancing to look up at the cloud with a frown. And as she watched, their faces began to change. Big beautiful eyes shrunk slowly and noses widened or shrunk, and the gold in the walls melted to black puddles on the ground. The crystals dropped to the floor as little black coals, and the gowns of the ladies tore. When Camille looked back at her brother, he was no longer Perfect. Instead his eyes were much too small, his lips too thin, and his pores too large. The soft sheen of oil coated his forehead, and there was still that crinkle between his eyebrows. She threw him back in shock and looked up at the dome. Now the cloud was passing, the music started up, peoples faces changed once more, the black puddles and coal on the ground reversed themselves, and everyone began dancing again simultaneously, happy that the slight disturbance of their Perfect world had ended.

"Good morning Camille!" Camille's room pipped, waking her from her sleep. She groaned and rolled over on the rough cot. "God damn smart-walls." She hissed, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The dream she'd had tickled the edges of her mind in a swirl of gold and black before slipping away from her. She looked around and groaned again, remembering where she was. Sadly. She was sitting in her cell of Complications. Around her, white metal walls rose up to a low flat ceiling, interrupted only once by a window. Under her was a simple cot that lay on the ground, and about twelve feet from her was a small hole in the metal of the wall. "T-shirt and shorts." She told the hole, and it spit out her requested items. The hole was nothing like the ones in Seaway that could produce anything you could ever think of, Complications had altered it so that she could only ask for simple clothing items and nothing else.

With a sigh, she stood and looked at her window. It wasn't a real window of course. Who knew how far they were underground, but the image on the glass of rolling fields and blue butterflies felt so real her heart wrenched. The illusion was complete with artificial sunlight. It was as if being trapped underground wasn't bad enough. No, they had to give her a constant reminder.

Quickly, she tugged the t-shirt on over her head and the shorts up to her waist. Cloths for the Perfected were all made in one size, but hers still hung a little too loose on her, being as she was unnaturally small for Perfection standards. Camille smiled at the thought. At least, even though they'd ruined her, they hadn't had complete control over it.

When she was done dressing, she sat on the cot rubbing a bruise at her wrist while she waited for the guards to come. Perfect skin healed quickly, but the bruise on her arm was still black even after a night of sleep. When it had been fresh, it had looked a lot worse and her entire wrist had been swollen. Typically a bruise should have been gone by now, but she guessed that since this one was worse than most, it was taking slightly longer to heal. It would probably be gone by the end of the day, leaving her skin flawless again. Sighing, Camille missed the days where every scar had told a story. They'd taken that away from her when they'd Perfected her, and with it, a part of her past.

Suddenly, the white wall on her right slid open and Camille remembered that today was the big day. For the past week they'd been given lecture after lecture before every class about the new rules. All of the prisoners were going to be moved from solitary confinement into one room. Apparently they needed the space for more important criminals, but Camille knew this was a lie. They were the most important criminals, and Complications never did anything without motive.

Cami's big aqua eyes narrowed on the guard. She looked grim. "What's wrong Lissa?" She teased the woman with a smirk. "Aren't you happy to see me?" The woman gave her no response. Instead, she just yanked Camille to her feet and slapped a pair of electronic cuffs on her, pushing her into the hall. As soon as they left the room, the wall slid back into place, completing the smooth wall of the long hallway. Why did they feel the need to make everything white? Even the suit Lissa was wearing was a crisp white. The corridor was brightly lit. There were no actual lights visible, but the walls glowed brightly so that every shadow had been chased away. "Where to?" Camille smirked, and Lissa pushed her roughly forward. Without her arms to balance, she stumbled and hissed, walking forward. "You know, you could of just asked. It's not like I was planning on standing here all day."

The woman lead her through a twist of hallways, each looking exactly the same as the first, bringing Cami to wonder how the people in Complications never got lost. When they reached the end of a hall and there didn't seem to be any turns, Lissa stopped and pressed the white wall. A small yellow circle with a downward facing tringale in the center illuminated on it's surface and Camille looked at the wall. It had abosolutely no cracks or bumps on it, and glowed like all the other walls, but as she looked, it slid open to reveal a small white room inside. Lissa and Camille stepped in. Lissa placed her palm against the wall and held it there for a moment. When she pulled it away, there was a soft aqua handprint already fading. "Confirmed. Up or down, Lissa Hawthorne?" The room asked, and Camille realized they were in an elevator. What was it with these people and smooth, walls? Did they not believe in doors or buttons? "Down." Lissa said firmly, and the elevator launched itself down so fast, Camille nearly flattened against the floor. Great. She was going even further down. Silently, she wondered exactly how far into they earth they were.

When they reached the bottom, Camille found that they were in yet another perfectly smooth white hallway, but this one was closed off at the end. It's as if the whole floor was one hall, though she knew that if she were to tap on the walls, words and numbers would glow, revealing that there was a room behind it. When they reached the end, Lissa placed her hand against the wall once more, allowing it to read her hand print. "Confirmed. Welcome Lissa Hawthorne." And with that, the door slid open, and Camille was shoved into the room. The cuffs on her hands dropped to the floor, dead and useless, and the door slid shut behind her, encasing her in the room alone. It was basically a bigger version of solitary confinement. The room was bigger, and instead of one cot on the floor there were six. There was one hole in the wall, and one window over the very last bed on the right side. Camille smiled. Being the first one there had it's advantages. Crossing the room, she sat on the cot under the window, claiming it as hers. With her legs tucked tightly into pretzel position, Camille leaned her back against the wall, tucked a long piece of white-blonde hair behind her ear, and closed her eyes, going over all the possible reasons Complications would have for moving all the prisoners in together.



Jessica Bodair sat in her office on the first floor of Complications with her ankles propped up on her desk and a pile of files on her lap. The room was different from the others in the building. Unlike the lower floors, the ground floor was above the earth so it had real windows, so it also didn't need the white walls to glow for light. Instead of having actual walls though, Jessica's office was completely made of glass. The entire floor was. Of course, it was still a smart-building. Along the top of the wall, where it met with the ceiling, a glowing blue strip ran. This strip was the system that ran the entire building. It allowed her to talk to the walls, make requests, and, if she wanted it, dim her glass so that no one could look in.

Now was one of those times. Everything around her was black, and she sat in the middle of the room with a glass of wine in one hand, the only light in the room coming from the glow of her desk and the blue strip on her ceiling. Slowly, Jessica flipped through the files in her lap. One for each prisoner and one for each of her main employees. Camille Lewis's was set aside on her desk, thrown open, while in her lap, the file of Vincent Verone was under inspection. He was a doctor of the mind, and his power interested Jessica. Though she'd seen every file at least a hundred times, she often opened them up and went through them continually, either to add things or to look for clues that would help her solve the mystery of what made them so different. There was very little paper left in Seaway anymore. Not many people used it, so it was odd that Jessica had hard copies of each file, but she liked to keep them on hand. Just in case. Granted, she also had her tablet, a thin piece of glass that allowed her to scroll through the system, but words on paper had always seemed more reassuring to her.

Standing, she threw Vincent's file back down on her desk along with the others, and looked down at Camille's open one for a moment. Two pictures of the girl glared up at her. One before, and on after the Perfection. The difference between the two was startling, but both were unmistakably Camille for she had a defiant glare to her large blue eyes that no Perfection could ever have. She turned away from the file and picked up her tablet, tapping the screen to make it come to life. Pictures blazed along on the glass until she found the one she wanted. Live feed from one of the security cameras. It showed Lissa Hawthorne forcing Camille into her new room, then turning away to gather the others. "Room. Get me Lissa." She spoke, and waited a second.

"Yes Mrs. Bodair?" Lissa's voice came through the walls, and Jessica smiled.

"Lissa, you are to go run some files or something. Anyway, I don't want you collecting the prisoners, I'll send someone else in your place." Without waiting for an answer, she clicked off. "Room. Get me Maia." Another second and she was connected. "Maia!" Jessica smiled, life coming to her voice. She'd always liked Maia. That was why she'd made her second-command. "Collect the prisoners for me into the new containment room on the bottom floor." She said, "one at a time so they don't give you trouble." Clicking off, she sighed. "Room. Vincent." Pause. "Vincent, you have no direct orders for right now, you may do as you wish, but make yourself useful." Sign-off. She repeated this process for the rest of her employees. There wasn't much to do at the moment, but once the prisoners were all together, she could really get going with the day. Vincent could probably do an interrogation while waiting, and maybe Catalina could get ready for a class, but other then that, Complications was pretty sleepy in the morning.

Taking a sip of her wine, Jessica tucked her tablet under her arm. "Room. Glass." She said, and the black walls faded back into glass, allowing her to see her employees. Some just clocking in, others buzzing about doing paperwork and making copies. Jessica sat again and smiled. She had big plans for the day.

Cataline Gale

Cataline was busy writing in her research report - about the emotions of the Complications. While she was alone in her room, much of her attention was focused on the work that she was doing. She loved the Complications - they were such an amusing subject of study. But then, her beloved, and blank room decided to interrupt. “Message from Ms.Bodair.” intoned the room in a deadly boring monotone. “Cataline, you have no direct orders for right now, you may do as you wish, but make yourself useful.” The message ended, and Cataline looked up at her room’s white-washed walls with a mocking smile.

“Hanging up already, Jessie?” she stated, then, with amusement in her voice. “I didn’t even have the chance to reply.” She sighed. Her director was always so serious - Cat wondered what it would take for the woman to loosen up and go have some fun. But the news was pretty good - it meant that she could probably duck out of Complications for a few hours, terrorize Vivi for quite some time, and maybe even go to a party. Or... it was the perfect time to do something about her room. Maybe some pink paint, and if she got bored, she might as well scrawl her name too over at Vivi’s office. She chuckled to herself when thinking about what the horror she could do to make her beloved, when making fun of him at the very least, Vivi miserable. “Oi, room!” she suddenly ordered.

“is there anything that you need, Miss Gale?”

Such a boring voice. She wished that somehow it would show emotion, but everyday, despite her best efforts at irritating the thing, it would only reply in the same way. Always that one sentence. ’is there anything that you need, Miss Gale’ It wouldn’t even listen to her when she asked it to call her Cat. She frowned before making her order. “Paint. Pink paint, and lots of it.” While her test subjects had quite a strict restriction on exactly what the hole in the wall would create, hers had no such limitation. “Brushes too.” If the room had any reaction to this request, it didn’t show as three cans of bright pink paint and a large brush appeared. She looked around at her room - there wasn’t much of anything really. There was a white bed to one side, and a desk on the other. Smiling at herself, she opened the can, and dunked the brush in. It had taken her far too much time to get to doing this.

But there was something that was missing. Digging around on the messy pile of paper on her desk, she picked up a half-melted piece of candy. Cat dropped the brush on the ground without a thought, and ate the candy. Mmmm. Cherry flavored. She looked down at the pink splotch on the previously spotless ground with a frown. But who cares, she’d just paint everything pink then!

Actually, she ought to go and fix Vivi’s room for him first - who knows what kind of expression he’d wear when he saw her new addition. Armed with the paint and brush, she was just about to make her way to his room, before…