Was planning on making this a male reader story, but there's a lot of those already so... yeah.

Before anyone asks, yes, I used AI to make the images. I've tried to do art, I can't even draw a goddamn stick figure to save my life.

Subject #1:

Name: Thomas Sentry

Age: 16 Years Old

Height: 5 Feet

Relationships: Adrian (Best Friend), Rika (Casual Friend), Marnie (Casual Friend)

Subject #2:

Name: Adrian Addison

Age: 19 Years Old

Height: 5'6 Feet

Relationships: Thomas (Best Friend), Rika (Ex Girlfriend), Marnie (Adopted Sister)

Subject #3:

Name: Rika Peterson

Age: 18 Years Old

Height: 5'2 Feet

Relationships: Thomas (Casual Friend), Adrian (Ex Boyfriend), Marnie (Best Friend)

Subject #4:

Name: Marnie Padilla

Age: 16 Years Old

Height: 4'8 Feet

Relationships: Thomas (Casual Friend), Adrian (Adopted Brother), Rika (Best Friend)

Thomas' eyes shot open and started frantically shifting around. He couldn't see anything other than a pan of glass in front of him. Besides that, he felt cold. Then he heard the sound of steam before the glass slowly started to open. Once it was fully open, he found himself staring at the ceiling.

His eye winched a bit before he groaned while putting a hand to his face. As he did, he felt something attached to it and pulled it off which appeared to be a mask connected to a tube. He rose an eyebrow at that before he struggled to get himself into a seating position, using the sides of... whatever he was in as support.

While rubbing his face he looked down at his body, seeing that he was wearing nothing but boxer shorts which only confused the boy further. He took a look around to at least figure out where he was.

It looked like some kind of laboratory of some sort, and there appeared to be these pods that were lined up just to the left of him, but so far, nothing to really help him out or anything. The only light that wasn't dim coming from where he sat. He scratched his head as he tried to think of where he could be but so far, nothing came to mind.

"What in god's name?" He mutters to himself.

After stretching for a second, he pulled himself to his feet. His legs were wobbly, and he almost fell back down on his back. He managed to get out of whatever he was in, using the pod for support before looking back. Now that he could see it clearly, he was able to see that it was another one of those pods.

It settled one question in his mind. The rest must've had other people in them. Wanting to settle another bit of curiosity, he started counting. There was a total of twenty pods and minus the one he was in, three were filled and had bright lights.

As soon as his legs finally steadied, he walked over to the front of his pod. In front of it was some kind of military chest that had a frame on the side that said his name and some other personal information on him.

Seeing all this, Thomas was slowly starting to put things together. If he had to take one guess, these pods must've been for something like cryogenically freezing people. Nothing on the 'why' though.

He opened the chest and inside was clothes that were neatly folded. At first, he thought they just any other clothes, though he recognizes his favorite beanie anywhere. These must've been his own clothes before he was... well frozen. He figured it'd be better than walking around naked.

He them on, especially his beanie. Now that he was more covered up and his feet weren't bare on the cold floor, he decided to examine the other pods.

He couldn't see what or who was in them. Only bright lights that would blind one if looking at them for too long. Looking at the names, he was taken aback when he got to reading them.

Adrian, Rika, and Marnie. The names of his friends from school.

"What?" He says to himself in confusion.

As he was scratching his head, he heard a shifting noise come from the pod next to him and stepped back. As the pod opened up, he heard some muffled groaning coming from it before he approached and saw a familiar redhead boy inside.

"Ah, shit... wha?" He groaned as his eyes were squinting a bit.

"Adrian?" Thomas says which caught the redhead's attention while he removed the mask from his face.

"T-Thomas?" He says as he tried to sit up.

"Just sit for a second."

"Why? What's going on?" Adrian says before looking down. "And why am I naked?" He then looked around. "And what is this place?"

"Well..." Thomas' eyes shifted left and right. "Don't exactly know." He says before standing up and going over to the chest. "Here, put these when you can." He says while bringing his clothes over to him.

"Thanks... I guess." The redhead says, still not fully there.

Taking another look around, he found a few consoles in front of the pods, the only who seemed to be on was the one in front of the four pods that were on. Thomas walked over to it and checked it. It was glitching out a bit and froze every few seconds, but he was able to see some things.

There was some things he didn't understand too well, but it seemed to be showing rows of shapes that resembled the pods. Two were green with the word open on them, two were yellow with online on them, and the other sixteen were greyed out with the offline.

Adrian managed to sit up after putting his shirt. His eyes opened fully as he looked around, registering where he was.

"I-Is this a lab?" He asked.

"Looks like it. Either that or some sort of advanced prison." Thomas answered while trying to interact with the screen without much success.

Hearing that, the redhead looked back before pulling on his pants, then his hoodie, then his goggles, then his shoes. He pulled himself to his feet, his legs wobbly, but he was able to pull himself out of the pod.

"So..." He grunted a bit, hand still on his pod. "Are these what I think they are?"

"Depends if you think these are some kind of cryo sleep pods." Thomas states.

"I mean, I was actually thinking that it was some kind of pod that freezes people."

"Same thing."

"... Right. I knew that." Adrian chuckled before looking at the other two pods. "So, who's in these other pods."

"I'm trying to find out, but this..." Thomas started saying before an error message appeared on the screen and he slammed his fist against it. "Piece of crap isn't helping."

"Chill. We don't know how old that thing is. You might break it."

"Adrian, it's already broken. It doesn't matter what I do to it."

"Okay, well maybe not look at the screen. Maybe we should check the inside. " The redhead says before walking over and crouching down to the opening of the console. "Uh..." He says before tapping the cover. "You got a screwdriver or-?" He says before the cover just falls off and lands on the ground. "Nevermind."

"Ya sure you wanna be looking at that without gloves or anything?"

"I'll be careful." Adrian says while leaning forward to look in, though it was hard to see. "Come on." His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he was able to see some wires. "I think I see the problem." He says while reaching in.

He moved the wires a bit, and it caused a spark that made him pull back and shout in pain.

"Dude, you said you'd be careful." Thomas scolded him.

Then one of the pods on screen changed from online to opening. Then another shifting noise was heard as they turned to one of the pods, seeing steam start to emit from it before it started to slowly open.

"Woah, woah." Adrian says while stepping back.

"Don't worry. I don't think we're in danger." The other boy says.

After the pod was fully opened, before the two walked over. Looking in, Thomas quickly covered his eyes and Adrian's went wide when they saw a blonde girl laying in the pod with the same mask over her face, wearing nothing but her underwear.

"Rika? Why is... wha..." Adrian started to say.

"I told you, I don't know." Thomas tells him before they heard groaning. "She's waking up." He says before going over to the military chest at the end of her pod.

"Wha... where am I?" Rika started to say.

"Hey, hey, hey, it's okay." Adrian says while removing the mask and helping her into a sitting position.

"A-Adrian?" She says, confused. "Wha... where are..."

"Okay, before you ask any questions, I just wanna say, that we don't know what's going on either and we're trying to figure out what is going on." He tells her as she blinked a couple of times, before rubbing her eyes.

"So bright." She mumbled.

"Here." Thomas says while giving her clothes. "We still gotta wait for one more."

"Thomas?" She says before she looked down and then she finally registered what she was in right now. "Wha-WHAT THE HELL!?" She shouted while covering herself.

"Okay, okay, I know what it looks like-" The redhead tries to say.

"What is wrong with you!? What were you-!?"

"Calm down! We're not the ones behind... whatever is going on here." Thomas says as he's going around the room. "We both woke up naked too. I don't know. Maybe we can't wear our clothes when being cryogenically frozen or something."

"Cryogenically frozen? What are you talking about?" Rika says before looking around and seeing the other pods. "What... What is this place?"

"As I've said, don't have a single clue. That's what I'm trying to find out."

"What are you doing?" Adrian asked him.

"Looking around for... I don't know a secret entrance or something. That busted piece of shit isn't helping us anytime soon. There's gotta be something in here." The other boy tells him.

"Is this a lab or something?" Rika asked.

"Well, considering that I can't find the damn exit to this place, it could also be some kind of high government prison. We don't know, just wait for Marnie to wake up."

"Marnie? Wha-Marnie's in there!?" Adrian says before running over to the other pod. "Wh-Why her of all people?"

"Figured that out a while ago." The other boy says. "Let's just wait. The others opened on their own."

"Okay, okay." Rika says before she starts getting dressed.

"Come on, come on, come on." Thomas says as he was going around, banging on the walls a bit. "Please let there be something."

Then as soon as Rika was finished changing, she stood up, like the others with wobbly legs, using her pod for support before hearing a shift and the last pod started opening. Soon, the last brunette girl was revealed in the same condition.

"Marnie! Oh please, please..." Adrian took her wrist and felt it before her eyes twitched and opened a bit, then he sighed. "Oh thank god. She's still alive."

"B-Big brother?" She muttered.

"It's okay." The redhead took the mask off before pulling her into a hug. "You're okay. I'm here."

"What? What's going on?" She mumbled.

"I don't know. None of us do." He says while pulling back a bit. "We're trying to figure that out. Rika, can you get her clothes?"

"Uh, right." The blonde says before going into the chest at the end of her pod.

Thomas was still banging around the walls for a little bit before throwing his hands in the air and groaning in annoyance. "Great. Nothing." He says before going over to the others as the last of them was finished getting dressed. "Ya know, maybe that theory about this being a prison isn't too farfetched. There's no way out of here."

"What do you mean?" Marnie asked, still confused.

"Well, I've been trying to find a way out of here and so far, no dice." He explains. "As I've been saying, we've all been cryo frozen for who knows how long and somehow are waking up now."

"There's gotta be some to get out of here. We got in here somehow, right?" Rika suggested. "Maybe the exit will open up at some point just like we suddenly woke up." Then as if on que, there was more shifting heard, turning all of their attention to one of the walls. "That might be it."

Then the walls started to separate revealing a ladder imbedded in it. They all looked at each other, silently agreeing to go up it.

Thomas was the first to go with the others following behind. He pulled the handle on the top before lifting the latch and pulling himself up, allowing the others to do the same. Once they were all up, they looked around, seeing bunk beds all lined up.

"Eh, looks less prison-y. This might be a bunker or something." Adrian says.

"Looks like it." Thomas says before going over to one of the walls. "JCJenson In Spaaaaacee?"

"Huh?" Rika says.

"That's what it says here. JCJenson In Spaaaaacee. Literally dragged out like that." He then steps aside to reveal the logo.

"Seriously? That's dumb."

"Wait, JCJenson? That company that works on robotics n' shit?" Adrian asked.

"Uh... yeah, seems like it." The other boy says. "Huh, what do ya know? This is something alright."

"That still doesn't explain why we're here, though." Marnie says.

"Well, no point standing around here. Let's see what else in here."

They all headed for the door to leave. It had a card/hand scanner to open it. Thomas tried it at first, got an access denied, then punched it in frustration... and it glitched out before saying access granted. The redhead sighed with a hand on his face while the blonde just shrugged.

A loud scrapping noise was heard as the door slowly opened. As it did a breeze suddenly hit them in the face, causing them to step back and turn a bit. As they did, a monitor they missed on the ceiling came on saying 'Temperature Levels Critical, Activating Mandatory Heaters'. Once they recovered from the sudden blast, they looked down the dimly lit hallway.

There was some snow littering the floor, icicles on the ceiling, all varying in sizes. As they stepped in, their breaths were visible.

"Oh that is not a good sign." Adrian says before they continued on.

As they ventured through the halls of the building, they came across a few things. A control room with a camera system that seemed to still be working, a kitchen with food and a bathroom much to their relief, a what appeared to be a cafeteria of some sort, and lots of meeting rooms, all having the logo of JCJenson, yes with space dragged out on the wall somewhere.

"Please have something useful." Thomas says as they opened another door to what appeared to be another control room with desks and monitors. "Okay, hopefully there's something that'll help us here."

As they entered, they started looking around. Thomas found a key card on the ground, lying on a lab coat that had pieces of ice on top of it. Rika and Marnie found some files while Adrian was able to turn on one of the computers in the room.

"Damnit. Anyone find anything about a password?" He asked.

"Uh... I think we can find it." Rika says while opening one of the folders as the other boy walks up. "Just give us a sec-"

Before she could finish, Thomas slammed his fist on the PC, causing the screen to glitch.

"Dude, will you stop punching everything!?" Adrian yelled in annoyance. "It's not gonna solve-!" He stopped as he saw they got in.

"Works." The other boy says.

"How?"

"Thomas, we literally found the password on the first page." Rika tells him in the same tone.

"Oh... well, we got in." He says with shrug.

Adrian groaned and looked around, opening a few folders before finding a file. "Alright, let's see here." He opened it. "Worker Drones?" He says before reading a bit. "Huh, talk about a way to pass off work to someone else."

"Or fire someone in favor for machines." Rika muttered.

"Do you think there are any around?" Marnie asked.

"I mean, these things are probably only programed to do work. Not much help they'd be." Thomas says.

"Not necessarily." Adrian says before looking through more. "Looks like they had some plans for some kind of advanced AI or something. These things might actually be able to help if we can find one." He closed the file then began to look around for another minute. "Well, no good from here on out. Everything else is corrupted."

"Maybe this thing could help." Rika says before going through the physical file. "No, no, no... oh, here. Let's see."

"Well?" Thomas asked.

"Eh, a bunch of mumbo jumbo but, there's something here called the 'Hyper Sleep Experiment'?" She says with an eyebrow raised. "Real creative names. In many of our ingenious works, blah, blah, blah... ugh, get to the point already."

The others looked at it as well. "Damn, they really like gloating about themselves." Adrian says in annoyance.

"Okay, here. 'We're working on a scientific breakthrough here on JCJenson IN SPAAAAACEE!!!! With all we've done, we're ready to move onto the next level of human evolution'. Some more gloating and... 'The subjects shall remain frozen in a year and by then, their bodies should evolve and eventually evolve, grow stronger, have a greater immune system, and possibly retain their youth for longer periods of time'. How would that even work?"

"Well, that answers why we were in those pods to begin with." Adrian comments.

"Hold on, we still don't know why we were the ones picked for this project to begin with. And probably a few other things." Thomas spoke up.

"Well, the answers probably around here somewhere. This stuff was dated back in the year 2971, nothing else too important though." Rika says before dropping the folder on the desk. "Let's keep looking."

As they were exploring more of the building, they found a few more things like a lounge area, a manufacturing area that was more in ruins than the rest of the place, not much stuff. The heaters were finally starting to kick in as they came across one last thing. A giant vault-like door.

"You think we should open?" Thomas asked.

"Well, it's the only place we haven't checked yet." Marnie spoke up.

"Alright, I'm on it." He then says as he goes over to the panel.

"Don't punch it, man." Adrian tells him.

"Relax, I got a way to open it." He then showed the keycard.

Putting it on the scanner, he got the access granted color and walked back to rejoin the group. They waited for a moment, hearing some scrapping noises before the door finally opened and unlike before they were actually hit with a huge gust of freezing wind that nearly blew them off their feet.

Regaining their stances, they looked, but instead of seeing another room they were in awe at the sight of the world outside. Everything was covered in a snowy terrain, no place left untouched by the white fluff. They stood and stared at the snow for a little bit as only one thought came to mind.

"How long have we been sleeping?"

To be continued...

Real quick, yes there's gonna be some pairings in this story, I haven't decided yet, but if you have any suggestions below, I'd like to hear them. And yes, I mean robot/human relations... maybe not for all the OCs, but I'd like at least one or two.

Not sure if I'm gonna do lemons though. Maybe I can think of something-PULL YOUR PANTS BACK UP! I didn't say that I would.

Hope you enjoyed.