t w e n t y ;

That night, Roseanne was in their black tent that she was sharing with Raven for the weekend, since it had been decided that way when they split up into pairs. There was very limited space in the tent, which made her place her head on his chest comfortably as she tried to get some rest, and he had fallen asleep almost immediately. The swelling in his busted lip had gone down already, and there was a hardened little clot of dried black blood left over as a reminder of the incident, but he still winced in his sleep every so often at the pain when he moved around a bit. He still felt bad about Ivory's anxiety and making her cry, he had already decided that he would talk to her later to apologize. But Roseanne had assured him that she seemed to be okay--Cedar and Scarlet had managed to calm her down. After they got back to the camp site following their hike through the mountains, they had some dinner which they packed from the Garden, and Ivory had retreated to her tent angrily with Cedar following behind her. 

The original plan was for them to tell scary stories around the camp fire and roast marshmallows, but Ivory had sat there with a scowl and her arms crossed over her chest, making the situation awkward. Little by little, they all retired to their own tents with Honey and Seville being the last ones to do so. Raven had waited outside the tent while Roseanne changed clothes and got ready for bed. He entered the tent once she had announced to him that she was ready. He didn't really have a problem changing clothes outside, since most of the other male crew mates were doing so as well. 

The group had also originally planned to stay the entire weekend in the mountains. But by the next morning at nine, Roseanne got up and left the tent to find a toilet with Raven when they noticed there was one tent missing. It was a brown one that belonged to Ivory and her boyfriend Cedar. That meant that she had been so angry with what happened the previous night that they decided to go back to the facility. As everyone got up and emerged from their own tents, Mauve announced that Scarlet was gone too. She had left very early in the morning without even telling him or anyone else. 

Seville tried to convince the others to return to the Garden, since he was closer with the three who had gone back. He reasoned that the experience wasn't going to be the same if there were members missing from the group. Honey nodded her head in agreement. Honey mostly kept to herself whenever she wasn't with Seville, but she knew he got along well with the other three. They were more like his family than anyone else in the team. She didn't want to stay at the camp site and potentially make him feel uncomfortable. Ciel and Indy suggested that they wanted to stay a bit longer. Mauve mentioned he wanted to return to the Garden because he wanted to check on Scarlet and make sure she made it back okay, to which his friends nudged him with knowing grins. His feelings had now shifted and he seemed to be crushing on the girl with red hair and crimson irises. Raven and Roseanne said they were okay with either option and the majority vote was that they would go back.

With a lot of extra time on their hands, Raven and Roseanne decided to check out the abandoned fifth floor dorms that night. Unlike their floor, this one was only accessible through one stairwell that was in the child dorms above the cafeteria. The facility had the child and teen dorms right above the cafeteria, the adult team dorms were in a separate building connected to the child dorms. Then they had the instructor dorms a ten minute walk up the mountain, and the administration dorms at the base of the mountain, right next to the security booth at the entrance. The two had read about it and tried to go during day time hours, but there was a custodian around, telling them they shouldn't be looking in there. Other than that, the entrance up the stairs was only sealed off by one chain that went from one rail to the other with a dingy sign that read keep out. 

This time they went at night, after curfew hours and everyone was in their rooms for the night. They took some flashlights and their holo phones. Raven lead, heading up the stairs first and they were so old and unused that they were riddled with dust and they creaked loudly. Both of them had to make sure to step carefully so as not to make a lot of noise. 

As they reached the top of the stairs, they shone their lights into the hallway and were not entirely impressed. The layout was exactly the same as all the other floors in the dorm building. They all had six rooms, each for two people. They had the communal bathrooms, the laundry room, and a lounge. But as they walked deeper into the halls of the dorms, Roseanne started to feel a chill run through her body. Like they weren't alone. Out of instinct, she moved closer to Raven and linked arms with him. 

They tried the rooms on the left side of the hall first, which were the communal bathrooms, the lounge, and the laundry room. They were surprised by the fact that nothing had been cleaned out. The laundry room had all the washers and dryers, with old vending machines that hadn't been used in years. On the counters were old boxes of soap and detergent that had been left as though the previous team were going to come back any second to do their laundry. The next room on that side of the hallway were the communal bathrooms and it was the very same as the laundry room. There were old bottles of shampoo and towels that were left there to spend eternity there without being picked up. As they headed to the lounge, Roseanne swore she heard voices coming from there. 

She stopped in her tracks and looked at Raven with wide eyes. "Did you hear that?" She asked him.

He looked at her with confusion. "Hear what?" 

And she disregarded it as her mind playing tricks on her. Maybe it was the fact that everything seemed like people were still living there, except for the thick layers of dust that had accumulated. Everything had been kept exactly as they left it whenever they went on their mission. But Roseanne wondered what happened to them. Most other teams that went on missions had their entire living space cleaned out, their things packed and sent back to their new homes back in their provinces. But this floor seemed to have been entirely forgotten. No one ever returned to gather their things or clean out the space that they once used. 

As they got closer to the lounge, Roseanne blinked back a few times and it was like she had been transported through time. The hallway's were lit with the warmth of the summer sun. The voices she heard earlier were more prominent now and they included laughter. She walked closer to see the sounds were coming from the lounge, where it seemed a team was gathered together. She looked through the glass pane in the door to catch a glimpse of the inside of the room. There was a banner at the front of the room that read Team 12191, Ready for Take Off! but as she looked at the people there, she noticed they weren't her team mates at all. They were other people. 

The group cheered and the captain of the team, a red boy, told his team mates that they should be proud of themselves for their years of training. The next morning they were to board the space ship Europa VI headed towards the asteroid belt. Roseanne felt her brain muddled with confusion in an instant. Her group was 12191 and they were also headed for the asteroid belt, but on a space ship called Europa VII. The scene quickly turned into a bleak one, there were no more voices or laughter coming from the room. Only a silence that chilled her to the bone as she now saw the facility's general admin stand in the middle of the room. 

"The mission was an utter failure." She said to the head of the facility cleaning staff and another department admin. Looking to the other admin in the room, she instructed. "Begin construction of a new space shuttle named Europa VII at once. We will also need to find a new team to go on this mission, only the absolute best and brightest of their generation."

"But," The department admin offered her suggestion. "Shouldn't we abandon this mission? Over the last hundred years, our facility has tried to extract the impostor DNA from that asteroid belt. All missions have failed."

"We will begin construction of the new shuttle at once." The general admin said firmly, and the lower ranking admin nodded, leaving the room to start preparations. 

"What would you like us to do with their belongings?" The head of the cleaning staff asked.

"Close off this floor. We will give instructions for no one to be allowed up here. As for their belongings, leave them. We don't have the time to spare, cleaning up after dead space cadets." As she said that, she seemed uncaring, finding them disposable. She could easily go through the provinces taking new children to groom into space cadets. The people of the provinces were proud to have their children picked any way. The head of the maintenance department nodded and scurried off as well, leaving the general admin in the lounge room alone.

As Roseanne stood there, she could hear a voice calling to her in the distance. A familiar voice. "Rosie...Rosie..." It was faint at first and seemed to get louder. Soon she was snapped out of her thoughs by Raven who was now standing in front of her, hands on her shoulders to shake her gently. There was concern in his deep black eyes when he noticed just how spaced out she was.

Roseanne shook her head to regain her thoughts.

"What happened?" He asked her with concern.

She started to speak in a blank tone. "I don't know exactly. I was standing here, but there were other space cadets like us. They had the same mission number too, and their shuttle even had a similar name." As she spoke, there was a part of her that made her feel surreal about the whole thing. Like maybe shed imagined it and her mind was playing tricks on her. "Then General Admin came in and said they were all dead. Another admin also said that mission was never successful. Raven...what if they're sending us out there to die and they know it?"

Raven gave a shake of his head, trying to reassure her. But there was a little corner of his mind that thought the admins in the Garden were definitely capable of something like that. All they cared about was their advancement in the sciences, not matter how they got there. It was the reason why they groomed the best and the brightest of each province since childhood. They wanted to send only the best into space to reduce the probability of error. But that didn't mean there were no errors. "They've prepared us since we were kids for this. I don't think they'd have wasted all this money to just watch us die."

Roseanne pulled her holo phone out of her pocket and typed in Team 12191 into the search bar. She had never thought to do that before, as did none of her team mates. But when she did, she got records upon records of other mission 12191 teams. There had been seven teams up to date, none successful in completing their mission, hence the name of their ship being Europa VII. There had been six Europa space ships before theirs. The most recent one had been in 2986, eight years before Roseanne was born and twelve years before Raven was born. Her heart dropped as she saw the photographs of the cadets in Europa VI. Each and every one of them were the same people she saw in her vision. The ones who had lived on that floor last. 

She continued scrolling and she sat that their ship hadn't even made it to the asteroid belt like most of the others did. Europa VI had fallen apart and disintegrated in the atmosphere just seventy six seconds after take off, instantly burning alive and killing all twelve cadets on board. The media had deemed the mission bad luck, as it was a mission to inspect and extract a life form known as impostor, which was turning people into mutated monsters. Though the spread of the disease had been mostly eradicated, the Garden facility was committed to studying the DNA that caused the mutation. 

Because of those first failed missions, the Garden had decided to televise the take off of each ship starting after Europa IV's disaster. That meant that for the next two ships, everyone had watched on their holo tv's how a group of space cadets died. Neither Roseanne nor Raven had heard about it because it happened before they were born and no one in the Garden ever talked about the disasters. They only talked about the heroes who had made it back from their missions. Roseanne always did find it strange that none of their instructors were ever from any of the previous Europa ship missions. They were from Efisga ship, Colonia, Transatlantia. But never from any of the Europa ships. 

Roseanne gulped hard and turned her phone over to show Raven. "They know this mission is doomed from the start. They're sending us out there to die."

-

some story drama for you guys. this whole chapter has nothing to do with my friend group. it was made up for the story because i thought we needed some drama. 

today im going to plan out my week like i do every sunday and they hang out with a friend who is visiting me from san diego. so hopefully all things go well. im looking forward to today. we went into curfew mode last night. which to me is reasonable. there are way too many people going out in big groups. i go out with one or two friends, but we mostly get food off a drive thru and just vibe in the car.

anyway, my crush was telling me he's going to ask for his hours to be cut during curfew bc his mom is worried he'll be exposed too much if he works a full 8hrs. but honestly he was telling me too he was just tired. he works really hard. so i think he deserves this. just a little break. 

anyway, i hope you all like the chapter. please give this a nice vote. thank you!

-clary