Five braced her hips while Eight dusted her hands. "That should be it," the wind user said, flicking the tail of her hair behind her shoulder. "What else do they need my help?"

Thirteen looked up from his work of sweeping the floors to find Five directing Eight towards where they patched up the hole in the roof. Through a common resignation of treating the hall and every corner in it their fortress, they started cleaning the mess the counter brought and have been at it since the sun was high. Now, the orange-ish streams of light punching through the ebbing gap in the ceiling, it seemed the day had come and gone.

He sighed and rolled a shoulder, letting it crack. The tightness in it crawled from his blades to the base of his neck. Holding a broom for more than two hours was enough exercise. The others drowned themselves in exacting work, from repairing the broken tables, smoothing the countertops, and flitting through the files in the cabinets. Shadows danced overhead as Eight swept the currents beneath her and two other people who could only be Twenty and Ten. The latter has great strength, and she had been a good sport with moving the upturned marble finishes from the floor. She could use some work in the strategy department, but he wasn't going to tell her that.

A pile of loose chunks from the walls and the ceiling fluttered by, controlled by Fifteen with her telekinesis. The suspended chunks trailed debris as they went with Fifteen's ability not enough to fill in the smallest of objects. Thirteen sighed, hands tightening on the shaft of his broom. He had just finished that part!

The others were out of the hall, mapping the extent of the building they woke up in. Thirteen had yet to visit the individual rooms and peek through the others' black books. He glanced at the line of crumbs littering the progress he made. Huh. Let them finish their work first before he continues with his.

He dusted his hands and stalked towards one of the doors circling the hall. Unlike the exits the other sections took, this one boasted a mechanism that controlled the flow of people. One could only enter the hall from the corridors but couldn't go back in. It must have clicked into place the moment the counter started, but now it's finished, would it have loosened?

His hands pressed against cold metal, noting the quiet but chilly draft blowing from the inside. As if the entire thing wasn't suspicious already. The air was controlled, and judging by Nine's estimates, it was somewhere around twenty-three degrees Celsius. Thirteen would bet every coin he had that it stayed that way even through a counter.

It proved one thing—they were somehow inside something they have no intrinsic idea about, and not only were they supposed to avoid being killed, they were supposed to escape.

He squinted at the mechanism, noting the wires exposed under the glass panel. Blue light shone from the internal parts. It's active. He looked behind him to see Five striding towards him, her hair swinging behind her.

"Hey, Thirteen." She gave him a wave, glancing at the door stopping him from his goal. "Do you need to get out?"

He stepped back. "Can you tell what the lock was made of?"

Five flashed him a quizzical look but obliged, pressing her hand over the tinted glass. "Tempered," she muttered under her breath before turning to him again. "Do you need me to break it?"

"Please."

She blew a breath and gathered a fistful of her hair. A silver blade flashed from her belt and snipped her hair off from the base of the neck. The wad then morphed into a shard-like shape, hardening into a material resembling the mechanism's guard. She passed it to him.

"I don't know what you're planning, but be quick," she said. "The others will start looking for you if you're gone long enough."

Trust shone in Five's eyes. It took Thirteen this long to realize they had a violet sheen. He claimed the shard and gave her a quick nod. "Thank you," he said. "I owe you one."

Five returned the gesture, slotting her blade back to her belt. She walked off before he could say anything more. Which was her mistake. If she had stayed longer, she would have seen him smack the shard against the mechanism's guard then used it to cut the cords. She would have watched him disable the wires by studying where they went and where they were going. Lastly, she would have witnessed him rerouting the system so that it would prevent anyone from entering without disabling a safety process he put into place.

Trust was humanity's greatest folly.

He slipped out of the door and tested his new innovation. The door clicked shut and swung open as long as he pressed his finger on a certain part of the horizontal bar parallel to where the circuit was. Maybe he'd work on making it run on his biometrics or even connect it to a building-wide alarm and threat-detection system. It'd be interesting.

But not today's projects, definitely.

His boots tapped against the pristine floor, going the opposite direction he had taken a few hours ago. The corridor, now void of swarms of bodies dressed in black jackets, swelled in size and lengthened to the point where he couldn't see where it ended anymore. What lay beyond the room he woke up in? That was what he had to find out.

Bland doors rimmed with gray frames flitted in his periphery. Faint glints flashed by, brought by the rods slotted between the headroom and the ceiling. He halted when the door to his room went by. He cranked the handle, half-expecting it to be locked. The door swung open with ease. Good. They could still use this wing.

He whirled to the door in front of his room and did the same thing. Locked. He tried again. Wouldn't budge. What in the world...? No one would think of locking their room before they leave, right? Fine. Put it that way. What was the chance the others had the habit? Surely one would be available. What about his allies' rooms? If they didn't see him duck in and out, it's forgivable.

The next few minutes were spent running through the corridor, trying on different handles. Locked. All of them. It was possible this building wasn't where everyone woke up, explaining the numerous exits in the hall. Everyone who went with him, those who wore black jackets didn't need to belong in the same section. Clustering. Maybe black corresponded to some range in the alphabet. Probably.

He reached the end that apparently existed. The last door was also locked. How many had it been? Twenty from just this direction. What about those he skipped from the door? He carried his feet and dashed back to where he came from. The corridor's exit crept closer and closer with every handle he yanked down. Locked. Locked.

A hiss ripped from his tongue. There were thirty-five doors, and if it's the same across the entire assembly, he might be able to predict the number of people in this hall. His pace slowed down, his finger flying to his lips. His teeth crunched against what remained of his nails. Looking at the jagged edges on some of them, it must be his habit long before this madness.

Without sufficient data, he couldn't work on his calculations, and if he put in the process of randomization, it would be next to impossible. Which led him to his conclusion: someone or something watched them.

The next question would be—from where? He whipped around, studying every nook and cranny until the light burned his retinas. When he found none, he ducked his head and massaged the bridge of his nose. Whoever it was, they thought this through. They made sure no one had enough knowledge. They were adamant on keeping them inside until the goal was met.

It was a goddamn game until the end.

He trotted back to the hall to find everyone sitting on the dusty floor, worn. Eight's hair had stopped being orderly and sat on her head in a tangled mess. Five's was in disarray, cut from several angles, giving it an uneven wave. If their enemies saw her, they'd guess her ability in a blink. Two, seemingly the youngest in the bunch, sprawled on the floor, arms spread on their side. What did he even do? Controlling minds wasn't part of the cleaning task.

He retrieved the broom he left leaning against the wall and started on his task again. If they have the time to lounge around, they were done with their duties. He sniffed, the dust billowing by his ankles stirring something unsightly in his sinuses.

"Hey, Thirteen!" A cheerful voice called from the crowd. He turned to find Fourteen waving at him from the huddle. With her having absolute aim, perhaps they had her shoot wads of glue towards the ceiling or something. Enough reason for her energy at this time of the day. "Show us a bit about your ability! We're all curious."

"I have to sweep the floors," he replied drily. Couldn't they see it? "Tomorrow. Or the day after. This is too much dust."

That was enough for a fib. Humans weren't designed to remember every single interaction they had throughout the day. If he vanished into the background enough, they would forget they didn't know about his ability in the first place. Fill their minds with nonsense, and they wouldn't mind the thing that mattered most.

If they were disappointed, they made up for it by asking each other for stories of the outside world, or at least what they remember from it. Thirteen listened, correlating the threads to his own memories. Six talked about not seeing his friends for a while, and they were supposed to be skateboarding on the weekend. He only went on to this escapade because his distant parents asked him to.

Seventeen had loving parents, but no friends. He stayed at home most of the time, studying his interest which was physics. It was fitting, wasn't it? Now he could control forces at will, manipulating the things he had just once imagined. Perhaps, he hoped to win this game so that he could go back to his solitary world and pursue what he truly wanted most. His parents might love him, but they had no resources enough to send him to where he needed to go.

Four, the ice user, had the same story, but for fashion. Nine was here because he saw an ad from his part-time job, and his parents thought it's a good opportunity for him to land more jobs with his experience here. Three, the healer, trained to be a nurse but was denied entry because of numerical standards and nonsensical barriers to learning.

As the stories flooded, Thirteen pieced a central theme. Someone close to these people encouraged them to enter this place, thinking it would benefit them at some point. There were explicit permissions—encouragement, even. Looking through his flickering memories, the woman, his mother, told him to go because they needed the money. For what? She didn't specify. Which was another suspicion. Why didn't she tell him? Was there anything to tell?

"I wish I could tell everyone where I am," Seven lamented, shuffling to change his position on the floor. "When we can die tomorrow, you really need to think about that stuff."

A couple of nods. "You don't have to die," Thirteen blurted. His voice fluttered in bouts of echoes in the vast hall and the thickening silence. "Not if you do as I say."

Everyone stilled. For four seconds, that was. "Yeah, you won't even tell us your ability," One reasoned, waving her hand in the air. "How do we know we can trust you?"

"You don't have to," Thirteen said. "What I'm trying to say is that this game might not be looking into how strong our abilities are. Maybe it's urging us to win by using them to our advantage, for us to use our heads and work with what we have."

Heads snapped up as he stopped sweeping and faced them fully. "Think about it. We can't win this by relying on our abilities," he said. "There will be sections who will think they can, and it's going to be their downfall. For us to get to the next level, we need to think differently. We need a strategy."

"And you need us to follow you?" Two asked, pulling himself from the ground, intrigued. "How do we know you have what it takes?"

Thirteen leveled his gaze at them, hands tightening around the broom handle. "Give me until the next counter," he replied. "No one has to die. We will win."

Confidence. It was a matter of inspiration and belief in one's words that drove people to go with anything one said. Thirteen didn't care about winning. He needed to get the hierarchy out of the way, the internal conflict too, so he could focus on what was truly essential. If they were all lost on a single goal and followed everything he told them to do, they would have less time to inquire about his secrets. They would have less mind to give him as he searched for the answers they didn't ask for.

He didn't want to win. For Thirteen, survival was a better goal.