a/n: yes I wrote this really quickly. it was fun. I thoroughly enjoyed. we meet a whole lot of characters in this chapter, but there are still a whole lot of characters we have to meet. am I a little overwhelmed? certainly. am I following through on this story? you know it. 

 The first girl opened her eyes to a faint yellow light as her breath got caught in her lungs and she gasped for air. She didn't remember waking up ever being so hard. She shivered; her skin was cold to touch, as was the hard surface she lied upon. The panic settled when she pushed herself up to a seated position and her eyes gazed upon the unfamiliar room. She did not remember going to sleep. She did not remember anything at all.

The walls were bare and beige and doused in a dim artificial light that flickered upon the ceiling. Her surface was elevated, high enough that she could brush her hand against the stucco sky. Her fingertips came down covered in dust. Against the wall where she was now were rows upon rows of pods like hers. The room seemed to go on forever, and the sight of it made her woozy. She did not remember going to sleep.

"Think," she whispered aloud, speaking to nobody but herself. She wanted to say another word, but her name could not find itself upon her lips. It was lost, and she was frozen in space and now she could not tell if the chills running down her spine were from the cold or fear.

On the opposite wall was a cabinet spanning across the rest of the room. Columns of three drawers, a perfect mimic to the pods. Perhaps there were answers there, explanations of where she was and who she was and how long she'd been asleep and who else was there and when was the last time someone's fingers danced upon along that stucco sky ceiling.

Her pod was maybe eight feet off the ground, and she saw a small ladder built into the wall beside it. She must have climbed that ladder up once, but she couldn't remember when. Her legs were tight when she moved them at first, her knees cracking so loud she swore she could have woken one of the others. Then again, she couldn't see if the other pods were full. That sent a worse thought through her mind; perhaps she was alone.

"That can't be," she said. Maybe once she'd have been more cautious speaking to the wind, but as far as she could tell hers were the only ears alive in all the world. "You can't be alone here." She wasn't sure what she would do if she was.

She crossed the room towards the cabinets, but when she tried to open one she found it locked. Just her luck, she thought. But when she crouched down, she saw it: names and numbers etched into every metal drawer, a keyhole to the right. Names. If there were names then hers must be there, and when she turned around she saw golden numbers on every black surface and the one where she had come read "17" and so she turned back around and her heart beat faster as she read "13—Sebastian" and "14—Emma" and "15—Wren" and "16—Jamie" and finally "17—Terra."

She froze. Terra. It sounded familiar, it sounded right.

"Terra." When she spoke it aloud, the letters rolled off her tongue as though they had a thousand times before. "Think, Terra." The puzzle was complete—it was her name. She knew it, just like she knew that she had been asleep for a very long time.

Above the cabinets was a mirror she noticed now for the first time. She hardly recognized herself, but she knew who she was looking at. Terra. She had blonde hair that fell in a mess of curls mid-way down her chest. Her face was round with gray eyes. She'd been asleep, but she did not think she looked tired. No, it was more like she'd lied down and sat back up a moment later only her memories had disappeared and she could not even remember falling asleep or entering the room or anything that had come before.

Her eyes were drawn to a thin cord around her neck, and as she lifted it from below her shirt she saw the charm of the necklace was a key. "17—Terra." She could look inside.

But before she could crouch back down, she was distracted by a sound other than the hum of a machine she could not identify. Another pod was opening, and she held her breath as it revealed another figure. This time a boy sat up, shaking just as she had, and though she wanted to run towards him, investigate if she knew him, if he knew anything more than she did, she could not bring herself to move.

"Where am I?" he asked the moment his head whipped towards the left and she became visible. There was a quiver in his voice, and though she was too far away make anything out clearly, Terra could see the terror in his face. She felt the same panic herself. "Who are you?"

"I don't know," she said. When she was alone she hadn't noticed the shaking in her own voice as well. "I don't know where we are."

She did not know what had happened, but she knew the boy knew just as much as she did. Maybe she was thinking too quickly, but she made the decision to trust him. They faced the same unknowns.

"Are you the only one awake?"

"So far, yes," she said, approaching him slowly. She didn't realize how loud her footsteps were before; they were nothing compared to her pounding heart. "My name's Terra."

He hesitated, and she knew what weight was descending on his mind but she did not speak in case she was wrong. "I don't know my name." She wasn't wrong.

"Let me help." The number on his pod read "24" so she turned around and scanned the drawers nearby. "Twenty-four, Kennedy. Is that it?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "Kennedy."

"I don't know what the hell is going on, Kennedy."

A third pod started to open. And then a fourth, and a fifth, and then a sixth and seventh and then Terra could not keep count because it seemed they all were waking up at once. Before long the room was flooded with strangers, and she'd forgotten about the key around her neck completely; she hadn't even noticed that Kennedy had had one too.

Terra pushed her way through the crowd, searching for any familiar face but all she saw were strangers. It was impossible, she thought, that she could know none of them. There was clearly some connection between them all, she must have known them once. Her eyes landed upon a boy with hair the same color as hers. Something had clicked; they must have had history. He was a part of her life before. She didn't know how or who he may be but she knew she had seen his face inside a dream.

"Hey," she said, pushing her way towards him. He blinked as she approached; it seemed he'd had the same reaction. So far as either was concerned, they may as well be meeting for the first time. "Have you figured anything out?"

"That kid did." He gestured to a small girl who had retreated back towards the pods. She appeared to be one of the youngest Terra had seen, but when she noticed her staring her eyes narrowed into a glare that warned she was more than just a child. "Names on the drawers correlate to the numbers on the beds, you find yours yet?"

"Yeah," she nodded. Of course nothing new had been discovered. "Terra."

"Number 17," he said, eyes widening just the slightest. "Jamie, sixteen. Guess I spent however long beneath you."

"I don't understand this," Terra sighed, "We wake up in some strange place with no memory of how we got there or who we are? It's impossible—"

"It's cryo," said a voice behind her. She whipped around to see an Asian girl much shorter than her but with a stare that made her seem much older. Sort of like that small girl, only the latter didn't seem to be covering up a fear. "Cryosleep. They freeze the human body so it doesn't age as infinite time passes. We could have been asleep for a millenia and still be none the wiser."

"Why the hell would we do that?" asked Jamie, but Terra couldn't disagree with the question.

"Damned if I know," said the girl.

"And what about our memories?" asked Terra, "Would that steal them too?"

"I've been awake ten minutes, haven't figured it out yet—" she muttered.

"I'm sorry," Terra said quickly, "I didn't mean that you should know all the answers now, there's no way to know that."

"It's not because of the cryo that we can't remember anything. That's something else." If she was offended she didn't show it. "I'm Eliza, by the way."

"We have to remember something," said Jamie. "What do we know? We knew our names the moment we saw them, we knew we were asleep—"

Eliza's eyes drifted up towards the ceiling. "We're underground."

"We've always been underground," said Terra. She followed Eliza's gaze up to a crank in the ceiling surrounded by an outline of some sort of door.

"Because the air above was toxic," said Eliza. "We put ourselves in cryo to ride it out, didn't we?"

"If we were riding it out and now we're awake, then let's go up," shouted a fourth voice. Another young adult Terra could not recall, he was the first to seem threatening.

"We don't know what's up there," she said. "We're completely unprepared—"

"I saw you, one of the first couple awake. You hear anything then when it was quiet down here?" The boy asked. She shook her head. "Then let's go."

"We need to be organized before that."

"Then let's grab their attention, damn it." One of the ladders by the pods stretched all the way up to the ceiling, and before Terra could argue again the boy had braced it. He already had his hands on the crank, on their only exit out.

"He's right," said Eliza. "Down here we've got shelter, but other than that we don't have shit. The only way to know if we can breathe is by going up."

"And if we can't?" asked Jamie.

Eliza shrugged. "It's the only way out of this crypt." On the final word, she walked off quickly, following the man under the ladder. She nodded to him once as he turned the crank. Terra gritted her teeth at the sound of the rusted metal creaking for the first time in ages.

"This is a bad idea," Terra murmured to Jamie. All he could do was sigh in agreement. As the ceiling door was pushed open, a new light flooded the room, more radiant than anything Terra could remember. She squinted in the brightness, all she could make out were the silhouettes of figures climbing up. She saw that man go first, then the small girl who'd figured out the names. She saw Eliza, and Kennedy, and soon person after person began to disappear into the world above. The room emptied as quickly as it had filled.

"Come on," said Jamie. "Let's go feed ourselves to the wolves."

As the crowd thinned, Terra's eyes were drawn to a small figure still glued to the pods. It was a child, too petrified to stand. "Go on," she said. "I'll just be a minute."

She approached the child cautiously, careful to keep a soft smile and soft sounds. It was a girl no older than thirteen with blue eyes wide with terror. Her skin was white as porcelain, but Terra couldn't tell if it was fear that had stripped all color from her face.

"Hey," she said quietly. "Are you alright?"

She shook her head, though the motion was almost too subtle to notice. "What's going on?" She was almost too quiet for Terra to hear.

"We're not sure yet," she said, "But we'll figure it out. We're all on the same side here."

"I don't know you," she whispered. Her eyes darted towards the exit. "Or them."

"I think we all must have known each other once." They were the only two left in the bunker. "My name's Terra, have you found yours?"

She nodded. "Maisie."

"Alright, Maisie. I'm scared too, but we're gonna be okay. They've all gone up now, they may have learned something." A slight smile emerged on the girl's chapped lips; it was enough of an answer for Terra.

"You go first," she said as they reached the ladder. "I'll be right behind you."

The first to wake up and the last underground, Terra took a deep breath before it was her turn to climb. "What the hell," she mumbled. But as she reached the top ring of the ladder and her stomach dropped because she could not bring herself to look at the sky, she found her eyes narrowing on something on the cement floor below. There were words painted on the ground only visible in the light of day, and as far as she could tell she was the only one who looked. The message shot another wave of unwelcome chills throughout her body.

This is your New Dawn. 

a/n

an alternate title for this chapter is "the opening monologue from the 100." 

yes I am well aware that it's the same plot rn but I pROMISE IT GETS DIFFERENT!!! (it doesn't help that Terra looks a lot like Clarke and the "Bellamy" of this story is played by Wells lol) 

there is a lot of foreshadowing in this chapter. at some point I'm going to challenge you all to reread this chapter to see if you can find it. 

who else noticed my little ravens cameo hahahahahaha if you did you're a real one

QUESTIONS:

why did they lose their memories? can they get them back?

is going up to the ground a safe idea? 

how do Terra and Jamie know each other?

has everyone lost their memories or is somebody faking it....?