Project Right:

We start out the story with an idea or an incident that would be pre-decided between the authors before any writing begins, just so everyone is starting on the same page.

Each author takes turns. One author writes the first chapter, then the following author continues with the second chapter as they see fit (within reason of course) and with consideration of the previous chapter. The responsibility for each chapter will rotate in a pre-decided order until the story is complete. enjoy

"Lockdown"

Chapter One

Chapter By Artemis Girl

Disclaimer: Don't own Inuyasha or any of its characters.

The wailing and red-flashing lights were really starting to freak Kagome out, but Kagome sighed while typing away at her computer, still fiddling with the design on the latest idea for an ionizer.

There were always drills and alarms going off during work and they never failed to be distracting in the worst way. Then again, she supposed, when you worked at the CSS, such alarms were a given.

The wailing increased a notch and Kagome annoyingly bit her lip. The Central Security Service headquarters, a covert branch of the informational branch of the SDF, was a highly secret governmental building, so really, constant alarms were to be expected, she supposed, as bomb threat drills, contamination protocol and prisoner escape plans were constantly practiced, all designated by the color of a flashing light and the pitch of a siren's whine. But, just one week into her job, Kagome had fast learned that if you paid attention to all the drills, you'd never get any work done.

It's best just to pay attention to the important ones really.

Kagome adjusted the electrical input of the ionizer before saving her file and moving on to finish the EM control, biting her lip all the while. Now, was it the red light with a high-pitched whine or the orange one with the low wail that symbolized a fire drill?

Kagome sighed, shoving the thought out of her head. Really, it didn't matter what it was at this point. But really, how did her superiors expect her to finish all her work with all this noise going on? It was inhumane.

Then again, her superiors probably didn't give a damn about the humanity of it all. After all, the CSS had been created to develop technology to control the flow of information to the public and from enemies, create ways to subdue crowds of people in mass panic and make techniques to break serial killers and terrorist to extract their information from them, all through various methods of dubious legality and ethics.

Morality and being humane probably wasn't too much of a concern to them.

Kagome fiddled with the EM controller, reflecting. The CSS had caught sight of her while she was studying at university, working on a major in Technology Development and Kagome was grateful she hadn't gone into Chemistry, as she had first wanted to. Here, her job was to help develop technology to help the SDF, like with lie detectors and such, which wasn't so bad, but the people who worked in Chemistry...

Kagome shuddered. Her friend, Sango, worked in the Chemistry department. Though all of the workers projects were all completely confidential, Kagome knew that along with the acid lock dissolvers Sango worked to develop, there were also the chemical agents meant to subdue crowds or relax prisoners.

All are theoretically harmless, of course, but Kagome much preferred her desk and computer rather than fiddling with the volatile elements Sango dealt with day after day.

Kagome paused, ceasing her typing for a moment. The siren had stopped, but the lights kept flashing. That was odd.

Getting up from her chair, Kagome figured she'd better check with someone to see what was going on. Though she was supposed to have memorized the emergency plan of action booklet all workers were given, Kagome couldn't remember, let alone differentiate, half of the 37 alarms. Someone else was bound to know.

Opening the door, Kagome stuck her head out into the hall and was mildly surprised to find no one there. Usually, there were at least a few stragglers among those who just ignored the alarms, but this time, there were none.

Kagome shrugged, walking down the hallway towards the doors to find someone. Someone would be willing to tell her what was going on or at least, if she could find anyone. The halls were deserted, as far as she could tell.

Without warning, the lights went out, just as her cell phone went off.

Huffing in indignation, Kagome stopped and put down her bag and rummaged through her purse. Honestly, why had the power gone out now? She hadn't thought to save her work on the ionizer and now it was lost. Dam it. Was a stupid power outage what this stupid alarm was about?

Digging out her phone and flipping it open, Kagome put it to her ear.

"Yeah?"

"Kagome!"

Kagome sighed with relief, recognizing the voice of her co-worker and close friend. "Hey Sango? What's up?"

"What do you mean, what's up? This is insane!" the voice on the other side yelled.

"Where are you, anyway, Kagome? I can't find you in this crowd. This is ridiculous!"

"I'm still inside." Kagome said, making her way to the door again. "Why? What drill is it this time? What's that whine and the red flashing light mean, anyway?"

"You're still inside? Oh man, Kagome, there's some serious stuff going on.

"You'd better get outside now."

"I'm working on it." Kagome snapped, slightly testy, "I was doing fine until they shut off the power and my phone started ringing, you know..."

"They shut off the power all ready? Shit. Kagome, this is bad."

"No kidding Sango." Kagome said, getting to the door and reaching out to grab the handle, "Stupid alarms are going off on the day when I have way too much to get done, the power's shutting off whenever I forget to save my progress and now I have a pissy friend on my back just because I'm not out the door when I'm doing my best..."

"No, Kagome. That's not what I meant."

"Then what do you mean?" Kagome demanded, jiggling the door handle, which appeared to be stuck, "Surely it can't be that bad."

"Kagome, it's a lockdown. That's what the red flashing light and siren mean."

Kagome froze. "A- a lockdown?"

"Yeah. And if the power's gone off already..." Kagome swallowed hard.

"...that means you're stuck in there until it's over." Her face stark, Kagome looked down at the electronic doorknob that sat in her hand, all her efforts to turn it fruitless.

"Shit."

"Kagome? Kagome! Don't panic!"

"I'm not panicking!" Kagome yelled back, running back and forth down the halls. "Hello? Is anyone there?" Kagome called out while holding the cell phone to the side, "Hello?"

"God damn it Kagome, get a grip! There's no one there except for you!"

Sango yelled from across the line, "It's a lockdown! Everyone else had the good sense to get out of the building before they shut it down!"

Kagome was freaked. After realizing that the front doors were not about to open, no matter how hard she kicked, punched and screamed at them. Kagome had gone off to find another exit and see if anyone else was trapped inside as well who might be able to help.

"Why'd they lock it down, anyway?" Kagome asked, scheming along the walls, glancing into each and every office in desperate hopes to find someone else around.

"Something about a terrorist attack, I think but I'm not sure. The Board has only given us preliminary reasons so far. I think someone's trying to get into it."

"What! Sango, what am I going to do?" Kagome groaned, worrying at her lip as she dashed along, "I don't want to be in here to fight off terrorists! I want to go home!"

"Well, serves you right for not learning your emergency protocol like a good little worker."

"Sango!" Kagome moaned, doing her best to open an emergency exit, to no avail.

"Chill out, Kagome. Your situation's not all that bad. All you have to do is find a way to get out of the building before anyone gets there, okay? You're a smart girl, Kagome. You'll think of something."

Kagome raised her eyebrows incredulously as she looked around for some other way to get out. Not that bad? Had Sango lost it?

"Sango!" Kagome wailed into the phone, desperate. "All the doors are locked and you know the windows are like super-reinforced! There's no way I can get out of here!"

"Come on, Kagome! Here, how about you-"

"Wait." Kagome froze, listening carefully to the empty hallway.

"What? What is it?"

Kagome turned very slowly to look at the far door, leading to another hallway. She peered at the window in the door, "I think I heard someone." Kagome said quietly, just under her breath.

"You heard someone? Oh come on, Kagome, you're delusional. No one's left in the building, everyone left."

"Then maybe it's the terrorists." Kagome said quietly, creeping along the edge of the hallway toward the source of the noise and looking into the doorway's window, "I see a shadow. Someone's there."

"The terrorists? God, Kagome, no one's the-"

"I'm going to have to call you back Sango." Kagome whispered. "Talk to you later."

Quickly shutting off the phone before Sango could voice any loud objections, Kagome tucked her phone away, her head jerking up when she heard a loud clatter coming from beyond the doors in the hallway. Could it be terrorists? It had to be someone, didn't it? Shadows didn't just walk around buildings, making noises!

"Oh no..." Kagome hid behind a corner, keeping her eyes out. Call her paranoid, but she was better safe than sorry! At a soft noise, she paused again, listening, her ears straining.

Footsteps. She could hear them. They were coming closer.

"I can hear you! I know you're there!" Kagome called out, her eyes wide, "I'm not scared!"

The footsteps halted for a moment, before continuing on. Looking around desperately for a weapon, Kagome picked up a short hat stand from someone's office and gripped it tightly, holding it like a bat. If she was going to die at the hands of terrorists, she'd go down fighting!

"Don't come any closer!" Kagome yelled out. "I'm armed!"

The footsteps kept coming and Kagome twisted her hands around the makeshift bat in a panic.

"I'll swing, I swear it!" she called out, hysterical. "I swear, if you take one more step..."

The door opened.

"Ahhhhh!" Kagome screamed and ran towards the figure in a blind panic, before stopping short at the sight of him.

It was a tall man with long white hair, dressed smartly in a dress shirt and pants, his CSS ID card pinned smartly to his breast. He held up his hands in surrender which were holding a tiny package from a vending machine in one and an eyebrow arched ironically.

"Well, this is interesting." he remarked, his amber eyes flickering over the poised hat stand. He looked at her cautiously, his expression clearly indicating that he doubted her sanity and he slowly held out his hand, offering her the package in it. "Cookie?"

The hat stand clattered to the floor and Kagome looked up at him timidly.

"Um... sorry?"

"So, I'm Kagome. I was working when the alarm went off and I ignored it. Rather silly, actually."

Kagome reached over to take another cookie from the strange man, munching on it happily as they sat against the wall. The man had offered a truce and since they didn't really have anything else to be doing, they had started talking.

Well, Kagome had. The stranger didn't really seem all that talkative.

"So then I missed my chance to get out. I never did learn all the alarms and what they all meant, so I didn't know I should be concerned until it was too late."

The man raised an eyebrow. "You ignored the alarm?"

"Well, yeah…" Kagome said honestly, chewing. "They've never been important before and my superior wanted the ionizer done before the end of work today, so-"

"I'm sure your superior would have understood." he interrupted, fixing her with a look.

"I know that. I'm smart enough to realize I made a stupid choice. You don't have to rub it in." Kagome informed him.

The man raised his eyebrow again and Kagome rolled her eyes.

"You're here too, aren't you? Now I'm not the only one who did something stupid to miss getting out, so you might as well get off your high horse and relax. How'd you get stuck in here, anyway?" she asked, reaching for another cookie.

"I was in a self-hypnotic trance when the alarm went off and when I returned to full consciousness I was too late to leave."

"No kidding?" Kagome asked thickly, around a mouthful of cookie, as she looked at the man widely. "Self-hypnotism? really? I didn't know they did that kind of stuff here."

"On occasion."

Kagome glanced over at his nametag for a moment, before snitching another cookie. "Sesshoumaru…hmm? I think I've heard of you. Don't you work in the Black Tech department or something?"

"Black science." the man called Sesshoumaru corrected, taking a cookie for himself. "You mean the Black Science department."

"Yeah, that's it. Black Science. My friend told me about that once, though she didn't really know all that much about it, only that it existed. No one really knows what you guys do back there. Like, everyone knows what the Psychotropic section does." Kagome said, rambling slightly as she toyed with half a cookie, "That's where I work, you know. We make stuff like EM controllers and ionizers and whatnot; you know... stuff to affect people's moods through mimicking the electro-magnetic field of brainwaves, or by flooding a room with negative or positive ions. But it's not very secretive at all."

"Are you always this talkative, or is this some special trait that only comes out when you're with someone that's completely disinterested in what you have to say?" Sesshoumaru asked her, arching that eyebrow once again.

Kagome shot him a glare. "All right then, mister. You tell me something, then. What do you do in the Black Science department, anyway?"

"We develop methods to extract information from enemies."

Kagome snorted. "Yeah, right. That's what the official statement is as well. What do you guys really do? You don't have to be diplomatic about it. I can handle it."

Sesshoumaru raised an eyebrow. "We use a combination of brainwashing, neuro-linguistic programming, hypnotism, shadow language and illegal psychology on prisoners to control them, wipe away their identity and make them tell us what we want to know."

Kagome's hand stopped midway to its next cookie and she looked up at Sesshoumaru slowly.

"Oh, come now…" he said pleasantly, both his eyebrows inclined, his tone ironic. "Weren't you just saying you could handle the truth of what the Black Science department did? I thought you actually could. My mistake."

"You brainwash people?" Kagome asked, horrified. "You mess up their minds? Just wipe away their free will?"

"Actually, we only wipe their identity away." he said conversationally, relaxing against the wall. "That way, we don't have to break their free will. They just obey us mindlessly, so it doesn't matter."

"I have got to get out of here." Kagome moaned, clutching her head. "I'm stuck with Sesshoumaru the sociopath, terrorists are coming and there's no way out."

Sesshoumaru raised an eyebrow. "That's hardly polite, you know. If I were you, I wouldn't call your only aid in escaping this damn place a sociopath. Especially when if he is a sociopath, he would have no qualms over killing you just to shut you up."

Kagome turned to look at him, wide-eyed and Sesshoumaru smirked.

"I was kidding." he said flatly, getting to his feet. He looked down at her and extended a hand. "Now, are we going to find a way to get out of here or what?"

Kagome looked up at his hand suspiciously, could she trust this man to help her get out of this place or not? He might seem genuine enough, however his occupation gave her more than enough reason to doubt him.

Sighing to herself, Kagome reached out and took his hand, as he tugged her to her feet. What else could she do?

"Let's make this quick." Kagome said shortly. "I have a date at seven-thirty and I have no intentions of staying in here to miss it until someone comes to get us out."

"Of course."

Sesshoumaru smirked slightly as Kagome stomped off down the hall in a irate huff. She would get out of this stupid place, help or no help from her arrogant companion.

She'd make sure of it.

Read and Review

Next: Chapter Two-By PurityFlower