AN: Well, next chapter and all. Read up.
Day 24, 1210 Hours, John's Room
John opened his eyes with the speed of the dead. Actually, Adam had died because of the heat of reentry into the atmosphere so he actually had quite a lot of speed. Taking this into account, John opened his eyes with the speed of those who have woken to a day they do not wish to be awake on. John would not be surprised if he was the only one awake, although it was entirely possible Ferris had been awake since before the announcement was made.
John continued to stare at the ceiling as the clock slowly worked its way towards twenty, getting out of bed when it finally reached a minute after twenty, deciding it was a waste of time to simply gaze blankly into the space before the roof of the room. He got dressed, opened his door, and slowly made his way down the hall. John could feel the silence which had claimed the entire school while everyone had slept grow agitated at his quietly noisy footsteps, causing him to take care to make no sound at all as he finally reached the cafeteria to find that Ferris indeed was awake.
The chemist nodded at his entrance, a small smile on his face instead of the usual perpetual grin, before returning to eating his lunch. The silence had followed John in and had gone to try and intimidate Ferris into modifying his behavior like John had but when it realized that Ferris was not acknowledging its presence it went back to smothering John. It followed John into the kitchen and hovered over the everyman's shoulder.
A small lunch was assembled, then disassembled and replaced with a smaller lunch. John had no stomach for food even if it had faded into the past the memory of Louise being taken apart in front of them was still fresh. He was unsure if he could even eat the food he had taken and was about to put it back in favor of an even smaller lunch but decided that he could no longer take the suffocating silence and went back into the cafeteria to join Ferris.
The silent sounds of him and Ferris eating were almost as bad as the pure silence.
Finally, John felt the need to purge the room of the silence's presence and asked, "So how are you holding up?"
Ferris looked at John before looking back down at his food and taking another bite and saying, "We need to figure out a new way to say that, it's getting stale."
"Ah, well, um," John paused for a moment to try and think of a way to rephrase the sentence he had uttered so many times since he had awoken in this school.
"How are you feeling?" John tried.
"That's also been used before, come on try a little variety, have you used 'how are you doing' yet?" Ferris said.
"I think so."
"Ok, how about 'are you considering murder as a possible choice'?"
"That seems a little, uh, passive aggressive? I don't know, just not right."
Ferris nodded, taking another bite of food while he thought. The silence began to return; using the pause in conversation to creep out of the corner it had retreated into and was beginning to advance on them when Ferris spoke, sending it back to cower.
"Ah, we might as well skip that part then, and I'm fine, thank you for asking, and you?"
"A little…fuck, I'm probably scarred for the rest of my life. Christ, that was brutal even for Monokuma," John said.
"Not really, it's about expected. We'd become desensitized if he didn't keep raising the ante with every execution. Fear, that's what it's all about. The feeling of being trapped and the fact that any attempt to leave will be met with slow, agonizing death, the stress of that is what pushed Louise over the edge, she just couldn't cope anymore, and we all know that death wasn't an option for her, poor thing," Ferris said, setting down his food and staring past John into the infinity.
John felt slightly scared of the chemist, not for the first time, but the first time in which he was really aware of it. Sitting in the silence, which had returned from its retreat, he really inspected what he knew of the small smiling scientist.
He had killed people before, or at least took responsibility for it and John was not completely sure it was all simply Ferris designing the weapons to be unleashed, the chemist was alive and acting completely, well, almost completely normal even after suffering organ failure and being stabbed. He had watched every execution in full without showing any sign of revulsion. And he was always smiling, which was really creepy when added with his sickly appearance and filmed eyes giving him the look of something from a horror movie that was hunting people down, and the fact he had been able to keep pace with Paris during the soccer game and John remember Alexander acknowledging the fact that Ferris was dangerous.
Ferris was definitely not someone who could be taken lightly.
"Anyone else come through?" John asked after he finished his mental breakdown.
"Jane," Ferris said, not looking up from his food, "She dashed past me into the kitchen and ran back out carrying food I think, she might be hiding out there in the other sections of the school, or back to her dorm."
"Yeah, the rest of you bastards are still moping," Monokuma said, "and I'm getting bored of waiting for more people to show up so go gawp at the new wing already."
The bear vanished as soon as he had appeared, giving the sense that his voice had simply come out of nowhere. John looked at Ferris who shrugged. There was nothing better to do and it seemed that no one else was getting up, probably having fallen asleep at the same late-early hour John, and were doing a better job of sleeping then he had.
They stood up, tossing the dishes by the sink before walking in silence down the halls of the school, the silence walking with them, satisfied they had stopped defying its power. Ferris walked with a slight gimp to his step, but still maintained his fast pace, although he was leaving off his usual rapid chatter that would have driven the silence away.
There was still ten of them alive in the school: Barry, Billy, Ferris, Atsuko, Chloe, Alexander, Paris, Mary, Jane, and himself; but the loss of the other six and the still increasing size of the available area to explore made the shrinking pool of student all the more apparent. Ten people and it felt like less. The silence was beginning to get oppressive so John spoke to Ferris to drive it away again.
"What else is there for us to find?" he asked Ferris, the chemist looking at him with good natured confusion until John clarified himself by saying, "in the way of rooms, we already found the majority of rooms in a school as well as a few that don't really belong here."
"The office," Ferris said after a moment, "possibly some other rooms as well although what they may be is unclear."
John nodded and tried to think of something else to ward off the silence. Fortunately for him Ferris continued the conversation.
"Are you feeling it as well? That feeling of being worn down from all of it?" Ferris said, not looking at John.
"Yes, I said that I was scarred for life early didn't I?" John said with a forced laugh.
"No, that's just some minor psychological damage; you'll be fine with therapy. I mean the will to continue with all of this," Ferris said looking at John, the small smile seemingly carved into his face.
"Continue with what?" John said, slowing to a stop in the central hall, Shi-ru standing, well lazing by the newly opened wing.
"This whole farce," Ferris said making an expansive gesture, tilting hi head to the side before shaking his head and saying, "forget it you won't get it."
John paused, trying to get his thoughts together which was enough of a lull for Ferris to begin walking away forcing John to move forward and grab the smaller student's arm to stop him.
"Fascinating thing the mind, isn't it?" Ferris said before John could speak, "How do we know who is the sane one's and who aren't? I like to think everyone is insane on some level, a proper amount of insanity to filter the reality of the world and make it livable. Hell knows we shouldn't be able to. We have no certainly that anything will go right, death isn't even certain, we are going to die but there's no order to it, just random death happening everywhere in such a disorganized manner. Anyways, the question of the day is based off my view, is the person we're dealing with insane because of too much or too little insanity?"
John had lost all ability to respond to the chemist. He had the feeling that Ferris would prefer solitude, and john doubted anyone else was awake so he let go of Ferris and the smaller student was gone, moving into the North Wing at a rapid rate.
"He was never really stable," Shi-ru said, looking to where Ferris had vanished, "he's really good at hiding it though so it might be prudent to keep an eye on him."
"I'm keeping an eye on everyone," John said tiredly, "it hasn't really been working out so far, there are six people who've died."
The penguin nodded and moved away from the wall to stand in front of John. John eyed him suspiciously, wondering why he was becoming so chatty all of a sudden. It was never good news if they were approached by either of the animatronics, but Shi-ru was more benign. The penguin looked around before snorting, muttering 'screw it' under his breath.
"You all need some solid answers, and I can give you some now but not here, got to the room behind the stairs," Shi-ru said before leaving.
John stood contemplating what Shi-ru had said before moving into the North Wing, guessing the stairs Shi-ru was talking about would be there since there were no stairs anywhere else in the school. Entering into the new area, John looked at the classroom's that lined the walls, nothing noteworthy standing out. A single door was set opposite the mouth of the hall as it opened into a T-intersection. Opening it John found the office Ferris had been talking about and surprisingly Jane.
She wasn't very good at hiding was she, John couldn't help but think. She had been found so many times that it was beginning to border on the ridiculous. He tried to exit without her noticing but she spun around as the door squeaked when he tried to close it.
She looked different from when he first saw her. Her eyes were opened as wide as they could and were constantly moving, and she fidgeted endlessly. Her hair was messy, and John couldn't help but see the tag that was sticking up slightly from the front of her shirt, showing she had thrown it on backwards.
"What do you want?" she snapped hiding behind the big desk that dominated the room, bout the only thing John had really noticed besides her.
"I was just seeing what this room was," John said, while closing the door.
He tried to remember the details of the room as he walked towards the one only set of stairs he had seen in the school, they were towards the west side of the wing. They were sealed off with a grate signaling that access would be given after another trial. There was a small door behind the stairs that John could see, along with all the other assorted doors along the hall.
"It's locked."
John jumped and spun around to find Jane, who flinched at his sudden movements and shifted as if to run. It wouldn't have mattered if John had swung as he spun around; she was a good ten feet away from him at least.
"Ah," John took a quick glance at it, pondering if Shi-ru had meant to meet him in front of it, before looking back to Jane.
She shifted as John stared at her, waiting for her to talk first. John cleared his throat as the silence drew on, becoming awkward. He had never really spent time around Jane even before the whole thing really took off, Jane Often being a background detail to Amelia, and then being a background detail to everyone once she exiled herself from the group.
"So," John said, after looking at every feature in the hall besides Jane, twice, "what's, uh, that you want to talk about?"
"Ah, do you think, it scared them? Away from the idea?" she said finally.
John looked at her, knowing exactly what she was talking about without her using exact words.
"I can't know, can I? Not unless Monokuma suddenly decided to leave."
This was not the answer he suspected Jane wanted to hear, but he could tell it was the one she expected. He could see the tension increase within her body for a moment but then she relaxed into what seemed like an almost serene state.
"Thank you, for your honesty," she said, before spinning around and fleeing to a different section of the school, leaving John alone to investigate the door that Shi-ru had sent him to.
Upon reaching the door nothing happened, so John tried opening it, the door opening smoothly before a force pushed John through and the door snapped shut behind him, leaving him in darkness. John swore as he pushed himself up and began groping for the wall to give himself something to orient to. He didn't need to as a light hummed on, giving the room a weakly illuminated look.
Turning around he found himself staring at a large machine, the light emanating from a screen. It was like a super computer from popular culture, and as John approached he noticed the letters S.H.I.-C.U. was stenciled onto the side. There was a keyboard set into a small shelf that extended towards him when he approached.
After noting that there was nothing else in the room John said, "Well?" to the air in general hoping this wasn't a sick trap that had been set for him.
After there was no response John looked back to the screen to see that words had appeared.
I can't hear you dipshit, type.
John looked at the keyboard before typing a response.
What are you?
I am the brain behind what you know as Shi-ru, more accurately Synthetic Humane Intelligence Robotic Unit. I am the Central Unit, Shi-cu.
So you're an artificial intelligence network?
No, just one, I am all of the units and I am one, my creators armed me with high processing power to be able to operate many units at once.
What happened in the storage room to that one unit then?
Take a guess; no that would take forever, I'll just tell you. Monokuma broke through the defenses set up to keep him out of my systems and temporarily cut me off from contact with that drone.
Alright, who made you?
I was made as a collaboration between several members of this school and its main body in Japan, Hope's Peak. This school was started as an outreach program since Hope's Peak was so successful in Japan.
Who exactly a part of your creation?
Rowland, Icarus the Ultimate Inventor, Chihiro the Ultimate Programmer who attended Hope's Peak and created several other AIs like me, and this fellow called Kneegi or something who was their lucky student. Oh and you.
And that isn't suspicious.
It's not my fault that guy had a minimum presence on the team. He was there helping to create my personality. Like you.
Does that mean he's like you? And me I guess.
No, I developed a lot on my own since the start and even then I didn't resemble that optimistic freak, boy could have all his limbs removed and he'd probably be able to find something to be glad about.
Doubtful, but moving on, is there any way out besides killing someone?
At present no, but if you could put enough pressure on Monokuma to force him into an endgame you might all be able to escape.
How do you do that?
Learn more, and continue resisting his attempts to egg you guys into murder. Time's up and you need to leave before Monokuma gets any idea about trying to break in here.
The words vanished from the screen being replaced by a sprite image of Shi-ru waving at him in farewell. John moved up to the door, placing his hand on the knob which clicked signaling him to jump into the hall and slam the door behind him.
Turning around, John saw Monokuma standing silently nearby, watching John quietly. John edged his way around the bear, which remained completely silent. Finally past him, john couldn't help but dash into the nearest room and h try to hide.
"Hoi, what's got you panicking? Someone else dead already?"
John turned to see Barry quietly playing pool at a billiards table, which was one among many leisure time activities scattered throughout the room. It was obviously a rec room and John was surprised Barry was there, although it quickly died down when he considered what he knew of the musician.
"Monokuma was giving me a look so I thought it would be a good idea to get away," he said in explanation.
"Need a witness, alright, want to join?" Barry said, before resetting the game so John felt obligated to join.
John grabbed a cue, noting that there was a TV with a plethora of game systems hooked to it. They played for a while in silence. Barry won and the game was set back up and played again. Finally Barry set the cue down after he won the second game and motioned to some of the other things.
John thought about it, but decided that it was best if he finished exploring so he declined Barry's offer. Barry shrugged and began turning on the TV as John left. Classrooms went past as well as the Office which resembled a regular principal's office if John remembered right. He reached the east half of the wing and walked until he reached a bend in the hall turning to find…
Utter destruction.
The floor was cracked and a good part of the hall was shored up with sturdy beams to prevent it from fully collapsing. There was rebar and other building materials that John did not recognize scattered about haphazardly presenting a real and present danger. None of the rooms in this half were properly accessible except one door which John opened.
He stood in another damaged room, which John supposed explained the reason for Monokuma utilizing the cold storage instead of this room. It was a morgue that was no longer useable. John looked around and fond nothing of interest and so left soon after. Figuring at this point he had seen all there was to in this wing; John went back to the rec room to join Barry in playing games while he digested what Shi-cu had told him.