Early One Morning, Just as the Sun was Rising

Who: Adam, Conor and Zania
Where: Around the fort,s tarting at the barn
When: Dawn

Adam woke from a deep sleep, stretching as he did so and he realised that he was in a bed. Which he hadn't been for days. He sat up, looking around. Okay, he was in a small room, wood-walled, nowhere he recognised. This was... new. There wasn't much to see in the room and it didn't take him but a minute to find the clothes, pulling on a pair of thick blue jeans and a shirt, ignoring the jackets and hats he found there. The pair of boots they'd left for him he very much did pull on though, before he left his room and headed for the communal area he found outside the door. There were other doors here, he noted, and, working on the basis that everyone had a room, he knocked on one at random.

There was knocking. Conor blinked, opening his eyes, and noted the change in his surroundings. Well, that was fucking weird. The scientists, no doubt, had been busy. He frowned as he rose, glancing around the room and deciding immediately that despite the fact it had a bed, he wasn't sure he liked it all that much. Conor moved to the door, coming face to face with someone he had never met -- not a huge surprise, since he was aware there were a great deal of people in this experiment he probably hadn't even seen yet. He furrowed his brow. "Morning," he said, looking out into the hallway. "Where the hell are we?"

"I really don't know," Adam told him, easily, not looking overly perturbed by the change in scenery. It wasn't s comfortable as the house - but then again, Adam had put in a special request for his comforts therein to be removed, at least from his own room, when he had joined the experiment, so that didn't bother him in the least. But it was definitely a step up from the camp, though that had shown at last some signs of getting organised. "My name's Adam - pleased to meet you," he said, holding out his hand. It seemed that most of his meetings in this experiment would be strange ones, so there was little point commenting on it.

Well, that wasn't a huge surprise either. Conor doubted they'd been left any kind of explanation. He moved into the hall, glancing at the other doors. There couldn't possibly be enough rooms here to fit everyone, and unless he had been one of the lucky few to get a single, he doubted that everyone was here. The problem with that was, he wasn't sure what that meant -- if they had been separated or worse. His mind went immediately to Zania, to Sarah. "Uh-huh," Conor replied to the pleasantries, lifting a brow and meeting the man's hand. "Conor. Any idea where everyone else is?" He figured they were going to have to go in search.

"I don't know," Adam replied - it didn't take a genius to work out that they couldn't all be here. "Unless they have several people in a room - though I was alone and I assume that you were." It wasn't really a question. "Maybe there are other areas," he suggested - though there was no staircase in evidence. There was, however, a door set into the opposite wall - that would be the obvious choice for where to go from here. "Would you like to come and look?"

Rather than sigh, though the urge was certainly strong, Conor restrained himself and listened to the other man. He wasn't frustrated with Adam, per se -- more with the lack of information they were facing. Conor doubted that several people had been crammed into a room, unless they had somehow pissed off the scientists, but for some reason, he didn't think that was the case. He got the feeling he wasn't going to like what they discovered. Nodding briefly at Adam's suggestion, he put his hands in his pockets, checked subtly to make sure nothing had been taken, and produced a clove. He lit up, smoking to focus as they moved toward the door. He had seen Sarah just last night, and Zania in the morning of the previous day. They were the two with whom he was currently closest -- if it could be called that. He wondered if they would be here, or if this was some kind of punishment, being introduced to new people. If that was the case, the scientists had figured him out quickly enough. "Smoke?" he offered, because he didn't have anything else to say.

"No, thank you," Adam said, shaking his head. he didn't smoke, he'd never smoked. In fact, he hated being around smoke, but he didn't step away either, making himself stay in the vicinity, breathing in the wisps. He'd reaffirmed with himself that he wasn't to avoid life's unpleasantnesses, to do so woudl be wrong of him - he was to take what life dealt him, accepting and uncomplaining. And this was such a little thing. He opened the door, and raised as eyebrow as they walked out into a barn. There was a snort off to one side and he turned and saw the two horses in their stalls. Smiling a little, he walked over to them, petting the first on the nose as it greeted him.

Conor glanced up, wondering if he should ask if the man wanted it put out, but Adam didn't say anything further, so he just kept the clove to his opposite side. He was just as baffled as they walked into a barn, eyeballing the horses. They were typical fare, very nice and all, though in general he wasn't a lover of the animal. Liked them well enough, he supposed, and he wasn't frightened; he supposed he merely found it odd they were sleeping in the back of a barn. The smell would no doubt permeate eventually. "Did you have them as roommates before?" he asked dryly, trying to make a joke in a situation which was feeling far less amusing as time went on.

Adam chuckled a little and looked over, leaving the horses for now. "I grew up on a farm," he told Conor witha shrug. "We always had horses." He headed them towards the barn doors, pushing one open and letting in the daylight outside - not that it was a great day or anything. he wasn't really surprised to find out that what they stepped out into looked very much like a farmyard, with what he presumed to be the farm house in front of them.

"That makes one of us," Conor muttered. He'd grew up riding horses, but he didn't think that counted. He'd been made to care for them, brush them and such, even mucked the stalls once -- until he got smart enough to pay off some grungy, olfactorily-challenged stable hand. They walked out of the barn and into the daylight, and Conor stopped dead, staring around at the completely foreign land into which he had been dropped. "Oh. Good," he said. "A farm." He glanced at Adam. "Did you happen to have other animals? You know, of the food-bearing sort?" Conor flicked ash on the ground. Put him in the mountains, he'd fend for himself. Stuff him onto a boat; he'd be just fine. This, this was out of his realm of capabilities. About the best he'd be able to offer was good entertainment, chasing down an errant chicken.

Adam looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "Yeah," he said. "Chickens, a couple of pigs, some cows for milk." They'd been a largely arable farm, but a few animals had supplemented their diet. "We had some ducks at one point as well, but they largely came and went, lived wild, but seemed to come back year on year." He looked around, noting the chicken coop, but the place didn't smell like pig. "You want to check out the house, or are you more concerned with food?" he asked, though there was absolutely no challenge in his tone - it was simply an honest question.

At least, he thought, they had someone that knew enough about farm animals to be of use. Even if no one else could do anything, Adam would be able to deal with the aspect of keeping them fed. Conor was sure he could learn something if it came down to it, but he hoped they would let him settle for hunting. If he found the right materials, he would find his niche. Conor glanced at the other man, shaking his head. "I'm more concerned about the long-term regarding the food," Conor clarified. "Let's find out who else we've got," he said, motioning at the house. He assumed that was where everyone else would be. Once they had a count -- more like, once he knew Sarah and Zania were safe -- they could better decide what to do about their new situation.

"Okay then," Adam agreed, heading towards the house. Opening the door, which wasn't locked - and, in fact, didn't appear to be immediately lockable - they entered straight into the main living area - which was in keeping with the ongoing theme of something out of a western. Not that Adam had seen many films, but if he had, that's what he would have recognised this as.

Conor had to admit it -- the whole old-time feeling he was getting from this place? Not his scene. It wasn't as if he was used to anything high-maintenance: his apartment wasn't a penthouse, he set out his own trash, he didn't employ a maid. His mother thought he was stupid for it, but he had no interest in bringing anyone else into his place. So he was used to managing household tasks on his own. He even cooked for himself, on occasion, when he felt like it and had the ingredients to do so. But this was ridiculous. What was he supposed to do, get up in the morning and gather eggs, potentially losing an eye by way of chicken-peckage? Milk a cow? Christ. Entering the house didn't give him any better feeling about it. He glanced toward a set of stairs. "I'm going to guess the bedrooms are up this way." He went on, taking careful, quiet steps, and read the names on the doors. Well, he wasn't interested in any name but one, and he knocked on Zania's door softly, heart pounding. Where the hell was Sarah? Maybe Zania would know -- but after his conversation this morning with Adam, he doubted it.

Zania had been sleeping soundly until there came a knock on her door. She rose at the sound, moving slowly towards it, all the while trying to figure out where she was and how's she'd gotten there. The last time this had happened had been April Fool's Day, but the setting had been a familiar one to her, and this was most definitely not. She wondered if she was dreaming, and if so, what did it mean, rubbing her eyes sleepily as she opened the door. The men on the other side were familiar, thank God, and she asked them the question she'd yet to answer for herself. "Where are we?" she said, trying to force herself awake. The scientists took far too much pleasure in putting them in these situations.

Suddenly, he was curious as to how they'd managed to move them. He hadn't thought about it at all upon waking -- had only considered it one of the strange things everyone kept talking about, and hadn't bothered to give it any real consideration. He wondered if they had been drugged before being moved; he normally wasn't a heavy sleeper. Relieved when Zania opened the door, Conor only just refrained from reaching out and touching her, even embracing her. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "As far as I can tell, a farm. A very old, very work-necessary farm," he said dryly. "I don't know any of the others but Andre. I've just met Adam. Do you know-- Can you guess what they did with.. everyone else? There are only about ten of us here."

"Ten of us?" Zania said, eyes widening a little as she stepped out into the hall. Looking down the wall, she could see a row of doors, and a few more footsteps allowed her to begin examining the names. It caught her attention that these were all girl's rooms, though Sarah was absent from the group. She was left to assume the men had woken up elsewhere. "Are you sure they're not somewhere else? Where did you wake up?" A glance back into her own room told her they'd not provided her with any of her original belongings, so maybe they really had been lost in the fire. "I guess they're... somewhere else. Another house maybe? Are there other houses around?" As she spoke she moved back towards the stairs, looking between Conor and Adam. Any answer was fine, for she had many questions, as usual.

"From what we could see outside, there's just the barn," Adam answered her. "There are more rooms back there - from the looks of it, there are women in the house and men in the barn - there's no more than a half dozen rooms in the barn though. We didn't see much of anything else outside - but we came straight here, so it's possible that we missed things."

"They put you in the barn?" she asked, turning to look at both men. That seemed unfair to her, to give the women beds and rooms and neglect the men. At least she was a woman. It would be the first time in a long time that she was given perks over the men around her, so she wasn't really apt to complain, but it still seemed a little... odd. "Maybe there's... something. You know, they left a note in the chapel when they put those girls in the stocks. Think they'd do anything like that here? Or just leave us to wonder what to do?" Zania thought it was quite possible they'd be left entirely in the dark, but that was rarely the case when it came to the scientists. She thought they enjoyed rubbing it in a bit, that they could do whatever they want, leave them notes, and then not provide any response until they were ready.

Conor rolled his eyes, nodding once. "There are bedrooms at the back," he explained, lest she think they were expected to sleep on the straw with the horses. At least the smell wasn't so bad, but he couldn't figure out why they had been separated. Perhaps it was part of the lifestyle of the time period -- because it seemed to him they were being expected to live in the manner their surroundings suggested. He scowled. Like that was going to happen. "I don't know if there's a note, but I wonder if the segregation is meant to be permanent. Think if they catch a man in the women's quarters or vice versa they'll brand them as having loose morals?" he asked dryly. For some reason, he didn't doubt it. Zania had mentioned girls being left in stocks when they'd first met. Conor was willing to bet the punishment for breaking sex-based rules would be worse than wearing a big red A.

Adam took the diplomatic route and kept his mouth shut. He did that a lot - often choosing to say nothing than venture a comment that wouldn't be appreciated. He knew that not everyone had his moral standards, after all. He also knew that people generally looked at him askance if he voiced his beliefs, unless he was sure of them. Thus, staying quiet on the subject. "There's a living area at the back of the barn - it's quite comfortable, a communal space and then the bedrooms off there," he explained to her, though his idea of 'comfortable' wasn't most people's. "We could go and look, see if we could find a note - unless you wanted to wake the others up?" he asked, looking at the doors. He smiled with a hint of relief as he read Rebekah's name. At least she was here with them - that was something, though he wouldn't be waking her. Let the girl sleep for now, she'd need it.

Zania relaxed a touch, learning there were bedrooms. She had been under the impression the boys were all laying around in the hay. At Conor's comment about being branded for loose morals, she glanced back towards her room, but saw no computer anywhere in sight. "It wouldn't be the first time they outed people for sexual immorality," she said, knowing neither of them had been there for the great porn showing. That had been a rather stressful week for everyone. It was hard to sleep, think, or do practically anything when the past sexual escapades of their housemates were being shown twentyfour-seven. "I don't know if we should wake them up quite yet," Zania said, looking down the row of doors. "It's early. Let's see if the scientists left us anything first."

Conor didn't particularly consider it sexually immoral to have sexual relations with other human beings, considering it was technically their sole function on Earth, but he kept his mouth shut. He wasn't quite interested in finding out what Zania would think about that, although perhaps sometime it would come up. She seemed to be looking for something, but he wasn't certain about what it was; he furrowed his brows, glancing over at Adam. Waking up everyone else wasn't his goal either, so he was glad Zania agreed. Besides, he was more interested in getting answers than he was with getting more questions -- because that was exactly what would happen if they woke everyone else up, and Conor had already proved beyond a doubt that he hated panicked masses. Even little ones. "Did you see anything downstairs?" he asked Adam. Conor hadn't, but then, he'd been looking for Zania, not information.

"No - but then I hadn't been looking," Adam told them, honestly. He wanted to go and have a good look around this place - see how big it was, what was here. He was more interested in that than he was in why they were here, but if the others wanted to find out why they were here, he'd go along with that for the time being. "Come on, let's go and look downstairs - there's clearly nothing up here."

"Just the bedrooms," Zania confirmed, heading towards the stairs. "Did you see what guys are here?" she asked casually as she descended to the main floor. It was only a large open space, with a room off to one side. There was a long table, a couple of couches, but it was all very simple, looking much older than anything Zania had ever seen. It was certainly different, and she began to wander throughout the room, her bare feet quiet on the wood floor. She moved over to the room, looking in, and noting it was the kitchen. "This is it?" she asked, not seeing any other rooms, the only door being that to go outside and that to the kitchen, looking out one of the windows, she could see the barn. "Do we even have a bathroom?"

Conor couldn't fault the other man, because he hadn't been looking either. His focus had been on finding the two people with whom he'd, well, bonded over the past few days. Since there were only bedrooms on the second floor, he followed after them, trying not to look around too much. He didn't want to let the place depress him. Zania's question, of course, had him cringing, and Conor looked at the wood stove and the basin on the wall. "I suspect," he said grimly. "That running water is not a possibility here." In fact, he would even be willing to bet they had to shit outside. Well, not like they hadn't been doing it the past couple of days anyway. Conor inhaled deeply. "So what should we be looking for?" He had never been in this position, after all, and with what Zania had told him about half-skinned animals, he wasn't sure. Not that he'd seen any. Yet.

"Well, I very much doubt we'll find a computer here," Adam said, dryly, walking up to examine a glass-shaded oil lamp that was attached to the wall. "In fact, it looks like we're totally without electricity." He looked around some more, but the note that was lying on the table wasn't hard to miss - there wasn't all that much in this room to begin with. It lay on the long table in the main room, written on parchment. Adam picked it up and read out the words on it, before looking at the others. "So, we have been split up then."

Zania wasn't all that sure how she felt about that. There were people that she would have liked to get away from, but there were some she didn't want to leave. There were a few she enjoyed watching from a distance, just to make sure they were okay. And now, they were all over the place. Who knew where they were, or if they were okay. "And we get the house with no running water," Zania said, trying not to sulk. For all she knew, the others could have it worse, or they could be put up in a nice little cottage. "So, do you think they'll keep leaving us notes like this? If we stay up all night, then we can see them?" And catch them and torture them? her mind supplied.

The note still didn't tell him exactly what he wanted to know, but Conor thought it pointless to mention this. Or, even, think about it. It wouldn't do him any good in the long term, and so he'd have to figure out a way to discover what he needed on his own. No electricity, no running water -- his lips quirked up at once side as Zania spoke. "Not all that different from what we've been doing, but now we have beds," he pointed out genially. Sure, it would've been nice, but that didn't seem to be in the scientists' vocabulary. "I sincerely doubt it," Conor said. Even with the short time around, he wagered that the scientists would never let themselves be seen. In this kind of experiment, that was strictly verboten. They'd probably be killed, he assumed, by angry subjects.

"If they can move us here without us waking, I doubt very much that they'd find it troublesome in the least to move unseen," Adam agreed. He put the note back in place on the table. "I'm going to go and have a look round outside," he told the others, heading for the door.

"Okay," Zania said, "See you later." She wasn't all that sure what she wanted to do now. She wanted a bath, but with no running water, that wasn't going to be easy. She also wanted clean clothes, and that might take looking around a bit more. "At least the chapel had a toilet," she muttered, slightly nervous about this arrangement. Even while living on the street, she'd had electricity around. "So, I know nothing about living on a farm," Zania told Conor. "Wanna go see what's outside?" He may have seen the grounds, but that was a place yet to be explored on Zania's part.

Conor lifted a hand as Adam moved away, glancing around the place fully for the first time. It garnered something akin to a sigh, but he tried to keep it light. Zania seemed a little uneasy, not that she could be blamed. This place wasn't suited for either of them, it seemed. He wondered if that was the point. Conor looked down at her, placing his hand on top of her head and mussing her hair lightly before drawing her beneath his arm. "You and me both," he told her. "C'mon." He already knew there were horses and chickens. Adam would be better suited for looking around outside, but at the very least he and Zania could do the things they knew ho. "We can get some firewood, some water. Maybe there's something that'll even pass as coffee in the cupboards," he teased lightly, leading her outside. They'd make do.