Monday December 22, 2098
0423 hours

Scraper 17, Chicago
Day One of The Great Cataclysm

The whole tower lurches in the night, throwing small objects off of shelves and tables, shifting furniture and breaking glass. The lights click on, powered by batteries smaller than your thumb that can power the emergency lights for two years straight, or until the bulbs go. The fire sprinklers come on next, an unavoidable spray of cold chemical smelling water from the ceiling, soaking sheets, clothes, books, desks, televisions and computers. Fortunately the sprinklers are able to put out all the fires they caused through electrical shorts.

Somewhere far below and in the distance there is an explosion, and if the tower lurched again at that moment then the panic would have been even worse, but it doesn't. A small mercy, perhaps, until Scraper seventeen does shake a second time with a scream of torquing metal. The lights go back off throughout the tower and all is pitch black.

It is four twenty-five AM on December 22nd, 2098, except it isn't. Today is Day One of the Great Cataclysm, and although only those in the highest places of power know it yet, nothing will ever be the same.

Wolfgang is awoken by the sprinklers. Escape is the first thing that pops into his head. Forgoing clothing himself, he runs out of his apartment. He looks about for safe (or at least "safer") paths of escape.

Wolf has a nice apartment, on a wide avenue that extends from the center shaft all the way to an outer wall (providing natural daylight) and the avenue is filling with others who had the same idea: pour from their beds into the streets in a panic. The torrent is flowing towards the elevators (there are dozens and dozens of elevators of all capacities in Scraper 17). The darkness suddenly is gone as a weird shifting blue light (like a lamp shone through a fish tank, Wolf thinks) pours through all the windows on the north and west faces of the Scraper.

Cecil's first thought is for the LAIs in his apartment. Minutes after waking up, he's throwing his blankets over his computing hardware, trying to keep the water out.

Wolf has no time to be relieved about nobody noticing his nudity. He runs to the window to see what the source of this aquatic illumination.

Cecil manages to get his machines covered by the time the sprinklers shut off on their own.

Wolf makes his way towards the windows and is shocked by what he sees. Usually even at night the Chicago skyline is so well lit that there is light all through the Scraper's avenues through the windows. All the lights in the city are out except for the glow of emergency lights in some of the larger towers, but the scene outside is still quite visible.

There is a... wall... of blue electricity, easily forty stories high running through the middle of Chicago, casting a horrible shifting light on the city and somehow making the shadows all the darker for the illumination. There are fires down below as the glowing wall intersected some large buildings on it's appearance and those structures were torn apart by the forces at work. All around Wolf people are screaming or crying at the sight of two things, one which should not be, appearing to be occupying the same place at once. The words non-Euclidean would come to mind, but nobody has that kind of composure at a time like this.

To the west, Scraper 8 is leaning like a drunken man.

"Try not to panic, everyone! Everything'll be alright. Please make your way to the elevators and evacuate the building."

Cecil, having been up until one in the morning, is not well rested. And since he's done what he could to save his apartment from the worst of the damage, he's not too sure what to do. So he returns to bed, leaving his computers covered and himself blanket-free.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god."

Angelo curls into a soaked, shrieking ball, clutching his head. The fact that the lights are out, that everything is soaked, that even with the excellent soundproofing in his bedroom he knows something is wrong is secondary. The primary concern to Angelo Lang is the white hot spike of pain in his head. Tears stream from his eyes as he rolls out of bed, hitting the sopping carpet of his bedroom with one shoulder, his legs still wrapped in his dripping bedding. Moaning, he crawls towards the bathroom, pathetically kicking his legs free from the blankets and sheet now stretched along his path towards the bathroom door.

"Oooooh god."

He stands, knocking the contents of the medicine cabinet into the sink, holding each of the bottles up, an inch from his face, to try and determine which of them is the one he wants. At long last he finds the aspirin, and struggles with the bottle for what seems like hours before the top pops free. Pouring a handful of the pills into his hand, he dry swallows, choking them down in an attempt to do something about the tearing, shouting, burning pain in his skull.

At the first tremor, Bill is awake. When the sprinklers go on, he gets out of bed. He frowns at the explosions, but manages to keep his balance through the second quake. When the sprinklers go out, he puts on his duster as a housecoat, and starts hunting around for a dry towel and clothes. Once this is done, he drags out his bug-out-bag, body armour, and gun cases.

"God I hate mondays."

"Meep!" Lita yelps, now sprawled over the floor like an eagle, the shaking of the tower having tossed her out of it like a rag doll. As soon as the sprinklers go off, Lita yelps again and frantically covers her wrist computer with the bedsheets to try and keep it dry.

"What's going on?!" Lita demands of no one in particular as she hastily gets up off the floor. Nearby, the sound of her monitor short circuiting from the excess water can be heard.

"Oh no! Nonononono NO!" Lita yells, running up to her monitor in the living room to see if there is anything she can do to save it. "Don't die on me, Shirley!"

Triss processes quickly. Earthquake. Failing structure. Power systems disrupted.

Chicago doesn't have earthquakes!

The building's not built to take that sort of stress. Triss gets out of bed, drying herself as best she can from linens in drawers, and hurriedly dresses, gathering a bare minimum of personal effects and clothes stuffed into a duffel before she heads out to the dark hallways.

Once there, she immediately heads towards the unnatural light and spends several moments just staring at the sight. But she quickly processes this as well, and moves on to next thought. "Power's out. Elevators are down. Stairs, or a window."

Throughout Scraper 17 the fire sprinklers exhaust themselves (the system wasn't designed to be able to go off everywhere at once, and as such could only run for a few minutes) and silence reigns for a moment. Then the power, or the backup power perhaps, comes back on. Lights at three-quarters throughout the structure.

Cecil has zero chance of getting back to sleep. He can forget about that right now. The fact that his computers getting ruined might not be the most of his problems dawns on Cecil all at once as the building lurches a third time, with a rending sound.

In Angelo's bathroom this fact has not made itself apparent to the poor figure curled tight in a fetal ball on the floor. The aspirins taste awful to Angelo's somehow pain-heightened senses (everything is awful) but hopefully the chalky taste in his teeth will be the cure for the spike between the thirty-something's eyes.

Bill finds everything he is looking for easily enough, for someone with an apartment one step above 'hovel' on a cleanliness scale. Maybe all the worrying, all the paranoia was worth it. But will validation be worth whatever is going on outside?

Lita's rooms aren't quite demolished. For some reason only half her sprinklers go off, saving the living room from the artificial downpour.

Triss stumbles out into the corridor and over to the outermost corridor that girdles the 87th Level of the tower, with the three-story windows and gapes at the sight, as humanity panics around her.

Power's out. Elevators are down. Stairs, or a window.

"Try not to panic, everyone! Everything'll be alright. Please make your way to the elevators and evacuate the building."

Triss turns reflexively towards the familiar voice and sees something else horrible. The corny guy from the day before (was that just yesterday?) trying to direct the panicked crowd, in the nude, illuminated by the shifting, unnatural blue light from outside.

Wolf makes his way to the elevators. Not breaking stride as he passes Triss, he says, "God of Parties, Lord of Mars."

Angelo whimpers as he rubs his head, trying to massage the pain away. He has to make it stop.

How to make it stop? How? What would make it stop? Asprin? No. Didn't work. Hospital. Yes. Hospital would make the pain stop.

Angelo struggles to his knees, and lurches to his feet, shoulder-checking the doorway as he leaves the bathroom. The pain of the incipient bruise is subsumed into the overarching pain from his head. He opens a drawer and grabs the first pair of pants in it, sitting down on the soaked carpet to put on the pants. That, however, is the extent of his patience. Once he has pants on, Angelo opens his front door and stumbles outside.