Alice reached up and brushed a strand of her long brown hair out of her face. Suddenly, she said, "Hang on, Diana and the others don't know where we are. They could get worried."
ooc: Kaori, you Skandar, and Diana have not climbed up into the vents yet, so you are still in the restroom. Rich, Hannah, Edmund, and I are in a different room.
Suddenly, Alice's cell phone rang again. She looked at the others strangly and then pulled it out of her pocket. It was a number that she had never seen before. Hesitantly, she opened it and answered it. "Hello?" She listened for a moment and then snapped the phone shut. Her fingers trembled as she slipped it back into her pocket.
"Alice! What happened?! Who was it?!" Rich was very concerned now. He had heard about the call about Alice's mom, and he didn't want anything else to happen to her.
Alice bit her lip and sighed. "It was the same voice I heard when I got the call about Mom," she said. "Except this time, it said, 'resistence is futile; surrender or die'. That's all. It said the nearly the same thing last time."
"'Resistance is futile'? Sounds like Star Trek. I wonder if these things are like the Borg... If they are, we're in trouble." He suddenly realized that he wasn't helping. "But, I know we're going to be fine, Alice. It's going to be okay."
Alice bit her lip even harder. "I don't know," she said. "Sometimes I wonder if this is even real. Sometimes it feels like some horror movie or sci-fi book." She shifted from one foot to the other nervously. "But if it is real, which I'm sure it is, then we probably are in trouble. No use looking at it any other way."
Alice nodded slowly. "I know that; but sometimes I wonder why on earth He let these things happen." She paused and then said under breath, "And I thought last year was bad...."
"We never know what His plan is, Alice." Rich said, putting his arm around her. "But He'll take care of us. Do you want to tell me what happened last year?"