Fuck it, whether this plan works or not, you don’t care, all you know is you can’t stay here anymore. One thing that’s working in your favor right now is the fact that Elliot and everyone else is in the conference room (Which he turned into a “meditation room” where he’s preaching some sort of weird philosophy to everyone.) You need to be quick though. You press a few buttons to make the elevator begin its decent. You only need one kid to help you in this task, so you get the one who is the best behaved and does more or less what you say. You get Jane.

“Jane I need you to come with me. As for the rest of you, go ahead and access the game database and play with whatever, just don’t touch anything on the central computer!”

The kids gleefully start following your instructions while you and Jane leave.

“Where are we going?” Jane asks innocently, while walking beside you.
“I need to check on something back in my room, the central computer says something broke down, but I need to see if it actually did, or if it’s a glitch in the monitoring system. Now if something did, I’ll need to get in there and open up the paneling and do some re-wiring. Could be dangerous, so I need you to run to the medical room and grab a first aid kit just in case. Nobody should be in there right now, so just take it.”
“I dunno, Daddy doesn’t like people taking things from there without permission…”
“Its okay, this is for the good of the shelter.”

Upon hearing that mantra, Jane seems to be more receptive to follow your orders. You tell her to wait by the elevator door when she gets the med kit. You rush to your room, load up on water and leave hoping that nobody has wandered by. You see Jane holding the med kit and looking in wonder at the elevator door which has opened up. Good its here and everything’s going according to plan. Now for the final stage.

“Hey! This door opened up! Daddy said it shouldn’t ever open up. He says he doesn’t want anyone to leave.”
“I’ll bet.” You mumble before addressing Jane properly. “Yeah, I know he wants to keep us all safe. Nothing was broken in my room, but I think something screwy is going on with the shelter’s systems and I need your help to fix it because I think you’re the only one talented enough to do it.”
“Yay!” Jane says in pride.
“Glad to see you’re excited, because this is REALLY important. You have to follow my instructions to the letter. You think you can do that?”
“I think so.”
“Okay, back in the computer room on the central computer on the right side you’ll see a green button flashing. Press that one. Then when the screen asks for confirmation, click on yes and press the enter button. You got all that? Repeat it.”
“Go back to the computer room, go to the big central computer, and uh…look on the right side for a green flashing button. Press that button, then the screen will ask me a question and then I click on yes.”
“Excellent, now after you do that, you might get a screen telling you the status of the elevator, telling you its going back up. That’s what we want it to do. We don’t want anyone leaving right?”
“Right!”
“Okay, I’m going to stay here and make sure this elevator doesn’t come down anymore, I need to open up some panels and do some re-wiring, so I’ll be taking that first aid kit now.”

You take the kit from Jane and tell her to go back to the computer room and do what you told her and to continue monitoring the elevator status just to make sure it goes back up and stays there. When she’s out of sight you quickly enter the elevator, and soon the door closes and you’re on your way up.

You are nervous as the elevator ascends, you half expect it to either start coming back down, or worse just stop suddenly mid way through trapping you.

None of that happens though and as soon as that door opens up again, you run out into the foyer you entered ten years ago and past that into the outside world again.

You see a bright light. It’s the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You never thought you of all people would be glad to see it again. You see everyone’s cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must’ve been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though.

“Meh, I need the exercise anyway.”

You cover your eyes and take a far view of your position. Nobody around, there’s not even a sound except the wind; you’re all alone as far as you can tell and this is what you missed. Once again you have peaceful solitude. You don’t know if you’ll make it out here, but anything’s better than staying in the shelter.

You begin to walk…