

He'd been dragged through the door to the radio room. Then she realized the sound was coming from the body of a man. The groups were divided into the following:Īt first, she thought it was the sound of the radio. Groups that included and were run by people who had, until that moment, been the most respected and trusted Sages in the Sanctuary. But the Sages hadn't known how to fix the psyches of the entire Sanctuary, so they'd had to divide everyone into three groups, and hand each of them a different idea to try. They'd found signs of mental and emotional trauma, and had begun to devise a scientific plan to help everyone fix it.

In March of 2003, a few Sages had made the fateful decision to enter the containment cell and run tests on the people inside. A few of the top Sages had even begun a campaign of spying and infiltration, attempting to piece together what had really happened. Then, after various explosions and accidents and high-profile disappearances, the Sages had stepped in to suspend the use of the Avatams and to begin a search for the source of the problem. In the days that followed, the Sages had begun to enact strict new rules, first limiting people to one confirmed companion and then to one specific person, from the immediate family of whoever was in the containment cell. And though they'd been able to save the lives of all the people in the containment cell, the process had been so traumatic for everyone involved that their psyches had been altered, permanently, and ever since they'd begun to begin to see and hear and feel things that weren't there. The Sages had performed a series of mass exorcisms on the top-level administrators, and their families, and anyone else involved in the original incident. Which is why they'd decided to lock everyone down inside the Sanctuary, and not to let anyone else in.īut by the end of November, things had gone from bad to worse. The Sages themselves weren't exactly sure what had happened either, but it was best to assume some massive security breach, or similar event, had taken place. The top-level administrators and Sages in charge had been doubting the history of the Sanctuary, which had been handed down through the ages and written in the books and confirmed by the scriptures as it related to the daily lives of the people.

That was when the, then, still-peaceful and harmonious members of the Sanctuary had begun to realize something was seriously wrong.
