Nothing. Well, nothing impressive to say the least. It didn’t appear that there was actually anything inside. Upon further inspection, Kelly noticed that there was a fine powder lining the bottom of the box. She leaned in closer, trying to discern if this really had been what she was looking for or if maybe her roommate never said or did anything because she was just that boring. She pursed her lips in a nonplussed expression, intently sucking on her lollipop while simultaneously exerting considerable effort racking her brain trying to figure out why her roommate so closely guarded an innocuous box of powder in her desk drawer. She leaned in closer and stared pensively for a few moments, hoping an idea would strike her and so she wouldn’t have to go searching for one.

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The light, as always, was blinding at first. Having been in absolute darkness for over three days now, the strain on the eyes was too great to process light immediately. But after only a second, he saw something that shocked him. His vision was blurry, and he wiped his eyes furiously trying to get them to focus. Even though his sight lacked clarity, there was one thing he could process instantly: whoever this was, their skin was too light to be the girl’s. Tears welled up in his eyes as he realized that his hopes might not be in vain.

Scattered shouts started springing up amongst the prisoners. They were shouts of joy and of urgency, and they eventually grew in number until they permeated the air in the box. There were those who did not notice the face—they had either been in there too long and their eyes had quit working or they had been there too long and had stopped bothering to look up—but they quickly caught on as mass exuberance spread like wildfire throughout the crowd.

Jake would have been overwhelmed by the noise if he weren’t shouting the loudest of all. With both his fists pumped in the air and tears streaming down his face, his eyes brought this new person’s face into definition. The first thing that struck him was that she was absolutely stunning. She had to be just about the same age as the girl, whom he assumed was about eighteen or nineteen. She had bright eyes and short, cute brown hair and, holy crap, those perfect beautiful full lips, which presently were pulled into an inquisitive smirk. It looked like she was smoking something, but there was no smoke coming out of it, and so it must have been a toothpick or a lollipop or something. His visual frame of reference was thrown off when she leaned in even closer, making it seem like the sky was falling. This only fueled his enthusiasm as he knew that they now must all be scant inches away from her face. Surely she would hear them. Surely she would see them. Surely she would save them.

And he may have been right. In another two seconds of intense observation, she would have heard their cries, which were deafening to them but almost imperceptible to her. In another five seconds she would have noticed that they were all moving and scattering and not just staid dust particles. In another minute she would have gotten a magnifying glass to investigate further, and she would have been able to discern them as tiny people. And maybe she would have taken them and protected them and found some way to restore them.

But they did not have two seconds.