We are all too busy watching the game to notice anything wrong until a third team tries to take the field. Their uniforms are purple and their hair appears to be dyed to match. All of them wear the same vacant smile that crawled its way out of the uncanny valley and speak with offputting singsong voices.

  It is only then that we all look up and see the storm rolling in, stretching across the horizon with clouds of that same unnaturally vibrant violet. Eerie music rides the wind ahead of the storm, heralding its imminent arrival.

  Everyone starts running then; the full stadium of people. I personally hold little hope of outrunning the storm but my mind goes back to the rumors of government tunnels beneath the university. I descend the parking garage stairwell, hit the bottom floor, find a door that should have been locked, and keep going down.

  By this point two acquaintances of mine have gotten the same idea and joined me. They are not my favorite people in the world, but I suppose I could stand them well enough to bear living out an indefinite period of time in an apocalypse bunker with them.

  We do indeed find a maze of tunnels beneath the university campus and spend a long while wandering them, working our way ever deeper while avoiding death trap storm drains that we would surely be trapped down if we slipped and fleeing the creeping purple mist that creeps down from the upper levels behind us.

  Eventually we find an open vault door and go inside, sealing it behind us.

  We are not the first to arrive, but we might be the st. Of the hidden bunker/research station, only a skeleton crew of the official staff are present (mostly security personnel). A professor that I’ve always been fond of and had a good personal rapport with has somehow wound up in charge down here, although that seems to be less from official authority or station and more from being one of the few people able to keep calm enough to organize everyone. Also, he’s somehow lost an arm.

  The professor has also been making use of occult powers to divine the intentions of everyone down here to make sure there’s no sabotage or fights likely to break out. In retrospect, that may also have something to do with his newfound leadership role. In private he admits to me that he doesn’t feel suited to being in charge like this and is barely holding it together. I have no comforting words for him, but I thank him for trusting me enough not to use his powers to read me.

  I am happy to learn that a close friend of mine has also made it down here. We wind up spending most of our time together in the coming days. While most of that time is spent in the bunker’s library theorizing about what’s going on or looking at her clothing designs for the boutique we still pretend she’ll open one day, we now find ourselves seeking the retive privacy of one of the less-used corridors.

  My friend remarks that she needs to use the restroom and decides to make use of the vatory built into one of the emergency escape capsules instead of waking all the way back to the main bathrooms. As it turns out, that particur capsule and its unch tunnel were compromised and it just so happens to be at this moment that the violet vapors sinking down from above leak in.

  Security remotely detects the breach, seals the airlock, and unches the contaminated capsule before I even have a chance to comprehend what’s happening, much less say goodbye.

  The st glimpse I catch of my friend is of her hair turning purple from the roots out and her face settling into a vacant smile.