"Milady... Milo-"

Just before the thought completed, the light's flickered and went out entirely; not even the emergency lights that had been illuminating the room. Borchart howled and shoved Jeff out of the way, saying something about Rochelle dying without power.

Jeff moved away from the eccentric hobo, fumbling to get the brain scanner off his head as he did. He only made it a few steps however, before he stumbled blindly into the group. The Dean screamed, Britta yelled for him to get off and they all collapsed in a pile of arms, legs, and muscle strains.

Borchart continued to mutter about his machine while they worked on disentangling themselves. A warm body lay atop Jeff's and long hair tickled at his face as the owner tried to move a moment he thought it might be Britta, but then he caught a whiff of the Animal Cracker body wash that Annie used, the kind he'd gotten her for her birthday.

As they all struggled, Jeff's hands instinctively found the small of Annie's back and he tried to roll them away from the human pile they were a part of. All he succeeded in doing was getting Abed's elbow jammed into his ribs and Annie's face pushed right up into his until they were practically touching.

In any other situation, he already knew what would happen. If it weren't for the screaming and the shouting, and the Dean calling out his name he would be feeling awfully tempted. Annie placed a hand on his chest, trying to pull herself free, even though Abed was on top of her. In the end he heard her sigh and resign herself to wait for those on top of the pile to get a clue before she got anymore bruises.

"Annie," he whispered, feeling the faintest of brushes of his lips against the skin of her cheek.

Her head turned and for a moment he thought her lips would slide against his... Then the Dean swung his legs wide in a mighty effort to free himself; which he did, but only by slamming that foot down on Jeff's crotch.

And that was that, they were stuck in Borchart's bunker. The mad scientist explained that the sudden loss of power, probably caused by the school board members, had caused a massive short circuit in Rochelle. He was going to be able to restore emergency power in short order but only then would they know if her emotional components survived.

For the first hour or so they argued back and forth about different plans to get out but nothing seemed feasible. The bunker was built of reinforced steel and pressurized when sealed shut. Nothing less than some tnt or a nuclear bomb would get through it, neither would cell phone signals.

Even though Borchart said it wouldn't work, they all had a go at the emotional wave scanner like Jeff did but with equally dismal results. Even Abed had tried. Jeff had hoped something might happen when he mentioned Molly Ringwald or when Annie brought up Troy... But the machine's face remained as passive as Abed's.

After the first few hours failed things went a little crazy, which was saying something considering the fact that they were trapped in a former computer lab converted into a secret bunker built by a millionaire/lunatic/computer whiz.

The Dean wound up stripping down to his underwear and screaming, Abed went all Hal 9000 on them and tried to read their lips and Britta and Annie got into a fight over whether or not Channing Tatum looked handsome or autistic. Which for the life of him he couldn't figure out why that mattered right now even a little and all the while his head pounded with Britta's bickering aand the fact that the strongest surge of passion he felt was when he was thinking about Annie. It all culminated with Jeff finally snapping, screaming and shoving his enormous frame into Rochelle.

The computer toppled over and erupted in a shower of sparks and smoke and broken dreams.

That had been the first few hours.

They waited out the rest of the day trying to avoid looking at each other and checking their cell phones for any chance of a signal. Jeff had settled next to the door and waited for some sign that Shirley was coming. She and Hickey knew they were down there and the secret entrance wasn't that hard to find.

At some point he fell asleep, only to wake up hours later, feeling a small warm frame snuggled up to him.

Then he opened his eyes and realized it was the Dean.

"Now Jeffrey..." the Dean only slightly released his hold. "Before you get angry just remember that I have the slimmest frame in here and needed a warm body to keep me from freezing."

Jeff threw the Dean off with a disgusted grunt and pulled himself to his feet then gave the room a once over. Borchart sat huddled off to the side, looking somehow more disheveled than before as he worked on Rochelle, Abed sat to another side, fiddling with one of the many computers stashed in the bunker. Jeff breathed a sigh as he stopped himself from getting his hopes up, that's what got him into this mess to start with.

Finally he spotted Britta, quietly snoozing in one of the computer chairs. Jeff smiled at this, there was no way in hell she was comfortable in that chair. Yet somehow she'd curled up in it like some sort of cat. It was about as close to adorable as Britta got.

Jeff moved over to her and lowered a hand to her hair, clearing it away from her face. As a reward for his chivalry, Britta suddenly snapped up and smashed a fist into his jaw. Jeff stumbled away, cupping his chin as Britta somehow rolled over and muttered something about patriarchy then drifted back to sleep.

On the one hand, Jeff realized that after five years and countless sexual encounters, he should have known better than to try something like that. On the other hand he winced, not only at the pain in his jaw, but the idea of waking up to that every morning.

His eyes drifted to the door and he let out another grunt. A minor inconvenience like that didn't matter now. Greendale was gone and Britta was who he chose to replace it with. That was good enough... Wasn't it? If so... Why didn't that damn passion machine work when he looked at her?

But another thought nagged at him, actually it had been tugging at his mind ever since he put that weird headset on. No... Before that... the words of a speech he didn't give echoed in his head any moment he allowed himself to calm down and actually think.

"Where's Annie?" he finally spoke.

"In the laundry room," Borchart, of all people, answered.

"You have a laundry room?" Jeff gave the dingy man a once over.

"I think so?" he said. "I know I designed one in the plans for this place."

"Please tell me you didn't snort the laundry soap when you ran out of cocaine," Jeff muttered as he made his way from the central room into one of the adjoining alcoves.

It didn't take long for him to find the room he was looking for. The bunker was big for one man but it wasn't exactly a vast underground complex. He passed a couple of vacant rooms before he heard the one he was looking for. Modern day washer and dryers were relatively quiet, but this wasn't modern tech and like just about everything else in the seventies, the laundry cleaners were big, loud, and obnoxious.

Not to say finding the room was entirely unpleasant. Shortly after he heard the machines, Jeff caught the scent of soap and water. It wasn't scented soap or anything, probably a beyond generic brand from the a seventies, but the fresh aroma of the soap caused him to breathe in just a bit deeper until he came upon the room he searched for.

If only the rest of the room was so inviting. As the state of Borchart's clothes testified earlier, the laundry room looked like it had spent the last forty years completely abandoned. A thick last of dust caked the walls, the floor and even the ironing board. About the only thing that looks inviting in the room was Annie.

Jeff halted when he saw her, facing the dryer with her back to him. She had removed her jacket, leaving her in her simple dress; which, until now, he had no idea was supported by a thin spaghetti strap on each shoulder. She'd tied her hair back in a loose ponytail and while he watched he caught a gleam of sweat on her exposed skin.

For half a moment, he just stood there, trying to remember why he'd come in at all. More than that , in the back of his mind, a thought echoed... No. Not a thought exactly, a fresh memory... The idea of what he had been on the verge of thinking when he looked at Annie while connected to the thought machine.

A cough from the other room shook him out of it and caused Annie to jump and turn around.

"Jeff!" she said at seeing him standing in the doorway "What are you doing?"

"Looking for you," Jeff said. "But the more important question is... What are you doing?"

"Borchart has a lot of blankets for a creepy hermit who shut himself in for the last forty years," she said, wiping her brow.

"So you're doing his laundry?" Jeff raised a brow. "Cause I gotta say, I don't think he'll notice."

"It's for us Jeff," She said. "We're going to be here a while and I'd prefer any thing I sleep on to not be covered in stray bits of cocaine that he somehow managed to not snort."

"Come on Annie," Jeff said. " It's not going to come to that, once the sale goes through... once Greendale is gone they'll come and let us out."

"They sold Greendale yesterday," Annie said, her voice laced with bitterness. "And in case you haven't noticed, we're still trapped. We're going to be here a while, until Shirley or the others can sneak down or until Chang has a change of personality and betrays Carl and Richie. Either way, we should be prepared for a long stay."

Again for perhaps the thousandth time, Jeff had to admit that she had a point. With a sigh he eyed the laundry machines, seeing that a cycle was just about finished. He neared the washer and gazed in while quietly rolled up his sleeves.

"I thought you were washing bedding," he said. "There's clothes in here."

"Borchart eventually thought he would be able to build a woman's body for Rochelle, so he packed the bunker with clothes that haven't been touched... But I'm not taking any chances."

"Well that will be nice for you, Britta and the Dean," Jeff muttered. "Anything else left to do?"

"I've already run an inventory of our food, medical supplies, and toilet paper rations as well as written out meal plans, cleaning schedules, and a Borchart guard duty rotation so we can make sure he doesn't murder us in our sleep. There are two rooms available to convert into sleeping areas once the bedding is dried."

"Holy crap Annie! I was only out for a few hours, have you slept at all?"

"Some of us have to get things done Jeff," she said. "Regardless as to whether or not others actually care."

"Getting stuff done and caring is what got us into this mess," Jeff said, unable to hold back the bitterness in his voice. "If we'd just allowed Greendale to be the toilet it was always destined to be we would be the in the middle of complaining about double soup Tuesday right now."

"No," Annie shook her head. "We're down here because we trusted cynical, jaded men with our future instead of realizing what we could have accomplished on our own. And now, thanks to them, every day is going to be double soup Tuesday."

"Annie, it's going to be okay."

"For you and Britta maybe," she said, her face hardening. "Abed, Shirley, and me are the ones being left out in the cold. So what do you care Jeff?"

"I care,"Jeff said. "I was the one to volunteer to put the brain machine on."

"I know Jeff, you care, but not in the same way."

"I... I'm sorry," Jeff said, noticing the way Annie's face softened just a bit.

"For what?"

"That we couldn't save Greendale, I know how much you cared about it."

The slight rosiness in her cheeks drained away and her lips pressed together in a thin line. Before Jeff could ask about it, Abed appeared and informed them that the Dean and Borchart were about to get in an argument and Jeff had better intercede before Britta did and made it worse.

Jeff nodded and left the room, just as he turned the corner however, he paused to think of something reassuring to say to Annie. By the time he came up with something he could already here Britta bringing up Guantanamo. He sighed and took a quick step back to the laundry room, only to find Annie buried in Abed's chest.

Britta said something about fascists and Jeff pushed himself out into the main room, trying to ignore the nagging feeling he had about seeing Annie in Abed's arms and trying even hard to forget what he thought about when connected to Rochelle.