Night 53: Courtyard

[unheroed]

[From here.]Hitting the ground hard, Harvey did his best to absorb the impact and ignore the pain that ran through his body as a result of the way that he was straining his wounds. He really only had the burns to worry about at the moment, but that was more than enough for anyone to deal with

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[byhookorby]

Vibrations in the earth triggered a signal.  Patients were at large in a restricted area.  The data were processed; a decision was made.  This was unacceptable.  Steps would have be taken.  A guardian was needed.  A guardian was released.

Orange Alert.  Orange Alert.

Beneath the surface of the pond, bubbles were forming.  First small ones, barely worth noticing.   Then larger ones, joining and splitting as they floated upwards.  The last one was no bubble at all, but a white balloon, more than twice a man's height in diameter, and moving under its own power.  It rose towards the surface, tumbling and shoving water and air aside.  The center of the pond began to glow, and a soft hum sounded a second warning.

It would be the only one issued.    

[its_the_mileage]

Once Dent was down, Indy made a fairly clean landing on the lawn and looked around. The entrance to the building was farther away than the one on the rec field had been. They needed to edge past the pond along the dirt path and round the corner to the nearest cafeteria door, which might be locked. The only times he'd bothered to try to pick locks had been when Pierson was around; tonight they'd have to force their way through.

Indy had just picked himself up and started moving again when something about the pond caught his eye. When he'd first surveyed the courtyard after landing, the water had been almost still--certainly nothing unusual about the way it was moving. Now the surface was roiling with bubbles. Big ones.

That was all Indy needed to see.

"Move!" he barked, breaking into a full sprint for the door and trying to get the brush axe back out at the same time. At the edge of his vision the water had begun to glow and hum. Mechanical? he wondered vaguely. It didn't seem organic, that was for sure. Despite his innate

[unheroed]

It was true that they had a further distance to cover, but even then it didn't seem that far. Granted, everything seemed further away at night -- not just because the shadows elongated it all, but because the second something was chasing you it became a whole different story.

Harvey had thought that they were in the clear for the moment, but Jones had caught sight of something that he'd missed. He could have blamed his decreased vision due to his burns, but in the end it didn't matter. Instinct made him look back toward the pond, taking note of a glow that certainly wasn't just the moonlight being reflected on the water's surface.

Great. Much like Jones, Harvey didn't want to stick around and find out what the hell that was. At this point, he was ready to accept anything from a giant robot to the goddamn Loch Ness monster. But that didn't mean he wanted to face it.

Not even bothering to respond, Harvey took off toward the cafeteria door, ignoring the soreness that was still lingering after jumping over the wall.

[byhookorby]

The bubble that was no such thing reached the surface, and a large, white balloon launched out of it, moving almost immediately to approximately twenty feet in the air and then stopping. The whine grew louder as it assessed the situation