Day 55: Courtyard [2nd Shift]

[sheepwood]

After what seemed like an eternity of being amused, irritable, bored, in pain, in excruciating pain, and any combination of those, Guybrush was met by the same soldier who had led him to the cafeteria. He wasn't offered a trip to the Sun Room to check the bulletin board, but didn't push for it anyway. That would have been more walking, and moving

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[doctor_voodoo]

Adjusting the tight collar around his neck, Facilier decided to himself that despite how the new garments were far superior to the embarrassing grey garb he had the night before, he was going to constantly miss his former violet attire with his hat and necklace of teeth...

Speaking of necklaces, the metal dog tags that came with the restrictive outfit bothered him as well; they belonged to a Rank D soldier with a name unlike his own. The number "26987513M" didn't make any sense either, although the single "M" at the end could have indicated his gender, but the rest of the numbers... it left him with the sickening feeling of being owned, and that didn't settle with his stomach any better than a bad batch of rotten gumbo...

Clutching the tags into a tight fist, Facilier turned to face the newcomer, another shorter man like Carter, but with reddish hair and (from what Facilier's intuition could sense) a good head on his shoulders, unlike the aforementioned sergeant...

"Oh I assure you, I have no interest in partaking in such a game with them..." he answered grimly with a hollow chuckle. "Although, I'm 'fraid I've already been dragged into someone's sick idea of amusement against my will anyways..."

By now, after all he had witnessed so far, Facilier was willing to get whatever he could learn about this place, no matter how insane or arrogant or just silly the explanations would be. This fellow with the goatee seemed a decent start, unlike the first two individuals he encountered since awakening here.

Suppressing the habitual urge to lean against his missing cane, Facilier fully faced the stranger and kept his hands busy behind his back, his bony fingers fidgeting with the despised tags within his palms.

"I hope you don't mind me asking, but do y'all know just where this place is and what I could find on the other side of them walls if I ever do get the chance to get over them...?" he asked, his serious tone perked up slightly by a light flavor of curiosity that hid his lingering anxiety.

[toxicspiderman]

S.T. snorted at the first comment. Looks like the guy was new, but already well on his way to a fair estimation of the place.

"Not a damn clue to either of them. People keep claiming this is Jersey, but it's no New Jersey I've ever seen." And he'd seen more of the state than he ever wanted to. That and the chemical barony it called a next-door neighbor. "Smelled, really. Air's too fucking clean to be twentieth-century Earth at all."

Naming the century still sounded pretentious, almost 90% of the way through it. (Rounded off because no one wanted an asshole who'd insist the new millennium started with 2001 at their NYE party. Even if he cared, S.T. liked parties. Especially when other people threw them and he just had to show up.) Here it mattered. He could be talking to someone who'd never seen a car, or who thought burning gasoline was a fairy tale told to children who didn't set their solar panels out to charge.

"I know people have gotten over the walls at night. No matter how far you get, you wake up here in the morning. Might be something worth finding within range, though." He shrugged. He'd leave mapping the trackless wilderness to guys who still thought going out in the woods and not shaving was synonymous with masculinity. Like Dolmacher. No gun prowess or tech-industry was going to make girls throw themselves at him, and he was never going to figure out why.

"Don't come through the Sun Room, though. It's a death trap after hours. Too many places for an ambush to hide, and only one way through." He'd gotten the same warning his first night here. He'd ignored it. It'd taken way too many wasted nights to drive it through his stubborn skull.

[doctor_voodoo]

"New Jersey...?" Facilier murmured as incredulity entered his face. Then as though on cue, a chilly breeze came down from the towering walls, bringing with it a flowing curtain of tiny snow flakes. Facilier stared at the snow, astonishment taking over his expression as they scattered over his shoulders and hat. He had been so worked up earlier that he hadn't given much regard to the colder temperatures. Now the reality of the chilly climate fully reached his senses; this was not the warm, humid air of New Orleans where he grew up in. So was he in New Jersey? It still didn't make much more sense. And since when did some hellish afterlife have snow?!

Listening to the other man's words, the corner of Facilier's mouth curled into a sneer. The stranger was knowledgeable, but his attitude was certainly toeing the line with the rattled doctor...

"Young man, do you kiss your mother with that mouth of yours?" he remarked in a dry tone, turning back to gaze about at the flakes that swirled around him, "And I don't need to hear that warning twice. I had the misfortune of being led through that room last night," he added grimly, "Had quite the close call with a deranged boy with a sword..."

Catching a glimpse of a pack of soldiers march by, Facilier repressed a nervous gulp. "And just what do y'all mean that everyone just wakes up here in the morning?" Facilier questioned, his anxiety building slightly as the snow and military presence increased around him, this was all too unfamiliar for him... "How is that even possible? Surely there ought to be a way outta here...?"

[toxicspiderman]

"My mother's been dead over a decade." He didn't know what she'd make of him now, stretching an extended adolescence out towards thirty. Didn't matter. He wouldn't change a thing.

"Wander around, think you're getting somewhere, and presto bingo you're back in bed and it's morning. Don't ask me how they do it. It'd need a crackerjack quantum physicist to get started on that one. I'm just a humble chemist." A damn good one, but he wasn't about to be inventing teleportation today. Besides, someone already had. All they had to do now was figure out where the keys to the transporter room were hidden.

"You find that, you'll have a million best friends you never knew you hadn't met yet. You just get here, man?"