Night 59: West Wing, South Hall 1-A
[Coming from here.]
Daemon glided out into the wider corridor and paused for a moment, letting Renji join him, taking a moment to probe the shadows with his senses, looking for anything out of the norm. There was a tingle down his spine, the sensation of being watched, though he couldn't find its exact location, just the knowledge that it was ( Read more... )
Daemon glided out into the wider corridor and paused for a moment, letting Renji join him, taking a moment to probe the shadows with his senses, looking for anything out of the norm. There was a tingle down his spine, the sensation of being watched, though he couldn't find its exact location, just the knowledge that it was ( Read more... )
The floor, walls, and a bit of the ceiling of the hallway looked like the outtakes of a slasher film. S.T. had smelled worse. Most of this was fresh. It only took a few molecules of putrescine to short out the part of the brain that kept the gag reflex under conscious control, even with a normal nose, but all of this was fresh. Correction -- most of it. He swallowed hard, and thanked experience.
"The cell blocks are usually pretty quiet. Four of them, three for guys and one for women." He ticked off the directions to each as he talked. "Looks like tonight is special on all counts. Lucky you."
New night, new freakshow. About the only thing that was constant. "Everyone here has been kidnapped. Except the bastards running the show, and even there I'm not sure." Doyleton didn't work. The small-town gig was spray-painted on a bunch of zombies (literal, not some kind of nihilistic analogy), but the supply chain looked like Earth. Everything being trucked in via transporter beam made more sense. "You, me, everybody. Either your brothers have been, and they're playing angry monster bait like you were, or they're back home, hearing some bullshit story about how you flipped out and got yourself committed."
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When they entered the hallway, he'd been expecting chaos, but the amount of gore that covered the floor and walls was enough to make him grimace. He's seen death before. He's seen plenty of violence and war, but this? This looked like a freakin' massacre.
"Jeez," he mumbled under his breath, trying to pay attention to the info his new tour guide was spouting as they picked their way through the mess. Still, his body wouldn't cooperate. It felt like being a kid again, awkwardly stumbling through the movements of a new kata. Only instead of his father's walking stick, he had hell-knows-what lurking around every corner, waiting for him to slip up.
"I know they're here," Raph said, adamant. Nothing this guy said would change his mind about that. Not until after he tore the place apart looking for them. "We all got attacked by those freak-o wooden ninjas. There's no way they would want just me." And there's no way the others could've gotten away when he didn't. They were all having just as hard of a time fighting them off as he was.
As he thought about his brothers, just a moment's lapse in focus caused him to lose his footing in a puddle of something. He stuck a hand out to catch himself on a wall smeared with what both looked and smelled like roadkill. "Ugh! You've gotta be kidding me!"
Further down the hall, something inhuman skittered through the carnage.
So maybe throwing a hissy fit in a place overrun with monsters wasn't the best of ideas, but he'd given up on stealth a while ago. At this point he was too pissed off to care.
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"C'mon. Down this way. People meet up in the big hall. If your brothers are here, odds are they'll be there. Or you'll find them in the morning." He still sounded dubious, because he was. Some groups showed up here in twos and threes, but Raphael was as likely to meet his mortal enemy around that corner than his brother.
Not the time for the whole time-travel explanation, not when the guy was about thirty seconds from pulling a prima donna fit over a few monster guts. S.T. didn't know him well enough to have an opinion beyond mild irritation, but that didn't mean he was going to let the dude charge off on a suicide run. Main hall it was.
First they had to get there. Going that way would mean sneaking past whatever the hell was down there. "Everything here is about five times bigger and meaner than it should be, except for us. Cockroaches the size of your shoe, squirrels the size of golden retrievers. Generally all the ninjas are on our side, though. It's all crazy doctors, zombie nurses, and wannabe fascist soldier boys you have to worry about."
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But the ninja thing caught him off guard. What was this, some kind of Foot run operation? He wouldn't put it past people like Shredder or Stockman, but all of this really wasn't Karai's style. Much as he hated to admit it, she had more class than that.
Still, he couldn't help being paranoid. He definitely wasn't in a hurry to trust the guy, but again, he didn't have much choice. If there was a chance his brothers could be at the end of that hallway, he'd take it. The possibility of monster squirrels didn't bother him in the least because seriously? Who's afraid of a squirrel? Even with his new awkward monkey body he could handle that. The bugs, on the other hand...
It took Raph all of two seconds to get over his fit and find a whole new use for those stupid pants. Not only were they keeping him from having to see a whole new level of horror that came with the new body, they were great for getting your hands clean. Dual purpose. Definitely not the worst thing that's happened to him tonight.
But clean hands or no, his level of frustration was rising exponentially with every slip and stumble. As they moved along down the hallway, he started to blame the heavy boots clumsily weighing him down. He hadn't thought of that before. They'd been on him when woke up, and until now he'd been too distracted by other things to notice. He'd never worn shoes in his whole freakin' life. How the shell did humans walk in these things?
"Soldiers, huh? Guess that explains the uniforms." Didn't, however, explain the uniform he was wearing. He definitely ain't no soldier. Soon as they were out of danger, he was gonna do something about that.
But the skittering was getting closer. Skittering, and the unnerving sound of something chewing. As they approached the threshold to the main hallway, the weird pink glow revealed a swarm of giant cockroaches devouring a ruined carcass.
"Bugs. Why's it always gotta have to be bugs?"
The roaches seemed to be minding their own business, but Raph wasn't gonna leave it that way. No, that actually made sense. Instead, he searched around for something to squash them with. Snatching S.T.'s pipe was mighty tempting.
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He shook the pipe. Then shook it again. Finally, he eased the now-unmoving roach off with a toe, and wiped it on the floor. The rest of them seemed O.K. with unmoving prey, so he left them alone.
"Yeah. It was sweats, with shitty little slippers and smiley faces on everything, until a week ago. Then the new management brought in the uniforms and the riot police. They'll still try to tell you you're crazy in the morning, but they get bored easily." He shrugged. The hard thing about this part of the debriefing was sounding sane himself. The cockroach conga line helped.
"You're not. Nuts. Unless you are, but not because you believe you're stuck in a fake mental institution filled with monsters at night. That part's true." Obviously. The human brain was good at self-deception, but that wouldn't kick in until morning, and depended on how straight-edge Raphael had been before. Hallucinogens could convince you that a dust bunny was your best friend, but the vacuum would be there when you came down. This place didn't have a down.
S.T. kept talking as he hugged the wall on the opposite side of the Country Cockroach Buffet. "At night, they give up even the basic pretenses. All out war, us against a bunch of abominations, plus torture and brainwashing us into going after each other. Usually higher on the freaky and lower on the gore."
[to here]
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But the guy was still blathering on about uniforms and mental institutions, making his way toward the main hall like he was just strollin' through the park.
Much as Raph really, really wanted to go crazy playing exterminator, there was a chance his brothers could be waiting for him on the other side of that threshold. If he wanted to find them, he had to keep it together. No more wasting time.
With less than a moment's hesitation, he ducked out into the main hall after his guide's retreating shadow.
[Following S.T. here]
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