Nightshift 24: Entry Room

[transgenix]

( coming from here.)

The hall was dark and quiet as Max led the way deeper into the building and away from the dorms. She could hear the faint murmur of voices coming from... somewhere, but couldn't quite pinpoint a location

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[is_god]

Susan followed Max as quietly as she could, through the now open door. After a moment of consideration, she pulled it mostly shut behind them. It would still open with just a push, but it wasn't obviously open, so hopefully it wouldn't attract attention.

She used her flashlight to survey what was in the immediate area. So far, it wasn't too promising, but she hadn't expected this to be easy.

[transgenix]

"It looks like a dead end," Max spoke, her voice sounding much louder than she'd intended in the not-so-large room. There were two large desks to either side and what looked like a door ahead of them, though she couldn't see through it to the other side.

Her gaze narrowing, she scanned the room intently, spotting the two doors leading off in opposite directions, then paused as she noted the tow small closet-sized rooms that were positioned behind each desk. Were they closets? Why two? And why there?

Curious, she moved towards one and tried the door, only to find it locked.

[is_god]

Susan moved to the other small room; its door was locked as well. When she let go of the door handle, her hand came away red with rust. She grimaced, wiping it on her pants, then knelt to give the handle a closer inspection. It looked rather decrepit, as locks and handles went, furry with rust. She gave it an experimental, light tap with her flashlight; it wasn't as weak as that, but she thought maybe it gave, just a little.

"I think..." Oh, hell with it. This was a hallucination, after all. She brought the flashlight down on the handle, hard, and was rewarded by the sound of it breaking.

The door would open now.

[transgenix]

Max, who'd been wondering if she would have to start looking for something to use as a lockpick, heard the sharp sound and laughed, moving away from her door to join Susan in front of hers. "I like you. No quibbling about breaking and entering. How's your flashlight?"

[is_god]

Susan inspected her flashlight. It was scratched, there was a little dent, but it still worked fine. "Just fine," she said, though she added in a smile. "Multi-use." Normally, she would have had problems with breaking and entering. But not if she was being held prisoner. "Prisoners have a right to escape, after all..."

She pulled the door open. And immediately sneezed at the wave of dust that wafted out.

[transgenix]

Max held her sleeve up over her face, wrinkling her nose at the dust. "What the hell. What happened to medical institutions needing to meet health regulations? Don't they have janitors here?"

As the dust settled, she peered into the small, cramped room, she spotted a neat row of filing cabinets, though they were all coated in a thick coat of dust. She trailed a finger down their surfaces, noting the letters listed on the front. "Well. We've found something at least

[is_god]

"Ivanova," Susan said. She straightened and joined Max in the small room, yanking on another draw until it came open. It took several tries.

She pulled out a file at random. If these people weren't completely insane - if she wasn't completely insane - they'd be in alphabetical order. "Corwin Piers," she read. "Anywhere close to your last name?"

[transgenix]

"No, it's Guivera," Max answered, flipping through the files curiously, but not seeing anything that rang a bell. "Although, it might be under something else entirely. The nurses kept referring to me as Lilian Gulliver. And apparently I'm married. You can imagine my shock at hearing that one. You think I'd remember something like that," she added, her voice a dry retort.

Wiping her dusty hands off, she took a step back. The files over here start with N names. I bet earlier in the alphabet is in the other room. I'll look through those, if you want to see if they have you under a fake name in these? Although I suppose that's a lot of files..."

As she spoke, she was already moving towards the locked door she'd first tried to open. Lifting her leg, she gave the handle a sharp kick, hearing the thing snap, and she grinned as it swung slowly open. Peering inside, she spotted more of the same filing cabinets and instinctively reached for the G's. She could only hope the people running this place would be so careless as to leave real

[is_god]

"That's... interesting." Susan said. "Yes, I think you would remember getting married." She frowned. "I don't know what my fake name might be. I guess... I'll just keep looking at these. I might find something interesting, anyway." She opened the file in her hand, but shut it soon after. Corwin was male, so definitely not her.

It was weird, the way she was already playing along with this. She picked another file out at random...

[transgenix]

Max didn't find anything under Guivera, but there was a file close by with the name the nurse had found on her. Hesitating for just a moment, Max finally reached out and plucked the folder from the file. She flipped it open long enough to see a picture of herself staring back at her before flipping it back closed once more. She didn't want to look at it now, she'd look at it later, when there was more time, and not more of the building free for the looting exploring.

Tucking it securely into the waistband of her make-shift belt, Max cast a sideways glance over at Susan. "Find anything?"

[is_god]

"Lots of things, but none of them related to me," Susan said. She was half tempted to grab a handful of random files and read them at her leisure. It'd be something to do. And since she still thought this was probably all a hallucination, well, it wasn't even unethical. "I think until I know what they're calling me, this will be a pointless search." She closed the file she was currently looking at. "Ready to move on?"

Just for the hell of it, she picked up a few of the files to take along. If might give her an idea of just who was messing with her head, seeing the sort of people they populated this place with.

[transgenix]

Max nodded, shoving her drawer closed once more. "We can always come back. We know where to look now. Besides, this doesn't seem to be real information, it seems to be the fake crap they're trying to feed us. Still, you never know, there might be useful stuff hidden in there."

Taking a step back, she glanced around the room, taking in its appearance. We seem to be at the front of the building. People running this place aren't going to be too close by to here - they usually aren't in most places. They're either going to be at the far back of the building, or above or below, if there's more than one floor. Maybe we should check somewhere for stairs? I don't remember seeing offices or anything during the day, but they could have just attempted to steer us all clear of there..."

[is_god]

Susan nodded. She tucked the folders she'd grabbed into her shirt. A little light reading for some other night.

"Good idea," she said. "Though..."

She walked over to the set of doors at the opposite and of the room. If anything screamed 'entrance' that would be it. And entrance also meant exit. She tried the doors, then bent to examine the locks. They weren't in poor shape like the ones on the file room doors had been.

"So much for that," she said. "But I had to try it."

[transgenix]

Max sauntered over and eyed the locks as well. "Solid. Something like that would require the actual key, or at least a heavy-duty set of lock picks. It's a shame they lifted mine. Maybe if I find something to use as a makeshift one, we can come back and try it. At least we know where to go when we find what we need and it's time to get the hell out of this place."

She didn't think twice about letting slip her occupation for the past decade and a half. For now, they needed to work together and some secrets could be revealed.

Straightening, she looked back towards the doors they'd come in through. "Let's see if we can go find someone more familiar with this place. There's got to be others trying to get out as well. Maybe they can give us some more answers. Besides, I want to see for myself if those rumors about mutated monsters were true or not."

After the mention of 'chimera' earlier in the day, she didn't want to take any chances on what this place might be cooking up.

[is_god]

"A thief?" Susan said. She was a little surprised, though thinking about it, maybe she shouldn't have been. At this point, considering they were in the same situation and Max seemed like a good enough person, she wasn't going to suddenly get picky about her allies.

She nodded. "And there might be other doors to the outside that aren't so well-locked." She shuddered. "I'm hoping the rumors are just rumors. The only monsters I've ever seen looked like everyone else..." Mutated monsters sounded just a little too much like fantasy, for her taste. And as weird as it might sound, fantastic elements were probably out of place if her hypothesis that this was some kind of telepathy induced hallucination was true.

She wasn't certain, at this point, what alternative she preferred.

[transgenix]

"A girl's got expenses and I needed to stay off the radar," Max explained with a careless shrug. "It suited both my purposes. No one caught me and I made good money at it."

She turned away, walking back across the room towards the door they'd come in through. "The only monsters I've known have been human, and they were nasty enough in their own right. Things people suspect to be monsters are often the exact opposite, and I prefer to make my decisions for myself."

The fact that she'd been condemned and mistrusted as a monster herself when her secret came out only piqued her curiosity more about what went on here in the dark.

She opened the door and peered out into the hall once more. "Lets see if we can find out if there's more than one floor to this place. People crazy enough to run a scam like this never hide things in the open. They're not that clever."