Night 46: M21-30 Hallway

[sdatislife]

Shinji hesitated at the threshold and after a moment of horrific indecision and fear he forced himself to take the step out of his room and into dim and darkened hallway. It was all strange again. The people, the appearance of this hallway - so much for hoping that last night might have been a fluke. With a start, he realized he still didn't know

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[theroadsofar]

Sam hadn't started everything with a Dean, you dickless sonuvabitch, which that right there? Was pretty promising already. Dean didn't let himself get too relaxed as he followed Sam in and set up shop, leaning his hip against the edge of the desk, arms crossed. If Sam wanted to talk about patterns and weird crap going down, then that was more than okay with him. Dean didn't think for a second his brother had given up on the deal - kid was too stubborn and bull-headed for that - but they were both here in one piece, he could keep an eye on Sam, and do their job at the same time.

Couldn't really ask for more than that.

As for this business about trying to break it down into something manageable - patterns worked, up until you got something from left field that broke it. Still, patterns were really all they had to go on and it beat sitting on their hands. Dean reached up, rubbing the back of his neck as he noticed Sam's spanking new change of clothes. Or rather, old ones, 'cause that was the same damn clothes he remembered Sam neatly folding up before. Looks like he'd got visited by the Fashion Fairy too.

"Problem with starting with yesterday itself is we still don't got a clue how they roofied us. As for when: think we're looking at a window of a few hours since we blacked out but hell, we still gotta figure out how they're knocking us out like that in the first place," Dean said. It wasn't like he'd smelled any agents, like chloroform, and considering how far the patients could roam, it had to be piped in, if they weren't going exotic and using some kinda spell. A muscle in Dean's jaw ticked as he thought back to the past couple of days and there were definitely some he could've gone without another replay of it, "There's always what happened a few nights ago with the morgue and the whole acid trip. We've got a definite place to start with there, if not an actual time."

Checking his watch, which he didn't even have in the first place, hadn't exactly been a priority at the time when he'd watched Sam get mauled right in front of him. Dean still thought it was the work of a faerie, judging by the M.O., but at the same time, he wasn't one hundred percent sold on that one either. Sounded like too many people were hit at too wide a range, even if that douchey flare sounded like a faerie to him. At a first glance, the BS over the last couple of days didn't seem related, except they all fit in the category of What the Hell, even for them.

And they'd all happened in Landels Institute. What they really needed was more intel on the building, find out if it was a focus point for something big or if this Martin Landel was intentionally importing this stuff.

[allroadslead]

The blacking out effect was probably the most troubling of it all, if only because it made everything wholly unpredictable. At least once, it'd been the sole factor for why Sam was alive right now. It had to be supernatural, though. Right? Getting dosed always left you disoriented, and there was nothing that knocked you out instantaneously like that. He would've attributed it to a possible skewed sense of time if not for that night in the shed. No, something had stopped exactly at that instant, or he'd have ended up with a lot more than a fading cut on his throat.

It had to put them out for several hours, too. He hadn't had a night that lasted more than a couple of hours or so, sometimes less, but it was always morning when he awoke. Not to mention, they had to be getting their sleep somehow. Sam never remembered sleeping, but he must've at some point-you couldn't go that long with no sleep and remain functional.

"Yeah." He glanced up and shrugged in agreement. "I suppose. We could check out the scene. Though establishing any sort of timeline's gonna be tricky." He tossed Dean his watch, the one he'd just found. The one that was now as good as dead, the hands stopped at 3:42 on the dot. When he'd been taken? Could've been. It would make sense. "Seems like everything just depends on sunset and sunrise. Kind of like a curse, you know?"

There wasn't a single clock or watch here, for one thing, and any watches were apparently frozen in time. He wondered if he asked a nurse what time it was, what she would say.

Either way, Dean was right. The morgue was the only place they could revisit at the moment. Yesterday's brainwashing didn't have a starting point and heading to Doyleton to see if the zombies were still there wasn't an option.

Maybe he could give the computer nearby another try while they were at it, as well. He had no idea what he'd find at the actual scene itself; this place had an odd tendency to restore itself-he still remembered that hole in the door of the Sun Room that had completely vanished the next morning-which only added to his suspicions about the institute's...flexibility. So to speak. Instability? That was another question, too.

[theroadsofar]

Not one word breathed on the deal. Dean could feel the awkwardness like a solid thing between them.

Dean reached up and caught the watch, glancing at it. Frozen. It wasn't the first time they'd run into electrical interference on the job, and usually this was a good sign, narrowing down a spot and time when something went down since it was generally localized to a specific area. Here, though? Wasn't gonna help much, except Sam had probably been taken at whenever the watch froze on but that didn't narrow down where. Or if it'd been working fine when he got taken but stopped later, right before they did the reappearing act in his closet. It wasn't exactly like he'd had his own watch to compare and come to think of it, Dean didn't remember seeing clocks around, which was definitely on the weird side there.

He tossed the watch back to his brother. "Yeah, but we're gonna need a motive on this so we can follow it to the source," said Dean. He pushed off the desk, "See what we can suss up in the morgue and maybe we'll get some clues, but it's probably gonna be pretty touch 'n go."

[allroadslead]

Touch and go was one way to put it.

Sam caught the watch and dropped it inside the drawer. He eyed Dean for a moment, wanting to say something. He felt like he should say something, at least. But what was there to say? Everything he had on his mind, Dean either already well suspected or it was a thought Sam couldn't possibly voice.

He was only putting off the inevitable, he knew. Sooner or later, there was going to be an explosion. But not now. Right now, they could pretend to do their jobs, pretend as if Dean wasn't on the fast track to hell, and Sam could pretend that the job mattered even half as much as the deal.

He started for the door. "Can't hurt to try."

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