Nightshift 49: Waiting Room/Lobby 1

[emotionl4arobot]

[from here]Slipping through the door into the next room, Brainiac 5 frowned, his hand rising to his head as a sudden wave of dizziness swept over him. He felt a little thrown off, like suddenly losing a data stream during an analysis. "Did something just..." he began, but trailed off, uncertain if it was simply a side effect due to stress or

Comments

[toxicspiderman]

S.T. stepped through the door.  His inner ear took a microsecond to catch up.  The world lurched like he'd just taken a good-sized hit of nitrous, but no euphoria followed in it's wake.  He took a deep breath.  The world got its sea legs, but this wasn't a patio.  The kid din't recognize it either -- what had his name been?  Member of the Significant Moniker Club, but what had it been?  Fuck.  S.T. squinted at him.  The pale circles tattooed on his forehead bobbed and dipped one last time like a car-lot searchlight extravaganza and then pointed to the answer. Brains -- no, Brainiac.  Poor bastard.  Then again, at least it had seemed accurate.

"How the fuck should I know?"  He snapped on his flashlight to get a better look.  Chairs, tables, a magazine rack.  The square yellow haloes of a few National Geographics were lined up like Beacon Street brownstones, a little careworn but wearing their uneven heights like a badge of distinction.  A copy of TIME slumped on the end where the half-assed semblance of order broke down into crumpled paper.

"Think we lost your tail, though.". Shaking a tail by getting lost himself was complete bullshit as plans went, but as they hadn't meant to do it, it seemed to have worked.  Saved by movie logic.  "You recognize anything yet?"

[emotionl4arobot]

"Because you seemed to think going in this direction was a good idea," Brainiac 5 pointed out, frowning at the man's answer. "I thought that would mean you actually knew what was beyond the door, not that you were just picking a direction at random."

He sighed, checking over the room again. "It doesn't seem like there's much here of interest, however. I don't know if you had any plans for the night, but I promised a friend I'd look into a few things for him. So I don't want to remain here for too long." And not only because he still wasn't entirely certain if they'd really lost Grell. The supposed death god was surprisingly tenacious, after all.

Brainiac 5 glanced at the door they'd come through quickly, then shone his flashlight at the opposite door. "I suppose we should see what's in this direction."

[toxicspiderman]

"Does this look like a patio to you?  Besides, the door should be," S.T. said, pulling a sheaf of papers from the back pocket of his Levis.  He turned on his heel and shone the flashlight directly at a section of wall.

A small hotel-grade watercolor hung there, involving some sunflowers and an lopsided wheelbarrow no claim of artistic license could make roll.  "There.  Does that look like a door to you?  Come on, let's see what else has been moved.". The building -- he'll, the entire town reset itself.  Rearranging a few rooms would be like swapping the glasses and plates in the cabinet.  Disconcerting for the first half-awake roommate who tried to pour O.J. into a salad bowl rather than drinking straight from the carton, but otherwise harmless.

Nothing around here was harmless.  The schedule change alone should have set off five-alarm fire bells in Sangamon's head.  That plus a room going walkabout should have called in engines from three neighboring towns.  It didn't.  Instead, he walked over to the misplaced door and pulled it open.  His one concession to the circumstances was to poke his head out before stepping into what appeared to be a hallway.  A fairly crowded hallway, too.  Losing a tail in a crowd seemed like an even better plan than just hiding.  He flashed a thumbs-up at Brainiac, which was probably lost in the dark, and stepped through.

[to the second floor pantry]