Nightshift 50 - M1-M10 Hallway
Like Dean was supposed to believe the whole beaming down crap was supposed to be all for their benefit. You wanted to help someone, you didn't kidnap them from their homes - or friggen time machines like the Doctor - and then offer them great food and a pat on the head like that made it a-okay.
Whatever it was, this wasn't from the goodness of the ( Read more... )
Whatever it was, this wasn't from the goodness of the ( Read more... )
“You first,” Dean said. Demons were safe. They weren’t going to sprout damn phasers on him or do anything nuts - their brand of nuts, he got. It was doucheness taken to a new level, but it was still something he could get. Demons just were evil begging for an exorcism. It was just how it was, from before he’d even been born and it’d still be like that when he kicked the bucket. There was something comforting about knowing evil was going to be out there and folks like Sam and him were going to be hunting them. No paradoxes, no aliens, just normal monsters out there that needed ganking. All in all, normal.
He missed normal.
Dean caught the ring when Sam tossed it at him, his fingers uncurling as he glanced down at it. He hadn’t thought it was blood coral but if it was, that could change things. He hadn’t figured they’d use it for some teleportation crap, though. Coral was used in all sorts of spells and summoning rituals; mostly it was just light stuff, like warding off the evil eye or protecting your junk from the evil eye. Depended on what version you went with. Using coral for amulets and pendants was pretty old school, even if there was stronger stuff out there. He had to say, he hadn’t heard of coral in general being used for heavy duty stuff like teleportation. It wasn’t especially black magic there. He guessed it could be possible that they’d somehow tapped into something in the blood coral that no one else ever had. Just felt kinda weird to look at coral and start thinking it could have some dark mojo when he’d always associated the stuff with just basic protection. No blood sacrifices or bones of a stillborn or anything like that.
For a second he wondered what Dad would make of these rings.
Dean had to swallow back the tightness in his throat. Dad had been gone for almost a year now and he wasn’t coming back, plain and simple. Most days he tried not to think about him being gone; he just trucked on. But there were still moments where he’d start to reach for the phone to ask Dad something and remember that yeah, the man was pretty damn dead. About as dead as a guy could get and then some. No chance of a spirit with the cremation, and he was sure Dad would’ve put precautions in place so there wasn’t a risk of him coming back through a cursed object.
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But he was back to pen and paper here.
He scratched his head and flipped through the pages, unsure of where to start. The missing patients? The various supernatural events that seemed to strike every couple of nights? Or the portals from last night...he'd touched on that with Dean, but not a whole lot. He supposed they could start there. It was the freshest in his memory and the truth was, it felt more relevant somehow. More important than the other things that'd happened, part of a key that they needed. Maybe because its effects were so similar to how they'd arrived here in the first place: a blink of an eye, no memory. Just like they'd stepped through a door.
"All right, well, I talked to a couple of people today about what happened last night and after, you know-" He gestured vaguely at the ring in Dean's hand, "-I think it's pretty safe to say that we were dropped off in some kind of contained area instead of making it anywhere close to home." For lack of a better term. "I don't know about you, but the guy I talked to earlier said that wherever it was he went, the internet wouldn't connect and the phones kept ringing when they tried to call anyone. No voicemail, nothing picking up. I had the same deal-lines were dead, no reception on my cell. Not to mention the whole-last-men-on-earth thing."
It made sense that buildings and other scenery were easier to craft than people themselves. Human beings were complicated and dynamic. The single demon that didn't even speak once, the fact that there was a limit to how far the edges of the landscape extended, it all seemed to suggest one thing. And hell, it wasn't as though he'd ever managed to figure out whether the Trickster had sent him back in time for real after the entire Wednesday incident or simply created the reality and had simply popped the bubble when it was over. So to speak. Either way, creating out of thin air might've been rare, but not exactly unheard of.
"Anyway, the theory fits with the rest of the picture."
Well. More so than anything else had so far. Whatever, this was the closest he'd gotten to answers in a long time which wasn't saying much. He didn't really have room to complain.
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“Real funky timing,” Dean fingered the ring, running his thumbnail over the blood coral set in the band. “It’s too big to be your typical illusion. Too many individual Twilight Zones there, and then there’s the whole shared experience thing, too.”
That right there made it stand out. There’d been that time with the Trickster, but that thing back then hadn’t gone full tilt and created entire illusions of worlds only to leave them all creepily empty of people. The Trickster had been all for realism. Okay, so it was cracked out realism, but the point was when he’d run into those two hot chicks - aka, the Trickster’s “white flag” - they’d looked plenty real to him. All of ‘em. Didn’t seem like a Trickster’s kind of style to go after a big mass of people indiscriminately, much less not bother with the usual bells and whistles. Then there was that announcement from their favorite nut job over the intercom. Ego like that, Dean was totally willing to bet the guy had a small dick he was compensating for in a big way. Figures. Jack-off.
Unfortunately, Tiny Dick out there was still working some serious hoodoo and that made him a big friggen threat. They weren’t much closer to figuring out what he was or how, exactly, he kept this whole place running. Big operation like this, it wasn’t just one spell fits all.
The teleport thing to these empty “worlds” bothered Dean the more he thought about it. Landels already had the ability to jack people from anywhere - and supposedly any when, if Dean was supposed to believe the Doctor (made a guy wonder why he didn’t try kidnapping Albert Einstein or a badass like Neil Armstrong). Last night with the portals, or whatever you wanted to call ‘em, and now these magic rings? Dean really couldn’t say he liked the idea of the Head Doctor refining this so he could get even more accurate.
Real cheery thought there.
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Maybe not typical, but that seemed to be the point. If he thought about it, there was nothing especially new that was going on here, not really. They were still dealing with something whose potentiality was rooted in whatever existing lore there was. All that was happening was that this was occurring on a much larger scale.
"The only thing I'm not sure about right now is pinpointing what's based on an illusion and what's real," Sam went on. "I mean, I don't think we can take it all the way here and just say everything. There has to be a-a foundation of some sort. Ground zero."
The institute itself couldn't be it, not if they considered the shifting landscape. That first night had proven it pretty solidly. He'd seen that hole in the door, and there was no way it could've been repaired by morning that fast. Something had been done, something not normal. And the way the town had simply aged, started to fall apart, as soon as the sun set. But where the institute rested was another thing altogether. It was an option. The only issue was figuring out where they were in the first place, where this institute and the town was located. Geographically and temporally.
Sounded simple, laid out like that.
He was still thinking when the intercom flicked on. He glanced up, about to say something else when a sudden high-pitched whine pierced right through the air. His hand flew to his head. Dammit, what-? It wasn't anything he'd felt before, not a vision headache or the headaches that followed the use of his abilities. This was clearly from an external source. It didn't last long, fading as quickly as it came.
He'd been fully expecting something terrible to happen right after, but a few seconds ticked by with nothing. Okay. Not exactly settling.
He slid his gaze towards his brother. God, seriously, he was tired of the crap this place spat out every night. "You know, I don't even wanna ask."
And yeah, he was tempted to take a look outside and see what the hell had just happened, but, well. The building was still standing and he couldn't hear any screams. Whatever had gone down, chances were good he wouldn't find out until tomorrow, based on hearsay and secondhand reports. Business as usual.
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If that was a spell, it wasn't like any spell he'd ever heard. For one thing, no incantation. There were some badasses who could do it with just a word. But he'd definitely heard the Head Doctor typing away at what sounded like a keyboard and that right there wasn't the usual method for hitting someone with a spell or a curse. There was also the cheesy sci-fi route - maybe they'd got implants or something upon arriving (they didn't know exactly how long they were unconscious).
Dean looked up at Sam, wincing, and seeing that same pain on his brother's face. It sounded pretty off the wall to him.
Then again, so had old school aliens and time travel.
Dean got up - okay, more like staggered up - and went over to Sam. It was just automatic to check him over, make sure the kid wasn't bleeding himself and he was in the same shape as he was. Satisfied that he looked fine, aside from just getting hit with the same skull-splitting sound, Dean rubbed again at his ear. Goddamn, it was going to be ringing for a while, wasn't it?
"The hell was that?" Dean asked. His voice felt kinda tinny as he spoke, thanks to that godawful noise. "Didn't seem to do anything."
"Seem" was the keyword here, though. Plenty of stuff out there that could do all kinds of crap and Average Joe wouldn't notice, at least not until it was too late.
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He waved his brother off, automatic, and eyed Dean right back. Dean didn't seem so much affected as he was annoyed. The hell was that was a good question.
Sam shook his head. It was already fading, not as crippling as the visions had gotten sometimes and definitely nothing like the migraine that had plagued him just two nights ago.
"I think this is a case of wait and see," he replied. Which he knew wouldn't sit well with Dean-it didn't sit well with him, for that matter-but unless Dean had any ideas as to where to start looking...Besides, if it was going to be anything, he had a feeling it would find them before they could find it. Whatever that had been, one thing was obvious: its effects were meant to be internal, not external.
Great.
He lifted his eyes to the ceiling in brief exasperation, but all he found up there was that stupid magenta-colored trap. Funny that none of the staff had scrubbed it off. Maybe they just didn't care. He sighed.
Wait, what were they even talking about before that damn thing interrupted them?
Oh, right.
"Look, Dean, we really need to sort out a priority list here. We can't just keep-reacting and retreating. At the very least, we need to start figuring out why the hell we're here."
He didn't like how scattered he'd been lately, and while he could start organizing himself well enough, it'd be good if he could know what it was Dean was looking at, as well. Coordination was never a bad idea. And motive was always a good place to trace back to. It all started there. It didn't matter if you were a demon or a swamp monster; they all did things for a reason, even if that reason was as simple as I'm freaking hungry. They just had to find it, that was all.
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