[03] Giving you a number and taking away your name

[aliveonlyinwar]

Dovev was sure they didn't leave out of any doors, but yet here they are in the heart of the city. The sky is overcast, dark enough that one should expect thunderstorms but the cloud formations jut don't look right for that

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[heads_i_lived]

Shirley stays close to Dovev, looking around at every one as they pass. Are they going to come after them? Are they looking for them?

Shirley clutches the file like a drowning man clutching a rope.

"Well, I suppose it's fine to invite a person to their apartment if ye've just nearly died and spent God knows how long running away from monsters with them," she says, giving him a wry smile.

[aliveonlyinwar]

Dovev gave a weak half-chuckle in return as he scanned the surroundings, looks like no one was watching them. But caution should be exercise. The man lead her through a few twists until they reached the front doors of a middle of the road complex. He clicked on an intercom.

"Yea, it's Dovev Orr with a friend, could you open up?" Was the simple request. The door clicks, and the man held the door for her.

"Should be safe enough up there."

[heads_i_lived]

Shirley smiled and walked through the door. "Thank you," she said.

"I hope it is," she sighed. "It's been a long day."

[aliveonlyinwar]

The elevator made the trip up to the sixth floor a short one, but Dovev paced restlessly in the lift. "Too long, way too long." Dovev almost muttered in response.

After a moment's confusion, he gets the door open. The Apartment is nice and tidy save for some sort of patriotic superhero comics strewn on the coffee table with matching action figure. Dovev glanced around. "Levi?"

Silence.

"Levi?" Dovev called again, looking a bit worried, and then he went out to the hallway, and inspected a potted plant. Key's not there, so Levi's not here. He hurried back in, and picked up a note on the counter.

"...Damn it, he should have told me he was going to a sleep over." He sounded relieved, but yet part of him is suspicious. He'll call the number given when they can get the folder out of the way.

[heads_i_lived]

Shirley rubs the back of her neck and bites her lip while they're in the lift. It's a cramped, small space, and Shirley wants to get out into somewhere where they wouldn't be trapped easily.

The apartment feels lived in, and she smiles a little at the action figure. The superhero comics grab her attention - when she spots them, she wonders if the newest one has come out. But then she shakes her head, trying to figure out why they seemed so important all of a sudden.

Shirley looks up when Dovev says that his son is at a sleep over. "Well, at least that'll give us some time to look at these," she says, gesturing to the files. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

[aliveonlyinwar]

"Go ahead," He gestured as he kicks off his shoes and curls up on the couch as he flicks open his file.

Name: David
Age: Estimated 37
Height: 6'0"
Weight: 200lbs...

Dovev paused, that's his statistic. What a strange coincidence.

Subject has unusually narrow pupils - but it does not seem to affect his visual capabilities.

"The. Hell?"

[heads_i_lived]

Name: Michelle Foster
Age: Thirty
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 150

Shirley frowns. She's that tall. She never really thought about her weight, but she probably weighs that much...

Subject worked in an antique store named Curious Goods. 'Cursed' antiques often were brought back to said store - we should possibly consider looking at these. The antiques have been shown to be able to swap personalities with bodies, to restore youth, to travel back in time, and one has been shown to bring a person back to life.

Shirley's eyes go wide.

She remembers -

darkness so much darkness and she feels so cold and there's a lingering fear from when she was still alive

Shirley turns the page.

There are pictures. There's a picture of her, and of her with a man that looks a bit younger than her, that's got a smile on her face and a comic book in his hand.

Shirley feels her eyes growing wet.

[aliveonlyinwar]

Dovev quickly got up to get a mirror. Yes, his eyes were narrow pupils. He ran back to the folder, noting marks on the model body. Without thinking about Shirley there, he yanked off his shirt.

On his shoulder, flank, every scar matched. But weren't they from that fire? But then, why didn't he have any burn scars?

"Oh my god."

[heads_i_lived]

Shirley is just about to look at another page of the folder when Dovev takes his shirt off. She makes a startled noise, and blushes.

"I... Dovev? What's happened? What's wrong?"

[aliveonlyinwar]

He starts, and looks back to her. "The report... all the scars listed in it matches mine." The man glanced down at his arms - there is a few fine, white lines over toned skin. "I think I didn't get these in that warehouse fire. I mean, look - there's no burn wounds."

[heads_i_lived]

Shirley awkwardly leans forward, looking at the scars while trying to retain her modesty. "I think burn scars would be bigger," she says. "The ones ye've got don't look like that."

She sits back and looks at her own model in the file. They all list different reasons, and although she doesn't have a lot of scars, they say she got them in ways that she doesn't remember getting them.

"Something's... very wrong here, I think," she says, turning back a page and looking back at the picture of her with the man with a comic book in his hand.

[aliveonlyinwar]

There is one near the waist band that definitively looked like an entry wound, and an indistinct smudge of dark color on his shoulder that could have been anything. Dovev nodded tersely as he headed to the closet, and yanked out a clean shirt and jacket, buttoning them up. The goo-splattered work shirt is thrown into the trash.

"Burns discolor the skin, crinkles it up - and it's shinier." The man glanced at the decorative mirror with an uncertainty. Something's missing. But what? He unconsciously mimed the gesture of getting a drag off of a cigarette, as he fidgets in place.

"I take it your file fits you too well for coincidence." He started, but then stopped. "Kind of funny how we ended up picking these two up." Dovev started again.

"What does this say to you?"

[heads_i_lived]

"It... it does," Shirley admits. "It gives just a little bit of stuff ye'd find in a doctor's report, and then it talks about another person... But it seems so familiar..."

"It says that something very odd is going on," she says, frowning. "It's like... remembering something that happened a very long time ago... Ye know what I mean?"

[aliveonlyinwar]

He nodded as he glanced at the number on the note, and checked his pocket. Dr Schreber? Who's he?
Not important right now.

"I only got medical reports here, but it's just too eerie. And - I wonder... what I did to that... thing, they don't teach that sort of stuff at the fire academy." Dovev blanched. "It felt too natural." The strangling, the killing.

[heads_i_lived]

"The madhouse, it... it felt familiar. I've never been here though, ye understand? And the thing - it wasn't... wasn't human. So... what was it?" Shirley asks, partly to the room around her and partly to Dovev.

"It was like... I think the people in that madhouse knew what was going on, and those things tried to silence them..."

[aliveonlyinwar]

"It's possible. It's possible... it's said that the mad are the children of God," He whispered quietly. "The poor bastards - who knows what goes behind those doors." The man could think of several dozen possibilities, but that's what one gets for working in a movie theater now.

"The... the body looked human enough... god, they could be walking out, amongst us, and we'll never know." Dovev glanced to the photographs, most of him - a vivacious woman and a young child. The woman seemed to vanish when the boy started to look about six and older. He tapped his fingers on the arm of the couch. "What now? We're discovering things about ourselves that we really should have known about, details are getting blurrier the more you try to focus on it."