Night 55, Main Hallway 2-Center

[swornandbroken]

[from here]He'd seen pins whose meaning he wasn't certain of, on other people's berets, a sword and shield the main one. Given Aguilar's fixation on results, and on the prisoners' proving their worth, Mello had to wonder if they'd be seeing a weeding-out of those who hadn't faced ordeals deemed worthy of pins. He was both disturbed and strangely

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[product_of_fear]

As the patients approached the hallways overlooking the sun room, they would start to realise that there was something very wrong with the area. It began gradually, the floor underfoot slowly transitioning from the normal subdued colours of the institute to blackened and scorched flooring that only became more damaged the further they moved on until each step creaked ominously, as though the brittle floor were about to give out below them

[bodhiandspirit]

Rita wasn't entirely satisfied with Morgan's reply. "What kind of chemicals?" she demanded, but he was already well into the next section of the hall. "Hey!"

Who did he think he was, stringing her along with just a bare-bones explanation!? If Rita walked off right then and there, what was he going to do if a monster came along? Hit it with his flashlight? Hmph.

When Rita caught up, she shot Morgan a cold look... but her attention was soon drawn to the bizarre sight that he was staring at. She edged closer to the railing, but kept what she deemed to be a safe distance. Whatever was happening there... it wasn't normal. No, not just that. It wasn't possibleA sense of dread began to well up inside her, and she could feel the hair on her neck stand on end

[swornandbroken]

"The kind you can make a bomb with," Mello snapped, irritated into giving away more of his plan than he might otherwise have done.

It was too bad for the poor bastards who tried to go through the Sun Room, he was thinking, glad it wasn't his problem, when something that most assuredly was his problem began to manifest

[product_of_fear]

Despite the area, the broken walls and the gaping ceiling, Mello's voice seemed to echo strangely, coming back to them like hollow warning, similar but not exactly the same as what he'd said.

"Get out of here."

At once, several other voices joined in, creating a chorus of breathy whispers that seemed to come from all around them, all of which had the same message for the patients.

"Get away. Run while you can."

But with the walls broken down and barely there, it was hard to tell where there was to run too.

time jumped to after rita and mello ala kes' request?

[autophoenix]

[ from here ]She tried the door on her right, finding it too firmly locked for her to even have hope of getting it open. And while she stared mournfully at it for a moment over that, she wasn't going to waste time on it. After all, she hadn't quite given up hope on getting a key off of one of those soldiers or a nurse or something, which meant maybe she'd get a chance to break in again later

[autophoenix]

[ back from here ]

Walking straight out of the room, she rested her forearms on the railing of the balcony, peering over into the darkness below. Curious, she shined her flashlight down in hopes of figuring out what was in there during the night, but … for some reason, there was still nothing but blackness. She squinted for a long minute, trying to figure out why it wasn't going away, and then she noticed that it was massive and … and wriggling. She nearly dropped her flashlight but instead secured her grip on it tighter and backed quickly away from the edge, eyes widened with fear and back slamming against the door of the staff seminar room, shutting it again

Round Two.... FIGHT!

[product_of_fear]

As Claire started to move, a noise, soft enough that it could have easily been imagined, started. It was a male voice laughing, or perhaps crying, but it was flat and almost too regular, like a recording played softly in a distant room. It faded almost immediately, but by then Claire might have been distracted by other things. As others had found before her, the room around her seemed to change with every step she took, the floor groaning as it seemed to literally crumble away to rotten boards and ash under her feet. The signs of damage spread up the walls and ceiling as well, decaying and breaking them down until Claire was suddenly standing in the ruined remains of a building, the blackened walls framing a patch of sky that was dominated by a great, pale moon.

Nothing grew in the black ash-like earth under her feet, though it would have been wrong to say there was no life here. A flutter of movement caught the light from the moon overhead, revealing itself to be a crow digging into a still figure wearing a familiar military uniform

[autophoenix]

The laughter -- tears? -- caught her attention and Claire began to move through the hallway down further across the central hallway, disregarding the stairs. If there was something going on, she needed to help. But before she could figure out where it was coming from, flashlight eagerly searching the emptiness, she felt the floorboards crack beneath her and for a minute she was sure that she was going to fall through. She could even recall the exact cracks of her bones from that kind of fall, expecting them

[predictator]

[From here, and jumping to after the other encounters?]Izaya made a mental note of the name as an acquaintance of Alfred's, and gave a nod of agreement over what this Matthew had said about the military. The 'institution' was a subject he was willing to speak more freely about... It would have been nice if he could get paid for the information, but a lot of the information about it could, unfortunately, be acquired from a number of sources. Better then to simply prove a measure of reliability in anticipation for the future

[brb_burgers]

"But we're not mental and any five-minute interview would show that," though whoa, hold up, there was something very not right what that statement and he stopped abruptly, standing up straighter as he watched Izaya. "...What monsters?" Initial images that came to mind were, in fact, humans or doctors with scalpels and gas and all manner of things not suitable for human exposure. He had a wild imagination, it was difficult, if not impossible to reign it in

[product_of_fear]

As the pair moved further through the hallways that made up the area overlooking the sun room, they'd notice that the are seemed far larger than it had any right to be, and it was changing as they walked. The floor decayed, wearing away until it was fine, powdery earth underfoot, and the walls were broken and ruined. The ceiling had collapsed in some time ago, revealing the night sky dominated by a vast, pale moon which provided enough light to see by, forgoing the need for flashlights. The air was cool and a faint, creeping mist had settled in over the ground, the kind that made skin prickle with expectation.

The area was, as much of the institute was of a night, eerily quiet and still, though that was broken a moment later by a muffled thump from nearby.

Should they turn towards the sound, they'd see a door set in a wall that was not yet completely broken down, and a faint noise that sounded like crying coming from behind it.

[predictator]

Alfred may have had a point about an interview showing that none of them were crazy (or at least that most of them weren't), but there was something to be said for preconceived notions. After all, either the doctors like Venkman were in on the whole thing, or they were already convinced that their patients were nuts despite how sane and rational they may have appeared.

There was something weird about the building up here-maybe it was just the atmosphere at night that made it seem a bit eerie, but had it always been in this bad a repair? Granted, his was his first time in this part of the building, but he and Villiers had been looking up at the balcony from the Sun Room the other day...

But Izaya's attention was drawn from the dilapidated hall, as Alfred had apparently not heard about the so-called monsters yet, or the experiments (the latter of which was admittedly still mostly conjecture on his part, until he found some solid proof). He stopped a few steps after the young man had, and turned to look back at him.

"The monsters:

[yin_yang_fox]

[from here]

She moved into the next hall cautiously. This area more often than not held things undesirable. Renamon continued talking. "For ones missing, there are two outcomes, and variations to each. They are either outside the institute or still within it. If they are still here, they're either in the medical wing, which none seem to have reached, or are being experimented on." This said with a careful analysis and little bedside manner. "If they are no longer here, I can't tell you what happened. They could have returned to where they were from, or somewhere else altogether."

Or stopped existing. As it seemed at one point. If they only held to DNA and patterns.... Not a topic to discuss currently. "...However, we're near a room that houses the files of those 'released'. It'd be simplest to check there first, and see."

[fangirlfatale]

Experimented on? Euuggh, that brought up even more memories of DeSinge's creepy lab. Morgan decided: she'd had more than enough freaky mad scientists to last her a while. When she got out of here, Does this job involve freaky mad scientists? was going to be the first question she asked prospective clients.

"These two are pretty tough," she said. "My best guess was that one of them kidnapped the other and took off. At least, that's how it usually goes with them. But the more I hear about this place--I'm starting to have my doubts." Warily, she scanned the middle of the hallway, watching for any movement that didn't come from a patient. Right now, everything looked and sounded normal. "My roommate claimed she ended up on another planet the night the doors went crazy, and she still woke up here."

[yin_yang_fox]

Another planet, was it. "It's a possibility," the Digimon replied. "I wouldn't cancel it out altogether without absolute proof in this place." And even this, Renamon wouldn't trust it not to violate those rules of fact and truth. There was enough already that it had shifted beyond a doubt--rewriting things already knew was something she would accept as a possibility. If there was a way to find the limits, explore the ends of this place's power... Until then, there were circles to swim in, and smaller ways to break the repetitive actions.

[to here]

[wantsyourzex]

[ from here]

"Hee! Hee! Hee! Yes, my natural body is quite different than what you see now..." If only she knew how different! Although, his natural form had had an unfortunate tendency to... repulse most humans, but perhaps she'd have a more open mind. "I did not have these, for example." He held up his hands. "My arms were more versatile, and far stronger, and my mouth was not quite so close to my face either. As for the hair..."

ZEX trailed off as he entered the hallway. He was getting a distinct feeling that something was not quite right here, but he wasn't sure if it was a mixture of his one eye playing tricks on him, or if the invisible monsters that tormented him expanding their repetoire of tricks.

"Hmm... does this hallway seem... unusual to you?" he asked. Perhaps his other paramour had returned, the strange female croaking human who'd left him coughing up hair for days. The thought brightened his mood considerably. He knew she couldn't resist him!

[shorttank]

"Oh, you know. You gotta do what you gotta do." This wasn't strictly true, for Leela, since meeting Fry and leaving the job she was supposed to have, and she was mostly saying it out of modesty. She didn't mind saving Bender and Fry from their own boneheadedness, actually. It gave her a sense of purpose. If she were being totally honest, she would have admitted she liked feeling needed. "I do get to travel a lot, and meet a lot of interesting people."

Having only one eye had never gotten in the way of the important things, like piloting the ship, though it had gotten in the way of doing some things she'd really wanted to do, like socking Cubert. "You know, I never really any had problems having only one eye. Except from humans being stupid about it." She smiled to herself as she followed ZEX along, imagining what those jerkwads from the Orphanarium would say if they could see her now.

Okay, if they could see her right now, they'd probably laugh. Then again, their dumb butts would be stuck here too, in that case, and Leela was sure