5th Announcement

[The Organization]

((continued from the 4th Announcement))

----

"Cavery? Is that you?"

An alien voice; an echo of a darker time.

"Yes. Hello, Botchi."

He ripped his gaze from the Fates and focused his attention now on his former colleague - one Doctor Amarant Botchi, of the First Pacific Division - watching on from the shadows with an intense curiosity.

His voice was shrill, unaccustomed to chit-chat.

"What're you doing here? We're not scheduled for an inspection 'til the 15th. I checked."

His spindly fingers twitched with agitation; the tips clicked together as he held them up in front of his chest, as though he was forever thinking, or planning. An old habit of his which equally irritated and amused the good doctor as he moved over to a monitor displaying the same vital signs as the ones by the wall. He didn't like speaking with Botchi at the best of times, but right now he didn't have time for his questions, nor the patience to strike up a full conversation with someone who would stare at people with such wild eyes that one would think he must've been possessed.

It was... unnerving.

"These aren't your machines, Cavery. Not any more. You can't just come down whenever you like and disrupt everything we're working on. I won't allow it."

Behind his mask, the doctor smiled, speaking coyly;

"Won't you?"

A footstep closer.

"No." He said flatly.

"You washed your hands of these things. They're not yours to toy with now."

His attention wavered, the doctor's fingers clenched around the computer mouse in his hand. A moment of contemplation, and then he rose from the desk, letting the device fall to the mat. The red light bathed them both as they watched each other in the silence. Scoping for any sign of their true intentions.

Botchi looked noticeably more disturbed than usual. His eyes were bloodshot and dark, and he looked as though he'd lost a lot of weight since the last time Cavery had spoken to him. In addition, he was as pale as a sheet, and the liver spots on his hands stood out like painful bites on his cracked and broken skin.

Analysis: Too much time spent down here in the dark. Cavery didn't remember a time when he'd seen him up on the surface. He wondered, for a fleeting second, if the man had ever even seen the sky.

And then he remembered why he was here at all.

"Look, I don't have a lot of time, so if you could start the sequence that'd be-"

"I'm not starting anything."

Botchi looked disgusted.

Cavery pressed on.

"...I don't have time for this. Start the se-"

"I'm not starting anything!"

Still, the others worked, unperturbed by the outburst. They were used to it. If he hadn't chosen a life of science he would've easily wound up the same, miserably bitter creature they were so comfortable around some other way. Amarant Botchi was a man of great wisdom, far beyond his years, and had he made better decisions in his life, he might have made a name for himself in the academic world. But as it stood, he didn't make those decisions, leaving him on an island out in the middle of nowhere, working in the darkness on things which, had the common man known about, would've condemned him to an eternity of fire and pain.

Though he was quite confident that would never happen, and so he became twisted by his own sense of supremacy, looking down on the rest of the world with utter contempt as he devised new ways to make them all "better".

His fingers had stopped clicking; his face contorted into a mad half-grin.

He salivated excessively.

Cavery took a step back.

Holding out his hand, he spoke a quiet calm.

"You're not yourself, man. You're not well - but you could help me again. Like before."

The grin widened.

"Oh, I could, couldn't I? And what a treat that would be. One flip of the switch, and you get to play the action hero for that child."

His figure hunched as he walked forward, closer and ever closer with his hands twitching outwards, reaching for the doctor by the desk.

"I could be so helpful, and so noble. A prince- an island prince. Or better yet, a king, helping out his citizens with a small and seemingly simple task yet laced with repercussions far outweighing the very reason for the request."

Cavery glimpsed at the monitor. If he could finish inputting the commands, he could run over and turn off the dome's power manually. It would leave the Fates' weak, but only for a short time. All he needed were a few minutes to get over to the island. That was all he needed. Just a little time to set things right.

Botchi lurched suddenly, almost keeling over. Cavery took another step back, gradually slipping away from his mission. If he could just distract him-

His train of thought screeched to a halt.

Botchi was on his hands and knees, vomiting a vile black consistency all over the floor. It seeped around his body, pooling out over the edge of the walkway down onto the machines below. The colour of it perplexed the doctor, as much as it terrified him, and as it crept up to the soles of his boots he realized why it appeared the way it did. Parts of it shone with a sickly metal sheen while the greener parts looked crumpled, almost like fabric. Except, it wasn't almost, and it wasn't like.

It was fabric.

It was belts, and leather and cotton, and most importantly, it was a distinctive gold pen.

It was a good friend of his.

Kneeling down, he scooped up a pair of silver-rimmed glasses and cleared them of the goo they were covered in. They were cracked and bent, with the lenses all but missing bar one or two shards clinging on to the insides of the frames. Everything stank with an abominable stench, made worse by the cold hard fact that his best lead was now swimming in pieces around him.

His breath came fast, filtered by the mask, but it gave him the wind he needed to spring up from the ground, run up to the still-heaving body and gift him with the hardest kick to the jaw he'd ever given a living person-

-had it actually connected.

The doctor found himself on the floor now, his spine cracking instantly as it fell back against the desk before he crumbled to the ground. He cursed his frail body silently, his lips unable to form the syllables and sounds for the man about to die. Instead, they hung open, leaking out a long and agonising groan as he felt himself slide across the mess on the floor. The soup splashed about his body, and the clothes stuck to his limbs as he was pulled further and further in to the gaping crevasse that once upon a time used to occupy the space of Dr.Botchi's torso. A gaping abyss of blood and bone, it sent out slithering organic appendages which wrapped themselves around Cavery's useless legs and sucked him inside, one cruel inch after the other.

He could hear them lapping all around him, the tendrils coiling up along his chest now, and soon enough, his neck. His eyes rolled back in his head, always hidden as they were behind that trusty mask of his, and in his final moments, Cavery thought of the island, and a certain boy who sat there now, awaiting the inevitable.



----

Lizzie's joints made cracking sounds as she stretched them far out behind her back, while her loud and squeaky yawn made her workmates giggle amongst themselves. Once she was ready, he popped her knuckles together, then slipped on her headset.

It was that time again.

"Good evening, and welcome to your 5th and final announcement! I'm your host, Lizzle Badizzle Nolan, and boy, what a night we have in store for you!

But before I get to the good stuff, here's the mandatory blah blah shit that I guess I have to do since I'm like, the professional here."

A scoff from Carl.

A crude gesture from Lizzie.

"Welp, this'll be easy anyway, since both Iris Landon and Samantha Reynolds bit the dust by... wow, that is the stupidest- what's wrong with these kids. Are they retarded? Do they even have brains? I mean, I spent three days over there too, not too long ago, and I gotta tell you guys, I did soooo much better than you have. I mean seriously. DANGER ZONES ARE NOT FOR PLAYING IN.

See, they're called danger zones because, hey, they're dangerous. One step in there and you're all "Wah! I'm totally dead now! Shit! Shoulda listened to ol' Lizzy-pie 'cause she actually knows what she's talking about. Dayum.", haha!

Haaah, oh well. Your losses. No skin off my delightfully perky nose.

No, you shush. It is perky. What? It is! Try and flick it. Go on. I dare you. Fliiiick it. Come on, fliiiick it. You know you want to, Carl. Don't even try to hide it. You wanna flick my nose so bad, don'tcha. I can smell it. You know what it smells like, Carl? It smells like- woah, what're you- mmph! No! I don't- mmm... o-okay, just- mmph..."

The sounds of muffled tongues found their way to the small microphone that was now sitting sideways on her desk, as she and Carl shared an intimate, albeit surprisingly so moment together in the middle of the studio.

Which... went on for far too long and had to be interrupted by a nauseous co-worker, who tried not to get pulled in to the kiss-fest by poking at them with his pencil.

"Oh- oh! Right! The, er, the announcement! Right! Gotcha! Hah. All... er... alright then. I'll er, I'll get back to you on that one."

And as she cleared her throat and sat back down, Carl slunk back to his chair, wearing the most satisfied look upon his face.

"And... um, ah, fuck, sorry about this, I'm er, a little, l-lost. Ahem. Right. Ray Pietrowski was the last to die, killed off by a very an... gry-"

She went quiet as her eyes scanned over the name of his killer.

Took it in slow.


"...Arab."

She stopped reading, and didn't notice at first when Carl came back over to read off the last part of the list.

She noticed the hand on her shoulder though.

"Hi. Um... the boss wants you all to meet in the Black Forest for the final part of the trial. You've got two hours to get there, and after that everywhere else will become a danger zone, so make sure you're gone by then.

And er, oh, Khalid, if you're listening?"

They shared a look.



"Stay safe, buddy."

----

OOC: Awright, so, finally we've made it. Now this is done, we can get on with the last part of the rp, and oh yeah, it's only ENDGAME, bitches!

Stay tuned, my friends, because the final five are about to become the final one.