darkness

[Yonagoda]

Melodie squeezed back. She didn't want to find the sound. If she didn't face it, it wouldn't be real. If nobody wrote the observation down then it never happened. A tree cut down in a forest with no people in it, you know. Schrodinger, Schrodinger, Schrodinger.

"If it doesn't sound dangerous," she said, "We shouldn't care about it."

[Kermit]

As Melodie and Yvette said what they said, Astrid shifted her weight to one foot and turned her head backwards to face half into the darkness of the hallway behind her. She chewed on the inside of her lip, grimaced, and turned back to them once they were done.

She sighed harshly.

"I'm not sure if you - okay. Just listen. People are fucking dead." She stated. "This is happening. It's real. I've got blood on me. It's not my blood. I don't know whose blood it is. I don't know how it got there. It's not mine. People have done this sort of thing before. Los Zetas. So. So."

She took a sharp breath in.

"So. Yvette. You might need to reevaluate what you think I was really implying."

She never blinked.

[MurderWeasel]

"Oh," Yvette said.

What had seemed simple a moment ago no longer was.

Melodie's suggestion that they not worry about anything that didn't sound dangerous was totally reasonable, but to Yvette a mysterious, unaccounted-for smashing somewhere in the darkness with no apparent cause or aftermath was precisely the sort of thing that spoke to possible danger. That was what had prompted her concern in the first place; even if it was just their class here and there weren't any animals around, it could be somebody hiding and panicking, and a lot of them had powers that could turn the situation unsafe. And without knowing more about their environment, there was no telling if it was something more concerning, like the ceiling of the next room being about to cave in, or any number of other hazardous surprises.

Astrid, meanwhile, was telling Yvette that she had misunderstood the code. This meant that they were not in agreement to hunker down here and try to wait it out. Yvette didn't know what Los Zetas was, but she trusted that Astrid knew what she was talking about—she usually did. What they were facing was real, and the girl was getting worked up with concern about the blood on her. It seemed like it could've been from the meat, but that didn't especially matter, did it? It didn't change that they were in trouble.

Yvette did manage to at least get her flashlight hand out of the bag, despite the large size of the device. She directed the light haphazardly, flashing over banks of ancient electronics that looked like they belonged on the set of an old movie with a small budget. There was a lot of meat on the floor around her and Melodie, and some of it was still throbbing with contractions.

"So," she said, turning her head to Astrid but keeping the light safely pointed to a far corner, where it reflected dully off a stainless steel filing cabinet, "what do you think we should do?"

And then, to Melodie: "And I just want to make sure we can afford to not care."

[Yonagoda]

''The blood is probably made by me. And it's not technically blood, but I won't get into it that much.''

She always called it blood in her internal monologues because it sounded more visceral.

Also, Astrid might've been sitting next to one of the peooke that were shot, but her mind wasn't really willing to stick itself to that concept yet. It slipped by her, and now she realized that if Astrid really did have blood on her from somebody else, that would make her feel really bad. But that thought also kind of didn't stay long.

''Los Zetas did this thing back in 2011, yeah,'' she muttered. ''Made a bunch of people kill each other. Like the gladiators.''

They told the guys that if they survive, they'll be a hitman for them, going on suicide missions against rival gangs. And hitmen on suicide missions don't last very long, so in the end it's pretty lose-lose.

''We can't afford to not care, but... think.of it this way. This is a dark, difficult to navigate place. There is a hallway in there that is now slathered with flesh. If someone is trying to kill people, going into the mysterious hostile dark complex or whatever isn't their best pick, probably. We're probably safer here than somewhere else.''

Geographic location probably had no bearings on survival rate in this game, but she really, really didn't want to leave.

Melodie released her hand. She thought about how they will eventually have to kill each other, in the end, if it comes down to it. She was pretty sure that was what Astrid was implying, anyways, though she wouldn't be sure until Astrid said it, and then after that she still wouldn't be sure because Astrid looked like a really good liar.

[Kermit]

Astrid remained completely still.

"It was already dry when I woke up. It's blood."

She inhaled, and switched the flashlight into her left hand. Then, she blinked. She switched the flashlight back into her right.

She craned her neck backwards, pointing her face slightly towards the ceiling above the other two girls. She blew out an exhalation. The flashlight beam began to jitter slightly.

"Yvette, just, please, I need you to come over here," she said, her throat sounding like it was starting to close up.

[MurderWeasel]

Yvette took one small step away from Melodie and towards Astrid, but only one.

No longer moored by Melodie's grasp, she swapped the flashlight to her left hand and zipped the bag back up again with her right. She blinked, but it was really more slowly closing her eyes, hiding behind the lids for a slow two-count, and then reopening them. It was so much easier in total darkness.

The situation as Yvette saw it could be laid out simply. Generally speaking, she trusted Astrid to have a handle on all of this more than she did Melodie. On the other hand, Melodie was more in need of someone to be with her than Astrid was. Right now, Melodie had presented the more compelling case for their course of action, but that was because she was trying to be convincing. Astrid was being deliberately opaque, and aiming her communication at Yvette alone.

The difficult part was, Yvette thought she knew what was happening here. She was pretty sure Astrid was looking out for her, and had been this whole time. She was pretty sure Astrid didn't trust Melodie at all, and thought the girl was dangerous or unstable. There had been, at minimum, two attempts on Astrid's part to get or keep Yvette away from Melodie, which meant that was probably what was still going on. If Yvette took those five remaining steps to Astrid's side, it would be so easy to cut the lights and slip away, leave Melodie to her own dark pit and go do something more useful, or at least more pleasant.

Yvette gave it serious consideration. It had now been confirmed that this wasn't an unprecedented situation. They were in big trouble, and there was an actual chance that people might sustain serious harm or even die. If what the kidnappers had said was true, some of their classmates were even already dead. There were some people on the trip Yvette wanted to talk to, if this was how their stories were going to end, and she didn't think too many of them would wander into this basement or warehouse or whatever it was.

But the thought of Melodie sitting here alone in the dark, with her oozing walls and pulsing floor, and what sort of reception she might get from others all on her own, just didn't sit right with Yvette.

Both of her hands were on her flashlight now, and almost absently she shifted it, pointing the beam right at the ceiling above Astrid.

[Yonagoda]

''Oh.''

Melodie squinted her eyes. She felt that wooziness in her brain like she got up too quickly, and her eyes, exposed to the light, felt the equivalent.

She felt like she was unwelcome here. She felt like she was unwelcome everywhere. She wished she knew what was happening in Astrid's head.

Melodie didn't know what to say nor feel at the moment. She just sort of... existed.

[Kermit]

The beam from Yvette's flashlight on the ceiling glistened and reflected off the upper portions of Astrid's eyes. She winced and took a step back, still craning her neck.

"Please, it's too much for me to explain now, but leaving her alone is the best thing we can do to help her." She said quietly.

She sniffled.

[MurderWeasel]

Yvette stood, listening and thinking but mostly focused on remembering.

How well did Astrid know Melodie? Yvette didn't talk to her classmates about each other much, not on a social level, because she got along pretty well with people who didn't like each other, and some of the people who bothered her were in turn well-liked. But even if they were closer to each other than either was to Yvette—and she doubted that—it didn't matter in this situation.

All Yvette's life, people had been trying to help her, but according to their own rules and experiences. Her parents made her eat regular meals most of the time for years and years, even though she hated broccoli and hamburgers and just wanted ice cream every night. Right at the end, Jenelle tried to save Yvette from herself. Even the day she was born, the nurse almost stopped everything right there by cutting the cord. Good intentions were not the same as understanding.

The flashlight beam was wiggling, doing loops and figure eights on the ceiling, but Yvette steadied it and pointed it over at a corner again instead as she turned and looked back and forth between the other two, who she couldn't really see that well without illumination.

"I'm sorry," she said to Astrid. "I know you want to help."

Then:

"Melodie, what do you want? What would be best for you?"

[Lilith]

There was the shaking of a door further down the hallway.

A swear. A woman's voice. It was a deep voice. Like a smoker's who had stopped smoking a long time ago. The door shook again.

There were footsteps on the metal grates. It rattled like a rattlesnake, warning people of the incoming danger, or maybe as a taunt as it is driving closer toward the girls. It rattled, unlike a rattlesnake this time, a woman's voice swearing again.

She passed by the girls, stopped in her tracks, and then rattled the door to the room.

Shaking the handle to its hinges.

[Yonagoda]

''What I want,'' she sniffled, ''Is for you to stop treating me like I'm a threat.''

(The rattling of the door, in hindsight, almost punctuated her last words, at least in her own self-centered, half blind unrecontexualized view.)

[Kermit]

The door rattled. Astrid's eyes shot wide, her brows raised up, and her face jerked toward the sound. As her head moved, a single trickle of dark fluid drew itself down along her upper lip, starting from her left nostril. The rest of her, including her flashlight, remained frozen completely still.

She sniffled. Then, she bared her teeth. The dark line continued, diffusing down across the white enamel until being cut across by her lower lip.

Her eyebrow nearest to Yvette and Melodie narrowed.

[MurderWeasel]

Yvette felt the corners of her lips start to turn down and put in the concentration to halt their movement. There was unidentified sound again, now the rattling of a door handle and a muttering voice (oddly familiar), and maybe that was the return of the mysterious sound from earlier or maybe it was the unknown boy or maybe it was yet another complication, but there was too much going on for her to give it proper full attention. Astrid was making a face, a dark streak forming on one side of it, and Yvette would have attention for that in a second, maybe, but Melodie's words had pulled her in most clearly of all.

"I'm not treating you like a threat, okay?" she said, turning to make eye contact except it was too dark to do it right, and she sounded so petulant and defensive to herself that she took a quick second to shift tracks. Her voice stayed quick and shaky, though.

"Melodie, I'm, I'm not afraid of you," Yvette continued, "but I am afraid. I'm afraid of, of this—" she waved her hand vaguely at the ceiling, flashlight along for the ride casting wild shadows and glints of reflection "—I'm one of the people that, that they called out as being in special danger. And I'm also afraid for you. I can't, I don't want to just leave you here alone. I don't know if someone else will come in and freak out, or maybe have their power going out of control, or..."

As she rambled, Yvette became aware of a weird feeling, something skittering over the tops of her shoes and against her socks at the ankle, and she had one brief moment where she thought Melodie was losing control again and the meat was starting an ivy-like ascent of her legs, but then she redirected the flashlight and gave a yelp, jumping backwards and barely managing not to crash into Melodie.

Ants and cockroaches were scuttling from the corners, burrowing out of the ground, struggling through the masses of floor flesh, climbing over walls and consoles en masse on their way to cracks in the ceiling and the world above.

[Wham Yubeesling]

“Come, little maggot, grow out your wings~”
“Pledge yourself to our unity~”

[DerArknight]

((Gary Greer-Wheatly continued from Induction))

A lot of stairs above them, Gary looked at the central stairwell leading into the darkness below.

And at the masses of insects crawling down the stairs.

This decision was an easy one to make.

"Nope."

So he decided to check out the upper part of the building instead. Isabella would have to come upstairs eventually.

((Gary Greer-Wheatly continued in The Dream Machine Takes All of Us))