Night 63: Bus 1

[age_of_kings]

By the time the darkness fell and the strange fluxing of air swept across the buses, Tolten still wasn't certain what was going on. Only that there was some problem with the final bus, and that they had been waiting to resume.

Of course now it was very certain that there would be no return trip tonight. Whatever the implications of that were, the young king had no idea. Nor did he spare a thought to it. Rather he found himself lurching to his feet and losing his lunch in the empty seat space behind him.

It was the only reaction his body could offer to what he saw unfold before his eyes, a twisted carnival show of gore and depravity the likes of which he had never imagined. Even the creatures in the sewers were less violent and torturous than this!

He knew he didn't have time for pity or wonderment as to whether or not the staff was always like that, under the surface, but his mind was slow to follow. He could only stare, shaking, his mind buzzing with fear and disgust and sorrow.

This was simply wrong!

[For Locke!]

Comments

[avengingfists]

"Shi--" Ilia hardly managed to snap off her expletive. The nurse was quickly becoming one of those monstrous things she had fought her very first night here, and she knew without a doubt that fighting in the close confines of the bus was not going to make it any less deadly. It might even work further against them. Ilia was not going to wait around to find out.

She grabbed Rose's hand and jumped out the seat into the aisle, shoving the girl back towards the exit door at the rear. "Move! Go! Go now!"

Other patients were scrambling just as fast to get away, and in such dangerous proximity it didn't go beyond anyone to throw another under the bus to escape. But Ilia was already in full-blown mother hen mode. Like hell would she allow anyone to knock Rose into harm's way. Not tonight.

[lovecraftcomplex]

There were faster ways out of here. If one was diminutive and highly maneuverable. Also, if one's hand wasn't being held by an insufferably interfering know-it-all. There was only room on this bus for one of those, and Rose was supposed to have that position covered.

She yanked her hand out of Ilia's, jumped up onto the seat, and pulled open one of the bus windows. She could just barely fit through; Ilia would have to go the long way around, which suited Rose just fine. She pushed up through it in a move that would have made a certain Disney mermaid blush with inadequacy, and then launched herself forward into a youth roll the likes of which hadn't been seen in the Institute (or environs) for at least twenty minutes.

She hadn't forgotten, per se, about the fact her entire torso had been recently skewered and hastily reassembled. She'd just ignored it. Now that she was flying through the air, she had time for one final thought. This was also going to hurt.

> Rose: Land already