Night 64: X-Ray Room

[damned_intercom]

As soon as the patients entered the dark room, the first thing they might have noticed were a couple of short bursts of static from the intercom. But no voices or cryptic messages greeted them.

Instead, their eyes would undoubtedly be drawn toward the strange picture of a human stomach carefully painted onto the southern wall, its paint casting an eerie green glow that cut into the darkness.

Although the artist had done their best to make the picture as clear as possible, they had apparently decided to leave a sharp kitchen knife perched on X-Ray table to compensate the patients for their troubles. Hopefully whoever picked it up would be able to make good use of it and the clue created for them.

Comments

[gald_digger]

[from here]

Well, they definitely weren't the first ones here.

Actually, there were a ton of people. Not clones, either, but distinctly different, normal-looking people. Several of them appeared to be injured, but none of them appeared to be turning into monsters at the moment. That was a plus, right?

"This is it," Anise breathed, relieved to be in what appeared to be a safe space, even if that could change at any moment. She took a moment to look over the room and the people inside, but her attention was quickly drawn to the conspicuous greenish drawing scrawled on one of the walls. "What's that? Could it be the clue?" She'd been hoping for something a lot more detailed, like a journal or a note at the very least. Maybe one of the other patients found something before they arrived, like that creep by the entrance said.

[earthling]

Like Anise, Claude was surprised to find the room so crowded. But more importantly, several of them looked like they hadn't gotten off as lucky as the three of them. He wondered if they'd been attacked by that monster back there, or if something else had happened. The thought that there could be other victims like that poor woman made Claude's stomach turn.

Before he could dwell on the gory details for too long, his attention was drawn toward the glowing picture etched onto the wall, some of the iridescent green paint dripping downward. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to make heads or tails out of it. Was this supposed to be another riddle? Or were they supposed to take the message literally?

"I...guess," he muttered as he studied the picture. "Is it just me, or does it look like a butterfly inside of a human stomach?"

[nobleman]

What they ended up running into was a mess. Guy came to a quick stop when he realized that the small room was practically filled to the brim by now, with not much in the way of breathing room. On top of it all, half of the people here seemed to be injured.

Oddly enough, Guy didn't actually recognize any of the other people here, though some of them had familiar faces. It seemed that for now, though, they were going to focus on staying out of everyone else's way. None of them had healing powers as far as he was aware, so what could they do?

When Anise and Claude both drew their attention to the drawing on the wall, made with some sort of paint that showed perfectly even in the dark, Guy also set about examining it. Claude was quick to make a conjecture about it, and Guy moved to his side, tilting his head as he realized that was exactly what it looked like. "No," he said after a pause, "it's not just you."

[gald_digger]

A stomach? Anise wasn't sure at first, but... it sort of did look like a diagram she saw in a book before. Butterflies in the stomach... with all the anxiety Anise was having over her illness, she understood the feeling well, but she wasn't so sure what the image was actually conveying.

"What do you think it means?" she asked, looking to each of her friends. The more she thought about it, the worse ideas came to mind. "... Is something wrong with our stomachs?"

[earthling]

Wrinkling his nose, Claude patted his belly with a gloved hand as he considered the possibilities. He'd felt nauseated before, sure, but it hadn't been severe or painful -- just kind of unpleasant, like he'd had too much junk food or eaten something that was a tad past its expiration date.

Still, there were only so many ways they could interpret a clue like that. He looked back at the other patients in the room, wondering if they had similar thoughts about the painting. Then again, with the way some of them looked, they probably had other things on their minds...

"Well, I'm not sure why else they'd draw a stomach," he said as he tried to piece things together out loud. "Didn't the intercom message say we could use this somehow? I wonder if the X-Ray machines could pick up on something like that."

[nobleman]

The moment that Claude made that point, it was as if everything had clicked into place. Not that something like an X-Ray was common back on Auldrant, but Guy had heard of it before and he knew what the technology was capable of. It could basically see into a person's body and reveal certain things, and it couldn't have been coincidence that the clue had been placed in this room.

Of course, only scientists that were well-trained would have known how to work a machine like this, and chances were that the technology that went into it on Earth was completely different from Auldrant. Which meant that Guy was basically useless in this situation.

He sighed to himself, but now wasn't the time to be dwelling on his own shortcomings, so he turned to Claude. "Do you have any idea of how to work something like this? If we can get a look at what's going on inside you two, maybe we can figure out how to stop it." There were some obvious solutions that came to mind, but none of them were acceptable in his opinion.

[gald_digger]

Anise was just about convinced they'd run into a dead end when Claude mentioned the machines. She didn't really know anything about x-rays, but from following the conversation, she could at least understand that they could help with identifying the problem.

"We can do that!?" Though her motivation had been steadily waning over the last while, there was a renewed flicker of hope in her eyes. "Even if we don't know how to use it, it's worth a try, right?" It couldn't hurt to try. With their lives on the line, Anise was more than willing to take her chances with some mystery machine.

Of course, there was a chance that the machines just wouldn't work to begin with. But with Claude, who was familiar with Earth technology, and Guy, who was big on machines in general, Anise really wanted to believe they could figure something out.

[earthling]

"I'm no expert, but I might be able to figure it out," Claude with a scratch of his cheek. Technology was one of his strong points, and it wasn't like it could be anymore sophisticated than the things he had seen at home or on Energy Nede.

"I guess that's the table people getting X-rayed are supposed to lie on," he observed as he turned his attention over at the small group gathered there. Once he took in the full scene, his mouth pulled into a worried frown. "Looks like someone who got injured is using it, though. I feel bad asking them to move the guy."

Besides, the beam from his hat revealed crimson-stained cloth close at hand. If he was bleeding on the table, then they'd need to wipe it down pretty thoroughly before sitting on it. That was especially important since so many of them were dealing with this strange illness.

[nobleman]

At this point, it seemed like they had no other option but to try and figure this out. There was just one problem, though, which was that apparently the place where the person being tested had to sit was already occupied, and by someone who was hurt and didn't look like he'd be standing any time soon.

With that in mind, though, there was one possible solution. "I wonder if he's feeling sick too," Guy said after a pause. "I mean, I know he's hurt, but they came here for information too, right? Since he's already there, maybe he'll let us run the test on him."

In theory, whatever they saw inside that man would be inside Anise and Claude as well. The symptoms that everyone was suffering from seemed similar enough, although he was only guessing there. All of them had the same rash, if nothing else. Of course, this meant that they were going to have to approach the group of strangers...

Guy looked to Anise and smiled briefly. "Think you can work some of your charm and ask them?"

[gald_digger]

So they needed to use that table. Anise shared Claude's apprehension about asking an injured guy to move, but Guy's suggestion seemed like a fair compromise. Even if it was kind of rude to ask, getting a test done on even one person was going to benefit every sick person in the room. They all had the same sickness, after all - or so she assumed.

When Guy asked her to be the one to approach them, a smile finally returned to Anise's face. "Ooh, so you think I'm charming?" she teased. It was nice to know he noticed her cuteness, though. Girls needed to hear that once in a while! "I guess I can give it a try. Leave it to me!" Suddenly energetic again, Anise made her way over to the strangers standing around the table.

[to here]