Night 74: Main Hallway, 3-West

[redcladidealist]

[From here.]

As Lloyd peered down the hall, first one way, then the other, he quickly came to the same conclusion the others must have drawn. Turning right would lead them to a dead end. Left was the only option.

There were no doors in sight, just another stretch of hall, walls featureless and oppressive. The silence hung heavy and thick between them. It made Lloyd's skin itch, tempting him to say something, raise his voice and yell just for the sake of breaking the atmosphere that this whole building tried to create. He tamped the urge down. The halls looked empty, but that didn't mean they were safe.

On the right he could see a set of stairs that led down. No, definitely not that way. The second floor wasn't where they wanted to go. In a way, though, it helped him orient himself. Stairs. The only stairs he'd seen on the floors below were...

He kept his voice low. "Do you think that's the Sun Room up ahead?" Had they just come around in a circle?

Comments

[freewill]

Castiel had been trying to orient himself ever since they'd moved out into the hallways. While this floor was designed to disorient them, the building's floor plan seemed to follow a certain pattern, which meant that eventually they should come across something familiar.

It was as they reached the end of the hall and found a dead end to the right that Castiel started to suspect they were on the far west end of the floor. When Lloyd spoke up and asked them about the Sun Room, Castiel paused and looked around. This did give him a sense of having been here before, and if he imagined where he'd be were this the second floor, it made sense.

"But... that would mean we'll have ended up right back where we started," he said, sounding none too pleased about that fact.

On the other hand, it looked like there was another hallway branching off to the left. Maybe they should search around there first before they assumed too much.

[forsworn]

"We'll check the left, then" Kratos said, nodding in the direction of the adjoining hallway. He too had been developing (or, trying to develop) some kind of mental map of the third floor, and he was fairly certain that they had never gone in that direction before. "That's the only way we haven't gone yet."

Of course, the teleportation pads made it difficult to say that with full surety; he could only hope that his confidence was not misplaced.

[to here]

[ryuuzaki]

[From here.]

Balancing his mixed feelings was difficult. He was nervous like a cat--used to hunting, but anxious for his own safety. His optimism related to the current plan ebbed and flowed unpredictably. He and Lana were so vulnerable here, in the long open hall, and in the Institute itself. If this scheme didn't pay off soon, they would need to find a way to bring someone with more physical strength into their group. Everything was fine at the moment, for values of "fine" appropriate to the circumstances--but it could go wrong in a second.

The orientation of the turn in the corridor made their location obvious. There was no reason to believe that they weren't still in the same building. The closet they'd come from was above the patient rooms, the sleep study area, and probably also the morgue.

Not much to their right but a dead end, but the entire span of the third floor was to their left. If they were going to do this systematically, the easiest thing would be to take every left turn and look for likely doors. He started in the more useful direction, and a gap in the wall showed that there was another corridor, not far ahead, also on the left. Beyond it, open spaces, other gaps.

When they reached that next hall, his flashlight confirmed that there was no shortage of possibilities. The beam passed across the sign on the door nearest to him, and he could see the words: Records Archive. There was a card lock, too.

He glanced at Lana, eyebrows raised, not voicing the obvious question.
your princess is in another castle?!

[fourstonewalls]

He wanted her to take point? Certainly. She swept around the corner into the dead-end hallway, and made for the first door.

[to here]

[lighthearted]

[From here.]

"We're almost there," Sora told Lloyd as he moved into the main hallway. This looked almost exactly like the layout of the second floor. In fact, if Sora hadn't known any better he would have thought that was where they were, but luckily that wasn't the case.

It was like Landel had purposefully built this place to be confusing. How annoying.

"We take the next left, and then the archive should be there."

[his_legacy]

At least Lloyd seemed to have found the right place. Link admitted to himself that he was slightly uneasy about the presence of two places called Hyrule, but he supposed he could only hope that he would be sent to the right one.

"It seems that we were directly above the dormitories..." he murmured as he tried to put together a map in his mind. The layout of each floor was at least predictable. Small graces.

He rounded the corner Sora indicated.

[To here]