Night 75: Secret Stairs

[his_legacy]

[From here]

Link struggled to force his eyes to adjust to the sudden white light of the moving staircase. As always, they began moving as soon as he stepped up. He turned to face Sora, finally breaking the silence.

"Hopefully the top brings us partially through the journey like it did last night."

Comments

[fourstonewalls]

[from here]

Lana took point on the staircase, gun trained on the top of the steps. "I was a little distracted; did you see anything about where we ended up last night?" The end of the night was a haze of pain and teleportation nausea; she wasn't even sure she remembered opening her eyes again before hearing Landel's voice in the morning.

[ryuuzaki]

He holstered his Walther before stepping onto the escalator, but left off the catch, and remained ready to draw it all the way up, his hand relaxed on the grip.

"No, nothing." He sounded grim to himself, and regretful. If he could have mastered the nausea quickly enough, he might have seen it, but that hadn't been possible.

"If the device is meant to function that way --" (the closer he got to Landel's probable location, the less he wanted to trade in specifics) "-- then it seems most likely that we'll need to do our part first. I don't know how much longer it will be until we've found the right place, and it seems as if we'll only have one chance... the notes suggested it has to happen the same night. If we fail, the password will most likely change, and it could be a while before we have another chance.

"I'm not sure we have that kind of time." Sometimes Landel's threats were empty bluster, sometimes they weren't. If he could force people into the molds he had created for them whenever he wanted to, why bother with the hospital charade at all? Maybe he'd gotten better at it, maybe that explained why more patients had disappeared recently, but it didn't make sense for that to be the full story.

They were nearing the top of the escalator. L's hand tightened on his pistol, and he shifted his stance, making it stronger. His heart rate accelerated. If the escalator worked as it had the previous night, they'd soon be in a room they hadn't yet seen. If it didn't, they might wind up in the monitoring room again, and they might not have it to themselves.

[To here.]