Night 75: Live Cultures Test Chambers (Third Floor)

[redcladidealist]

[From here.]

At first Lloyd thought this room was as empty as the last, a few trolleys with jars and tools sitting on top, forgotten, the only signs of recent use. Two chambers much like the one that had nearly killed Kratos (and him, except that he'd been more lucky) stood on either side, ominously promising the same experience - or worse - if any of them dared to step through. The warp pad wasn't in either one, though. This time its soft purple glow lit up the room they were in from the far side, with no need to tempt fate in the pressure chambers again.

That same purple light revealed a flicker of movement as something large, maybe as tall as Lloyd was himself, darting back around the corner of one of the chambers. Lloyd's heart jumped in his chest, and he quickly motioned to the others.

They weren't alone in here.

"Who's there?!" he demanded, lifting both his swords.

Please, please just let it be another patient.

Comments

[damned_doctors]

He'd thought he would have enough time to get out of sight, given that the banging at the door had signaled to him that something or someone was trying to break their way in. Somehow, one of those pesky patients still caught a glimpse of him as he disappeared around the corner, but more than that, he recognized the voice.

Of all the bizarre coincidences, one of his pet projects had to be the first to find him.

Tempting as it was to say nothing and remain still and hope that they didn't find him, the doctor wasn't that stupid. They'd search the whole room if they had to.

So he steeled himself and came out with his hands help up in front of him. He wasn't armed -- all he had were the clothes on his back, and his labcoat was torn at the back from one of those nasty lab experiments that had almost taken a chunk out of him.

It was still dark enough that his face wouldn't be particularly visible, but he imagined that would change soon enough.

"Before you shoot," he said with a glance at the other patient's gun, "I might be able to make it worth your while to let me live."

[fourstonewalls]

The light from Lana's flashlight glinted off the barrel of her pistol as she followed Lloyd through the door; she'd only ever done this a few times as a detective -- it wasn't like TV -- but she'd done it dozens of times here. This time there was something to see, and Lloyd reacted even more quickly then she did. She just stiffened, slightly, to let Ryuuzaki know that she'd seen something. Perhaps he wouldn't follow.

Or Lloyd could just strike up a conversation with whatever was lurking. Well, that was one option. It did, surprisingly, seem to be a human. Or look like one, at least. One who hadn't turned into a zombie, even. She held the gun steady. "Mmm?" It wasn't quite a word; just a little questioning hum; the man clearly had something to say, and she didn't actually want to shoot him outright.

Ryuuzaki could do so if it turned out to be a bad idea to let him talk.

[ryuuzaki]

Lana moved into the room ahead of L, and he caught her slight hesitation -- something had surprised her, and it must have been the same thing that had caused Lloyd to call out. He followed her, expecting trouble, but glances into the room's dark corners showed nothing, and there didn't appear to be anyone hiding behind the door.

He made his way more fully into the room as the doctor came out, and once he was in, he raised his flashlight to the doctor's face, shining it in his eyes, intending to disorient him.

He didn't really want to shoot the man unless he had no choice, but at the same time, dragging a hostage around would be a liability. It might be easiest to lock him in one of the small areas off the previous hallway, although trapping him with a bunch of chemicals seemed like a bad strategy: while the doctor seemed to care enough about his own survival to try to make a deal with them, if he became convinced he couldn't make it out, it would make it easy for him to create a poisonous gas, or possibly to start a fire.

"Might," he replied, sounding more cool and skeptical than he felt, keeping his gun and flashlight trained on the doctor. "Please close the door, Castiel."

Probably, the best idea would be for someone to knock their new friend out, but L wanted to hear what he had to say, first.

Maybe nothing useful, maybe begging, maybe information that they couldn't trust. At this point, though, he might be trying to buy himself some friends. He had to be aware of how things looked, and if he had been confident that Landel would right it, he probably wouldn't have been hiding. Unless... given that L was relatively sure that Landel knew exactly who his patients were, what their abilities were, and what they had been up to all evening, how much stock could they put in appearances?

If L could believe his own most straightforward analysis, then it most likely hinged on Landel's arrogance. He always believed that he held the upper hand; he consistently underestimated his opponents, or played them against each other or at least took advantage of their enmity, as had seemed to happen with Aguilar. He might be doing the same now, and he might even be watching this particular encounter.

So where would the doctor lay his own odds -- with the patients, who were making progress that they'd never made before, or with the Head Doctor?

[freewill]

As he was the last one to enter the room, the doctor had already shown himself by the time that Castiel stepped inside. It was the white coat that gave him away as someone different, and his defensive nature predisposed Castiel to suspicion. The man assumed they wanted to kill him, which meant that he had to be one of the doctors who performed the experiments.

There was no way for Castiel to know if he was the one responsible for what had been done to Dean, but it didn't matter in the end. The point was that he had tortured some of his fellow patients; whether Castiel knew those specific people or not was irrelevant.

He did as Ryuuzaki asked and shut the door. The doctor could still race through the warp pad if he was swift about it, but he seemed pragmatic enough to not risk that. A smart choice, seeing how the four of them could put him out of his misery in a matter of seconds.

It was curiosity more than anything that made Castiel decide to hear the man out. He wouldn't hesitate to kill him. After the things that he'd done, he was no better than any supernatural creature.

[redcladidealist]

The moment the doctor spoke, Lloyd's breath nearly froze in his chest. That voice. It wasn't a particularly remarkable voice - no quirks, no accent that Lloyd could pin down, just smooth and controlled. But he knew that voice. He could still hear it sometimes, the same way he could sometimes hear the soft sound of a scalpel being picked up, the swish of air as a blade started to fall. Not just controlled, but in control.

Hello, Lloyd.

"You."

The click of the door when Castiel shut it jolted Lloyd out of the instinctive, nerveless terror that tried to rush through him at the sound of that voice. Anger replaced it - at himself for being afraid in the first place, but more because it was that man. The man who'd tortured him, tortured other people, Lloyd's own father, and had been so smug admitting it! Lloyd's hands clenched around his swords, even though he couldn't feel the grip.

Because of what this man had done to him.

"Why should we believe anything you have to say?" Fury boiled in his voice as he advanced on the doctor. His swords flashed in the light. He wasn't helpless this time. "After everything you've done- Where's Kratos!?" Because it couldn't be coincidence, running into this man the same night that Kratos disappeared. "You're the one who tortured him before! What did you do to him!?"

[damned_doctors]

Two guns pointed at him, and Lloyd armed with two swords. Wasn't this his lucky night? The fourth patient stood behind the rest, but the look on his face betrayed just how little he'd deliberate over murdering him. The answer was "not at all."

Of course, it was Lloyd who reacted the most and advanced on him with all of that righteous anger. The doctor could hardly even blame him. He had done terrible things to him and his father in the name of science, and because Landel had asked him to. He wouldn't deny that.

The one way out of this was by making a deal of some kind, and even then that might not be enough. He could make a break for it, but he'd have to try and maneuver his way closer to the warp pad to manage that. For now, he remained still and feigned calm as he considered Lloyd's questions.

"I had nothing to do with your father's release," he said, resisting the urge to shrug because that would only anger Lloyd further. "But he's no longer here." Brainwashed and released into the general masses, just like so many others. "But that's not what I'm here to talk about." His gaze shifted down to the back of Lloyd's hand. "I can help you with that little problem."

[fourstonewalls]

Lana had asked Ema several painful questions about her experience with the doctors, but she'd never actually asked the basics. No description, no identifying marks. So she could hold her gun steady with complete equanimity; the doctors, at least, hadn't killed anyone. She'd faced much, much worse.

The deal the man was offering wasn't really anything they needed to hear, but she doubted they could convince Lloyd of that. Also, she didn't actually know what Lloyd's little problem was; none of the alterations the doctors made were helpful, but some of them had seemed worse than others; without that knowledge she certainly couldn't convince him.

"Is this really necessary?" she muttered instead; they could all hear her, but it was clearly a rhetorical question. We'll go this way, and you'll leave us alone. was the offer she wanted to make, but Lloyd was the one who needed to come to that decision.

[ryuuzaki]

A bit of begging, a bit of bartering, not exactly on the side of the patients, but looking for mercy from them.

So, this man had been Kratos's sleep study doctor. L didn't recognize him, and he was fairly certain that, even if he were very heavily drugged, and even if a false moustache were involved, he would never mistake the man for Watari. That meant it wasn't likely that he had been L's doctor.

L tilted very slightly in Lana's direction to answer her question in a low voice; the other two were both close enough to overhear him. "Let's leave that up to Lloyd, for the time being." It would be the easiest way to proceed, and on top of that, they'd be able to learn what exactly the "problem" was that the doctor was referring to.

He wondered if he would eventually have to stop Lloyd from killing the man, then he wondered, almost idly and on the heels of that, if he would bother to stop him. He really should, if it came to that and if it was at all possible. His heart wasn't in letting the man be killed, but on the other hand, it was barely in ensuring his survival... the only thing he felt strongly attached to at the moment was moving on and doing what he could to ensure that he and the other three would make their way out alive.

[freewill]

Castiel also felt that when it came down to it, this was a distraction and nothing else. Obviously it was of significance to Lloyd, and Castiel didn't necessarily think that they should let the doctor get away, but he couldn't help but think of the ticking clock. If that security system booted back up, they could lose their chance to finish this and stop Landel. A single doctor didn't matter much when compared to all that.

Ryuuzaki was right, though. In the end, the amount of time they devoted to this doctor was up to Lloyd. And if he decided to cut him down, Castiel wouldn't stop him. What point would there be in letting a person like this live? It didn't seem as if he'd been made to experiment on them against his will. He'd signed up to ruin others' lives and toy with their bodies. Castiel would feel no remorse if the man died.

He shifted away from the door and closer to the glowing warp pad, in case they would need to stop the man from fleeing.

[redcladidealist]

Lloyd barely managed to hold back a flinch when the doctor's eyes zeroed in on his hand. He could still remember the feel as the blade sliced through his skin, short, sharp bursts of pain, of sheer helplessness, that had torn his mother's Exsphere away. His hand jerked at the memory, and his anger threatened to boil even higher.

"If you think I'm going to put myself back in your hands so you can experiment on me again-" he started off with a snarl, only to cut himself off, because suddenly it occurs to him that the man who took his Key Crest and Exsphere was standing right here, and if he was offering to fix what he did, then he knew where the things he took were. Lloyd's breath momentarily freezes in his chest at the thought of getting them back.

Because he knows. He knows that without a real Key Crest, he's as good as dead. Maybe not right now, maybe not even in a week, but sooner or later, the fake on his hand just wouldn't be enough to keep his father's Cruxis Crystal in check. He's seen what happens first hand when someone's mana goes out of control, and...

Marble.

Exbelua.

The thought of turning into a monster like that and turning on his own friends was enough to shoot an icy spike of fear down his spine. He struggled not to swallow, to let the doctor see how effect the threat he'd uttered was, and instead chose to glare at him.

"Just tell me where my Exsphere is, and my Key Crest, and my dad's. I'll fix it myself," he growled. Even if it meant letting this man get away, because Lana's muttered words were right. They didn't have time to deal with this on top of everything else they had to do tonight.

[damned_doctors]

There seemed to be some questioning among the group as to whether they should expend any time on him at all. Given that they had this moment of opportunity where the building was vulnerable, it was a worthwhile question, though he wasn't about to argue his own case. If anything, that would make them less likely to let him off the hook.

He didn't expect to get away from this scot-free. Still, if he gave Lloyd what he wanted with no other questions asked, then he might have a chance.

The doctor noticed the man in the coat inching toward the warp pad. Unfortunate, but he would have to rely on being faster than him.

"What if I told you that they were in this very room?" He didn't feel that he needed to give the exact location. Surely four people searching together could find Lloyd's precious Key Crest in no time. All they had to do was take their attention off of him long enough to do so.

[fourstonewalls]

If pressed, Lana would have to admit she had absolutely no idea what Lloyd or the doctor were talking about; whether these were sentimental items or tools they could use, she had no idea. It also didn't matter, as the doctor was stalling for time.

She'd put the odds of him telling the truth very low, though it wasn't impossible. The best lies were the ones that weren't lies at all, just useless. He was trying to distract them; he'd distracted Lloyd, certainly.

"That would be convenient," Lana said. She'd kept the gun trained on the man throughout the conversation, but now she squinted down the barrel, sighting a center-of-mass shot. It put her at a disadvantage trying to race to the teleportation device, but someone had to take the initiative. "That's a good start; perhaps you'd like to elaborate."

[ryuuzaki]

A number of things were happening at once, but not very quickly. Lloyd's back-and-forth with the doctor continued, although L couldn't be sure what they were talking about. Castiel shifted towards the pad, moving behind L, and L caught the doctor clocking him doing it. That suggested that the man intended to make a break for it. Lana had him in her sights, and she wasn't a bad shot, but that didn't mean she intended to shoot him in cold blood so much as deter him.

Did it matter if the doctor got ahead of them?

Landel had given every indication of knowing that the patients were working up here, and the security system was down, which meant that any progress they were making was no longer in any way quiet. He knew they were coming: one doctor ahead of them wasn't more of an alert than the wailing sirens.

The Institute itself had a staginess, a false and performative element, but some of the things L had suspected of being set-ups (simply because the entire experience was so weird that he had to consider the idea) had turned out not to be. They might reach the end of all this and find not their freedom, but the knowledge that they had passed a final series of tests; conversely, Landel might really be as overconfident as he'd always seemed.

Either way, it didn't seem logical that every element they'd encountered so far was theater. That would have required this area to always look "abandoned" and for the "doctor" to lie in wait, and to be just the right doctor for Lloyd to encounter, and so on. It all would have depended on too many variables to be a viable plan. If the staff here had abandoned the area in a hurry, they were running either from the patients or from the creatures that had been unleashed.

If the doctor got ahead of them... the worst that seemed likely to happen was that they'd have to fight him later, and he might be slightly better-armed then. He might get away completely, or he might get caught by whatever was lying in wait ahead, which might offer the rest of them a strategic advantage.

As these thoughts flickered rapidly through his mind, L found that he really didn't see much advantage to stopping the doctor before he got away, as long as Lloyd got what he wanted first. If they had the opportunity and felt like taking the time, they could force the man out of the room, force him to go the other way, back towards IRIS and the room with the records. Why hadn't he headed that way to begin with?

-- The doctor must be very afraid of them, or else he knew of something that would be coming on their heels. The first thing would mean that they could be cautiously optimistic about their chances... but the second would mean that they needed to keep moving as fast as they could.

He had nothing to add to Lana's comment, but if they didn't get to the point soon, he'd probably try to force the issue.

[freewill]

It does strike Castiel as too convenient, a way to stall for time, though what the doctor might be waiting for is difficult to say. Then again, humans will behave in some bizarre ways if they think that they might be on the brink of death, so it's not as if he can view the doctor's behavior as logical in any way.

Then again, there is a slight chance he's telling him the truth. They found them here, so it's possible this is his work area -- and if he is the one who experimented on Lloyd and Kratos, then it would make sense that the results of that would be stored here.

The real question here is how Lloyd will react, if he'll fall for the bait out of desperation or if he'll maintain the skepticism that the rest of them are experiencing. Castiel's gaze shifts from the doctor to Lloyd himself, curious for his reaction.

[redcladidealist]

Lloyd wasn't stupid. He knew very well that the doctor was distracting them, was only trying to save himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind, somewhere that sounded a lot like Kratos, even pointed out that the doctor could be lying, intent on making them waste precious time.

But even the chance that he wasn't was a chance Lloyd couldn't pass up. It was more chance than he'd had since this happened. His eyes widened, then immediately tore away from the doctor's face - playing right in to what the doctor no doubt wanted, but he didn't care. He had to find those Key Crests!

"Where?" he snapped, already in motion, swords dipping and all but forgotten in his haste to start searching the room. Maybe in another situation he might have cared a little more about the opening he might be giving the man, but this was his life and his father's life. Some things were just more important than a man who'd made his living torturing people for some kind of sick research.

[damned_doctors]

Of course, the doctor remembered how impulsive Lloyd was from their session, so this was what he had counted on. Granted, he hadn't been lying, but they would find them out for themselves. What mattered was that Lloyd was now distracted with trying to save himself, and that was the opportunity the doctor had been waiting for.

There was still a chance that the woman would get a shot off on him, but the doctor had to take that risk. He sprung forward, right for the warp pad. The other man, the one in the coat, tried to get there first and grab out at him. He did get a hold on his arm, but the moment that the doctor's feet hit the pad, he disappeared out of his grasp.

The way he saw it, this was the only chance he had of getting out of this alive.

[fourstonewalls]

The truth was, Lana couldn't pull the trigger. She'd been able to shoot things that had once been people, but that was different. Or at least she'd been able to convince herself of that long enough to save herself (and Ryuuzaki) from the nurse last night. She wasn't sure if she'd been showing her hand, or if it was sufficiently clear in whatever files the Institute had that the doctor knew it, or...if he was just that desperate, but she didn't even try to fire off a shot as he wrenched his way out of Castiel's range and onto the teleportation device.

Her hand wasn't shaking when she brought the gun back down, but that was only because she was concentrating on not allowing it.

"Mind telling us what an Ex-Sphere and a Key Crest look like? And if there's any reason we should be wasting our time on finding them?" Her voice was at it's coldest, the way she talked to the accused when she had no doubt of his or her guilt.

It was an act, but Lloyd didn't necessarily know her well enough to see through it. (Ryuuzaki did, but he should also know her well enough to grasp what she was doing. Lloyd needed a target for his anger, and to focus on what was really important; she was perfectly willing to provide both.)

[redcladidealist]

Distracted though he'd been, Lloyd hadn't intended to let the doctor get away like that. When the man made a run for it, Lloyd jerked back toward him, but- damn it! He was already too late! Biting back a frustrated curse, he stood there for a moment, torn. Go after him, or let him get away - get away with everything he'd done?

It wasn't really a question, though. As much as he steamed at the thought of the doctor getting away, the danger he was immediately in was more important than justice or revenge. Glaring at the warp pad, he thumped his swords down on a shelf - hard enough that Kratos probably would have said something to him about rough treatment of his weapons, but dammit, Kratos wasn't here, and he needed an outlet, something he could vent his anger on.

In retrospect, Lana's questions just then could have had a lot better timing.

"I'm not wasting time!" Lloyd growled. He jerked a drawer open, shoving the contents around with one hand in case what he was looking for was buried under the tools within. "Without a real Key Crest, I'm as good as dead. I just don't know when." He forced himself to take a breath, reminding himself that they wouldn't know. They wouldn't know, and it would be better if they did, because they didn't have time and he needed their help to look, and maybe a little because they deserved to know what could happen to him if they didn't find what he needed.

Releasing his breath, he pulled his hand back out of the drawer, then reluctantly pulled his left glove off. The Exsphere and the fake Crest were visible even with it on, but-

They needed to see. They needed to understand. He held his hand up, letting the dim light catch on the gem embedded in his skin. A dull plate of metal glinted around it, surrounded by angry, puckered skin.

"This is an Exsphere," he explained grimly. "It's complicated, especially if you don't know what mana is, but it's attached to my mana- my energy, and if it isn't controlled by a Key Crest, sooner or later my mana will go out of control and I'll become a monster. That doctor gave me one he made, but I already know it's not working. I need a better Key Crest than this, and so does my dad." Fake or not, he had no doubt that the crystal he'd seen attached to Kratos's hand would cause trouble without something to keep it in check.

[ryuuzaki]

And just like that, the doctor escaped.

When Lana spoke sharply to Lloyd, L gave her a sidelong glance, brows slightly raised, but he didn't say anything. Keeping Lloyd in the room, keeping the group together, was a good idea. If she hadn't distracted Lloyd, he might have taken off after the doctor.

L listened to Lloyd's explanation of the situation with internal exasperation, keeping his demeanor as neutral as possible. On one hand, they could run out of time, their best chance at escape eaten up by something that was the very definition of a wild goose chase. L hated having his time wasted even when the stakes were low, but this was a great deal more than that. On the other, if it was really that important --

"All right, I understand. One of us should watch the pad and the door while the rest of us search. Castiel, will you?"

Lana could use some distraction, he thought, and Castiel was probably the most physically imposing of the four of them -- the weird blade he was carrying helped.

L jerked open the nearest drawer and started rifling through it as he continued.

"It would be better to take as little time as possible. We don't know what's ahead of us or behind us or how much time we have left. Everyone from this area seems to have gone forward in relation to where we came from, so that raises the question of why they didn't want to go in the opposite direction. Was it just us? Something else?

"That guy probably isn't coming back, but we can't be sure, and if he has friends up ahead, we have to be prepared to deal with them all later. It's also possible that he lied to you to distract us so that he could escape.

"-- Not this drawer."

He moved on to the next. The jewel in Lloyd's hand was distinctive: L would know it if he saw it, or anything like it.

[freewill]

It had been a bizarre sensation to have someone dematerialize out of his grasp, but Castiel was left with no way to stop the doctor from fleeing the scene. Tempting as it was to step onto the pad after him, he realized that they had other issues to discuss first and it would be reckless of him to rush ahead without the others. Castiel had plenty of faith in his own abilities, but those had been weakened here and he had to keep his mortality in mind too.

Frustrated, he turned back to Lloyd as he explained what the items the doctor had mentioned were and what they meant to him. It was more than a little alarming to learn that Lloyd was in danger of turning into some mindless monster and he hadn't warned any of them until now, but Castiel could only assume that the threat wasn't imminent.

It was a moot point now. They needed to focus on finding the Key Crest and Exsphere, although Castiel was given the job of keeping an eye out. That happened to be something he was good at, so he didn't chafe at it. There would be three people searching and the room wasn't that large -- if the items were here, they would find them soon.

If they didn't find them, this entire encounter would have been a waste of time, something that Ryuuzaki didn't hesitate to point out. "With any luck, those monsters on the loose will deal with him," Castiel remarked, half under his breath, as he lingered near the warp pad and kept an eye on the door they'd come through. So far, they had remained ahead of the beasts.

[fourstonewalls]

Lloyd's explanation left Lana none the wiser as to what on Earth -- or, more likely, off-Earth they were looking for. True, she knew what it looked like, and that magic was involved. Ilia had occasionally explained bits and pieces about her abilities, but it was still far too nebulous for Lana's liking.

Granted, she wasn't going to have to present the knowledge to a judge, so it didn't really matter if she was slightly confused, but it was unsettling. She thought Ryuuzaki might feel the same; or he just wanted to move on -- either way they were racing against time. The night ending or Lloyd turning into a monster; which it was would make a great difference to Lloyd, but less so to the rest of them.

"Perhaps he'll do us the favor of taking a few of them with him." Even a despicable man like one of the doctors deserved better than to be ripped apart by wild creatures, and she couldn't help imagining it. The howls that they could occasionally hear through the walls didn't help. As she answered, though, she was pulling open drawers. She lifted a tangle of junk out of one and shook it; nothing fell out, so she dropped back in and shut it with more force than was entirely necessary.

Damnit. She didn't need to add to the tension level by letting her nerves show; she knew better than that. Was better than that. She did not compound it by taking a deep breath; instead, she slid open the next drawer like nothing had happened.

This one was devoid of anything but a few cobwebs. As were the next three. Nothing.

[redcladidealist]

At one point, after the initial panic of realizing the danger he was in, the danger he was putting everyone else in, Lloyd had thought to warn everyone close to him. Then Tsurugi...

Even if we told them, if we don't know when it's going to happen, we still can't protect them. ... All it would do is make people scared. The other boy's voice echoed in his head, a memory of that ride on the bus they'd taken... was it only five days ago? It felt like forever.

But forever or five days, it had been long enough for the initial panic to subside and Tsurugi's advice to sink in. He didn't know when it would happen, and they had so many more important things to worry about - things they needed to concentrate on if they wanted to survive even one night.

Like tonight. Like finding Landel and getting out. Like the monsters he could still hear in the distant background (please let it be distant, they don't have time).

Except now there was a chance. His Key Crest might be here. There was a chance to make sure he didn't have to worry about turning into a monster and turning on his friends, and it was here, it had to be-! It was a struggle to keep his hands from shaking in his haste to pull open drawer after drawer, every cabinet door, every bin - a struggle to ignore the way he couldn't feel the cold metal of every knob and pull, but he couldn't think about that, he couldn't.

And then all at once he couldn't, because he opened a drawer and something gleamed.

"I found it!" The words weren't even out of his mouth before he reached in and snatched the Key Crest out. It wasn't his, it was Kratos's, but the metal felt warm in a way that had nothing to do with heat and everything to do with the way his unstable mana was reacting to the touch of inhibitor ore. Relief washed over him, more than he felt like he'd felt in years. He was... not safe, but he could be. It was more hope than he'd had for days.

But he wasn't done yet. His fingers fished into the drawer a second time, heart leaping when they brushed with two more things. This time they did shake when he pulled the objects out.

His Key Crest. His Exsphere. The doctor hadn't lied.

"I've got them!" he told the others, not even bothering to shut the draw. "I've got them! We can go!"

Because they still didn't have time. Dammit! But at least now he felt like he had a real chance to save himself and Kratos.

[ryuuzaki]

Right, Lloyd had found what he was looking for. That meant that there wasn't any reason to linger here. They had to press forward while they still could. Freedom was -- it wasn't close enough to taste, but it might be on the table.

"Let's go. People with swords take the lead; Lana and I will be behind you with guns." He didn't need to tell them that if anything were to come at them, they should kill it. It was impossible to say where that doctor had gone, or what kind of weapons he might have found in the interim.

Still... if the doctor had wanted to kill Lloyd, he could have withheld the information about Lloyd's belongings, couldn't he?

They stepped on the pad as a group, eager, cautious, and determined.

[To here. Will this be my very last moving post ever?]