damned_institute | Night 55: Entry Room

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Night 55: Entry Room

[From here.]

Even with the change in staff, the Entry Room looked the same as it did during his first nighttime visit, save for the lack of Mele and her conjured fire. Oh, thinking about her brought back a twinge of guilt- knowing how the town was at night, she surely wouldn't approve of his heading there, even if he was in good company. Well, he couldn't sit in his room forever, and there was no guarantee the rooms were safe- after all, that was where the nurses collected people for the Sleep Studies. Besides that, he'd not been outside of the Institute's walls at night on his own volition. It was high time he changed that.

He frowned to himself in the darkness. Now that he had his body, what would he do with his time at night? He was still no closer to rescuing Dorothy or any of his friends from Wizard Landel's brainwashing, and the General had hinted that things would only get harder from there on out. He knew they had to be stopped, but how? And what could he do? He wasn't a fighter like Depth Charge, or a witch like Mele; he was not a doctor or professional or even someone with a working brain. The fact that he was seemingly useless was what grated on him the most. However, if there was anything the Scarecrow knew, it was that he couldn't give in. Even if it took him forever, he'd think of something. He had to!

The Scarecrow swept the room with his light before heading in, trailing along the wall for safety's sake. "So you've been to town at night?" he asked. "Aside from the time we were left there?" There was also the time the doors were enchanted, but there was a chance not everyone had ended up there that night.

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The two men weren't alone for long. There was a movement in the shadows near the front entrance not long after they started into the room, from one of the corners the flashlight had missed. From out of the shadows stepped Sam - though, at first glance, he didn't appear to be much of a threat. It was hard for a man in a frumpy black teacher's jacket to look that threatening.

He did look rattled, though. He was not looking forward to doing his job tonight, especially not with someone new calling the shots. To say that he was a little worked up with the stress was an understatement. Sam could already feel his blood threatening to boil - literally.

Which was why he wasn't going to have much patience for these patients if they didn't turn straight back around. "Hey!" he said with a slight hiss in his voice, holding up both hands. "What are you guys doing here? Do you know how dangerous it is out this way?" His wide grey eyes were half pleading, half filled with frustration. "You're gonna get yourselves hurt real bad, or worse." The emphasis seemed to fall heavily on the "or worse" part.

Here was hoping these clueless-looking idiots would actually take his advice. Otherwise, he wasn't going to be held responsible for whatever happened to them.

"No, I wasn't around for that. I had one of those rings--" Carter was cut off by another man suddenly appearing in the darkness. He wasn't wearing the traditional (well, the new traditional) Landel's costume but that was all right, he knew some people had other outfits too. He seemed like a nice guy, trying to warn them off, but Carter wasn't some greenhorn private.

"Don't worry, we've been out there before." He displayed his crowbar proudly. "And we've got protection. It's real neighborly of you, but we'll be fine." He tried to walk around the black-coated man, assuming he wouldn't do anything but complain in order to stop them.

Oh, so his ring actually did take him to town? The only time the Scarecrow had seen one of the rings used was when he'd broken one himself- Depth Charge's- but it hadn't taken them anywhere. Well, it might have, but as far as he could recall, he'd found himself in bed immediately after shattering the jewel. Maybe it wasn't a fault in Depth Charge's ring at all- maybe they did work as promised, but he'd broken it too late. That did make sense, even if the timing seemed oddly coincidental.

As the Scarecrow filed that tidbit away as something to mention to his roommate later, a man stepped from the shadows. Another patient? He wasn't dressed like one, but he certainly didn't look like one of the guards or a witch, either. His warning seemed friendly enough, though. "Yes, that's awful kind of you to worry," the Scarecrow agreed, following Carter's lead around the stranger. "We know there are risks out there, but we'll be careful. Honest."

Sam could have laughed at their answers. In fact, he did - in a breathless, disbelieving kind of way.

Were these two for real? He was clearly very agitated about this danger he was warning them of. Even if they felt like they could face it, the least they could do would be to act like they were worried about whatever the danger might be. But no. No, these two were ready to just waltz into whatever Sam the Good Samaritan (for all they knew) was so intensely worked up about with smiles on their faces and thoughtless reassurances falling from their lips. They didn't even know. They didn't even know.

Well then, Sam supposed he had no choice but to enlighten them.

"Oh I really don't think you've got protection, friend." As the man with the crowbar passed him, Sam made a subtle move with his hand, bringing it into range of the crowbar. If he got it just in range enough, a spark would leap from the end of Sam's finger to the bar, then creep up through the metal and into the man's hand. The unarmed man wasn't quite in range yet, and so Sam sent him a psychic projection instead, hoping to hit, but knowing the distance attack was less accurate.

In combination with his stress levels, Sam's attack attempts set off a bright, smoking "KKRAK" from the back of his elbow, causing him to flinch sharply and barely hold in a shout. The flare was gone quickly enough, thankfully, but damn if it didn't still feel like it was burning.

Regardless of his own pain, there was guaranteed to be a reaction from the men now, whether it was to their own pain or to the flare from Sam's body. He flashed them an unstable grin.

"Still think you know the risks, guys?"

[OOC: If you choose to have the described attack work on your character, you get to pick which body part to ignite on your character's body (except feet; don't ask).]

Right as the man in black was reaching out to him, Carter swung the crowbar back onto his shoulder, unwittingly protecting himself from a direct attack. The loud crack made him jump and scurry back several steps, taking himself further out of accuracy range.

"Hey! You're on fire!" The flare was gone before Carter could do more than gape. The man seemed surprisingly calm about the fire, even a little gleeful. Carter had set himself on fire dozens of times and he still tended to react with far more screaming and panic when flames began to dance at his sleeves.

An odd being standing around guarding an important area, sparking from odd places and making strange noises...Carter's mind worked uncharacteristically fast and abruptly came to the only logical conclusion. He pointed his finger at the man and dramatically declared, "You're an evil robot!"

[Totally rolled a d7 to see if he'd been set ablaze. You got lucky this time, strawman.]

As intentional as it might have seemed for the Scarecrow to dodge Carter's scurrying by falling on his rear after a few steps backward, it was simply a startled reaction to the sharp crack from the newcomer. Wait, had that been a spark? The flame was gone before the Scarecrow could be sure, but it had certainly looked that way.

He blinked- no, he was definitely seeing things. What he wasn't imagining was the way the stranger was talking, which seemed more threatening by the second. The thought that he might have been bewitched just as Mele had crossed his mind, but was interrupted as Carter declared him to be a robot- not just any robot, but an evil one. The Scarecrow knew very little about robots, aside from that it was a term used to describe mechanical beings like the Tin Man. The stranger looked human enough, though. Perhaps it was a human skin, much like his own.

"He certainly doesn't look like a robot," the Scarecrow said, gathering himself from the floor and moving to Carter's side. "He might be one of the brainwashed patients, though."

Though Sam knew he had gotten a reaction from just his own flare-up alone, he was still frustrated at having missed both his marks. And now they were calling him a robot - a robot? Really? Who were these people? Maybe they really were mental patients, regardless of what Landel had explained.

In any case, the frustration caused another brief flare, and this one did cause him to grunt louder this time as it blasted from his lower left arm and out the end of his sleeve. Again, the flare was easy enough to get under control while it was still small, but it did leave some nasty burns on his arm and hand.

"I'm not brainwashed!" Sam snapped at the unarmed man, his good cheer seeming to snap away like the snuffing of a candle. With a growing snarl, he added: "And I'm not a robot. Just very, very easy to piss off." And unfortunate enough to have a way to manifest that feeling physically.

And with that, he ran at the unarmed man, hoping to get close enough for a guaranteed hit this time. "Just leave the fuckin' room the way you came! That is all you have to do! How hard is that?!" he shouted gutturally, reaching for the man's hand and preparing a spark. If that failed, he was already preparing to channel his next flare-up through his hand, at least wanting to singe the man if he couldn't set him ablaze.

The robot's furious claims just made Carter more certain of his accusation. Miss Aigis was almost identical to a human and she acted just like one. She even had a human girl's personality and made Carter question the boundary between real people and really good imitations of them. But he had no such qualms here. This was a real robot, and apparently one that was breaking down pretty badly if those fires were any indication.

Also he was attacking Carter's new friend. That wasn't good. As the robot ran at him Carter ran after it, crowbar raised to strike. The head looked like a pretty good target, he could smash its robot brain and stop the rest of it from moving.

After all, it was just a robot. You couldn't kill a machine. You could just break it.

Before the Scarecrow could even react, the stranger had completely lost all of his cordial appearance, snapping menacingly as he took offense to what had been said about his being either a robot or brainwashed. Stunned, the Scarecrow failed to react quickly enough as the man lunged toward them- he found his hand grabbed. What came next was even more of a shock.

First was a painful sensation (and he was sure it was pain this time), then his right arm burst into flames. Fire! But how? He was fairly sure that human bodies didn't burn the same way one made of straw would, but there really wasn't time to dwell on it when the blaze was crawling along his lower arm. It was one thing to be unfeeling, knowing his body was burning but only because he saw it doing so; it was something else- something far more terrifying- to be able to feel the flames eating through him.

After that, there was unbridled panic. "I'm on fire!" the Scarecrow shouted, pulling away from the conjurer as he flailed. "Help, I'm on fire!"

"Kinda the idea!" Sam growled as the (soon to be literally) unarmed man shouted in pain. Just as he pulled away, however, the other man caught up with him. Not being a trained fighter, Sam couldn't avoid the blow fast enough, especially not from behind. The crowbar slammed across his back and skull, causing some major hurt and possible cracking of bone.

Sam was stunned big time, and with the loss of control over himself and his motor functions, he thus could not control what the stress and anger were bringing out in his body. Sam breathed hard and coughed, trying to fight the burning as he tasted blood in the back of his throat, but he couldn't. He let loose a room-shattering cry then as his fire blazed brightly from both hands and his torso, shooting out from his sleeves and the collar of his shirt. His attacker wasn't likely to be singed from that angle, but damned if he wasn't going to be scarred by the sight of melting, sizzling flesh, unless he had a particularly strong stomach.

A direct hit! Yeah, boy! Carter was about to try another strike when Frank's arms burst into flames and the thrill of triumph vanished.

"Roll on the ground! You have to smother it!" he called out, running over to try and help Frank put himself out. He'd been so concerned about hitting the robot that he'd totally forgotten about its laser eyes.

Carter tried to get Frank down and slapped at the flames on his arm, far less concerned than his friend. He was a brilliant demolitions man but he was also kind of an airhead, which led to many instances of 'wait, did that say -ene or -ane on the bottle?' or sticking his cuff into a bunsen burner. Compared to evil robots putting out a self-immolation was a relatively soothing task.

He didn't notice the black-clad being's meltdown until he was overwhelmed by a horrible, yet depressingly familiar scent. That wasn't the smell of metal and oil on fire. Burning metal was sharper on the nose and Carter actually enjoyed it, since it meant he'd done his job right. This smell was acrid, slightly sweet yet nauseating, and one that Carter had only found in brief moments before he'd turned his face away from the destruction he'd wrought and fled off into the darkness.

It was the smell of burning flesh.

Carter stared and felt a growing wave of sickness well up inside him as he watched the robot...the man...burn himself down like the end of an old candle. What was happening, what was this person? What had he done?

In his panic, the Scarecrow hadn't thought to try smothering the fire or looking for a stray bucket of water- his mind had only been on the fact that he was burning and feeling it. Luckily, Carter was there to help, taking down the wizard before running to the Scarecrow's aid. Even with both of them trying to slap out the fire, it continued to burn. Was this how he was going to die? It seemed like a cruel joke for him to be a vulnerable man of flesh-and-blood, only to meet his end in one of the few ways that could truly ruin him in his straw form.

There was a sudden moment of clarity for the Scarecrow as the horrible smell filling the room was gone, the pain in his arm no longer noticeable, even though it was clearly still ablaze. He blinked- the clever little thing! It was odd to think of something that robbed him of his senses as useful, but it had chosen to activate at just the right moment. The Burning Man was down- now was their chance to make a break for the door!

The Scarecrow leapt to his feet, giving Carter's arm a tug. "Let's go!" After a short sprint around what was left of the Burning Man, he reached the door, giving the knob a try. "Drat! Locked!" Unlike the ones in the hallways, a few hurried hits to the lock with his flashlight got no results. The entrance was clearly made of tougher stuff.

Worried their attacker might recover at any second, the Scarecrow headed for one of the exits to the side. "Come on! This way!"

[To here.]

[ from here ; time skipping and moving through with permission ]

Klavier took a quick sweep of the room with his flashlight before walking through completely. The last time he had been in this room was when he'd gone off exploring by himself. He already knew that heading out the front door was a bad idea and that the desks were relatively useless as far as finding information went. So he ignored both. Instead, he walked in far enough for the other two to enter after him, then turned his flashlight to illuminate first one door to their left then one to their right.

"There are actually two file rooms here. I'm unsure as to how they're segregated, exactly." It could have been anything, honestly. He turned his light to focus on the first room. "Both are locked, but I was able to break through the lock with relatively little difficulty." His attention went to the two. "...It would probably be simplest to approach this in order and start with the first room."

Edited 2011-04-10 03:00 (UTC)

To be completely fair, he had a point. "I guess I can understand that. Anything to get out of their system, right?" Claire conceded, casting a glance down at her own clothes. "My stuff's pretty old and raggy, but at least it's mine. But just be careful, all right? Wearing white at night is as good as putting a target on your head. I could see you almost clear as day, even when the torch wasn't on you."

His civility was helping his case. And, surprising, he didn't act one bit like most boys his age. Aggravating, self-centered morons, chugging booze and grabbing at girls. Not that there was a steady supply of either around here.

Then he called her name pretty, and suddenly Claire was all burning cheeks and smiles. "Thanks. Thank you. Um. I've never heard the name Battler before." It was incredibly strange, even for a foreign name, but after the compliment she couldn't bring herself to fault him for it.

Their destination was closer than expected. Claire ducked into the new room, holding the axe aloft with both hands. Just in case. She had never been to this part of the hospital before, and so took extra time to note the obstacles, the exits, the general layout and function of the room. Her eyes settled a large set of doors opposite their group, peering intently. If she remembered her map correctly, then this would be somewhere near the front of the building. She took silent steps after Klavier, leaning closer with a whisper. "Is that the exit?"

Now that the tension in the atmosphere was starting to die down, Battler could feel himself slowly beginning to relax. It was hard to completely, when they were wandering around in a hospital with little to go on but the light their own flashlights, but even though he was a little on edge, he could still at least carry on a normal conversation.

"Something like that," he nodded, "though you can't really call something that was handed to you any kind of rebellion, can you? In fact, being given something like this at all is kind of insulting." He ran his fingers down the embroidery on the lapel, with the hand with a gold ring engraved with same insignia. His thoughts on it ran a bit deeper than that, but for the sake of keeping things light, he decided to keep those to himself unless asked.

"Well, at any rate, I don't plan on letting myself get hurt so easily, so there's no need to worry about that," he grinned. It was a naive statement and he knew it—it wasn't as simple as something not happening just because he willed it—but there was also something to said about confidence, wasn't there? ... Caution was good, but paranoia was only inviting a disaster.

He laughed faintly at the reaction to his name. It was definitely among the milder reactions he'd gotten to it, aside from the people who intentionally ignored it out of politeness, though to be honest, it was a little easier when someone actually said something about it. Even Battler was more than willing to make fun of it. "You're not the only one. It's pretty, um... 'unique.' I seriously question the judgment of the parent who named me this."

Ha paused for a moment when the exit was mentioned, mentally taking note of the heavy doors. They were totally useless to him—if it were as simple as just walking out, being here wouldn't even be an issue, and even that situation, it still wouldn't solve anything at all. Even if they could casually walk out and try to find their way home, that wouldn't solve the root of the problem or help anyone else. But it was good as reference point, and even if it was stupid to try now, there might be a point in the future where it came in handy.

Taking Klavier's suggestion, Battler made his way over to first room. It was locked like he said, but he could definitely see where he didn't have any problem getting in. .... The doorknob was weak and totally rusted over. You could tell at a glance that it would probably be broken, which made him frown slightly. Did they really keep anything important in a place like this? Wasn't that a little too easy....? ... Well, whatever. It seemed kind of dubious, but he could only assume the guy knew what he was doing. Since the flashlight he using seemed sturdy enough, he used it as though it were a hammer, slamming off the knob and pulling out the lock from the newfound hole in the door. After that, the door could be pulled open without any resistance.

[to here]

Edited 2011-04-12 17:08 (UTC)

Smelled odd in here, Mele noted as she eased the door open slowly and peered cautiously inside. She hadn't encountered anything weird behind doors she'd decided to open yet, but going by everyone else's injuries, something was going on....

That smell was familiar, for some reason. As was the room, she thought as she stepped in, even though she was certain she hadn't been beyond this door, despite having seen it fairly often in the day. Had someone been burning something in here? There was that one time with Soma when Mele had gotten completely distracted by something completely inane, but that was just that one time, and it wasn't like Mele imagined up things on a regular basis. Discounting the reason she had that pin on her hat...and the name on her necklace thing.... Mele frowned as she shone her flashlight around. Serious deja vu.

And out of the shadows staggered a figure, a man who brought the smell of burnt flesh into sharp relief the closer he got to Mele. The burns didn't look life-threatening yet, but they covered his hands, pock-marked his face with angry black and red blotches, and crept up even more skin underneath his jacket. Any way one could slice it, the man was in bad shape.

Which, as far as Sam was concerned, could work to his advantage here.

He put on his very best agonized expression (not hard), and groaned. "Ohh god. Oh Jesus, not good," he spoke in a strained tone, as his throat tried to constrict around itself from the pain. "There's somethin' bad out there, miss. It got me real bad. You can't go that way. I'm telling you. You gotta go back. You gotta go back. Please don't go out there."

It was so unexpected. Mele jumped, then crossed her arms over her chest to hide that she had. Just someone who was injured, nothing special. Sort of.

Don't you look a mess, she thought as she looked him over. "Don't know anyone who could help," she said cautiously, running through the options in her head. She knew no one who could help; she had no idea how long it was until morning—how did others who'd been injured at night cope? Waiting until day didn't make someone's organ burn any slower, she'd imagine.

More importantly, was whatever was out there coming in? She glanced at the door at the other side of the room as she asked, "What was it?" Nothing that could smash through doors, she hoped. But if it were, maybe that was a lucky break. Or maybe it was a lucky break that someone had already been out there first and thought to warn someone despite his own position. At least this guy's and her situations weren't reversed at this moment; maybe she should thank him. Mele had never been one to be the selfless scout. "... Can you walk?"

Sam's dry laugh echoed through the small room. He coughed, answering, "That's okay. Think I'm beyond help anyway."

His head shook when asked what the thing was, and if he could walk - with some added involuntary shaking in the rest of his charred body for good measure. "I don't know," he answered on both counts. "But whatever it is, you'd better get out of here. It strikes real quick. You won't even see it coming. Safest way is just to go back the way you came," he continued to insist. Strange hair aside, the woman seemed nice enough. Smart too, probably. He really didn't want to have to do anything to her.

Hm, fire attacks were pretty fast, generally speaking. But—

"Who closed the door?" she asked as she turned her body to leave—whatever else, she was eager to get out of here for an uncomfortable reason she couldn't really explain. But as long as whatever it was didn't seem to be attacking—the doors were holding firm, there was no knocking or ramming—it seemed sort of like a missed opportunity not to collect the information. Especially from someone who was dying.

"I'm sure I'd have warning if whatever-it-was got through," she added, to assuage whatever protective feelings he seemed to be having on her behalf. "If you want, I can even tell other people to stay away from this room. How far away was it?"

"Yes, yes that sounds like the best idea. No one should come through this way. Tell them that, please," Sam answered with a sigh of relief (or as much relief as he was capable of, in any case). "If you go back and tell them that, no one else has to take this kind of risk."

Although, he worried: the woman still looked like she wanted to go through herself, especially with the way she seemed so sure she could avoid an attack. "I don't think it's gonna come in here unless it has to," he added, hoping that would further assuage her. "Whatever it is, it's more like a trap, I think. Set to turn on whoever crosses it." He couldn't help a heavy sigh at that. What had his life become at this point, anyway?

If it was a trap, there was even less to worry about, wasn't there? A trap could be avoided, and from the guy's wording, it didn't seem like an ambush kind of trap: the ones that involved humans and were therefore flexible. But Mele didn't want to take the risk of running into additional traps beyond the first trap and ending up like this guy, either.

"I'm going, I'm going." She sighed as she turned to go. "I'll see if I can find some kind of doctor or something," she added thoughtlessly as she went. Because of course her chances of finding a doctor were incredibly slim, and she didn't think at all about possibly giving the guy false hope or whatever and all that. "Hope night ends soon," she said cavalierly, waving as she exited.

[from here]

The smell of charred flesh hung in the air; human, possibly. Lana's flashlight swept the area -- scorch marks there, and ash. A trail of it led to one of the lobby doors. On the other side, the handle of the file room door had been sheared away. Brute force, and not that much required, if a cursory examination from several yards away was any indication. Which it likely was; she hadn't been a top detective for nothing.

She flicked the beam it in a quick dip, towards the undamaged file room door, hoping Ilia would take the hint. No need to advertise that they were here more than they already had. They could check the desk on the way in; that would also give them a little cover if whatever had gone into the lobby came back out.

Some time to himself had helped more than Sam would have figured it would. After the woman with the looped hair had left, he had plopped himself down on the ground and let the coolness of the wall and the occasional gust of wind from the crack in the front doors soothe his burns - and his inner temperature. Maybe the rest didn't help much physically, but easing Sam's state of mind was about as good, all things considered.

That said, the nuclear man was still not exactly peaches and cream. No matter what kinds of breaks he got, this wasn't going to go away. He could wish it away all he wanted, sure, but he might as well be yelling at the sky for all the good it did. It was actually kind of funny, when he thought about it hard enough. This was all going to become routine eventually, wasn't it? As plain and mundane as brushing your teeth, driving to work, or making dinner. This was going to become the new normal, the pain and the fear and the rage all fading and blurring together for the rest of whatever his life. Rise and shine, Sam. Time to burn it all to the ground. He could almost hear Lisa saying it.

He couldn't help himself. As the door opened again, he started laughing. Laughing and snickering quietly in the shadowy corner. "All so normal," he said quietly, shaking his head in a jittery sort of way, burns crinkling around the edges of his eyes and the upturned corners of his mouth. "Normal is so relative. It's kind of amazing, in a way."

Ilia was a little surprised by Lana's sudden change in mood. She supposed she could blame that partially on Ema's frightening disappearance earlier in the night still bothering her, or maybe just being in the institute itself made Lana jumpy. Either way, Ilia took the snapping remark with a bit of humility. It was true that having some notes was probably better than leaving it up to memory, but Ilia had her training drilled into her. You didn't leave behind anything that could be traced back when on a mission, and she treated this place no different. Though there were a few rules she had thrown out, she still didn't feel comfortable compromising herself further by leaving behind something tangible.

The smell hit Ilia a second after getting past the door, and she stopped when the sound of laughter filled the air. Not good.

Ilia whispered, starting again at a brisk pace. She kept her hands to her sides, trying to give off an air of peacefulness. If they didn't threaten the thing or person or whatever, maybe they could get by without much notice. She didn't feel like having a fistfight in an area where a fire had just been, but she wouldn't back down if it came to blows.

She wanted to let Lana know that she was willing to buy the other woman time if it came to that, but she thought talking too much might just make them that much more of a target. She couldn't be sure, but whoever it was, whatever it was, sounded like they were going insane.

A dull clang rang out as Lana makeshift candlestick crowbar slid out of where she'd wedged it under the handle. The sound was shockingly loud, and in its wake, low laughter rolled in. Damn. There was someone standing in the shadows, and if that laugh was any indication, he was more apt to be the cause of the smell than the source of it.

Lana looked at the lock one last time, and jiggled the handle -- the tumblers were no looser. Brute force had never been Lana's strong suit. Ilia might have better luck with the door, but there was an easier solution.

"The other door is already open -- this one's jammed and Landel neglected to supply us with the appropriate tools for forcible entry." Lana spoke quickly and quietly, but in the same tone she'd have exchanged nonsense about the weather with a colleague. No sense tipping off whoever -- whatever was out there. She slipped past Ilia and strode across the room, hoping Ilia'd be right behind her.

Sam threw up his hands and let them fall limply. "Oh that's real nice," he said with a snort and another laugh. "Not even gonna pay attention to the man with third degree burns when he's talking. That's new at least. New heights of human compassion, no doubt about it."

The nuclear man shook his head, unstable grin still split across his face. "I don't blame you ladies, either of you, really. It's hard to make it in here without stopping to check on every dying person. You're in a hurry, you need to get things, you don't know who to trust. I get it. I get it so – so much."

A tension had been growing in Sam's chest as he went on, watching the women move from one door toward the other. The earlier parts of the night weren't going to give him peace of mind just yet, it seemed. He knew perfectly well they had good reason not to trust him at this point. Hell, Sam wouldn't trust himself at this point. But it still hurt to watch them move on without even bothering to glance over, or make a token attempt to acknowledge the suffering of someone who was still somewhat human. It was irrational, but really, what was rational with him anymore?

A pop cracked through the room, followed by a hiss and a strangled grunting groan from Sam. The tension inside him was just enough to spark a flare from his shoulder. The flame lit his corner of the room for less than a second, but it would have been enough to let the woman get a look at Sam's burned face if they were looking his way.

Ilia followed after Lana quickly, almost stepping on her heels in her haste to keep moving and not become the burning man's target. His words were a little hard to take, but he wasn't acting like a typical burn victim would. Crying, screaming, nothing of the sort. Almost like an acceptance of the situation, though she could hear an irritation also growing in his voice as they sped along by.

Reaching the other door, Ilia thought she caught a flicker of a flame in the corner of her eye. If there was still a fire going, then this entire area was unsafe! She didn't dare suggest they go back, though. There was nothing to go back to, except to a burn victim that didn't act like a burn victim. With luck, the file room they were heading into would have an exit out the back.

Lana didn't flinch when the tirade started; she'd heard it all, and worse, and all of it truer than he could know. His estimation was setting off warning bells in her finely-honed instincts; if this wasn't a prelude to an ambush she would be surprised, but it didn't mean his words hadn't struck a nrve.

Light flared: fire, out of nowhere. Lana looked the man -- if that was even what he was -- in they eye, ignoring the burn. What was it with nights and her and men with their faces burnt off, anyway? The flash of the fire was still blotting out that section of her vision with afterimages, but he wouldn't know that.

"My, my, what little faith in humanity. Sometimes all you have to do...is ask." She stepped through the door after Ilia, pulling it closed behind her.

[also to here]

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Night 55: Entry Room

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SO SORRY FOR LATE GUYS!! D:

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