Brook was probably right about the time. If Anise didn't notice a rash at the start of the night when she was putting on her gloves, and Brook noticed his late into the night, then they had to have appeared sometime in between... while the intercom was going crazy.

It was the answer to her latter question that she had trouble swallowing. "No... skin?" She furrowed her brow, trying to understand, though she couldn't help but be a bit skeptical. Maybe Brook used to be some kind of strange-looking alien, like a few others at the institute were... but what he was describing made him sound like some kind of walking skeleton. And that would just be weird. "... How does that work?"