DAY 64: CHAPEL

[skeletonenigma]

This time, when the darkness faded and the next thing Skulduggery became aware of was that same bed underneath him, he didn't take the time to absorb the jarring feeling and sort out what might be going on. He leaped off the bed immediately, almost stumbling in the process - damn balance - and took a moment to realize that his eyes were burning and he could barely see a thing.

The room was blinding. The light itself wasn't an issue; it was the fact that Skulduggery's eyes had to slowly adjust to it, a sensation he hadn't experienced in ages and had never expected to experience again. He had a hand pressed to his forehead and was blinking rapidly when a woman knocked on the door and came in.

She was... cheerful. Everything was cheerful, from the bright light and noises outside to the intercom announcement that interrupted the woman's sudden spiel. It was such a startling change from just a few minutes ago that Skulduggery found himself lost for words while the... nurse... nodded brightly at him. She'd said something about a mental hospital, something about a man called Erik, and something else about 'not real' and 'getting better.' With Skulduggery's mental prowess - even operating at less than its usual efficiency - it was easy to work out what she meant.

He studied her openly once the light wasn't so blinding. "You're either a very convincing liar, utterly insane, or a psychopath. Let me find out which one." His head tilted. "Would you believe me if I said there was a woman last night who had been mortally wounded, but who was still walking around?" He cut her off before she could answer. "No, obviously not. And I don't think you're a psychopath who murders people for fun. A convincing liar, then. That doesn't clear anything up in the slightest, but I suppose it's something."

"Mr. MacAuley, you were sleeping all of last night. Are you sure you didn't just have a nightmare?"

Skulduggery wanted to point out that as a skeleton, he didn't sleep, and he certainly didn't have nightmares. The blurriness at the edges of his vision, however, reminded him with a jolt of his mysterious transformation to human. Suddenly, annoyingly, the nurse was making much more sense.

Was it... real, then? Everything with Yomi and the chapel - had that all just been a vivid hallucination? Had his entire life just been a vivid hallucination, like the woman was insisting?

In a slight daze, Skulduggery asked to see the chapel. He was standing there alone now, examining the fountain carefully for any sign of its demonic visage from before. But now it was just a fountain, the water was just water, and despite Skulduggery's best efforts, the water didn't respond to his Elemental magic. It remained stubbornly in its basin without so much as a ripple, silently mocking him.

Skulduggery sat down heavily on one of the pews, mystified. He wasn't insane. He joked sometimes that he was, and it might partly be true, but he wasn't insane on a level like this. He didn't just make up his whole life as he pleased.

[Free! But be prepared for a barrage of questions.]

Comments

[earthling]

What an exhausting night. Granted, most of Claude's nights weren't too restful these days, but he hadn't expected one of the buses to crash. If that hadn't have happened, they probably would have made it back to the institute before the sun set and things got out of hand.

Man, he hadn't gotten anything done last night, he inwardly grumbled. What a waste.

But today was a new day, and he was in one piece -- two things he knew he couldn't take for granted in this place. Of course, the rash creeping up his arm had only gotten larger since the last time he'd looked at it, and he was decidedly more nauseated this morning. Even so, Claude did his best to suck it up and get up out of bed once the nurse came to collect him. From the sound of the announcement, he wasn't the only one dealing with these weird symptoms, which meant he didn't have an excuse to wallow around all day.

With his condition in mind, the stillness of the chapel sounded like the better choice. Since that was where he normally went on Sundays anyway, the nurse didn't bat an eye, and instead cheerfully escorted him to the second floor.

Not many people had arrived yet, which meant he had a lot of empty pews to choose from. Claude took a seat toward the edge of the chapel, keeping his rash close to the wall so the irritated skin wouldn't be the first thing anyone saw if they sat down next to him. With that taken care of, he let out a small breath, closed his eyes, and simply rested for now. If he was lucky, his nausea would clear up by the time brunch rolled around.

[For mother dearest!]

[lighthearted]

[HELLO THERE, SKULDUGGERY.]

The image of Renji's body, bloated and torn apart and distorted almost beyond recognition, burned through Sora's mind like the fever that he'd been suffering from for the past day or so. It wasn't something he'd been prepared to see, and the guilt of realizing that he should have kept a closer eye on the man since his return was something that twisted through his body like an illness.

It was no real surprise, then, that he woke up feeling nauseous. His fever seemed to be easing up at least a little, but when rolling over in bed almost made him want to puke right then and there, he had to admit that his condition hadn't exactly improved.

On top of that, because of everything that had happened last night, he hadn't gotten any chance to search for medicine to help ease the symptoms. Curing it seemed like an impossible goal, especially when the only thing Sora could really focus on was the fact that Renji and Daemon were dead, mutilated by who knows what.

There was a large part of him that wanted to just stay in bed. He was sick and could probably plead with a nurse to be left alone at least until midday, but in the end he decided it was more important to inform people of what had happened to Renji and Daemon. He forced his body out of the bed, swaying and laying a hand on his stomach to try and calm it. Not that that was going to work.

Landel mentioned something about how they could ask the nurses for medicine, but he didn't know if he trusted anything that the institute was putting out. When they were responsible for him feeling this way in the first place, he figured it might make more sense to try and tough it out on his own.

Sora quietly informed his nurse that he wanted to go the Sun Room first when asked, and remained there just long enough to put up a message explaining what had happened to Renji and Daemon. It wasn't worded very well, but he didn't have the energy to write something long and detailed. Overall, he was relieved that they wouldn't be eating until next shift, because the idea of stomaching anything with how he was feeling seemed impossible.

The nurse led him up to the chapel next, and Sora moved to the front of the room, fighting back spikes of nausea as he looked for a place to sit. He spotted a tall, skinny man nearby and tried to work his way around him. "Excuse me," he said quietly, his face pale with illness. And that rash that had started on his hand had only spread since yesterday, but that was something he could almost forget about; at least it didn't itch.

[skeletonenigma]

The chapel was almost too calm. With very few people around and no one to talk to, Skulduggery should have been dangerously close to being bored. As it was, he was too preoccupied with the idea that he might very simply be a mental patient. His mind was racing, trying to come up with something - anything - that might contradict what the nurse had said, but he was coming up blank. It was entirely possible that everything from a few minutes ago was just the nightmare of a crazy man. And worse, that made sense.

Fortunately, Skulduggery was saved from having to dwell on it by a young boy moving past him, a young boy who looked ill. Skulduggery gave the boy a brief nod, and was about to slip back into the overplayed and well-worn thought process when he decided that he would go just as insane as the nurse claimed he was if he didn't at least try to distract himself for a bit.

He glanced over at the boy, curious as to why he was moving into this particular pew when there were so many empty ones. "You don't look well," he commented.

The idea of the illness perhaps being contagious belatedly occurred to Skulduggery, but he didn't try to move away. His last sensible memories were of being a skeleton, and new habits were slow to form.

[freewill]

When Castiel came to, his first thought wasn't so much a thought as a realization that his arm still ached. In fact, the grand majority of him ached, and while his head seemed to have finally let up on that insistent pounding, the rest of his body seemed to be suffering as a result.

It was to the point that his muscles seemed to protest as he sat up out of bed, even though he was favoring his uninjured arm. As much as his vessel seemed to want to give out on him, however, Castiel wasn't willing to allow that. He lifted up his shirtsleeve to see that his wound had been bandaged. It seemed that Lingormr's quick stitching job had done the trick.

Another debt owed, and at this point he wasn't certain how to repay it. Lingormr was free to call on him at any time that he was required, and perhaps for now that was good enough. Castiel stood up, glancing toward the intercom system when Landel mentioned that they were allowed to ask the nurses for medicine if needed.

He had no idea if there was anything that could actually relieve the pain he was in, and for all he knew giving into that suggestion would only make things worse. It would be like accepting a deal from a demon and not expecting some sort of catch. For now, he endeavored to bear it.

As usual for Sundays here, he was given a choice of where to go for the first shift, and also as usual, he chose the chapel, not bothering to examine too closely his reasons for why. The room was still on the empty side when he reached it, and Castiel soaked in the silence, stepping forward to the front of the room and settling into a pew on the left side.

He started to run through the things he would need to do that day. He'd need to contact Lingormr and Soma, ask after Sam and Dean again, and work toward reversing this illness before it reached some sort of critical point. Castiel's gaze dipped down to his hand, where the redness that had started there had now spread up past his wrist. There was no way to hide that today.

[For Kratos.]

[lighthearted]

It wasn't too surprising that the stranger ended up saying something. Sora got the feeling that most people would have a hard time just ignoring someone his age who looked sick moving past them. Still, that didn't mean he was in any state to have a proper conversation.

Most patients should have known about the sickness going around, though, seeing how Landel had brought it up a lot already. Maybe this stranger was just trying to be subtle about the whole thing, but at this point Sora realized it would be impossible to hide.

"Yeah, it's going around," he said as he sat himself down, letting out a small sigh of relief. The nausea wasn't as bad when he wasn't moving around. "I... don't think it's contagious or anything, though, so you don't have to worry." Sora was going to have enough people avoiding him at night. He didn't want it to start happening during the day, too.

Sure, some time to himself might have done him good, just because he wasn't feeling great, but at the same time he didn't want to be stuck being miserable on his own.

[baniichan]

When Barnaby awoke and slipped his glasses over the bridge of his nose, he wasn't surprised to hear the Head Doctor addressing them over the intercom. This was apparently something that happened every day, so he knew to expect it now. Unfortunately, blacking out and waking up in a bed wasn't something he was completely unaccustomed to, but Barnaby had to admit that he wasn't used to it happening with such regularity. Not only that, but his wasn't an isolated case, which made all of this even more disconcerting.

Every day brought more questions than answers, it seemed. The moments right before his blackout were particularly disturbing. Barnaby wasn't sure how their captors had managed it, but this place apparently had the resourced to change them all into something that wasn't human anymore. Moreover, they didn't seem to care whether they all lived or died.

The rash, meanwhile, had crept further up his arm like a snake coiling across his skin. Although it didn't itch, he noticed his knees were more wobbly this morning. Barnaby wasn't sure whether it was a result of the fatigue he'd been feeling, or something else, but he knew he didn't like it.

He would have to observe the other patients to get a better idea of how many people were in the same boat as him. First, though, Barnaby wanted to use the current shift as a way to get a better look at the second floor. As a result, he informed the nurse he wanted to go to the Chapel this morning.

It wasn't as ornate as some of the chapels one would see in a book or on television, but that was hardly surprising. After settling down on a pew, Barnaby picked up one of the hymnals and flipped through the pages. Nothing pointed toward any clear denomination, and after a moment he put the black book back.

There wasn't much for him to do now except pass the time. Nurses lined the room, watching them like hawks in order to keep them from sneaking out of the chapel undetected. Barnaby folded his arms over his chest, and he silently wondered how many of them underwent such an excruciating-looking transformation each night. Closing his eyes, he was only left with the surrounding quiet, and his own thoughts.

[For Anise!]

[idolism]

_[Aigis!?]

It was pathetic to feel relief when the moon went down… but, well, Aidou did. Fleeing through the woods with an injured girl could only lead to bad things. He hadn’t cared about such things when he’d been at the Academy, roaming the moonlight grounds with the sweet smell of blood in the air, but that had been then and this was now.

And in the here and now, blood led to trouble.

The only good thing to come out of last night was him escaping unscathed. If it had been his own blood flecking the ground, he was sure he would have been facing down the morning with a very different mindset.

As it was, he was only mildly unhappy to be making the weekly trek to the upstairs chapel. He wasn’t injured, he wasn’t sick… that was something to be pleased about, wasn’t it? At least until Landel revealed his next sadistic circus trick.

Finding a quiet spot on a pew, Aidou stretched his legs out, hooking his arms behind the pew back. Despite all the crap going on, now was almost a good time to go for a nap…

[avengingfists]

As disturbing as last night had been, it could have been worse! For Ilia, at least. She and Roes had managed to escape the wrath of the Aquilas, if only by the skin of their teeth. Ilia thanked her lucky stars, and that was all she was thanking. So, after posting a quick note about her bar on the bulletin, it was with irony that Ilia made her way to the second floor to the chapel this Sunday morning.

Despite her logical mind, Ilia could still appreciate the beauty of religious icons and architecture. The institute's chapel wasn't particularly stunning. In fact, it was mostly just peaceful in its layout and lighting. How quaint.

Thoughts mostly on the night to come and wondering about her turn-out, Ilia almost took a seat in a pew by herself. Just as she was about to sit, however, her eyes caught sight of a familiar blond and a small smile spread over her face. Heading his way, Ilia stopped just short of where she might sit and chuckled. Talk about déjà vu.

"This seat taken?"

[forsworn]

Waking up was easy enough; what came next gave him trouble. His chest and shoulder were covered in bandages, and both complained bitterly when he tried to sit up. In the end, Kratos had to simply grit his teeth and push himself up with his uninjured arm, which turned out to be a harder task than he expected. By the time the nurse came in, he already felt tired, and the day had barely started. Pathetic.

--but he had been asking for this, actively pursuing it by attempting his own version of thoughtless, brash heroics. At least they had managed to defeat the aquila; that made the whole ordeal somewhat worth it.

Usually, he actively avoided the chapel, but this time, Kratos actually felt inclined to head there rather than go to the Sun Room; he had a feeling that most of the people there would be airing out their complaints about the stupidity of the blond man from yesterday, whether on the board or in person, and Kratos had no head for that at the moment. It was when he felt his worst that he most preferred quiet and solitude, and the chapel could certainly offer both, even if religious spaces made him uncomfortable. Purposefully ignoring certain details, though, was well within his capabilities.

As he walked down the main aisle, looking for somewhere to sit where he could perhaps close his eyes in peace for an hour or so and catch his breath, he spotted Castiel sitting in one of the pews. Normally, he might have passed him by - the point wasn't to find familiar faces - but a chance glance at the man's exposed hand gave him reason to pause. Like Sora's, Castiel's hand was covered in a rash that labeled him as another victim of Landel's virus. This time, though, he felt no need to automatically entertain the possibility of also killing Castiel in the near future; in fact, perhaps because he was sick of even thinking about fighting at the moment, he found himself feeling sympathetic.

It was that hint of sympathy that led him to sit down next to Castiel, eyes looking straight ahead rather than at the man's hand. "Good morning."

[gald_digger]

She was safe. That was the first thing to come to mind when Anise awakened that morning. The creatures that pursued her and her friends through the forest were far behind them now.

Of course, she wasn't completely in the clear. The rash on her hand had spread up most of her forearm. A quick search led to the recovery of the shopping bag from yesterday, from which Anise grabbed the make-up tube and began applying it to her arm. In the end, it couldn't hide all hints of discoloration on the skin, but the redness had been paled enough that it wasn't too obvious. At least no one would see it from a distance.

A nurse arrived soon after she was finished, and Anise cooperated as she was escorted first to the Sun Room for a quick stop at the bulletin, then to the Chapel. Though Anise had given up on any hope of being rescued from the institute through divine intervention, the atmosphere of the room reminded her of home, and that was reason enough to visit there from time to time.

Upon entering the room, she immediately spotted Claude and Ilia, who both appeared to be in one piece. That was good to see. But they were involved in their own little conversation, and it'd be rude to butt in, so Anise began to make her way to the front of the room instead. On her way, however, she caught a glimpse of a handsome man's face... then stopped, took a couple steps back, and looked again.

With his eyes closed, Anise was able to steal a much longer look than was normally polite. His face really did look like that of a storybook prince, though. Anise wanted to try talking to him, but he looked like he was resting, or maybe meditating... Maybe she'd just be bothering him.

But then again, what kind of heartless monster would reject the company of a poor little (cute) girl like her? Batting her eyelashes, she took another step closer and opened with a timid-sounding, "Um... excuse me. Is it okay if I sit here?"

[skeletonenigma]

Ah, yes, that 'bug' mentioned over the intercom by the man whose voice sounded the same from the night before, but whose tone was decidedly different. If the boy was feeling as bad as he looked, he'd probably asked for medicine already, so there wasn't any point in pressing the issue. The few times Valkyrie had gotten sick, she tended to throw things at Skulduggery when he mentioned it too often.

Valkyrie. There was no way Skulduggery made her up. He could picture her perfectly, down to the last smirk. Her terrified face, when she saw him getting dragged through the portal - he remembered it perfectly. And Ghastly, his friend Ghastly, recently awoken from two years as a statue. No one could have created those scars.

Skulduggery sighed and sat back in the pew. Thinking about them in endless circles wasn't going to help things. Skulduggery was a detective, and detectives looked for facts, as painful as those facts might be. Detectives asked questions. The boy next to him looked a year or two older than Valkyrie, hair just as spiky as Fletcher's, if not quite as amusing. He looked sane. He didn't quite look like he wanted to answer questions, but to be honest, that had never stopped Skulduggery before.

"Let's pretend, for the moment," he spoke up, "that I'm suffering from complete amnesia. Or that I simply popped into existence about an hour ago, whichever one is easier for you to believe. I haven't the first idea what or where anything is. I am, however, intelligent,” he added, remembering the way the nurse had treated him like an idiot. That still rankled. “What is this place? Where exactly are we?”

[earthling]

Upon hearing his mom's voice, Claude suddenly looked up at her with raised eyebrows. "O-oh!" Doing his best to give her the brightest smile he could muster, he nodded toward the empty space beside him. "Sure! Have a seat!"

They hadn't talked much since the day after his mother's foray into the coliseum. His heart still ached at the thought of her helplessly watching a friend die, but she seemed to be in better spirits today. Did that mean she'd been lucky enough to find that girl again?

"How're you doing?" he asked, his voice a little gentler now.

[freewill]

Castiel didn't quite understand organized religion or the strange decisions made in its name, but he knew enough about it to realize that in a chapel like this, the expectation was to sit quietly and commune with God. He personally had no interest in such a thing, seeing how he'd already wasted far too much time trying to find word from a Father who wasn't listening, but he was surprised by how many patients were chatting among themselves.

It could be that the majority of the people here had no faith, or perhaps they'd all realized that there were more important matters at hand than their relationship with whichever god they worshiped.

Either way, he wasn't particularly shocked when someone came to join him, and Kratos' presence was hardly upsetting. The two of them had always seemed to understand each other in an instinctive way, which was surprising seeing how they weren't even the same species. Certain things transcended those lines, however.

It was difficult to know whether or not Kratos had noticed his hand, but Castiel wasn't interested in drawing attention to it. He nodded in greeting, annoyed when he found even that small action caused him pain. "How have you been?" he asked. Kratos didn't seem to be moving very fluidly either, and Castiel wondered if he'd also sustained injury the night before.

[lighthearted]

As it turned out, this stranger didn't seem that concerned about the illness after all. Sora figured that was better than if he'd tried to avoid him or something, but on the other hand...

It quickly became clear that this man was brand new to this place, and Sora had to hold back a sigh at that realization. It wasn't that he didn't want to help -- of course he did! But with how he was feeling, he wasn't sure he had the energy to answer the laundry list of questions that the man must have built up by now.

Even though that thought ran through his head, though, he knew that in the end he could never turn away someone who needed help. And if there was anyone who knew this place in and out, it was him, so in a way it was his duty to explain.

"That's how it happens to everyone," he said, wanting to make the man feel better about that first and foremost. Sora figured that the most important thing when first arriving here was understanding that you weren't alone in your situation. "I know the nurses are making it sound like you hallucinated all that stuff you remember about your life, but it's just one big sham. They're keeping us here against our will, to experiment on us and make us fight, and... well, getting home isn't so easy." He was a testament to that.

Sora felt his nausea grow and twist in his stomach when he realized that if things really got bad with this illness, he might never make it home. But that sort of result had never been an option. Still, Renji and Daemon had fallen prey to something, and while he knew that death wasn't always permanent here, it was hard to shake the feeling of dread he'd experienced when he'd seen those two mangled corpses.

[tasteoftruth]

It was quiet. That was all Badd needed right now.

He sat down in one of the pews and pressed the heels of his hands so hard into his face that his eye sockets hurt. Stupid, stupid, useless and stupid. At least Anise had managed to stay safe, through some miracle, and he'd saved Byrne and Renamon, but he'd left the others to die. He hadn't gone back as fast as he could have.

He'd die to get Byrne out of here. Hell, he might die just to get himself out of here. But he was quite sure even that wouldn't solve his problem. Everything they did was just spitting in the wind. There was no point. There had never been a point.

What the hell was he supposed to do?

[Free!]

[oyaji]

Take medication, he said. Right, because there was nothing Kotetsu longed for more than some delicious unmarked pills from a crime syndicate posing as a mental institute. Yeah, he'd pass. The older man told the nurse as much when she had sen the rash that was steadily creeping up his arms. He had woken up in a cold sweat, heart hammering against his rib cage to find that, once again, he was alone. Barnaby was probably back in his own bed. Kotetsu hoped so, at least.

For his partner' sake, he asked his nurse to grab him a long-sleeved shirt so it would cover most of the rash up. The pair of them had enough to worry about without adding a strange disease to the list. While she was at it, Kotetsu asked if she could grab his crappy Doyleton mask for him. The nurse gave him a look, but he was immune to them already. If he wanted to be a crazy old man with a mask, that was prerogative! He was tired of having to make up a new story every time he ran into someone, because his stories weren't very well constructed! Plus, they were hard to keep up with.

As they made their way to the stairwell, he realized this wasn't the route to breakfast. "Are we not eating?" he asked.

"Not on Sunday. We have chapel first and then we'll take you to brunch."

"Oh... Okay, chapel, huh?" When he finally figured out what she meant, he stopped walking and his nurse had to circle back. "Yeah, uh, I'm not really Christian or anything..." His wedding had been Christian, but neither of them had ever been active practitioners, especially once his wife had died.

"That's fine. This isn't about denomination. This is a place for anyone to sit and think. Everyone is heard here, no matter what they belief."

"Everyone? Oh, well that's nice of him..." That made the nurse laugh as she shuffled him inside. It was very small, but there was plenty of space. He found room in one of the pews closer to the door and sat down. It didn't take him long to grow restless. His shoe creaked softly as he rocked back and forth on the balls of his foot. Uncrossing his legs, he changed legs and crossed them again.

The quiet got to him as much as the scenery. Most whispered softly to each other, but he could see some actually resting or thinking like they were supposed to be. Frankly, Kotetsu couldn't remember the last time he tried praying--Actually, no that was a lie. He remembered the day perfectly. It was the night before his leave of absence was used up and he had to return to work. He didn't ask for anyone in particular, just that someone listen to him when he asked to keep his wife safe while he was out helping everyone else. The last thing he wanted was to have her all alone in her last moments.

Well, Kotetsu reflected bitterly, that hadn't worked out very well. He never thought about a higher power since then. Still, he had others to think of again. Sitting up straight, Kotetsu brought his hands together and bowed his head.

Okay, god or gods--I dunno, but just listen for a second. I'm not sure how I got myself in this. I thought I was out for good, and here I am! I don't care if I have to stay a deadbeat as long as Kaede isn't left alone. She's only got me--

And so does Bunny... Damnit, he's gone through more than enough for one lifetime, please just fix him. Fix him so he remembers. It's just not fair after spending his whole life finding answers and then waking up to find them all gone again. please, enough is enough!

Smacking his hands together twice, Kotetsu slouched back against the pew and felt silly for using such desperate tactics, but it was unfortunately a desperate situation they found themselves in.

[Free]

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery eyed the boy with a faint smile that he was completely unaware of resting on his face. The boy had looked sane, but then again, the insane ones always did. He was corroborating Yomi's story about the prison and fighting, at least. That was what Skulduggery had wanted to hear, but it didn't make the story any less difficult to believe. Still, something had injured Yomi - killed her, if she was telling the truth - and Valkyrie kept saying that a living skeleton shouldn't be such a skeptic, anyway. Skulduggery had been through too much in his life for it all be a figment of someone's imagination.

Good. That was one mystery solved.

As the edges of his vision grew slightly blurry once again, Skulduggery realized he hadn't blinked once this entire conversation. He squeezed his eyes shut against the tears and pressed his palms up against them. He continued to blink rapidly for the next minute or so, trying to ignore how strange the sensation still felt.

"I got a sense of that last night," Skulduggery said, carrying on as if nothing was out of the ordinary. "At least, I think it might have been last night. Time hasn't been very kind. What sort of experiments?" He glanced at the nurses standing at the back of the chapel. "They're not going to start attacking us, are they?" He wouldn't be surprised. They were far too cheerful to be working in a mental hospital.

[baniichan]

With how closed off he made himself appear, Barnaby had been hoping that no one would approach him just yet. Still, Dent had warned him that would be difficult to get much time to himself as long as he was trapped here. With the way the nurses structured every minute of their day, that was probably what their captors intended.

Well, regardless, there was no point in sending the young girl away. His assigned nurse was watching him closely, for one thing, and she seemed invested in the idea of him making "friends". As long as he was at a disadvantage, Barnaby had no intention of giving himself a bad reputation with the staff. Not only that, but it was difficult to tell whether anyone was from Stern Bild from a simple glance. Even if he wasn't working as a Hero anymore, Barnaby had poured a lot of effort in maintaining his clean, polished image. He wouldn't give it up so easily.

For that reason, he opened his eyes and turned his attention onto the shy girl standing near his seat. She couldn't have been much older than 14 -- maybe even about Dragon Kid's age. Barnaby's mouth curved into a polite smile, his expression deliberate and well-rehearsed.

"Certainly," he answered in an even tone.

[selfnighted]

[I apologize in advance for this. :'|]

Chapels calmed Maya, but unfortunately, a chapel in the place she was imprisoned wasn't much relief at all. For one thing, to reach the chapel she had to pass a hall that she had recently seen coated with blood, and it brought too readily to mind the most recent scene in the entry room.

And now the good doctor was threatening them all with it. He was being inscrutable as usual, then; he had a method of forcing all the patients to lose consciousness so there was no reason he couldn't just do it if it struck his fancy. It had been the General who had wanted the patients to perform for him; the doctor merely made threats and didn't bother to explain why. Business as usual for him.

"Long night?" Maya said wearily as she took a seat next to the man. She didn't much care if he was hurting himself or not (humans did the silliest things), but she didn't like the thought that the head overlord Landel was watching and taking sadistic glee in the patients' actions. Unfortunately, there wasn't much Maya could do. "Do you need a hug?" she said as sincerely as possible, which meant it didn't sound sincere at all.

[tasteoftruth]

Oh, right. This was Landel's. If the institute itself wasn't torturing you the other patients would take up the slack. "Probably not as much as you could use a kick in the teeth," he mumbled, letting his hands drop and huddling with his elbows on his knees. Even hunched, he still did an admirable job of looming over her. "You got a problem with a guy trying to do a little praying in here?"

Not that he was praying to anyone, per se, but he could use an excuse to make himself seem less despondent.

[selfnighted]

"No," Maya replied serenely, moving her gaze to the bird image at the front. But there was something fallacious about Landel including this structure in the asylum, was there not? All of the religions she'd heard of advocated the sort of thing that the good overlord doctor never seemed to practice. Unless Landel had done it to appease his conscience.

Maya found that unlikely, for the simple reason that he'd never seemed to display anything of the sort. Thayer had said something about the necessity of the asylum; Landel didn't express such feelings.

Pointless speculation. She turned her thoughts back to the situation at hand. Perhaps a conversational distraction was in order. Then again, she hadn't heard what her companion for the morning had mumbled. "To whom are you praying?"

[tasteoftruth]

Anyone who'd listen, at this point, but Badd had in general given up on gods. There were Christians in the department, and Jews, and the people who went by that odd Shinto-esque religion the spirit mediums were fond of, but Badd preferred to rely on himself. He hadn't been to church in decades.

That didn't mean he didn't have his heroes. "Saint Kojak of the Eleventh Precinct. Patron saint of detectives." He ran his tongue over his teeth, adding, "And lollipops." His stonefaced expression didn't so much as twitch.

Why not, nothing else had worked thus far.

[gald_digger]

“Thank you!” Anise cheered as if that had been a victory in itself, and with a light giggle, she plopped down into the space next to him. It was hard to tell if he appreciated her being there, but at the very least, he seemed to have excellent manners – which was a very good sign in Anise’s book.

Not wanting things to fall into quiet awkwardness, Anise went on to ask the man a few questions, hoping to get the wheels of conversation rolling. “So, what’s your name? I haven’t seen you around that much… Are you new?” Maybe she could use some of her veteran knowledge to keep him interested.

[lighthearted]

When the stranger lifted a hand up to his eyes like he was trying to hold back tears, Sora frowned, trying to figure out what could have caused that kind of response. Maybe his eyes were just stinging for some other reason, seeing how he'd managed to smile just a short while before that.

The man didn't draw much attention to it, though, instead moving on to ask questions. Sora addressed the last one first, since it was the most urgent and the easiest one to answer. "No, they won't attack us," he said with a shake of his head. "Well, not unless we try to riot or something, but even then they'll just sedate us." The nurses had never resorted to the sorts of things that the military had done while they had been here. Sora wondered if he should mention that, but he didn't want to overload the man.

"I've never been experimented on myself, but every other night a group of us will be taken out of our rooms and up to the second floor, where the doctors torture and do all sorts of things." He wasn't being vague for any reason other than he didn't know the details most of the time. He knew what had happened to Kairi, for instance, but for most of the other patients he had no idea. It was usually better not to ask about that kind of stuff.

"What happened to you last night?" Sora asked, since that would give him a good idea of what the man needed to know.

[skeletonenigma]

Quite literal experiments, then. Skulduggery was almost disappointed to learn that even in unexplored alternate realities he knew nothing about, torture would still be an inescapable part of his life. So much else about this supposed hospital had been unique, but perhaps torture was simply too much of a classic to leave out of the equation.

But torture, he could handle. He'd been introduced to all sorts of creative torture meant to hurt even a skeleton in the last few years alone. The idea of torture meant far, far less to Skulduggery right now than the idea of getting sedated. He'd never been sedated before, and he imagined it wasn't fun.

"Well," he answered the boy after a moment, "I met a woman who said she was killed, and she insisted on coming here. That fountain," he added with a brief wave of his hand, "was not angelic, and it wasn't spouting water. I'm guessing the rest of this place tends to follow that example come nightfall. Why the pretense during the day?"

Actually, mentioning Yomi out loud made Skulduggery remember that he had been looking for a mirror on the way to this chapel. He made a mental note to find one later; a quick few minutes of practice might help him remember to blink more often and smile without looking eerie.