Night 68: Main Hallway, 1-Center

[madeinthehrl]

[from here]

It was still early in the night from the looks of it--the main hallway was totally clear as they moved toward the Sun Room. It was true the route they were taking was normally guarded, but there was no guarantee the rec field wasn't, and with a group this large, they would stand a better chance at breaking through anything that might await them.

She glanced back at the group. "If there's someone in the Sun Room, try to focus on disabling the attacker and running. I don't want to get held up in a pointless fight."

Comments

[a_sin_for_him]

No, something wasn't right at all. Lust's thin lipped expression turned to a frown. She wasn't so rattled by the day's losses as to not sense that subtle wrongness.

She followed after Castiel, eyes narrowed and scanning the dark corridor around them. The prickly feeling of unease didn't fade, only grew worse as the eerie quiet settled over them.

Or...almost quiet.

"What was that?" Even hushed, her voice sounded too loud to her own ears.

[freewill]

As the silence set in, something so strong that it was as if all of the sound had been sucked away, Castiel realized that there was a reason this felt familiar. He let out a breath, remembering that time on the field with Gabriel, and knew that this was the exact same set of sensations. They were being haunted.

The sound of crying hit him then, and immediately he knew it had to be a trap. It was no surprise that Lust asked about it, but Castiel turned toward her sharply, moving so quickly that his stomach seized in pain.

He placed a hand there, but ignored it for the most part, eyeing Lust sharply. "Nothing good. Whatever may be causing this, I've encountered it before. It's a ghost." She would have to believe him -- and how couldn't she, considering she wasn't human herself? The urgency in his body language and tone likely made it clear that this was no joke.

[deathrattling]

The boy's cries continued, the only sound breaking through the deadened silence, until his eyes lit upon something at the end of the hall and he quieted: and then relocated more than moved, flickering up to standing as if there had been no motion in between, and from there to a spot behind Lust in the blink of an eye. One pale hand reached out and snagged onto her wrist, grip cold and demanding.

In the other arm he held a small black cat, curled comfortably against his chest and staring at them with gleaming eyes.

[a_sin_for_him]

"Yes." Lust's voice was without emotion or expression. Ghost. Spirit. Spectre. This place was too rife with them. "I believe I may have, too. Don't touch it."

Of course, that meant nothing when the thing itself took the choice out of their hands. At the cold grip on her wrist the homunculus jerked away even as she turned, remembering the other time some manner of spirit had touched her in this place.

Scar had been there, that night.

[freewill]

Instead of giving them a chance to get away, the ghost came to them, and it didn't take a form that Castiel would have expected. Not that children were exactly uncommon when it came to vengeful spirits, but the hair that had wrapped around him and Gabriel had put a different image into his head.

The cat, on the other hand, was strange. There wasn't much idea of where the souls of animals went after they died, though it was possible the feline was merely an illusion.

Either way, Castiel's main concern was getting away from it. As Lust jerked away, Castiel grabbed for her other arm, attempting to pull her further down the hall. "Do you have anything on you made of iron?" he asked urgently.

[deathrattling]

The shadows lengthened, deepened: matched the silence in its completeness. Each movement the patients made magnified in the thick air, the rustle of Lust's recoil and the matching fabric-swish of Castiel's urgency. In the cocoon of quiet around them there was nothing but the boy -- and then in the blink of an eye, not the boy, either. Nothing more than their own footfall and the faintest smell of what might have been autumn around them, hot long afternoons warming through rotting fallen leaves.

And then in another blink the boy was in front of them, standing as if he had always been there. The cat purred in his arms, gaze locked upon them.

He opened his mouth, and the sound was almost as if his voice and the cat's had melded, a solemn brash yowl of a word: "Toshio."

[a_sin_for_him]

"Iron?"

Lust looked at Castiel in confusion before shaking her head. "No..." She didn't even have pockets. And then the spectre was suddenly before them and Lust clenched her hands into tight fists. She was so tired of this place playing with her, breaking her down.

And for no reason! It was all nothing but frustrating madness, building and building without end. It made her as angry as she had been earlier in the day, upon learning of the deaths that had come in the night. It was a sick, hot, fevered anger that threatened to override her reason if she wasn't careful.

"Just go away!"

[freewill]

Despite the ghost being out of the ordinary in other ways, it still behaved like one. Castiel didn't feel any cold spots, but the way that it disappeared and reappeared was similar to any other spirit.

No salt and no iron between them. Castiel thought he might have to make an effort to change that in the future. He'd need to start carrying it around like the Winchesters -- what a strange thought.

With no other option open to him, Castiel struck out at the spirit with his blade. It wasn't made of iron, but it was metal, and he could only hope it would disperse it for long enough that they could get away. "Stay back," he hissed at Lust. If this thing decided to do them harm, he'd rather take the damage.

[deathrattling]

Lust's cry of anger only served to tilt the boy's head a little to the right, stare as blank as ever, not even so much considering these new victims as it was just that: a stare. It encompassed them, read them into the blood that scripted the architecture of this space, but without emotion or consciousness.

It vanished as soon as Castiel swung, the entire image simply blinking out of visibility the moment blade touched skin, all that was left a distant yowl in a long range, octaves too low to be clear.

For that moment the stillness around them seemed to exhale, a breath of the Institute's normal nighttime noise: and then Lust was soaking wet from the head down, water plinking from her body. And filling her throat, her mouth, drowning her from the inside.