Night 70: Main Hallway, 1-West

[freewill]

[From here.]

And here he was.

Castiel had made it to the meeting spot without any complications, which also meant that he was the first to arrive. Not only out of him and Kratos, but out of the entire patient body. There wasn't another soul here, and Castiel wasn't even in a position where he could sense if others were close or not. With no other recourse, he leaned against the north wall and pulled his new radio out of his trenchcoat with his free hand.

He glanced down at the three numbers printed at the bottom -- 77.7. It caused him to twist his mouth, because he knew the meaning behind it, at least from a human's perspective. It had to be a coincidence -- there was no other logical explanation for it -- and yet he still had to wonder.

He turned it on, but there was still only static. Castiel imagined that the radio wouldn't be of much use unless he had someone else's number to switch it to.

[For Kratos.]

Comments

[rebonding]

"Down there?" Korra glanced over her shoulder, raising her eyebrows once again.

"I headed down there last night without any trouble... I know sometimes monsters can hang out toward the middle, though." She shined her flashlight down the hall, though nothing really jumped out at her.

Figuratively and literally.

[asteroidbelt]

If it happened on alternating nights, then it would be dangerous. But there was no telling for certain. 'Monsters,' she had said, in the plural. "We'll have to go quickly."

He started walking, but stopped and turned back. "—If you wouldn't mind?"

If monsters sometimes hung out in the middle, it must be guarding the room that led to the front door, he thought belatedly as his mind caught up to the implications. But he and Ryuugamine had gone there once, and hadn't met anything. It was possible that the door to that room becoming a portal had short-circuited the monster program, but the problem really was that Ryusei didn't know how it worked. The intercom announcements seemed to imply that the nighttime occurrences were deliberate, maybe arbitrary. No point in trying to guess it. Still, he was torn between the options of going straight through and stopping to check the door. That depended on whether anything was there in that hallway tonight, but there was also the possibility that the ghost needed time to manifest—time they would be giving her by taking a detour. "We could take the stairs instead...."

[rebonding]

"Sure!" Korra shrugged, giving Ryusei a friendly smile. "I've never been upstairs, so I've got no idea what the best way of getting up there is. I guess it's worth a shot." If they ran into anything dangerous, Korra was certain she could take care of the both of them.

Of course, she'd yet to face any of Landel's true horrors, yet. This may have been her third night, but she hadn't exactly gotten a proper feel for the severity of their situation yet.

"I'm Korra, by the way." She bowed casually.

[asteroidbelt]

"Sakuta. Nice to meet you."

Decision time. Stairs or hallway? "This way it is," he said as he gestured to the hall. When he'd been here with the others, Miketsukami hadn't known the layout of the second floor, either; he'd just picked the route that didn't seem to be in the way of the mysterious noise. In that case, the hallway and the stairs led to the same result: Ryusei didn't know what lay behind either. He just really wanted to test his theory, and maybe he even wanted to go through it out of a sense of bravado because he'd been afraid all day and going through the hall would put a rest to them if nothing happened. Or it could make it worse by happening a second time, but in that case, Ryusei had the chance to observe the ghost's weakness. If it didn't kill him first, but Ryusei simply wouldn't let that happen. Simple.

"Ready?"

[to here]