Night 75: Live Cultures Test Chambers (Third Floor)

[redcladidealist]

[From here.]

At first Lloyd thought this room was as empty as the last, a few trolleys with jars and tools sitting on top, forgotten, the only signs of recent use. Two chambers much like the one that had nearly killed Kratos (and him, except that he'd been more lucky) stood on either side, ominously promising the same experience - or worse - if any of them dared to step through. The warp pad wasn't in either one, though. This time its soft purple glow lit up the room they were in from the far side, with no need to tempt fate in the pressure chambers again.

That same purple light revealed a flicker of movement as something large, maybe as tall as Lloyd was himself, darting back around the corner of one of the chambers. Lloyd's heart jumped in his chest, and he quickly motioned to the others.

They weren't alone in here.

"Who's there?!" he demanded, lifting both his swords.

Please, please just let it be another patient.

Comments

[redcladidealist]

Lloyd wasn't stupid. He knew very well that the doctor was distracting them, was only trying to save himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind, somewhere that sounded a lot like Kratos, even pointed out that the doctor could be lying, intent on making them waste precious time.

But even the chance that he wasn't was a chance Lloyd couldn't pass up. It was more chance than he'd had since this happened. His eyes widened, then immediately tore away from the doctor's face - playing right in to what the doctor no doubt wanted, but he didn't care. He had to find those Key Crests!

"Where?" he snapped, already in motion, swords dipping and all but forgotten in his haste to start searching the room. Maybe in another situation he might have cared a little more about the opening he might be giving the man, but this was his life and his father's life. Some things were just more important than a man who'd made his living torturing people for some kind of sick research.

[damned_doctors]

Of course, the doctor remembered how impulsive Lloyd was from their session, so this was what he had counted on. Granted, he hadn't been lying, but they would find them out for themselves. What mattered was that Lloyd was now distracted with trying to save himself, and that was the opportunity the doctor had been waiting for.

There was still a chance that the woman would get a shot off on him, but the doctor had to take that risk. He sprung forward, right for the warp pad. The other man, the one in the coat, tried to get there first and grab out at him. He did get a hold on his arm, but the moment that the doctor's feet hit the pad, he disappeared out of his grasp.

The way he saw it, this was the only chance he had of getting out of this alive.

[fourstonewalls]

The truth was, Lana couldn't pull the trigger. She'd been able to shoot things that had once been people, but that was different. Or at least she'd been able to convince herself of that long enough to save herself (and Ryuuzaki) from the nurse last night. She wasn't sure if she'd been showing her hand, or if it was sufficiently clear in whatever files the Institute had that the doctor knew it, or...if he was just that desperate, but she didn't even try to fire off a shot as he wrenched his way out of Castiel's range and onto the teleportation device.

Her hand wasn't shaking when she brought the gun back down, but that was only because she was concentrating on not allowing it.

"Mind telling us what an Ex-Sphere and a Key Crest look like? And if there's any reason we should be wasting our time on finding them?" Her voice was at it's coldest, the way she talked to the accused when she had no doubt of his or her guilt.

It was an act, but Lloyd didn't necessarily know her well enough to see through it. (Ryuuzaki did, but he should also know her well enough to grasp what she was doing. Lloyd needed a target for his anger, and to focus on what was really important; she was perfectly willing to provide both.)

[redcladidealist]

Distracted though he'd been, Lloyd hadn't intended to let the doctor get away like that. When the man made a run for it, Lloyd jerked back toward him, but- damn it! He was already too late! Biting back a frustrated curse, he stood there for a moment, torn. Go after him, or let him get away - get away with everything he'd done?

It wasn't really a question, though. As much as he steamed at the thought of the doctor getting away, the danger he was immediately in was more important than justice or revenge. Glaring at the warp pad, he thumped his swords down on a shelf - hard enough that Kratos probably would have said something to him about rough treatment of his weapons, but dammit, Kratos wasn't here, and he needed an outlet, something he could vent his anger on.

In retrospect, Lana's questions just then could have had a lot better timing.

"I'm not wasting time!" Lloyd growled. He jerked a drawer open, shoving the contents around with one hand in case what he was looking for was buried under the tools within. "Without a real Key Crest, I'm as good as dead. I just don't know when." He forced himself to take a breath, reminding himself that they wouldn't know. They wouldn't know, and it would be better if they did, because they didn't have time and he needed their help to look, and maybe a little because they deserved to know what could happen to him if they didn't find what he needed.

Releasing his breath, he pulled his hand back out of the drawer, then reluctantly pulled his left glove off. The Exsphere and the fake Crest were visible even with it on, but-

They needed to see. They needed to understand. He held his hand up, letting the dim light catch on the gem embedded in his skin. A dull plate of metal glinted around it, surrounded by angry, puckered skin.

"This is an Exsphere," he explained grimly. "It's complicated, especially if you don't know what mana is, but it's attached to my mana- my energy, and if it isn't controlled by a Key Crest, sooner or later my mana will go out of control and I'll become a monster. That doctor gave me one he made, but I already know it's not working. I need a better Key Crest than this, and so does my dad." Fake or not, he had no doubt that the crystal he'd seen attached to Kratos's hand would cause trouble without something to keep it in check.

[ryuuzaki]

And just like that, the doctor escaped.

When Lana spoke sharply to Lloyd, L gave her a sidelong glance, brows slightly raised, but he didn't say anything. Keeping Lloyd in the room, keeping the group together, was a good idea. If she hadn't distracted Lloyd, he might have taken off after the doctor.

L listened to Lloyd's explanation of the situation with internal exasperation, keeping his demeanor as neutral as possible. On one hand, they could run out of time, their best chance at escape eaten up by something that was the very definition of a wild goose chase. L hated having his time wasted even when the stakes were low, but this was a great deal more than that. On the other, if it was really that important --

"All right, I understand. One of us should watch the pad and the door while the rest of us search. Castiel, will you?"

Lana could use some distraction, he thought, and Castiel was probably the most physically imposing of the four of them -- the weird blade he was carrying helped.

L jerked open the nearest drawer and started rifling through it as he continued.

"It would be better to take as little time as possible. We don't know what's ahead of us or behind us or how much time we have left. Everyone from this area seems to have gone forward in relation to where we came from, so that raises the question of why they didn't want to go in the opposite direction. Was it just us? Something else?

"That guy probably isn't coming back, but we can't be sure, and if he has friends up ahead, we have to be prepared to deal with them all later. It's also possible that he lied to you to distract us so that he could escape.

"-- Not this drawer."

He moved on to the next. The jewel in Lloyd's hand was distinctive: L would know it if he saw it, or anything like it.

[freewill]

It had been a bizarre sensation to have someone dematerialize out of his grasp, but Castiel was left with no way to stop the doctor from fleeing the scene. Tempting as it was to step onto the pad after him, he realized that they had other issues to discuss first and it would be reckless of him to rush ahead without the others. Castiel had plenty of faith in his own abilities, but those had been weakened here and he had to keep his mortality in mind too.

Frustrated, he turned back to Lloyd as he explained what the items the doctor had mentioned were and what they meant to him. It was more than a little alarming to learn that Lloyd was in danger of turning into some mindless monster and he hadn't warned any of them until now, but Castiel could only assume that the threat wasn't imminent.

It was a moot point now. They needed to focus on finding the Key Crest and Exsphere, although Castiel was given the job of keeping an eye out. That happened to be something he was good at, so he didn't chafe at it. There would be three people searching and the room wasn't that large -- if the items were here, they would find them soon.

If they didn't find them, this entire encounter would have been a waste of time, something that Ryuuzaki didn't hesitate to point out. "With any luck, those monsters on the loose will deal with him," Castiel remarked, half under his breath, as he lingered near the warp pad and kept an eye on the door they'd come through. So far, they had remained ahead of the beasts.

[fourstonewalls]

Lloyd's explanation left Lana none the wiser as to what on Earth -- or, more likely, off-Earth they were looking for. True, she knew what it looked like, and that magic was involved. Ilia had occasionally explained bits and pieces about her abilities, but it was still far too nebulous for Lana's liking.

Granted, she wasn't going to have to present the knowledge to a judge, so it didn't really matter if she was slightly confused, but it was unsettling. She thought Ryuuzaki might feel the same; or he just wanted to move on -- either way they were racing against time. The night ending or Lloyd turning into a monster; which it was would make a great difference to Lloyd, but less so to the rest of them.

"Perhaps he'll do us the favor of taking a few of them with him." Even a despicable man like one of the doctors deserved better than to be ripped apart by wild creatures, and she couldn't help imagining it. The howls that they could occasionally hear through the walls didn't help. As she answered, though, she was pulling open drawers. She lifted a tangle of junk out of one and shook it; nothing fell out, so she dropped back in and shut it with more force than was entirely necessary.

Damnit. She didn't need to add to the tension level by letting her nerves show; she knew better than that. Was better than that. She did not compound it by taking a deep breath; instead, she slid open the next drawer like nothing had happened.

This one was devoid of anything but a few cobwebs. As were the next three. Nothing.

[redcladidealist]

At one point, after the initial panic of realizing the danger he was in, the danger he was putting everyone else in, Lloyd had thought to warn everyone close to him. Then Tsurugi...

Even if we told them, if we don't know when it's going to happen, we still can't protect them. ... All it would do is make people scared. The other boy's voice echoed in his head, a memory of that ride on the bus they'd taken... was it only five days ago? It felt like forever.

But forever or five days, it had been long enough for the initial panic to subside and Tsurugi's advice to sink in. He didn't know when it would happen, and they had so many more important things to worry about - things they needed to concentrate on if they wanted to survive even one night.

Like tonight. Like finding Landel and getting out. Like the monsters he could still hear in the distant background (please let it be distant, they don't have time).

Except now there was a chance. His Key Crest might be here. There was a chance to make sure he didn't have to worry about turning into a monster and turning on his friends, and it was here, it had to be-! It was a struggle to keep his hands from shaking in his haste to pull open drawer after drawer, every cabinet door, every bin - a struggle to ignore the way he couldn't feel the cold metal of every knob and pull, but he couldn't think about that, he couldn't.

And then all at once he couldn't, because he opened a drawer and something gleamed.

"I found it!" The words weren't even out of his mouth before he reached in and snatched the Key Crest out. It wasn't his, it was Kratos's, but the metal felt warm in a way that had nothing to do with heat and everything to do with the way his unstable mana was reacting to the touch of inhibitor ore. Relief washed over him, more than he felt like he'd felt in years. He was... not safe, but he could be. It was more hope than he'd had for days.

But he wasn't done yet. His fingers fished into the drawer a second time, heart leaping when they brushed with two more things. This time they did shake when he pulled the objects out.

His Key Crest. His Exsphere. The doctor hadn't lied.

"I've got them!" he told the others, not even bothering to shut the draw. "I've got them! We can go!"

Because they still didn't have time. Dammit! But at least now he felt like he had a real chance to save himself and Kratos.

[ryuuzaki]

Right, Lloyd had found what he was looking for. That meant that there wasn't any reason to linger here. They had to press forward while they still could. Freedom was -- it wasn't close enough to taste, but it might be on the table.

"Let's go. People with swords take the lead; Lana and I will be behind you with guns." He didn't need to tell them that if anything were to come at them, they should kill it. It was impossible to say where that doctor had gone, or what kind of weapons he might have found in the interim.

Still... if the doctor had wanted to kill Lloyd, he could have withheld the information about Lloyd's belongings, couldn't he?

They stepped on the pad as a group, eager, cautious, and determined.

[To here. Will this be my very last moving post ever?]