[From here.]

Judging from the maps, Harvey had expected them to enter out into some sort of patio, and yet instead they ended up... here. He frowned, glancing down at the slip of paper again to make sure he hadn't read it wrong. As expected, that wasn't the case, which really only left one other answer.

"These maps are inaccurate," he grumbled as he shoved them back into his pants pockets. "How about yours?" It was possible he was being overly judgmental, as they hadn't led him astray until now, but the fact still stood that he wouldn't be able to trust them anymore. Damn it all.

On the other hand, while this wasn't a kitchen, it looked like they were getting close. From what he could tell, this was where they served up food. "Whatever," he said with a sigh, "let's just keep moving."

[From here.]

Subsequently, the two fell rather than walked into their next room. Peter gasped for breath, overwhelmed by the sudden temperature change, even if this was far preferable to what they'd just come out of. He ended up half on top of Sam, and had to ditch both his shovel and sack to scramble up and into a sitting position.

It was only once he was off of Sam that Peter was able to take in the room where they'd ended up. Still no pharmacy, and no file room either. He realized there was no way they'd get that lucky.

Sighing, he patted himself down, rearranged his tousled hair, and then slowly stood up and started to gather his things. They seemed to be in some kind of mail room, if the slots and big sacks were anything to judge by. Did that mean... did they get letters sent to them, and the staff just never delivered them?

But first things first. Peter glanced over to Sam. "You all right?"

[From here.]

L expected another dark hall, the decaying remnants of what had once been clinical, but he stepped through the door into warm, gleaming light.

The sudden change hurt his eyes, and he blinked against the brightness. It took a few seconds for his vision to adjust and sharpen again. As it did, he lowered his flashlight until its beam pointed at the floor, then clicked it off.

The room itself was not inviting: while it was rich and, in some ways, ornate, it was also oppressive, full of hard surfaces and angles, and dominated by a large, carved dais at its center. Everything he could see was gold, even the low ceiling. Atmospheres like this, full of ancient and terrible power, were a rare experience; the echos of archaic authority that had long since faded into obsolescence were somewhat more familiar to him, usually in the context of investigating the theft of some expensive trinket or other.

In this case, though, the power was still tangible. It sat on the platform. It was big, mostly lion, and -- yes, it was breathing; worse, it watched them through eyes that looked both intelligent and pitiless. As L stared back at it, its tail began to flick back and forth.

His expression, which had been both astonished and baffled, settled into a frown.

The situation raised a number of questions, most of them obvious. They weren't where they were supposed to be, and their current location mystified him; they might still be in the Institute, in some way, or it might be a new place entirely. This is what Landel meant by "renovations"? Or -- this is a "visitor"? Recalling the minotaur from a few nights earlier, he began to understand how unlikely it was that they had gone far.

He found that his confusion and curiosity were too fresh for fear to set in with the heaviness that he suspected it should have. Faint dread was present, but it was generalized, caused more by the portentous ambiance of the room itself than specifically by the beast at its center; it felt more like they were standing before a throne than in a lair. Even so... if the beast decided to spring, he doubted that he would be able to reach his knife in time.

For the moment, the sphinx seemed content to pin them both under the weight of its intent gaze. Without taking his eyes off of it, L inclined his head in Lunge's direction, and spoke in a hushed tone.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

[warped in from here.]

The minute Endrance stepped through the door, he felt the pit of his stomach drop. He recognized this place from one of the first nights he'd been there, and he had hoped never to wind up there again. "This place..."

He couldn't turn and look at the cages lining the walls. Instead, he kept his eyes down, staring at the floor as if it would suddenly turn into a warp point - or wishing that it would.

"I was here one of the first nights I was in this place. It's...it's horrible. I don't know why it exists here, but I know I..."

Endrance finally lifted his head, though he closed his eyes not long after. "I'd turn it to dust in a moment if I could. I..."

[warped from here.]

As Porky stepped through the doorway to the rec field, he suddenly felt queasy. He shut his eyes and readjusted his stance. Ugh...what had just happened? Was Landel pumping nerve gas into the institute or something? Shaking his head and giving himself a light slap on the cheek to help focus, Porky opened his eyes.

"What." Porky said plainly.

As if to say, "No Porky, you're not going crazy, you're going cRaAaAaAzY," the ex-king had somehow wound up in the women's bathroom found next to the sun room. Normally, Porky would have appreciated the warp. Walking around the institute was tedious indeed, and anything that could speed up the process would be welcomed with open arms. There were, however, two points that bothered Porky:

1. Porky had not been planning on visiting the girls' bathroom tonight.
2. Porky had just been fucking warped to the girls' bathroom what the fucking fuck just happened

"Alright, calm down..." Porky whispered to himself as he scanned the room. "All of this is happening for a reason."

Porky slowly walked towards the exit, keeping a close eye out for anything suspicious.

[From here]

"It wouldn't be much of a music room if they didn't," he agreed. Interesting to know that Edgar at least had those where he came from. A part of him was sure it would be interesting to sit down and compare what was similar and what was different between all the different places the people he'd talked to so far claimed to come from. That part was quickly distracted by a strange moment of vertigo as he stepped through the doorway. He would have blamed it on his less than perfect health, if not for the fact that this also didn't seem like where they'd been meaning to go. It was an office of some kind, with no other exit he could see which would conceivably lead them towards the shed his roommate had mentioned.

"Edgar? I don't think we can get outside from here."

Maybe the other man had simply gotten disorientated in the halls. He could see how that might happen.

[From here]

The rain was sharp and cold against Hime's face, but there was no crunch of shattered glass beneath her shoes, only that of gravel. The street, the stores, the town - gone. More importantly, at least to Hime, so was the zombie. She had hoped that by breaking through the window she might circumvent the spell on the doors, but once again it seemed that any manner of exit was just as ensnared. So what had they come out of now?

Turning around, Hime saw nothing - no shattered window standing in the middle of the air, no portal, no trace of where they'd come from. In fact, she had no idea where they were. In one direction, she could see a large silhouette, far off and looming. The institute, perhaps? Closer by, there were smaller shapes. A town, it seemed. Doyleton? No, Doyleton wasn't so close to the institute - assuming that was institute.

In either case, the zombie had escaped. Hime made a hiss of frustration as she put away her bat in favor of her knife and her flashlight, for all the good it would do with how hard it was raining.

[from here]

At first it was hard to figure out what had happened. Vertigo, a sense of displacement - Logan steadied himself with a step forward. It was still dark, but something had changed.

That had been the sound of a boot heel on wooden boards. It smelled like pine trees and dust, and his flashlight drifted over familiar walls half a second after he put it all together: Canada. Crickets in the grass, bike parked outside, beer in the fridge, Canada.

There would be a battery-powered camping lantern on the left, on top of a bookcase he'd cut himself. He brushed the dust off it and flipped it on - still worked. The cabin, with all its faded books and taxidermy and cobwebbed corners, looked just like he'd left it, and compared to where he'd been, it looked better than ever. Maybe better than anything.

"I'll be damned," he said, looking down at his boots to make sure they were really there. He'd left Pete and Kurt in the nightmare psych ward, but it was hard to worry about that right this second. He'd somehow won the right place at the right time award, and he was going to use that chair he'd fallen asleep in for firewood (no sense taking chances, and he was in the mood to burn something). He had had to talk to Cyke, and then Hank - but first things first.

"Where you from?" He glanced back at Tifa as he moved toward the table in the center of the room; his communicator was there (cell phone, too; shouldn't need it, but there it was). Wait - he paused suddenly and turned back, frowning at her clothes. Why the hell was he the only one dressed normally?

((From here.))

Spock managed to catch his balance as he stepped through the door, expecting to find some sort of hallway, as the maps he looked at once before on the bulletin had indicated. Although it was true he didn't regard those supposedly patient-made maps as absolute truth, Spock had not anticipated on walking into a room such as this one, either. Lightning flashed through the windows, briefly illuminating shelves that held a modest-sized set of boxes, many of which were scattered onto the floor. Spock held his light up, and his beam fell onto some of the damaged tiles on the floor.

They were no longer inside Landel's Institute, Spock realized. Dark eyes glanced over toward McCoy, though the Vulcan didn't immediately speak. Rather, he took a cautious step forward, studying the area carefully as a low rumble of thunder shook the walls. While he did not detect any lifeforms in the immediate vicinity, that did not mean they could let their guard down, either.

He approached the window that was near the door, gazing out into the torrent of rain. It was dark, and difficult to see, but another flash of lightning gave him a glimpse of some of the structures he recognized from Main Street.

"Fascinating," he murmured. "It appears we have been transported to Doyleton."

[From here.]

This time, Lelouch was prepared for the peculiar sensation that accompanied the crossing over into the next room, but that did nothing for the complete shock of seeing precisely where the institute had sent them. How the hell--

"N-1, N-2, describe to me what you see," he ordered haltingly, his gaze fixed on the building before him. The fact that his Zero suit had disappeared and been replaced by his usual school uniform held little interest for him compared to their surroundings. If he didn't know better-- this had to be some sort of illusion, or at least a dream, nightmare, hologram-- it couldn't be real, could it?

He broke away from his guards and walked up the steps to the entrance of the clubhouse, one hand slowly raising to touch a pillar. Real. The archways above him, real. The perfectly manicured lawn, real. The stones beneath his guards' feet, the vaulted windows, the stairs he'd just climbed up-- how was any of this real? How had they gotten here? Most important of all, how could they get back?

"Begin searching for an exit," he ordered next, shaking himself out of his stupor. He could figure out how Landel had done it after they made their way back to Nunnally.

((From here.))

Ludwig had no explanation for what happened next. One moment he hopped through a shattered window, leading to the outside, already preparing himself for a dash into the next building over... and the next, he was in a courtyard, a lake stretched out before him and rain lashing his face. Once more, he had no explanation for how this had transpired, for he knew this place, even in his short time in the Institute and even with the rain stinging his eyes.

Somehow, in an instant, they had gone from a zombie attack in a mechanic's garage, running for their lives, to... this. Ludwig stared blankly for a moment, then weakly swung his flashlight along the ground. They were at the door leading back into the Institute, and to his chagrin, the man couldn't see any signs that they had ever been in the mechanic's shop. There was no glass on the floor- even with the weather, it should shine in the light, no signs of rust, nothing to mark their passing. Save only for the heavy monkey wrench in his hand, the one clue that remained out of place, there was no sign they had ever been anywhere else. And yet it was there, challenging him with its impossibility.

His mind ached as he tried to come to terms with what had just happened. In quick succession, they had gone from a hallway, to a garage with zombies breaking through the windows, to the courtyard. The entire process had taken less than ten minutes, probably not even five. Even as healthy as he was, he doubted he could run all the way from the hallway to the courtyard without breathing harder than he was. Even more than that, the garage was the only place he could have gotten the wrench from, for he had no idea if he'd even be able to find one in the Institute, and he certainly hadn't spent the time necessary to look.

It was, in short, a physical impossibility for which he had no possible rational explanation. His mind blanked, reeling with trying to come to terms with something so patently absurd, and in the back of his mind, he calmly and rationally decided that perhaps, in some way, he truly had just gone mad. Occam's razor cut very finely here: the most rational explanation, and the one with the fewest extraneous elements, was that he was insane. But he didn't stop there. Instead, he turned to Donna, his voice a tiny bit strained as he shouted above the downpour, "Did we... really just go from the town back to the Institute by jumping through a window?"

(From here.)

Touya stepped through the door and stopped. He'd been in quite a few closets in his time of various kinds, and this was not a closet. Not unless Landel started storing couches and paintings of puppies in his closets. Did he take a wrong turn?

He turned to look outside the door, maybe check the plate on the front, but it slammed shut as Yue walked through. Dumbfounded and disoriented, Touya struggled for something to say.

"Uh..."

That was about all he had.

[from here]

Agatha wasn't really sure what she'd been expecting. Either something would try to defend the room, and she was as ready for that as she could be; or it wouldn't, and she could move on to those adjoining rooms she'd spotted through the doorframe. But she'd certainly expected there to be adjoining rooms, what with having seen them already. In fact, she'd expected it to have anything at all in common with what she'd seen, rather than being a rather boringly tidy little office.

It barely contained anything- desk, chairs, couch, tiny and severely plain machine with a flask- but somehow, it was enough to bring unease to the forefront, despite Agatha's fury. Something was horribly... was even more horribly wrong than she'd thought.