damned_institute | Nightshift 33: F-A Block Hallway

Though Lia kept a careful leash on her own psychic senses, locked down as tightly as she possibly could to avoid picking up or reflecting too much of the chaos she was certain surrounded her, discomfort passing so near wasn't something the witch could miss. She frowned, emotions shifting and resettling into a low hum of sharp concern as she turned toward the other woman.

The other girl, she noted, eyebrows rising in faint surprise as she noted yet another person held captive who was younger even than she. "Are you all right?"

Melissa was about to mutter a brisk reply and continue on her way when the woman's full mind touched on her tongue. She froze, but not with surprise. How many more people was the mindcaster going to meet who went against everything she'd grown up with?

This time, there weren't any thoughts. Emotions, definitely, quickly changing from the earlier fear to a much less welcoming concern. But there weren't any thoughts underneath the taste. It wasn't the simple emotions-drowning-out-thoughts either, but more like... a sort of psychic barrier.

Melissa turned to face the woman. "Okay. First off, I'm fine, you can stop with the concern." It was one of the most annoying, bitter emotions Melissa had to deal with from her friends besides pity. "Second. What are you?" She doubted the woman was another telepath, but she must have some experience to have any kind of a barrier up. Not even Rex had managed to do that, and he grew up with Melissa.

Lia's eyebrows rose in sudden sharp surprise that dove swiftly into wary evaluation. It did, at least, have the effect of dispersing her concern. She let her senses slip the leash a little more to test the other woman's psychic scent, and frowned. Not Blood, though the question had given indications in that direction already. And yet that same question alone marked her as something other than a landen.

"I could ask the same of you," she replied. "I'm a witch. A Queen, to be exact." The inflection she gave the word made it a statement of specific designation rather than a claim to royalty.

Melissa tensed slightly at the woman's sudden change in emotion, not used to that intensity without the underlying thoughts. She actually had to put forth effort to get past that barrier, not exactly something she was very interested in doing right now. She was about to add to her question when she was stopped by a strange sensation on the edge of her mind.

The feeling of someone else touching her mind with the intention of finding out what she was when Melissa wasn't touching them... that was very, very new to her. She physically drew back, fearful of the non-control of the brief contact.

The mindcaster purposely ignored the implied question and addressed the next part instead. "A witch." She said it with a hint of disbelief in her voice, but that earlier feeling pretty much convinced her it was at least part of the truth. And as much as she didn't want to admit it, Melissa was intrigued by the idea of another sort-of-telepath that didn't feel... wrong.

"A witch," Lia confirmed, a faint frown forming at the disbelief. Not out of offense, but rather out of a perplexed uncertainty as to how precisely to explain. The definitions and terms were so ingrained as to be second nature.

"You aren't, but there is something..." Half-blood, she wondered for an instant, and then discarded the notion. That wasn't right, either. Which left something that lay outside of her particular vocabulary. Thus, instead of simply leaving it implied, she asked, "What are you?"

Melissa had to laugh at that. "Last I checked, no." She stopped herself in time from adding 'There's no such thing as witches,' remembering exactly who she was talking to.

"I'm..." Melissa was faintly surprised at how difficult it was to explain what she was. She'd done it a good number of times before. Never to a stiff, of course, which was probably what made this particular encounter so hard. A small sneer settled onto her face as the silence following that one word lengthened. "A human being. Why? You're not?"

She was very aware of the time slowly being wasted as she stood there talking, but Melissa was curious about this sort-of-telepath witch who wasn't a midnighter. She wouldn't spend too much more time here, in any case.

Lia's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline, temper cooling further. She'd encountered similar attitudes before, and was no more impressed than she had ever been. "I'm as human as you are," she replied evenly, a slight twist of inflection lending ambiguity to the otherwise straightforward statement. She, too, could play at word games.

She took a short glance toward the door leading into the southern halls, torn between attempting to unravel this new mystery or leaving the sneering girl to her own devices and continuing about her explorations.

And without that psychic barrier, Melissa thought somewhat bitterly, she could easily figure out just how true that statement was. Oh, well. It wasn't like she needed anything important; mostly just little things to satisfy her own curiosity. Which there wasn't time for right now. In fact, Melissa kind of wished the witch's emotions were hidden behind that barrier, too.

The quick glance wasn't lost on her, nor was the slight undertow of impatience lacing the witch's mind briefly. Melissa followed the look to the door and shrugged. "You're trying to escape." It wasn't a question. "Have you tried anything outside yet?" That was where Melissa intended to go; to some sort of courtyard surrounded by a climbable fence, using the surrounding thoughts and half-memories as a guide.

"Isn't everyone?" Lia asked, a touch dryly although her irritation abated just a little. "I can't imagine staying here, if there were any other choice..." She didn't find it necessary to admit that she would be more inclined to find a way out and then help the others trapped here escape than to simply flee herself. Not when she knew so little of the other girl.

She shook her head, grimacing at the reminder of how little she'd accomplished so far. "No. I never made it that far last night. I though to inspect the greenhouse tonight, to see if I could find any shears or other tools suitable as weapons before going any further."

Melissa just ignored the first part. That had been precisely her point, and she didn't see fit to retort and get into some kind of pointless argument. She winced at the foreign irritation, but other than that there was no reaction.

"Weapons." Melissa frowned, raising an eyebrow. "You're going to stay and fight anything that attacks?" She gestured towards the door leading away from the rooms. "There's a courtyard that way. I'm going to look for a way out of here, and I'm going to run from anything big with sharp teeth." Her tone was a little condescending, but her body language clearly indicated that the witch was free to come. Even Melissa knew that traveling alone in a place like this wasn't a very good idea.

"I'm going to make sure I can defend myself if I need to," Lia corrected. The condescension grated on her nerves, and she found herself wondering, perhaps unfairly, if this girl had ever found herself in a truly dangerous situation in her life. "Running only works if you have somewhere to run to. Sometimes it's just not an option."

She managed to clamp down hard on a surge of grief, forcing it down deep enough that only the faintest trace leaked through the barriers that protected her core of self. It was for her own sake, not out of any sense of courtesy; the emotion was still too raw to visit easily.

"Is it the same courtyard the patients visit when they decide to air us?" she asked curiously, wishing now that she'd ventured outside during that shift after all. That she would come along was implicit in the question; there was no other reason to ask.

Melissa chose to answer only the last question, mostly because she wasn't quite sure how to respond to the other statements. She intended to find a place to run to, but that seemed pointless to voice. And the very faint notion of grief that suddenly colored the witch's taste was... interesting, but Melissa couldn't begin to figure out how to ask about it. Besides, there much more important things to focus on right now.

"I assume. I've never been there. I just know where it is." She turned towards the door, focusing her mindcasting out past the walls as far as it would go. "It's outside the cafeteria. There's a lake, and... high walls around it." She frowned. "They're covered in ivy," she muttered, mostly to herself. Why didn't anyone manage to get over it before now?

Unless they did, and that's where the disappeared patients went. Shrugging, Melissa made up her mind to check it out. She took a slow step towards the door, giving the witch ample time to follow if she wanted. Melissa didn't really mind either way.

Lia wondered how the not-quite-witch knew much of the courtyard's layout if she'd never been. After a few seconds' thought, she decided not to ask. The information could easily have been on some long-vanished missive posted to the bulletin board, or have been passed either verbally or over a psychic link. Or perhaps not the latter. Now that she thought of it, she realized she'd had nothing of that sort of communication over the past day and a half.

She nodded as she followed, wheels turning in her mind at the description. "If the creepers are wide enough, they might make solid handholds to climb up," she mused. She was familiar enough with climbing, both trees for fun and over rocks while venturing off the beaten path. The latter would be a helpful thing if they did make it into the mountainous territory somehow.

"I'm Lia," she ventured, recalling that she'd not yet given her name. If they did find trouble, proper names were more useful to call in warning than 'hey you'.

"That's what I was thinking," Melissa replied absentmindedly, still concentrating on the surrounding mindcast landscape. She did note how much harder she had to concentrate than she would have back in Bixby, but that was to be expected by now.

She paused at the door with her hand on the handle. "Melissa." It was strange how much more of a necessity asking for names was here; the mindcaster normally knew the name of anyone she needed without thinking about it. It was so normal for her that she kept forgetting the person's name was off-limits here until the person actually thought about it.

Briefly shaking her head, Melissa pulled the door fully open and slipped through into the hallway beyond.

[off to here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/394449.html?thread=31995857#t31995857)]

Nightshift 33: F-A Block Hallway

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