damned_institute | NIGHTSHIFT 42: BLACK ROCK HOTEL

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NIGHTSHIFT 42: BLACK ROCK HOTEL

Snake jerked his head away from Fox's hand and shot to his feet, disorientated slightly by the sudden shift. The grout in the tiles was black with what looked like old blood, and the stench of rot heaved in his throat. Something was badly wrong. He sensed threats - left, faint shapes in the dark outside the large windows - Fox - something creaking in the ceiling - a long groaning voice off to the right, past the walls - and something moving in the back of the room -

It staggered towards him, and before he fully knew what he was doing he ripped the match from the book and struck it with his left hand alone, popped the cap off the hairspray, and blasted a tongue of flame at the aggressor, aiming for its face. He saw, in the flickering light, long hair and long nails and the skin on its rotten face peeling and cracking and bubbling in the heat. It gave a long, screaming cry, and toppled to the floor. Its arms and legs writhed and kicked furiously, an automatic, animal gesture, before it finally lay still.

"Here?" he snapped at Fox, wrapping his fingers around the can of hairspray. "This place gets better and better. It's like a theme park." His voice quaked with anger. The place now stunk of something far worse than rotten meat, and for a fraction of a second he thought he could hear Big Boss's voice saying something he couldn't make out before he realised that it had come from inside his own head.

"At least I don't have to be the only thing here back from the dead," he growled. The woman zombie was leaking something he didn't want to think about. He guessed that the decomposition must have trapped methane and other flammable gasses inside the body, hence why it went up like a candle.

That said, he didn't really think he could burn anything else again. For a while.

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Struggle through something like this long enough, Meche knew from experience, and you could get your mind to go blank. It helped. Just like in the forest. Just one step--swing--swing again--pull the metal free--step--another step--pull herself--step--step. Phoenix looked bad, she thought, when she was thinking at all. Then he stopped and looked back in her direction, and if he was worried about her, then Meche herself must look like death warmed over. Or maybe death going cold again. Warmed over must be normal.

Step. Swing. Step.

She got herself down the street that way almost fine until Senna stumbled ahead of her. Meche gasped and pushed herself forward so fast she almost fell on that ankle--and right over Senna's shoulder, she saw what the girl was looking at.

She tried, really tried, to choke the sob down, to keep up whatever she had left of a strong front. It didn't work. All she managed to do was stifle the worst of the noise as she made a break from the zombies without swinging and followed Senna to the door. No, this wasn't the afterlife. Meche couldn't have imagined Hell this way.

Regular zombies were just monsters. Just like that thing in the schoolhouse last night, except that they were easier to hurt. But seeing the pet shop mare rotted, dead, forced the thought that the zombies were real people from the town too, and she'd been whacking their skulls like piñatas--

The smell of smoke was heavy in here, and there was some kind of barricade on the stairs and maybe more of them in here. She had to quit being childish. Meche found a semi-clean patch on the inside lining of her cardigan to wipe her face with, tried to get air in through her plugged nose and out through her mouth, and joined the others in thought. Her body wouldn't agree to stop crying yet, but at least she could get clear words out in between shaky breaths. "Restaurant?" she offered stuffily. "Don't hotels have those too? Big room, tables and chairs?"

"They do usually," Edgeworth answered, nodding. The voice in his head was still sending out regular warnings and sharp blasts of pain, but he was trying to hold it together now. The others had done so, and now it was his turn to step up and take the lead. He wrapped his arm a little tighter around Phoenix, trying to signal that it was all going to be okay, that it wouldn't be much longer now. He wasn't sure how much good that would do, but it was something.

He looked around, squinting through the smoke. "I think I see it over that way," he said, catching a glimpse of a blood-stained tablecloth through a doorway to the right side of the hotel lobby. "Setting up camp there would be a good idea, I think. We'd be close to the kitchen, which should have a first-aid kit, and we could use the table linens as bandages." Assuming there are any that aren't soaked in blood.

With a nod and a clenched jaw, he began moving in that direction.

Ken had walked in silence, occasionally lending a strike or two to keep the enemy past arm's length. He was small and young, but he couldn't be discounted. Despite newcomers, a new setting, the rules were the same. Couldn't let them all die, even if the odds were slowly declining against them.

So when the group began suggestions for a permanent place to set up defense, Ken was quick to agree. "They would have knifes," he commented toward Edgeworth, almost muttering the words. "For defense." The fact did not sit well with the boy, but he had to relent: there wasn't much they could do with a few items from the antique shop, as handy as they were.

Was that a horse? Phoenix had glossed over the huge, slumped shape on his first glance - he must've dismissed it as more than one body, or slag from property damage, or demolished furniture, but now that his eyes had arranged the shapes correctly, he couldn't see it as anything else. He'd never seen the animal - its presence in the lobby was only surreal, some sort of terrible installation piece of macabre modern art, and he edged back toward the dining room before he could find if he also had the capacity to fall into whatever state of mind had the girls panicking and crying.

"You're all right. Let's go," he urged quietly as he pulled his eyes from Mercedes, afraid to let that sympathy roil around too long in his gut. He'd just been soaking himself with blood, but it was tears that were making him want to-- He felt his teeth chatter against each other, then clenched them quickly, keeping close to the group as they crossed into the dining room. He reached back to close the open half of the tall double doors, and the bite wound in his sleeve gapped and flashed horror- darkening red blood, of course, but skin beneath going blue-white, mottled deeper shades of gray-green. The flesh screamed agony, where it wasn't pins and needles, and Phoenix stared for a terrible few seconds before looking back at Edgeworth. He focused on any patch of open skin - cheek, forehead, neck - and felt nothing but his jaws going itchy and restless, stiff. He could let the comfort of the hand against his side go out of focus, and it wasn't anything but-

. . . it was nothing but something to bite.

A memory flashed into being for that second of numb horror, crackling with static - he'd barely shaken off being bitten when he'd clubbed at the mob again and an uncanny second wind had surged through him, electric and uncaring of injuries. Without being told, he understood the words that would have accompanied the feeling. You can't have them, they'd been, so close to fierce possessiveness he'd felt for people he'd defended before that it only came into focus now. They're mine.

Phoenix extricated himself from the hold awkwardly, catching Edgeworth's hand and squeezing it with a look of subdued thanks underpinned by a profound, frightened discomfort. An unreasoning panic was banging around in his chest, a moth fluttering and battering itself to death against the sides of a glass jar. He needed space. He needed - damn it, he needed to stay calm, was what it was. There was no reason he couldn't keep this under control if he just stayed calm. "Okay. Tables and chairs over here, and if someone could scout the kitchen for weapons and first aids kits, that would be great too." He flexed his hands on the doors, on a pretense of bracing them, averting his eyes quickly from the slowly-darkening veins on the back of his right hand. It struck him quickly that this might be a bad idea - he wasn't going to bank on any of his companions being unobservant, and keeping his increasingly worrisome-looking hand at eye level could be a bad idea, in that case. He didn't think that the hands were that noticeable (unless he wanted them to be, anyway), but the shaking was probably kind of eye-catching. "Mercedes, do you want to hold the doors?" he asked, doing his best to sound less like he'd just lifted something heavy, or like he was being dangled from a very high place, though he felt like both at this point. Now that he had the chance to stand still and look, her ankle looked pretty ugly. Even if she hadn't been injured, she wasn't the first person he'd have asked to help him move tables.

Edited 2009-08-05 06:21 (UTC)

Senna only nodded to the general consensus, following along as she attempted to get her bearings. The memory, the horse, the... similarities. None of it could help anything now. Everything just... Everything just got so ruined. So wasted. And she--

She swallowed, shaking. Her arm had lowered with her realizing, and it dragged on the concrete, an ugly noise. Her arm jolted up as her eyes widened. Not now. Not right now. Turn it off, turn it off and continue. You've still got too much work to do. So when they entered the dining room, Senna opted out of the searching. Moving the things, physical labor, sounded good right now. Despite her sore arm and sorer self. Sorer soul? Did a Shinenju have one?

--Stop it.

Her eyes squinted shut for a moment, then she opened them, attempting to smile reassuringly. "I'll get the tables, Mr. Knight. I may be small, but I got this part." The sword went on one table to the side, within a few steps, and she grasped the first table sliding it over to the doors. Work, right. Busy, right. If you feel, are you alive. If you have pain, are you real. Out of habit, she kept the smile on, but it slid to bittersweet all too quickly.

Edited 2009-08-05 22:32 (UTC)

Meche took another deep breath and nodded at Phoenix, grateful for something to do. Barricading themselves in here probably meant they'd be in for the night, but maybe that was for the best. At least two of them (Senna and Meche herself) had already been bitten, maybe the others too; whatever first aid skills she had might be needed once they got themselves walled in. And if she was honest with herself, Meche knew she wasn't really up to a lot of attempts at heroics tonight. Not like this.

She crossed back to the dining room doors, set the cane against the wall an arm's reach away, and mimicked Phoenix's stance by laying her hands flat on the panels to keep them shut. She was still a little worried about Phoenix. He looked like he was shaking, and Meche wondered whether it was fear or pain or exhaustion or all three. He'd been alone in that mob scene for a long time. Even if he hadn't been bitten, he might well be even more shaken than the rest of them, despite the collected way he was trying to handle himself. But whatever it was, Phoenix wasn't complaining about it. She needed to suck it up too.

She leaned in closer, bracing her weight on her left ankle, as the others started to bring the furniture over. The door felts awfully flimsy under her fingers. At least Senna's table looked reassuringly solid, and Meche angled her body to one side to let the shinigami wedge the furniture against the exit. If they could get themselves sealed off and fixed up, maybe some of them could sleep until morning, she thought. They could leave a guard or two up. That would be enough, wouldn't it?

It struck her a little late that keeping the zombies out might also mean keeping out other patients who needed shelter. One of the worst things about Landel's was the way it forced you to choose.

While the others were working on getting the doors barricaded, Edgeworth decided to get started on trying to get medical supplies together. It was hard, though, leaving Phoenix like that. Miles knew him well enough to know that he was running on adrenaline alone at this point, and that wouldn't last much longer. It wouldn't be a pretty crash, and there wasn't the luxury of enough privacy to quietly fall apart.

With that - and a single moment's thought that it would have been nice for them to leave the electricity on if they were going to send waves of the undead at the Institute's population, because at least then there would be enough light to work by when cleaning up the damage - he moved in the direction of another set of double doors, breathing a quiet sigh of relief when he found that they led to a kitchen. Right. First aid kit first, and we can come back for knives or other weaponry if we need them. He involuntarily shuddered at the thought of actually stabbing one of the creatures. It reminded him of one too many murder cases, and a body that never should have wound up in the trunk of his car.

He scanned the area, quickly finding a first-aid kit, then moved back out into the main dining room area. There were a few tables with clean linens, and Miles took a few tablecloths to use as bandaging material, then began setting up shop, as it were, against a wall that was equidistant from both sets of doors. "Once you think the tables are going to hold, all of you, over here."

There was an intake of breath as Ken realized, but in the end, he kept the observation to himself. Survival right now was most important; no matter how ill Phoenix appeared, assessment could wait until they were momentarily safe. If they were safe. Surely a few pieces of furniture would only hold bodies out for so long...

Ken clamped a fist over a chair as if to kill the thought and immediately brought it over to where the younger of the two women was setting the table. His other hand grabbed another on the way, figuring two at once would better pass for effort. Using what little knowledge he had of police thrillers, he jammed the back of one chair directly under the door knobs, pivoting the legs in a way that created a makeshift crutch. The other he left standing nearby.

But as much as he knew to grab the other table, the second glance shifted his direction, and the boy found himself at the man's side. Worry seeped into his expression. "Wright-san?" he muttered. "Are you... Are you all right?" Obviously not, but exactly how much was the boy's aim.

Knight? Phoenix was so used to people mangling his name, to either humorous or derogatory effect, that it took him a second to realize that the label was a backhanded sort of compliment. "Um- thanks," he replied, flattered and a little self-conscious at once, weaving out of the way of the table. It wasn't until the proximity made him aware of the figure at his elbow that Phoenix glanced down at Ken, eyebrows lifting at the question. The boy had been quiet since the shop,understandably, but it meant that he hadn't expected much in the way of conversation from him. Definitely not questions.

"I'm . ." Even if the thought of blurting an automatic, defensive 'fine' hadn't sent that faint, creeping sensation of cold metal slithering up an ankle, it was hard to lie to Ken. He was a smart kid. Even if lying to him wouldn't have been more difficult, it would have felt wrong. With everything it seemed like he'd been through already, he deserved the truth, at least. "Yeah, it hurts. But I'll be fine," he answered, sounding far more certain than he really was. As discreetly as he could, he pocketed his hand, which was still slowly paling in a way that even seeing was sickening. Taking the weight off the limb helped, and for a second gave him a reprieve from the cycle of alternating pain and restlessness.

He didn't try to be discreet when his eyes traveled down searchingly, then back up, but Ken seemed like he was doing alright, at least on the lack-of-injury front. Phoenix loosed a quiet breath, relieved. He was in one piece. Edgeworth, as far as he could tell, was in one piece. Mercedes and Senna were at least in moving-and-talking shape. It had been a fair trade, he told himself,and that made it a little easier to bite back the increasingly-urgent itching just under his gums, the bright panic that flashed like firecrackers through the sluggish haze of exhaustion and injury. He was getting too tired to focus on anything very well, and while that was good - his brain kept slipping off of the terror and disgust that came with remembering he'd been clubbing people in the head, that it was horrible, that he'd seen people put to the death penalty for things he'd just done repeatedly - it was also dangerous, in that every time he tore his eyes away from an unclothed, uninjured patch of healthy, smooth skin on his companions, it was a little more difficult.

Taking a step away from the doors, Phoenix managed a little, valiant quirk of a smile in the darkness, reaching down and squeezing Ken's shoulder encouragingly. "We're all going to be fine," he murmured, more promise than reassurance. He was still a moment, as if trying to give the words a moment to sink in for Ken (for both of them), to take root and become real. Then he patted his back a little, more subdued, taking a second to avert his eyes - and clench his molars together - which helped, if very briefly. "Come on," he murmured, once he was sure he had half a minute where he wouldn't need to grind his teeth, leading Ken toward the middle of the near wall where the first aid setup seemed to be forming. "Let's make it easier for Senna to not run us over." He glanced over his shoulder, seeing that the barricade seemed well on its way and was more than fortifiable if something started banging at the doors, then ahead at Edgeworth.

Walking had gotten harder since the flight down North Street, and Phoenix reached for a chair once he got within arm's-reach of Edgeworth, pulling it closer and slumping down onto the seat gratefully. He was glad there wasn't anything anything mirrorlike around here - if he felt like this, he didn't want to know how he looked. He tried to navigate his hand back out of his pocket, clenched into a fist, and couldn't swallow back the low noise of pain that moving the joints of his arm startled out of him. His eyes were closed, he realized a second later, pressed tight as he breathed through his teeth with an attempted minimum of tight, gutteral noises on the exhales. He wished the room wasn't so comparatively quiet. He wouldn't have been able to tell how badly he was failing.

"Just- over the jacket," he asked, voice tight and low with the strain of holding the screaming muscles up, cracking open an eye to watch Edgeworth.

Edited 2009-08-08 13:53 (UTC)

Something in her was charmed. She grinned at Phoenix. "No problem!" The table she had went firmly against the doors; a nod given to Meche for the moment. The process repeated, one turned to three and three to five, and as six was contemplating seven, she decided it was good. If they had to leave in a hurry from here, it would take long enough to clear it. As it was, only a nice-sized group of zombies would be able to make it through, and the noise from the tables scraping, if they were successful, would alert them in time.

This was logic. Logic hadn't really been hanging out with her this night. Senna drew a hand across her forehead, exhaling, then gave a small smile to Meche. It was nowhere near her normal bright and charming grins, but it was genuine in its affection. "Gonna get your ankle looked over?" she asked as they headed towards the guys.

The two that were with Mister Gentleman Knight seemed okay physically. But there was definitely something up with the guy himself. If Meche and her both hadn't been bitten and had nothing happen, Senna would have said it was a reaction to the bite. But it didn't seem like these were those type of zombies. Something like discomfort flitted through her. She tried to cover it up, like she always did. "So, our past-due introductions. I'm Senna, this is Meche, and we all have bad timing when we choose to shop."

The joke was flat, and she didn't expect anything. She eyed Phoenix instead. "Are you going to be okay?"

Meche let go of the doors and shifted to helping Senna put the tables against them. The repetitive motions were slightly reassuring. They could make it through the night like this, and then--and then what? She'd never heard about anything like this happening before. Would they just end up back in their rooms at the Institute as always? Either way, Meche reasoned, morning had always brought safety here. She'd have to hope that would still be true tomorrow.

She carefully wiped her face again with the least gory patch of the cardigan and joined Senna on the way over to the man with the first aid kit. She was still favoring that ankle, but the blood had mostly dried by now. "Once you get your arm taken care of," she replied. "But if you're still holding up all right, let's get Phoenix squared away first. He looks..." Meche didn't keep going, but if she had, she might have admitted, "worse by the second." It was his arm, she saw as they got closer. The way he was holding it made it easy to tell. It must be a deep bite, maybe more than one. Meche couldn't quite push back the little wave of guilt that realization brought on.

He looked like he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. She offered the least half-hearted smile she could muster to his companions and added dryly, "Nice to meet you, although next time we should really pick a better night to go out on the town." The crack was as flat as Senna's, but that hint of bravado cut a little of the tension Meche was feeling. Better than crying, anyway. She took a seat a few chairs down from Phoenix and kept an eye on him--as long as the other man had the ability to treat that arm, she sensed that it would be better to let him handle it.

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NIGHTSHIFT 42: BLACK ROCK HOTEL

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