Day 43: Chapel

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And just like that, the disorienting feeling of blacking out just to wake up in an unfamiliar bed came again. Alkaid had wondered if it would - everything about last night had been different, all the way from the zombies to the eerie emptiness of the Institute to the strange broadcast at the end of the night. Had the Head Doctor been shot? Damn, someone had gotten to it before her. And who was the voice at the end there? It was like she'd been allowed access to some kind of strange mystery that she could not understand, one that had been going on for a long time before she had arrived and would be going on for quite a while in the future, after she was gone. Had these strange sets of circumstances been bugs in this place's programming? Who could say?

The morning's intercom greeting was strange, as well. Federal training whatsit? It didn't seem like this happened very often, from the sound of it, but so much had happened since the last day she remembered that the former Demon Palace Emperor was ready to take pretty much anything at face value.

The room she woke up in was still empty. Wondering where to stick the half-cracked bat that she'd picked up last night, she shoved it under the mattress hastily when she heard footsteps in the hall.

The stupid nurse was the same as ever, though. Some things never changed. "Ahh, good morning, Eileen. It's so nice to see you awake."

Alkaid rolled her eyes at the nurse's chuckle, and shook her head. She didn't care that the NPC thought it was nice, she just wanted to see the rest of the institute already.. see what had changed! "Yeah, it's fantastic. Whatever! Just take me where I'm going and be done with it!"

It was just then that she realized that she was not wanting to devour the flesh of the nurse in front of her. And that the pain on her arm had kind of abated - she couldn't see through the thick bandages they had covered her arm with, but she wondered if her skin was still rotting off like a zombie. Had they somehow cured her infection overnight? Or was the nurse not human, like Alkaid had always thought?

There was only one thing for it: she had to go somewhere else.

"Chapel, sun room, or cafeteria, then?"

"Does it look like I care?"

The nurse sighed, then started walking Alkaid down the hall, up the stairs, and down another hall to the chapel. No one here yet, huh? That was weird. She couldn't imagine that no one else'd show up, but who could say? This place had been turned on its ass.

The chapel was empty so far, and kind of nondescript. She shooed the nurse away, and stood in the middle of the space between the pews, standing akimbo. What would happen today? What would she learn about herself... her situation? How long had she been sleeping? Was she really still going freaking undead, or had that been somehow taken care of?

All this would come to light really soon. She hoped. Geez, too many mysteries!!

[unwittingly awaiting Haseo]

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[kindalikedit]

Dean hadn't expected to hear about people actually helping them. Usually it was the other way around. Civvies were supposed to run around, crapping their pants cause a Jersey devil was on their ass and that was when they'd step in. Being the rescuee was a new one. Technically he'd been unconscious for all of that, so he'd missed out. But Peter? Wishy-washy, good kid Peter? He hadn't exactly struck him as the kinda guy to dive into the fray like that. Dean's eyebrows rose. "Yeah, I ran into a kid like that first day here."

He'd arrived during the night and had spent an unknown chunk of it unconscious on the floor after getting friggen flashlight-whipped with his own flashlight - something, he realized, was starting to turn into a running gag in this joint. Getting your knocks on in the job was just part of the risks, but he could safely say he hadn't spent as much time unconscious (or near it) as he had just within this week here. Hopefully he wasn't gonna get brain damage or something permanent, even if he had a pretty hard skull. Dean decided he was gonna keep the whole getting brained by your own flashlight to himself for now. Sam had enough things to be worried about. Something that happened once and looked to be just a random thing wasn't really that high on their To-Do list.

Dean was still trying to wrap his around him that nerdy, probably-shy Peter had been the one to put on the superhero cape and save their asses when the dead were walking. "You serious though? Him? I mean, I talked to him a little, but he came off as just some college kid that time."

And not the badass kind, like Sam. Sam had come prepackaged with all the know-how on surviving and handling a gun; somehow he doubted they taught how to hotwire a car and bypass security at Stanford. Still, Peter had toughed it out to last here during the nights, which meant either he knew the meaning of "stay put" in the rooms or he could handle himself more than Dean had guessed at first. Peter told him about being "brainwashed", which had been his first warning there was a real danger of getting possessed and attacking people with no say in the matter - he just wished he'd paid more attention to that, 'cause he still had no memory of the actual moment when he must've gotten tagged. No stray memories leaking into him from the demon, either. Come to think of it, how had it gotten into his room? He'd laid salt lines down...

Unless there was more he forgot and he didn't even know it. That night had just been obvious. Dean wasn't sure if he wanted to bring that up to Sam just yet, not when the kid knew more than he did and could just get away with hedging around it. Sam probably had good reasons but Dean could handle himself. Especially now that he had the tattoo and he couldn't get turned against his brother like that.

Dean caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, shifting slightly to watch as the first nurse came in to escort the patients at the same time as the intercom sounded. Looked like their time was up for now. Dean gave his brother a back-handed tap on the arm before Hello Nurse showed up:

"Take it easy, Sammy,"