damned_institute | Night 49: Pantry 1

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Night 49: Pantry 1 - First Floor

[from here]

An average man in good shape can run about ten miles an hour. Logan was not aware of this, but that was how fast his bike was going. Something had caught his eye on the road ahead, and he'd slowed way down to avoid slamming into anything potentially huge; and then, as he was veering toward the side of the road to get a closer look, the feeling of standing on the edge of an abyss and looking down washed over him.

And then, at the speed of a flat-out run, he'd crashed.

He stayed where he was for a full ten seconds, half-buried in - what? Debris? Pieces of the bike? He definitely hadn't been going that fast, and damn it, the road had been empty. He shifted and sat up, and the debris, or whatever, shifted with him. It sounded suspiciously like aluminum cans.

Pitch black, clearly an indoor space, and - what the hell was crunchy under his hand?

Cereal.

It was a goddamn pantry. And his ribs hurt. He could've invented a small journal's worth of new and creative words for the situation and whoever thought it was funny to jerk people around like this, but instead he said: "You okay?"

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Tifa felt the same lurching feeling in her stomach as if it were falling into her sneakers. Her fingers curled tight around the material of Logan's shirt in a death grip as the bright white of the snow disappeared into blackness. Her face hit the solid muscle of Logan's back and all she could do was twist her head away and ignore the pain in her nose.

Something heavy hit her on the skull and rolled across a linoleum floor. Floor? She lifted her head from Logan's back, noticing first she no longer wore his jacket, and looked around the black room.

Oh

my

fucking

god.

She knew it! SHE KNEW IT! What did she say? They were not getting out of this easily. She said that! She fucking said that and she was right! Ha ha! Ohh she wanted to scream that she told him so, but instead she said: "Saved yer beer..."

Oh.

It would probably best if she got off Logan. She rolled off his back and sat beside him. Something was dripping down her chin. Lifting her hand, she dabbed something warm from her lip. Oh good, blood. Nice. Tifa quickly wiped what she could from her face so Logan couldn't see. Not that there was enough light in order to do so.

"Good," said Logan. It had come out and been intended as sarcasm - being tantalized with escape only to find out you'd been stuck all along had a funny way of making you not give a fuck about the little things - but then again, now he had beer where there was none. He'd appreciate it tomorrow (or later tonight, depending on how it went).

He dug his flashlight out of the wreckage of the pantry and stood up, brushing himself off. "Too bad you didn't bet me," he said. "You'd be up twenty bucks." He pointed his flashlight at the ceiling so he could see a little without blinding her - looked like she had a split lip, but that was nothing. Even better, they'd somehow managed to get into the kitchen without having to go through that one--

His train of thought stopped dead. The bike wasn't there and he was back in institute clothes, but the beer was real? "Wait a second, lemme see that beer."

Tifa just shrugged at his mood, knowing that a beer was better than nothing. She sympathized with Logan, but only for so long. He should have honestly known it wouldn't be over so quickly. It was his own fault for being sore. So she just smiled in hopes it would lighten the atmosphere. "Yeah well, then I'd have twenty bucks and nothing to do with it..." The brunette wasn't exactly sure what bucks were, but if people from Logan's world bet with them, it had to be something like gil or an item, something in that vein of speculation. Still, regardless of what it was, she still wouldn't be able to do shit with it in the institute. So no skin off her back.

Wanting to get up off the floor, the young woman was happy to return the beer to its rightful owner. Se dusted off the crunchy debris they fell into from her butt and took a better look through the pantry, praying they hadn't wrecked the fresh fruit. Not sure where to start, she glanced down at Logan, who was still fascinated with the beer. "Did you not--is everything you had gone?" That would be rather strange. Why had the beer come with them and not her jacket or his clothes or PRS? Or was there any point in speculating? If they could move through time and space to land in this man's house, it stood to reason they could just as easily bring back one little beer.

Logan turned the bottle around in his hand and pointed his light directly at it. Looked real, felt real, but so had the bike and everything else. "Yeah," he said belatedly. "Kind of assumed it was an illusion." But if the cabin had been an illusion, then how had the beer gotten here? Unless the whole place was an illusion, and none of this was happening, which was a little too existential for him.

"Let's just get the hell out of here," he said, dropping his flashlight beam. Whether it was real or not, he was going to drink this goddamn beer later, and then he was going to find something to cut. (Hit, he had to remind himself mentally: he was going to find something to hit. Wouldn't be as satisfying, but at least if it was a person, they'd stay alive to give him answers if he was just hitting them.)

"Hang on, hang on... I need to grab some stuff for my b--project..." Okay, so Logan enjoyed a beer or two or ten, but that didn't mean she was letting him in on her plans. He might think she was a raging alcoholic, wild from withdrawals or something. She would at least wait until she had a batch made before announcing her hobbies.

This pantry was all shelving from floor to ceiling. They needed to be systematic about this, not wanting to be caught in the middle of picking apples if something came after them. Though it was such a confined space, it was rather unlikely anything big enough to be threatening could be lurking in here. So, she had her manly mule and her sweatshirt to carry things in. It was definitely going to take more than one trip, but she would cross that bridge tomorrow when it came. "I'm looking for apples or oranges, lots of 'em, preferably ones we didn't squish. I need sugar, ketchup if we can find it, yeast... if we can find that, I need some cans of fruit juice..." Hmmm, was she missing anything? "Yeah... any of that... And then we can get the hell out of here..."

Apples or oranges would have been okay, if she'd left it at that, but she didn't. Nowhere close. Logan's expression edged toward indignant as she rattled off her list. Ketchup? Ketchup and apples?

"What the hell are you making, Christmas freakin' dinner?" He tucked his beer in the crook of his arm and scanned the shelves.

No, that wasn't going to work. He set the beer on the shelf and stacked what he could find: two baskets of apples, a basket of oranges, two bags of sugar, three kinds of juice, and ketchup, all in a precarious heap, with the beer lying carefully on top. His flashlight was pointed somewhere he couldn't really see - he was peering over the side of his beer. "Didn't see any yeast," he said. "You're getting the door."

Tifa whipped around with her usual, harmless smile in place, but her brown eyes were wide, dark brows raised in challenge. "I'm making homemade alcohol..." So he had better learn to behave if he wanted some.

She didn't find much on her end, a bag of dinner rolls that she could probably substitute for yeast.

Jeez this is going to taste awful.

"Wow, you work fast..." Taking off her sweatshirt and pulling down the gray smiley shirt underneath, Tifa tied a knot in the bottom of the sweatshirt and walked closer to Logan. "We don't need to take all of it this night. I don't want to be the only one empty handed if something comes after us." The beer took priority, and she set it down on the floor before going through all the ingredients. The apples were necessary so that would stay, oranges were going to make the alcohol too tart so she scrapped those, ketchup she put in her sweatshirt along with the apples. "If you can carry a can of juice and a bag of sugar, that'll be plenty." Plus, he could easily set them down if they found trouble. "I've got the beer..."

Tying the heavy sweatshirt to her waist with the sleeves, Tifa grabbed the rolls, beer, and kindly opened the door for them like a good girl.

Edited 2010-05-24 05:44 (UTC)

[from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/898630.html?thread=69586758#t69586758)]

Fifty miles an hour, maybe sixty, through wide-open empty streets, and Mello was grinning, buoyed up by the freedom, however illusory; feeling better, more like himself, than he had since waking up in that godforsaken house of torture.

And then the world went black and cracked into splinters around him.

Nausea drove him to his knees and pitched him forward. He caught himself on his hands, and retched, but nothing came out. The back of his neck felt like it was on fire, like all of last night was happening all over again, condensed into a split second. Someone was groaning, "No, no, fuck no." After a moment, Mello realized it was him.

The sickening whirl of the darkness slowly settled to a level he could handle, and its totality had lessened, though he still couldn't see much. He had an impression of being closed in, and smelled, weirdly, he thought, cinnamon and an underlying earthiness. He could feel he was in the much-hated sweatpants, t-shirt, and coat again, but what was-- He reached to the small of his back and pulled the Sig out of his waistband. And laughed, a brittle laugh with an edge of hysteria in it. He would have traded the gun for feeling right again, in a heartbeat.

Dimly aware of Matt, and wanting to prove he was still in control, he reached for the certainty he'd felt only a second before, the absolute conviction that he was going to take on Landel, Kira, and Near, all three, and win.

It was gone.

It was gone, and Matt was dead, dead because of him, and how had he ever thought he could change something that had already fucking happened? The two of them had just gotten yet another vivid demonstration of how inescapable this place was. How it could yank your whole damn world out from under you when you least expected it.

He had to get back out. That was the only way to fix this. He pushed back to sit up on his knees, fought another bout of nausea. "Bloody buggering fuck, that was a bad one."

Edited 2010-05-24 23:16 (UTC)

One moment they were in a Japanese cop car, doing fifty or sixty an hour through what seemed to be deserted Tokyo-

And the next, Matt fell forward onto his hands and knees, dizzy as hell. Everything around him spun a few moments, and his stomach lurched before emptying onto the floor; he was barely used to Mello's driving when it didn't involve teleportation. This was just sick and wrong.

Amid his confusion, he caught Mello's faint words - all of them - and it barely sunk in at first that he'd been right; there really was still something wrong with Mello. Swallowing hard and trying to ignore the awful taste lingering in the back of his throat, Matt mentally noted that he needed to find out what the hell was going on with his friend - especially if the guy turned out to be his only true ally in the entire place.

When he finally managed to pull himself together, Matt blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. Somehow, his flashlight was still in his hand, and he clicked in on, shining it in front of him. Eugh - there was his vomit, amid a crazy mess of cereal covering the floor. A few metal cans were scattered across the surprisingly spacious room, and he could note shelving along the walls, food stacked on each shelf. Most of it was in disarray, and it was obvious that someone else had made it to the pantry before them.

Glancing to his side, Matt found the ladder; gripping the bottom rung tightly, he used it as leverage, to help pull himself to his knees. A small, startled gasp escaped him when he felt something crawl across the back of his hand, and he practically jumped to his feet, shaking his hand and reeling the other way, nearly bumping into Mello. "What the fuck-!"

Mello heard Matt being sick, and his own stomach pitched again, but he managed to keep the little bit of dinner he'd eaten down, swallowing back the bitter saliva that filled his mouth.

The flashlight stabbed at his eyes when Matt clicked it on, bright enough after the darkness, and echoing the light from last night uncomfortably enough, that Mello winced away before he could stop himself, and shielded his eyes with the hand that didn't have a death grip on the gun. "Fuck, watch where you're pointing that thing."

He used a shelf to pull himself up, and finally got a good look at their surroundings. The immediate impression he got was of a tornado having hit a small grocery store. Toppled cans, scattered produce, and the crunching under his boots that he'd initially taken for gravel, but was actually about six different kinds of cereal, with one last roach fleeing the light. Fucking charming. Plus Matt's addition to the mix, which was not helping Mello keep his cool. He instinctively looked around for chocolate, but didn't spot any. It would be a cold day in hell before he'd stoop to digging chocolate chips out of cookies. His flashlight was resting against the bottom of a shelf, and he bent to pick it up.

Mello had never explored this room, but the rumble of thunder outside told him plenty. "If you want anything, grab it fast," he told Matt. "We're getting the fuck back out of here." He couldn't believe it, but he could pretend.

Matt's stomach was finally settled for the time being, but the thought of venturing out of the room and potentially jarring themselves further was unappealing. He wasn't sure if that was a one time thing or not, but he definitely hoped that it was. Bloody annoying, that's what this is, he thought, turning away from Mello to check out the pantry.

Grabbing a few packages of Oreos and snickerdoodles and a bag or two of chips, Matt tucked them safely into his arms; with his flashlight still lit and trained upward at the ceiling, he stepped around Mello, juggling his swag a bit as he grabbed the doorknob and twisted it, yanking it open and stepping through. He made sure to brace himself, though it seemed likely that the teleportation had occurred primarily so they could see the place where Matt had died; Landel must've known that'd screw with them proper.

Edited 2010-05-25 04:07 (UTC)

((From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/904133.html?thread=69616581#t69616581).))

Once again, they arrived at a completely new location. This room was considerably smaller than the previous room. Judging by the rows of shelves packed with food, they were currently in a storage area used to hold food to feed the captives. It appeared they were not the first here, however. Damaged boxes, cans and bags were scattered across the floor, mixed with a variety of breakfast grains that had been crushed to dust. It appeared as though something -- or someone -- had entered the pantry at roughly 16 kilometers per hour. Whether it was because they had not anticipated on arriving at such an enclosed space, or because of something else entirely, was not clear.

Regardless, it was clear that lingering here too long was probably not in their best interests. There was little room to move in case they were attacked or had an unexpected encounter with other captives. Furthermore, there were even fewer items of interest to examine here than in the other rooms they had visited. The food here was highly reminiscent of early 21st-century Earth cuisine, which was quite expected by this point in their investigations. They would likely not learn much regarding their situation here.

While it was true the last room they visited also contained some sort of food, so far Spock had yet to identify a pattern regarding the areas they were transported to. Perhaps further exploration would give them something else to consider.

"We can't fully expect that pattern to remain unchanged, especially if this is about stimuli. The institute hasn't exactly done these warping doorways before, either--" McCoy was pointing out as they stepped through the door. He trailed off

The vomit was the first thing he noticed, a sour smell to the air. Noticing the actual damage done to the room came next.It looked like a storm had come in here, destroyed boxes and cans littering the room and floor, some barely hanging off the shelves. The on;y damage they'd seen had been that place back in Doyleton, and it hadn't looked nearly so recent. Some of the cereal was still pouring, from a shelf in a silent waterfall of grain. There didn't appear to be anyone in here, but judging from the state of the room, it looked like it hadn't been all that long ago.

"Spock," he motioned with the flashlight, the beam landing on the different puddles on the floor. Just as he'd thought, vomit, and then further in, dark red glimmering in the light, in splatters. It didn't look as serious as a severed artery, but it didn't look like too small a matter anyway. The blood liked dark, heavy, spattered in a series of drips rather than a spray.

A fight? he wondered. This room looked relatively small, not much in the way of blind spots, and with the only exit back the way they came, he didn't see how something like Jim's creature could even fit in here. That left the possibility of a fight between patients.

Edited 2010-05-25 22:56 (UTC)

Spock's eyes followed McCoy's flashlight, and he silently took note of the blood and vomit. There very well may have been an altercation between captives here, though it was difficult to imagine any of the patients having the capability to cause such damage within the pantry. At least, not without some sort of extra factor involved. What, exactly, that could be was difficult to decipher without more evidence. One of Landel's creatures may have been involved, but in that case he would have expected to see more blood spattered onto the walls and floor.

His eyebrows faintly rose as he considered this. Interesting...

As curious as the Vulcan was about what truly happened within this room, however, the remaining items didn't seem to shed any definitive light on the matter, and there were no witnesses available for them to speak with. Furthermore, while it was easy to see the entirety of the room from where they were standing, Spock did not wish to find themselves unexpectedly cornered in here by a hostile individual or being that could emerge in the doorway behind them. It was for those reasons that he decided they did not need to stay longer more than necessary.

"This area could become dangerous again," he said as he turned toward McCoy. "The exposed food and blood may draw the attention of the facility's creatures. I suggest we leave."

Edited 2010-05-25 23:41 (UTC)

[to here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/914179.html)]

[homeworld roll]

[from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/911715.html?thread=69721187#t69721187)]

...and now they were back in the food storage area. A food storage area, Brainiac 5 corrected mentally. This one was different to the other. He wondered bitterly if Sangamon would want to help himself to the contents of this one as well.

"This is frustrating," he complained aloud, mostly to himself though the fact there was someone else to listen as well helped. "I don't know what your goals are, but I am going to continue until I find something worthwhile."

"Genius boy, Brainiac, what's the difference?" S.T. muttered as he followed Twelvy through the door. Sure, sure, make fun of the guy who didn't grow up in some Jetsonian utopia.

He didn't have any answers as to how or what was going on. He did know his own agenda, which had been thoroughly gutted by the revolving doorway routine. "I'd been planning to pick up a few bags for evidence collection. Keep my contaminated genetic material from shedding all over the data set." He wrinkled his nose in something that was probably a sneer, but it wasn't pointed at Brainiac 5. "Then up to the torture chambers to see what dead-end clues got left behind tonight." The mission of mercy part was just a bonus.

"This is the first floor pantry. We're here," he said, tapping the map awkwardly with the thumb of the hand holding it. "Let's see." He set down the toolkit, which dropped his flashlight out of useful range. If Brainiac couldn't take a hint, it wasn't his problem. "We started here," he said, scratching a 1A onto the map. "Any idea where that second room was? Was that the main first floor hall out there?" It had been loud enough, but he hadn't recognized the room.

"Brainiac 5, not Brainiac," he corrected instinctively. It took him a moment more to piece together what Sangamon meant by 'torture chambers' and 'dead-end clues', but considering what the man had asked about Peter when they'd met earlier in the night, he had a fairly good idea.

"Then other than hoping we coincidentally wind up in the right area, I'm not sure what you can do," he commented. Brainiac 5 blinked at the map, then ventured closer with his own flashlight, tilting his head to peer at the paper Sangamon was holding. "I'm not entirely sure," he said slowly, "but I think that may have been one of the rooms I passed through on my first night here. I was headed towards the main entrance then, so if it was the main hallway we saw, it might have been one of the waiting rooms."

Scanning the rest of the map, Brainiac 5 continued. "Then we were in the pantry, then the Arts and Crafts room, and now we're here..." He sighed. "There doesn't seem to be much of a pattern to it, unless it's that so far we've gotten a pantry every other time."

He smiled faintly and reached for the door handle. "I suppose we'll just have to see where we end up next. Are you ready?"

[to here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/903115.html?thread=69765323#t69765323)]

Edited 2010-05-29 03:41 (UTC)

[back from here]

S.T. blinked against the dizziness, but the room didn't change. This was exactly where they'd been a minute ago, halfway across the building.

"Pantry fetish. Either someone's," he went to jerk a thumb in the Head Bastard's direction, but he didn't know which way to point. So he turned the motion into a dismissive shrug. "Even weirder than last report, or his subcontractors are up to the usual standard."

"More data?" He folded the map and shoved in a pocket this time. No use inviting trouble.

[to Colu]

Edited 2010-06-22 02:18 (UTC)

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Night 49: Pantry 1 - First Floor

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