Night 49: Pantry 1 - First Floor

[noifsandsorbubs.livejournal.com]

[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?"

Comments

[toxicspiderman]

"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.

[emotionl4arobot.livejournal.com]

"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)]

[toxicspiderman]

[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]