It was replicated that struck Mello. It had been obvious from Matt's reaction how accurately the empty stage had been set, and though he'd managed to convince himself, while they were there, that they'd managed to get one step closer to escape, he'd known all along that real progress would never have been that easy or unlooked-for. He'd known it was another trick, a construction designed for maximum impact. Presumably, Lunge's companion had suffered a comparable emotional blow, thanks to whatever place the Institute had seen fit to throw them into. Just as it wasn't for Mello to say that Matt had been taken back to the scene of his death, he fully recognized Lunge wouldn't be forthcoming with any details about his partner from that night.

"That's a massive amount of information." That it was about them, about him, he quickly pushed from his mind. "It has to be organized, and stored, which is to say accessible... somewhere." The place couldn't just pluck it from their minds, could it? He should have considered this before, he thought, irritated with himself; and would need to devote more thought to it before he came up with anything he could act on.

"There were two spaces." Lunge's rhetorical question got a quiet huff in response. "Would anyone ever get a thumbs-up in that coliseum, I wonder." He could see Landel liking that idea: himself as the emperor, holding the power of life and death over his prisoners, watching them struggle in a contest that was rigged. The only way to win would be to refuse to play at all.

Two nights ago, so they had wound up there by chance, in the middle of what sounded like a quest right out of a fairytale, or some shit, in a part of the place Mello hadn't even guessed existed until that same night. A part that had felt older than the rest of the Institute, at least to him. "What's it doing down there? The style's inconsistent, to say the least."