[From here.]

Beyond swaying for a few seconds, Sora's dismount from the warp pad was actually pretty graceful. The first thing he noticed about the room was all the screens mounted on the walls, letting off a faint glow -- though the corners of the room were still left in shadow.

He saw different hallways, different rooms, places that he recognized, along with areas of the basement that he'd seen if only briefly.

"Wow, this is really something. I cant believe they were actually watching our every move..."

For a moment, Sora was too distracted to consider what might be lurking unseen in the dark.

[OOC: We'll be attacked in this room!]

[From here]

Just as Link had hoped, the key card did the trick. This wasn't a room he could remember passing entirely through, and a warp panel sat in the corner.

"All set, Sora?"

[From here]

Link struggled to force his eyes to adjust to the sudden white light of the moving staircase. As always, they began moving as soon as he stepped up. He turned to face Sora, finally breaking the silence.

"Hopefully the top brings us partially through the journey like it did last night."

[From here.]

Once they got inside of the library, Sora definitely slowed down. It just didn't feel like the kind of place they could run in, since libraries were always supposed to be quiet.

Besides, they were going to have to pull the switch in the bookshelf first anyway. Sora knew exactly where the Oxford book was now, so without any delay he moved over and yanked it out.

The door slid open and he turned back to Link. "Let's go."

[From here]

Link broke into a run as soon as he crossed the threshold of the Sun Room. Even if something was waiting for them in here, there was absolutely no time to be wasted. He only made sure that Sora was still with him as he approached the door into the library.

[From here]

Link was moving quickly, picking up the pace as he walked without even realizing it. He was used to moving about at a steady jog, but the surroundings here simply weren't conducive to speed.

"I think I'm thankful for it, in the end," he added as an afterthought. At first, he had wished there could be some way to use the link between worlds to see the Twilight Princess again, but not anymore. He wanted her nowhere near this wretched place.

[from here]

Whatever else he'd meant by the broadcast, the Head Doctor hadn't been kidding about the patient population. Lana hadn't seen another soul on the walk from her room to the center of the main hall. She could only hope Ryuuzaki was still here.

Well, hope, and risk a solo expedition if he didn't show up within what seemed a reasonable interval.

[L]

[From here.]

Link was always the quiet type, but that seemed to be even more so tonight. He looked focused, like all he could think about was finding Landel and ending this once and for all.

Sora could understand that. He remembered how he'd felt right before taking down Xehanort's Heartless and then Xehanort himself, and this wasn't that different.

Still, he wasn't one to let things stay quiet even on a night like tonight, and so he glanced over at Link as they moved.

"Did you have any friends come here? From home, I mean?"

[Starting in M7.]

It was just as Sora had feared. The Head Doctor was going to try and get rid of them by brainwashing them, all of them. That meant he really did feel like he was in danger, didn't it? So in one way, it was encouraging, but Sora didn't know what they'd do if Landel got to them first.

Both he and Link were here and aware of themselves, though, so that was one upside to focus on.

Sora had changed already, and his final act was to grab his radio, flashlight, and place that key card in his pocket. He turned toward Link and let out a heavy breath. The pressure was definitely on now.

"Are you ready?" It was just the two of them now, but that wouldn't stop them. They had to put a stop to this. For Tsurugi's sake. For Kairi and Riku. For everyone.

[From here.]

L stepped back from the door he'd just forced, then retrieved his pistol from its holster. Nothing had come charging out of the room, and it seemed quiet inside, but that didn't mean much.

He stood in the doorway, the flashlight poised above the pistol, ready to fire if he needed to.

His anxiety faded quickly, back to a low background buzz. Even from the door, he could tell that the room was as advertised: an ordinary server room. The racks lined the walls, not leaving much space for anything to hide.

Beyond that, they'd found another pad. They had no way of knowing whether or not it was the "next" one, or whether it would only take them in another loop, but they'd have to try it. If another was available, and one was the wrong choice to take, nothing would differentiate the two.

He glanced at Lana. "It seems to be clear."

He felt tempted to sabotage the servers, but what would they be sabotaging? Live cultures probably accounted for several of his worst experiences at Landel's; destroying work related to them might be a good idea. At the same time, if these servers controlled machinery involved in experiments and storage of pathogens, breaking them could cause some kind of biological disaster. Without knowing what kinds of live cultures were involved, doing anything that could result in their release would be stupid. And it would be time-consuming. If they were to have any chance of success, they needed to stay on track... then, any biological research here might become irrelevant.

As he moved towards the purple glow, he heard soft electronic noises--battery backups, he thought, since this area didn't seem to be receiving full power--and saw the occasional small blinking light.

[from here]

The next room was larger, and the bleakest supply depot Lana had seen yet. It was too clean, if such a thing existed; night at the Institute always left her feeling grimy, but now she was half-inclined to actually use the sinks to clean up so that she wouldn't dirty the area. Fans whirring overhead added to the oppressiveness. The only inviting thing was a computer, which presented a password screen. "All yours," she murmured. A security expert, hmm? If he was, he was welcome to try his hand, although this seemed even unlikelier to be their goal than the thermostats had been.

Instead, she kept looking. Two doors, one beside the room they'd appeared in, and one that likely led out of this particular warren. She turned to see what Ryuuzaki had decided to do without opening either, and waited.

[From here.]

The archive had been large in comparison to most of the rooms they had passed through so far on the third floor, and this new room was only about a quarter of its size. Bland colors, nothing that could really be described as "decor" except in that the walls and floor had been finished.

It seemed to be empty, but there was bad news: only one pad, and a closed door. That meant that if this wasn't Security--it already seemed doubtful that it was--and the door didn't lead to where they needed to go, they'd have to hunt for the next pad.

It immediately brought what had happened the night before back to the front of his mind. There probably wasn't even anyone ahead of them at this point, and he and Lana should now be visiting areas that no patients had reached before... at least not as far as any of the remaining patients knew. But it was possible that he'd missed something, that someone had gotten further without him learning about it. Either way, going forward, they needed to be even more on guard than they already were.

Was it possible to increase that vigilance? Without sabotaging themselves with anxiety? They were already on high alert, already quite aware that if they escaped one trap, it might not be long before they found themselves in another.

Several panels were mounted to the wall. He approached one after he stepped off of the pad, peered at it for a moment, then turned to Lana. "It looks like a series of thermostats."

No point in staying, then.

[From here]

Link's bow was still drawn as Sora broke down the door into the chamber containing the warp pad. He turned to face the new room, but only long enough take in the details. The panel was just across the way... He was ready to shoot or run at a moment's notice.

"Anything?" he muttered, barely loud enough for Sora to hear.

[From here.]

This was the area that Lloyd had warned him about. Sora stepped inside, remembering it from the night before. He hadn't known then that they would be walking right into a trap.

Lloyd had mentioned something about a zombie in a doctor's outfit. Sora hadn't seen anything like that last night, and he didn't see anything like it now, even as he took a moment to search the area with his flashlight pointed in each corner.

"Hmm...."

He turned back to Link and let out a sigh.

"Lloyd told me that some zombie turned on the machine that sucked all the air out. I was hoping we could find it and stop it before we went inside, but I don't see it anywhere." Which meant that they were going to be taking a big risk as soon as they walked through those doors.

[From here]

Link cracked a small smile as he stepped out into the laboratory. Everything was just as it had been before they came to it last night, much to his disappointment.

"We decided that there was nothing of importance in here, right?" He took another look around as he crossed the room for the door, pulling open drawers and checking them with little regard for being gentle. Once again, all of that breakable glass was... tempting.

[From here.]

The room looked just as it had last night, like an apartment that had been left behind by someone who had once taken at least some care of it.

Remembering what they'd seen come out of the bathtub, Sora wasn't all that eager to waste too much time here. Lloyd, Kratos, and their friend had been able to avoid the ghost, so they should be able to too. He didn't see any interesting items around, and so he made a beeline for the teleportation pad.

"Come on, let's hurry up before that thing finds us again," Sora said quietly as he walked.

[From here]

Link had the layout of what they had discovered so far memorized. This sort of exploration was right up his ally, even if the frustration of needing to pause through the daytime put him off his rhythm. They needed the third door on the right. Suite 1, a locked door.

He made sure all of the other doors were safely closed before making his way down the gloomy hallway.

[From here.]

Sora staggered off of the pad, taking a quick look around the locker room. There hadn't been anything that interesting for them to look at the first time through here, so he didn't see much point in wasting any time with it.

"At least we know exactly where we're going now," he said with a small shrug. They'd have to break down a door soon, but that wasn't such a big deal now that they knew the right one.

[From here.]

Sora had to wait for a few moments of dizziness to pass him by, but when his vision cleared he found he was in the room with the metal detector, rather than where they'd originally started. This was the room where they'd found those keys, so that made some sort of sense.

"Hey, look at that," he said with a small smile.

But he had to get back to what he was explaining. As Sora moved over to set his flashlight and radio on the conveyor belt, he continued speaking. "That room we ended in last night is a trap too, kind of like this one but worse. When you go into that chamber where the pad is, they start sucking all the oxygen out."

It sounded pretty dangerous, but Lloyd and his friends had made it through, so that was reassuring if nothing else.

[From here.]

After having it built up so much, the Records Archive turned out to be a rather unassuming room.

It looked much like a number of the other rooms scattered throughout the institute. There were computer consoles all along the walls, interspersed with bookshelves that held countless different volumes -- journals, notebooks, and files, all looking to have been organized and cataloged in a very methodical way. There was a table in the center of the room surrounded by chairs; atop it were a few open journals, along with one large binder. Was this what Landel was referring to whenever he mentioned paperwork?

Castiel used his flashlight to take in the whole room, noting that there was yet another teleportation pad in the corner, but it was abandoned save for them. Maybe Landel hadn't expected them to get this far...

Other than the computers, though, this was the sort of thing that Castiel was comfortable with. This was research.

He turned back toward the others. "It looks like we have plenty of work to do."