wipeawaythedebt | Doors Plot: Welcome to the Midnight Isle

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Doors Plot: Welcome to the Midnight Isle

The remote mining colony on CX-4593 had been radio silent for six months.

The colony, nicknamed the Midnight Isle by the miners trapped in its perpetual darkness, had been running at peak efficency until the drills hit and cracked a mineral that their local geologists could not identify. After sending a copy of the readings and initial scientific findings back to Earthbase Epsilon, the miner recorded that they intended to resume drilling the next day. After that last broadcast, communication stopped. The colony managers, safe in their homes on Epsilon attempted many times to re-initiate communication, but to no avail.

A proposed rescue mission is still being discussed in committee and to the outside world, the mining company reports that everything is normal, just some routine communication bugs.

Meanwhile, the radio silence continues, but all is not silent on the Midnight Isle. There is clicking and scratching inside the walls and floors, distant echoes in the halls, and the electronic hum of a station still at full power. But absent are the sounds of the miners, and everywhere are the signs of distress and danger. Meals left abandoned covered in mold and dust. Chairs and tables stacked, as if in barricades, and most worrying of all, the smears of blood in the halls and pooled on the floors, absent of bodies, but full of unanswered questions.

And now, six months after the strange mineral was discovered, there are doors opening and strangers are arriving.

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"Elizabeth!"

He's certain she'd gone through the door just a few minutes ahead of him as he'd held back to pay the cab driver. She should be right here. Wherever here is. The place is damn spooky. Walls are all some kind of metal, lights set into them, a few blinking on and off, but enough so he can see pretty well. But he can't see her and he should be able to.

"Elizabeth, answer me!"

Running down the hall, he makes a turn into a large room. Some kind of abandoned dining hall. It's a damn mess, tables and chairs overturned, a barricade built at the far end, and the blood... there's blood everywhere. Clenching his fist, he starts towards the far end.

"Elizabeth!!"

There have been very few times in her life that Sybil has felt what she now knows is absolute terror. Darrow, it would seem, has brought her both of those experiences though she knows she is not in the city now. The halls she finds herself in are empty and metal, unlike any she has seen before. Her work as a nurse means there is no fooling herself as to what the brown-black splashes on the walls and floor are, she knows the sight of dried blood.

To think she had been heading home from the hospital when she ended up in this place. Sybil finds herself wishing for trousers, the mid-calf skirt and heeled boots she’s wearing better for her plans of meeting a friend for dinner and a glass of wine after a too-long day. Yet as she’d gone into the restaurant and found herself in this horrible place instead, and frankly she was frightened.

She’s armed herself with the broken leg of a chair, not that she thinks she would be able to fight much off with it. If it weren’t for the noises from the walls Sybil would have been convinced she was alone. Hearing someone shouting is actually a relief, and she rushes toward the voice. Perhaps not the safest of choices, but what else is there to do? Wander these halls alone for longer than she can imagine?

Still, she hefts the chair leg as she turns the corner, trying to look stern and imposing. “Who are you and why are we here?”

"Easy, now, Miss, I'm not gonna hurt you. Just trying to figure out where I am." She looks terrified and wielding that... is that a chair leg? Like some kind of weapon. Looks like she'd fall over in the process. He needs to find some real weapons and fast. His vigors will only take him so far without finding some salts.

"Name's DeWitt. Booker DeWitt. I was just with a young woman named Elizabeth, you seen her?" Because she's his priority, she's the one he has to protect. Not that he doesn't feel for this woman, but there's really nothing in it for him to put his neck out. Not if Elizabeth is somewhere. Glancing at the blood and chaos around the mess hall, he decides to add a slightly more distressing question, "You seen anyone?"

His words don't precisely soothe her, but the relief at seeing another person is strong even if she's still worried. That starts to fade when he says his name and asks after Elizabeth. Surely they're can't be that many Bookers about, and especially not ones who are guardians of a sort to Elizabeths. "I'm Sybil. Sybil Crawley."

Sybil lowers the leg of the chair some, shaking her head. "I haven't seen anyone, you're the first. I've not seen Elizabeth. Are you here from Darrow?"

"Yeah..." It takes a moment, but he catches on, "You know Elizabeth?" He's not really placed all of her friends yet, something he'll fix after they get back. If they get back.

"You ever seen this place before? Or... anything like this?" Anything useful. He heads back to the door she came through, looking up and down the hall. It's too damn spooky, giving him all kinds of thoughts he doesn't want to be having.

“We’re friends,” she says more tersely than she might otherwise. In another situation she’d love to engage him in conversation, to learn about him and his interests. This was not the day for that. “I- No. It’s completely unlike anything I’ve ever known. I’ve never seen something with so much metal.”

"Well I don't like the looks of this. We should keep moving." There have to be weapons around here somewhere. He doesn't thing any place that looks as remote as this one does would go without some kind of protection. Even with all the blood around. Which only brings up a better question:

With all this blood, where are the bodies?

"Perhaps we should." Sybil isn't about to argue, she doesn't know more than he does. "Do you think there's a reason for this?"

"Hell if I know, Miss, but I'm not sticking around to find out." Picking up a piece of twisted metal, he pulled out his handkerchief, wrapping one end so he could grip it without slicking his hand up again. Last thing he needed was more scars to go with his brand.

"C'mon." He hits the door, watching the corridors closely as he motions for her to follow.

There's little choice but to follow, and truth be told, Sybil feels safer with him there as much a stranger as he is. The chair leg is still in her hands, a better weapon than none, and as she starts at a skittering sound from behind the wall she reminds herself to breathe. "Do you think Elizabeth might be here as well?"

"Hope so and hope not." He doesn't want Elizabeth to be near this place that's screaming danger and death to him. At the same time, he just doesn't want to not know where she is. It's annoying, he's not used to caring about someone like that.

"I'm thinking the fewer people find their way here, the fewer people are gonna get hurt."

“This place has done worse,” she says softly, her voice cold. The memories of that shadow Darrow are hard ones for Sybil. She doesn’t like thinking of the abomination that kidnapped her that Kaine claimed was another version of himself. But being here she cannot help it, wondering if there’s a reason these things happen to her over and over. “At the least, I hope that stays the worse experience. I would rather not repeat the things that happened before.”

Elizabeth didn't know where she was.

She hadn't been sent back - that, she at least knew, was for sure. She wasn't where she was a few moments ago, either. Instead, she was somewhere she almost certainly didn't want to be. She'd always been in control of the tears, and whatever had happened hadn't been a tear.

She didn't know how she got here.

The tension she felt was almost foreign after months away from the fear. It was enough to put her on full alert, though, as she scanned the area she'd entered once she was sure there was no door back - that'd be too easy. She was in some sort of living quarters, the beds lining the walls thick with dust from extreme misuse. Some other furniture was overturned or broken.

When she was picking through the place for some kind of blunt object(and it scared her, honestly, that it was the first thought that came to mind - something to protect herself, even if it were a broken leg of a chair), she found herself coming up, unfortunately, very empty. There was little she could do but try to move on from the room.

It took all of five seconds after opening the door for her to regret the decision. The lights were flickering, but it was enough to illuminate the huge blood splatter on the wall opposite of the door.

She didn't stifle the sound of shock that escaped from her mouth, loud enough to echo the empty hall, in time.

The door had not opened to lead her into the precinct.

Emma stands with her hand immediately going to the gun at her hip, frowning visibly as she tries to squint into the darkness, flickering lights only revealing so much in the split second she gets of certain details. She can hear the faint hum of something powering, a low thrumming that seems to reverberate from the very walls itself, and as she takes a few steps, the sound of her movement echoes in the otherwise silent space. She's about to reach for her phone to see if she can find anyone that way when she hears the scream.

Immediately, instinct rears to the forefront over self-preservation and she runs toward the sound, trying to pinpoint exactly where it had come from. Her gun is out and drawn, and she flicks the safety off with her thumb, keeping it ahead of her as she runs, gaze sweeping into each open doorway before she finally sees movement in one -

She lowers her gun at the sight of a face on the other side of it.

"What are you doing here?"

Elizabeth heard the footsteps too late to duck back into the room she was in and try to hide. She wasn't sure if she could move that fast after what she'd just discovered.

"I don't know!" she exclaimed, her voice high-pitched but hushed, now. Something had caused what was splashed on the wall, and she didn't want to alert it if it was still around. The panic of not knowing where she was turned into something much more productive for the situation - indignant anger over having a gun pointed at her. "Who are you? Where are we?"

She had to get back. She had to find Booker.

"My name is Emma," she answers, because at least that's something she has an answer for, anyway, and when she glances around them, she doesn't hear signs of any other life - except the constant hum that seems to be emanating from the very walls of this place.

"And as to the second part - I'm not really sure. Last thing I knew, I was heading to work - back in Darrow." She tests the name to see if it rings any bells of familiarity.

Darrow. Elizabeth was never so happy to hear the city's name.

"I'm from Darrow too. I was with a friend before I came here, and now he's gone. I don't know how I got here, either," she said, glancing around nervously. It felt like they were being watched, though she hoped that was her own fear making her imagine things. "I'm Elizabeth. My friend's name is Booker. Have you seen anyone else besides me in here? I need to find him."

Booker. The name alone would be enough to make her blush if she didn't halt first, brow furrowing with confusion and recognition. She's probably revealed her hand already by that alone, but she feels the need to tread lightly just in case.

"It's just been you and me so far," she admits. "But if he's here, it's better if we stick together to look for him. We can watch each other's backs that way."

Her expression said a lot. Elizabeth had never seen the woman before, nor had Booker ever mentioned her. It made her curious, but honestly, she knew there were bigger problems right now. She'd been in enough bad situations to spot one when she was in one.

"Okay. Okay," she said, taking a deep breath to calm herself. She timidly stepped out of the doorway, careful to hug the non-bloodied wall so she could come to a stop next to her. When it came to things like this, she was used to following someone. Having someone who appeared to at least know how to use a gun was comforting, at least. It was the small things. "Which way do you want to go? I only was in the room I came out of so far, and - and nothing's in there. It's all ruined."

It looked like a lot of this place was in a similar way. It didn't make her feel better about their situation.

"I came from that way, so I don't know if there's any chance of going back the way we came, trying the door again?" Emma shrugs both shoulders. "I doubt it'll work. I think if it was that easy, both of us would have been able to turn around and leave as easily as we found this place."

She keeps her gun out as they start moving slowly.

"Did you happen to hear anyone else?"

"I know I tried going back where I came through. It's just a normal door," Elizabeth said, frowning. She might've tried all she could to open a tear or something, too, but that wasn't something she could do here, either. Wherever they were, it was definitely not Darrow and it definitely wasn't where she'd been before either.

"I've been hearing a lot of sounds. I don't know what it is or where it's coming from," she admitted, her gaze shifting toward the bloodstained wall near them as they passed it. It still turned her stomach "And that."

"Great. That's - reassuring," Emma answers, though it's not Elizabeth she's frustrated with. This doesn't seem like something Regina would pull, either, and somehow she doesn't believe her magic has enough sway to really do anything this powerful, so she doesn't know what that means.

"Definitely trying not to look at that, either," she adds, quickly diverting her eyes as they walk past a particularly nasty spatter. "Well, maybe we'll run into some familiar faces. If we got sucked through here, it makes sense that others might have, too."

"My thoughts exactly," she said. She'd taken the words out of her mouth, honestly. There was something very wrong, and she had no idea what that something was. It was frightening, though she didn't show her fear. She had been through a lot, what was happening right now was just another test. "I'll keep an eye out for anything useful. Maybe we can figure out what's happened here while we look for people."

She just hoped Booker was alright. She knew he could take care of himself, but the place made her feel uneasy in a way that she hadn't even when she was back in Columbia.

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Doors Plot: Welcome to the Midnight Isle

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