Doors Plot: Night Has Fallen

[wipeawaythedebt]

The Midnight Isle is no longer empty, if it ever was. There are people now, four of them, people from far away and they don't know where they are or how they got there. They've been wandering, lost, worried, watching the long dark halls and listening to the strange sounds in the walls. They were alone, then in pairs and now they're together, locked in the command center. Time has passed, but there's power and there are records if the people are smart enough to pull them up. The door's got a good lock... for now.

Night, or what passes for it has come. The sounds are getting louder, whatever's there knows there's people on the Isle again. New people. Whole people. They have a taste for people now and they're wandering inside the walls, claws scratching inside their new metal home, looking for the people. They don't see well in the light, they don't like it, but power can't last forever. The generators have to cycle down every few months, they did six months ago and they're overdue. Must be running pretty hot by now. Tonight, maybe tomorrow, they'll shut down.

Tonight might be the last night these people have.

Comments

[cagedlamb]

It'd been luck that they came cross Booker - and Sybil, too. She knew that. It'd be a lie to not be on edge a bit, though, being really unable to talk to Booker about things. How they were going to proceed. How she should proceed, when she felt more and more like it would be likely he'd need to use Vigors around them. Something was lurking just out of view, she knew it.

It scared her.

She would try to find a way to speak to him privately later. For now, she did what she found herself often doing - scavenging. For what, she wasn't sure, but their hideaway was a mess of things in the room to go through.

Maybe she would find answers.

Maybe she would find something useful.

It was, at least, better than simply sitting and listening to the awful scratching noises that seemed to surround them.

[adifferentlife]

That there is so much to go through is a worrying thing to Sybil. Even the detritus of other people's lives is bothersome as to her it means that they didn't have time to take these things when they left. If they left. There are no bodies to be found, but the blood is mostly everywhere. There's less in this room and she supposes that's a relief. One of very few she's had.

Her stomach grumbles as she picks through a drawer, pulling out a doll made of what seems to be scraps with a stitched mouth and button eyes. Pursing her lips she holds it up to show Elizabeth. "You think she would have wanted her doll."

[cagedlamb]

Elizabeth knew what a panicked mess of left behind items looked like. This place - this place basically that. Whatever had happened had been terrible, and just thinking about it made her stomach twist.

Who knew how many people lost their lives here? She tried not to think about it as much as she tried not to think about the ones who died trying to take her back. She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she barely noticed Sybil had spoke to her. The fact she was there at all worried her.

She shouldn't be in a place like this. No one should, but at least Elizabeth had seem some terrible things before this. Sybil didn't come off as the type able to say the same.

"I don't think they had much time to take anything," she said, her gaze softening when she saw what Sybil was showing her. It reminded her of her old teddy bear, which had been taken away from her. Glancing away from it and up at her friend, she asked, "How are you doing?"

She was glad Booker had been there for her.

[adifferentlife]

There are horrors that Sybil has seen, mostly because of the war and the hospital work that she did. But she would prefer broken bodies to this emptiness. This reminds her too much of that other Darrow, that place she found herself abducted by the Kaine-like abomination. She does her best to not shiver at the thought of the spider-like man and the things that he’d done, but the memories aren’t welcome ones at all.

“I don’t think they did either,” she says finally, laying the doll carefully back in the drawer she’s been searching. “Holding together. Focusing on other things as best I can.”

“You?” She shuts the drawer and turns back to her friend, already tired of this place. She wants food and perhaps sleepbut she hasn’t found the former and likely can’t achieve the latter. “You must be relieved to have him here.”

[cagedlamb]

Elizabeth glanced over at Booker's direction when Sybil mentioned him. She was more relieved than she could put into words, truthfully, to see he was there. If anyone could protect them, it was him. The only problem that arose from that, however, was that unfortunately the reason he was so powerful was because he could do things that would shock anyone who saw them - anyone not from Columbia.

Which apparently was all of Darrow, from what she'd seen.

"Holding together, too," she replied with a weak smile, trying to shake the worries from her mind. They would deal with things when they came, she supposed. "And yes, I'm glad. I'm glad he found you, too - though I hope he wasn't too gruff around you."

[adifferentlife]

“Not very. At least, he wasn’t the worst I’ve seen, and I did try to accost him with a chair leg.” She offers something of a smile herself, though it is nearly as weak as Elizabeth’s. Finding humour is hard right now, not knowing where it is they are or how it is they’ll get back. She only hopes that like the last time she found herself elsewhere there is something they need to do in order to return to what has become her home.

“Do you think there’s a purpose to this? That we have a task to complete?”

[cagedlamb]

Elizabeth had to hold back a chuckle at the mental image of Booker dealing with that. She supposed he was used to it - their first meeting had gone in a somewhat similar way. In her defense - and in Sybil's, she was sure - he'd surprised her.

"I'm sure he understood why you almost hit him," she assured, though she hoped even he had said as much to her already. Her question caused her to pause in what she was doing, considering it. In the end, she could only shake her head. "I'm not sure. What could we possibly even do here? Everything and everyone, it seems, is gone."

Or at least she hoped everything was gone. The noises she kept hearing sounded too much like movement and too little like the sounds an old, broken down place like this would sound like for her liking.

[adifferentlife]

“I hope they’re gone,” she says, shivering. It’s a different hope than when she arrived just hours before and had been desperate to try and find anyone from this place. “But they must be. There’s been no sign of anyone.”

Only the blood and the strange noises. Sybil shakes her head, focusing instead on a panel in the wall with buttons. It’s like an oversized version of the computers that she’s learning to use at the college, really, and she’s wary of pressing any buttons lest she break something. “He was very concerned with finding you. Which, to be honest was a relief. It helped me to place him as from Darrow and not as the person who’d brought us here.”

After another moment of staring she presses a green button and isn’t that surprised when nothing actually happens. “The last time I found myself somewhere else because of Darrow a friend – Kaine – he had to overcome another version of himself. A horrible version.”

[cagedlamb]

Elizabeth wasn't so sure, but she also didn't say so. Being pessimistic in a time like this would do no one any good. In a little metal box that seemed to hold a lot of tools, she did finally find out thing that looked useful. She started fiddling with the switch on the small flashlight, wondering if he did what she thought it did.

"Yeah, we knew each other back home," she explained, though she still knew they were probably an odd pair to most people. She was surprised, sometimes, that he hadn't cut her loose too - but by now, she was certain he wasn't protecting her for any sort of gain. There was no New York here.

"This place has done something like this before?" she asked, though she found herself a little unsettled at her mentioning seeing another side of someone. She knew Booker would never turn his Vigors against someone, and if she had the ability to open tears again, she wouldn't - not with the chaos stepping into other versions of the same place did. But it still was something she didn't know and she wished, again, that she could just be honest.

[adifferentlife]

“I hadn’t been in Darrow long, only a few months. It was as if another version of Darrow just appeared and we found ourselves trapped there.” She’s busying herself looking through a cupboard, finding it easier to focus on that than to look at Elizabeth as she talks. “This creature, monster in the truest sense, it took me.”

Sybil remembers the fear that she felt, though it seems as if she’s now seeing it through a haze. It had been bone chilling, her life threatened in a way she’d never imagined. But she’d stayed strong then, fighting back. She would do the same now. “Only the monster was my friend, another form of him.”

[cagedlamb]

"I'm sorry," she said, frowning. It sounded terrible - she honestly couldn't imagine such a thing. No one that had gone after them in Columbia were people they knew. That detail made a whole lot of difference. "That must have been terrible."

Any courage she had in considering telling her a little more was cut off at that point. Her ability didn't hurt people on purpose, but they did hurt people. A lot of people.

[adifferentlife]

"It was," she says seriously, with a heavy sigh. There's nothing in the cupboard of any real use, she's convinced, pushing it shut in her frustration. "But it was behind me. Then this. I can't help but wonder if I attract such things, I suppose."

[wipeawaythedebt]

He's quiet when he comes up next to her, worried but willing to let her do her thing. She was damn good at finding things, so he's happy to let her look. But he wants to make sure she's holding together because the time might come when they have to run and fast and he wants to make sure she's still up to it.

"Find anything we can use? Maybe a vial or six of salts for me?"

[cagedlamb]

Elizabeth could feel Booker hovering near her. She didn't glance over until he spoke. Honestly, she was glad he didn't ask her if she was alright - she was exhausted, honestly, but there was

"Everything here is ripped apart," she said, which she thought said a good bit towards his initial question. Glancing around to make sure no one was near them, she added, in a somewhat quieter tone, "What are we going to do? Are you going to use Vigors here if whatever did this shows up?"

It was a question she already knew the answer to. The problem was, the answer she didn't have was how they were going to explain things to them when they saw him do things that were certainly not normal in Darrow - or anywhere else, apparently.

[wipeawaythedebt]

"I'll do whatever it takes to get you and the others out of here. Secrets be damned, they're powerful and I'll use 'em." He's seen the blood, whatever did that isn't going to flinch at a gun. Not that he even has a gun on him. Something he'll have to reconsider, if these things were likely to happen at any moment, he was going to start being armed everywhere.

"I made you a promise, I'm going to keep you safe, that means here, too."

[cagedlamb]

"I'm not saying not to use them. Not just to protect me, but everyone," she said, a frown on her face. She knew there was no way around it realistically, especially if she couldn't find a weapon among the rubble. She just felt like everything good was about to end for her. When people found out - she didn't know. She wasn't sure what might happen.

She glanced toward Sybil again, feeling terrible all over again for lying to her. A feeling of dread had been hanging over Elizabeth since they'd ended up here - that surely it couldn't just be a completely empty ship. There was no body of what attacked everyone to show they'd eventually killed it. Whatever it was.

"I - don't know what to do. Should I just tell her?" she asked, honestly looking for his opinion now. It was the first time she'd even had anything approaching friends before. While she'd been able to fake being normal, this was beyond something she could just figure out how to handle.

[wipeawaythedebt]

"I'd say you an' me have a certain experience when it comes to secrets." The ghost of Lady Comstock comes to mind, shrieking and bringing the dead back to life, screaming about how she was wronged. How she was lied to. Used.

"I can't tell you what to do. Maybe telling her now is a pain she doesn't need. Maybe we'll get out of here without a fight and you can worry about it later." Not that he really believes that last part. Not with all the blood, all the sounds. Still, nothing's come after them yet and that's as promising as it is worrying.

[cagedlamb]

Elizabeth knew he had a point. Which was exactly why she kept going between the two decisions. She supposed it was probably better to keep it quiet for everyone, though she knew enough that it was a risk.

"Do you really think nothing's going to happen?" she asked. Because she wasn't even trained to look for trouble and she saw it (vividly, in fact, splattered against walls all over the place). A part of her wanted him to tell her the truth and a part wondered if she wanted to hear it.

[wipeawaythedebt]

"I'm hoping, but then I was hoping Columbia would be an easy job." Smirking, he put a hand on her shoulder, weary, but affectionate. "And darlin' nothing about picking you up has been easy." Which was the least of it, he supposes. There's rough jobs and then there's that job.

[cagedlamb]

Elizabeth gave him a loo, then rolled her eyes. Despite him teasing, she knew he did have a point. At this point, he wasn't really even being pushed forward by any kind of monetary gain to help her.

"Well, this has nothing to do with me," she countered, though she wasn't actually being defensive. "This - this is beyond anything I've ever seen. Apparently this isn't the first time people have been sent to other places. I guess it was too much to hope we'd end up somewhere nicer."

[wipeawaythedebt]

"Guess it was." He's never bothered to hope for much, but he's really starting to wonder what God's got against him. And why He seems to be dragging a kid as nice as Elizabeth through all this with him.

"I'll make sure you get through this, kid, that's a promise."