Difference between revisions of "Log:Patent Pending"

12 May, 2018

Where Cerise went after seeking the Hera Pear in the Hedge. Part 2 of 3. ( - Part 1 - Part 3 - )

Obliviscence General Hospital

You're back at work. Somehow, it always feels like you've already made it through the better part of a busy day and are just getting a chance to catch your breath... Where do the mornings go? You're in your office, reading through a patient's chart and trying to remember what you did earlier today. The memory keeps slipping just out of your grasp like soap in the bath, though.

You also have a feeling like you had a very bad dream. But you did your best to forget it immediately upon waking and now you aren't sure just what it was about... Only that the lingering effects -- the fatigue and the comedown after the adrenaline and the touch of paranoia that makes you want to think twice before opening doors -- are left now.

Cerise has a pen in her hand, just in case she needs to make notes on the chart, but what she ends up doing with it instead is quickly tapping on the edge of her desk pad with it. It's as if her subconscious is also trying to keep her awake, but in the end, she returns to the ever trusty cup of coffee, taking long sips as she tries to keep awake.

This particular chart is about one Lesley Skye Lattice IV. Hair, blond. Eyes, blue. Height, 5'7", Weight, 130 lbs. Strawberry-shaped birthmark on right thigh. It's one of those named experiments from before -- this one is called Edmund. But you /must/ be tired, because the details of this one seem questionable at best. Something about entrapment, dissolving of bonds, application of liquid Lethe in high doses? What is going on here?

Cerise frowns as she looks at the chart some more. Her lips pull into a purse and her brows furrow together as if she can just scrunch her face tight enough it will all make sense. Is this even germane to the experiment? After a few seconds and another large gulp of coffee, Cerise pushes up from her desk. She'll probably head to John's office eventually, but first it's a swing by the nurses station to make sure they got the charting right. Those poor nurses, always taking the fall!

Whoever is really conducting these experiments seems... Well... It's hard to tell just what it is that the experiments are meant to discover. /Your/ experiments are about finding alternate ways to get the effects of hyperbaric oxygen treatment... And no matter how you turn the pages, you don't see anything about that, even though the patient seems to have sustained several wounds that might benefit from your work.

Several nurses are chatting at the station. As you walk up, one of them points and makes a sound like she's about to scream but isn't going to let herself. "Your-- " she says, stuttering. Her eyes are enormous. "Your shoulder... It's on your shoulder."

But you don't think that there's anything on you. Is there? Maybe she's pointing at somebody else? There are quite a lot of people passing through the hallway. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, technicians, even a few patients...

"What is?" Cerise blinks a few times at the nurse who seems so frightened, but she was ever the cool headed one and really, what could be on her shoulder that would elicit that reaction? It's probably a bug. A spider at worst. Cerise turns her head first to make sure that she's not pointing at anyone else and then she checks out the shoulder, bringing a hand up to brush whatever it is away from her.

When you look, there /is/ a spider there. But there's something strange about it. The spider only has two eyes, and they aren't round and protruberant like usual but ovular in shape and lidded, like a human's, though with the spider's black, finely furred skin. They have a slightly lustrous, grayish color, like polished lead. It raises the tip of one leg but doesn't otherwise move upon being spotted.

"Get rid of it!" says the frightened nurse. One of the others tells her, "Calm down. It's only a spider. You see worse things every day."

Taking a look at it, Cerise seems to have a second thought on brushing the spider away. Maybe it's the humanness of those eyes, or just Cerise's natural avoidance of doing harm to other things, whichever it is she turns back to the nurses, "It's fine. Get me a piece of paper or a whole pad if you have it? And a cup or something? Let's get this guy outside where he belongs."

"Of course," says one of the porters. He looks familiar, though you aren't quite sure where you might have seen him before. He hands you a paper cup from the water cooler and a sheet of paper from a small white notepad with the hospital's name and logo printed at the top. Good deed performed, he goes back to wheeling the empty bed he's charged with toward its destination.

The frightened nurse has run off, despite the other nurses' mixture of sympathy and teasing. On your shoulder, the spider continues to hold still for a long minute. Then lifts the same long, spindly leg as before and brushes the hispid tip against the underside of your jaw, quite near your jugular.

Cerise stares at the orderly a moment as the man heads off but she's soon distracted by the spider, tugging her head away when the spider comes close. She may not be dooming the creature to death, but that doesn't mean she likes having him there. Gripping the pad in her good hand, she holds it up just under the spider in an invitation for the creature to crawl on it, and then as an added incentive she takes the cup with her other hand and tries to gently brush the spider in the direction of the pad. When the spider crawls on it, /If/ he crawls on it, Cerise quickly traps the spider with the cup.

Oh, he does. You're able to trap the spider easily enough. Now all there is to do is head outside and let him go. Easy-peasy.

You head down the hall and towards the big glass sliding doors that head out to the steps of the hospital and the wider world beyond. At least...that's where you thought they lead.

Because once you get outside, the steps...descend into nothing but oblivion.

There are no people. There are no trees. There is no sky. There are no birds.

All around you, there is emptiness. Darkness. But it's an echoing darkness: not dense and rich, like the night. This darkness is truly no-thing.

Cerise stares into the darkness in terrified confusion with wide eyes and hands that tremble despite their small passenger. She can't quite seem to grasp it as she stands there and the seconds tick by and then it's minutes. Finally, the woman pulls herself together to try and do the only logical thing, she ducks back inside, leans up against the wall and catches her breath. When she's a little more together, she'll peek under the cup to check on the spider.

You can't tell if it's darkness that you can walk in or not. If you take another step, what happens? Will you even fall? Or simply be lost... Forgotten? Like...

Why do you feel like there's something that you're forgetting now?

The emptiness, neither warm nor cool, without any qualities at all, extends before you as far as you can sense. When you lift the cup to check on the spider, the long-legged little creature is gone. In its place, a mirror stares up from the notepad. Gouges in the metal prevent you from seeing your own eyes. At the head of the pad, the words 'Obliviscence General Hospital' appear in a neat, old-fashioned looking black script.

Cerise stares at the pad and mirror for some time. It's another thing to try and make sense of. Eventually she reaches out and folds her hand around the mirror, holding it tight in her palm, hidden from view from others. Then she lets the pad drop on the ground and looks up, is anyone else panicking? Does anyone even seem aware that they can't leave?

All these people-- doctors, nurses, orderlies, patients, technicians, staff-- make the hospital seem to hum with life. Outside the doors, nothing exists. It doesn't seem like they know. But... How would you know, if they did? Would they tell you?

Either way, /you/ need to see it again. The flat emptiness outside the doors. You push back through them and step back out into the black nothing.

Dimly, you remember a scene like this from your dream. But it wasn't empty outside the hospital. The darkness was filled with things like you saw in John's lab the other day... The man strapped to a chair being tortured with small incisions that bled a quick dark liquid that vanished after brief exposure to the air. A woman trapped far beneath the surface of a river, swimming upward, lungs filled with carbon dioxide, desperate for oxygen, only to see the surface recede out of reach when she came near it. A boy holding a dove with broken ribs, watching its black eyes grow dim as the hollow bones folded in on its heart. And a trunk-- a trunk like an old soldier might have brought back from the army-- with breath steaming out of the keyhole. You'd had the feeling, in your dream, that you knew who was inside that battered rectangle of wood, metal, and leather.

You wanted to help them... But at the same time... When you looked down, your hands were pressed to the lid. Holding it shut against the efforts of whoever-- /whatever?/-- was curled up inside. Waiting for the air to run out. Silent.

But you wouldn't... You wouldn't /do/ that, would you? When you woke up, at first you saw that strange black liquid on your fingers, as if you /had/ been holding onto something with that dark fluid draining out of every molecule. But you only had to blink, and it was gone... And then the dream was gone, too...

The dream-memory causes Cerise to squeeze her eyes shut, as if doing so can make what she saw not true. As she does so, she takes a step back, falling against the doors again, but this time she does not retreat to the safety of the hospital inside. This time, she opens her eyes again and she peers into the darkness once more. This time she tries to see, but she tries to push past the jumble of images. This time she tries pick out one thread to find that to focus on that. The thread she picks? That image of the old army trunk. She has to know /what happened/ and why.

You can see it clearly. You draw nearer and nearer to the trunk, and you can /hear/ the breathing within -- hear it, and see it. That thread of breath.

But once you get close enough, close enough that your hands are once again on the lid -- that you are once again pressing down, bearing down, on whomever is silent in there -- the person inside seems to buck up again with a last gasp? Is it a last gasp? Of life --

"LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT, YOU SONS OF BITCHES, LET ME OUT!" The voice is male, and loud, and clear, and unmistakable. Ben. It's Ben. The whole trunk rattles with his effort. There is no lightning. No tricks of any kind, like he's been stripped of all of that, or never had it to begin with.

But his voice is racked with pain and fury. "LET ME OUT! I SWEAR TO GOD, I'LL KILL YOU ALL! I'LL KILL YOU, YOU ASSHOLES! LET ME OUT!" The words suddenly stop. Was that a sob?

"Ben!" Cerise cries out the name with the sudden realization who it is in the trunk. There's a sob on her end too, a reflection of empathy with his feelings mixed with the surprise and emotion of her own situation. "Ben, I'm here. It's Cerise. It will be OK!" And Cerise shifts her hands so that instead of pressing down on the lid, she's lifting it up, freeing the man inside.

When you fling up the lid, there's nothing inside the trunk. Just more of that black liquid. It has about the consistency of water, though you can't see through it... At first. As you stare down, looking for Ben-- Is he /underneath/ it?-- Somewhere?-- it becomes clearer. There's something specular about that dark, slowly rippling surface. You see your own image in it. And the image of someone else, standing behind you, whose features you can't make out.

But no Ben.

"Ben? Ben, come back to me..." Cerise reaches a hand towards the liquid, almost dipping her fingers in it but she stops when she sees that reflection. Quickly, she whirls around, looking behind her. /Is/ there someone there?

Of course. It's just John. Smiling at you; sky blue eyes bright in the dark, featureless landscape. Fair hair a halation that separates him from the black emptiness. The white block of the hospital stands a few feet behind him.

"Cerise," he says. "You skipped your break. Aren't you going to eat today?"

Just as if there were nothing extraordinary going on here. Did he hear the screams? Or you calling for Ben? Does he see the way that there /is/ nothing, nothing at all, outside the hospital walls? Except for the trunk that you just opened and the flotsam and jetsam of the memories of your dreams, superimposed on the void?

"John?" It's a question at first, as if Cerise can't figure out how all of this melds together. Then she glances around her at the darkness and the emptiness and she slides a little away from John. Her eyes widen, as she gasps out disbelievingly. "John, what are you talking about? Can't you see what's going on? You think I should just take a break? What are you...This makes no sense!"

"Cerise," John repeats. Then he tips his head -- just enough to bring out some surprisingly dark shadows under his eyes. In a landscape with hardly any light, how is this even possible. A slow, thin smile spreads across his handsome face. "You'd better take your break now. You might not get another one, if you know what I mean."

Then he turns around, hands in pockets, and wanders off into the darkness... whistling. The further he goes, the louder the sounds get around you... louder and louder, starting as small moans, turning into full-blown shrieks and cries as the darkness lightens, but you can't see anything...

The black lightening to white. Silence turning into cries. Is this better, or is this worse?

Cerise stays outside as long as she dares, but eventually, she ducks back into the hospital. She looks around for John, but only briefly. She's more intent on finding the nearest window and peering outside to see how it looks from this vantage.

When you pass through the doors of the hospital, it looks like you're walking into a completely different institution. Gone are the sea glass colored walls; the paintings of bamboo and the fountains of gurgling water that made the waiting rooms seem like they might just as well belong in a spa. No wood or upholstery left to the furniture. Nothing but metal, tile, and glass. All of it grey as a dense fog.

The hospital, where just minutes ago you could hardly walk without having to avoid bumping into someone, is deserted. The lightbulbs hang bare from the ceiling. Now and then, one fizzes and throws off blank, naked sparks of electricity.

The windows are as opaque as if covered in black paint.

Once again, Cerise stumbles to comprehend just what is going on. She takes a few steps into the lobby, looking around in disbelief. "John?" She calls out softly at first, sounding little and lost, and then a feeling of panic begins to rise, "John! John, where are you?" She takes more steps, this time more sure and quick, hurrying down the hallway in the direction she thinks he's most likely to have gone.

Someone has been moving the doors. The break room is where a supply closet used to be. Where John's office had been: an operating theater. You're there in the room, staring around at the empty table and the anesthesia machine, through which more of that black liquid appears to be running, and a monitor that's reporting someone's... What? Heartrate... ? Even though there's no one in the room.

Across the room, you catch a glimpse of the spider with two eyes. Crawling over a tray of sterile instruments. Dipping its feet between the scalpels and retractors.

"Doctor Hodgson!" comes an urgent call. A voice that you don't recognize, from another doctor rushing into the room now. The first person that you've seen since John walked off whistling into the darkness outside. If that /was/ John. Was it?

But you don't have time to think about that now. The new doctor, about your height with large eyes stained the blue-violet hue of a fresh bruise, is reaching for your wrist-- trying to tug you away from this room. "You've got to come quickly. Things are very bad. Very, very bad. We need you... "

Cerise's head spins at all the changes, but the one thing she knows, the thing that she clings to is that when things get bad she can help. She steps towards the doctor, letting him pull her along, and then she stops, pulling back on him. "/No./ This isn't right. What's going on? Where is everyone?"

The doors of the operating bay thud shut behind you when you go out of the room. There's a finality to the sound. Hard clay dropping onto polished wood six feet down from the surface of the earth. You can almost hear the rain...

No.

The doctor stops with you. His agitation is obvious: the fingers wrapped around your wrist spare and trembling. "It's one of the patients," he says. He stops and gulps a deep breath of air before looking wildly around the empty corridor. One one of the walls, the square space where a painting used to hang shows a slightly lighter grey than its surroundings.

"I shouldn't... No, no," he reprimands himself. "I can't tell you." Strange eyes wide; turned to you like the beam of a lighthouse. "I can't... "

"Tell me." Cerise is insistant. Now that she's made the decision to stop, it's like she's bolted in place, refusing to move without answers.

"Don't you know what's going to happen?" asks the other doctor. The name tag pinned to his white coat shows not a whole name, but a symbol; a bit like a 'p' whose vertical branch extends up past the rounded curve. 'Þ.' "That's what they... "

Here he cuts himself off again. Once more looking around the halls-- for what? Other people? Cameras? Bugs? Then the doctor looks at you again and says, after stepping in very close to you, close enough that you can almost feel his lips against your ear as he whispers: "It's one of the patients. He won't cooperate… They say he'll listen to you. They say a lot of things about you, Cerise. That you know... "

But he pauses; thinks better of it. Pulling back again: "You've got to come or we're going to lose him. /Now./"

Cerise finally relents. She unbolts herself from her spot on the ground and moves, allowing this new doctor to drag her off, "Show me the patient, then."

The doctor with the odd name tag keeps his tight hold on your wrist as he tows you out of the empty operating theater into the labyrinth of deserted hallways. Outside, the lights have all turned the same purplish blue as your new guide's eyes. Those that haven't gone out completely, that is. Corridor after corridor falls away behind you.

You see no one. And none of the rooms that you expect appear where they're supposed to be.

As you hurry, a low hum of electrical noise starts to build up in the back of your mind. Or is it coming from whatever generators are keeping the remaining lights going? You'd ask the other doctor about it if he didn't seem so frantic. He stops at last before a pair of tall, colorless doors with no windows in them. Breathing hard. "Come on," he says, and shoves one of the doors open for you to walk through. Inside, although not arranged the way that you're used to, are a long sink and all the sterilizing supplies and storage that should come before entering any operating room.

Cerise has scrubbed up enough times that she steps towards the sinks and reaches for one of the foil-wrapped, pre-soaped sponge/brush combinations, ripping it open and turning on the water. A few seconds later, there's soap suds all the way to her elbows and she's running the brush end over her fingernails. It's then that she turns to the other doctor, "We've got time right now. You going to tell me what's going on? And you know I'm not a surgeon, right?"

The other doctor is hovering at first, plainly nervous, so much so that he can hardly stand on the same square of blank tile for more than a second. What could have put him in such a state? "Aren't you?" he asks, whirling on you, when you ask that question. It's a mark of how strange and confusing the hospital has become that it briefly seems like the question could be legitimate: /Are/ you a surgeon? Could you just -- somehow, wondrously -- have forgotten a thing like that?

You couldn't... Could you?

"The patient is resisting treatment," he says, then. "They say he trusts you. What else do you need to know?" At this last, a harsh, stinging note enters his voice, as though it were offensive to him to be questioned in this way.

"A patient file would help. A breakdown of the attempted treatments so far." Cerise spits back sharply as her own frustrations come to a rise in this topsy-turvy environment that she finds herself in. Even with all the chaos, Cerise seems to know exactly how long she should be scrubbing for - a feat worth noting in a normal situations. You can blame it on that need for internal order. Nearly three minutes to the dot, she's shaking water off her hands and facing the other doctor, "Lets go in." She heads for the doors leading into the supposed surgery itself.

The other doctor shrugs off your concerns. "Afterward," he says. "Everything will be clear. You'll see." With that, he smiles: a broad, slightly unhinged-looking smile that's also somehow, at the same time, still rather nervous, as if his anxiety were a full set of piano strings subject to the mangling of a child who'd got loose at the bench without a single lesson to his name in which key to press when. He backs into the doors to the operating theater and holds one open for you.

Inside, the room is almost empty. There's a table in the center with a man stretched out there who looks to be of about average height; or a few inches less, perhaps. The tufts of his soft brown hair are receding and his round eyes are closed tight by the anesthesia -- assuming that that's what those tubes are pumping into his veins. The tubes are opaque, slightly silverly in appearance, and make it impossible to see just what's inside.

'Þ' moves over to one side of the man and lifts his hand, starting to check his wrist and forearm for something. Ignores, for the moment, the fact that the man's chest is laid wide open. Waiting for you. Are you a surgeon, or not?

That black liquid that seems to be everywhere in this place is welling up from the depths of his thoracic cavity like oil leaking up from a ship long since sunk to the bottom of the ocean. For just a moment, under the hot, white, transparent operating room lights, it seems to iridesce.

Cerise steps up to the patient and looks blankly down at the open chest cavity. Is she supposed to be doing something? She doesn't know. Then her eyes focus on the liquid, "Suction." She snaps into action, barking out an order like it's completely natural before musing quietly, "That shouldn't be there. What is it?"

There's something familiar about the patient's face. It keeps nagging at you, like the itch of a mosquito bite with no physical marker to scratch or to cut open and bleed free of the poison. How do you know him? It bothers you to see him here, stretched out like any other anonymous body beneath the starched flaps of his dressing gown and the pinned-back skin of his chest.

"Lethe poisoning," says 'Þ.' Still conducting his inspection, though it's not clear to you just what he's looking for. "We see it all the time." After saying that, he freezes as though he's made some sort of misstep and looks up over your head towards... What?... And then back at the patient's forearm.

A nurse brings you what you asked for, rolling over the cart that the suction unit is attached to.

"Look," 'Þ' says, then, and lifts the man's hand to show to you. There's something off about the patient's nails. Not the smooth, round discs of a human being, but the longer, more flexible-looking nails of a mouse, with their extended hyponychium. "Was he like this before?"

Cerise reaches for the surgical tool and begins to suction out some of the liquid from the man's chest. She's slow, careful, methodical, everything would you expect from Cerise, even though this is an area where she has little experience. She stops when 'Þ' points out the nails, the suction tool is set back down on the tray so that she can lift the patients hand, examining the nails closely, "Yes? I think..." It's a question still, filled with uncertainty. Then her eyes dart up to the man's face and widen appreciatively, "I think I - I know him. Alwin!"

That strange black liquid, which seems to have the consistency of water in spite of being so opaque that it looks as though it ought to be heavy and viscous, like oil or tar. You've already suctioned so much up and up out of Alwin's chest until the suction unit is completely filled but there seems to be just as much there as when you started. "Nurse," barks 'Þ'. The nurse wheels the filled unit away and comes back with an empty one.

Lifting the patient's hand and looking at those long, whitish nails, more and more memories start to come back to you. But if Alwin is here, and he shouldn't be, then where's John? You start to look around the room as if that will scare him out of the corners. But the room, a big, empty hexagon, with almost nothing in it except for the table, yourself, the other doctor, the nurse, and a series of machines on wheels like the one that the nurse just rolled up, has nowhere to hide anyone. Let alone a big man like John. And he obviously isn't here...

Is he?

Remembering the way that the other doctor seemed to startle a moment ago when looking at something over your head, you turn and look up, too. You have to twist to see behind you. Up there, there's an observation room -- Normal for a big operating theater like this in a big hospital like Obliviscence General. Thick panes of glass stretch from the floor of the room to its ceiling. Through the glass, dimly, you see a river filled with sharp rocks... And on the other side of the rippling water... A big, powerful-looking, dark-skinned man; a delicate redhead; a young man with silver-blue eyes, scowling fit to bust the glass; and an older, intimidating looking man with dark hair and eyes. Standing on the rocks in the river without moving. Staring down at you like they're looking for something... Something that they can't seem to get the slightest glimpse of at all.

"Who are they? Why are they there? I don't remember them." Cerise asks as she peers up at the people in the observation room. All the while, one of her slender hands stays put on Alwin's arm. Now that she has him, unwilling to part company. At the very least, the man provides an anchor to herself, to something real. "Where's John? He should be helping with this."

It's then that she remembers that she's here for a purpose. The people above are dismissed and she reaches for the surgical tools again to resume work on Alwin's chest. Her voice lowers, so that 'Þ' can't hear it, but perhaps the patient can, "Don't worry. I'll fix you."

"John is here," says John. Or his voice says it, anyway. He doesn't seem to be anywhere in the room with you. But when you look back up at the observation room, there he is, white coat and all, standing with a row of other doctors. Though he doesn't look like he's been speaking... And you wouldn't be able to hear him from down here if he had, would you?

And why did that 's' drag out for so long... That isn't how John normally speaks, is it? But otherwise... It sounded just like him.

There's no river in the observation room anymore. No sharp rocks either. Just space for the observers to stand and a few rows of seats toward the back whose discomfort you remember well. You don't recognize anyone else up there, apart from John, though the room is packed. You've never seen it so full. John stands in the center with a man just his height, but thinner and less self-assured-looking, wearing thick black glasses, at his right hand. On his left hand stands a Chinese woman with long, straight hair and nothing at all to write with; one hand on her hip, staring down at you.

Under your hands, Alwin doesn't respond to you. His chest just keeps pumping up more and more relentless black fluid. His face looks pale, like it's a long time since those clear blue eyes opened... A long time since anyone was home behind the round forehead and slightly slack, silently breathing mouth.

John's presence should reassure Cerise. It always has in the past. No one knows her as well as this man with whom she spent nearly a decade of her life - so many of those years formative as well, but not even him staring down at her makes her seem more confident. There is just too much *wrong* with the whole situation. Brown eyes turn back to Alwin, her brow knitting together as she stares down at the body beneath her. "We need to figure out where it's coming from." She shifts the suction tube into her other hand, holding out a good one, "Scope." With both tools in hand she begins to probe the body gently, looking for a more immediate cause.

'Þ' moves the light that's attached to the operating table. There are several of them, the smallest hardly larger than a penlight, and it's this last beam that he brings /into/ the cavity of Alwin's chest to illuminate the dark pumping of heart and lungs beneath the water as you suck it away, still fruitlessly, and start to search through his chest for the source of all that strange liquid. There's so much of it... And yet it has no scent at all. If you could bring yourself to taste it, you'd bet your life or John's that it would have no taste, either.

"There's something," says 'Þ,' "that he doesn't want to know. Something that he's afraid of. Do you see it?"

He's looking, too, without getting in your way. You uncover a patch of bone here; a gleaming shiver of muscle there. But what would that look like? Something that Alwin doesn't want to be inside him anymore? Something that he wants to be free of?

Cerise hands off the scope to 'Þ,' leaving her hand free now so that she can grip a scalpel. "No. Where is it. Show me." Cerise stares down at the chest and then up at the screen attached to the scope and then over at 'Þ,' her expression earnest and worried.

"I don't know Alwin well enough." 'Þ' almost sounds sorry. Is he? Can anybody in this strange place really feel sorry about anything? He worries his bottom lip with his teeth for a second, then says, "You know him. That's why you have to find it."

The screen shows nothing but black liquid. And, reflected in the dark surface, a gleam of light from the observation room high up behind you. It looks like John is standing in between your parents now.

"Who is he? Really? If you could boil him down to just one thing?"

"Kind." Cerise whispers her reply, "He's kind." Her shoulders slump, hands coming to rest on the edge of the surgical bed as Cerise shakes her head, eyes beginning to well up, "But what does that have to do with this? I don't know how to help him. I don't know what to do."

"Yes, you do, Cerise," says 'Þ.' "Only you can do it. You have to. Or he's going to... " He doesn't finish that sentence. Die? Somehow, that doesn't feel like the right word. But what else can you call it? What else do people do here? You remember the other man strapped to that horrible chair with the small knives cutting over and over again into his skin. He was leaking this same thing...

And that army chest, the one with Ben inside.

What /is/ it?

When you put your hands down, more and more black fluid comes up from Alwin's open chest. It starts to drip off of his sides and over the edges of the operating table. Starts to run onto the floor. The floor, brushed metal, easy to hose down, glints through the first thin sheet of liquid.

There was something like that in Alwin's chest, too. You don't know what it is. But you had glimpsed it... Only seconds before you wanted to give up. Nothing in a person's chest, human or otherwise, should shine like that. And so what can it have been?

Cerise sucks in a breath, forcing calmness to return. "I can do this. I got it." She whispers to herself, psyching herself up for the task to follow, much the same as she would have as a teenager. Then she is maneuvering the scope through the liquid filling Alwin's chest desperately trying to find that bit of metal. When she does the scope is set aside and she lowers a hand with a pair of forceps, aiming to pull the metal bit out.

The forceps close on something small, round, and hard. You can hardly see it, but when you feel it, you start to worry it carefully free. At the same time: your head starts to pound. There's a droning sound in the room, growing louder and louder, that seems to travel aimlessly. On your right hand, on your left hand... /Behind/ you...

At last, it pops out. A key: perfectly ordinary and not special to look at in any way. Just a thin, flat circle of metal with the jagged tip hanging down, pointing at the floor as a last drop of black liquid slides off of the end.

Cerise doesn't waste long on the key. She flips it over in her hand once and then she sets it aside on the tray. She's more worried about Alwin, and it's not long before she's suctioning up what remains of the black liquid in his chest. "Get ready to close him." As she works, she takes a brief moment to look over her shoulder and up at the observation deck. Is John still there? Are her parents there?

You notice as you work that the black liquid seems to be receding faster than you can suction it up. When you look up at the observation deck, though, it's empty. And when you look /back/ at Alvin, his chest is whole. Sealed. No stitches. No sign that it ever had to be opened in the first place.

His skin, though, looks whiter than the table on which it rests. The little puff of breath that was coming in and out of his lips before can't be heard at all anymore. And his hair, which had been receding, looks full and thick and brown again. Hands no longer showing those overlong nails, but short, cleanly curved, patently human ones.

Only... Something about the whole... Looks like a balloon with a hole in it too small to see. The air is escaping, invisible, somewhere. Before you is only something empty. Not even organic, but plastic, artificial. A mylar skin with no heartbeat at all anymore.

"Nononono." Cerise breaths out as she watches that change overcome Alwin. "That shouldn't have happened. I shouldn't have done that. We need to fix it." She swallows down a lump in her throat and turns towards the tray where she set the key earlier reaching for it again, along with a scalpel.

But the other doctor is already handing the key over to the nurse. Why? What can they possibly be meaning to do with it? The nurse shuts off the suction machine and reaches out to accept the round little key. It looks like it's made of bronze: a warmer, browner hue than the scrubbed metal of the surgical instruments and stainless steel surfaces of the operating theater.

When the key isn't there, Cerise moves quickly, striding towards the nurse who is taking the key away "No." She says sharply, reaching out a hand for the key and if it isn't surrendered, Cerise will snatch it right out of the nurse's hand. "We did the wrong procedure. We made things worse. We're putting it back."

"No," says 'Þ,' who looks straight at you after putting the key, which looks absolutely and totally clean, bizarrely for something that just came out of a man's chest, into the nurse's black-gloved hands. Large hands, though also long and bony-looking through the latex (if that's what that substance is), appropriate to the nurse's stature of what looks to be about six and a half feet. The nurse steps easily back out of reach when you go for the key.

'Þ' seems less frightened and jumpy now than he did just a minute ago. His eyes are clear, and for a moment it almost looks as though he's going to start smiling. But then the moment passes and he gestures without expression at Alwin's body. "That was the right procedure. Don't you see? He's waking up." And indeed, his eyelids have begun to move, though they haven't opened yet.

"Don't leave." Cerise casts the nurse a final, suspicious glance as she barks out that order. Her tone is that of someone who clearly expects to be believed. Then she steps over to the bed where Alwin lies. Leaning over him, her demeanor changes and becomes more gentle, as one of her hands reaches for his face, fingers running down his jaw. Her eyes never loose their sharpness, still studying him to pick up every detail, "Al?"

The nurse backs up some more, though you can't see where he's put the key now. Do you know him? How many people that tall can there be in this hospital? Not that you seem to be running into many people that you know, besdies John. John, and people you haven't met yet.

Alwin opens his eyes and looks at you. They're the same watery blue that you remember, the rims a little red, as though inflamed by something. The urge to cry? Whatever they gave him to put him under so deep? But although he looks right at you, he seems not to see you. Or perhaps simply not to recognize you.

His gaze moves straight past you to 'Þ,' of whom he inquires, pushing himself up on his elbows and then into a sitting position, "Who's this bitch?"

"Alwin?" It's reflexive that Cerise backs up when Alwin sits up, but it's also driven by her surprise at his sudden change in attitude and words. Her eyes widen, and then dart over her shoulder to where 'Þ' is. Surprise morphs into alarm, "What's happened to him?"

"Nothing," answers Alwin. He seems quite capable of speaking for himself now. He steps down off of the operating table and smooths the wrinkles from his hospital gown. "But I could use a drink ... A change of clothes and a drink."

He glances at you, then back to 'Þ.' "And less ... /shrillness/ ... If you catch my drift. No questions." For a moment, Alwin looks exactly like he did just minutes ago, except that he's up on his own two feet and his eyes are open. But that hollowed-out look is back again, just as plain as if he'd been buried alive, suffocated to death while banging on the inside of his coffin, and then been exhumed and defibrillated and forced to march lock-step back to the undertaker to wait for the grave to be re-dug and for everything to begin all over again.

"I'm tired of questions," he says.

Cerise steps into Alwin's path. A hand lifts to block his further progress, and if he keeps moving it's placed gently, but insistently on his chest. "Over my dead body. Sit down. We're not done." It's seldom that Cerise sheds her overtly gentle bedside demeanor, but she's does so now. Her words are forceful and as she says them, her eyes squint in his direction.

Alwin seems easy to manipulate. Not very strong, physically or otherwise. Much less so than you think he should be. When you push him, he moves back like he expects you to strike him. Hate brightens those round blue eyes. "I don't know who you think you are," he tells you. "But it's over."

Then he looks at someone behind you. Though you haven't sensed anyone standing there... And says to them, with a flash of renewed urgency, "Haven't you explained it to her yet?"

What Cerise sees doesn't make her happy and her frown grows and deepens. She keeps a hand on Alwin's chest, she's not about to let him free. Simultaneously, the woman whirls around, "Explain what? /Stop/ playing games with me and tell me what I need to know!" She asks before she even knows who's there, most likely assuming that it will be the other doctor.

But there's no one there. Not even in the observation room, which looks just as deserted as the last time that you glanced up so high. Just the double doors closing with a soft swish that seems to drag out forever -- shhhhh -- as somebody leaves. Must have been that tall nurse, taking the last of the suction machines out of the room to be drained. And Alwin's round little key with them.

"Don't worry, Mouse," says 'Þ' as he unhooks the last of Alwin's IVs and starts to roll up the tubes. "She isn't here because she's stupid. She'll remember what we're here to do soon enough. Right, Cerise?" He flashes you a quick, bright smile, looking suddenly even younger than normal. "Now, let's get you to your room."

"'Cerise'..." Alwin is saying. His chest feels hollow under your hand. But there's a heartbeat there. A slow, steady, perfectly healthy heartbeat. "Strange name. Maybe you're right and she belongs here with the likes of you."

Cerise's hand leaves Alwin's chest, but only so that she can insert herself between him and 'Þ.' Her sharp eyes are no on the other doctor, the frown unwavering. "No. You tell me what's going on. You tell me now or neither of you leave here."

'Þ' laughs, sounding surprised and gratified at the same time. "You have no control here," he says. He puts his hands on Alwin's shoulders and pulls him back, away from you, up to his feet again. "At least... Not now. Maybe when you've remembered how things work." Not 'figured out' -- remembered. "Then you can pull all the strings that you want. Look forward to it!"

"Come on." He heads for the doors with Alwin in tow. Alwin isn't looking at you anymore and doesn't seem to be looking at anyone or anything else, either, fallen back into that not-all-here state. He wrenches out of the other doctor's grasp and says, "About that drink..."

Remembered? Cerise stares at the doctor and Alwin. At first that gaze is all slack and confused, but then, slowly, there's some light in her eyes. There's realization and then there's effort. Those self same eyes narrow in concentration, willing to the best of her ability that the doors refuse to open. "You can't just walk away. Where am I?"

You've seen so many things -- and so many people -- change while you've been here. It should be a small matter, right? To keep a pair of doors from opening? You're concentrating fiercely on them when 'Þ' walks up to them with Alwin. He turns around to look at you and says, "Read the sign. You can read, can't you?" /What/ sign?

Then he pushes the doors open and goes through with Alwin just as if your will -- and your questions -- counted for nothing at all. The slabs of stainless steel swing shut again before you. When the doors stop moving, words have been scratched into the metal, legible with the pair lined up together: 'THE HOLLOWS: WHO IS IT THAT CAN TELL ME WHO I AM?'

"What the hell does that mean?" Cerise calls at their back. Again, eyes dart up to the observation deck as if expecting John to be present again, but then she dives through the door that the two men just left, chasing after them.

You catch a glimpse of John -- smiling -- just before the doors close behind you. On the other side of those doors, though, there's no anteroom, no hallway, no nurse's station. No room filled with hospital beds. Nothing that you'd expect to find here at all.

Just a room. About seventeen by twenty-four feet, with no doors and no windows. The walls and ceiling plated with a thick, dull, slightly musty-smelling metal. Wherever 'Þ' and Alwin went, they aren't here. Neither is John. There's just you.

Cerise turns in a slow circle, taking in every inch of the plain, metal room. There isn't much to take in. She takes a moment to close her eyes, to center herself and remind herself of what she knows, mumbled under her breath, "It's not real. It's a construct. I can change it. I /can/." She then opens again and strides towards one of the walls, reaching out with a hand she bows her head and begins to concentrate, "There are doors here. Doors that take me to the room John is in."

When you look up, you see your own reflection in the dull metal. Or... /is/ it your reflection? Just for a moment, it looks like somebody else. A face that you can't quite place. White as chalk and so thin as to be almost skeletal, with eyes the same lusterless grey as the thick banks of lead that sit behind the plates of more malleable metal hammered over them to form the walls of this room. It has the hungry look that you saw in Alwin's aura before.

But then you see only yourself -- blurry, only a little saturated, with the impurities of the metal showing through the tired, faded skin beneath your eyes -- in the wall. And then not yourself, but a door. The door to the apartment that you share with John. You remember it clearly: a solid slab of navy blue-painted wood, clean and polished and new, with a brass knocker shaped like a sun set high in the center.

There's a brief flicker of disappointment, but it lasts only until the door appears. Cerise breathes out a sigh of relief and then reaches a hand for the door, passing through into the apartment beyond.

The apartment is just how you remember it, which seems like it might be a bad thing. Everything is how it should be, except...

If you look outside the windows, there's that same flat darkness, like you saw outside the hospital. Like all of this is some kind of eerie stage set.

And all the liquid in the place? It's like that black stuff that you keep seeing everywhere. Bottles of wine, water from the tap...everything is black. It doesn't stain.

In fact, as a cold wave of despair hits you -- however momentarily -- you start to think that it might be nice to have just a glass of the stuff. Just one glass. And you don't know why. Nothing about it seems appealing, but /something/ about it seems appealing. You remember Alwin asking for a drink, and instantly know this is what he meant.

Cerise pushes down that brief desire. She doesn't give in, not yet, but she also avoids looking too long out the windows or turning on any of the water. Instead, she passes from entry to living room to kitchen. "John?" Her voice is tentative at first, and then raises in confidence. "John, I know you're here." Insistently, she prowls through the apartment until she finds him.

You go through the whole apartment a few times before you see him. John is standing in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of juice from a carton in the fridge. Or at least, the carton is marked like it should contain juice. Except that the same black liquid comes out. It looks more attractive this time than the last time you saw it. What must it be like, to make Alwin want it so badly?

And not just Alwin, but what seems like a whole hospital full of patients who can't stop seeking the stuff?

Curiosity tickles the back of your throat. John, not seeming to notice the struggle going on inside you, turns around and takes a drink from the glass before saying to you, "What is it, Cerise? Are you feeling okay?" Concern sparkles in his bright eyes.

Some of Cerise's tenseness flees when she sees that concern in John's eyes. It reflects the old camaraderie that the pair have between them. She moves closer to John, a small smile tugging to see him despite everything. "John, I can trust you, can't I?" She works very hard at eyeing up his face, avoiding looking at the juice that he has. In fact, when he has a sip, she looks away briefly, returning only after he's done. "You know this isn't right. You have to tell me what's going. Please."

"What isn't right?" John returns your smile, though the concern in his eyes doesn't go anywhere. He takes your hand and puts the glass of juice into it in order to free himself up to lay the back of his own hand over your forehead, as if he were taking your temperature. It's something that you feel like someone else has done to you recently -- or is going to do to you? But it's such a generic gesture... That could mean anyone, anything. Right? There's no need to get worked up about it.

More tantalizing is the glass of dark liquid in your hand. It still smells of nothing in particular. But /is/ that how it tastes? Is it bitter? Sweet? Something else? Why is it here? What is it like? How are you ever going to understand it, if you keep it away from yourself?

"You feel hot," says John, sounding worried. "How are you? Cerise... Maybe you'd better lie down. You know how these fevers get."

"Everything. This world. This isn't our life, John, you know that. This world isn't /real/." Cerise can feel that glass in her hand, it feels so cool, so refreshing and it takes every nerve in her body to not take a drink from it, but somehow she manages to persist a little while longer, helped on by her own passionate desire to get to the bottom of things. "John, I'm not sick! Stop playing with me!" She gets more frustrated as things go on, and finally it's the frustration that overcomes her. She plops down in one of the kitchen chairs and drinks.

When you finally raise the glass to your lips, you find that the liquid tastes, as you guessed earlier today, if there are days in this place, of nothing at all. It has almost no discernible weight, either. In fact... You can hardly tell whether you've had anything to drink at all. Did that even work?

You take another sip, but it seems the same. At least at first, you don't feel any different. Except that, perhaps, very slightly, that overwhelming frustration begins to ebb. You're concentrating on that feeling when John comes back into your field of vision and interrupts you.

"But you haven't been yourself, sweetheart," he says. "You've been saying strange things. Talking about Maine... And Vermont... And people who turn into mice... Nightmare experiments taking place at the hospital... " His blue eyes peer deep into yours. You see nothing there but genuine, sincere affection. "When it was just in your sleep, that was one thing. But you're awake now, Cerise... So if you /aren't/ sick... Then what's happening to you?"

Cerise's eyes turn upwards, meeting John's. She keeps the glass held tight in one hand, while with the other she reaches out for his. "I don't know." Her voice is plaintive as she admits that, the pleading in her eyes clear. "I don't know what's going on. Nothing is right and I just ... I just want you to tell me what's happening to me. Please, John."

John takes your hand and holds it. His feels warm and strong: like he'd never let anything bad happen to you. Like maybe everything that's happened today has been just a bad dream. Or maybe you really do have a fever, and you've been imagining it... All of it. Everything until this moment. Because when you look around the kitchen, nothing looks out of the ordinary to you at all. Even the liquid in your glass is just regular orange juice. Its tang lingers fresh on your tongue.

"Nothing's wrong," he says, soothingly. His voice sounds so reassuring. You could amost fall asleep right here. And you /are/ tired, aren't you, after the fight that you've been putting up... Against what? Your own imagination? "You just haven't been feeling well lately. You've been having some funny dreams... Seeing some things that aren't there. But that's all right, honey. We'll go and get you checked out together and get to the bottom of this. Don't you worry."

"If you insist." Cerise's smile is weak and tired, but it's there. She takes another sip of the juice and then finally releases the glass, setting it down on the kitchen table. Without letting go of John's hand she pulls herself up to her feet and then leans in to give the man a loving peck on the cheek, "You're right that I'm feeling poorly. I'm going to try and get some sleep. Hopefully, I'll feel better when I wake."

John winds his other hand up into your hair, working his fingers through the fine, dark strands and massaging your scalp gently. Pulls your face down to his for a kiss. When he releases you, you feel better already -- and even more tired. Like the exertion you've been through just collected into one solid brick and hit you all at once. "Don't worry," he says again. "Everything will make sense in the morning, Cerise. You'll see."

You feel like you heard something like that recently... But you can't quite remember where. Anyway... It doesn't matter right now. You can hear birds singing in the trees outside; see the late afternoon sunshine streaming in through the windows. One of them is opened, just a little bit, and the white curtain next to it ripples in the fresh breeze. Stippled lightly with shadow, it reminds you of the pillows and clean sheets waiting for you in the next room.

And after that: a new day. One where everything will make sense, and you'll know what to do. A day with no blemishes and no pain in it...

Yet.

Cerise returns the kiss, and relaxes into John's arms, staying there for a moment. Then it's another, tired kiss and Cerise is slipping away, moving to the bedroom and that oh-so-inviting bed.