Gish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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nexus_crossings2017-10-27 04:40 pm
gish) wrote in nexus_crossings2017-10-27 04:40 pm
2nd Annual Halloween Block Party!
The leaves have turned gold and orange, the air has grown crisp, pumpkins both carved and uncarved have begun to crop up. It's time to don your costumes, light your candles, pray you don't see any spectres (or do!), rev up your sweet tooth. Why?
Inhabitants of the Nexus may recall the festivities from last year, but even if you're new or your memories are foggy, the fliers and invites have been floating around for the past two weeks or so. They urge anyone who wishes to celebrate the spookiest time of the year with friends, food and festivities over at The Crossroads Café. The entire block is sectioned off for the shindig, in fact! Black and orange streamers festoon the café and trees, along with hanging (plastic!) skeletons and bats, plenty of jack-o-lanterns and candles.
- Costume Loan: If you don't have a costume ready or are lacking access to one, the Café staff has you covered! Next to the coat closet is a rack of various options for dress-up with a sign simply stating: Feel Free to Borrow! Outfits, hats, accessories, masks; anything a person needs for a perfect last minute costume is there for the taking.
- Inside the Café: The doors to the Crossroads Café are propped open and awaiting your arrival! Seating inside the Crossroads Cafe comes at a bit of a premium, though for those who need the warmth and enclosure of inside there are certainly several tables inside, as well as couches and seating areas all around the bonfire outside the cafe.
The lights have been dimmed for this special occasion and the display cases as well as the counters are laden with foods and treats from all over the Nexus. The far counter has been converted into a bar area for anyone in need of some liquid courage. On one table sits a large table set aside for people to share their own Halloween themed treats should they so choose. For now it's mostly empty, save for a large bowl in the center with a sign reading: Candy Exchange Program. There's sure to be something in there you've never seen before if you dig around long enough! - The Bonfire: Out in front of the cafe in the middle of what is usually the street is a large bonfire in a rather large fire pit. Plenty of tables are set up near the fire, showing off pumpkins carved in all manner of spooks and designs. Seems like folks are welcome to bring their own jack o'lanterns and other festive creations if they so please.
There's plenty of seating on one side of the large fire, though the other side gives way to a large, open area. - The Dance Floor: On the far side of the bonfire where usually the outdoor seating goes is a marked off area for a dance floor. The large speakers ensure anyone walking by won't be able to miss the fact that there's a party going on. Several floating lights bathe the area in a golden light altogether separate form the light and heat the bonfire provides.
Music from many different worlds plays continuously throughout the night. It beckons one and all to let loose and enjoy themselves on this night of celebration.
((Check out the OOC post here!))
EDIT 10/31/17: Something's gone wrong. [Phase 2: NIGHTMARE has begun!]
((Here's the OOC post regarding Phase 2!))
Here's where people go to wonder what the heck just happened. [Left Behind thread!]
EDIT 11/28/17: The Nightmare is over. [Finale thread!]
((Thanks for playing, everyone! And happy holidays!))
no subject
He can't heal her. He can't help. He has to find a way out...
The lit panel catches both of their attentions. The Ghost flies over towards it, trying to scan the syringes inside. They're large, the needles already attached, sharp and heavy.
Find its cure...
He turns at Adia's gasp, looking down and around as he finally takes in what's grown in the black slime around them. He snaps on his flashlight, panning it over the room and the viscous growth that oozes over everything.
"
It makes no sense," he whispers, unsettled and afraid. Less for himself this time. The unknown contaminant is unlikely to be a threat to a Ghost. This one glances back at Adia and then sweeps his light down to highlight a clear spot on the floor nearby, guiding her to a safe vantage point. He's murmuring very quietly, so soft he might only be talking to himself. Something about aggressive phenotypical adaptation and lateral gene acquisition...tw: suicide
"Thanks," she manages weakly, but Ghost isn't listening. Ghost is babbling, so softly that she can barely hear him over the pounding in her chest. "Ghost... Ghost. You need to find me a keycard, or hack the panel open. If we're supposed to heal someone, this must be the cure..."
She thinks. Hopes. It's impossible for her to tell what's in the syringes just by looking at them. It could be a cure, or it could be the very disease that started this whole mess. She tries to decipher the writing on the panel above, but it’s a hodgepodge of symbols and chemical equations. Her knowledge in biochemistry is failing her, and every second that passes is another second that they’re trapped in this room with no way to escape.
Her gaze flicking side-to-side, she catches sight of a pair of eyeballs on the panel next to the syringes. They look more human than the others, their irises colored hazel. They are as vacant as the the rest, but this doesn’t help, because it reminds her…
It reminds her…
“No,” she whimpers. No, she has to concentrate. Find the right syringe while Ghost hacks it open. Or they’ll be trapped…
The orange light upon the slime gives it an almost reddish glow. Like blood. Like blood that spreads from a wound, that clots and clumps around bits of skull and brain matter…
The warmth of his lips on hers is still fresh when he pulls the trigger, and she can only stare in stunned silence as he collapses like a puppet with its strings cut. She drops to her knees and puts her hands on his chest, his face. There’s a mess under his head, on the sanitary white cabinets beside them. His body is warm, but his eyes are cold. Lifeless.
His body is still here, but he’s gone.
With a choked sob, she sinks to the ground and wraps her arms around her knees as the memory consumes her. She can’t breathe, she can’t think. Her heart is going to explode. She’s alone, she’s alone, she’s alone.
He’s gone.
no subject
But he does start when his audio sensors pick up a faint sound from outside the room. Something rasping, slithering over metal, carrying through the bulkheads. He huddles closer to the shadow of a slime-smeared medical console, gaze sweeping over the walls – the ceiling. He can hear Adia sobbing softly. But the slithering fades, the soft flow of sterilized air through the room doesn’t change, and after a minute he ventures back out, hurrying back to circle Adia where she’s curled on the floor.
This time she doesn’t even notice him. She’s shaking, struggling for breath, eyes focused elsewhere. The Ghost thinks she must be in shock. She has to come out of it. She can’t stay this way. He can’t find a visible keycard and that means he needs someone with hands to dig beneath the slime. She can’t stay this way, helpless. They can’t afford it. But he doesn’t know how to bring her out of it and she just keeps sobbing, a lost and broken sound he’s never heard before that tears at him like the shriek of a Hive monster. They’re alone in their tiny island of dim light amid the encroaching shadows and the slick blackness on the floor.
Well, yeah. They can’t handle the Darkness. Normal people aren’t meant to face what we do. That’s what we’re here for. Right, Ghost?
He knows then he can’t ask her to find the card. She can’t sift through this hideous mass with her bare hands. There are two parts to this puzzle, and hers is clear. The Ghost disappears into the shadows again, looking for something else. Something light and small enough to lift. When he returns it’s with a rolled up sheet of paper: the least stained medical chart he could find. He drops it on the floor, where it unfurls to the blank side, a pen rolling out.
“
Adia?” He tries not to sound hesitant. “Adia, listen to me. They’re not real. Don’t look at them. Concentrate on the puzzle. I need your help, Adia. Look at me. Listen to me. I need you.”He doesn’t even need to pause for breath. He can be patient. He can be hopeful. That's what he was made for.
no subject
She shed tears. She whispered soft pleas for it all to be a bad dream. But mostly she stayed silent, huddled underneath a workbench while she waited to be rescued. The crew plied her with questions. Did he hurt her? Did she know he was a Cylon?
It was hours before she could answer, but they filled the silence for her. He was a monster. A toaster. A skin job. Good riddance to him. She was better off without him.
Whenever she felt herself start to cry, she’d look at her friends’ angry, righteous faces. They had all lost loved ones. They thought they had lost her. It was Caspar’s fault. It was all his lying, conniving fault. They hated him.
The last thing they wanted to hear, she decided, was how much she loved him.
So she didn’t say a word.
But now. Now the dam has broken and she can’t stop sobbing. He’s dead. He’s dead for good this time and she never even got to say goodbye…
Someone is talking to her. Ghost. She gasps for air and looks up at him. She had forgotten all about him. She’s not alone. She’s not…
He’s talking. He’s talking, but it’s not the fearful babbling from before. She concentrates on the tone at first: calm, insistent. Patient. The words filter in a moment later. Puzzle. He needs her help on the puzzle.
He needs her.
“I thought I saw Caspar’s eyes,” she whispers. “But… but they weren’t, were they?” She takes a deep, shuddering breath, then lets it out slowly. “I… I went to a bad place, I’m sorry…”
She picks up the pen and paper, then shakily gets to her feet. Solve the puzzle. Find the cure. The eyeballs growing on the side of the panel are still there, but she ignores them.
She's trapped, but she's not alone.
Ghost needs her.
no subject
I know." The Ghost looks down at the floor for a second. "It's... well, it will be all right. We're going to get out of here."It almost doesn't matter what he says; he's just so relieved to hear her answer. He hovers around her as she finds her feet. He's not looking around them any more, either. "
Can you make it out? I can hack the panel, but you're the biologist."Focus on purpose. Function. The code beneath the grotesquerie. There are always patterns...
no subject
Taking another deep breath, she turns her gaze to the panel.
The equations are as much of a mess as they were before, but now, at least, she can tell that there's a pattern. She begins to scribble down some of the symbols so she doesn't have to keep everything in her head at once. It helps. "I think so... the notation is terrible, but it's consistent. I'll try to have them figured out by the time you've got the panel open."
She falls silent, her gaze darting from the writing to her notes. She continues to jot down symbols, scratching out the ones that don't make sense. They're all drugs... painkillers... but which one is the right one?
All the while, she can't help but wonder what the next step will be. They have a cure, but who is the patient? How will they find them while being pursued by those monstrous hands? Those monstrous, grasping --
The brain grasps for solace.
She blinks. Her pen freezes mid-stroke.
Find its cure and free it from its endless agony.
"Ghost..." She keeps her voice low and calm. "I think I know who the cure is meant for."
no subject
He pulls away from the keys to look over at her, unwilling to come out and acknowledge the worst possibility. "
Well... I only know of three organic life forms in this area."He hesitates, then scans Adia again quickly. She seems fine - physically - which means...
"
It's not the abyss monster, is it?" He doesn't know which option is worse, here.no subject
When Ghost finally speaks, she blinks in confusion. The abyss monster? But it --
Oh. Oh. It all makes sense now.
"It's been trying to reach us with those hands," she says in a hushed voice, as if afraid that it will overhear. "When I touched it... it's in such pain. It's suffering." She gestures to the panel. "These are painkillers. I can't tell which one is the right one, yet, but that must be what it needs."
She bites her lower lip. She doesn't want to have to ask him to do this, but she can't think of any other way around it.
"Once I have the syringe, you'll need to re-open the door."
no subject
Open it? But if I do that..." They'll find him. They'll come in and they will hunt him out wherever he hides. They'll drag him back into the darkness forever, and then they'll get Adia. Maybe they'll take her first. They'll certainly touch her. She only grabbed at them for a few moments before and he can still see the blood on her face.But they'll come for him first. He feels that instinctively. Can recall with terrifying clarity the determination in those claws clamping around him, blocking his sight...
There's another kind of clarity too, though. Someone has to distract them. Someone has to keep them busy so Adia can use the syringe. He certainly can't do that part. And Blaze or no Blaze... it has to be done. He's quiet for a moment or two, working on the security. It's a little better than that on the door, but it's a similar system and now it's familiar to him.
"
I'll have the panel here open in a minute. When you're ready... when I open the door... be fast. Please."no subject
When he agrees to her plan anyway, she feels a burst of pride for her small, brave friend. It fills her with a renewed determination to find the proper cure and see this thing through.
To get them out of here alive.
"I'll be fast," she promises. "Fly back to me as soon as it's open, then get behind me." Part of her dreads the idea of those hands touching her again, but she needs to get close enough to administer the medicine, and what better way than to have Ghost lead them right to her.
She turns back to the syringes resting in front of her. Three drugs. Three painkillers. What makes one of them a better choice than the others? Her pen marks turn to chicken scratch while she puzzles over the specifics and comes up blank. All of them have the same efficacy. All of them have the same side effects. All of them have the same dosage! Where is the difference?!
Only one of them can cross the blood-brain barrier.
"I know which one," she whispers. She almost laughs. She found the cure. They're halfway there!
...how long has it been since either of them have heard the sound of claws scraping on the door?
no subject
"
I nearly have it," he says, trying not to think about predatory claws creeping up on him. Knotted fingers closing over his shell, clenching over him like a cage.And then something cold and rubbery presses against the points of his shell and
he's
not
imagining
that
"
Adia!" He clenches his shell tight about him and launches forward, twisting and folding himself until he squeezes free of the closing fingers. There's a thunk as he bounces off the panel glass and throws himself upward, darting away as fast as he can propel himself. Unfortunately that gives him a shockingly good view of the ribbon-like arms stretching down from a ceiling vent. They're coiling and contracting now, flesh bunching as they rise back and angle up for him.He knows what he has to do. He flies for the far end of the room and waits, high up by the ceiling. Letting them come for him, staring right at them. Holding the solution to the security locks in his mind.
When they're almost close enough to grab again he dives. Drops down and shoots back toward the security panel, skimming over floor and glassy eyes alike. He pops up at the keypad and snatches at the interface.
I know this, I know the way through, I know this... Layer after layer opens up, peels away before him. But behind him, they are coming. Just let me get this. Let me finish this...
The last code falls into place. The last countermeasure falls for it. The pad lighting turns green, the panel clicking open. Ghost throws himself aside as fingers reach for him. "
Get it now!"no subject
The hands, they’re here. But that wasn’t the plan! She isn’t ready!
“Ghost,” she whispers, too terrified to shout, frozen in place while he flies to the far side of the room. The hands predictably shoot towards him, desperate to wrap themselves around that tempting, floating eye, and all she can do is watch helplessly. Uselessly.
But then he flies back towards her, faster than the hands, and she knows what he’s about to do. It’s not the way that they had planned, but he’s going to open the panel.
And bring the hands right to her.
She hears the click as the panel opens, and turns long enough to grab the middle syringe. The hands scrabble at the space where Ghost once was, and for a moment they stop moving, simply hover in the air as if debating what to do next. Knowing that she won’t get a better opportunity than this, she grabs one thin, sinewy arm and brings the syringe down with the other, injecting it at the wrist.
She thought that maybe, because she had already been exposed, she’d be at least a little prepared for the pain.
No.
It overwhelms her, drowns her in a sea of agony. She is a speck, a tiny mote floating in a universe of suffering so vast that she can barely comprehend it. Blood pours out both her nostrils, streaks out the corner of her eyes. Her jaw is clenched so tight that she can’t make a sound, can’t breathe, overwhelmed by the other’s pain.
As the last bit of consciousness leaves her, she pushes down on the syringe’s plunger.
The hands disappear.
They vanish into a fine red mist that almost immediately dissipates into nothing. The sirens stop their wailing, the warning lights stop their flashing. There is only silence and the cool green light of the open panel.
Adia has collapsed to her knees. She’s breathing heavily, but slowly, her nosebleed slowing once again to a mere trickle. She looks up at Ghost, tears in her eyes — saline ones, this time, that mingle with the blood.
“We did it,” she tells him. “It isn’t in pain anymore. I felt it before it disappeared.” The imprint of its final thoughts still lingers in her mind, the blessed relief. “It’s cured.”
no subject
"
Do you think so?" He looks around, at the sudden stillness. A different kind of stillness to before, though. His instincts don't prickle with menace, the wreck around them no longer wails and shudders. "Everything does seem a lot more... peaceful. I wonder what it was, really."He looks around again, then back at Adia. "
Um, are you hurt? When you touched it I thought... it looked horrible. I don't know how you held on."no subject
Aside from some damaged capillaries, she doesn't seem injured. Her vitals have all gone back to normal. When he asks if she's hurt, she thinks it over. "No, I... I'm okay." After everything, she would have expected herself to be in shock, or traumatized over what happened. But she's not. "It hurt very much at the time, but... it's not suffering anymore."
And neither is she.
The pleasant silence is broken by the sound of glass shattering. A mirror in the back of the room, untouched by either slime or eyes, lies in pieces on the ground. Visible through the frame is the dim light of an alley way.
An exit.
Quickly, she gets to her feet, then pausing a moment as a dizzy spell hits her. But it passes quickly. "Let's get out of here and find Blaze." If Ghost had hands, she'd hold one; she settles for reaching out and gently touching one of his points. "I want to tell her how amazing you were. She's lucky to have you for a partner."
no subject
"
O-oh... I'm just glad you were here. I wouldn't have made it otherwise." Still, he's quick to fly over to the mirror and wait for her, peering carefully at the space beyond lest it house any fresh dangers.Not that it would stop either of them stepping through. Adia's right. It's time to find his Guardian... and the way home.