It's Brittany, Bitch | Ερις (![]() ![]() @ 2017-11-02 21:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | eris |
a message for the curious
Who: BB.
What: BB goes exploring by herself, with consequences.
Where: Pax Letale.
When: The day following this.
BB sipped her hard cider, the sound of it sliding through her teeth exaggerated with a sigh as she squinted at the Pax blueprints, hoping the change in perspective would yield new information that, after a half hour, otherwise saw nothing. She'd returned to her apartment following the failed exploration with Daniel, and only after the next morning had she thought to look at the blueprints "gifted" to her by a Deluxe floor tenant that she'd previously plagued in her usual journalistic style.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the infamous "Tower" unit had been added once the building was converted from a hotel to an apartment complex. Perhaps hoping to score higher paying tenants, the lofty apartment was now a thing of myth that even these drawings could not attest to. BB knew she'd seen it on the market, had pulled up old, saved webpages of advertisements from years past; but the ventilation system seemed to stop right at the Deluxe level.
Finishing the drink, she tossed it back into the growing pile around her garbage can. More and more it seemed like there was only one answer; she was going to have to crawl up the ventilation herself and see if it stretched up another level. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, sitting up on her knees as she reached to knot her hair into a loose bun. She was already dressed in her running clothes; they would serve well enough. BB jumped to her feet and went to her kitchen, going to the drawer that held both cutlery and a spare flashlight her parents had foisted on her down the line somewhere when she'd been living on a college campus; she tested it, and the batteries seemed to hold true. She couldn't remember the last time she'd changed them, but it was unimportant now.
Pocketing her phone in a square of cloth made for such things, she also palmed her keys and went to the elevator to head up to the Deluxe floor. Her hands beat a soft tattoo on her thighs, her impatience palpable as the elevator car rose. Briefly, the thought that she should have invited Daniel, or at least told someone what she was up to flitted through her mind, but she dismissed it just as easily. There would be time, she thought; there would be opportunity once she had her proof. And then the elevator was dinging open, announcing her arrival on the floor she'd summoned it to.
It was empty, save the creepy altars that lined the hallway. Despite the fact that there was no breeze, not even a draft that she could feel from the emergency stairs, the curtains that lined the walls and surrounded the strange tables holding offerings to gods she couldn't begin to recognize moved, billowing into shapes that were reminiscent of people. BB felt like she was being watched; she rolled her shoulders and straightened her spine, reminding herself what she was about.
She drifted back toward the spot where she and Daniel had found the vent, staring up and peering hard through the red paint that covered everything. Her gaze moved down, glancing at the altar they'd stepped on without hesitation previously; BB felt a small bead of trepidation winnow its way into her skull, the lack of her friend's presence making her anxious. But she pushed on, stepping up on it and reaching for the vent. Her fingers fell just short. Another glance down had her feet pushing two tattered books into place, giving her the extra inches she needed to reach the grate and somehow pull it free, as though something was finally seeing fit to grant her the luck she needed.
But it was a precarious favor; she put the flashlight between her teeth, and somehow dug up the upper arm strength to pull herself up into the vent. Just as she did so, at a moment when she was floating between floor and ceiling, the books and part of the altar fell to the floor. Whatever had been benevolent the moment before was now angry, and BB felt like her arms might give. But then she caught herself, and rose up, into the dark passage. Once she was safely on her belly, most of her upper body in the vent shaft, she pulled the flashlight out of her mouth and clicked it on. Five feet ahead, it seemed like the vent was parallel solely to the Deluxe floor. Gritting her teeth, she started to inch forward, hoping something would reveal itself.
It did. Ten feet later, the shaft suddenly shot up at a right angle. Forcing herself to stay quiet, BB continued to slink forward, eventually turning around so she could sit up and then stand up in the upward-facing passage. The flashlight went back between her teeth so both hands could reach; she caught the edge of the shaft, which caused her to need to stand up on her tip-toes, but she pulled herself up again. She was definitely bingeing on ice cream after all of this, she decided, after conducting such a rigorous workout. The shaft wound its way around in unfamiliar ways; BB followed it, the need to know overpowering anything with a lick of good sense. The flashlight came back out, its beam withering a little in the darkness, but BB did not take heed.
Instead, another thing had caught her attention; another vent. She crawled toward it as carefully but as quickly as she could manage; this was, of course, not quiet at all, but who would hear her? Suddenly her flashlight went out, flickering at first before dissipating completely. BB grunted in disappointment, turning the lense of it around to face her as she hit the button over and over as though her insistence would persuade the flashlight to come back on. It did not, done with her and her adventures.
Grumbling, BB felt her way around; there were only two directions, forward or back, and the vent was in the former. Her destination came to hand quickly; at least, it felt like it did, after five minutes of groping her way through dusty darkness. She could feel cobwebs and dirt lining her arms, probably saturating her whole front, but it would be worth it when she could wave her discovery in both Daniel and Kal's faces, maybe tell Alice that she'd figured out some of the mystery—
These thoughts continued to spiral through her brain, up until the shaft suddenly gave way and she tumbled face-forward through onto the floor below with a loud thud. Dust marked her passage, along with bits of the ventilation shaft, leaving her coughing and rolling on the ground for a full minute. Once her vision returned—which wasn't much to begin with, since the room was dark, though lined by glittering, blue columns of what looked like server lights, screens covered with information too small for her to read clearly—she looked up, slowly, meeting the gaze of someone else in the room.
He looked as surprised as she was, though it didn't take long for an unsettling smile to move over his face.
"Well, it took longer than expected, Ms. Bernard, but I can't say that I didn't plan for this particular development."
BB's eyes went wide, and she thrust herself up from the floor as quickly as she was able. Her eyes passed over the room—more lights, more computers, a strange chair that looked like something she'd sat in at the dentist's office surrounded in a pool of light—searching for an exit. None was to come, as the man closed the distance between them. He tried to grab her, and BB threw the dead flashlight in his face. He growled; not like a person but like an animal, and the next thing she knew, he'd struck her, and the whole world went black.