Repose

[A while after the initial chaos, well into the lockdown. The fleeing crowds have, er, died out a little. So aside from the alarms, the floor above ground zero is quiet, almost pensive, as if waiting--until a burst of static rips across the hallway intercom system, followed by the ominous sound of steel doors clanging shut in unison, all over the level. A new, localized alarm begins to sound somewhere nearby.]

[Hallway intercoms]
Ooh, shoot. [A long pause and then, cheerfully:] Um! Totally my bad.

[Stephanie was supposed to be in and out. Well, that was the plan, anyway. Eddie had managed to snatch her a visitor's pass for the Dane Blake announcement. They both decided that this would be the perfect time to slip in and try to gather some sort of information on what happened to her. There were no leads, save for flickers of memories that were beginning to peak through here and there, and she and Eddie (and probably others) thought that it might be the work of the League after all. It made sense, didn't it? Who else would want to go after her and after Bruce and cause an entire town to lose time, too? The League had meddled in their lives countless times, particularly Ra's, and they all knew what they were capable of. Kidnapping and wiping memories and god knows what else? Yeah, that had the League written all over it. And Eddie knew there was connections in Area 52 with the Tethys and the League, overlapping goals and motives and personnel to do their bidding. So, while Eddie and the rest of the complex glued their eyes to Blake's presentation, she drifted away from the crowd.

The long, sterile hallways reminded her of hospitals: both working there and being a patient there. And something else faint. Bright lights and bruising grips and being tethered to a gurney like an animal. She shuddered and put her head down, careful not to make too much eye contact with Tethys employees or the fluorescent lamps above head. Keep a low profile, don't draw attention. No freaking out. Steph had gotten good about breathing through her anxieties over the past few years, so she took a couple of deep breaths as she continued down the winding halls. A steady flow of people shuffled and ambled and sprinted down the halls, all towards the lab where Blake was about to open up that Vault.

Eddie had given her the basics of the layout, and she followed it as best she could. Just as she located the offices, where there might have been something and just as she was about to take out her tools to break in there, she heard a scream. Spinning around, she found the source: a TV streaming the unveiling in the lab. Right before her eyes unfolded a horrific scene. Blake is torn to shreds, another girl is decimated. Stephanie's hand flew to her mouth.]

Oh fuck. [She looked around the hallway, which filled with people running towards exits as alarms blared and lights flashed. And because she was Stephanie Damn Miller, she turned to run towards the lab despite the warning over the PA. But a wrong turn had her careening towards a dead end. Panicked, she looked around and kicked the door in of the first room to her left, a tiny conference room where the lights were off but the screen still played the feed of the Vault Opening. The dim lights in the room and evisceration playing out in front of her, in all its HD glory, had her heart skip several beats and had her stomach lurch unpleasantly. She stared in abject horror, wanting to do anything she could to save the people but arrested to the spot at the sight of what was happening.]