InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "HUG THE PORCUPINE!"

Kimberly Corman hearts nerds (cheatingdeath) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-09-20 23:10:00

Entry tags:

!active, connor temple, day 24, kimberly corman, location: clock tower

Day Twenty-Four, Morning
Who: Kimberly Corman and Connor Temple
What: Trying to find a payphone or, at the very least, civilization void of dangerous people
Where: The clock tower
When: Day 24, 8:30am
Rating: PG
Status: Complete

Kimberly had at least managed to escape the woods unscathed and without the intimidatingly-sized man, King, or the angry woman whose name she had failed to learn. There had to be a payphone somewhere. She'd call Thomas, or her dad, and someone would come pick her up and take her home. When she got there, she'd make her next move - the Stonybrook Institute. It was safer there. The padded room would be boring, but she'd be alive...and safe.

She'd come upon a building, however ramshackle it was and as much as the very idea of going inside made her nervous - bad idea, Kimberly, roof could cave in; could cut yourself on broken glass; break your neck trying to climb the stairs to find a phone... she thought to herself - but she moved carefully and slowly toward the door and into the main room. It was empty and looked uninhabited. There didn't seem to be anywhere a phone would be hooked up, even. "Hello?" she called out tentatively. Maybe if there was someone there, they'd know where she could go to find a phone.

Padding around the room in the socks from King's box, with her eyes on the floor to watch for any rusty nails, Kimberly shifted her own box underneath her arm and squinted in the darkness. King had said there were matches in the box and she could use light, she thought, but he'd also said the matches were wet, which was useless. Besides, Kimberly was terrified to light any of them, anyway. Fire hazard was bad enough, but with Kimberly's luck? She didn't really want to take the chance. "Anyone here?" she tried, pausing in her movement so that she could look up toward the stairs.

Taking a deep breath, Kimberly set her box on the floor and toed it open. She bent down and very carefully extracted the book inside and flipped through it. There seemed to be writing from all different hands. "Huh..." she thought aloud, picking up the pen gingerly and writing a small note. "Like anyone will see this," she muttered to herself, rolling her eyes and dropping both the book and the pen gently back into the box and toeing it shut again. She'd look at the other stuff later.

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-21 08:44 pm UTC (link)

Kimberly whirled around at the sound of another voice and her eyes went wide when one of the socks she was wearing caught on a nail protruding slightly up out of the floor. Her arms pinwheeled as she started to fall foward and grabbed onto the new person by the shoulders, nearly taking him down with her and only barely managing to keep herself on her feet. "Holy shit. Oh, my God, you scared me..." she gasped as she righted herself. "I'm so sorry. God, I should've seen that coming..." she muttered, wondering why she hadn't seen any signs for that accident.

Clear had said that you could always follow the signs. She could've landed on the floor and busted her skull open; if the man hadn't been there to steady herself, that definitely would've been Death's less-than-amusing way of putting Its List right. There should've been a sign. Definitely. Something was very, very wrong about this place, wherever she was.

Standing up more straight and retrieving the box that she'd dropped during her potentially near-fatal almost-but-not-quite fall, Kimberly looked sheepishly at the man. "I'm sorry, seriously. Uh, I'm Kimberly. Maybe you can help me...I'm looking for a phone...?" she asked, tucking her hair behind her ears and giving him an apologetic look.

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leconnortemple
2009-09-21 11:08 pm UTC (link)

"Sorry, sorry, I'm really sorry," Connor protested, babbling right over the girl's words. He hadn't meant to scare anyone! Hell, he hadn't even known she was there! When he'd left, the tower hadn't been abandoned, but it had definitely been quiet, its inhabitants keeping to themselves, really. This girl? Hadn't been there. Connor would've known. Being that close in the vicinity of a cute girl? Yeah. He'd have known.

He caught her with some difficulty, struggling to keep the both of them on their feet. "Alright. You're okay. Just take a deep breath." He was so rarely the one able to help, but he found himself doing so more and more often. Maybe Cutter putting his faith in him had given the young techie the confidence he'd needed all along.

But then Kimberly, her name was, said something about looking for a phone, and Connor's face dropped considerably. "New here?" he attempted to tease, though his heart wasn't in it. Poor kid. "You'd have to be to be looking for a phone." He took a deep breath and offered a sorry excuse for a smile. "You've been kidnapped, Kimberly. Welcome to the Dark Side, my name is Connor and I'll be your tour guide."

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-22 12:53 am UTC (link)

The man was apologizing back at her and he'd managed to catch her when she'd tripped; it was probably the only thing keeping them both on their feet instead of on their asses on the floor. She clung to him for a moment to regain her balance and then finally let go and nodded as he tried to calm her and suggested she take a deep breath. "Okay yeah...I'm okay. Thank you," she said with a small smile. Kimberly steadied herself and tucked the box beneath her arm again. His accent made her smile slightly.

As soon as she mentioned the phone, however, his expression fell and Kimberly felt her heart sink. Especially when he asked whether she was new here. More and more, this place just felt wrong. Felt like when she was watching the news about the kid who hung himself in the bathtub and wrong in the way that she'd missed dying when it should've been her instead of her mother in the parking lot being murdered. Wrong like Highway to Hell on the radio, like the kid slamming his toy cars together, like the beer truck driver drinking and wrong like the Mount Abraham school bus full of students chanting "Pile up! Pile up!" right before the crash that killed her friends. She opened her mouth to confirm that she'd woken up there in the woods that morning when he went on to tell her that she'd been kidnapped, his name was Connor, and he'd welcomed her to what he called the Dark Side.

"This isn't the Dark Side," she said quietly. "Not yet. Just wait," she sighed. Only a matter of time, now that I'm here, she thought miserably. Death was always coming. Always waiting in the wings for an opportunity to put things right. She and Thomas were the only ones left to close the circle and complete the List. Thomas could be dead for all she knew and if that was the case, she was next. She hadn't seen anything to warn her about the nail in the floor, so she thought worriedly to herself that maybe she'd be completely on her own. No visions. No warnings. Just...Death. "Okay Connor, how long have you been here? Where is here? And why isn't there a phone?" she asked.

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leconnortemple
2009-09-22 03:19 am UTC (link)

Heh. Not the Dark Side? Oh, sure, they didn't have their red lightsabers or anything (better not to give the Management the idea, either, no matter how cool it would be!) but this place was definitely dark. A newcomer like Kimberly just couldn't know quite how dark. Not yet, at least.

"You may want to sit down," he offered, nodding to a spot on the ground. Sure, he didn't know about Death having Kim's number, but he did have some common sense and had checked the spot for anything peculiar first. After all, the poor girl was wandering around barefoot. "And we'll have to check the thrift shop later, see if they've any shoes that'll fit you. It's kind of cool in there, actually, if you can stand the musty old person's flat smell."

Perhaps too much info. Had to work on that. "Anyway, the reason you won't find a phone is because they haven't given us one. There's...well, there's actually some debate to whether we're even on Earth or not. Quite the roaming charges if not, wouldn't you say?" His words were followed with a short chuckle, but it was strained.

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-22 10:50 pm UTC (link)

Furrowing her brow just slightly, Kimberly shook her head. She didn't want to sit down, she wanted to get out. A creak over her head made her look up as she startled and then she looked back at Connor. "Is this where you stay?" she asked. If they were kidnapped and he sounded resigned, she could only assume he "stayed" somewhere. "Because this place needs some serious death-proofing," she added mostly to herself as she looked around at the decrepit walls and ceiling around her. Another creak made her jump again. "Is someone up there?" she asked breathlessly, looking back at Connor with wide eyes.

Connor mentioned a thrift shop and Kimberly's eyebrows raised, her expression softening slightly. "You're serious," she said in a low voice. He really sounded as though he meant for her to settle in. Maybe he had.

"Who's 'they?'" Kimberly asked. "And whaddya mean we might not be on Earth? Of course we are; what's that supposed to mean?" He certainly was nicer than the woman in the woods and less smug and smarmy than King, but he sounded crazier than the two of them put together. Kimberly instinctively took a few steps away from him.

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leconnortemple
2009-09-23 01:08 am UTC (link)

That was okay. Connor was used to people thinking he was a bit barmy. At least Kim thought so for a valid reason and not just because he was curious about the trustworthiness of R2D2 when C3P0 was the only one who understood him. Really, an alternate universe where they were being held prisoner did sound completely nuts. He could accept that.

"I don't stay here," he assured, "though I have had the unfortunate experience of spending the occasional night when it was too screwed up to go outside." Flesh-eating birds and killer zombies tended to do that, but better to start her off slow. "I'm pretty sure someone stays here full time, but they tend to keep to themselves and I'm not going to bother them. Privacy's something you grow to respect around here." It was something he had learned quickly; when a large group of people shared a tiny space, you didn't get a lot of time to yourself.

Connor sighed before scooping his hat off the floor and popping it back into shape. "I don't expect you to believe it. I didn't either, at first. Look in your box and read the book if you want proof. We're being held here, as lab rats. Very little food, no mobiles, limited access to every day supplies..." As for the away from Earth thing? He bit his lip, thinking of how to broach that bit. "There are people here...plenty of them. And some? Well, they're not from Earth." Which he thought was the coolest thing ever! But Kim...might not, no.

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-23 01:45 am UTC (link)

Kimberly found herself looking Connor up and down. It wasn't as though she was checking him out, but with the lack of suspicion in her eyes, it would've been easy for him to think so. If he was dense or full of himself. In reality, she was sizing him up. He said he didn't stay here, but that he sometimes got stuck there. "Too screwed up...how?" she ventured a little reluctantly. Something about the way he'd tip-toed around being direct made Kimberly uncomfortable. "And if you don't stay here, then where do you stay? If I'm stuck here - which I'm not, I'll find a phone if it kills me - I'll need a place to stay and..." her voice trailed off as she looked around again, unintentionally shrinking back toward him as she looked at the ominous-seeming staircase. "It's gotta be a safer place than this. This place looks like it's about to fall to pieces any second..." she finished, swallowing thickly. He said he wanted to give the people who did stay here privacy and Kimberly was voting right alongside him. The sooner he helped her find a safer place that wouldn't take as much effort to death-proof, the better.

"I looked at the book. It's a piece of junk. It's all written in already," she muttered, frowning. "And I can't keep flipping through it. Paper cuts can get infected really easily," she insisted, sounding probably more paranoid than any normal person would be about a paper cut of all things. The part where he said lab rats, though, made Kimberly even more paranoid. She'd been through enough already in her short life, running away from Death on a full time basis. Kimberly's eyes narrowed slightly in thought. He wasn't kidding. That...sounded like a kidnapping to Kimberly and she shivered, rubbing her bare arms with her hands in spite of the heat. "For what...?" she asked nervously.

Connor said that some of the people here hadn't been from Earth. The two she'd met seemed Earthly enough and he didn't say he wasn't from Earth, so... "O...kay..." she said slowly. "How many people are here? I woke up with a man and a woman in the woods. He was kind of a skeeze and she scared the shit out of me, so..." she muttered sheepishly.

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leconnortemple
2009-09-23 02:47 am UTC (link)

The last thing Connor would've thought was that he was being checked out. That happened so rarely that it wasn't exactly something he considered high on anyone's list of priorities. Rather, he found her look disconcerting and he hesitated before he replied. He didn't blame her. It was a lot to take in. He wasn't that red-eyed bloke, Remy. He wasn't comfortable here and never would be and therefore, had a harder time explaining the existence of the place to anyone else. "The book is a journal. Some new age technology, made to write back and forth with others. Don't ask me how it works, I haven't figured it out. Yet," he added, determined no technology was going to pass him by. Think of the things he could take back to the ARC with him!

Just because he wasn't the weird bloke who seemed way too happy here didn't mean he couldn't help someone out. Connor leaned against the wall he'd snapped the stone from earlier. Hmm. Maybe she was right, maybe this place was a giant death trap. He'd heard about the earthquake from reading the journals of others. It wasn't impossible. "If you woke up with them in the woods, they're as lost as you are," Connor supplied. "That's typically how they start you out. I'm pretty close to the one I wound up here with, though, but he wasn't a skeeze or scary. The guy who found us was both, actually," he added with a grin.

The grin faded, though, when he realized everything he needed to tell her to get her to understand the peril they were in. Peril was usually something he tried to forget about in this place. But watching Chris fight off an illness that could easily kill him had put a lot of things in perspective for him and his face went dark. "You should come back to the gymnasium with me. It's one of those places most people are staying. Out of safety and all. I don't know how sturdy it is, but it's got to be better than this place."

Gnawing on his lower lip, he attempted to smile at her...and failed. "This isn't a great place, Kimberly. I don't know where you're from or what you do there...it seems everyone here has a bit of something special that drew the people running this place to them. There's twenty or so people here, as best as I can tell. I haven't met everyone just yet. But...people die here. I'm not going to hold back, you need to know the truth. Stay where there are a lot of people and never take anything you see at face value. It won't do any good. Nothing is what it seems around here."

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-24 08:31 pm UTC (link)

Kimberly raised her eyebrows curiously at Connor when he tacked the "yet" onto the end of his statement that he hadn't figured out how the books worked. She thought it was a little crazy, yeah, but then again, so was waking up in the woods with a psychobitch and some guy who talked about sex and pickles in the same sentences. "So...are you, like, really into that geek stuff?" she asked, not meaning to sound at all offensive, but honestly curious whether he actually was trying to figure out how the journals worked or if he was just trying to impress her with empty words.

As Connor went on talking, Kimberly's eyebrows dropped back down and then her brow furrowed as she tried to take it in. "Typically?" she asked, frowning. "This happens a lot, then? People waking up in the woods with strangers?" Connor said that she should go with him to the gymnasium because there were more people that stayed there and Kimberly wasn't sure how she felt about that. Was he a skeeze hiding behind a nice-guy facade or was he genuinely concerned about her well-being in spite of the fact that he'd only just met her. Or...he was completely dangerous and she should be making a run for it.

But as Kimberly tried to decide, he seemed to be attempting a smile and she thought maybe he really was worried, which wouldn't make sense to most people, but to Kimberly - who spent the past month caring about people she'd never met just because she'd seen them die in a vision - it made perfect sense when she thought about it. "Yeah, I'm getting that..." she replied when he told her that it wasn't a great place. She opened her mouth to tell him that she was from New York, but then thought better of it when she considered the fact that it was probably rhetorical. The thing about something special about the people here caught Kimberly's attention instead. "So, what's special about you, then?" she inquired. Her eyes closed in a slow blink as her expression went bitter. "People die everywhere. Death has been on my ass for months. It's only a matter of time. I've cheated it twice already," she mumbled mostly to herself.

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leconnortemple
2009-09-24 09:47 pm UTC (link)

Connor's wimpy smile turned into a full-fledged grin when she asked if he was into 'geek stuff'. "Yeah, you could say that," he said with a short laugh. "It's my whole life, technology and computers, electronics, all of that. I've been taking things apart to see how they worked since I was a little kid. Drove my parents insane." It was also just one more thing for them to fight about, but she sure as hell didn't need to know that.

But did she need to know that what was special about him wasn't him, but his career? Maybe not, but it was only fair to say it. No reason to let her go around thinking there was anything great about him. He wasn't Chris or Tonks with their magic powers, or from another planet like Spock or Sigma-guy. He was just the average human with a less than average workday. "Nothing's too special about me," he said honestly. "But my job is. I deal with anomalies...portals through time. I... Yeah, well, I've sort of dealt with the uh...prehistoric." Yeah, sure, that was good enough.

"Cheated death, huh?" he asked, then, attempting to shift the subject some. "You'll find a lot of us have. And, I'm afraid, you haven't escaped that by winding up here." At that, he gave a little groan and a crooked smile. "In fact, it may only be worse. Don't know how bad your near-deaths were before...but this is definitely no better."

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-25 01:21 am UTC (link)

Somehow, Kimberly thought his answer would be yes and she looked down sheepishly even as she smiled. Hopefully, he hadn't taken it offensively. It didn't seem like he had, so Kimberly was at least relaxed even if she felt a little bitchy for saying it like that. "People like you make the world go 'round," Kimberly countered when he said he'd driven his parents insane with it.

Her eyebrows raised in slight - okay, not slight - disbelief when he said he dealt with the prehistoric. "Dinosaurs?" she asked dubiously. Seemed pretty damn unlikely since they were extinct, although if he was serious and wasn't just pulling her leg, it was pretty special... No. It was ridiculous. He had to be full of crap; no way he worked with dinosaurs. "Unless, do you mean, like, in a museum?" she tried.

Suddenly, Kimberly drew into herself a little defensively. "My near-deaths? No. You misunderstand me. I saw myself die in visions...and someone pulled me away from my death right before it was about to happen in real time. I'm on Death's List. I was supposed to die a year ago. I didn't because something made me stay where I was. I was supposed to die in a car wreck, I saw myself die in it...and when I tried to stop it, I ended up putting all the people I was trying to save in mortal peril. And then I watched them all die one by one. In the order we were supposed to, except backward, so if my friend Thomas dies because I'm not there to watch him, then I'm next and here? Here, there's nothing and no one to interfere. I will die. And it won't be pretty. It'll be ugly. So, so ugly," she replied.

"Impaled by a fire ladder through the eye. Crushed by a pane of glass dropped from a crane. Decapitated by faulty elevator doors. Impaled by a piece of plastic tubing when an airbag went off. Sliced to pieces by a barbed wire fence after an explosion. Burned to death in an explosion. Drown and brought back to life - that one was me. Killed by a grill's gas tank exploding. That's what I've seen. That's what I've got to look forward to if I don't get out of here and get back to Thomas. If I can protect him, Death will skip him and then he can protect me and it'll go back to him. We'll take turns forever." Her tone was matter-of-fact and dull as she looked back at him with her eyebrows raised. "This place, no matter how bad you think it is, can't be worse than what I've already lived, believe me. So uh...my thing must be the visions. The thing that makes me special." She shrugged.

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leconnortemple
2009-09-25 06:04 am UTC (link)

Museum. Right. Well, they had met Sarah in one, which was sort of cool. But it was definitely not where he'd started off. And he didn't plan to end up there, either. If he hadn't been recruited (read, begged Cutter to let him join) by the ARC, he'd have wanted to be out in the field. He wanted to find the bones, not show them off. "Not exactly," he said with a slightly smug smile. And then he left it at that. As far as he was concerned, more than enough people knew. If she didn't want to believe in the whole portals through time thing, he wasn't going to force her to. But the sooner she did, the sooner she'd tolerate being in this place.

But then he listened quietly during her story. She actually believed in a pre-determined list for Death and yet couldn't believe in being away from Earth or pre-historic creatures breaking through time anomalies and ending up in the present? How, exactly, was that supposed to work? Not that he was judging; he was genuinely curious. It didn't make a lot of sense and he knew it.

But then she said her friend was at risk if she didn't get back to him. And he wanted to cry for her. Oh, he wouldn't. His masculinity was enough at risk every day. But he definitely wanted to. "I don't know how to say this," he said quietly, "but you won't be getting back there any time soon." Simply put, Kim? You were next. "Seriously? You've seen all of that happen? Because of a car wreck that didn't happen?". Okay, some people would've thought she was mental. But Connor wasn't most people, now was he? "Death sure makes up for lost time, doesn't it? That's...I don't even know what. It's scary, what all you've been through."

Sometimes, a bit of compassion went a long way.

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-26 01:31 am UTC (link)

Brow furrowed, Kimberly looked back at Connor. "Not exactly?" she asked. He either worked in a museum or he didn't, the way she saw it. If he did, it made sense that he worked with dinosaurs. If he didn't, he was crazy. Well, then again, the survivors of the pile-up had thought Kimberly was crazy and now they were all dead. The only one who hadn't thought she was a nutcase was the only one left alive. ...maybe. "How is 'not exactly,' an actual answer to a yes or no question?" she inquired.

Connor said she wasn't getting back anytime soon, Kimberly's brow knit even more deeply and she frowned back at him. If she didn't, Thomas would die and she'd be next. There would be no stopping it. Not until she was dead. As much as Kimberly knew it was well after her time, but she was still scared and she still didn't want to die.

"Yeah. Seriously I've seen all that happen," she said in a low, dull voice as her eyes cast down. "All because I tried to save them. We were supposed to die and when we didn't...Death started tying up loose ends, yeah," she replied with a weak smile that didn't reach her eyes in any way. She swallowed thickly and looked back up at him. "Scary's one way of putting it..." she agreed softly.

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leconnortemple
2009-09-26 05:10 am UTC (link)

Connor exhaled slowly, releasing a pent-up breath through his lips. What he was telling her was less than good news. Would she escape that list being in this place? Maybe. Maybe she'd be one of the few that got a reprieve by being snatched into the glass box. Instead of making her life worse, it would get better. Maybe. "I know you don't believe me," he said quietly, "and I can't say I blame you for that. There's nothing ordinary about all of this. Nothing that can be taken at face value."

Biting his lip, he shrugged. Time to appeal to the part of her that believed in visions, and Death's pre-determined list. "If you can grasp the concept of Death having an actual being, you should be able to accept gaps in time and space travel and the like. Kimberly, I think you may have gotten lucky ending up here. I don't know for certain, but these people, the ones running this place?" He chuckled slightly, though it was almost an angry sound. "They have a way of stopping time, it seems. Of making things turn out how they want."

He started pacing, then, his technical mind working in overtime. The scientist was theorizing, and it was a dangerous thing. "I've a theory that, since you're outside of your own time, Death, your version at least, can't find you here." And now she may as well try and Baker Act him, because she had to think he was certifiable for that statement. He'd just take the padded room next to hers, thanks.

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cheatingdeath
2009-09-27 12:02 am UTC (link)

"I'm the last person with room to call someone crazy," Kimberly replied dully, frowning. "And I know about not taking things at face value," she added. Now, anyway. The visions, with the exception of the first one of the pile up, were never taken at face value. Or rather, when they were, she'd been wrong. Pigeons hadn't killed Tim, the glass had although the pigeons had been at fault. A man with hooks hadn't killed Nora, the elevator had. Doctor Kalarjin hadn't tried to choke her to death, she'd been trying to resuscitate her. "So even though this sounds kind of insane, I...'ve seen crazier."

Kimberly shook her head. "No. You misunderstand. Death is not an actual being, per se. It's just there. It's all around us all the time. There's no Grim Reaper, It's just a non-entity. I...shit, sorry, I know what I mean but I don't know how to explain it, really." Clear would know, she thought but didn't say. "But gaps in time and space? I don't...uh, understand what, really, you mean," she admited. "How can anyone stop time?"

She watched silently with arched eyebrows as Connor began to pace. "Death can always find you when It wants you," she sighed, looking down. "It'd be nice if your theory was right, but even if it was...that doesn't help my friend. He's my responsibility...it's my job to keep him alive."

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