INTRO 001: BEGIN

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INTRO 001
NAVIGATION
⩕ ARRIVAL

It’s arrival time. Or is it? For some, this situation seems eerily familiar. In fact, this has happened before, you are sure of it. The voice makes the announcement and the door rolls open. You hear the frightened voice and it begins again.

There might be memories of this place but things will seem… off. As if walls are a slightly different colour, corners a bit sharper, the door handles a bit higher. If you explore the rooms of interest you will find a few things have changed.

The cooler with the tongue is now gone, and in its place a locked door with a strange device placed next to it. It looks like an intercom. The yellow message on the wall has changed, it now reads:

There’s sunshine, daisies, and tulips too
Just remember that when you’re feeling blue ☺

The writing is clearly different than the previous message.

The room with the tube is mostly the same, except the rusted cabinets are now shiny and brand new. The tube’s liquid is now dripping a rust colour fluid.

Any items collected will be somewhere nearby.

⩕ ODE TO BEVERLY

After exploring the new (?) developments something strange is now happening throughout the complex’s floor. A shrill crying. It sounds hysterical.

It leads you to the bathroom with the shattered glass. The sound is coming from the drain of a sink.

There’s broken words, too jumbled to really understand. But the hello from earlier? Definitely the same voice.

As your face nears the sink suddenly long black hair springs from the drain, shooting up and strangling and snaring any bit of you it can. The more you struggle the more it becomes aggressive, cutting in to your skin, peeling away flesh. All the while the shrieking and wailing grows to thunderous levels.

The only way to escape is with outside help. But your rescuer has to be careful not to also get caught.

The hair or whatever it may be seems intent on blood.

⩕ THE CHASM (PART ONE)

Some of you might have escaped the hair with most of your important parts in place. But any open wounds will freely flow blood and not seem to want to staunch. Any materials found seem to be useless in treating the cuts. And when your droplets of blood hits the ground it hisses as if like acid and then unexpectedly the floor around it cracks into a hairline split. The more blood that is dropped the more the cracks appear.

Throughout the following days and nights the cracks randomly split wider and deeper.

Investigating further you will notice that the same nausea you might have experienced before is now back-- and wait! Did you just see a pair of eyes inside those fissures?

Somehow you know in your gut that the only way to stop the progression of the splits is to drop more blood in to it, but not your own. In fact, this idea takes hold despite your better judgement. It is a compulsion. Better find a willing volunteer or perhaps it will come down to a fight.


⩕ HELLO GOD? IT'S ME 7░ ░

Something odd happens many hours in to your stay. Those of you who have found a walkie will receive a broadcast. It is a man speaking. It sounds like an old recording. Soft conversation is happening in the background overlaid with a hum of machinery.

Obviously I am a man of logic. In this day and age how could someone not be? Our primitive instincts are only a tool for survival so our higher minds can concentrate on things like advancement and discovery. This a belief everyone should have. Or isn’t it? It frustrates me that few are on this level of thinking. Too many are preoccupied with that in which cannot be seen. What cannot be hooked in to.

His voice then says your number. You are certain that you have never met this person, but he definitely just addressed you specifically.

I know you are reasonable. Tell me what you believe in? In this moment, what do you believe?

As you answer, you get the distinct impression that the entire complex stills to listen. But whatever frequency he was using is now dead. The question seems to be one to ask one another, broadcasted far and wide.

⩕ ⩕ ⩕ ⩕ ⩕ ⩕ ⩕

⩕ The Chasm will continue to grow throughout the next month. It becomes more and more cumbersome to navigate but the blood does seem to help to keep it at bay.

Comments

[gunslung]

[ Though Teddy takes the strip, and he does press it to his wound as instructed, there's a resigned sort of edge to his expression. ] I've already tried doing this, Bigby.

[ But just because he's tried doesn't mean he's not going to try again, awkwardly pressing the flimsy stuff to one of his arms. There is a strange sort of comfort in repetition in Teddy's life, whether it's futile or not. ]

I don't think these wounds can be fixed by anyone but the people who've taken us here.

[sweariff]

Then humor me. [It's snappishly said without so much as a glance up.] And if that's true, then there's really not much of a difference between doing this and nothing.

And seeing as how you were already doing nothing...

[Once he's got the strip in one hand, he muscles in on Teddy's personal space bubble, slapping the other man's hands away and quickly replacing them with his own free one, bunching the bloodstained cloth up in a ball and pushing it down on the gash. Then, he loops the clean strip around the entire wound and ties it securely. If one layer didn't work, maybe two will this time.]

There. [He's actually kind of proud of it.] Whatever's wrong with you, you're not bleeding acid. Somehow. [He glances down at his hands, covered with fresh and old blood alike, then at the cracks forming where Teddy had been standing]

[gunslung]

I'm not. [ That's easy to agree with, at least. ] But it doesn't change the fact that my blood seems to make the floor angry.

[ It sounds like a more accurate description than "it seems to break the floor" to him. The floor is living, and the blood is waking it up, and Teddy has been alone for a long, long while just watching it whenever he stops moving (even if he doesn't really compute it, seeming to be just fine standing or sitting in the same spot for hours on end, staring, doing nothing, not living).

What blood remained on Teddy's fingertips drips with another sizzle. The cloth Bigby had put on him darkens gradually, following the pace at which Teddy's wounds fucking throb. ]

I found a door. A new one. [ He frowns slightly as he says it. ] It's locked, but it has this machine next to it, and if you press this round thing on the machine, someone speaks to you.

Or at least I think it's a someone. They spoke backwards, but when you put it rightways it says "the word on their tongues will open passages".

[ He spares Bigby an upward glance. ] Do you know what that might mean?

[sweariff]

[Bigby thinks on an answer for all of three seconds. It seems pretty obvious, he thinks, though let's face it — in a place like this, just because the answer looks straightforward doesn't mean it is.]

...Probably that it needs a password. Who knows what that is.

[He wants to run his hand against his chin as he usually tends to do when he's thinking, but given its current state, it's probably for the best that it stays far away from his face. Instead, he wipes his hands on his knees, making the light blue fabric go muddy as he smears blood into it.]

Maybe it's something we can find nearby. They wouldn't tell us that much if they didn't want us to figure it out. [As he straightens up, he reaches into his pocket to pull out a few folded snapshots that he offers to Teddy.] I found these in a file cabinet a few rooms back. I don't know if they'll help any, but they had red marker on them that looked and reacted the same way the ones we found before did, except this time they...changed. Right here.

[He points to the cross on the right corner of one.]

That wasn't there when I found them.

[gunslung]

[ Teddy is extremely careful when he handles the photographs, worried that he'd stain them with his blood. The edges are perched between the pads of his fingers as delicately as he can manage. ]

Places? [ He doesn't recognise any of them, obviously, but there's a part of him that longs to be in a winding field-- to see the sky above him. He finds the message written in, the please think of me, and it brings a small frown to his face when he considers it.

He takes all the photos with crosses on them, lining them up on his thighs. It's a chore trying not to drip blood on everything, but at least he manages somehow. ]

There has to be something similar about these. The last set of pictures we had made a puzzle-- the "REPLACE" puzzle. [ When he blinks, the pictures on his lap change for just a second, and he sees the people, sees the way their hands were scratched out, and--

Teddy shakes his head, and the pictures go back to normal. But he does open his box up, pulling out the pictures from earlier. ] So this has to be one too, right?

[ Teddy hasn't noticed that their first set of pictures have changed, incidentally. ]

[sweariff]

[Bigby doesn't either, at first, but the absence of scratched out faces — a detail that sticks out in his mind — is stark and glaring, and he takes another closer look. Sure enough, that's not the only thing that's different.]

Those weren't there before. Right?

[Knee to the floor, he grabs at one of the pictures, the one that stands out the most to him because it's the only one containing something that does look familiar. Too familiar, actually.]

I think you're onto something here. [He turns the picture to Teddy. It's the one with the cooler.] Look familiar? That used to be in the room with the graffiti. Remember what it had inside?

[gunslung]

...the tongue.

[ It doesn't hit him like a slap to the face. Teddy actually just sits there in silence for a while, his brows furrowed deeply and his mouth pulled into a small frown in his lack of understanding. ]

What?

[ He looks at Bigby again. ]

Do you think the message is talking about this? [ A beat, as he considers the rest of their first set of pictures. ] Do you think all these other boxes have tongues in them, too?

[sweariff]

[Teddy's...a little slow on the uptake, isn't he.]

No clue. But that one sure did. [He taps at the image of the cooler impatiently.] "The word on their tongues." That's what you heard, right? A lot of things changed when we woke up again, but that cooler's the only thing I can think of that's missing outright, and then, for some reason, it magically shows up in these with a bunch of boxes that look just like it. There's one for every person that used to be here, and each of them had their mouths scratched out.

[Actually, come to think of it, Teddy might be onto something yet again.]

You don't find that just a tiny bit weird, like there's a connection?

[gunslung]

[ No, Bigby, he doesn't. It's probably obvious in how Teddy spends more time staring at you like you've spoken in a completely different language.

But he does look back down at the boxes on the chairs, and. ]

Did all those people... say the same thing? [ A beat. ] Do you think it has something to do with "replace"?

[ Then his head cocks to the side. ]

The room the Tongue used to be in had words on it, too. Different from the ones that were in there before. [ And if Bigby thinks that the fact their pictures have changed must mean something, then surely the room should catch his attention, too. ] I didn't think anything when I saw it, but maybe something'll come to you.

Something about sunshine... about remembering. Is remembering the same as thinking?

[ Because Teddy's looking at please think of me again, even if the reason it perplexes him probably has nothing to do with any noticed patterns. ]

[sweariff]

[Bigby gives him a long, hard look as if trying to parse how serious Teddy is right now and, if he is, if there's some sort of bizarre hidden meaning to the questions he's throwing out. Finally:] How much blood have you lost?

[Because that would explain an awful lot about how he's acting. Or maybe he's always been like this and Bigby was just too caught up in his own business when they first met to notice. Either way, it's giving him a headache and that's not something he wants to deal with at all.]

The last one was about dogs and cats, this one's about flowers and sunshine. I'm not sure they were put there to do anything else but scare us, but the way they changed, same with everything else— That definitely means something.

Whatever control these people have over the building, it goes a little beyond just replacing and changing things. It's [he gestures for the right word.] illusionary. Even if we can't find the cooler, maybe there's something out there that replaced it.

[gunslung]

The door with the "password" [ the word feels funny in Teddy's mouth, but all he does is crinkle his nose about it ] is where the cooler used to be.

[ That's the first thing with conviction that Teddy's said in a while, but that's probably because it's got less to do with hypotheticals and more to do with concrete things he's observed. ]

Exact same place, that much I'm sure of.

[ His blood has begun to seep through the cloth that Bigby gave him, finally, and a drop falls onto the floor with a soft hiss. ]

[sweariff]

[Are you sure, is what Bigby wants to ask, and suppressing the reply is suppressing an instinct, but Teddy says it so seriously that he thinks twice before opening his mouth.

The sharp sizzle of blood hitting the floor is another good deterrent.]

We'll get it open. [Trust me, that tone says, but his eyes are on Teddy's arm and the wrapping. Where it was once the size of a child's palm, the circle of blood seeping from the wound has rapidly grown enough to cover the entire strip.] We'll just...figure it out as we go. Okay?

[It doesn't sit well with him, this flying by the seat of his pants thing, but Teddy's not getting better and that takes a little more precedent.]

Let's get something else for those cuts in the meantime. Or at least stop them from bleeding every ten seconds.

[gunslung]

All right.

[ "Get something else", Teddy presumes, must be code for leaving, because there's nothing in the room he's sitting in besides the items they'd already brought inside with them.

He takes one more look at the newly changed pictures-- the boxes on the chairs, so weird-- and then puts them together to put back when. ]

I forgot to show this to you. [ He's pointing out the folded diagrams at the bottom. ] They're showing the, uh. How hands are on the inside.

I found that where I found this hatchet.

[sweariff]

[He peeks down at the diagrams, and at first, he doesn't really know what he's supposed to be looking at. Hands? What about them?]

Looks like something you'd see in a hospital or a medical book. [And this time he doesn't even fight his impulse — he looks down at his own hands, raising one and turning it over.] Wonder what they were studying them for. Maybe the same thing they were doing with mouths and—

[That's it.]

—The people in the pictures. [He's almost startled with what he remembers.] Their hands were scratched out too. Remember?

[gunslung]

Yes. [ A little too vividly, in fact, as seems to be the case with most of Teddy's memories, both of this world the "first time" he saw it and something else entirely. He doesn't know it yet, but if Bigby asked him about it, Teddy could probably recreate the drawings in absolutely seamless perfection. ]

I keep thinking we'll find a severed arm sometime, like the tongues. [ Sparing a glance at his own cut-up mess of two forearms doesn't reassure him any after saying that. The cloth Bigby's wasted on him has turned a steady red, and the blood dripping from it is the precursor to more sounds of upset coming from the floor beneath them. ]

Maybe we should.