poly_chromatic | 030: VIDEO

[Chase is in one of the hospital pathology labs, a centrifuge whirring away on the desk in front of him. He's flicking through a messy looking sheaf of paper.]

I'm starting to understand why the City Guide has an entire section on zombie handling strategy. Someone told me they used to be a regular problem, here. Anyone long-term enough to be able to tell me about that?

[He's about to ask another question, but a second voice, deep and rolling, curiously accented, interrupts.]

What is an enemy to you, Doctor?

[Chase's head snaps up. He takes a gasp as though the breath has been punched out of him.]

You're not here. You're never really h—

[But the voice comes again, and as Chase moves, the picture on his device swings to show a man in a tattered, bloodied surgical gown, the flesh rotting away from his face.]

Men make choices.

[The zombie sweeps a rack of equipment to the floor, and the screen goes black.]

[ooc: Chase's ghoul is ~~Darth Vader~~ ~~Mufasa~~ ~~James Earl Jones~~ Dibala, the genocidal dictator of a small African nation, who he murdered shortly before arriving in the city. Dibala will be/have been around for a little bit to bother anyone at the hospital.]

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[Chase's device is on by unresponsive for a time. It flickers to life with the sound of crashing, explosions of steel and glass, and shuts off. On, and off.

So it's some time before Chase can check the display, the number of the open line that's been sitting there in his pocket, and ask softly:]

Hello?

[The clicking is suddenly frantic, and there's a crash and someone screaming, but the screaming doesn't cut out, so whoever it is is still alive.]

[And it's not pretty to hear, but Chase listens as closely as he's ever tried to listen to anything.

Meanwhile, he's heading through corridors to where hospital information systems can track the signal.]

[The signals is getting closer to the hospital but the screaming's stopped; she climbed up to get up on the roofs and no one is watching for a giant half-spider in the air.

And it's moving fast.]

[He doesn't think of the rooftops either, but he's not in the clearest-thinking of places just now. Which explains why he thinks letting himself out through one of the service exits into an alley beside the hospital is a good idea. At least the line is quieter now.]

Satya. Satya.

[She lands next to him - she's enormous, ten feet tall, her human torso oddly shaped because of the two extra limbs, her heavy abdomen turned towards him as she looks to make sure there's nothing there.

There's nothing there.

She's brown and shiny-hard with exoskeleton, her mouth a pair of chelicerae that occasionally move to click her fangs together, and she turns to look him over. She doesn't touch him. Her top arms - much like her normal ones - have fingers, long, longer than any human finger, with extra joints that move in an oddly graceful fashion.

All six of her eyes are her strange amber color. She tilts her head to look at him, and when she sees he's fine she shifts, spiders falling from her, rearranging, until she's shorter than him again, wearing no shoes but enough clothing to be normal]

Did it hurt you?

[Just an empty alleyway, apart from the doctor and the monster on a mission. But appearances can be deceptive. Not long ago he was working in an empty lab. He hasn't stopped trembling, enough that the chatter can be heard when his teeth touch. Anyone else would think it was a reaction to seeing her shift.]

Not yet.

[She'll tell the lie by the blood on the air, though he's keeping that arm against the wall. It was a cut, not a bite, and he's stemmed the flow, though not before it painted an arm of his lab coat.

Not yet. Because these things keep on coming. Nothing keeps him down.]

Are you—? I heard— [That sound.] Someone was—

Someone saw me. I'm not worried.

[She looks at the cut, but it doesn't smell thick or necrotic, so she's not worried.]

Did you kill it?

[He takes a breath and exhales in a rush, emptying his lungs so that for a moment he slumps back against the wall.]

I don't know. What kills them? What... I don't know.

[His coherence has held to this point, it's getting stretched now. Another breath, in.]

Should I worry for who saw you?

No.

[Most people, when they see a lilian, suffer delirium. Whoever it was wouldn't be able to recognize her anyway]

I don't think you would have recognized me if you didn't know me.

[He's starting to worry her, but physiology is something Saya knows, even if emotions aren't her strong point. She takes his hand and measures quickly, and then applies her fingers to the pressure point that calms stimulated nerves]

[She's seen him hit a panic attack before, and he's somehow not quite there yet - he can hold it together when the necessity is there - but running into the solidified version of a hundred flashbacks isn't leaving him as steady as he'd like. He just blinks at her.]

Of course I recognised you. Your eyes.

[The fact that they came in multiples seems barely to have registered.]

All six of them?

[She holds onto his arm, and keeps her gaze on his face. He still smells like fear.]

Do you need to stay?

They're still yours.

[His chest rises with a slow inhale. Calming a little.

He nods. Need to? Maybe not by anyone else's definition. There are people here he won't leave.]

They are.

[She twists her hand and takes his]

Then I will stay too.

[It's cold, that arm, but he can feel her overheated skin more acutely. It takes a moment for him to decide what she's saying makes sense.]

It's safer in the central wards. People are coming in for shelter.

[She shrugs]

I'm not hungry, and I don't really need shelter.

[Maybe she has missed the point]

I'll know where you are.

[Maybe.

It doesn't seem like a bad solution. with a few more people corralled Chase could be left with only relative strangers on the network to worry about. But then there is the old adage about not putting all the eggs in one basket. And that one particular bad egg still perhaps, perhaps roaming the hallways.]

Yes.

[And she's be close enough to do something if something else attacks]

[Less his concern. Inside the hospital, with the standard refugees who take root there during the worst of the curses, she'll be less free to act without being observed.

But, he'll know where she is.]

Good.

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