Chapter Seventy-One: Night Shift
It was noon. I wondered if the five days we were going to spend there were full days or if time would start speeding up once some important scenes were out of the way.
My question was slowly answered. Very slowly.
It was eight hours before my first night shift started. I decided to go find the mess hall.
I got lost almost immediately. It was hard to imagine just how big this floor level was. It must have taken up more square footage than the building on the surface itself. The halls wound around. There were automatic security doors placed at every junction. They were open during the day, but at night, they would be closed, turning this place from a maze into a prison.
The front of the floor toward the elevator was more open, with several different rooms that could be reached without security clearance. I eventually found the mess hall to be one of them.
The mess hall was smaller than I imagined. NPCs sat at the tables eating prepackaged meals from fancy vending machines that lined a wall. Luckily, the vending machines were connected to our badges and our purchases would be deducted from our salary. I didn’t have enough money to pay for food otherwise. Our trip to the pawn shop had cleared me out and the Campfire storyline didn’t give me much.
I had yet to see my friends since being separated from them upstairs. I decided to wait at the mess hall for a bit in case one of them showed up. I couldn’t wait all day. I had monitors to watch and a pre-shift nap to take.
I was Off-Screen the whole time. Despite this, NPCs more or less stayed in their roles.
I purchased some meatloaf and mashed potatoes from a vending machine with a revolving shelf filled with prepared meals.
I sat and ate my lunch.
Eventually, I looked up to find Camden making a beeline for my table.
“We keep calling those people patients, but they don't seem sick and they want to leave,” he said, referring to the eight people that were being observed within the facility. “They do not like me at all.”
“Maybe it’s just your bedside manner, Doc,” I said with a nod toward the badge he was wearing on his white lab coat. “Dr. Camden Tran. Didn’t think you’d get the degree so quickly, did you?”
“I think I’ve earned it,” he said. “I’m serious, we’ve got those prisoners so drugged up they don’t know what year it is.”
“I’m not sure what year it is either. Where are my drugs?” I joked. “Yeah, I’ve got a view into every cell. If those people are patients, I can’t imagine what disease they must have. What kind of doctor are you?”
“Neuroscience.”
“A brain doctor?”
“A brain researcher. All I do here is hook them up to machines and monitor some pseudo-scientific measurements.”
I thought about that for a moment. “So do they have… good… brains?”
“All measurements are within standardized ranges,” he said. “That’s what the lab guys keep saying. They keep dodging my questions.”
He told me about his day so far. We were still at the very beginning of the Party Phase. There was still time for discovery.
After a little more back and forth, I decided to go back to my igloo and sleep until my shift.
I tried to sleep. I really did.
But I was in a storyline. I wasn’t sure I could ever doze off knowing there was something in this place that was going to try to kill me. This week wasn’t going to go well.
At 2:30, I decided to get up and watch the monitors. With the security doors open and people walking around, I could likely make sense of the layout of the building more easily than I could at night when everything was shut off from everything else.
I watched and, despite Mr. Rowe’s warnings, I listened to anything that looked like it might be useful information.
I found Camden again. On the monitors. He was inside one of the cells with a man in his mid-thirties. The man looked sad and worried. He sat on the edge of his bed.
“Can I at least see my children again?” the man asked. “Our visit got cut short today because a new therapist got introduced. We were promised we’d get an hour today.”
Camden shook his head. “I’m not in charge of that. Talk to the Relations Manager about that.”
“She’s new too,” the man said. “It’s not even worth learning people’s names around here.”
“Just a few more minutes,” Camden said, as he affixed some kind of diode to the man’s head.
The man was slumped over and tired. “We’ve been here for weeks. Months, I don’t know. You haven’t even told us what’s wrong with us.”
Camden didn’t respond to that. “Just lay back.”
The man slowly leaned back in his bed.
Camden watched a computer monitor on a large cart like the kind teachers would use to wheel televisions from classroom to classroom, except this cart had all manner of electronics built into it. Camden watched as numbers danced on the screen. I couldn’t make out what was happening.
After a moment, I saw Anna walking down the hallway with a young man, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old.
I switched off the audio from Camden’s room and switched on the audio from where Anna was.
“You really think there’s something wrong with me?” the young man said. “I feel fine. Just a few sleepless nights is all.”
Anna shrugged her shoulders. “The doctors think that you should be monitored. I’m just here to help make sure you are being taken care of.”
“Do I have to wear this?” the young man said, holding out the white gown in his hand. “I really don’t think that’s necessary.”
“I can’t blame you,” she said. “But the sooner you’re ready for evaluation, the sooner you’ll be out of here.”
The kid stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”
Anna continued to lead him down the hallways, consulting a clipboard in her hand as she went for directions. I followed them along as they went, switching the audio as we went along.
“I see on your chart, you didn’t put down an emergency contact,” Anna said.
The kid shrugged. “It was just me and my mom. After what happened, it’s just me. I’m sorry, they said not to talk about the accident until they said I could... Am I in trouble?”
“No, of course not,” Anna said. “Here we are.”
She presented him with one of the cells. She let him in there for a moment while he changed, then she took his clothes away.
“I’ll be back later when I make my rounds,” she said.
“Ok,” he responded meekly.
He sat on his bed and waited.
That made nine patients in total.
Kimberly sat in one of the white cells at a table. Across from her was a young girl who might have been six.
“It’s nice to meet you too, Bethany,” Kimberly said. “I was hoping to ask you some questions and then maybe we could play a little game before you have to go to bed. What do you think?”
“What kind of game?” the little girl, Bethany, asked, looking over at Kimberly’s side of the table for a glimpse of whatever game Kimberly might have brought.
“A card game.”
“Where’s Miss Gloria?”
“Miss Gloria?”
“She used to play games with me too,” Bethany said.
“Oh,” Kimberly said. “It’ll just be you and me.”
“…Okay,” Bethany said in an adorable little voice.
"Do you remember what you were doing when the accident happened?” Kimberly asked.
The little girl shook her head.
“It was a long, long time ago. I don’t remember.”
“Can you try to remember?”
The little girl was quiet.
“I was with my brother,” Bethany asked. “He wanted ice cream, but Mommy said we couldn’t have ice cream until later.”
Bethany started to whimper.
Kimberly moved around to the side of the table to attempt to comfort the child.
A voice came over the speaker in the cell, causing high-pitched feedback on my speakers. “Do not touch the subject.”
They must have had other people watching the same cameras I was. Maybe the researchers could see the cells with the subjects in them.
Kimberly stopped in her tracks and looked up where the speaker must have been. She said something under her breath.
She moved back to her seat.
“It’s okay,” Kimberly said. “We don’t have to do the questions. We can just play the game. Do you know how to play Go-Fish?”
“Yes,” Bethany said.
Kimberly unveiled a pack of cards specifically designed for the game go-fish, with pictures of different kinds of colorful fish on them instead of normal suits and ranks.
Kimberly dealt the cards and they started to play.
“Do you have any blue squids?” Kimberly asked.
Bethany shook her head. Go fish.
“Do you have any red sea turtles?” Bethany asked in response.
“Go fish.”
“… Miss Gloria was better at this,” Bethany said.
“I’m sorry,” Kimberly said.
They continued playing for thirty minutes or so after that. I eventually tuned out.
I surfed around to other audio feeds. The NPCs were all speaking to each other, but I never once found a conversation worth spying on. I didn’t know if that was because my effective Plot Armor was so low that I couldn’t discover information as well as the other players, or if there simply wasn’t any information to obtain yet.
Night crept in slowly. I eventually managed to get some sleep in preparation for my shift.
As I awoke, I began doing pre-shift checks for audio and video. Everything checked out. It was busy work. Nothing major.
I noticed something happening in the mess hall. Two NPCs were having an argument with no players around to hear. No players except me.
I switched on the audio.
“You fired Rolf,” an NPC said, a woman who appeared to be a custodian or something similar. She was hauling around a large trashcan and emptying the smaller cans into it. “You expect me to do his job too. I don’t have the time.”
“We’re all working extra shifts, Barb,” the other NPC said, her manager. “We need you to pick up the slack.”
“It’s too big!” Barb said. "I don't have time to clean it all in one shift."
“You can finish it tomorrow. We need to be out of here by 7:30. You know the rules.”
“If I finish it tomorrow, then I will have to stay late tomorrow too. I will never be finished.”
“Let’s just go,” the second NPC said. “We’ll resolve this later. You’re going to get us both fired.”
The other NPC dropped the trashcan she was emptying on the ground. “Fine.”
After some more bickering, they both headed for the elevators together.
It was awfully convenient that everyone on the floor took turns doing important things as if they were coordinating things so that I could spy on them one at a time.
The cameras covered most of floor 2B, but there were things I couldn’t see. I wasn’t sure which parts were uncovered, but there were places where an NPC could walk off the screen and not reappear for a while later--dead spots.
My Location Scout ability lined up pretty well with the security cameras, though the trope gave me less information. It mostly just told me where one of Carousel's “cameras” was, not what it covered or anything of the sort. Location Scout told me of several shooting locations that I didn’t think were on this floor.
I had yet to see Dina at all. She must have been in one of them.
After the last daytime employee had gone, I was left alone on my watch. I shut the giant door to the security room and locked it.
I stared at the monitors. My friends had all gone to their quarters to sleep. I couldn’t see their beds or their bathrooms, obviously. Luckily, Carousel didn’t put any cameras in the bathrooms.
Most of the job was in the waiting.
I considered the two enemy tropes I had seen as I waited. Anyone Can Die. That meant Anna’s Last One Alive trope wouldn’t protect her and Plot Armor wouldn’t save anyone. I debated over whether Oblivious Bystander would work, seeing as it only protected me temporarily to increase tension. I wasn’t sure, but I also didn’t think it was worth the risk to try unless I had no other choice.
A Knock at the Door was less clear. The monster wasn't deterred by doors. It wasn't clear why. Could it break them down? Or did it have another way through them?
Like a security badge.
I waited.
And waited.
Midnight. Finally.
Then two o’clock. The patients slept soundly in their beds for the most part. Only one of them tossed and turned: the new kid.
Three o’clock in the morning. If anything was going to happen, it would happen then, right?
No...
It happened at 4:15.
I was barely able to stay awake as I watched the monitors. I had not seen anything to write in my logbook and was looking for something, anything. Some sign to share with my friends, some clue of what it was we faced.
One of the screens on the back part of the floor where the cells were looked funny. It wasn’t blurry or staticky, it was ever-so-gently warped. Distorted. Like looking at something through an antique window.
There was no visible figure walking through the room. There was no jump in audio either-it was silent.
I was looking at a hallway with a potted plant, but it was just slightly distorted. I wouldn’t even have noticed had I not been looking for something.
Moments later, it was back to normal.
Another monitor became distorted. And then another. One at a time, a monitor would get distorted and then it would go back to normal as a monitor near it would become distorted instead.
The distortion switched back and forth between monitors. It was confined to a certain area. I started writing this down furiously in my logbook. How would my character be acting right now? Worried? Would he think it was a hardware malfunction? Yes. That was it.
I wrote down that there was a hardware malfunction. I tracked which cameras appeared to be affected.
I couldn’t figure out what was stopping the distortion from continuing its path around the monitors at first. Then I realized—it was the doors. The distortion-or whatever was causing it-could not pass through doors. It was wandering from room to room but only the rooms that were open to each other.
That didn’t make any sense.
The monster we were after could go through doors. It had a trope that said just that.
Eventually, I watched as the distortion stopped in one of the rooms, a conference room of some sort. There was a spike in audio for a split second. Then, the distortion disappeared.
I watched for the distortion to come back.
I never saw anything else that night.
I wondered if anything saw me.
Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.c(o)m