redshiftrp | video; @unknown

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video; @unknown

[ The communicator bobs, turns, points at the floor. There’s muttering from a voice some of Anchor’s residents will recognize. When the camera rights itself, it’s a close-up of Creepy Joe’s face, the eye that was formerly sealed shut now open and writhing with tiny flower-like tentacles. His other is steady, crazed blue.

His mouth is still twisted, his lips still curving upward on the ruined side of his face, not quite hiding teeth too long and sharp for a human mouth. There’s movement behind and between his teeth, though it’s hard to see what it is until he opens his mouth--more tentacles, tiny flailing things growing from the insides of his cheeks, the roof of his mouth, his tongue. They make him lisp hoarsely as he talks.]

Don’t go down. Don’t do it. You’ll open the way to worse things, worse things, worse.

[ He glances behind him, and in spite of the close angle, some at Anchor might also recognize where he is. In his little hole in the wall, where he was recording the actions of Anchor’s new residents. ]

Trust me. I came back, didn’t I? I came back to help.

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Thought it was a good place. A better place than where I came from. [ A soft little laugh, bitter and sad. ] Thought it was a place I could stay, be happy, make a life. But now look--I'm the only one left. Only one left, and I get to see people come and have it happen all over again.

[ He takes her hand in his good one, squeezing a little too tight. ] Do you understand? Seal it up, seal it off. Live, just live, just have what they took away from me.

[Every hair on her body feel as if it bristles up the moment he touches her. Poison's eyes widen, her fingers twisting a little in his grip, but he's-- he's strong.]

Joseph, you're hurting my hand.

[She says it evenly, but can't keep the faint shake out of her voice. Her free hand grips the knee of her trousers tightly.]

The others-- did they find a way home?

[ He lets go at once, standing up and backing off again. ]

They thought they did. Wouldn't know if it worked, would I?

No... no, I suppose not.

[Poison brushes her hair back carefully, tucking one side behind one of her ears. She watches his movements with large violet eyes and huffs out a breath through her nose.

Maybe he knows more than he's saying, but it's going to take a little more prying than the current level of trust between them would allow...]

Do you remember much about where you're from? Where you were before here?

[ He closes his good eye, leaning back. ]

Bad. It was bad. We were running, always running--hunted. Monsters following us. Monsters shaped like people, but they weren't people any more. No home, no safe place.

[ He opens his eye. ] But then there was this place. It was good. I was happy.

[She's heard stories of other people who came from places like that. Places where they were hunted. Poison had never had such worries through most of her life - sure, sometimes the Phaeries would come and take a child, but they were more often simply left alone.

The young woman leans forwards, resting her elbows on her knees and clasping her hands together.]

You said... what's down there was 'the worst of us'. Was it made here? Or did somebody bring it?

I don't... know. [ He makes a small, frustrated sound. ] Don't remember. Just remember eyes, the eyes watching me.

[ He rubs his forehead. ] Don't remember how it happened, when it happened. I was here, it was good, but then... The eyes, and they took my girl away.

Your-- daughter?

[She ventures the guess with a small, encouraging smile.

The eyes-- ah, she'll come back to the eyes.]

You have a daughter?

Not... any more. [ He stares at his hand. ]

Don't know if they took her when they left or if she... died. Or if...

[ He shudders. ]

Or if she was taken by the eyes.

[Another of those soft sighs, a frown, and Poison looks down at her hands. Her mind ticks over carefully, absorbing everything. This kind of talk isn't entirely strange to her.

It sounds too much like Phaeries to be foreign.]

These eyes. Where were they?

Below. Down below. Behind the doors. [ He leans forward urgently, starts to take her hand again and then draws back. ] Can't go down there, don't let anyone go down there.

I'll try.

[Poison reaches out as he draws away, closing her hand over the top of his.] I'll really try, I promise.

[ He studies their linked hands, slowly turning his over to clasp hers. Gently, this time. ]

You're a good girl. Peter is a good boy. I can... show you. Safe places. For if things go bad.

[Good. Gently is better. She nods slowly and looks up at his face again, sparing a quick glance for those odd tentacles waving around inside his eye socket.]

That would be very kind of you. I'd like that.

[ He smiles, a little, which manages to be both horrifying and to take years off the human side of his face. ]

Places not on the maps, the ones the communicators show. Blind spots. Hidden from the life signs detectors.

[ He lets go of her hand and eases to his feet. ]

Could show you now. If you wanted.

[At least he smiles, which is more than Lamprey ever did. She wonders if those spots are where Joe was hiding before. Maybe this is one of them.

Places like that could be useful, and not just in case things go bad.]

Okay. Show me.

[ He leads the way out of his little cavern, looking around carefully before he steps out into the limited light under the trees.

The first two places he shows her are much like his little spy hole--one accessible through a small bolt-hole near the R&D area, another through a crack in the wall inside an abandoned restaurant. They each have a small supply of water and dried food, recently restocked.

When they emerge from the second little space, he pauses, giving Poison an anxious look. ]

Next one is for the kids. Only for the kids. You, Peter, others who come. Don't tell anyone else.

[It's... amazing, actually. Not only that these places are here and they've never been found, but that he's showing them to her so willingly. She makes casual small-talk while they roam, and keeps a wary eye out for anyone who might come across them.

Poison doesn't think that she could hold anybody back, save for Peter, and she doesn't know what Joe would do if he felt threatened.

She looks up at him when he stops, her expression showing none of the muted fear it had held at the start of this entire venture. She places a hand on her chest.]

I won't.

[ He leads her to what looks like an air vent, large and apparently sealed. But when he presses on the head of the top left screw, it slides aside soundlessly. Gesturing for her to follow, he climbs inside, now completely silent. It seems to take all of his focus to navigate the branching metal tunnels.

The vents, with time and exploration, will lead to areas of the city that aren't yet unlocked, opening up in places like the family apartment blocks, an otherwise inaccessible area of the library, and other places. One of the downward-angled vents will lead to a flooded out area, but that's one place Joe carefully avoids.

It is very, very easy to get lost.

Ladders and tunnels lead downward into Anchor, always downward, for long enough that Poison might start to wonder where she's being taken. If there's ever an end to it.

But the tunnel levels out eventually, and Joe crawls up to another grate. A switch on the wall next to it opens the tunnel mouth, and he eases himself out and drops out of sight.

Outside of the tunnel is a fairly spacious room, with a rumpled bed in one corner, a fridge set into the wall, and shelves of food and water on that side. On the other side are medical supplies, running the gamut from the recognizable to things even Joe doesn't know how to use or what they might be. In a glass cupboard next to the bed are rank after rank of bottles filled with blue liquid, one of them half-full, a capped needle set next to it. A small door next to the bed leads into a tiny bathroom.

He shifts from foot to foot, watching Poison nervously. ]

Can show you an easy way to get here, but the tunnels... The tunnels are safest.

[It doesn't take her long to realise that she wouldn't know the way out of here if he decided that he was going to abandon her, or if she needed to get away. Left, left, right, left-- she loses count of the directions too quickly and every section of the tunnels looks the same. Now and then she hears a noise on the other side of the metal walls, but she doesn't dare pause to listen more closely.

And it's only a saving grace that she's physically fit and can keep up with him, though she does have to call out now and then for him to wait.

Then they're there, she drops through the grate after Joe and blinks rapidly as she looks about the room.]

What... [She mutters, straightening her hair and clothes and trying to decide what she ought to take in first.]

... What is all of this?

My house. [ He looks tentatively proud.

He pauses, then gestures her toward the far wall, which is blank except for a button, a handle, and a narrow seam that looks like a doorway. He listens at the crack for a long minute, then pushes the button. The doorway-shape opens outward, revealing the medbay. The door was hidden behind a set of shelves in one corner of the X-ray room.

Joe grabs the handle and drags the door shut again, as quickly as he can. ]

Small tile by the shelves opens it. To get in this way. It was... [ It takes him a moment to find the words. ] Panic room. For medical staff.

[She draws her breath in sharply when he opens the door and... there's the medibay. And it's so easy. Poison glances back to the vent they dropped in by, and she can understand why he said that would be safer, but still...]

A panic room?

[In all her inter-dimensional wanderings, that's a phrase she hasn't heard. She presses her lips together. A panic room. Somewhere to go and seal yourself if something happened..?]

Why would the medical staff need a panic room?

There are more. For others. For the families. Some near the bedrooms. Hidden. The vents, they go there. Don't know why they're here. Don't know why the people who built this place made them, like they... expected bad things.

[ He runs his hand over the hidden door, starting to relax for the firs time during their whole conversation. ]

This one is just... best. For me.

[More of them. Maybe she can find them, now she knows what she's looking for. She shoots Joe a quick smile, tucking her hair behind her ears again and approaching the rows of bottles near the bed. Not too close, but she peers at them, noting the half empty one.]

Is this for you, too?

Yes. [ He walks to the little cupboard, stroking the glass lightly with his good hand for a moment before pointing to the ruined side of his face. ] Stops this. Can't get worse.

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