BONFIRE LIGHTS IN THE MIRROR OF SKY.

[wastemods]

WHO: Everyone in game.
WHAT: Our first event log!
WHERE: Anywhere in the world core.
WHEN: After the storms begin.
NOTES: Expect surreal horror and possible violence. Please use common sense when warning for other content.

Photo by drainrat

PREVIOUSLY, ON THE WASTEYARD.

The world remains divided into a land where either a hazy sun shines muted light above or a full moon casts silvery shadows below. They hang fixed, as if nailed in place, more like theatrical props than far-off heavenly bodies. And you can still see only one of them, depending on which side you arrived.

Meanwhile, the storm rages.

On both sides of the world, the rain starts and doesn't stop. The temperature drops, transforming torrential rain into icy snow. Gusts of wind become gales and spin detritus into shrapnel, man-made disasters turned natural. Shadows spin wildly—almost comically—in cyclones, before bursting into nothingness; if you aren't careful, the winds will snatch you, too. Out here, the only protection you might have is cooperating with each other.

Indoors, it's certainly warmer, but that just means water doesn't freeze. Buildings flood with chilly water that rises no matter how many stairs you climb. Architecture groans under the pressure of earthquakes, sending more water cascading through the ceiling before it disappears into cracks below. Is anywhere safe?

Well, yes. One place, splintered into many. The mirrors in ash-gray frames stand sentinel, scattered throughout the world. They emit warm light from the other side; sunlight spills moonside and moonlight reflects sunside. Water impossibly flows around and away from them, leaving behind untouched earth that stays still and silent. Standing in front of them gives you a respite, a tiny bubble of safety to wait out the worst.

INTO THE LABYRINTH.

Once you plunge indoors—unless you're really that determined to take your chances in the storm—you'll find every building with electricity experiencing a brownout. The overhead lights flicker and radios crackle with static, warbling broken news reports and tunes. They eavesdrop on strings of Morse code and private confessions on ham radio. If it's ever been broadcast on the airwaves, public or personal, you might hear it if you tune to the right station; you might even hear yourself, replaying a conversation you've had or will have. And sometimes the audio seems pointed, preternaturally so, as if tuned to your own thoughts and words.

Meanwhile, the waters continue to rise. The halls stretch long, seemingly infinite and twisted into knots. In some of them, no matter how far you walk, it seems like you never get any closer to the end; in others, you hit one dead end and can't stop hitting dead ends, no matter how many times you retrace your steps. None of that's unusual.

But if you delve deep into dark enough recesses (whether accidentally or intentionally), the world calms. The water recedes. Mirrors materialize in the dead ends, scratching out an "X" in the frame before your eyes. If you touch one, the glass falls away in ribbons, flowing like quicksilver and fleeing farther into the darkness. It reveals a hole on the other side, so deep a black it looks flat. Wherever it goes, it's so dark you can't see the other side.

And that's when you hear a sound like someone inhaling and then exhaling, steadily breathing around you. No...you feel it. A presence that has no form no matter how hard you look, but follows you in creaks and groans. It feels like being stalked by a monster in a maze.

Running from it only intensifies the feeling. Attacking makes it even worse. Calm acceptance is the only way to lessen or even neutralize it, but that's something you'll have to discover for yourself. In the end, there's no way to defeat it. You have to trust your instincts and believe it's there, despite the fact that you can't see or touch it.

CHANGING SIDES.

Elsewhere, it starts as a smell.

As the ground shudders and cracks, the stench of rot comes from the fissures. Mirrors and windows melt off walls, and a strong sense of vertigo comes and goes, like cresting waves. Looking out a window shows buildings and bridges breaking off of the labyrinth and drifting—or plummeting—away. They dissolve into nothingness as they vanish into the abyss, like they were bathed in acid. The already fragile world is falling apart.

It comes with a pervasive sense of wrongness, perhaps ironic in a world where everything is already wrong. But that's when it happens: You look up and realize you're no longer where you started. The sun or the moon, whichever you expected, is no longer in the sky. Instead, on the horizon lies its opposite.

It's a phenomenon unique to areas with high concentrations of ash mirrors and hallways, particularly when there's someone else on the other side. Sometimes the instability flips your positions, so one of you is now in the dimension where the other previously stood, while other times it drags you both together into the light of the sun or moon. It's like you resonate, magnets attracting or repelling each other in little pockets of peace.

THE LOCKED ROOM.

Amidst the chaos, as the world shifts and there's no telling where or when you are, you slip through a crack. Or maybe you're a weirdo who climbed through the hole left behind a mirror.

In either case, the fissure is both literal and metaphorical, influenced by the unstable world and your actions. Maybe you step through a door, crawl through a crevice, close your eyes, or do something else to take you between here and there. Whatever the case, you find yourself in a room unlike any others you've seen in this distorted world. Well...once you look closer, anyway. On the surface, it may just be another kitchen, ballroom, or cellar.

But in these rooms, it doesn't matter which side of the divide you were on. Not only because you can't see whatever lights the sky, but because they lie between dimensions. There are no windows and no doors; you'll only find walls the same mottled gray as everything else in this place. Attacking them gets you nowhere. Any damage is there and gone, like the erased moments between flashes of a strobe light. There is no easy way out.

But there is a mirror. Hairline cracks run through its surface, shattering a single reflection into multitudes. Set in an ash-gray frame like so many others, it's left somewhere in the room, whether hanging on a wall, haphazard on the floor, or leaning against some furniture. It emanates the skin-prickling sensation of being watched. Turning away doesn't help; you can feel it gazing at your back.

The haunted feeling only subsides when you stare back. And you should stare back, because these mirrors are your escape route. Staring into them will reveal someone on the other side with the same predicament. Surprisingly, you can hear each other when you speak. It even comes translated if you don't speak the same language, although your mouths still sync to your native tongues. It's like a poorly dubbed movie.

Touching the mirror gives you the impression it's somehow leeching off you, trying to fill those cracks. Try to pull your hand away and you'll find it's a little difficult, like unsticking your tongue from a cold pole. Moreover, you'll feel a compulsion to tell the truth, to do something real.

THE GREAT ESCAPE.

For those of you left behind where the sun and moon still shine, keep an eye on your own mirrors, especially broken ones that seem to be influenced by something invisible. They display a room that most decidedly isn't your own, acting more like a window than a mirror. And whoever's inside, trapped, might call on you for help. You won't be able to hear them, though, so how are you with body language?

Meanwhile, for escapees...

No matter how you escape the rooms, you might notice something a little strange once you get back to the labyrinth. Well, stranger. For a brief window of time (one that grows longer with each room you escape), you'll discover the sun and moon occupy the same sky. The area you've entered is a temporary nexus of sorts, one that fuses the dimensions into something that almost seems stable.

It feels right, but the world isn't strong enough to hold itself together for long.

( COMPANION OOC POST )

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Comments

will graham | hannibal | ota (one closed prompt, rest are open)

[wontgraham]

STORM (mirror or sun-side shenanigans edition). {open, feel free to tweak as-needed for your reply}

[ To say Will's luck here has been 'bad' doesn't really do it justice. Loneliness feels like an extra presence after this long — and he can't even measure how long it's been with anything further than how many times he's gotten too exhausted to keep going, and had to snatch sleep while hiding under a rusted table or inside a car with no engine and half its doors missing.

He still hasn't met anyone in person. And the closest he'd gotten, in fact, the one time Will had become aware of the different spheres here — sun and moon in their respective mirrors — they'd both moved. The tease of it still aches in Will's chest.

Not that he has a lot of time to worry about that right now. Sun-side now, Will gave up outrunning the rising water after five floors, and instead went sideways through the office facsimile he'd ended up in, wading waist-deep through frigid rainwater before he'd found a mirror.

He'd gone towards it out of instinct before he'd even processed the unusual fact that it's...ringed by the water like the epicenter of an invisible swimming pool. Will steps out of the wall of rainwater and, while he doesn't dry off instantly — his shoes squelch water with each step — the floor by the mirror stays dry.

He climbs right up onto the counter — because of course it's hung over a wall-length countertop — and sits on it, side pressed to the glass so he can keep an eye on the mirror and the room at large. ]

CLOSED. {closed; for ben}

[ Will is in the labyrinth. Or that's what it had felt like before — now it's one long passageway that ends at yet another mirror. He reaches out a hand to touch it on instinct, remembering the protection of before. Which means he gets to watch the mirror rip itself apart, melting away like liquid metal. It leaves a cavernous hole behind itself, a doorway with no door and no sign of what's beyond it.

Will thinks of carving his name into a mirror twenty-three cycles of sleeping ago, and wonders if this is it speaking to him again. ]

What's your name? [ he asks, and the only answer is the drawing sound of something formless breathing behind him. Will's own breath rattles too-loud in his ears. He places one hand on the empty frame of the mirror. It's smooth, not the ragged texture he'd expect from broken glass fragmenting away.

Safe to touch. Will leans his head in and sees nothing beyond it, but he can't hear the breathing anymore. It's like there's— nothing, except the beating presence of whatever's in the dark is unmistakable.

Will drags himself through.

*

Another mirror. He can't feel surprised; realizes he'd expected this, by now. Will comes forward immediately, and only thinks that maybe it's more than his own instinct pulling him by the time he's touching fingers to the cracked surface. Will thinks of Braille and wonders if the spider-webbing means anything, or if it's truly random. Is anything here random? Or is it intentional chaos? ]

What happens if I carve into this one? [ Will asks softly. He's starting speaking out loud to himself more, in the absence of anyone except the endless setting to overhear.

Except... it's not so endless anymore, is it? Not in this closed room. Will glances around — the hair on the back of his neck prickles when he exposes it fully to the mirror — and then turns back to it, fingers still gently against it.

Until he sees a form he recognizes. ] —Ben!

STORM (radio feedback edition). {open, could happen sun or moon side, feel free to add whatever twist you'd like in your reply}

[ The storm is full of snow and ice, by now, and Will dusts his shoulders and hair off as he tries to drag the door shut. It doesn't fit the frame, not quite, and instead he turns and heads deeper into the building, leave it clattering in the wind behind himself.

There's — radios in here. More than usual. They line each piece of furniture in varying states of water damage. Drifts of snow catch at Will's ankles and then his knees as he wades deeper through what appears to be an office.

A familiar voice has Will freezing, stock-still, and straightening up to listen.

Just there— through the crackling, through the howling wind coming in the window by his head, it's himself from barely two months ago. 'I already did.'

He knows what comes next. He knows it must be the radios. He knows it's not actually Doctor Lecter here, but when the rest follows in the other man's voice — 'Fate and circumstance have returned us back to this moment, when the teacup shatters,' — and is accompanied by the sound of the wind breaking something glass in the room with him, Will acts on instinct.

He grabs the nearest blunt object — it appears to be a portable hole-puncher — and runs, breathing hard, no longer feeling the cold that's turning his fingertips white and his nose red. ]

ESCAPE ROOM. {open}

[ The next time — or the time after that, or the one after that — that Will appears in the windowless room with just a mirror for company, he didn't dive into the back of the labyrinth mirror. No, this time he fell in, accidental, and it takes him a moment to orient himself despite having done this before.

He's still damp from the rainwater. That's...frustrating. Anyone arriving second and looking into their mirror will see a man seated cross-legged in front of his own mirror, staring determinedly into it with a slightly frown. Hope that's not disconcerting.

If Will arrives second, however, he wastes no time in checking his own mirror for whoever's on the other side. Enjoy a man in damp flannel and jeans suddenly staring through at you. Maybe the dusting of snow in his hair makes him look more harmless.]


{ooc; will has a plotting post over here, if you want to plan something in particular! also feel free to talk to me over at itrhymes. i ❤️ contrived character drama so lmk if you have deep desires for nonsense.}

once more, but with feeling

[fumitory]

( at this point, Ben would confidently wager the timespan of having spent genuine days here in this over-exposed, dulled-out grayscape under a hazy, lackluster sun. not that the transition from the light-intensity of an overcast day to the dark interior of a structure was any significant one, but having to change from day to night became a bit exhausting in its own way.

but they've swapped — himself and Will, the man in the mirror, the voice through a radio, always half a connection. seen but not heard, heard but invisible. that's what they get for giving in to their equal yearning to mesh into each other's spaces; the world flips their settings, instead, and Ben stumbles down into a scene of nighttime, illuminated in a vibrant, silvery glow.

but their mirror fell apart, and Ben has caught just a glimpse of Will entering the void it had left behind, before his own mirror had withered to nothing.

Ben couldn't do it. it whispered to him in voices that burned so familiarly as to ache, and it had just taken Will, too. he nearly crawled in with the hope to follow the other man, but — something about that hole in the wall made the blood in his veins run cold.

pulling himself away was the single hardest thing he's done since arriving here.

and Ben immediately questions his trepidation after five minutes and putting a fair amount of distance between himself and the wall that seemed eager to consume whatever semblance of a connection Ben had made with someone. if it wanted to encourage their connection, wouldn't it finally let them through onto the same plane? topsy-turvy this world may be, but must it really be so contrary all of the time?

that's when the looming fear creaks over Ben, like shadows and structures stretching up and making him feel strangely minute. he thinks, perhaps, he he had just sullied the one open doorway that they had both been looking for.

damn it.

he's thrown out into the wild storm, the one he had been eager to avoid; it rushes up to him like an insistent child, slamming around his shins and capturing him. Ben wades through, water splashing up and tickling his face — he has to find shelter, now, from the storm raging on as it fills every enclosed space. it's a race against this bizarre temperament of his surroundings, pitch black sky and blanched landscape under a still-visible moon, despite the rain and wind.

when Ben climbs for higher ground, he finds a point inside a loft space where a new mirror lies; the water laps sleepily around a circular perimeter, half-hearted in its attempts, as if the floor were at an incline here. Ben clamors for it, where the water doesn't reach, and lets himself collapse onto hands and knees in this bubble of solitude.

another mirror. Ben sighs and leans his back against it — it's warm, and that is the most surprising thing about this current situation. he thinks he wants to turn and look into it, but he wants to just rest for a moment. another person suddenly gone, Ben thrust back into isolation, and now shoved into a new layer of this place. it's exhausting.

the warmth feels...familiar. it twists the tissue and muscle behind his sternum, wistful and nostalgic. it's a warmth not unlike Peter...

and with that warmth, an ember of wanting glows, against the exposed cold air of being alone.

Ben's hearing changes — like pressure releasing in his ears, and suddenly, the warmth has gone. he opens his eyes and it's nearly bright in comparison; when he looks around, the room is bare, exposed concrete of some sort lining the four walls around him, and the ceiling and floor connecting it all. he shifts suddenly, breathing audibly. it's all changed again.

there's a very out of place vintage couch, a tall mirror stood up against the wall, and a few other meager furniture bits. Ben stares, his head swimming, as he sits on the floor.

oh, what new, fresh hell is all of this? )

[wontgraham]

[ Ben doesn't hear him, of course. Will should know that rule by now. He presses his hand more fully against the glass, a thrill of alarm ringing up to his shoulder at the sensation of pressing against broken glass, but the mirror doesn't shatter under the light pressure.

Ben sits against the mirror, blocking out the majority of the water-logged storm next to him, and Will sighs. He's leaned over an ancient-looking sink just to interact with the mirror in this room, but there's...not much else to indicate the sort of room he's in. Will looks around, skull prickling with primal warning every time he isn't staring directly at the mirror.

Yellow-gray walls. Water stains, except they trickle up from the floor, beads of water and all. No windows or doors. Just the mirror.

And a relative lack of disrupted, melting, or otherwise nonsensical furniture. Will turns the faucet knobs and can't pretend he's surprised when no water comes out. So when he looks back up and the room beyond the mirror has changed, Will isn't quite expecting it; just a subconscious sense of wrongness that's been triggered more often than not by the scenery here. He blinks. And then realizes that Ben is turning, now, towards the mirror...

Will does the first thing he can think of, and that's to reach forward again, one hand pressed against the mirror, the cracks a familiar pattern under his palm.

Why would he speak just yet, when he knows Ben won't hear him like this, anyway? ]

[fumitory]

Jesus—

( Ben clamors away from the mirror in a burst of movement, twisting and landing on his backside as he'd been sitting. he sighs, breathes, shoulders slumping with relief as his eyes settle on the image of Will over there, on the other end of this mirror.

needless to say, Will's presence was a little bit unexpected! )

Scared the devil out of me... ( Ben grumbles to himself, lower than his typical speaking range, said only to himself. he doesn't know that he can be heard, doesn't think he can speak to Will now that they're back to being separated by mirrors again. Ben hadn't been able to call to Will as he watched him slip away into the threshold, certainly.

he pushes himself up onto his knees, crouched to look through the fine cracks of their new means of seeing one another, and while there is an undeniable glow of distress in his expression...Ben is far more relieved to see Will is all right.

(then again, Ben can't help but feel that he has to hope it's Will... he doesn't like the way the mirror makes his face look uncannily segmented, just out of alignment. who knows what he's truly looking at anymore.) )

[wontgraham]

[ Will's jerked back from his mirror before he can register what startled him. The movement wasn't enough - while staring at someone's back, there's always the realization that you have the upper hand, that you're the one spying on the other, that they might resent it once they notice. Ben's shock isn't what shocks Will in turn, no...

...It's that he can hear him while he sees him. Will stares at Ben - and then spares a moment for his hand, which seems to ache after losing contact with the mirror so quickly - and back up at Ben. ]

Who knew I was an accomplished exorcist. [ The irony is completely lost on Will, of course, as he stands in his bare and water-damaged room and stares back at a very startled Ben. They're at different heights compared to their mirrors, and their rooms are different while still being mostly empty. The same jarring wrongness of the rest of the world is here, but then...

...Why is there such a pull towards this mirror above all the others so far? ]

[fumitory]

( to be quite blunt about it, Will's words leave Ben looking as though he's seen a ghost, rather than a familiar face. momentarily, Ben's pulse skips up so fast, it feels as though reality dilates around them. Ben simultaneously goes obscenely expressive, and still. he can't tell if he's been caught, or if his entire life is one big joke.

it's...usually a joke.

literally, genuinely, the only thing here that saves Ben's dignity is — being struck with the boomerang awareness when it finally occurs to him, that he heard Will speak through the mirror.

Ben rushes up to the mirror, pulled over to sit on his legs, shifting the pane of glass in his hands by its dull frame, leaning in as if to share a secret. his eyes move animatedly over the mirror, over Will's face, incredulous. )

I can hear you— you can hear me. ( manifesting the revelations, cementing them. they can communicate like this; Ben trails blunt fingertips over the cracks like thin veins in the mirror's face, which drift from Will's shoulder, and up, and away. ) I'd love to say we finally found the happy medium... ( haha, get it? medium? it's— really not the time for that. )

But...I think I'm trapped in here. ( Ben doesn't know how he ended up here, and as he scans the room from over his shoulder one more time, he verifies to himself that there is certainly no door, no window, not even a tacky little cinematic air duct. he can't decide if he's relieved for that, or not. ) —What about you?

[wontgraham]

[ Fear. Personal fear. Will's dry smile flattens out completely; the sense of overstepping some unseen boundary is so powerful he feels the instinct to step back from his own mirror. He forgets to look away from the eye contact, curious in some appallingly morbid way.

Will stays at his sink, though, watching as Ben scrambles - low down, to get a look at his own mirror. ]

...Trapped. Again, yeah. [ Will's expression crinkles with self-deprecating humor, because...yeah, everyone's trapped. Been trapped. That's the exhausting part. ]

If it's just the one mirror in each of our rooms, I guess...this is it. [ A dry swallow. ] Just the two of us. [ And Will reaches forward again, to that broken field of his mirror. It mars Ben's recognizable face into something just slightly alien.

The ripples under his palm and fingers seem to widen, or perhaps pull together, as Will flattens his hand against the mirror. As before, this feels oddly right.

Musing, almost to himself: ] The other one broke on its own. But this one's...stubborn.

[fumitory]

( the earnest eye contact...helps, surprisingly. the relief that swells to see Will again, after the mirrors had crumbled to nothing, is nearly sharp; Ben can't not stare back, can't keep his eyes anywhere except on this cracked image of the other. like a hunger, it keeps Ben's complete attention.

the answer only confirms what Ben expected, though he would have hoped that Will wasn't here under the same restraint. the room — which, as Ben designates in his mind, feels instinctually more like an entity than a place. doesn't it feel like they're being observed?

doesn't it feel as though they were brought here, them in particular, for a reason?

Ben stares openly while Will pushes a hand out, spreading wide and flat against the mirror; usually, he might avert his gaze, keep from gawking, but there really is nothing usual about this. any of it. Ben swallows and listens, intent on Will's observations. he has a way of commentating that Ben has never encountered — he validates that instinct, that this place is alive, some how, and goes so far as to...seem to understand it, to some extent. )

Stubborn, or...

( Ben reaches his own hand out, under a frightfully sentimental whim — if he touches the glass with his fingertips, as he does now, will he feel the heat of Will's palm? are they that close, or impossibly far? ) Perhaps, it's trying to fuse back together?

[wontgraham]

[ Ben reaches out, in a movement Will's seen him take before — to write his name and simplified questions on a mirror — and Will stared at the points where their fingertips line up. It feels significant, it feels like this is right, and it gives Will an odd thrill to see their postures starting to mimic what a real mirror would show Will right now—

Nothing happens. The teacup, already shattered, doesn't pull itself together. But...no. Will feels an ache from inside himself, or— from the mirror itself? Will's mouth is open in a wordless question for several long seconds, staring down at their hands, before he finally looks back up at Ben. ]

Fuse itself? Or fuse the world it's in? The skies are each half of a whole that never shifts... [ Will's sky and Ben's sky; always different, even after they'd switched. Will swallows and then his expression finally creases into pointed confusion, a sort of aching curiosity. ]

Does it feel...like you don't want to pull your hand away? Like you shouldn't want to pull your hand away?

STORM (radio feedback edition)

[snikthatch]

[ As the ice storm grows in fury, Logan drops down from the telephone pole where he'd ridden out the flood, skidding down a stack crumpled cars and dumpsters cast up by the waters like discarded toys. The wind bites and claws at his skin, his frostbitten palms aching and burning. Normally he'd be able to shrug it off, but this place is anything but normal.

He wraps the meagre warmth of his hoodie tighter around the shredded and bloodied remains of his uniform and heads for the nearest building with an open door. From the outside it appears to be some sort of warehouse. Inside, however, it turns out to be laid out like a set of offices, snow already drifting deep around the discarded furniture. Radios of all kinds cover every surface.

Logan pushes through the snow, breath clouding around him, eyeing the shadows that twitch and shudder in the corners. A brief burst of static makes him wince. Voices ripple out of rusted speakers, unfamiliar at first, then a fragment of one he knows -- prepare the test subject -- and he's about to turn to seek it out when he hears hurried footsteps wading through the snow, frantic panicked breathing, and someone collides with him hard enough to send him crashing back into a snowbank. ]

[wontgraham]

[ It turns out that when Will finally does come up on a living, breathing other person, he's woefully unprepared to actually use that makeshift weapon he's been carrying for the past unknown amount of time of moving at a dead sprint. (Presumably he hasn't been running long, since food packed in aluminum foil isn't the most energizing. It's just that time means a lot less, like this.)

He hits what feels like a solid cement wall, but which falls away from him way too fast and with far too little dust for that to be the case. Will's momentarily dazed out of his panic, even if he regains his grip on that slightly faster than he regains his balance. ]

—Shit. [ Give him a second, his usual inability to shut off his weird commentary is still coming back online. ] Who are you?

[ Will's got zero idea how useless the blunt weapon he's brandishing is, so brandish it he does, standing over whoever he just knocked over. ]

[snikthatch]

[ To salve his pride, Logan decides in the second or two he's lying in the snow under someone's desk that the only reason this guy managed to run into him was because of how this universe is messing up his senses and making him feel like crap. That's all.

He pushes himself up into a sitting position, snow packed into the seams of his hoodie, wetting the torn edges of his costume and clinging to his hair, and glares up at the guy who hit him. Who appears to be some kind of elementary school teacher-type holding onto a bit of office equipment like it's Excalibur. ]

I don't think you get to be the one askin' questions, bub. [ Logan hauls himself to his feet, still eyeing the stranger. ] What the hell were you runnin' from?

is logan wearing the mask part of his uniform still, or how 'torn' are we talking

[wontgraham]

[ Will spends a moment thinking about how the flaky snow all over him is really ruining this guy's glare, before he remembers that he himself probably looks the same if not worse. Will's still got a flannel shirt and light jacket from home, but both layers have their own share of rips from crashing through ever-shifting scenery here, and neither feels warm enough in the current weather. He's shivering even as he takes in the other's disheveled appearance.

At the question, Will smiles, an expression that doesn't reach his eyes. He's pale and sweating, and the expression itself is a little uneven, so it probably looks less than reassuring. ] Memories.

[ He looks down at the improvised weapon (school supply) in his hand. If he's worried about getting tackled by this short linebacker in exchange for having just knocked him over, Will doesn't look it - although his breathing's not really evening out. ] I hope. [ Since the alternative is that Hannibal's here, in this ever-changing setting, presumably feeding off the other kidnapped inhabitants.

Will looks back at the other, forehead pinching. ] Not a lot of options for clothes here?

[ Yeah, he means the yellow spandex, bub, not the hoodie. ]

for the record: nope, he's got it pushed back

[snikthatch]

[ Logan scowls at him for that remark. He doesn't miss the pace of Will's heartbeat or the smell of fear and sweat on him. Guy looks shaken by more than just running through the snow in the middle of an Escher nightmare. ]

Didn't exactly get to pick out my travellin' suit before I ended up here.

[ His gaze ticks down to the hole-puncher in Will's hand. ]

Plannin' on stickin' someone with that thing?

o7

[wontgraham]

[ Will probably had a fear-funk to him before the radio incident, but now? Enjoy, Logan. He's faking zero percent of feeling and looking...slightly left of reality right now, though he's doing his best to claw his way back to it.

Getting asked reasonable questions by a guy who looks a little ticked off is helping with that, honestly. Will blinks and looks down at the hole puncher again. He'd like to just toss it aside like it doesn't matter at all, but now that he's holding a weapon - no matter how potentially-flimsy - he'd rather hang onto it. His shoulders round, though, and he sighs heavily through his nose. ]

I had been. [ At least he's...honest. Another, slightly shaky sigh as he takes a look behind himself, and then behind the other man. ] Someone I used to know.

Looks like he isn't actually here right now, though.

[snikthatch]

[ Logan narrows his eyes a little at Will, nostrils flaring as he takes in his scent. Between the way he's talking and the smell of stress on him (layered underneath the scent of dogs and metal), he's starting to think this guy might be playing a few cards short of a full deck.

At his mention of the man he was running from, Logan takes a look back over his own shoulder, then raises his eyebrows. ]

There are a lotta things here that don't make sense. [ He sighs out a cloudy breath and brushes some snow off his arm. ] Try not to think about it. Or him, I guess. Then they won't bother you so much.

[wontgraham]

[ Well, that's a useless thing to say. Will's expression flattens with annoyance, eyebrows briefly pinching in towards each other, but this is low-ranking for possible bad responses to him being...him. He moves on, and shrugs. ] Seems like something here doesn't want me to forget.

[ Will was turned away from his last question, but that's not stopping a second one. He looks the other man up and down — muscular, but not posturing like he's ready to fight — and then nods to his left, indicating the world at large more than anything in particular. ] What about you?

Heard anything...familiar?

escape room.

[sorrypardonyesthankyou]

[A disappointing fact, perhaps: Ruth doesn't notice him at all.

She's soaking wet, hair plastered to her cheeks and neck, a (mercifully dry) child's sleeping bag thrown around her shoulders in hopes of getting her teeth to stop chattering. This time, she's ended up in what might've been a nice bathroom at some point, sitting at the edge of a tub a foot or two away from the mirror.

And the mirror is nowhere close to her first priority, having tried to call through it a minute or two earlier. Ruth's abandoned it in favour of pulling her blindfold off and wringing out the water into the empty bathtub.]

[wontgraham]

[ Will's second, then. And it looks like it's just a pair of them — again. Is this a game?

He comes close to his own mirror, which is leaned against the wall but not hung on it. He has to sit down, cross-legged and with wet denim cold against his legs, in order to see the entirety of the other room.

She doesn't look at him, but then, Will hasn't made much noise yet. Will stares at the back of a heat of soaked, black hair and then goes ahead and speaks first. ]

...I wonder if we've already talked.

[sorrypardonyesthankyou]

[Ruth pauses, lifting her head at the sound of the voice. Someone on the other side of the mirror, she guesses--someone who just showed up.]

...Yes sorry. I think, yes, we have.

[She doesn't recall a name, but even with the slight warping of the sound that comes out of the walkie talkies, she's fairly certain she knows this one. He was the crazy guy, wasn't he? He sounds a little like the crazy guy.

Ruth moves like she's going to turn around, then pauses. With a mirror between them, two rooms connected only barely, she's safe--but that doesn't mean she's in the mood to walk someone through the reality of her face.]

Are you pardon, do you get scared easily? Thank you.

[wontgraham]

[ Well, it's hard to forget a vocal tic quite like that. Will's definitely spoken to her before. She'd said something about powers and mutants and...all sorts of things that would have sounded impossible to Will back home.

But having been living in an impossible place for the past few weeks, Will's a little more willing to believe these new things piling on top of the setting itself.

He still doesn't know her name, though, a fact that's quickly and easily forgotten when she doesn't quite make the turn to look behind herself.

...When she'd said cane in that initial broadcast, Will had assumed she needed it to walk with an injury. But there's another common type of cane, isn't there? ] ...Is it your eyes? [ And truth be told, something cold settles in his stomach at the idea. He thinks of the nurse back at the hospital when he'd come in to consult, the way her eyes had been punctured and squeezed like molded jello.

--He hesitates just a second, but he's absolutely not about to share that. ] Wouldn't have been that good at my job back home if I did. Try me.

[ The irony here, of course, is that he absolutely was emotionally wrecked by his job because he was scared all the time. But that was only possible because he's stubborn to the point of ludicrous decisions, so: here they are. ]

[sorrypardonyesthankyou]

No. Pardon. [And since he says try me, she does, turning to face the mirror and carefully walking back over to it. Hers is a face like anyone else's might be, save for the smooth, even skin between her eyebrows and cheekbones. The blindfold, she sets on the edge of the sink to dry.] Never has been.

[Deadpan or genuine: you decide. Until she knows a person, she tends to let her words tumble awkwardly in between.]

What, sorry, yes-- was your job?

[wontgraham]

[ Oh, wow, she...meant that 'no'. Will's expression - not that she can see it, he realizes belatedly - is relatively still, though it flattens out in shock. There's a flicker of something unwelcome, but it's a memory; that nurse, the one with the eyes gouged out by a man's thumbs. Will swallows that down, and then...yeah, this is fine. Weird but fine.

Definitely more welcome than most of what this world's thrown at him so far. ]

A professor. [ A beat. ] For the FBI. [ Another, slightly longer beat while he tries to decide if it's useful to hold back, or more useful to be bluntly honest.

...They should probably tally everyone's skills together for a better idea of what they're working with. ] And-- something like a homicide detective, for them.

[ And then he's hitting on a realization, as she walks over to the mirror... ] Did you even...know you could see other people through the mirrors here? Did anyone tell you?

[sorrypardonyesthankyou]

[It's refreshing, not having to explain any further than this. Too many people have responded to I don't have eyes with what happened to them? lately for her tastes. By comparison, the momentary sensation of somebody staring--imagined, since she doubts she could read his mind through a mirror even if she tried--is tolerable.

(And it's gone better than the last time someone caught sight of her full face.)]

Didn't...no, sorry. Didn't know they had professors. [Quietly. She's not sure what to think of that. Professors, she's willing to trust--the FBI, not so much.

Makes it almost a relief to have to answer more questions about...everything. The seeing-not-seeing thing.] No pardon. Thank you, no. Not until I got trapped.

[wontgraham]

At the Academy, they do. For specialized training and education. [ Will doesn't sound terribly proud, just matter of fact with the ragged edge of someone who's a little unsure just how long he can expect to keep talking for.

Of course, last time Will was in a room like this, he didn't end up separated from the other person until they both got to leave. Maybe these rooms aren't like the rest of the world, and at the mercy of completely random whims. ]

Okay. [ He nods at her answer before remembering that's useless. Odd, to realize he's going to have to verbalize everything he wants to broadcast. He's quiet for a moment just to mull that over.

When he speaks again, he may sound closer — he's right up near his own mirror, shuffled closer and still seated in front of the low view of it. ] They're doing more than letting us see now, though. This is only the second time I've— heard someone through a mirror.

[ He touches his own. Just as in the first room, it feels almost...staticky with attraction to his hand. Softly but abruptly, because he thinks he saw hesitation earlier: ] Don't like law enforcement?