A Bloody Valentine: The Investigation

[etcircenses]

Who| Those selected for the lab search Mission
What| Capitol-soldiers enact a bit of rebellion to find out top secret info regarding what the offworlders a really for... and find a little more that was bargained for.
Where| A lab near to the Romulus Hotel
When| Congruent with the dance auction
Warnings/Notes| Violence, gore, body horror, descriptions of dead bodies in various states of decomposition and mutilation

A quick stop in the gift shop means a nice big hat for each to duck under and pass by Peackeepers. Hopefully. Laughing together in affected Capitol accents and acting like a natural born citizen may well be the best way to sneak by. After that, it's off into the night, just down the block. There's no clear entrance save one door in a back alley, the color blended to match the wall and make it unnoticeable. However, the red graffiti stating, You're playing with fire, and the dark freezer truck at the end of the alley, do both help to bring it to attention. There's some serious business locks on the door except... someone's put a stopper slip of wood in there, keeping it so anyone can sneak in. Odd. You'd think with a place so important looking as this, those working there would be a little more careful.

The inside is just as stark white as the outside, only more so thanks to the bright white lights that shine from the ceiling giving the whole place a glow. Anyone really familiar with the process of Avoxing may find the look of it all to be very familiar. It only gets worse as the group progresses down the sterile halls, through one door, then another, until finally reaching a room with hazmat suits on a rack, masks set by them. The next door is steel, and upon it's closing, a sterilizing spray is unleashed. Only then does the final steel door open.

The first thing to hit is the smell. Only a few times have even the arenas smelled like this. It's the singular warning to the horror that's to be witnessed as the lights slowly turn on, running down to the end of the massive room. It may once have been a building used for the Avoxing of criminals but no longer.

For rows and rows do the metal tables go on, upon them, corpses in very state of decay, dissection, and dismemberment. The bodies have all manner of injuries: burns, bites, stab wounds, more, all injuries that could be managed within an arena. The bodies are yours; the offworlders, the former Tributes, those who have died.

Two bodies of the same person lain out together like twins to be compared can be seen. Others are opened up or half way through the processes of being stitched back together. Some of the corpses have been incredibly preserved, withered and hollow-cheeked, but still like they could simply be asleep. The quarter quell has been running for nearly four years and there's a little piece of every offworlder left from it.

There are great machines of unknown purpose, some appearing perfectly innocuous, others looking like something from a torture chamber. There are separated glass rooms with bottled chemicals, walls with giant tubes of liquid with bodies kept within, and another wall where the bodies appear cryogenically frozen.

Down at the end in a steel room with clear forcefield, is a separate area for those dead with a tendency to get back up. Desks are scattered through out, many filled with documents, hastily scrawled notes, and journals-- no photos of loved ones here, but there may be something that tells of what exactly went on here.

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[etcircenses]

You've got less than an hour to investigate this place but who could really blame you for looking less for clues than the remains of those you've lost. Or maybe even yourself...

[occasio]

Getting into the building isn't as difficult as Phi would have imagined it. The Capitolites aren't very observant over who comes and goes from their parties, but the fact that the door to this building is left propped open nearly makes her turn around and walk away from this whole mess. Still, curiosity and the need to know win out over whatever hesitance she might have had.

The hazmat suits are familiar enough to have her thoughts drifting back towards the Nonary Game... just in time to be met with a room full of bodies. She can't say it's not familiar, and the smell is certainly... something. Phi fights back a wince as she heads into the room, browsing and examining the corpses as if they didn't bother her at all. They were only dead bodies. A lot of dead bodies, and the sheer number of them is overwhelming. But in that end, that's all they are, and there's no use getting upset about what's already happened.

At least, she tells herself that until she stumbles upon her own corpse. It's a bit more eerie, staring your own dead body in the face and remembering the moment of death depicted by the mangled torso and entrails stuffed back into the body cavity. Eventually, she pulls her attention away, only to have it fall on more familiar faces. Several of Kyle, of Luna, of Akane, of Sigma. She freezes at the last one, something about it not connecting in the way it should. She has the urge for one desperate moment to go back to the house. To make sure he's still there, alive and well.

[infinitemayonnaise]

"This doesn't bother you?" Nitou's poking around some himself, true, but he is super bothered by everything. Incredibly bothered. Will probably be bothered for days after this. "I mean, what the hell is all of this?"

[occasio]

Phi nearly jumps at the sound of the voice next to her. Her head snaps over a little too fast, and there's a half second of a startled look before her features smooth out again.

"Dunno," she decides to answer the second question first. Her gaze pans over the room, but purposely avoids looking at the bodies that she was just staring at. "A bunch of corpses, looks like. At least a few of them are from the last arena." She only knows that hers is for certain--and probably Luna's too, but she can wager that some of the others are as well.

Her thoughts trail back to the man's first question, as reluctant as she is to address it. For all for her outward calm, she's not feeling as aloof after seeing Sigma's bodies lying there. "I don't see the point in getting worked up over it. They're already dead. We can't do anything about that."

[sociopathicwolf]

For the most part, Derek is doing pretty much the same. The bodies are only worth noting as far as what it means that they're all here - and anyway, he's a little bit preoccupied. It's strange, adjusting to working with someone who isn't Chuck - but maybe not as much as it would have been if it wasn't Phi. If he didn't already trust her at least enough to have given her the information in the first place. He knows Chuck isn't happy about not being here with him, but they couldn't risk both of them going on this.

And the good part about having spent almost a life time working on being too stupid to be noticed means that if Chuck's out at the dance, people will assume Derek was there, too, even if they don't actually remember seeing him.

But he's not preoccupied enough not to notice everything going on around him, and he stops when Phi slows. He follows her gaze to what's caught her attention, and then hesitates when he sees her body, looking like it was mauled by an animal. Looking remarkably like some of the bodies in his own arena, and that thought settles uneasily with him.

Before he can pick it apart, though, she's moving on, looking at other bodies. At the Gamemaker's body, and there's a low growl before he can help himself. Before he remembers that she thinks he's her friend, and he cuts himself off. Instead he waits, keeping an eye out while he gives her a moment.

[occasio]

The growls catches in Phi's ear, breaking the trance that she found herself in. She'd almost forgotten that Derek was with her, and though she's not sure if she trusts him one hundred percent, she does feel a bit of comfort in knowing they're in this together.

It's not difficult to figure out what he was growling at, not after the strained relations between her District staff and her Gamemaker friend. She's half tempted to let Derek know that they're both on the same side--but that would defeat the purpose of Phi being here. She's supposed to be acting as Sigma's proxy. Keeping him out of hot water for the moment, after his brush with treason. Other people knowing where his loyalties really lie was the whole reason she nearly lost him.

She settles on a compromise. "He's not a bad guy. A bit thick sometimes, but..." She shrugs, as if the rest of her sentence is obvious. There's a pause as she looks back to the bodies again, wishing there was some way to cover up all the dead faces that she recognizes.

TW for body descriptions? Do we even really need to given the nature of this log? Oh well TW anyway.

[revvinguptheharley]

Harleen still keeps asking herself why she's here. She isn't a detective, she's barely a doctor! So why did she take that message and run with it? Why is she sneaking out of a Mandatory Capitol party to snoop around.

But all those questions are obliterated as she stares at the room full of mangled, mutilated and in some cases mutated corpses before her.

Eyes wide in silent horror she has to wrap both hands around her mouth to keep from screaming. She's frozen stiff in place for a solid minute as her eyes scan over so many faces and forms. Some familiar to her, some not. Her heart lurches when she sees her own rictus face, frozen in a twisted smile. The skin is gaunt and stretched thin like wet paper over the body but preserved. The eyes are gone giving her former body a ghoulish appearance. She doesn't even need to guess which death this was as the lower half of that body lays on the same table sliced cleanly in half by a scythe.

For a moment her mind is flooded with the memories of that death at the hands of someone who had trusted her only to be driven insane. Then another death at the hands of someone who forgave her for taking advantage of their condition. A single shot to the head to alleviate the pain of a thousand little cuts bleeding all over her body. Another body still with it's head twisted around in the wrong way and cocked to the side due to a snapped neck.

Why would they even keep these? What purpose does it serve?!

Others now, friends of hers, enemies, people she's personally killed. There's Shepard's body missing chunks from a pack of raptors ripping her to shreds. Her face goes a sickly shade of green as she finally lays eyes on the bodies that have haunted her since her third arena.

Diana, Bruce, Tim, Jason, Eddie, Barbara. All from her world all in various states of decay.

Unable to maintain her composure anymore she rushes to a sink and promptly throws up, shuddering as she grips the edge of it. It takes her another couple minutes before a trembling hand reaches for the faucet and turns it on washing the mess down the drain. She couldn't leave evidence like that behind or they'd all be on these slabs soon.

[infinitemayonnaise]

"You got it out? Make sure you get it all out, better just to do it all at once." Nitou really sounds like he's about to be sick, too. But he is trying, trying very hard to pretend like he isn't as bothered as he really is.

[revvinguptheharley]

"T-there wasn't much." She wheezes softly, leaning in to gulp some of the water down and wash the taste out of her mouth. When she straightens up she dabs at her lips with a paper towel and tucks it in her purse to avoid leaving it behind as well.

"W...we've seen worse." She adds trying to calm herself down with logic when this was an emotionally charged moment. She needed to stay calm, time was short and there was probably too much to see.

"Thanks." She added weakly casting an apologetic glance at Nitou.

[infinitemayonnaise]

"Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!" Someone might want to tell Nitou to shut up. He'd been good and quiet on the way in, but now? Now, this is a little much for him to take in. He's looking queasy, and the sight of everything is just freaking him out. It doesn't help that he's just recognized one of Haruto's over there on the other side of the room--and was that one of his?. And another of Haruto's over there? "What the hell is this?! What kind of sicko just keeps this stuff lying around?!"

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn crosses over to him in a few brisk strides, grabbing his shoulder. "Hold your tongue," she advises, her voice sharp, "and if you need to be sick, do it where it will not be seen. Will you bring the whole Capitol down on our heads?"

She looks pale and queasy herself, though. Passing her own body, oddly enough, isn't what got her - she's imagined her own death enough times, and can cope remarkably well with having it face her this way. What gets her is the body she can see across the room - smaller than the others, with large, hairy feet. Elsewhere, she's sure, her King and Queen lie here in pieces. That is a hard thought to stomach.

[infinitemayonnaise]

"Well, no, but I..." He trails off in a noise of exasperation. "This is sick!" There's a groan, but at least it's at a much lower volume than he's been using. "I'm not gonna hurl, I swear. I wanna, but I'll keep it to myself."

Scientist's Desk

[etcircenses]

In one section of the building is a table with no corpse or chemicals, just lots of papers and books, a place of study and recording. The way things are left, there's a sense that whoever worked here spent a lot of very long hours buried in the business. It doesn't seem to be very joyful work.

There's a desk to the side and a place where a computer used to be, the layer of dust slightly thinner there. Some crumpled papers have been left upon the floor where they fell. Whoever was here left in a bit of a hurry.

Roland, Signless & Harleen

[revvinguptheharley]

While her initial reaction was not particularly graceful or impressive, Harleen had come here to do something important! And so with quivering stomach now empty and the constant creeping anxiety that they were going to be caught any minute the blond woman had made her way through the rooms to a desk loaded with books and papers.

The crumpled papers get her attention first and she kneels down to gather them up, uncrumpling each one with care to see what they say. She's not the only one moving in this direction either and she glances over her shoulder to confirm who had the same idea she did. Her fears are lessened slightly when she sees a familiar face or two. While she may not know Signless that well outside of mentor business Roland had spent more then his share of time getting to know her...usually by force.

A wave of guilt washed over her remembering the sort of humiliating ridiculousness he'd endured and she busied herself with the crumpled papers trying to find anything that may be of use to them.

[ka_sera_sera]

"Miss Harleen." Roland sounds a little surprised to see her, but doesn't waste time with any kind of greeting. They've quite a few men looking around here, but their time is short. They've none to waste on lingering hellos, and none to waste thinking too closely on what will happen should they be caught. Roland is not one to worry too much on consequences, not usually, but a part of his mind still remembers the Capitol's threat and, if Roland listened to that thought echoing faintly from behind a thick-walled and well-locked room in his mind he would be thinking, They will send me back, they will send me back-

"I didn't know you were in the Capitol again," he says, eyeing the whole arrangement of this place for a moment before gathering up all the books, reading over their covers and flipping through their pages as he talks. Books are important. And even if there is no great hint in any of them, if the books are here in this place then they must at least tell him something about whatever was done here.

He didn't know Harleen was here, though, as it happens, and perhaps this is the best time for him to learn. Occupied as he is with these books, he can not think too deeply on how much having missed her presence disturbs him. A gunslinger ought to notice everything, or at least ought not miss something as important as a fellow prisoner, one he knows in the way he knows her, being chained back up in this place.

"I'm sorry to see it," he tells her, because he is, and because he ought to get something out of his first real opportunity to speak freely in all the time he's been in Panem.

Then he turns to the man behind him, looks him over. "Signless, what've they put you in this time? Any zippers or pins on those clothes you could use to pick the locks on that desk, if there are any? Any jewelry?" Because they were meant to be headed somewhere, because even now the Capitolites will have their parties, and with parties come the outfits. These damned clothes may as well come in handy, at least once.

[69problems]

This is a risk. It seems almost silly to even think it to himself, of course it's a risk. Much like Harley -- Harleen -- the Signless is subdued and withdrawn, and much like Roland he's trying not to show the panic bubbling at the back of his mind. He's already on borrowed time in his opinion; he should have died four or five times over by now even without his death on the District One battlefield. The Capitol should have executed him the moment he first returned for fighting with District Thirteen, and it astounds him they've been as lenient as they have. A little brainwashing, a little torture, when he was expecting death that had some finality to it.

He really cannot afford to fuck up now.

"There may be something in my hair--" he says and reaches up to comb through it with his blunted and painted claws. No sharp points for him; they're too cautious for that. Otherwise he might have been able to just jimmy the lock with one of his nails. A bobby pin from his curly overly-decorative bun will have to do.

"You're lucky I've picked locks before." It's meant to lighten the mood but there's something hollow to his tone, something that stems from that not-quite-yet-panic. "It won't take long. Anything interesting on those papers?" The last is directed to Harley, and he swivels an ear in her direction in wait of an answer.

Off-Limits Zone

[etcircenses]

The far end of the building has the worst smell, the least light, and the greatest chance of the heebeejeebeez. The shelves are higher here, arranged like someone desperately wanted to block out the sight as much as possible. One of the desks has marks in it like someone dug their nails in out of nervousness. The giant tubes with bodies floating within have an option to decrease noise from them. None have been turned on.

It's down here that the mobile dead are kept, steel walls and forcefield windows cutting them off from what was once a room of living workers. There's a red sign, a tack board, and no sign of any dead actually being mobile.

Phi and Derek

[occasio]

Phi moves past the surgical tables and other obstructions, towards the back of the building. It almost feels like someone is trying to hide something away back here, and her curiosity runs deep. While the lack of light and the floating bodies might unnerve others, she remains stoically calm. They're only bodies. Dead bodies do not generally pose any kind of danger, and even if they did... There's a significant amount of glass and/or steel between them and her. She's not concerned.

The giant tubes holds her interest for a minute before she moves past, walking up to the red sign to see if she can make out what it says.

[sociopathicwolf]

Derek, too, is moving through the building with a detached kind of curiosity. He can see reasonably well in the dark, and the bodies - they're just bodies. Derek's no stranger to being surrounded by them. He's on alert for any sign of trouble, like he pretty much always is, but for the most part he's focused on gathering information.

He watches Phi move out of the corner of his eye, keeping her in his peripheral vision as he approaches the shelves. They may be up high here, but that's another of the good things about being built so tall. He starts carefully poking through them.

Dissection Table

[etcircenses]

The corpse is mangled enough as to be unrecognisable. Unless, of course, said corpse happens to be yours. An unfortunate possibility and perhaps what's drawn you to this particular table. Most of the destruction seems the fault of in-arena brutalization, and a little bit of decay. However, the corpse has been dissected somewhat on top of that, parts opened up to be looked at a little closer, things investigated.

There's a second table near it hosting another corpse, this one perfect nondescript in an entirely different way. The body is hairless and has features that could only be described as generic. It's one of the most preserved bodies in the whole place, but still definitely dead. There's a tag on the wrist.

Between both tables are some smaller wheeled ones, hosting a number of tools and more.

Looks like it's Altair, Sam, and Nitou

[infinitemayonnaise]

"Oh man, oh man, oh maaaaaaan," Nitou moans. He still looks like he's about to hurl. He doesn't even want to get too close a look at that body in the horrible event that it actually is his--the way it's torn up, it could very well be his after that chestburster got him in the space arena, but it's not like he's willing to go in for a closer look--and instead busies himself trying to check out the weird generic corpse. He doesn't know weird generic corpse, and weird generic corpse isn't as torn up as the one on the table. Maybe that wrist tag has some information. "I'm an archaeologist, not a forensic scientist--these guys are too fresh, man!"

[sizeofyourbaggage]

If Sam were his normal self, he'd probably be able to try to calm Nitou down, or at least try to be gentle and understanding while also firm.

He's not his normal self, and he's already on edge from finding the bodies of people he loves earlier. Sam's mind is jumbled up enough as it is, especially being on a mission to help the rebellion - the Capitol's edged in there just enough to make him have to constantly remind himself that this is the side he's on, that this is the side he's chosen.

It's even harder to do when the only people he's managed to hold on to enough for the Capitol not to twist are lying dead behind him, and he has to keep reminding himself that that's not true, either.

"Freak out quieter," Sam snaps, eyes flashing red as he activates the HUD vision his eyes now have, replacing his goggles, and scans the room, focusing on the smaller wheeled tables.

Storage

[etcircenses]

One of those separated glass rooms has its door left open, inviting the intruders to enter. The scent of corpses isn't so overwhelming here but only because the chemicals are much stronger. If it weren't for the masks, it may not even be safe. As it is, you won't want to linger within too long.

For the facility's contents, everything is kept clean as can be. The metal shelves shine in the light, and each vial and jar set upon it is without a spot. The labels are all scientific latin, containing all manner of thing inside. There's a large sink for clean up, sterilization of tools, and a place to let them dry which is filled with a number of gleaming scalpels and plying instruments. Everything has a place and every place has a thing. At least, it seems so on the surface. Couldn't hurt to look around.

[foundafamily]

As he steps into the storage area, Firo just barely manages to hide an unsettled shudder. "Somethin' about this place still gives me the creeps..."

He doesn't enjoy playing with corpses, but at least they're more familiar to him. And familiar in a different way that these things are, because he realizes with a start that he does have some unsettling experience with this kind of thing. Just not in his lifetime.

Looks like it's time for Szilard's memories to come out to play--the old alchemist still had plenty of training in the conventional sciences. Firo sighs as he steps closer to the first shelf of bottles, inspecting each label closely and trying to determine what organization method might be followed there.

shows up three days late with starbucks

[shieldofrohan]

"You are not alone in that," Éowyn says grimly, following him inside. The hairs on the back of her neck are standing on end, at the smells and the sights and the wrongness of it all. She puts a hand to Firo's shoulder, squeezing it gently as she passes. "I cannot read these labels. Call if you see anything that seems of interest."

For her part, she's heading for the sink, to examine the tools. She may not be able to tell what the chemicals are, but she's had some training in medicine, and she thinks she may have a better chance at understanding from the instruments they use. First, though, she checks in and under the sink itself, looking for signs of blood or any carelessly-dropped equipment they may have missed.