[ATK1;All Characters] Waking Trial.

The cathedral is rather large for what it is; it's hard to imagine that perhaps people had once worshipped and gathered inside. Now the walls ache with echoes of emptiness and the wind crawls whistling through cracks in once beautiful stained glass. It's more like a castle than a cathedral, with so many halls and rooms now infested by birds and rats and bugs who find more sanctuary here than perhaps even people could.

The parking garage beside it was once a place where people would leave their vehicles to go walking about the fairgrounds and the downtown area, and now half of it is smashed and collapsed. Whether something exploded or something large smashed it or it just fell apart is hard to tell.

The air is filled with snuffling. Snarling. Barking. Mutant beasts pace around the cathedral and the parking garage, and even seem to expect a few nearby buildings.

Are they angry?

Or are they eager...?

It is the sounds of wind and creatures that greet you as you wake, whether you be on top of a building, deep in the cathedral or if you awake inside of a long abandoned car, you will be almost sure that whatever makes the ghastly howling everywhere it will find you.

Are you alone? Are you alone? Are you....?

Jez awoke rather suddenly to his own coughing. After a fit of hacking and gasping causing him to curl into a tight ball, he let his eyes fluttered open. His lungs burned, he had a headache, and his entire body ached and throbbed like he had fallen asleep on the floor after a day of working out way too much. It took actual effort for him to uncurl himself on the floor and to open his hands that had been clutching so tight he had left fingernail marks on his palms. Only then did he finally realize he was somewhere he didn't recognize and indeed, he was on the hard floor instead of his bed.

"Nnng, where the hell am I?" he asked the dim emptiness as he slowly and painfully sat up. Something wet was on his face and his mouth tasted like copper. He spat and the little globule of spit fell into a pool of light cast from the windows of the dingy building. There was blood in it. Jez's blue eyes widened and his hand went to his mouth. The inside was coated with dark blood, some of it dribbling out the side and drying on his lips. He was aware of a damp stickiness on his cheeks and ears, even on his neck now. Frantic hands pawed at his entire face, all coming back with blood. It was coming out of his fucking eyes and ears and he had a nosebleed.

Panic siezed him and he tried to wipe the blood off his face, smearing it instead on the thin hospital scrubs-like clothing he barely even registered he was wearing. He stood up on the floor, movements stiff and awkward and every movement agony. He stumbled for the door of the run down building and burst outside.

He was breathing heavily and a damp sweat began to tickle his brow as he stopped in the middle of the street. This wasn't right, why was he so tired? Why did it hurt so much to move? He looked like a murder victim, his face and now his clothes smeared with blood. Far down the street dogs creeped. Jez did not notice them, looking instead up at the ruined city, eyes wide.

A stagnant, hazy mirror fades into view. It rippled slightly with his breath, silvery and reflecting the grey and green blur around him.

Vision sharpens and he finally feels the rocks digging into his cheek. The dull throb in his arm. The cotton-dry that clogged his throat and mouth.

He is laying face-down in a pool of rainwater. A pool of rainwater and dirt, recently stirred up, but calm enough to reflect the slat of light from the parking garage.

Somehow waking up like this seems perfectly normal to him.

He gets up but his legs are not yet awake, and they betray him. They betray his head right into a concrete pillar marked B-3 in bold white and green. His arms wrap around the pillar as if the world was going to turn upside-down, and he makes close personal friends with the peeling paint.

Sensation has been driven deeper. He feels he should not be this numb. He feels his veins should not be so visible or so dark beneath the skin on his hands and...

He's starting at his reflection again. Distorted, like a fish-eye lens. A metal something buried in him. Stitches branch out around it, the skin between them not quite stuck together, but without any ichor or blood to show healing. They seem to be clean.

He laughs. He laughs long and loud an hysterically and stumbles into another pole (B-4, this time), and sloshes through another puddle, and falls on his face and rolls in the dirt.

All he knows is his name. All he knows is his name and the urge to run, to wake up this sluggish brain, to make flow this sluggish blood.

"Where are you going?" Asked a brown-haired boy, dressed in steampunk airship pilot's overalls. Even as he spoke his form became less distinct. The totems in the background no longer had faces, and the giant spider lady was only an anxious presence from the edge of the intergalactic refueling center.
Epic shook her head, trying to stay focused. This dream had some characters from her favorite cartoon shows in it and she was reluctant to leave it. "Sorry! I'm waking up!" She apologized to their worried... identities. An expert in lucid dreaming, she revisualized her surroundings, but they evaporated just as quickly. Something from the waking world was fighting her will to stay asleep. This curiosity didn't help her; the moment she acknowledged it, the cause made itself felt. Pain! It was too late. Her senses woke up and her mind followed, only to encounter what a full-body bruise must feel like. It hurt so much! Where was mom? Dad? She couldn't speak, which only scared her more. Help! I'm dying! The 11 year old cried and moaned from her throat, trying not to move. Why wasn't anybody coming? It seemed like an eternity because of the hurt. She opened her hazel eyes just barely and peered around... rocks and rubble? The eyelids then shot completely open.

She remembered. Those horrible people hadn't been lying! The truth of the situation hit her, causing her to shudder violently. If her throat didn't feel so horrible she would scream! The dogs would be on the hunt soon; even if every inch of her body wanted to cry, the girl punched her distress in the face. They wouldn't want her to die right away which was a major boost to her self-confidence and self-preservation was all that counted right now. With clenched teeth and many occasional yelps she braved the pain, working herself to an upright position and doing stretches like in gym class even though she kind of didn't remember how most of them were really done. Within a few minutes she was able to walk and do the arm swingey one. The arm swingey motion was as usual, but when the small girl saw her right arm itself there were so many irregularities that she had no idea what to do about it. She used her teeth to tear off the bottom a leg of her pants [which were made of some really flimsy material] for a bandage and tied it around the icky looking spot, hoping that it meant something.

She looked around some more now, for something to defend herself with. Walking up and down the hall wasn't very productive; it was like one of those choose your weapon scenes in a video game except the shelves were filled with nothing but unwieldy pieces of rock. Although heavy things were a great for smashing, she didn't have the strength to carry anything right now...
So she began walking down the corridors, searching the walls and floor for signs of anything useful.

Noir opened her eyes. The deep blue of her iris struck a sharp contrast across thin white eyelids, they fluttered shut for a moment as a soft groan escaped her lips. Her body hurt.

She was already sitting up. The position only added to all her ache, spreading from the kink in her neck and down the spine, as if she had fallen asleep for a very long time like this. Her head was propped up against the wall, her legs tucked close to another to fit into the thin room- no, more of a tall box. A different person may have felt claustrophobic walking up in the enclosed booth. Noir, however, felt the strange sensation of dulled recognition. She was in a confessional. Which meant she was in a church. No, not her church...but still, a cathedral, somewhere.

Her body stirred slowly, carefully- painfully. There was a pitchy humming in her ears, like on a television put into standby mode. She couldn't hear anything else. Her other senses idly awakened and she could smell the age and rot of the wood surrounding her. A metallic taste filled her mouth. She swallowed, but the taste lingered. Noir could feel the dried blood stuck under her nails. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. She couldn't tell if it was her own or not.

There was little thought in the action as Noir stretched out her arm, stiff and robotically, pushing on the confessional door. It swung open, filling the girls vision with the vast emptiness of the cathedral. Broken stained glass cast dirtied light on the rows of pews, a good few thrown out of order or weakly sagging into their centers from decay, the floor layered thick with tumbled debris- Noirs attention caught at the foot of the booths opening. A rat. Well- it had been a rat, at one time. The creature lay rigid and dead, its body ripping open from the base of its throat and past the center of its belly. The organs spilt out, a fresh vivid red shining like a jewel amongst all the dust. Another rat, all its vitals still safe within its unscathed body, lifted its tawny head from the dead things innards. At the movement of the opening door the creature fled, disappearing from Noirs line of vision. Her hearing was returning- she listened to the tiny movements of the rat even after she lost sight of it. An uncomfortable feeling swelled from the pit of her stomach.

Noir stood- it felt like her body was moving on autopilot now. Her legs trembled beneath her weight; she regained control of her limbs and willed her first step forward. Her body had awakened- though her emotions seemed to be lagging minutes behind the movements. I'm in a church. It was poetic. An almost tragic parody of the only life Noir had ever known. Almost. The head of the rat collapsed under her shoe, its frail skull snapping and bits of light grey goo oozing onto the floor. She continued moving forward.

For a good fifteen minutes, Athan just sits where he finds himself—sprawled against some unknown wall—and wonders if perhaps he has died. Whatever afterlife this is, he hadn’t expected it to smell quite so bad—and then he sneezes, and supposes he must be alive, after all. Ho-hum.

He opens his eyes. It doesn’t make much difference; the lighting in this room is dim, filtered through a single, high window so clouded over with dust as to make picking out any distinct shapes impossible. Instead he considers what else he can glean: there’s a musty smell of mildew and old books that’ve just begun to rot. Across the room he can hear the steady spat-spat-spat of some dripping liquid. He rocks his head back to try and get a look at the ceiling; it doesn’t work, but he feels that he still has his ponytail in order, and smiles faintly.

All told, he hasn’t the slightest idea where he is.

He stands shakily, finding purchase on the rough, peeling wallpaper. His hand touches some unseeable slime growing in the corner and he grimaces, wiping it off on his trousers. Well, he seems to have his own clothes, at least—but a bit too loose? A sharp twinge of pain shoots up from his wrist to his shoulder as he moves; he flexes his fingers and makes nothing of it.

He picks his way slowly along the wall, wondering at the wound-up feeling of his leg muscles and feeling in front of him with his left hand for obstacles. A few chairs scattered haphazardly about the room bang painfully into his shins, and he almost trips over one that’s fallen on its side. Not a terribly tidy place. At one point his fingers skim the surface of a desk, and ill-aged paper flutters beneath them. Squinting, he picks up and leafs through a warped Bible—waterlogged. Room must leak like the dickens when it rains.

At least his eyes are adjusting.

Another, clearer once-over confirms his suspicions regarding the tidiness, and fills him with a much more distinct unease: there are at least twenty of the little chairs, all pushed violently to the sides, and has that one got old blood on it? Right, then, onwards and upwards—his hand lights on the doorknob and he pulls it straight open, stepping out into the considerably brighter hallway.

“Oh, knickers.” He weaves forward blindly, hits a wall, spins back around, and grabs straight for the first thing that can keep his balance.

"Oooh looks like Luke and Chis are watching some interesting stuff over by the parking garage!" excited glee was the only thing Cyrus could read in the voice of his partner.

"Turn off your fucking pervo-scope Paige," Cyrus said gruffly, the effect enhanced by his raspy, acid-chewed voice. Cyrus nibbled on the last bit of his food ration for the day and glared with his empty eye sockets about a foot to the left of his partners head.

"Pfft, oh come on, don't call it that! It's a very useful tool! Besides, all the girls I can peek in on are dead at this point except that masked bitch and you can hardly see anything through her teeny little eye holes," Paige said nonchalantly tossing his arm around Cyrus.

Cyrus hunched his shoulders a little and glared some more. His stomach in response bubbled in agitation and several sharp pangs of pain stabbed his gut. Cyrus hunched over immediately, clutching at his stomach and frantically willing himself not to puke up the meal he had just spent half an hour gently easing into his stomach. Seconds passed and the gurgling and urge to puke died down, although there still remained a throbbing pain. Cyrus straightened up and relaxed a bit, cringing a tiny bit each time a wave of pain passed.

"Ya good?" Paige asked.

"Fuck you-"

"I'll take that as a yes!"

With that Paige grabbed Cyrus by the collar and began dragging him forward across the rooftops. "PUT ME THE FUCK DOWN YOU MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE!" Cyrus raged against his partner, but Paige was a big guy and Cyrus was a lot skinnier (and older) than he used to be. Paige dragged him along by the collar like a spitting cat by the scruff of its neck.

"Rope bridge!" the scruffy man said lightly as he crossed across to another rooftop.

"I DON'T NEED YOUR SHITTY HELP!" Cyrus replied. Despite his words he did stop his struggling long enough to stand up and walk proper across the bridge. Paige smiled and Cyrus scowled and returned to protesting, although he did so much more quietly once Paige mentioned dogs prowling the streets. It was quite a bit of time of struggled passage before Paige stopped.

"Plank is out, can't go any further... But that's okay! Looks like they're gathering about here too," Paige said with a fiendish grin that Cyrus could hear.

"What PART of that sentence is okay? And where is here?!" Cyrus muttered angrily at him.

"Old cathedral thingy... We're out back but the dogs are also here just milling around. Luke and Chis are out front and there's more there too. Kinda odd don't you think? I think a few even heard us but they didn't do anything why is that? Wanna stay and find out?" Paige's eyes glittered with curiosity and excitement.

"NO" Cyrus said adamantly.

"Great we're staying! Let's see what happens with this show!"

Sarky is normally none too pleased even at the best of times. And this is currently not the best of times.

He'd opened his eyes and found himself staring at a pathetic excuse for wall -- there are holes through it. Then there's an open doorway to his left, and he can see a set of stairs in the room beyond. Broken furniture and cracks everywhere. The door itself is torn off its hinges. Basically, it looked as if a tornado had torn through the rooms, ripping the building apart from the inside but leaving its shell intact. Whatever place this is, it is certainly not where Sarky wants to be.

Also, there's something stuck in his wrist. Something metallic and shiny and more than slightly strange. So Sarky's first course of action had been to try and pry it off, only to find out that yes, it was indeed stuck in his wrist and so pulling it out would probably not be prudent. At which point Sarky very gingerly tried chewing on it. In hindsight, he wasn't really sure what sort of outcome he'd been expecting from that, and had quickly given it up.

He's also thirsty and a little bit hungry and all the growling noises coming from outside are doing nothing to help.

Which means, of course, that the best course of action right now would be to--

--cross his arms, remain sitting right where he is, and scowl at the opposite wall, apparently. Since that is exactly what Sarky sets about doing. He's kind of just hoping that the dogs just slink away soon. If not, then he's going to take care of his hunger problem and his dog problem all at once.

The first thing Syrus does upon waking up is to sneeze, violently. This alone sends all sorts of alarm bells ringing through his head: the implications are that either one, he is simply in a dusty place (which is not so bad but damn if his allergies didn't give him hell), or two, he'd been lying here for so long that a significant layer of dust had settled. Which is terrifying, if one thinks about it.

He sits up, battling a surge of disorientation, and as he does so an acute stab of pain jolts through the back of his head. Instinctively clasping a hand to the source, he only brings his fingers away when the lancing jolts subside to a steady throbbing. Looks at his fingers, sees that they are now red. Syrus frowns to himself, then rubs together the digits a few times before pushing the thought to the back of his mind.

Syrus is alone.

He feels terrible. Physically, but on a mental level too. It was like he'd just had a row with…someone for the stupidest reasons, but both parties had gone to bed without resolving the dispute and now it is the morning after in which the air has not managed to clear itself. That sort of terrible. But Syrus has no recollection of--

(Questions. Questions and wants. Syrus wants to know how, and why, and what the fuck is he doing here. Where is he? He wants to know who the stranger in his head is. And why Syrus is so unspeakably, undeniably furious at him.)

He’s inside a vehicle of some sort, he notices. The windows are grimy and filth and dust clings to his palm as he wipes away a patch of window in order to see outside into the gray, drab world. He scowls at the howling wind, squints at the shapes prowling around some sort of building. He has no idea where he could possibly be.

“Wrrghkklll” comes out instead of “fuuuckk” and Syrus furiously clears his throat. He does not attempt talking again but instead turns his attentions to the car handle.

Predictably enough, it resists all his efforts to open it, and a storm begins camping itself on Syrus' face as his redoubled efforts prove themselves futile.

Tiber stares down at a city he's never seen before, fingers numbing on the stone against which his knuckles are pressed. Behind him there is a great hulking bell and he does not know where he is or how he got here. He sweeps his eyes across what's down below in careful widening circles, hoping to see anything familiar, but now he's reached the horizon and he has no choice but to think about something else and the most obvious choice is what the fuck is this thing in my

He glances down at his forearm, where blood has pooled in the indentation of skin around the metal. He woke up some twenty minutes ago, half-frozen in his shirtsleeves with no idea of where he was and only slightly more of who, and something was under his skin and it wouldn't come out no matter how much he clawed so he stopped but it has not stopped bleeding yet. He thinks as he watches his blood get sticky on the stone of the bell tower that he should do something about it--or rather that he should know what to do about it, but he doesn't and so he does nothing.

The problem is he can't quite make anything out down below. Peripheral flashes of movement on curbsides--and once, he thought, on a rooftop--but nothing he can focus on and he is forming the distinct impression that there's no one else in this city

He steps back from the ledge and goes to the other side of the room where there is a door, giving the bell a wide berth because he doesn't think he could handle hearing it ring. There was nothing beside him when he woke up so he leaves empty-handed.

"Is there anyone else here?" His voice is small-sounding and he only just realizes how thirsty he is. He rubs at his throat with his clean hand--he sorely needs a shave--and picks his way down the tiny corridor, stepping over bird droppings and checking inside each door. By the time he reaches the last one he is almost panicking again; he shoves it open and it falls easily from its hinges, wet and rotted. There isn't anyone there.

The hallway ends in a set of stairs and Tiber goes down them, taking the corners of the angled spiral a little too sharply. By the time he reaches the final twist he's not prepared for the detritus blocking his path and he trips forward, smearing blood where he reaches out to catch himself on the wall.

The room is a complete pit and godfuckingdammit there's no one here eith-- "Hey!" Tiber's heart soars; he almost laughs, so immense is his relief. "Hey!" He stumbles forward, picking his way towards the adjacent room wherein he can see another person--an actual living, breathing oh fuck he's not moving is he dead.

"Hey!" he shouts again, probably too loudly in his now redoubled panic. "Are you--are you here, too?" He stumbles again over an upturned pulpit and steadies himself against the door frame.

The first thing she did upon waking up was scream, and looking back on it she was disappointed with herself, but there wasn't really much else that could have been done. The shock of the new environment and whatever trauma her body had apparently been put through made her nauseous... She was very close to vomiting on the roof.

The roof. The steepled, towered roof. Of the cathedral.

It took her some time to collect herself upon waking up on the edge of what could have easily been a fall to her death.

Once she had recovered from the shock, she immediately started scouting around. Why would she be here? She knew she hadn't had that much to drink with...

With who? Where? Faces and places were blurred but events still existed.

Chill, cool it, it'll all come back to you, Julya. Except your head feels like it's gonna cave in and your arm has what looks like an alien egg-sac implanted in it. Not surgical steel. It's warm. It may or may not have the same pulse as you.

She pushed the thoughts aside and started edging her way towards the closest safe place... a short jump to a pile of rubble that appeared to be one side of a parking garage.

She had noticed the growls before, but she hadn't trusted herself to look until her footing was cleared. It cleared, but she was still shaking, and seeing the beasts did very little to help.

Spoiler:

Sarky flinches when he hears someone -- what are they even doing? charging down the stairs? But at least the loud descent means Sarky's not surprised when the stranger comes looking for him.

He's cracked an eye open to get a look and is relieved to see that the man doesn't look like a threat at all. The blood on his arm catches Sarky off-guard for a moment, before he realizes it's the man's own.

He sees the trip, the recovery, and notes the response to his own presence. Hears the question and snorts.

"Am I here?" Sarky says. He's talking with his sharp teeth clenched together. "Shit, what gave you that idea? 'Course I ai--"

He stops when a vague sense of guilt washes over him. Like he's been unnecessarily nasty to a friend and now his conscience is reprimanding him. Something's drawing him to this stranger, some strange sort of sympathy -- maybe camaraderie -- what? He doesn't even know this man's name yet--

Sarky suddenly drops his head to pinch the bridge of his nose. He must be more out of it than he'd thought.

He finally stirs, grimacing as he pushes himself away from the wall and gets to his feet. His legs are shakier than he'd expected but it only takes him a few moments to regain balance. Once he thinks he can stand without problem he stretches, cracks his neck, pauses with his head still tilted to the side to listen to the dogs -- are they closer than before? are there more than before? -- then straightens out again and returns his full attention to the stranger standing in the doorway.

"Sorry," Sarky says, but only to placate the guilt that's still hanging about him. "I'm Jordan Sinclair. Sarky. You can call me whichever, don't care. You happen to know where the hell we are? I just woke up."

Then Sarky scowls and looks around, eyes settling on the nearest window. "And what the hell's up with the dogs?"

Cyrus could hear the dogs gathering thicker and thicker, their growls, whines and barks filling the air. There was palpable tension in the air, the dogs were excited about something and it was filling both the men with unease. Cyrus muttered angrily under his breath and fidgeted, sinking down as close to the rooftop as he could manage. "Are you about done yet?" he hissed angrily at Paige.

Paige pause for a moment as if he was gonna say something meaningful and then bubbled out cheerfully, "Yep, I have absolutely no idea what's going on and those dogs are creeping me the fuck out!"

Cyrus breathed a sigh of relief and stood up. He brushed himself off and began walking back the way they had come over the rooftops. His ears picked up a creaking and cracking noise briefly, and he realized he had stepped upon wood and not the concrete of the rest of the rooftop. There was a sudden and resounding CRACK and Cyrus felt himself plunge down. In a split second his mind registered what it ment to be dropped into a corroding building with dozens of dogs creeping around the outside hungry for food. Cyrus braced himself and...

And he failed to hit the ground. Cyrus blinked his empty eyes. He felt Paige's strong hand gripping his arm tightly, nails biting into Cyrus' jacket.

Cyrus felt his heart flutter and stomach lurch. Bile rose up in his throat burning and stinging. After the fear died down and he swallowed his heart attack burn his anger took over. "Paige I swear if I die because you dragged me to the fucking dog parade I WILL FUCKING COME BACK AND HAUNT YOU TO DEATH," Cyrus hissed at Paige, wanting to scream but not wanting attract the attention of the dogs.

"SHUT UP CYRUS I'M ON THE FUCKING WOOD TOO!" Paige hissed back. The two men froze as the now rotten wood that had been meant to board up the hole in the roof creaked and cracked. Finally, after several suspenseful seconds of held breath, the weakened wood made up its mind and splintered.

The two men tumbled to the ground landing painfully on top of each other. There was barely a thought spared to their pains however as the two men snapped into survival mode.

"Closest secure building is the chapel straight ahead!" Paige said, not even sparing words to curse. He grabbed Cyrus's wrist and pulled him forward.

"Across the street?! We're dead!" Cyrus wailed but sprinting along with Paige none the less. The building they had been on was crumbling to the ground, insides displayed wide to the dog infested street. They vaulted over what was left of the small wall and sprinted into the daylight. Even their first few steps out into the street Cyrus realized something was off about the dogs. The dogs should've been on top of them the moment they landed in the building, but something held them back, made them hesitate.

It didn't last long though. Suddenly several of the dogs snapped around as if released from a spell snarling and bearing their jagged teeth. Cyrus couldn't hear anything but the beat of his own heart and a mess of snarling bearing down on him. He felt Paige's hand get ripped away from his own and panicked. Cyrus reached blindly out in front of him, while feeling claws graze his coat. His fingers brushed a wooden door, and then a handle. Letting his instincts take over Cyrus grabbed wildly at the handle and pulled the door open.

The door clicked shut behind Cyrus just as he heard the scream of his partner and smelled blood on the air. His tick suddenly sent a stab of pain through his arm and to his brain. "SWEET MOTHERFUCKING JESUS IN HELL!" Cyrus screamed as the pain washed over him. He slammed his tick into the wall in some futile attempt to stop the sympathetic pain he was feeling.

Then it did stop. Cyrus froze as the pain stopped and he felt the invisible tension in his mind suddenly release, like a bungee that had connected him and Paige. Cyrus crumbled to the ground, recognizing the sensation from past experiences all too well.

Then Cyrus puked his guts out, and then puked some more, retching even as he had nothing left in his stomach but stubbornly clinging parasites to puke up. Of some miracle, he didn't puke any up, but he was completely oblivious to the girl in the large chamber with him, inching away from him towards the front doors...

The first thing Mikhail was aware of was the pain. It started as a dull ache as his consciousness slowly trickled back into his own body and out of the black emptiness he had been in for god only knew how long. His head hurt the worst, he believed, although for a good several minutes he remained too disoriented to know for sure which part was his head and where the rest of his body was. Especially since the rest of him seemed to hurt equally.

It was a feeling he could only equate to the soreness and exhaustion from running for days on end with minimal rest. The hunger gnawing at his stomach was the same as it would have been then, although the headache was worse than anything he’d felt from simple dehydration. Mikhail groaned as he attempted to shift one arm closer to his head, though the attempted use of his vocal cords informed him that his throat was sore (what a surprise) and caused him to cough a few times. He felt whatever had been in his throat clear, and a sudden metallic tang in his mouth. Even in his current hazy mental state, he knew well what that meant.

At least the strong taste helped to rouse his mind back into higher functionality. He was aware, now, that he seemed to be lying face down in a very cramped and lumpy space; not as hard as concrete or metal, so he didn’t think he was outside or on the floor of a building. But he didn’t spend much time thinking about that, as his subconscious was nagging at him that there was something far more pressing to worry about. Something was very wrong. It wasn’t the pain, or the blood, or even the strange place he was lying in. No, it was the sound that was bothering him. Or rather, the lack of it.

But it wasn’t silent, not at all. There were strange animal noises that reminded him of wolves. Wolves outside, snarling, prowling…it started to spark a memory, but the signal seemed to fizzle midway across the axon and he couldn’t remember why it seemed familiar, leaving him with nothing more than the vague impression that it was. But it wasn’t that noise that was the problem, his subconscious nagged. It was the lack of a sound. A certain sound.

There was no ticking, not even a faint one. Though his left wrist was right beside his ear, and – yes, he could feel the weight on top of it, something metallic – the ticking of the watches he always wore there was mysteriously absent.

This alone was enough to make Mikhail pry his eyes open at last, and though his vision was blurry at first, it cleared a bit with every patient blink. At last he could see that though there was indeed something on his wrist, it did not in the slightest resemble a watch.

Mikhail frowned. He slowly sat up, if only to try to get a better look at the thing, ignoring the protest of what felt like an agonizing soreness of every muscle in his body. He also became aware that he was sitting on the floor of a car, one of the sports models with only one row of seats, which explained why the space felt so cramped. He hoisted himself into the driver’s seat, sitting on the tattered, crumbling remains of what once was probably leather. He ignored the car and why he was in it for now, he would think about that later. The more important issue was the thing on his wrist that was not a watch and was not ticking.

Strangely, though, it seemed to be faintly pulsing. He ran his other hand over the shiny surface. It felt like metal, though he had never known metal to move like that. It took him less than a minute to decide that he didn’t like it. He couldn’t very well wear a watch over that, so it was going to have to go.

Mikhail spent the next ten minutes or so picking and scratching at the device, and banging it against whatever surface he thought might do some damage. Interestingly enough, it hurt him too when he was most successful at harming it, although it seemed to repair itself quickly and he was fairly good at ignoring the pain. Like hell he was going to let a device tell him what to do. But Mikhail came to the unfortunate conclusion that if there was a way to remove the distasteful thing, he did not know how. He put it to the back of his mind for now, after giving the device one last nasty look for being in such an inconvenient location without his permission.

Now, the car. He fleetingly wondered if it was worth hotwiring to drive out of wherever he was, but a surveying glance over the dilapidated state of…pretty much everything in the car informed him that such an endeavor would probably not succeed. It looked like the car had been there for a long time. Only one thing to do then.

Mikhail squeezed the handle and the driver’s side door swung open with a firm enough push, though due to the rusty hinges it screeched horribly in protest. At least it still worked. He hadn’t been able to see out any of the windows, they had been so dirty, but as he took his first steps outside – slowly stretching, as he felt he had been cramped in there much too long – he found himself in what looked like a parking garage. Or, more accurately, what used to be a parking garage. The other vehicles looked as though they were in much the same condition as the car he’d just left, and though a dim, grayish light spread through the garage from the open sides, he didn’t see anyone else around. Nothing moving at all, for that matter.

He could still hear the wolves – or were they dogs? Wolves had simply been the more prominent thing in his memory – snarling at each other below, so Mikhail decided heading toward the roof of the building would be the smarter idea. Perhaps he could make sense of his surroundings from there.

Pain stung like thousands of needles as Aerroh opened his eyes to the upside down world. His thoughts were everywhere as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing through blurry eyes. The world seemed to be all wrong-looking. With hands groping around, he found himself at an obscure angle on top of something... On top of... A toilet? Aerroh blinked several times and the blurriness faded away with every blink to reveal that he was in a restroom stall. He was laying upside down on a toilet with his legs sprawled up the wall. His brow furrowed as he thought about how strange it was to be sleeping on a toilet upside down when his paranoia hit him. Ignoring protests from his aching and throbbing body, he flailed madly hitting up against the metal walls of the stall with resounding thuds.

"GAH!" he yelled as he twisted and turned to right himself immediately. His disorientation helped him to hit the floor hard knocking the wind out of him. Peering out from underneath the stall, he had seen the old deteriorating floor and walls. It was painful as he moved to lift himself up off of the floor and get out of the stall, which creaked as the metal protested movement. Aerroh listened hard for sounds of anything and heard growling faintly, probably from outside. He did a quick once over of himself and realized that his weapons were gone. This bothered Aerroh and it showed on his face visibly as his paranoia increased. The shiny metal on his wrist caught his eye and he examined it carefully with seeming intelligence before chewing on it madly to try to remove it. Seeing that it was no use, he moved stiffly out into the hallway. The sight of deteriorating walls met his eyes as he moved through the empty halls. He started to panic, not recognizing his surroundings and picked up his pace. He found his way through a couple rooms and out into the back area of the building he had been inside. The growling of dogs rushed to his ears and he knew he was in danger, especially without his weapons. A shed caught his eye and it wasn't far away. Aerroh rushed over to the shed and threw the doors open, shifting through its contents madly before finding a weapon he was at home with, a shovel. He turned, holding onto the shovel tightly, and felt a little more comfortable facing the danger around him.