WEE͠K ̸́4͝

[strangerpeople]

W҉͘E͜͠͝E̕K̡̛͡ ̡͟4̸

[The blight is all-consuming.

Within days dozens are confirmed infected, and you and your unexpected new scientist friend find yourselves trying to work on a cure. If not a cure, a stopgap of some kind. Anything to prevent this thing from destroying everything. It's hard work. It's not going very well. Really, it feels like with every step forward, you're taking ten steps back. Discouraging is an understatement, to say the least.

A week passes, and the death toll rises. It's really starting to look bleak. You constantly second-guess yourself, and even get into a fistfight with your new ally one night. It's getting to the point where you are working on fumes.

Then, unexpectedly, you get a phone call. It's been a long night, and the sun is beginning to rise above the mountains, when it happens.

You and the scientist are not the only ones looking for a cure. In fact, there are at least a dozen others-and they think they may be close to a breakthrough.

But-and you can't believe you're hearing this, after all of the failure you'd experienced throughout this blight-they need your help.]


---


[To say that the end of last week sucked would be an understatement. To say that no one knows what this week will bring is not even in question. Yet even as you wake, you feel a cloud lift from your mind, as one of the truths you've been living with since the beginning has suddenly changed.]




[But is it possible to abide by this new truth? The Hosts, and IT beyond, seem intent on making that impossible. And the rat...well. Obviously the rat's not an ally. Let's not kid ourselves.

There's only one way to find out if more deaths can truly be prevented-and that's to keep going, and hoping that the new floor that has opened up will offer something in the way of an opportunity.

In the meantime.


There are 11 strangers left in this place.]

Comments

[mermaidkin]

You go and say such nice things about me and then think I have to block out your actual words at this stage? [He takes out one earbud. Even in this motion, his posture has regained a lifelike relaxation, a living predator ready to strike.] I know we're aiming for interchangeability, but do I look like Link to you? I'm right here, you know! I've never been somewhere else waiting for you in a glass coffin!

[backuphero]

[Honestly, the Snow White reference stings, and more than it probably should. Unless Hiyori bothered doing the math on when that movie came out, why bring that story up?]

What, you think I'm a prince? Please. You might call her cool now, but you didn't exactly make it a secret that you think I'm under the sway of an evil witch. If anything, you'd be the one with the cape and the white horse, right?

[He smiles, but even with the sarcasm he just poured out, there's something broken about it. He can't keep it up, and once the smile is gone, something about his expression really does call to mind a young girl told to run, terrified by the forest she's been lost in.]

[mermaidkin]

[There are glass containers within the killing game's perimeter. They'd crack, if Hiyori got out of one at the pace he rises to his feet now.]

Well, she must have done something to a nice Southern boy to make him not give a damn that she makes voodoo dolls out of us, throws darts at pictures of our faces, sneaks into our rooms and makes sure we remember she was there! [He holds up the MP3 player. In the groove of the charge port is a speck of blue glitter.] She's the one who's right, though! We're idiots only good for following orders, who can't take into account worlds other than our own at all even though we've been getting their bad news beamed into our heads for months and months! There's no way the smart, reliable guys you thought we were would have a good reason to give up!

[backuphero]

I'm - I didn't - I didn't know about most of that, I -

[It's rather like he was just struck by a piece of that heavy glass, or perhaps by what those containers hold. Jonathan actually reels back, catching his balance only because he was taught to, not out of any conscious effort. He'd be fine with falling backwards onto tile right now. It'd hurt about the same, send his mind in just as many shattered directions.]

Look, I knew she wasn't okay but I didn't know she went that far! I thought the doll was it, I... know it's not worth anything, but I'm sorry. But the hell you mean about other worlds' bad news?

[mermaidkin]

You didn't? Well, happy marriages can have their secrets. Vita Clotilde-Morris took it upon herself to teach me that, she said, since I'd never have one.

[Oh, it's delicious to get that in, the blood in the water from the shards, but he's really supposed to be over this now.]

As for our chain of command. IT is the one really watching all the time from between the clusters, and he directly relays to us the information pertinent to our work. We knew about the whip that way, for example. That's why I can file reports from this chair instead of the desk, too.

[backuphero]

She shouldn't've said that. But there's no unsaying words once they're said, is there... anyway, if you know everything about the whip, then you know the one I'm carrying ain't my family heirloom, right?

[The face Jonathan makes is not a smile, though his teeth are bared. It feels like he's Kay in The Snow Queen, really, with a shard of mirror worked down to his heart from one eye. It hurts, the way the fog had silently promised it never would again. No matter, though. No problem.]

Oh, whoops. Guess I just told your boss, too.