The Doctor shook his head, his eyes watching the military personnel to see if there was any reaction to Silas’ poking around the helicopter.
Silas’ search would reveal no trace of anything. If something had been back there, it would have had to either slip over or through the fence barrier and into the sea… Or into the helicopter itself.
But noiselessly?
In his frantic search, Lucius missed his new room at least once, perhaps even twice, before finding it and stepping and bolting inside. The door slammed behind and Lucius winced from the noise, turning his head back just slightly to see if it would bounce back open. Making a mental note to practice opening and closing the door later, Lucius began searching the room. He was hoping to find a PC or even his phone. Couldn’t find his phone on himself earlier and with some thorough-ish searching in the room, probably wouldn’t find it here either.
Doomed. His following was doomed.
Algorithms didn’t care. Even if any of them were loyal, they would be removed. He had to check, he had to find some way to see his status and put something out. Sure, whatever, maybe this place would need to verify and censor it or something. Didn’t matter, just need to post something. But without–
Library!
This was a library, right? There had to be a PC, most libraries have them.
Before any further thought could occur, like the commonality of personal libraries having computers or even fax machines, he was back out the room. Opening it with a wide swing, almost pulling it shut again with the same abandoned and reckless reasoning before remember the noise. Almost falling backwards from stopping, Lucius slowly closed the door. It was a library, no loud noises.
Once there was a soft chink and click of it closing, Lucious was off on his search for a library PC. Or maybe ask one of the staff eventually, but later. They were probably busy.
The inside of the helicopter was surprisingly confined in spite of its size. Its black interior was not improved by the lack of cushions on the seats. Just the hard, curved metal and seatbelt buckles adhered with metal bolts to the wall. Well, perhaps it was just one less thing to burn.
…What was that?
Something close, so minor it seemed to be an imagination… But no, you definitely heard it. A giggle.
To his probably disappointment, Lucius would find the library consisted of a small room which looped around a large center bookshelf, and the walls of the room were lined with them as well, aside for one small space reserved for a fireplace on the wall furthest from the door. Two cushioned seatswere angled towards the blaze, and in front of one of these stood a pair of people.
They were both small, bony women, each in their early 20’s, with an incredibly gothic appearance, dressed in nothingbut black and white with the occasional grey added in. It seemed the colors of the room did not reflect off either of them in their normal form, but instead reflected off in the same grey hues elsewhere on their bodies.
No doubt about it. - it was two of the goth woman from before.
They were just placing a book back on the shelf, with the one closest to the fire tossing a large ball into the flames. Something seemed to give Lucius away, and both of them turned with a gasp at his sudden appearance.
And suddenly, both of them were gone. No trace, nothing to show they had ever been there except for the flaming ball and one crooked book on the shelf.
“Whoever is giggling, I do not get the joke,” Veronica said. She looked around to see if anyone else heard it.
At first, Lucius might not have noticed there were two of the woman now due to his search for the PC. As in, he saw there was two but chalked it up to motion blur or movement jitter. It wasn’t uncommon for him to adjust his shoulder and the movement of its shadow catching the corner of his eyes, making him think some person or bug came by. But that changed after Lucius gave an exasperated, rolling sigh for being unable to find a PC.
A dual-gasp definitely confirmed he wasn’t seeing things…Well, now it seemed he couldn’t seem them at all. They vanished!
Instinctually Lucius calls out, “Wait, no, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to. . . startle you?”
He blinks, staring at the ball that was now burning. Why would you burn a ball? That seemed mean, maybe. After waiting for a few seconds to see if anyone returns or responds, Lucius goes over to the bookshelf to see what book they were looking at.
One of the military personnel standing at the helicopter slowly turned to look at Veronica. Although his face was obscured, the indication behind his action was clear and unrestrained confusion with a dash of annoyance.
He slowly turned away again, his opinion of Lugar de Morte residents clearly lowered. The General had boarded in a separate compartment, and the Major nodded to some of the personnel, who began swiftly packing up the cases they had unloaded.
It was a very old leather-bound book with a sturdy cover titled The Old Grave. The cover seemed to be quite oversized for the book, as there were barely enough pages inside to justify its being so wide. In the spaces where pages should have been were simply jagged edges of paper that used to be there.
The ball was almost entirely reduced to ash.
@ajtazt @ProfSrlojohn @Chronicler @Cordax @MakutaOisli @TheMOCingbird
. . . Oh.
“Did…the book offend you or something? I don’t think we’re supposed to do that,” Lucius asks aloud.
Keeping book in hand, Lucius looks to see if there was a way to turn off the fire. Looking for some button, switch, or turn-handle in case it was electric or gas-fed. If neither are found, hopefully there are some tools near by, like a poker or small soot shovel, to beat it out. These pages were lost, but he could try preventing more books from being burned.
Veronica shrugged, and thought, Perhaps I was just seeing things.
She fastened up her belt on the chopper. Out of mere curiosity, she looked around the helicopter to see any safety violations; She was, after all, military personnel before her days as an astronaut, specifically in the air force.
It appeared to be… Yep, looks like it was gas-fed. Some small pipes emerged from the wall behind the blaze. There didn’t appear to be a visible off-switch; perhaps this was meant to stop meddlesome people from turning it off and on again.
“And it’s about dang time!” A voice bellowed from the door as it began to creak open. “Next time you mess with it I’ll demand your apology in writing!”
There was one potential issue.
In the center of the floor was some kind of hatch secured by a simple latch. It wasn’t very big, a perfect square hinged from the inside, but at proper speed this would seem like a problem were it to be opened.
Wen peered at whatever Veronica was looking at, before his mood dived.
“Please don’t tell me we’re jumping from that hole.”, He asked, not bothering to try and hide his immense displeasure, that it seemed people were going to be hurled like rag-dolls out of a 65-mph helicopter, and then have to parachute.
SERIOUSLY. THATS A PROBLEM.
Lucius looks around to try and find the owner of this voice.
“Who are you talking to? I didn’t do anything.”
Silas shot Veronica a glance.
“Something seem’s off to you to?” He asked in a hushed tone, his eyes continuing to flit around the chopper, determined to make some sense of what he had seen.
“Eh?” There were sliding footsteps on the floor and a long, white beard which preceded the curious eyes of Roswell. “Now I only was speakin’ to this idiot, never you mind sonny, you didn’t do nothing problematic.”
He shuffled further, blinking at the change of light. “They never make this room the right temperature. It’s always too cold or too hot.”
The major gave his first facial reaction to the goings-on of the day by raising his eyebrows in surprise - the hole was definitely too small to fit through. “You’ll be dropped off close to ground at the entrance point. The sooner we depart the more efficiently we can operate.”
“Maybe it’s the right temperature for the books?” Lucius offers up. “Seems to be more–wait, do we not have control over the temperature in our rooms?”
OOC: I REVIVE THIS TOPIC!
IC: "And that’s it, hmm? You get this object of nondescript properties,and left in your hands, which we are all VERY sure are capable of not helping yourselves, to whatever the heck this stuff is. And we ALL know this stuff is either very valuable or very powerful, and as such thats why you want a bunch of powered people to help get this stuff, right? " Wen said sarcastically between his mandibles. @Ghid
Closed at request of DM