Event- Siren

[apocalypsehowmods]

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Siren

➥ The Public Eye

(cw: potential body dysmorphia, loss of control, human-caused pollution, animals in distress/animal cruelty/injury to animals (specifically seabirds for one small portion of this prompt), body horror, uncanny valley)

Like most towns of an appreciable size in America, Gloucester, MA, is graced with something of an overabundance of video cameras. Perhaps even more-so than most small towns given the presence of ADI and the supernatural phenomenon that regularly plague the place. The mechanical eyes gaze silently out at the world, sentinels or sneaks, gathering information. And there is something very, very wrong with them.

It's not every camera. It's not even consistent among cameras, but every so often, perhaps related to whatever hacker has already been causing problems, something shifts. Those walking nearby (or even far from) a video camera will find their consciousness momentarily ripped from their bodies and transported into the camera's viewer. There, they'll be granted the vision of the camera, whether that's grainy black and white, full color, or maybe even night-vision. For those lucky enough to be transported to a camera near their own bodies, they will be able to see themselves twitching, moving irregularly, as if something is trying to gain control.

There seems to be no way to control the camera they're in. It is stationary or perhaps it moves in a set turning motion. Those trapped within have no control for the minute or so they seem to be transported. If they can take a moment to calm themselves and take advantage of this new perspective, of course… there might be rather interesting things to see, including:

• A massive, scaled form moving out in the deep water off of Gloucester's shoreline. With the night-vision capabilities granted by these particular visions, those trapped might even catch sight of strange figures swimming near the impossibly large creature. They throw… something at it and the vast creature thrashes, kicking up enormous waves that rocket toward the coast.
  
  
• Piles of garbage are cast up onto the beaches by some of the rogue waves that seem to be kicking up. Some of them move and almost appear to have a humanoid form before they simply fall apart, becoming a pile of simple rubbish.
  
  
• Unidentifiable figures in dark clothes are moving around the city at night, spray painting eyes in alleyways, across buildings, anywhere they can find that cameras might be able to see. If someone were to catch a glimpse as they were just finishing up their artwork, they might notice that the spray painted eye blinks.
  
  
• A small growth of horrible, lamb-esque plant creatures seems to have cropped up in an alleyway near Things of Beauty, one of the curiosity stores in town. There aren't a lot of them and they seem to be small and young. They're also in an out-of-the way spot that might be difficult to notice for more people.
  
  
• A group of youths appears to have found a weak point in the fencing around Dogtown. As dusk descends, they can be seen traveling into the closed park. It would seem some refuse to be deterred by law enforcement and ADI.
  
  
• Head of ADI Security, Neil Grace, seems to be spending his lunch hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays entering into an unmarked building to do… something. He enters and exits completely alone.
  
  
• Non-native (recently demoted) PR person, Reyes Amador, seems to be in some remote back alley in town some evenings. They have a large fishing hook that may be familiar to anyone who saw the flayed bodies on the beach. They also have a caged seagull with them. There's clear upset on their face as they reach into the cage and manage to plant the hook into the bird before quickly shutting and locking the cage. The bird goes wild within its confines, attempting to attack Reyes as they cover their face and appear to cry to themselves.
  
  

➥ Rogue Wave

(cw: thassalophobia, large creatures, drowning, flooding, (un)natural disasters, human-caused pollution, animals in distress/injury to animals)

rogue wave (n.) a random, enormous ocean wave that sometimes travels at an angle to prevailing seas.

The beaches are closed.

To be fair, the beaches have been closed since bodies started washing up on shore and left ADI's PR department working overtime to keep the grim scene out of national news. Now, though, the problem is rapidly becoming more vast than what horrors the sea dumps ashore: the ocean itself seems to be trying to relocate inland. The first rogue wave to hit the harbor early in the morning on August 16 is devastating enough on its own, battering boats against their docks and drowning one unfortunate fisherman who was swept out with the wave when it retreated. That incident alone would have been a freak occurrence, a tragic and frightening tale but ultimately a mundane one born of the unpredictability of the natural world.

But then the next rogue wave hits, and the next after that, and the next after that. They're not regular or predictable; the waves don't hit in the same place each time or at regular times. One day might be a reprieve of calm, and the next see massive waves battering the coast one after another. Gloucester is taking a beating, and the rest of the region is suffering along with the city. Homes and businesses on waterfront property are left abandoned in the face of unpredictable, uncaring destruction, and flooding extends inland. The air in Gloucester is thick with salt and humidity, the ground increasingly soggy underfoot as one nears the sea. ADI sends out custodial crews to batten down and place sandbags at headquarters and the housing complex. Thanks to ongoing repair efforts, Bonnie's Flophouse is, for once, not flooded, though Bonnie and the Visionary are pessimistically preparing for the eventuality of having to evacuate their basement apartment once again. Neighbors around Gloucester are in similar distress; for the civic-minded there is no end of work for volunteers in water-proofing buildings or helping salvage that which has already flooded.

The why of it all will take some legwork to discover. Within a few days ADI manages to spin up a story about seismological disturbances on the ocean floor, which...actually isn't that far from the truth, as far as anyone can initially tell. The rogue waves all originate from roughly the same patch of open ocean, and the best view from shore is at the far end of Coffin Beach. Investigators are strongly cautioned to have an escape plan to reach high ground at a moment's notice, and anyone known to lack outdoor survival skills will be officially discouraged from going. Observation efforts will be hit or miss; one might strain one's eyes for hours and see nothing but a few erratic ocean swells.

Get lucky enough to see more, and your luck might quickly run out. The creature that appears offshore might be mistaken for a whale breaching in the first few seconds, before one realizes that the shape is wrong, what one mistook for the whale's body resolving into the reptilian head of a serpent whose body goes on and on and on, heralding the realization that it is so much further away than one first thought. The creature is impossibly huge, a leviathan that could swallow a cargo ship whole. Its coils rise from the surface of the ocean before crashing back down with a low, bone-rattling bellow of pain. From this distance the human-sized creatures that surround it and provide the apparent source of its distress are mere specks.

Hope you remember your exit plan. A mere flick of this serpent's tail would be enough to capsize a ship, and this is a full-body thrash of pain. The waves offshore swell as the creature submerges, a wall of dark water heading all too quickly toward the beach, carrying yet more garbage with it.

➥ Thicker Than Water

(cw: thassalophobia, large creatures, claustrophobia, blood, siren sounds in the first link, hallucinated death)

Though few, the towering forms of the signal tower creatures still stalk about the edges of the town, largely still and passive but for the blaring tones they occasionally cause. They could almost be forgotten about, a new and eerie installation to Gloucester's skyline but nothing too distressing as long as you don’t look up, right? At least until the day a new sound issues from some of the phones.

The effect is immediate. The smell of rusted metal and a gentle chirp of electronic equipment mixing with a less than comforting creek of metal on all sides. One second you’re on the city street and the next, you’re in the cramped and stale-aired interior of a submarine. Large pipes line the sides of the sub and two bare-bulbs in metal cages light the interior with a harsh glare. Oxygen and depth meters frame the single porthole window to the outside above an instrument panel that displays coordinates, a compass, and simple controls for piloting the rust-encrusted submarine.

When you look around, the back of the sub is only a few paces away, the space clearly meant for no more than one or two people. At the back is a small, blank, video display surrounded by additional pressure gauges. A large map sits beside it, the topography of it faded and nearly useless, but the lines of the coordinate grid can just be made out. Between the map and the display, is a rectangular button backlit in dull orange. When pressed, the display struggles to life with a whirring sound before finally displaying an image of the empty ocean ahead in black and white.

Luckily, you’re not alone here and you and your new partner can quickly find instructions laying around; though, the edges seem warped and encrusted with a rust-red and flaky substance. It’s an easy task: move to the listed coordinates and angle, snap a picture of the anomaly, move on to the next. Simple. You certainly don’t seem to have much of a choice as any hatches appear to be welded shut and the forward window is covered by a sheet of metal as the sub lurches to life. Though, not before you perhaps notice the ocean outside isn’t a deep blue as you might expect, but an unsettling red.

Probably fine.

Eventually, you reach depth and idle, the submarine now left in your capable hands. Those more willing to explore will find the ocean around them entirely unfamiliar. While rocky outcroppings make maneuvering hazardous, there’s also the odd, sharp plantlife to consider and the occasional tube-like shapes that wave about and knock against the sub like over-eager worms. Those particularly lucky might even catch sight of something else out there. Something unfathomably huge. Whether the pair of you decide to follow instructions or not, in time, the creaking of the metal sharpens and feels as if it presses in on you, like it might just crumble. Seams warp and shift and the bottom of the sub begins to slowly fill with a thick, fresh, blood.

The oxygen meter steadily drops and as you move or don’t, something seems to knock against the outside of the metal walls, surely too thin to protect you from whatever lurks outside. Which will get to you first: whatever lives in blood or the threat of suffocation? Perhaps if you finish your task quickly, you won’t need to find out.

➥ Nereid

(cw: human-caused pollution, animals in peril, potential animal death, potential drowning)
(Additional Note: Thank you to Alexis, Katrina's player, for reviewing and contributing to this prompt.)

It's taken a few days to arrange for the boat and organize their forces, but an expedition out into deeper water is underway, spearheaded by Katrina, to investigate the flayed bodies that have been washing up on shore. Sable, ADI's primary contact at the Docks, has volunteered her small vessel for the task. It might be dangerous, but with the waves lashing Gloucester's banks and infrastructure, it's either help with this or deal with the fact she's not going to have a place to do business in town soon.

With the bodies cropping up at night, volunteers who take to the water are outfitted with night-vision goggles, harpoon spears, knives, and nets. However, the boat heads out during the day for anyone there to freedive. "This is not race for speed or depth," Katrina advises. "Be calm. Do not waste breath or strength. Save both for when you fight. If creatures here are like ones from my home, they are strong, and they fight. Do not swim here if you are afraid. Do not push your body." For weaker swimmers, there's plenty to do on the boat under Sable's watchful eye. Keeping a lookout, prepping the nets in case there's something that needs to be hauled aboard, and spotting and disentangling sea creatures that might need some help with whatever plastic or line that's been caught on them are the primary duties.

The boat sets anchor, keeping an eye out for any rogue waves, and it's into the water for the freedivers. The first thing that becomes abundantly clear is that there is a lot of trash off the coast of Gloucester. Far more than seems reasonable, in fact. It's as though someone tipped a cargo ship containing heaps of the stuff out nearby. The second thing to become clear is that at least some of the trash is alive. The mermaids, if you could call them that, seem to be made of the stuff. Their long fingers are made of hooks and broken bits of metal, their webbing is plastic bags and discarded netting, their hair is fishing line and wires. Whatever has been thrown into the ocean has been pulled together into these merciless beings. Any diver grabbed by one will need to think quickly and fight hard to escape, or they'll find themselves rapidly pulled deeper, limbs entangled.

It's not a completely one-sided fight. The harpoon spears seem to stun them momentarily when pieces are knocked apart or off. But it's getting a net over the mermaids and hauling them up into the open air that seems to kill them. Mermaids raised out of the water for more than a few seconds break apart into lifeless trash. Maybe get some trash skimmers. There's a lot of clean-up to do out here.

➥ Mod Notes

• GENERAL - Players are welcome to play background NPCs for themselves when they are needed in a thread. If you need more information on general behavior for these types of NPCs, please feel free to ask! In general, the information provided in the prompts should be sufficient and ordinary people will act like… ordinary people! Although, the people of Gloucester seem to be becoming more and more aware of supernatural phenomenon and they are frightened by it. You're welcome to make up any details beyond that for your specific scene. Also, please remember that character deaths are permanent and plan accordingly!
  
  
• THE PUBLIC EYE (16-31 August) - Characters who do not have actual bodies can still have their consciousness hijacked and pulled into a camera. In those instances, if they can see where their 'body' was, they'll simply be able to see the device that their ghostly form is usually attached to. This seems to be an entirely supernatural phenomenon with no coding or commands being executed to cause this. Cameras that are checked will appear to be completely ordinary to the technological eye. Those who might have some kind of supernatural sense that they are feeding might get some read off of various cameras that indicate they might be about to snag someone's consciousness. The various items that characters observe in cameras are welcome to be followed up on. For prompts that involve unnamed NPCs, players are welcome to assume interactions and take control of those NPCs. Anyone wishing to try to fix something (like the vegetable lamb infestation) will be encouraged to take care of it directly by ADI with another team member. Named NPCs can be found and/or confronted in the NPC Top Level below.
  
  
• ROGUE WAVE (16-31 August) - Characters will have the opportunity to assist locals in a variety of ways; players are welcome to invent their own scenarios for assisting local residents and businesses (as well as shoring up ADI property) and play any unnamed NPCs as desired. Characters who are able to get a better look at the serpent through magical or technological means will see that it has fishhooks and other detritus stabbed into its scales and that the creatures harassing it are the same mermaids seen in the Nereid prompt. The serpent's thrashing and subsequent rogue waves will diminish as the mermaids are killed off following the events of that prompt.
  
  
• THICKER THAN WATER (16-31 August) - No more than two characters will be trapped in the submarine at the same time, players are welcome to come up with alien plant life and structures they might find in the camera, but there will be very little life found beyond the encounters with the leviathan. Bones of impossibly huge creatures, brief snaps of a fin or a scale, huge teeth, and other such oddities may also be spotted at the listed coordinates. Characters can either finish the assignment or simply wait it out, but the pressure will increase, filling the chamber slowly with blood. Before they can drown, however, the sub will be crushed either through pressure or through the jaws of the creature, and characters will find themselves suddenly jolted awake again where they’d been before the siren sounded. No time (or very little time) appears to have passed. They will be unharmed; though, they might find blood still lingering under their nails or trickling from the corner of their mouths or eyes.
  
  
• NEREID (19 August) - Sable's boat, the Minx is a large vessel with plenty of room for as many characters as might like to come on this adventure. Characters do not have to get into the water and will be relatively safe as long as they stay in the boat. Sea creatures tangled with the garbage include things like seabirds, sea turtles, and even a few dolphins, seals, and sharks. Sable will be able to guide characters on how to safely catch creatures to free them or to help them from a safe distance. There's plenty of deck space for if and when characters need to start hauling up mermaids. Once characters provide info on what's going on, ADI will take efforts to start a large-scale clean-up operation with multiple rented vessels to dispose of the mermaids. Players are welcome to have their characters assisting with those endeavors throughout the end of the month.

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Thicker Than Water

[edalyn]

While Eda may have had very little trouble adjusting to the phones in this world, right now she's feeling just about done with them. She seriously contemplates throwing hers into the sea, but it seems like there's enough garbage in there without her help.

Still, she's planning to leave hers at the apartment today, a plan which very nearly works, except that just as she's leaving said apartment she turns out to be within earshot of an absolutely horrible noise. Her ears fold back a bit and she covers them, muttering something about how she's going to throw her phone into the sea after all.

And then a wave of dizziness hits her as she's very suddenly and disorientingly somewhere else. She braces by grabbing the nearest wall and starts to take in her surroundings when she feels a hand brush against her. She jumps slightly and starts to give an irritated growl, but the voice is familiar and so is the man, once she actually turns.

"...Hell if I know." It's not exactly the most helpful answer, but she's wondering much the same.

[whisperedone]

The person jumps and Garner flinches, his hand pulling back slightly with that and the growl he receives...but the voice is distinct and sets ease back into him. Well, some, her answer didn't exactly fill him with confidence.

"It sounds...creaky. Metal...and it's small? What else can you see? Is there a door?" Not that he's going to make her do all the work, he reaches until his fingers find...glass? circular glass and metal around it in a circle. Then...ok, he was familiar enough with what screens and monitors felt like, at least.

[edalyn]

Eda looks around some more, getting her bearings as she takes in the small space.

"There is... but it doesn't look easy to open," Eda grumbles, lightly kicking the welded-shut hatch.

"But you're right, it's metal, mechanical... some kinda vehicle I think. It's got controls almost like an airship or--" and then it clicks, based on what little she can see out the window, even if that's a lot more red than she'd expect.

"...I think we're underwater." And she doesn't sound happy about it. That makes things a lot more complicated than just getting out of here.

[whisperedone]

"Oh..."

What else is there really to say to that? They're under water, something he can't navigate well even outside of the metal vehicle, and in said vehicle which it seems neither of them recognize or know what to do with.

Alright.

Garner takes a breath and lets it out slow as he feels along the potential display his fingers had found. "Then we'll need to find the controls, if it is a vehicle, there must be a way to move it forward or back. If we can find a viewport or window, perhaps we can navigate back to the beach at least."

Nevermind they might be nowhere near their beach if they were suddenly out here with no memory of arriving, one problem at a time and starting with the ones they could do something about. "Do you see a wheel or levers?"

Not that it's all on her, he starts following he path of the wall around with his hands until he finds...pipes? Pipes that lead him towards the other side of the room-machine.

[edalyn]

"If we're even near the beach," Eda mutters. She's trying not to worry about the fact that the last time something like this happened she wound up in an entirely new world, but it's hard to ignore.

"But there's controls, yeah, and a window... can't see much outside. Is the water here usually red? I'm used to purple at home and blue here," she sounds more curious and less automatically distressed by that part, but it's probably worth noting. She tries a lever as she says this, noticing that the machine doesn't seem to be responding, great.

She's about to complain about it, when something faint light catches her eye and she walks back to the... screen? Probably. "There's something over here... well, here goes nothing." A big glowy button would be hard to resist at the best of times, and right now she doesn't have many other options.

Eda presses the button and is initially disappointed, at least until the screen flickers to life. "There's something on this--" And whatever she's saying is cut off suddenly as the submarine gives a dizzying lurch.

[whisperedone]

Purple and red are both odd water colors to him, but it's also been a while since he saw water and he's never actually seen the ocean before, so he's not sure he can even answer that reliably beyond the uncertain sound he makes in response.

What if they weren't even in the ocean, but a lake neither of them knew about? 'Underwater' was vague enough, maybe there were red lakes about.

As he's getting to the other side of the machine, it lurches and he grabs hold of the pipes to steady himself, his stomach twisting for the forward motion he can feel for only a moment...and then it smoothes to nearly nothing but that hum again.

"I think you found the controls." He runs his hands over the side closest to him, then over a little further back the way he came. "If the controls are there...I believe the back of the vessel is this way...and also where the motor is. The vibrations are slightly heavier." He frowns as he turns back towards Eda. "There must be a way to navigate, this machine feels...too advanced to only move forward and stop."

A grating whir sound stirs up from near where Eda last was, something mechanical sliding through worn grooves that ends with a solid clank as the view window seals shut.

[edalyn]

"I found a screen with a button," Eda explains once the movement of the submarine smooths out. "It's showing the outside now. The controls are across from here, I think. Maybe they'll do something now that it's on." He's probably right about the motor, and she tries to pay a bit more attention to the way the vessel feels herself.

At least this is some kind of progress, but she looks up as she hears the window sealing and lets out an irritated groan. "Window's gone. Great. This keeps getting better."

"Hm?" She's turning to go try the controls again when she spots something that was tucked almost out of sight. There's a rustle of paper as she picks up what turns out to be an instruction manual that appears to have seen much better days.

[whisperedone]

A screen with a button...that's something to work towards. Especially when there's very little else to find. He's pretty sure he's found what she's talking about when the sound of paper moving catches his attention and has him turning more towards her.

"I don't suppose that tells us where we are and what we're doing here?"

ADI wouldn't do this, right? Probably more entity-related stuff. It was entity-related things that had brought them here, surely, so whatever that was had just shunted them around. No, maybe missives and objectives were too much to hope for.

[edalyn]

Eda flips through the manual for a moment, then pauses to sniff the edges. "Is that blood?" she mutters. Either way, she goes back to skimming it.

"Looks like it does not tell us where we are," she answers, voice clipped and irritated. "But it tells us how to run this bucket of rust. We're supposed to go some places and take some pictures. Helpful."

At least it's somewhere to start, though. Better than nothing, even if she really hates following instructions.

[whisperedone]

It's not far to take that small step towards her and hold a hand out for the paper. "May I inspect it?"

Meanwhile, the instructions maybe weren't quite what they were wanting, but they were helpful in his mind. "That is...something, at least. A direction. Why don't we start there, an objective means an end in sight. Do you feel you will be able to follow the directions on how to run this.. 'bucket of rust?'"

It seemed an apt description at least.

[edalyn]

"Yeah, knock yourself out," Eda says, glancing over the manual a moment longer before handing it over. She's not quite sure what he'll be able to tell from it, but she figures he's got a better idea of his senses than she does.

"They don't look too hard... but the screen's at one side and the controls are at the other. Think I can watch it and tell you what to do?" While it doesn't seem like the best system, it might be easier than one person scurrying back and forth.

[whisperedone]

"Yes, I believe I can do that." He's decent at directions and he trusts her about as well with this as he might himself plus she could actually see what they were doing, so ,ight as well.

He brings the paper up and runs a finger along the edge until he can find the uneven texture of another substance along the edge. Supposedly blood. He raises it up to his mouth and places the corner between his lips so his tongue can press into the paper and re-wet the dry substance. After a moment he blinks and pulls the paper back away from himself.

"It's definitely blood. We ought to be careful for whatever caused the last person here to bleed." He offers the paper back over without another thought. "What's your first order...captain?"

[edalyn]

Eda watches him, honestly not seeming to find the approach of tasting the blood all that weird. They really should try and avoid whatever fate left it there, but they already know they're probably in danger. She takes the manual back before snorting at the next comment.

"Thanks, I hate it." She wasn't entirely sold on being an authority figure at the best of times, but especially not right this minute.

"But... I guess it should be getting a handle on the controls. It says here--" She does her best to describe the controls and what the manual says each thing does, glancing between the actual submarine and the paper. At least it's fairly straight-forward, more than she might have guessed.

[whisperedone]

Garner listens intently, his hands running on various parts of the enclosed ship and finding the parts she describes. The camera should be easy enough, taking the picture causes a sound whe the image is generated and a light flashes when there's an object of interest in the view similar to how his phone tells him when the image is lined up, the heat of the glass from the light will tell him when it's been successful. Leaving the navigation and the readouts of the coordinates to her.

Too bad too, that would likely be the part he'd enjoy more, the precision of exact numbers, but it simply wasn't practical without some form of confirmation that what he was doing was right.

He moves himself to the camera mechanism, though pauses by the pipes near the back as they seem to groan a bit. That was....fine, right? Pressure shifting?

"Let's get moving towards that first point, perhaps whatever is there will give us some guidance on what we're actually doing here."

He waits until the cabin lurches slightly with movement before letting his mind drift to other perhaps important questions. "Are you claustrophobic at all?" He's....not sure what they'll do about it if she is, but better to know, right?

[edalyn]

Eda, meanwhile, doesn't seem terribly interested in the numbers or coordinates. While she shows a little bit of curiosity about how the ship actually works, that sort of precision definitely seems like the most boring part to her. But she's capable of keeping an eye on things, even if she grumbles.

"Might as well.. at least until we get the hang of driving this thing." Because another part of her is tempted to just try going up and hope. For the moment, though, she'll collaborate on the first task, doing her best to keep track of the parts she's handling.

She also does her best to brush off the next question, since there isn't much either of them can do. "Nah, I'm fine with small spaces," she says, which is mostly true. "Just don't love when they're locked."

She keeps her tone light and mostly flippant, because her default approach to things is still to pretend she's fine, even if she's working on that. Unfortunately, it's true either way. The amount of space may not be a huge issue, but the feeling of being trapped is harder for her to deal with.

[whisperedone]

"Ah."

It sounds fair to him and she sounds genuine to his ear, but he also wasn't the best with reading people. Hopefully she was telling the truth, there was little they could do about it regardless.

There's another juddering creak to the back part of the sub and he turns a bit to the let as something in that direction seems to gurgle to his ear. This thing was sea worthy, right? It must be...

"If there is nothing at this coordinate that helps us, perhaps we try navigating up instead and hopefully there will be a way to find the shore that way. This...ship is making odd sounds, but I'm not sure what are meant to be normal."

[edalyn]

Eda's ears twitch and fold back slightly when the ship begins to make what she's guessing are worse noises than before.

"I wouldn't exactly be surprised if this place trapped us in a faulty boat... but let's hope that's a good creak." Or at least not one that means they're going to end up more trapped than they already are.

She takes a deep breath and turns her attention back to the numbers. If nothing else, at least they're something to focus on. "It looks like we should be getting close, if I've got the hang of this." Hopefully they are, because the next creak is louder than the last.

cw: reference to self harm

[whisperedone]

Garner nods more to himself than to answer her, hand ready and set by the button for her mark.

Except there's another creak and the gurgle gets a little louder. He doesn't notice the liquid touching his boot, but he can smell it, that acrid coppery tang he's all too familiar with.

"Is that..?" Button all but forgotten, he crouches lower to put his fingers down by the floor. He's met with something thick and tacky and hot. Not burning, but as hot as blood ever is when he draws his own for his maledicts. A quick pass of the substance by his nose confirms it even without taste.

"Eda." His tone is firm but still quiet as he stands again. "Are we sure it was water outside that window?"

[edalyn]

Eda doesn't take long to notice the smell, either. While it's familiar for somewhat different reasons, it's still familiar enough not to miss.

She looks over just as Garner is getting back up, and then looks down. The blood hasn't quite reached her own boots yet, but it quickly does and she grimaces. "Eugh." She makes a disgruntled sound and steps back a little, but there isn't much point.

"Well now I'm not. It did look red..." Though she would have expected blood to be opaque enough that it didn't look like an ocean at all. Then again, she might be expecting too much sense.

Eda groans and tangles her fingers in her hair. She has to focus, but the smell is starting to get overwhelming, as is the idea of drowning in here. She's starting to panic, and she isn't someone who should panic. She mutters something that sounds a lot like keep it together, birdbrain.

"Up. We need to go up--forget the photo nonsense." She supposes there's a chance finishing their task would let them leave but she doubts they have the time, and it's not like they have any reason to count on that. Unless Garner argues the point, she'll work on changing their course.