Open Log

[musicdied]

Who: Yelena Belova and anyone
When: Mid-August up to just before the event
Where: ADI housing and the surrounding neighbourhood, the railyard
Summary: Getting the lay of the land, and investigating the phantom crash.
Warnings: fire, destruction of home, mention of insects, mention of potential death and corpses, paranoia


ADI Housing - C2

It's a solid few hours between when Yelena is first deposited in one of the maintenance ducts in ADI headquarters, and when she turns up at the apartment - shared, she's been warned, and while that's less than ideal, she's dealt with less privacy before - she's been assigned to. This once, she takes no pains to be silent, though neither is she overly loud.

If there's no one immediately in evidence in the common area of the apartment, she'll set about exploring, committing the layout and location of various useful items to memory. If one of the apartment's other residents is in evidence, or else when they make an appearance, she greets them with a small smile and a, "Hello. I think we're to be roommates."

(And, ok, maybe only half of the other residents of the apartment will think she's harmless for even a second, but half is better than none.)

ADI Housing - General

After she's acquainted - or reacquainted - herself with her roommates and washed the cobwebs and dust from her hair, Yelena sets out to acquaint herself with the grounds of the housing complex and the area just beyond. The first evening, she's concerned mainly with the major landmarks: the apartment blocks, the fitness and laundry facilities, the gate and the bus stops, the nearby grocery store. The next few evenings, she can be found wandering the grounds and the nearby neighbourhood with less apparent intent - just stretching her legs, if asked. (Just cataloging the surveillance equipment; she's seen high-security facilities with far fewer cameras.)

Over the course of the first two weeks she's there, she establishes something of a routine, alternating running and swimming in the early mornings, visiting the gym at night. Occasionally, after curfew, she might be found up on the roof of one of the buildings. It's not against the rules - she's checked.

Railyard - August 21-24

It doesn't take any convincing to get Yelena down to the railyard after the crash that has, apparently, gone unnoticed or ignored by the majority of the town. Including, apparently, the people who work in that selfsame railyard. After the third repetition of "I just started here", she abandons questioning to those less physically adventurous in favour of inspecting the rusting tracks and decaying train car. She slips in through the half-fused door, the beam of her heavily-weighted flashlight bobbing as she scrambles over detritus best left unidentified, and struggles not to cough at the haze of dust and ash in the air. That the burnt-out hulk is ancient is clear enough. So too is the fact that it was once a sleeper car, and she supposes it's fortunate that some long-ago rescue crew has already removed the bodies, even if no one's bothered to haul the car away.

(Or would it not have been here yesterday, if anyone had taken it into their heads to explore the railyard without the impetus of the crash?)

She runs a finger carefully along the lip of the washbasin, then turns her attention to the walls, squinting at the ruined posters. After a moment, she pulls her phone out of her pocket, and starts recording. Most of posters and playbills are destroyed beyond any use, but some few might yield more information on closer inspection, somewhere that feels less like a tomb and doesn't force her to take shallow breaths.

It doesn't take long for the theme to become apparent even in the few posters that remain.

Something - maybe the creak of fire-and-rot weakened flooring, maybe the scuttling or chittering of disturbed vermin, maybe just a shift in the air - alerts her to another person's presence, and she glances sharply over. She relaxes only a little when she spies another person, and not anything particularly sinister.

"It's strange, isn't it?" she says. "This still being here."

Wildcard

Hit me with something, or pm me/pp me at quantumvelvet if you have an idea you want to chat about.

Comments

Railyard

[worthallthis]

"Is it." He doesn't seem surprised by her being startled. He'd made that noise intentionally, because he's realized startling his team is probably not a great idea. Especially when one of them is a very capable assassin, like him.

He just continues swinging up inside to look around, metal hand hanging onto the door. "It is not in the way. People are busy. If it harms no one, why move it."

[musicdied]

"It only harms no one because everyone seems to look around it. They don't come in." She stomps the heal of one boot on the floor in illustration. It groans alarmingly.

"They cleared away all the other pieces. If this was a carnival train, it would need more cars to carry everything. There's no room for lions here. It would need an engine to pull it. Why clear away everything else, and leave this one piece for so long that everyone forgets how it got here?"

Something scuttles across the listing floor of the train carriage, and this time when her foot comes down, it's quieter, but with intent.

[worthallthis]

Okay, she has a point. He hadn't considered there needing to be more cars. He mostly avoids the train yard-- the sound of the trains on their tracks hits something old and deep and terrifying that he no longer remembers-- and the only reason he's here is because he saw Yelena coming this way, so he doesn't actively know much about this wreck in general.

He stays by the door, where the floor is sturdier. He's aware he's a lot heavier than Yelena. "I don't know," he admits in answer. "Maybe it's more magic." Ugh, magic.

[musicdied]

"Ugh, magic," is Yelena's immediate response, in unknowing echo of his thoughts. But given the suspiciously blind eye the railyard employees seem to be turning to the derelict car, and given the absolute lack of emergency response to the phantom crash...

"You're probably right. It has to make them not notice somehow. Or not care. Maybe it doesn't work on us because we're already a little strange for being from somewhere else. Or we haven't been here long enough to slip under the spell."

[worthallthis]

That makes him pause, suddenly even more wary of this whole place. "Perhaps we should leave," he suggests carefully after a long moment. He doesn't want his teammate under any spell, thank you very much. But he doesn't want to overstep, either.

[musicdied]

Yelena shakes her head. "I want to at least get pictures of the rest of this thing, so we can examine them more closely at home."

There's a moment's pause as she surveys the decaying pile of rust and misery, before she adds, almost reluctantly, "The last strange thing I saw here was gone when I went back.
I don't want to miss things with this one."

[worthallthis]

He doesn't sigh, but he does look maybe vaguely put upon. "Take some pictures, then." Get a move on before this spell potentially sinks its teeth into you.

A pause. "What last strange thing?" He hasn't ever thought to take pictures of anything, to be honest. But it suddenly strikes him as a good idea, in case he ever winds up with maintenance again.

[musicdied]

"I have been," she says, and taps her phone with one finger. She turns away to continue documenting the rest of the burnt out car, and there's a declaration of trust in the motion, that he'll watch her back if there's threat of anything more than stepping through a rotted-out piece of flooring or slicing herself open on the wreckage.

"There was...it looked like a playground slide, in Dogtown. It led to some kind of temple."

[worthallthis]

"A temple." From a playground slide? How is that even--

--magic. Fucking magic again. He thinks maybe he hates this place, sometimes. Even if there's no maintenance and nobody's tried to hurt him yet, except for targets he was supposed to kill.

"What was in it."

[musicdied]

"A pit," she says. "Too deep - I threw in a chemical light, and it did not hit bottom before it was out of sight. This close to the lake, there should have been water long before it disappeared. There was a pulley with chains over it, with a bag held from it. Something alive, I think, and bleeding. The pit was too wide to reach for a proper look."

There's something in her voice, a twist of anger or regret - she may hope it was an animal, but there's a part of her that suspects otherwise. And they had left it there, in the dark, alone.

"There were no symbols, just two disks in the wall to lower the pulley down, and open the doors once it was in the pit."

[worthallthis]

"You were probably not anywhere near the lake. Especially if. The slide did not lead there a second time," he points out. More magic, Yelena, it had to be. Hell, knowing this train thing apparently happened a hundred years ago and nobody noticed the car here, she might not even have been in the same time.

What a fucking mess. He focuses on what they could potentially understand, rather than what they probably can't. "You could not get to the bag on the pulley?"

[musicdied]

"It probably still leads there," she replies, and there's a note of something dark in her voice, a grim sort of bitterness. "It just was not where we left it."

She shakes her head, and snaps a few more pictures of the posters, and the strange, splotchy mold colony that appears to be attempting to eat the tiger on one.

"The pit was too wide, and it was in the very centre. If we'd had something to pull it over with, maybe - that is probably how it was put on. Or there was a mechanism to move the pulley over, somewhere we weren't able to find."

[worthallthis]

"The doorway moved," he guesses she means. "Or was closed, to open again another time."

He frowns, shakes his head. "Too late to do anything, anyway, probably. If the body didn't react to you being there, it was already dead." That's meant to be a comfort. Yelena couldn't do anything, but maybe there was nothing to be done. If a body is dead, then it needs nothing.

There is the possibility that when the doorway opens again, a new body will be added. "Was there any other sign to show the doorway was open. Something to look for elsewhere." Or should he start hovering around a playground?

[musicdied]

“The bag began to thrash when we lowered it,” Yelena says. “I do not think it was dead. But it also would not have been helped if we had refused to escape as long as it was there.”

She’s aware of how cold that sounds. She’s also aware that he might be the one person who won’t judge her for that coldness.

“The slide was out of place, when it was there. In a clearing, with no buildings nearby, and no path. Like it had just been dropped there. A lure, but not one that is somewhere it might be easily noticed.”

[worthallthis]

Nope, he absolutely does not judge it. Though he does frown. That's not encouraging at all, cold or not. Yelena clearly made the right choice, she didn't really have another choice, but it's still not encouraging that there are in fact living things tied up in bags somewhere underground.

"And you have not been able to find it again?" It was moved, or didn't ever properly exist to begin with and it was all a magic-induced hallucination, or it only appears at certain times of day or of the month... magic makes everything so much more difficult, dammit.

[musicdied]

"No," she confirms. "I've looked. I know the location is right. But when I go back - nothing."

It's disquieting, and leaves her off-kilter. It's nothing like what she experienced under the Red Room's control - her perception had always been her own, nothing had ever blurred the stark reality of the horrors she'd seen or inflicted - but there's an unpleasant similarity in the questioning of herself.

"I don't know if it or whatever put it there thinks, or thinks anything like a human if it does, but if I were to guess at a reason, I would say that something does not want anyone who makes it out to go back prepared."

[worthallthis]

"Maybe you should finish in the spooky, magic train car," he reiterates after a moment.

But he has another suggestion, too: "And then show me where you saw the slide. Maybe we can both keep watch. Just in case."