Silent Ponyville: Reunion
Sickness unto foolish death.
Part 22
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The siren finally fell silent.
...
...
...
"Are you still there?" Posey finally asked, causing Lance to flinch.
"Yeah I'm here...are you?" At any other time, in any other place, it would have been the most ridiculous question in the world. But at the moment the only thing about that question that would make him feel ridiculous was not asking it.
"I think...does your light work yet?" she suggested somewhat hesitantly.
"It should." Lance proceeded to fiddle with the switch on his surgical light until it clicked on again at last.
They both immediately shrunk backward as they were confronted with two hideously smiling, pale ponies standing stone still right in front of them. Unlike last time, Lance recognized them for what they were before any outright panic could set in. The way Posey's exclamation paused midway and then petered out entirely suggested she had just come to a similar conclusion. They were just mannequins...again...although their appearance made it difficult to use the word 'just' when describing them. Their outer surface was scratched and cracked, with trails of dried blood making it look as though they had been mauled to the point of bleeding to death. They hung from pairs of chains descending from the ceiling, and over the mouth of each were nailed two identical photos of a forced, bloody smile with missing teeth and bruised gums.
Having confirmed they weren't actually under attack, Lance looked around this new version of Operating Room 2, quickly encountering that familiar feeling of regret for having turned on his light. Two mannequins flanked the place where Door 303 had been. What was left was similar to the missing section of wall he had first happened upon, only instead of crisscrossing rebar it was vertical, rusted iron bars. The floor and ceiling had both been replaced with unevenly spaced grating made of haphazardly welded together bits of rebar, and both had shifted position a good six inches upwards and downwards respectively. Above and below them were strangely complex arrays of pipes and ventilation ducts that had all rusted and worn through, allowing a deathly black mold to seep out and up along the walls. But he'd been expecting such a hideous change of scenery this time. He tried to not focus on any of the fine gruesome details and turned, looking for what was really important: a way out.
There was a door to each side and one behind them. While they were all of similar rusted metal construction, each one bore distinct markings. The door to their left bore an etching of some kind of nail or pin, while the door on their right displayed the much more obvious image of a needle being threaded. Even though he could also clearly see something written on the door behind them he didn't step closer to read it quite yet, finding himself more curious to see if there was anything behind the iron bars that had once been Door 303. His inquisitiveness paid off, for as he shined his light through he saw a railed catwalk on the other side leading across a chasm to a platform built around what could only have been an elevator shaft, though the side with the door was not facing toward them. He also spotted another catwalk in the distance coming in on the left side of the platform from parts unknown, but he wasn't much concerned with that compared to the elevator itself. Shifting his gaze from side to side, he also saw there were two paths traveling onto the catwalk just beyond the bars. Surely the two side doors lead to them...but could it really be that easy to escape this time?
His suspicion was replaced with concern as he turned back toward Posey and saw that she was handling all of this about as well as he had the first time. She had fallen to a sitting position, slowly looking around with wide eyes as she processed a level of shock that even the abhorrent things that had already happened to them could not have possibly prepared her for.
"Posey...you alright?" he asked, stepping forward and placing a hoof on her shoulder, hoping the touch would bring her out of it.
She said nothing, content to let her wide eyed look of alarm slowly descend down to her hooves and linger there.
"Posey," he repeated, his worry increasing as she continued to not reply.
She let out a shuddering breath, bringing one of her hooves up to rest atop of his hoof on her shoulder. "I'm not alright Lance...I'm really...really not alright. But I said I wanted to be here with you, and I meant it. I'm not going to make you wait until I am alright though, because I don't think I will be until we get out of here."
"I know the feeling, trust me," Lance replied as he gently nudged her in an attempt to coax her back to her hooves. "But I can see an elevator through those bars. If we can just get one of these side doors open we can finally leave."
"That almost seems too good to be true," she observed a bit skeptically as she obliged him. Without further delay they both picked one of the doors to try opening, and to their complete lack of surprise they were both locked. Their attempt at opening the third door leading into the hallway was also met with the familiar obstinate click, but this time it was a bit more distressing. They were trapped...again.
"Okay...is there a key or something somewhere?" Lance thought aloud while starting to look about.
"It would have to be hanging from something, a key would just fall through the grating here if it dropped " she pointed out a bit unhelpfully. "Wait, what did that writing on the door say?"
"Oh of course, the writing," he scolded himself as he trotted back over to examine it. The text was a bit worn but it was still fairly legible.
One may only lie
One can never lie
One path may save you
One question is permitted
"Sounds like that old story with the two ponies at the fork in the road...I never figured out how to solve that one," Posey said after reading it.
"It's simple, all you have to do is ask one of them which way the other one would say, and then take the opposite way," he explained. Posey took a moment to think it over but within moments seemed to grasp the logic.
"Oh, I get it now, because if you're asking the liar, he'd say the opposite of what the truthful one would say, and if you're asking the truthful one, he'd tell you the lie that the other would say, right?"
"Exactly," Lance confirmed with a nod. "I guess we're supposed to ask...one of the mannequins?" he continued as he turned to the pair of plastic abominations with a raised eyebrow. They were the only other things in the room that even bore a resemblance to something capable of answering a question.
"The world just changed around us in seconds Lance, would it really be that far out of left field if they found a way to answer after that?" she said as she too turned around.
"Good point." Arbitrarily choosing the left mannequin, he moved directly in front of it and looked it straight in its complete lack of an actual face. "Uh...which door would she tell us to take?" he asked while pointing toward the other mannequin.
...
He set the pointed hoof back down on the floor as a lot of nothing continued not happening.
...
Lance sighed and turned back towards his wife. "Well now we're locked in a room and I feel a bit more like an idiot than I did twenty...seconds...ago." His statement lost steam as his gaze moved past her, back towards the door, seeing that something had changed whilst neither of them had been looking. Posey couldn't help but notice this and cast a look over her shoulder.
"...so that probably should've made some noise, right?" she asked with concern as she examined the sizable gash that had been gouged into the metal of the door, effectively crossing out the phrase 'one question is permitted'.
"Yeah...should have," he replied. He'd lost count of how many times these sorts of things had happened to him by now. Did that phrase being crossed out mean that his question had registered somehow?
She turned back to look at him, but a repeat of the previous events played out with roles reversed. "That uh...probably should have too, right?"
Wasting only half a moment with raising an eyebrow, Lance spun around to see that the left mannequin's mouth photograph had moved from its face to the pin engraved door right next to it, held in place by a single large railroad spike that had been punched straight into the metal. "Yeah...probably," he repeated. "I guess that's the door she said the other would pick...so that means this other door is the way out," he said confidently before both of them jumped at the sudden click of the needle engraved door unlocking itself.
"That's a good sign," Posey observed with a glimmer of hope in her voice as they stepped closer. Lance nodded, allowing himself a small smile before he opened the door.
Nothing awaited them but a solid wall of cement with black mold seeping from the cracks.
"What?" he asked nopony in exasperation. No sooner had he said this than a cacophony of bending and snapping metal sounded from outside the iron bars. "What?!" he repeated with more urgency as they dashed over and looked out. The catwalk that had once promised freedom was missing, evidently having fallen into the void below and leaving nothing behind but the bent and twisted railing on their end.
"You picked the wrong door?!" Posey said with something of an edge to her voice.
"I picked the right door Posey, that logic puzzle is older than dirt, the answer that is also older than dirt can't suddenly stop being right!" he snapped back as he stepped over and tried the pin engraved door. It was still locked, provoking a single, frustrated slam of his hoof. "I wasn't wrong."
"I'm not necessarily saying you were, but-" she was cut short as Operating Room 2 proceeded to grab their attention one last time with the sound of a soft metallic creak behind them. After the resultant twirling of heads, they were both greeted with the simultaneously welcoming and ominous sight of the riddle laden door standing ever so slightly open. The words on the door had been altered again, this time a bit more drastically, with a new phrase gouged into the metal in a much more chaotic hoof writing than the original four.
One may only lie
AND ONE CHOOSES TO
One can never lie
One path may save you
One question is permitted
They both stood there in cautious silence, expecting some aberration to let itself in through the newly opened point of entry, but nothing of the sort happened. After what seemed far too long a time Posey mercifully eased a bit of the tension off by speaking first. "Right then...the writing's gone and we're not stuck in this room anymore...good enough for me," she said, creeping forward and craning her neck to try and see what was in the hallway beyond.
"Yeah...wait, the writing's gone?" Lance began before spouting the obvious question.
"Yes, look," she replied, pointing directly at the text that still stood there silently accusing her husband...as far as he knew. "It's like it was never there to begin with."
"..."
"..." She placed her hoof back on the ground and looked at him with a slightly tilted head. "Lance?"
"No, you're right," he said, the lingering conflicted look vanishing from his face. "We need to get moving. There was another catwalk leading to that same elevator. The best we can do is look for some way to get to it."
She nodded. "Any ideas?"
He shrugged as they approached the door. "Turn right? That's all I can think of," he answered as he reached for the knob only for his wife gently nudge him aside.
"Lance, I know you're fixed up a bit but I'm still faster," she explained, giving a demonstrative flap of her wings. "Please let me go first...this is already hard enough without watching you stick your neck out first too...okay?"
Of course he wasn't okay with it. He wanted her to stay as safe as possible at all times. He wanted to be the only one who had to subject themselves to any danger. He wanted her home...so there could be a home again.
That's not how this works Lance.
"...Okay," he complied with great reluctance. She nodded and switched on her lantern before pushing the door open fully and cautiously stepping out to look around, wings held open in readiness in case a quick flap backward was needed.
"Um...I don't think your 'turn right' plan is going to work out quite yet," she said, looking back over her shoulder at him. He stepped out behind her and immediately saw why. The floor was gone save for a single bolted together rusty metal bridge connecting the door of Operating Room 2 with the entrance to the operating theater directly opposite.
But that wasn't what made Lance nudge Posey along almost the instant he spotted it. Her lantern was adequate when it came to lighting up an area, but when it came to sheer reach, Lance's surgical light beat it by a quite literal mile. When he looked around he immediately spotted a few things lurking beyond the range of her lantern.
Roller gurneys. On the walls. Two to their right and three to the left.
"That door's fine let's go!" he urged as he gave her flank a gentle push.
"Agreed!" Posey said as she opened the door with all due haste and held it open just long enough for the two of them to get through before slamming it shut again. "What the buck were those?!"
"If you see them again, move along and keep an eye on their undersides," Lance said, figuring it wiser to just tell her the important parts for now. "While we're at it you should probably be the one carrying this if you're going first," he continued as he plucked the surgical light from it's spot beside his watch and held it out for her. Hampering the lead pony with such a limited range of view was simply not going to cut it.
"So they are monsters then? Why didn't your watch go off?" She passed her lantern over to him in exchange and then clipped the surgical light to one of her saddlebags as she questioned him further.
"They don't set it off unless they come out." He spent a brief moment wondering how he was going to carry her lantern, but was soon able to find a strap that would serve his purposes. Now that they were re-situated he pointed at her new light. "Try it out."
He didn't have to tell her twice. As both of their eyes followed the beam of light around the room they saw that the operating theater had been struck with the same lack of a floor that had befallen the hallway. The only way forward was a path made of more crisscrossing, welded together rebar that jutted out along the tiled, grimy, black mold infested wall. It traveled around the left side of the room, leading to a set of stairs on the far end would get them up to an archway that had been gracelessly bashed through the wall at about the same height as the observer seating would have been. There was of course no railing, because clearly that simple comfort would have been far too generous.
There was one more feature that kept Lance from moving quickly along the path of rebar. It was another hole in the left wall near the far corner, one that must have been bashed through with much more care judging from the way all the piping was still intact. The pipes were sufficiently close together to make entry quite obviously impossible, but that still left a lot of space through which something might reach through and grab either of them.
"Careful," Lance whispered.
"Right," Posey replied as they both pressed onward along the path, doing their best to keep the contact of hooves against metal as quiet as they could manage. When they neared the dangerous looking corner their pace slowed, Posey creeping forward until she could see behind the pipes. Evidently the going was safe, but Lance couldn't help but notice the fear in here eyes as she looked back and motioned him forward. His curiosity piqued, he did what he had repeatedly come to regret in the past and looked beyond the pipes.
It was the storage closet from which he'd gotten the pipe. The hole went straight through its back wall. The door was now barricaded shut from the inside with a combination of planks and crime scene tape, and a body bag resting in a puddle of very old looking blood had replaced the 'murdered' mannequin. As was the case before in the apartments, there was a white flower resting atop of it and carvings of the phrase 'FIRST DO NO HARM' covered the walls. It seemed the rollers weren't the only familiar sight following him around.
"Um...I think it's just a mannequin in that bag...I think," he said to Posey as though it would somehow make the image any less disagreeable for her. It took her a few steps to form any sort of response as they started heading up the stairs.
"That part of the oath was always a bit weird to me," she said, clearly trying to shift topics away from their general surroundings. He wasn't about to prevent her from doing so, still remembering clearly how he had previously resorted to talking to himself just to preserve his own sanity. She could have started talking in complete gibberish and he would've been just as happy to listen and respond to her voice.
"What do you mean?"
"You're a doctor, shouldn't it be obvious you're supposed to be curing your patients instead of harming them?" she asked in reply as they neared the top of the stairs. She made certain to keep her eyes forward, taking her duty as pointmare quite seriously.
"Yeah, that is obvious, but it's not what that part is talking about," he started as Posey took the last step upward and moved aside to make room for him. "It's not just about how you're supposed to heal your patient, it's about-" He stumbled at the last step, groaning and bringing a hoof to the side of his head as his ears started to ring sharply and a splitting headache suddenly shot through his skull. There was some vague awareness of a firm hoof on his shoulder and a distant murmuring but it did little to pierce the confusing fog of pain into which he had been plunged. Finally the excruciating episode started to recede. Following a few blinks Lance was able to comprehend his position slumped down near the top of the stairs, and hear his wife trying to get his attention.
"Are you alright?" she asked, hopeful for a response now that he seemed to have his wits about him.
"Yeah...now I am."
"What happened?!
"I have no idea what that was. It was like..." he began as he started standing back up, shaking off the last of the disorientation. Now that he could think clearly, he couldn't help but recall the headaches he had started suffering after each encounter with Door 303...only this one had been much more severe. What the hay did that mean though?
"It was like what?" Posey pressed as he continued to not complete his answer.
"Uh...nothing, it's nothing," he said dismissively as he took the last few steps upward. It was a time for moving and escaping, not for stopping and thinking. That time would come later. She looked at him pointedly, as though she were about to keep pushing about his thoughts on the manner, but after a few moments she silently relented so they could continue onward. Lance was not the only one who wanted to delay any sort of clarity in favor of getting out of there.
For how recklessly the archway had been bashed through the wall, the passage proceeding it was remarkably clean cut, going straight through the surrounding pipes and ventilation ducts. The only thing marring the concrete walls was the grime and mold that had steadily dripped from the plumbing. The tunnel traveled forward a short way before turning left and hitting a dead end, the only way out being a worn out vent panel in the floor.
"Let's hope it's not too far a fall," she muttered as she crept closer, peered down and shined her light through the vent. Lance stood back patiently, knowing his lantern wouldn't do much good. After a few moments of applying a critical eye to things Posey looked over at him, bringing a thoughtful hoof to her chin. "It's not that far but...I'd rather not have you jump down on your own."
"Same thing we did to get down to the roof then?"
"Yeah, give me a minute to get this vent off without making a racket first," she agreed before trying to ease the panel open as carefully as she could manage. The latch joint looked tenuous thanks to the ever present rust, and there would doubtlessly be quite the noise should it fall to the floor below. Thankfully she was able to open it and ease it downward with only a small creak to mark the occasion. With a sigh of relief at her success she motioned Lance over before climbing onto his back again and holding tight with her legs, signaling with a nod that he was clear to jump.
Lance approached the hole in the floor with doubts that were only made worse by his inability to even see the floor. There was nothing for it but to trust Posey. He took a last breath to steel his nerves before hopping down into the darkness. She grunted with the sudden effort needed to slow his fall but didn't have to keep at it for long. Four strong flaps were all that was needed to set his hooves safely on the floor...although 'safely' wasn't a word on either of their minds after they finally got a proper look around.
The once white plaster walls of Recovery Room 2 had been stained a dull brownish yellow, accentuated by dark red where streams of liquid had cultivated a strange mildew, and the phrase he had twice seen carved into the wall was missing. The tiles that had made up the floor had all been ripped out leaving it an uneven mess of damp concrete for them to stand on. Nothing remained of the bed but a rusty bent bed frame with an ominous crimson puddle beneath it...and there was something in the corner.
As it turned out, the phrase on the wall hadn't vanished entirely. One part of it remained, it had just moved...and multiplied. The words "EVERYTHING IS FINE" had been repeatedly carved into the flesh of a corpse hanging in the corner. It was a stallion, colored an unnatural grey where there wasn't a trail of blood staining his coat red, as though the color had been bled right out of him. Aside from the macabre calligraphy there were two more distinct wounds on his back along each shoulder, both held closed by a mess of staples. They could not see his face. It was pinned into the corner by a leather strap, both ends of which had been bolted to the wall whilst the middle had been nailed into the back of his skull. Below him was a black garbage bag that they could only assume had been placed there to catch the blood dripping from his back hooves which were dangling in the air below him.
There was also a very old, rusty, slightly dented stapler lying on the ground at the foot of the bed, but somehow that seemed less immediately important to them.
"Please tell me the door works," Posey implored as her eyes remained locked on the suspended corner carrion. She was answered by the turning of a doorknob and a gentle creak behind her as Lance found the door quite cooperative. "Thank Celestia," she muttered with a relieved exhalation as she turned and moved past Lance, taking a step into the hallway.
"Wait a second," he said said as he walked to the bed frame, opened one of his saddle bags, and picked up the stapler.
"What are you...alright, that's probably a good idea," she started, but then relented upon remembering how a random bundle of bolts had eventually let them inside the hospital in the first place.
"You should have seen how many random things I was carrying before we met up again." He deposited the stapler and snapped the bag shut before they both made their way into the hall. "Did they follow us?" he asked, his voice just barely above a whisper.
Posey took her cue to search for the gurneys they'd fled from earlier. Thankfully, as she moved the light about, neither of them saw anything of the sort. This second length of hallway was much like the first, containing nothing but a seemingly endless fall below with only a single walkway to move along. Rather than just skip directly to the opposite door though, this one extended a ways to the left, ending at a door about midway through the hall that Lance remembered as the floor's nurse's station.
"Looks clear," Posey whispered back before they started to head for the door, still moving slow to minimize noise. As it turned out, this proved a wise decision, enabling them both to hear the gentle squeak of wheels...directly beneath them. They both stopped dead in their tracks, their eyes practically yanked downward to see the familiar group of five gurneys on the wall underneath the grating. Pausing only a moment to shoot an unnerved glance at one another, they then bolted for the open door, disregarding how much noise they made. Lance made it a point to quickly shut the door behind them and spend a moment with both forelegs holding the door closed, if only to give them a moment's false sense of safety.
"I'm sorry, I didn't think I'd have to look beneath us," she apologized.
"You and me both, don't worry," he assured her as he warily dropped back down to all fours. It was not as though he could do anything to stop them from finding them again, much less do so by just holding a door shut.
"That was just...mean." She looked around the nurse's station as she spoke, the brief encounter only having made her more acutely aware that they needed to look everywhere. Fortunately the station was easily the least unsettling room she had seen so far. Most everything was merely covered in old dirty sheets, leaving her unable to identify what anything in particular was, but none of the shapes struck her as anything particularly out of the ordinary for a small office...save for the small, slightly stained lump in the sheets covering the ceiling. But it did not move, nor did her husband's watch buzz, so she ignored it for the time being. Easily the best feature of the room though was the door on the other end that indicated they wouldn't have to go back into that blasted bottomless hallway again.
"Oh yeah...just sneaking up on us is so mean," Lance mumbled bitterly to himself under his breath, quietly wishing he could be so lucky for that to have been all anything had done to him in that hospital.
"Hrm?" Her ears perked up, having thought she heard words in his last exhalation.
"Nothing...just sour grapes."
"...I can't really blame you," she replied with a nod. Though she still didn't know the specifics of what had transpired since being separated at the elevator, the sight of him spoke volumes. He then attempted to step past her toward the door only to be stopped again by a gentle hoof reminding him that she was lead pony. Lance sighed softly and took a step back without any protest to let her open the door, deciding to keep his eyes on the other door behind them with a sidelong look...just in case. There was the sound of the doorknob turning, the sound of the hinges groaning as the door opened, and then the sound of Posey gasping before taking a step backward. This demanded his attention slightly more than an inactive slab of rusted metal with a still doorknob.
When he turned his head again he was greeted by the sight of a metallic room turned red and brown from rust and general decay. The bottom half of the far wall was made of a combination wood and steel bracing whilst the top half was made of reinforced glass. On the floor with her back against that same wall was the dead body of a barbed nurse. Her forelegs were pinned to her chest by yet more barbed wire, and a metal collar attached to a chain was around her neck. There were large bite wounds all over her body, each injury surrounded by seared flesh...and for some reason they weren't simply regenerating. But, alarming a sight as it was, the corpse was not what made him stare in bewilderment.
He recognized that room. They were back in the vault, on the other side of the divider where the Deaf Colt had initially been standing.
"Do these rooms ever stop getting worse?" She had not stepped any closer to the door and wore a disquieted grimace as she continued looking at the dead mare. On the other hoof she hadn't retreated any further either, so that was something.
"They did last time...just hope they do again...I guess," he advised as he stepped around her to poke his head into the room. There were two more dead nurses hanging from hooks off to the left side of the wall, and to his right there was an entryway with nothing remaining of the door that had been there, save for the snapped hinges to which it had been attached. Thanks to the limited radius of his lantern, he wasn't able to see that far beyond the entrance or through the divider, though the glass looked far clearer than it had previously.
The sight of her still injured husband going ahead of her snapped Posey out of it, reminding her of the task she had taken upon herself. She set her reluctance aside and followed him. "I wish I could be as pragmatic as that about all this," she said as she looked to her left and then shied away from the two hanging nurses.
"I'm just as scared as you are Posey...the only reason I might not show it right now is that I've seen things here that worry me a lot more than a corpse does," he explained. "Like for starters, that door we just stepped through wasn't supposed to be there, and if it had been there before, it would only have lead into another hallway. The last time I was in this room it wasn't even on the same floor as the other rooms we've been going through."
"Okay...that is pretty worrisome," she replied, eyes slowly widening as he detailed the sheer scale of the changes the building had undergone. "Let's just...can we please keep going? I don't feel comfortable being a mare in this room."
"Hang on." Acting on a hunch, Lance approached the divider and peered through the glass. The lantern's light only revealed a portion of a chipped, cracked concrete floor and a single leg of some piece of furniture. "Can you help me see into here please?" he asked her. Posey nodded, moving to a spot at his side and shining the surgical light through the glass for him.
It wasn't nearly like what Lance remembered. The little slice of nightmare was gone, replaced with a fairly clean room, though one that was visibly in need of a good dusting. There was a table in the middle with a chair at each end, one of which was bolted to the ground and had manacles on the arms. The whole set up looked like an interrogation room...one that was exceedingly more severe than those in any of Equestria's police stations.
A glint of light on the table caught his eye. "Wait wait, go back," he said while tapping Posey on the shoulder as the beam of light moved along. After she had focused the beam back on the table they could see there were five sheets of paper arranged in a circle on top of it, and in the center of that circle was a key. Were those the same notes he'd spent so long gathering before?
"Can we break this glass?" She gave the pane a couple curious taps, quite keen on finding a way to shorten the length of their trip.
"Probably not, it'd be better to look for a way around," he answered as he turned toward the empty doorway. Posey took her spot in the lead again, causing her light to reveal the long corridor that awaited them...
The long...narrow corridor with worn rusty pipes for walls...the end of which they could not currently see past...
"...are you sure we can't break the glass?" she repeated, looking back at him over her shoulder.
"Maybe if we had the right tools...but we don't." He suddenly looked none to eager to proceed himself, obviously having much the same sort of second thoughts she was. "I've seen the sorts of hoof strikes that kind of glass can take, we're not getting through it on our own," he continued, justifying his decision to himself as much as to her.
Posey nodded, still having the same qualms but finding herself willing to trust his judgement. She advanced about three body lengths into the corridor before stopping to check that Lance was right behind her. They then fell into step with one another, moving steadily along in the cramped quarters heading toward Celestia knew what.
"I swear Lance, when we get out of here I am going to fly up and do flips just for the sake of doing flips," she mused. Being a pegasus, she wasn't much better than Lance when it came to small, closed in areas.
"You can do them for both of us," he replied behind her, actually managing a slight smile even though he knew she couldn't see it.
"I'm...I didn't mean to bring that up. It's probably hard enough on you already without me-"
"No, Posey, it's fine, I-"
The both blanched at the abrupt sound of a door closing and wheels squeaking behind them. Both pegasi cast sidelong glances backward, unable to turn their bodies, and saw that the once bare entryway now had a quite solid looking door. They could only guess that the gurney that had appeared in front of it had something to do with it.
"Nevermind it's not fine!" Lance corrected as his watch began to buzz.