LOCKED TO alchemicals

[deaftly]

[He doesn't remember anything. All he knows is that there's a bright light in his face and he just wants to sleep. After a couple of minutes of tossing and turning he finally opens his eyes and sits up. The room he's in is perfectly white, without any sort of interesting features. There's a desk and a chair, but nothing on either of them. They're as white as the walls and floor, and on closer inspection, the bed he's in is just as white and spotless as the rest of the room. The sheets are a bit on the stiff side even though he's been sleeping under them, and the bed is kind of hard for his liking, so he finally squirms out from under the covers and stands.

The clothes he's wearing strike him as being wrong, though he can't recall what the "right" clothes would be. They're white - like everything else - and they're very simple. He doesn't have anything to compare them to, but the material is soft and kind of thin and feels a little odd. He shrugs off his confusion about the clothes and starts for the door. Even the doorknob is white, which strikes him as strange for about half a second before he yanks the door open.

The room that he enters is spacious. Like the room he woke up in, everything is white. There's a sofa, a small table in front of the sofa, and a couple of plush chairs. There's a couple of doors leading elsewhere, and his first order of business is to see where they lead. One leads to a perfectly white kitchen which isn't interesting right now (though some part of him wonders if the food will be just as white) and the other door he comes to is locked. There should be a front door around here somewhere though, right? He doesn't want to be here. He can't remember why he's here (or anything, really) but being here doesn't seem right.]

Comments

[alchemicals]

[What the actual fuck, Naki.]

...Okay. That's probably because of the...thing. The not-human thing.

[...]

What's in the containers, do you know?

[deaftly]

Maybe...

[He pulls out one of the containers and pops the lid off, looking at the meat again.]

I dunno. It's meat, but I have no idea what kind of meat it is.

[alchemicals]

...Let me see it?

[Granted, he doesn't know how useful he'll be either, but...]

[deaftly]

Sure.

[Naki hands it over, not thinking anything about it. Hell, you might manage to find something useful, because he sure isn't.]

[alchemicals]

[And he'll sort of study that, and for a good long moment he doesn't have any damn idea what he's looking at - it's meat and that is about all he can tell about it - when all of a sudden something clicks and he's not sure if it's willful or just something his brain did all of a sudden or just a really bad feeling, but either way it startles him a little, though he tries really hard to keep it off his expression.]

...Yeah, I don't know, either.

[Let him just...pass that back over.]

Like I said, it's probably something weird? I'm going to guess it had your name on it for a reason.

[deaftly]

I guess they don't want you to eat it for some reason. I guess it has to be a whatever-the-fuck-non-human-thing.

[He puts the lid back on it and shoves it back in the refrigerator, making a face. He hasn't noticed any sort of discomfort from Kimbley.]

Like I said, I'll eat later. I'm just not hungry right now.

[alchemicals]

...Okay.

[God, what the hell does he even do with this.]

You can go back to doing whatever it is you were doing in the other room, if you want. I'll join you in a second.

[deaftly]

Alright.

[He's content to leave it at that. He still doesn't notice anything off, so he'll go back and draw on the walls some more!]

[alchemicals]

[...It'll admittedly take him a bit more than a second, because the internal screaming takes a while to shut off, but eventually he manages to calm down and wow, that did absolutely nothing for his own appetite and as far as he's concerned, fuck eating especially.]

...Did you find more pens?

[THAT IS AN ACCEPTABLE TOPIC OF CONVERSATION.]

[deaftly]

[Naki looks up when Kimbley enters the room. He's once again parked on the floor, apparently very determined to create a solid line of those squares straight down to the floor. Kimbley's question catches his attention first, but there's something else on his mind.]

Nah, but I didn't really look. Do you think they left us more? If they did, that means someone was in here last night...

[And that's creepy.]

...I thought you were gonna fix something to eat?

[alchemicals]

Yeah, but we're going to run out of ink eventually, is the problem. If they left us more...

[...That's really creepy.]

And I changed my mind; I'll get something later, I guess.

[deaftly]

I guess we'd better search the place and see if there are any more!

[He gets up because that's easier to focus on than Kimbley's sudden lack of desire for food. He can't be certain, but it seems like it might be tied to whatever that meat was. Maybe it's just something humans hate? What would most people find really offensive to eat anyway? Maybe something like dogs or cats? That just sounds gross.

He pushes it from his mind and moves to search around the room, checking in all the drawers and coming up with nothing except more paper in another drawer.]

You having any more luck than me?

[alchemicals]

...There's a drawer in the kitchen that has a bunch of random assorted crap in it; that's where I found the last set. I'll go check.

[At the very least he has something to do with himself; let him go...check on...

What the hell.

When he comes back in he tosses something in Naki's direction; it's a pack of them, in all various colors.]

They were in here last night.

[deaftly]

[Naki catches the pack and immediately goes to examine it. Unlike the previous pens, these aren't ball-point. They're closer to markers than anything else, he figures that out once he gets the packaging off and draws a purple line on the wall to check. It's only when Kimbley speaks that the weight of it hits him.]

...These weren't in here yesterday?

[No, they wouldn't have been. If they had, Kimbley would have brought them over.]

Shit... Fucking shit, they were-- They were in here while we were sleeping...

[He's not sure what it is about that, but it's the creepiest thing he's heard since he got here. Somehow this is worse than human trafficking or being thrown in jail. He's really not sure what that says about himself.]

Okay, look, from now on we've gotta pull shifts. One of us has gotta be awake at all times. That's fucking... That's terrifying, holy shit.

[alchemicals]

[Kimbley's quiet for a moment; it's pretty obvious that he's pissed, though it's kind of hard to say why just from looking at him - and honestly, even if he were to be asked he wouldn't know. Maybe it's just the easiest way to handle how freaked out he is by this.]

...I was sleeping out here last night.

[deaftly]

[Naki's silent for a long time. He has one hand in front of his mouth and it's kind of twitching a bit like he's trying to come up with something to say, but eventually he settles for the quietest thing he's probably ever said in his entire life.]

...oh.

[He's not sure exactly why this is so awful, but he understands just how awful it is. He tries to come up with something to say to either lighten the mood or redirect their attention, but he can't find anything.]

...holy shit.

[alchemicals]

Yeah.

[He moves over toward the wall they were messing with yesterday, finding one of the labyrinths and tracing the path between the lines while he thinks that over.]

So either I just didn't hear them, I was drugged somehow last night so I wouldn't hear them, or they...I don't know, they made me forget them once they were done. I don't think it's that last one because I'd probably be bruised up at least, I would have tried to kick their ass.

[deaftly]

Yeah. Yeah, and I think I would've heard that and pitched in as well, so we'd both be bruised in that case!

[At least there's that. At least he can take small comfort in knowing that their memories haven't been tampered with even further.

...God, this is fucked up.

Naki joins Kimbley, finding one of the other labyrinths to follow because that seems like the best way to not panic over this revelation.]

I guess that does answer the question of whether or not they'll come in here, but... why? Why did they only leave the pens? I mean nothing else was changed or moved or anything, right?

[alchemicals]

...I don't think so. But that might be because we didn't really touch anything? I mean we fucked up the walls, but -

[...]

...They had to have noticed that we fucked up the walls with those pens, right? Why give us more, if that's all we're going to do with them?

[deaftly]

Yeah, that's just it. They didn't clean it off or anything. You'd think they'd want to take the pens and clean the walls if they're gonna come in here. But they left more pens... So are they trying to make us be creative or what?

[He doesn't understand and it's frustrating. Naki sighs and shakes his head, moving to restart the labyrinth again. He has a feeling he's going to be doing this a lot.]

[alchemicals]

Who knows, maybe they want us to prove we have a fucking soul or something. That's supposed to be what creation implies, right?

[deaftly]

...Are you fucking serious?

[That's possibly the dumbest thing he's ever heard. Naki throws up his hands.]

Why the fuck don't they just tell us what they want? Wouldn't that be fucking easier on everyone!?

[alchemicals]

Fucking sarcastic, actually, and they're an idiot if they think I don't have a soul anyway because I know for a goddamn fact that I do.

[...Kimbley.]

Either way, I don't fucking care. They're giving me pens, they can deal with more fucking artwork; it's not like I have anything better to do with my time.

[deaftly]

...I would ask how you can know for sure that you have a soul, but this conversation's way too deep for me.

[He shrugs. At least he acknowledges it!]

Yeah, maybe if they gave us something else to do... but I guess the pens are nice. I mean, I'm always fine with more colors.

[alchemicals]

Yeah-

[...Wait.]

...Why the fuck would you think you don't have a soul, though?