Never Lie, Never Sin, Tell Us What A Mess We're In [Open to Multiple]

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie stares at the door to her cell. There is something different about it today. She's having a little trouble placing it, but she knows there's something off. It's concerning. She has been so clear about what ROMAC needs to do to keep everyone else safe from her, and the suspicion that they're messing up somehow makes her very, very nervous.

It's the locks, she realizes after a few moments of intense scrutiny. That is what's wrong. There are supposed to be five, but she only counts four. That can't be right. Melanie approaches the door with a little frown on her face, her fingertips hovering a few inches from the metal, wary of the shock she'll get if she actually touches it. Her hand flits from lock to lock like a hummingbird. Now there are six. How are there six? She counts again, baffled to find that the number has halved itself to three.

She tries to count again, but this time, there are none.

Now she does reach out to touch the door, she can't help it - she can't believe it. They can't have taken the locks away. They're important. Hasn't she made it clear how incredibly important it is that they keep her in here?

The door does not shock her. Instead, it swings open beneath her hand, smooth and silent.

Melanie presses her lips together, her mouth a thin, disapproving line. She doesn't like the thought of leaving her room, but someone has to be told about this so they can get it fixed. Keeping her movements slow and even, as if she's trying to sneak past a group of hungries, Melanie carefully steps out into the hall to look for help.

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[all_the_gifts]

Melanie has just enough time to confirm that the stairwell below them is clear before Daniel's hollering for help. She dashes back up the stairs, legs going like pistons, to see Daniel locked in battle, holding one at arm's length as it scrabbles to reach him.

For a moment, she really wishes he had a gun, after all.

She launches herself at the hungry's midsection. Though she doesn't weight much, she's worked up enough speed that it's enough to knock the thing back a few paces. Leaping away from its flailing limbs before it can get a grip on her, Melanie turns back to Daniel and hauls him down to the next landing. The first hungry is already in pursuit, along with a couple of its friends. Melanie considers their options, mind racing…

… and then shoves Daniel, not down the stairs, but into the corner. "Get down," she says urgently, tugging him into a crouch, "and stay still." She's done this before. It'll work a second time, right?

Without waiting for acknowledgment, hoping he'll just trust her, Melanie turns back toward the approaching hungries and holds up her hands, palms out. The forerunner pulls up short as if she's thrown up a forcefield, head beginning to sway uncertainly. Melanie stands her ground, moving her hands slightly to keep them between the closest hungries' faces and Daniel, her familiar, unremarkable scent baffling them into momentary complacency.

"They don't want me," she explains in an undertone. "They only want you." She chances a glance back down at Daniel, her expression faintly apologetic. Then, her attention squarely back on the hungries, she adds, "It's clear farther down. Move real slow. I'll stay between you and them."

[peacefulexplorer]

Daniel fights to keep the thing at arm's length, oh god its teeth are snapping at him, this thing was once a person and it was sentient and what if it still is oh god oh god oh god -

Then Melanie is there, slamming into the thing and driving it back enough for her to grab Daniel and pull him down, away from it, and into the corner of the landing. He braces himself against the walls and Melanie orders him to stay down and stay still and he nods breathlessly and struggles to get his breathing down to a volume that isn't noisy, panicked gasping.

Perplexingly, Melanie doesn't make any further aggressive movements but simply stands in front of him like a shield. And, even more confusingly, it seems to be working. The hungries halt their approach and instead mill around, directionless, and Daniel can only stare and hope they can't pick up the sound of his heart flinging itself against his ribcage.

Then he recalls Melanie's words about "monsters" and how she could carry the nebulous "disease" - which he suspects is the causation of the hungries' current state - without succumbing to it. Her scent must be masking his. Ingenious, really, but it means they're stuck.

Still, he trusts Melanie's words in this situation. He nods, and starts creeping, infuriatingly slow, down the stairs and resists the itching urge to bolt.

[all_the_gifts]

A two-flight journey that should have taken little more than ten seconds stretches to ten minutes. Melanie stays put, more or less, keeping the hungries on the landing while Daniel regains some distance. The creatures are no longer on the move, but they haven't given up, either; their heads turn slowly from side to side, scanning for any obvious sign of their quarry. At least there's no breeze down here to waft Daniel's scent around. Still, Melanie doesn't dare move until he's halfway down the second flight. Only then does she cautiously follow suit, keeping her movements slow and even and her eyes locked on the hungries.

"When you get to the bottom," she murmers, "open the door very, very slowly. There might be some in the hall." The fact that they haven't already had company from that direction is encouraging, but Daniel's shout might have drawn some into the hall, if not all the way into the stairwell.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Okay," he whispers back. God, he's terrified to say anything at all. He has no idea how sensitive these things' hearing is but if it's anything like their sense of sight, the answer is probably somewhere along the lines of really damn sensitive.

In the meantime, he resists the urge to give into every instinct that's screaming at him to bolt, moving agonizingly slowly down the bottom and to the door, all the while praying that there aren't some in the hall. Daniel has no idea what it will mean for them if there are. Objectively he does, he just doesn't want to think about it. Melanie can't protect him on all sides.

Daniel is bitterly wishing the dream had at least given him some basic tools of self-defense. Like a sidearm. Something like that would have been incredibly useful. But he's getting used to the notion that the Rift tends to be as unhelpful as possible when it comes to flinging people into dream situations.

It feels like an age before he reaches the door, which probably means he's moving as slowly as he should be, and Daniel cautiously cracks it open. He does his best to raise as little noise as possible as he peers out, scans the surrounding area.

"I don't see any," he hisses.

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie feels a little surge of hope at that. If they can give this bunch the slip, they might be able to make it to her room without running into any more of them. Her room, the one place in this building that was modified to be hungry-proof.

"Okay," she breathes as she edges down the stairs. "Step out there nice and slow, and hold the door open for me." The hungries have ceased following her - most have remained on the landing, and the most venturesome only made it half a flight before halting for lack of obvious prey - and she doesn't want the sudden swing of the door shutting to reclaim their interest.

She moves a little faster than Daniel did, but she has the luxury of practice (not to mention the far greater luxury of not being the hungries' food of choice). He only has to hold the door for a few minutes before Melanie edges through it - carefully, carefully - and takes charge of the door, easing it shut with painstaking slowness. When it finally shuts, it barely makes a sound.

Melanie stills for a few tense moments, listening for any kind of movement back in the stairwell, hearing none. Letting out a little sigh of relief, she finally turns her attention to Daniel.

He's definitely looking rattled - like Gallagher, he wasn't ready for this. But unlike Gallagher, he's been brave, and smart, and Melanie is suddenly struck by the realization that she likes him, soldier or no. She's so glad he didn't get bitten. She's going to make sure things stay that way.

Melanie slips her little hand into his much larger one and offers him a faint, lopsided smile. "Okay?" she asks quietly.

[peacefulexplorer]

Having to move so slowly is still nerve-wracking but there's a rhythm to it, and Melanie's seemingly infinite calm is helping him keep the anxiety from overflowing.

The door closes and there's a stretch of silence which Daniel has no idea if he should consider that good or bad (good, he suspects, right?), and then Melanie sighs and takes his hand.

Definitely good.

"Yeah," he breathes back, half-grinning despite himself. "Thanks. I, uh, don't know what I would've - yeah. Thanks."

[all_the_gifts]

"You're welcome," she replies, her smile widening for a moment before it fades, making way for a more troubled expression. "It's my fault," she says quietly - an observation, not an invitation for sympathy. This is her doing, so getting Daniel through it all without the hungries taking him apart is really the least she can do. She can't quite help but sound bitter as she adds, "This is what happens if I get out."

[peacefulexplorer]

"Really?" Daniel looks at her quizzically. "Cause I didn't see you attacking anyone. I did see you saving my life five times a minute."

He kneels next to her again. Melanie's concerns are valid, he'll give her that, but that doesn't mean she needs to cut herself off from society completely.

"Even if something like this were to happen - which I'm not saying it will, I don't think anyone would let it - it wouldn't be your fault," he insists. "There's the whole 'actions speaking louder than words' thing, I know, but that doesn't cover intent. And I know you wouldn't do anything like this intentionally. You just saved my life, I think that gives you some credit here."

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie gives him a dubious look. "No one 'let it' happen in my universe," she points out. "It just did. No one could stop it." She casts a haunted look around them. Even if this universe is different, she can't gamble billions of lives for the sake of getting to go outside every once in a while. Not if it could end up like this. "It's too risky," she insists, releasing his hand so she can wrap her arms around herself.

"And this is my dream," she adds, dropping her gaze to the ground. "I didn't really save your life - or if I did, it was from something I made happen. If something bad does happen to you in here, it's because of me."

[peacefulexplorer]

"Well, okay, for one? You don't need to worry about me." Daniel smiles again, projecting reassurance as best as he can because he can't really bear to hear what Melanie's saying right now. "Might not look it, but I'm not the easiest person to kill."

Not the easiest person to keep dead would be more semantically accurate, but they just braved a raging horde of zombies so Daniel is going to leave that one where it is right now.

"For another, you can't judge yourself for what you might do or what might happen. This is a dream and we're both in it, meaning the Rift put us here. And the Rift, well. Let's just say I'm getting the idea that it has a really twisted sense of humor." His smile gets a little more grim at that. Yeah. Really twisted.

[all_the_gifts]

He still doesn't understand, Melanie thinks, because no sane, decent person could honestly conclude that occasional bouts of fresh air are worth the risk of this dream - this nightmare - becoming a reality. But she doesn't want to argue with him, doesn't want to explain in painful detail how dangerous she can be to good people like him.

She saved his life this time. If the hunger got out of its box, it'd be a different story.

Melanie lifts her shoulders in a little shrug, clearly unconvinced but unwilling to talk about it anymore. They aren't even safe, yet. "We should try to get to my room," she says instead. "If anyplace in here is safe, it'll be there."

[peacefulexplorer]

Melanie doesn't seem eager to talk about it. Which is understandable. Still, that's an awful lot of self-blame for someone so young to be carrying with her. The thought makes his shoulders drop a little.

But Daniel doesn't fight the subject switch. If she doesn't want to talk about it, he won't force her, especially not after she just saved his life. The most he can offer right now is quiet support and sympathy.

"Okay," he agrees with a nod, standing again. "Think I remember how to get there from here. Think we could find something to barricade it shut?"

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie shakes her head. This part of ROMAC headquarters isn't (wasn't?) exactly awash with loose furniture at the best of times, and with hungries potentially around any given corner, she doesn't want to risk the noise associated with prying up something heavy and dragging it into place. "Too loud," she says. "And if there's still power, the locks on my door should go automatically."

Here's hoping her door is open in the first place. And that her room doesn't have any other occupants.

She pads slowly down the hall, though not as slowly as she'd move if there were any hungries actually in sight. This floor seems to be in slightly better shape than the one above; the puddles are fewer and smaller, easy to skirt around, and the mold isn't so bad. But there's no ignoring the derelict feel of the place; it's every bit as abandoned as the rest of the building, even if it was better enforced against unwanted intrusions.

She holds up a hand in warning as they approach an intersection, then creeps ahead to peer around the corner. Her shoulders slump a little: more hungries, half a dozen clustered motionlessly around a sorry little heap of unidentifiable scraps: the remains of their last meal. Melanie leans back around the corner, looks up at Daniel, and solemnly holds up six fingers. Then she frowns, thinking hard. They're too close to the side hall that leads to her room for sneaking by to be an option. She'll have to draw them off, somehow.

[peacefulexplorer]

With the present threat of danger passed, Daniel can take more time to examine the space they're in and then immediately wish he hadn't taken the time to examine the space they're in, because the space they're in is incredibly creepy and abandoned and probably full of those things, and there's still the whole host of questions prickling at the back of his head concerning zombie ethics.

They don't seem sentient, sure, but that doesn't mean they aren't. It's probable they're acting instinctively, reverted to a base "eat to survive" mentality that doesn't seem to extend to actual logical self-preservation. They rely overly on smell and, judging by the clusters of them, might function in a very loose pack structure, minus the hierarchy and intelligent coordination and anything resembling a pack structure in the animalistic sense. Okay, so more like they travel in groups because it's convenient - more prey can be cornered with greater numbers (at this Daniel suppresses another shiver). Maybe that could also be attributed to base instinct, the automatic clustering for strength in numbers.

Their intelligence levels must not be very impressive if Melanie's able to invoke the "if you can't smell it then it must not be there" logic on them, so perhaps Daniel's giving them too much credit.

Melanie's warning hand halts his wandering thought process in its tracks. Then she raises her fingers.

Six of them.

Daniel swallows hard.

"Could we throw something, lead them away?" he whispers. It's an extremely basic strategy but the hungries don't seem to be particularly gifted in the critical thinking department. The issue would be actually throwing something without attracting their attention with the sudden movement.

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie's quick to nod. She'd been thinking of the same thing. A hurled object won't be as enticing as a live animal would be, but trying to hunt something down is out of the question. She can't leave Daniel alone, and she probably wouldn't find anything down here, anyway. This hardly seems like fox territory.

"Do you have anything small that you wouldn't mind parting with?" she quietly asks. "Something that smells human?" No matter how hard she throws something, it's going to come to a halt eventually. If it smells human, that could buy them a few more seconds of distraction.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Um." Daniel starts searching his person, hoping the dream is kind enough to have dropped something of his into the environment along with him, even if it's apparently not friendly enough to include his sidearm. He does, however, find a radio, the sort he'd use to contact the old team for help, and privately shoots the dream a vicious spike of irritation. A useless radio but no sidearm - that seems pretty consistent with the Rift's warped sense of humor regarding Daniel's survival rate in these dreams.

In any case, it might not be good for its intended use but at least it's good for something.

"I have this," he offers, holding up the small communicator. "Will that work?"

[all_the_gifts]

The radio is a slight surprise, and Melanie takes it, turning it between her hands for a close examination. It's not exactly like the walkie-talkie she'd used before, but it's similar enough that she quickly ascertains how it works. And if she's not mistaken, this switch will deliver an obnoxious burst of noisy static.

"This is good," she says with a tentative smile. Then, "Once I throw this, just follow me. My room's halfway down this hall, on the left."

Slipping back into the liquid mosey she's developed, Melanie edges around the corner and toward the group of hungries. She wants to get past them before she throws anything - better not to draw their attention toward Daniel's hiding place at all, even if only for a second.

It's a few tense minutes before she's passed the cluster and found a doorway she can duck into. From there, it's only the work of a moment to flick that switch - the resulting hiss of static is all the louder after the eerie silence - and wing the little radio down the hall. She presses back a little as the hungries stampede past her, then ducks out of the doorway and makes a beeline for her room.

[peacefulexplorer]

He stays hunched around the corner, nerves jangling until the sudden burst of static and the clatter of the flung radio signifies that he needs to move, like now.

Daniel takes off at a dead sprint, Melanie little more than a pale blur in front of him, and practically dives into the room behind her. He can hear them outside, the mindless thudding of feet and he's going to try not to think about that right now, he just seizes the door and slams it shut and prays that it will hold.

That's really all he can do at this point. Because if Melanie's room can't hold them back, there's nowhere else for them to go.

TW: body horror, kindasorta character death??

[all_the_gifts]

At first glance, her room appears to have fared better than the surrounding hallways. The drain in the corner remained unclogged, so there's no standing water on the floor. The posters are faded and curling, but they still cling stubbornly to the walls. The furniture is still in place, though Melanie isn't sure if the chairs would support her weight anymore, and the books on the shelves look as if they might fall apart if she touched them. But it's about as nice as she could have hoped, and it isn't until she turns back to check on Daniel that she sees what's crumpled on the ground just behind the door.

It's a little body, the ribcage grotesquely split to make way for a large, pale stalk that stretches up toward the ceiling, taller than Melanie is herself. A handful of pockmarks show where the spore pods used to hang; the pods themselves are on the floor around the body, impossibly but undeniably split, emptied. The entire image is softened and blurred by the grey carpet of fungus that has grown to fill that corner, but it's not so thick that Melanie can't make out a tuft of blonde hair, or the pink jeans identical to the ones she's wearing, now.

She had already known that this would be how it ended for her. She had accepted it. But she never expected to see it.

Melanie stares, trembles, and says nothing.

[peacefulexplorer]

Daniel's heart is still beating out a rapid staccato but it starts calming down once it becomes clear that they're not about to be abruptly swarmed by hungries. He can catch his breath, glance over at Melanie, and get a horrible nauseating wrench in his chest when he sees what she's looking at.

"Oh my god," he breathes, and for a minute he can't not stare at it in silent horror. Melanie's the same, he realizes vaguely, and her rigid stillness in the face of the sickening, awful sight isn't helping. He automatically reaches out to put one hand on her shoulder, tears his gaze from the thing.

"Melanie?" he whispers. "It's okay. It's gonna be okay."

It's not.

But Daniel doesn't know what else to say. How does one be comforting in a situation like this? Melanie is so obviously shaken by the sight when the entire time she's been carefully assertive, impressively self-assured and calm and rational in what is literally an apocalyptically bad situation that he's pretty sure most adults couldn't handle half as well. If the dream hadn't crossed into nightmare territory already, it certainly has by now. And it's Melanie's.

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie doesn't start at the hand on her shoulder, nor does she immediately tear her eyes away from that grim specter of her own future. But Daniel's whispered reassurances, as absurd as they are, manage to shake her out of her stupor - enough for her to turn away from the body in the corner to hide her face and fist her hands in the sturdy fabric of his jacket.

"I don't like this dream," she says, no less absurd than Daniel's reassurances, but true. "I want to wake up, now."

[peacefulexplorer]

He doesn't have the words to answer so he just wraps his arms around her and hugs, gently, and lets her stay huddled there. He doesn't want her to look at it. He doesn't want either of them to stay in this room a minute longer, but their options are so - limited right now.

"I'm sorry," is all he can come up with. "I know, I'm sorry."

It's wrenching. It's - this is from Melanie's head, torn straight out of her nightmares, and it's just been flung into this sealed room with her, an unforgiving reminder that extends beyond the post-apocalyptic dreamscape they're in now. Daniel almost doesn't want her to wake up, because he doesn't want her to have to deal with the memory of this on her own.

"I'm so sorry," he repeats, uselessly, and wishes he could think of something more tangibly consoling, but all he can do is whisper the same hopeless apology.

[all_the_gifts]

It's fitting, Melanie can't help but think, that after however many decades of watching the world fall to ruin because of what she was, she would have finally returned down here, to the little cell that was supposed to keep everyone else safe. Of course, it makes no sense that the body in the corner should look as she does now, but that doesn't matter. Maybe the dream, or the rift, or her own mind just wanted to make sure she recognized herself.

And here's Daniel, being so kind to her, far more than she deserves. Regardless of her intentions, look at what she's done. How many times can she save his life down here before he falls just like the rest of the world? She should probably pull herself away, and she releases her grip on his jacket to do just that. But then she loses her nerve and wraps her arms around him, instead, leaning into the warm, comforting solidity of him.

This is all just a nightmare. Daniel is real.

Still. "I'm sorry you got stuck here," she eventually mumbles into the general region of his stomach.

[peacefulexplorer]

Before he can think of something better to say, Melanie's hugging him back, entirely unexpected, and Daniel lets her. Physical support is about all he can offer at the moment. If that helps, he'll take it and lend her as much as she needs. When she apologizes he just gives her a little squeeze.

"It's okay." And Daniel's honestly more worried about what this will mean for Melanie than him. That - she shouldn't have had to see that. "And we'll get out of this, I promise."

He pours as much conviction as he can into the words, determined not to let anything else happen to her. She's been through more than enough.

[all_the_gifts]

"I know," Melanie says, her latent pragmatism beginning to reassert itself. "We have to wake up sooner or later." It's what might happen before they wake up that worries her. Even if the hungries leave them alone, she doesn't like the idea of being shut in with her own body.

It's a dream. It's not real. There has to be something they can do to get out of this place - to really get out, not just the room, but this whole terrible situation.

Melanie frowns, thinking hard for a few moments. This has to be her dream. Can she change it? Make the dream do what she wants? That seems reasonable. The only problem is that it's not easy to imagine the world any other way than this.

Maybe she doesn't have to. Not on her own.

"I have an idea," she says, letting go of Daniel so she can pad over to the little bookshelf. The textbooks she disregards, and many of the others are in rough shape - 'Anne of Green Gables' falls apart under her hands - but there's a leather bound copy of 'The Secret Garden' that has weathered the years with relative success. Melanie cradles it in her hands and turns back to Daniel. "Maybe if I imagine someplace nicer," she starts, uncertain and hesitant. Daniel probably knows more about these weird dreams than she does.