[network] Noisy Black, Part Four [open] [horror/surgery effects/note specifics please]

[snowblindmods]

[Soon, everything will be over.]

Comments

@zd; text

[swatsflies]

Hey! Anyone there?
We need evidence that it's dangerous for you guys to be left in there.
Need something about those outside of the cells not being a risk.

@hexappeal, Private - cw: suicide mention

[sleight_of_fate]

[It hurts to type, but he's going to do it. He needs to, and there's things to be said that he won't say out loud.]

Quiet in here. Noise doesn't stop. Starting to wear us down. No painkillers, no real care. People getting weaker, starting to lose hope.

worried someone will figure out how to take themselves out.

[swatsflies]

Shit. Yeah. That sounds bad.
Anything else?
I don't know if she'll take this as concrete proof

@featherydouche; text; night 263

[mrcreamsicles]

[It takes some fussing and a good deal of hissing at the static that keeps poking his wounds, but Davesprite eventually manages both the voice commands to get his tablet to open the network, and to put it on speech-to-text.]

Steph, Bucky, DJ Star-Lord, anyone outside. The eyes are talking to me. They spelled messages above us. Not our cells, higher, near where the rows are neat. I'll spell them.

WE REMEMBER. WE'RE SORRY.

CAN'T TOUCH DOOR
IN FROM OUTSIDE?
OR YOU - HOW?

BYE BUDDY.

[There is a small gap here. It hurts, and focusing is still hard with the way he feels, but he needs to tell them—]

There's a trapdoor. Enoch said there's a trapdoor. Under the operation table, below us, down the elevator. Basement. You have to find it.

@Spoiler ; text

[spoileralert]

The eyes are... moving?

[ This does not sound like a real thing, but you never know. ]

[mrcreamsicles]

No. No. Only on people. They've. They're drawing them like Beckett was drawing them, like House was, but into words. Every eye is there looking at me and I know them when they're there. I know them when they find them, when they write them, when the converts put them on us.

@bucky; audio

[advanced]

[Much later on, after the admin messages, Bucky finally reluctantly contacts Steph.]

I'm here too, ready to try and get in. We should pool resources.

[Getting everyone out is more important than petty grudges.]

@bucky; audio

[advanced]

[It's quite a while later that the reply comes, he's only been checking his tablet sporadically through the night.]

Message received. I'm nearly there, and sounds like others are too. I'll get in contact with-- Stephanie and arrange with her.

[Urgh, his least favourite person here.]

[mrcreamsicles]

[Long enough that it takes Davesprite some effort to figure out what beeped at him and what to do about it. Tonight really isn't the best for focus; it slips away so easy once he no longer has something taking it up. But through the haze he eventually realizes that's his tablet, and he needs to turn it on. It takes a little more fuss to get to the message itself.]

You're the eyes outside. Everything keeps staring.

@user; voice; night 263

[cosmicwords]

Everyone, we've talking to the system administrator, please do not lose out on hope.

I think, maybe, she needs proof of what's happening in there. If you can send us evidence of what you see, pictures and videos and whatnot, please do so. I think it might help.

[He ends the feed with a few minutes of him playing Lavender's Blue on his flute.]

@featherydouche; video; (cw: eye horror, skinning, reattachment of skin elsewhere)

[mrcreamsicles]

[It's in trying to refresh and check recent network messages after his own report that Davesprite finds this. As hard as he's been pushing to focus, the flute music makes it so, so much easier. It connects things up with greater sense, piece them together into meaning. With voice commands, he gets the tablet to record video.]

I know where every prophet's sign is in Norfinbury that we've found.

[The view is crooked, but it shows his face first (human now with his loss still lingering), where his eyes have been sew shut behind clear lenses grafted into his skin.]

Admin, there are messages from the converts they wrote with the symbols. They said they remember, and they're sorry. They can't touch the trapdoor. We have to get out.

[The view moves, slow and careful; he sets the tablet on the floor before managing to hold one arm outside his cloak, the rest of his body still covered, to show the panel of his own removed skin that's been stitched to his arm.]

My back is skinned. It hurts. There's something on the floor that keeps poking it if I sit down. They feed us now and then, but I can't sleep. All of us were changed, people have eyes put in them, Beckett was being forced to draw them. They burned Karkat's wrists and swapped his heart for a new one. We need out. It's so hard to think clearly—it keeps getting harder. We'll be dead or brainwashed if you don't; even the converts don't want that. They want to help. They've been forced.

[That's all he can manage without better vision to see what he's doing, and the song only lasts so long, but he hopes still that it will help.]

@user; voice

[cosmicwords]

Thank you. Do you have any idea what the converts are doing? What might happen to them?

[After asking he plays the music again, but this time the effects are not as strong.]

@beyonce | video | cw lacerations; loss of limb control; body parts sewn together

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen's camera shows the ceiling tiles once more, the fabric-covered shape of his leg looming on one side of the image where he sits cross-legged beside his tablet. His voice is rough from lack of sleep and from thirst; he's theoretically mobile enough to take advantage of the plumbing but his attempts have ended with more water on him than in him.]

I can't show you pictures of something no one else can see.

voice;

[cosmicwords]

That's okay, I think. Take pictures of whatever you can, even if it's just something someone else has seen from another angle.

She's not in there with you, we need to give her as clear a picture of what's happening as possible.

[And it will give the people in the cells a project to focus on for a while.]

@godsend, video - cw: brain stuff, limb stuff

[termineur]

[ It's like breathing air after being underwater too long. He knows he doesn't have much time before he's pulled back under again, and he can't think of what'd be useful. He stares at his tablet as if it will have the answers.

Sylar, for those who haven't seen him on video yet, has his skull sawed open and his brains exposed to the world. Parts of his brain are replaced with clockwork pieces. His arms are replaced with mechanical prosthetics, and his very being seems to tick away like a clock. ]

I already sent her video of what I can see from here. Is she going to open the trapdoor?

We're running out of time. We don't know who we are most of the time, anymore. I don't think she'll be able to fix the nanites if this process completes.

voice;

[cosmicwords]

She will try but we have to prove to her that time is running out. I think she considers it a dangerous option.

@Mnemosyne; voice

[bookofnope]

[The music brings his mind back to itself, just for a moment, just a little. Beckett can't do much, but he can join in, humming along between fragments of words.

He has a lovely voice, really. Shame it's so broken.]

@user; voice

[cosmicwords]

You have a nice voice.

You're Beckett, right?

@wiccandoit, video (He can't be around long.)

[darkincrement]

[ The feed is aimed at the ceiling of the elevator as it ascends up and away from the cell level. Vanitas had hit the highest floor he's able to go so they have a moment. Flipping the tablet to aim it at himself. ]

No time. [ Sitting down in the corner as he closes his eyes. Trying to resist the pressure to return the tablet. It's clear he hasn't been sleeping from the bags under his eyes.]

It's going to be over soon. Tomorrow night is the last. [ A pause as he pointedly looks away ]

It doesn't bode well for them.

@jwatson; video

[jumpthegun]

Can you be sure? You're telling us directly that we need to get people out before tomorrow night.

@beyonce | video | morning 264 | lacerations, body parts sewn together, loss of limb control

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen's tablet is left on, just one long video feed of his cell's ceiling. The cell block is relatively quiet now; from nearby there's occasional muttering, half-finished recitations of old lessons from medical school mixed with snatches of phrases in dead languages.

Sometimes he can be glimpsed walking past the tablet (or tripping over it) when the sound of the faucet -- the faucet that he always finds already turned off -- goads him into getting up -- or when he just lets out a yelp of pain and irritation and gets up to start pacing for no apparent reason at all. Other times, much more rarely, he raises his voice at some unseen passerby.]

I'm in here. I see you, I'm in here. I see you.

@ASolomons; audio

[devoutish]

[Alfie really doesn't give a fuck about contacting Stephen right now. The cloak that's been following him around for days, however, has other plans.

When Royce had vanished into thin air, it had latched onto the closest possible person - namely, Alfie. Alfie's been doing his best to ignore it. But he's on the tablets with Royce pretty much constantly now, and when his feed picks up the sound of Stephen talking in the background, the cloak gets a little enthusiastic.]

All right, all right, all right, fuck off.

[This comes after the cloak has thrown itself at Alfie's head and torso several times, eventually flat-out knocking the tablet from his hands.]

Strange!

@Spoiler ; audio ; night 263

[spoileralert]

We have supplies to make a bomb. I need one of the converts to find the ground floor door and mark it with a prophet symbol, as soon as they're able. Can you guys do that for me?

@duster; video, night 263

[equal_shots]

[It's luck entirely that Kid catches this message. Yes, he had come to try and talk with someone outside--even more with Eve--but he keeps forgetting what he's doing, a splitting headache pounding against his skull as he constantly fights the brainwashing.

He looks nearly as disoriented as some of the sinners have, peeking into the video of Royce's tablet.] Why? It is-- [The cup of water he was going to offer to Royce tips precariously to the side and Kid shakes his head. His voice is a whisper.] --we need help, please. Please. We don't want to do this. But--

[Tangling his fingers in his hair he stops abruptly.] This is what the Prophet wants?

@Mnemosyne; voice

[bookofnope]

... bomb?

[He's not very lucid, but his pulse jumps at this word. Jumbled memories, confused alarm.]

No. No. We had, before... the world broke, we recorded...