TBOS Round 4.5

Anna found herself in a pitch-black area that was quickly becoming annoyingly familiar.  She found that this time she could at least move her arms and legs, which was an improvement over the previous time she'd been locked in her own head.  "All right you asshole, let's get this over with.  Apparently I'm just the perfect host for all sorts of wandering archetypes.  I've been thinking I should start a zoo in my head."

There was no reply.  Anna wandered around and discovered that the pitch black area was now surrounded by walls.  As she wandered, a tiny amount of light seemed to permeate the area.  However, she still couldn't adjust to it well enough to see any meaningful distance.  "This place is a bit homelier than it was last time I visited," she said to nobody in particular.  She reached out and touched the walls and found that they were covered in a strange liquid that seemed to ooze out of them.  She pulled her hand back and discovered that her hand was now covered in black ink.  "Hmm. Warrior wasn't much fun to be around, but at least he was house-trained."

Anna walked further and found that she wasn't enclosed by walls as she had initially assumed, but instead had a narrow passage open to her.  The passage wound and twisted, and as she navigated its turns, she began to get a clear sense that she was steadily spiraling inward towards something that had been hidden away in the middle of her brain.



James, Reinald, Hazel/Alec, and Lia walked back where they'd left the characters and discovered Alice standing over Kate's body holding what appeared to be a ceremonial dagger, Kate's blood dripping from the blade.  Kate's blood on the floor was red all the way through, with no trace of infection.  Alice was visibly shaken.  "She attacked me!  She kept saying that I must be the one with the infection.  She said I killed Matt.  I don't know where she got this knife.  I didn't have a choice."  At this point Alice turned accusingly toward Alec.  "It was him.  It had to be.  Alec has been acting suspicious since he got here."

"I'm afraid we already know Alec's reasons for acting suspicious.  We are now quite confident that he is not infected."  Reinald calmly aimed his gun at Alice's head.

"That really only leaves one suspect," James said, aiming his gun as well.

Alice stopped looking panicked and abruptly became completely calm.  As she stood still, her eyes began to glaze over and become completely black.  James and Reinald fired their guns at her head in unison.  The bullets quickly destroyed Alice's face, sending black inky blood spraying across the room.  Alice leaped towards the group, apparently unaffected by the bullets, and slashed blindly with James' knife.  Reinald attempted to dodge out of the way, but the knife still managed to slash across his arm.  The black ink on the knife blade mingled with Reinald's cut.  He could immediately feel himself being overtaken by an alien presence forcing its way into his body.  

James tackled Alice and sent both of them crashing into Matt's body, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor.  James managed to pry his knife out of Alice's grip and shoved her into the wall.  The front half of Alice's head had been nearly blown away by the gunshots, and although she could still walk around, her lack of eyes seemed to be preventing her from seeing anything as she stumbled against the wall.  James cautiously approached her, holding his knife defensively.  Behind him, Matt's seemingly dead body picked itself up off the floor.  With a hypodermic needle concealed in his sleeve, Matt injected James with black inky blood.  The possession he had been fighting since he got sprayed with Antagonist blood suddenly struck James much harder than it had before.  He turned and shoved Matt away, but it seemed like he could barely move.

During the commotion, Lia had pulled out a blank sheet of paper.  "James, get away from them!" she shouted.  James attempted to comply, but was finding he had difficulty getting his body to cooperate with what he told it to do.  Alec/Hazel jumped in and pulled James and Anna away from the area.  Lia stepped forward with her paper and pen and calmly wrote "FIRE."  Blue flames rose from the floor underneath Matt and Alice.  The two had no time to react as the fire rose up to the ceiling, turning the entire room behind James, Anna and Alec into a blue inferno.  The flames abruptly died out as soon as they had begun, revealing the inside of the room charred black and completely devoid of features, with no evidence remaining of the two possessed characters.  Lia folded the paper and put it back away.