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Being granted a few precious seconds was enough to regain her bearings well enough to avoid another attack, and Caroline had just turned to thank Lucky for his help when Mark's voice came through.

"Rogue...zero?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. The remaining attacker advanced on her again, and she drove her dagger more forcefully into him this time, snarling "don't ******** touch me" as she kicked him away from her.

She silently stared down at the unmoving foe as she caught her breath, nodded once as she inwardly decided it was only fair to take their jacket as penance for injuring her, and crouched down to quickly set to work doing so. It wouldn't take more than a second or two, she'd reasoned; taking off someone else's clothes wasn't difficult.

"Did you pick zero, Lucky?" Her voice was tense, but it was difficult to tell if the strain was directed towards him or a result of the pain in her arm. "Seven'd be better. Eight, even. You like zero?"

Damage: 5
Assailant's HP: O

"Well," said an entirely unfamiliar female voice on the headset to Caroline and entirely familiar to Lucky, "zero was more my number anyway."

He knew who the voice over the line was.

"Hello Lucky, and a new visitor too. I'm very sorry I just don't have the time to amuse myself watching you today, but there is a small gift left for you if you follow the trail. I think you'll like it, and your new friend too. Bye."

There was a click through the headset and then nothing.

It was now awfully quiet in the corridor and there were no other assailants. Both the blinking lights and the siren were gone as well, leaving just a long, long corridor separated by several open doors.

"Hi... Charlotte..."

Lucky didn't realize he was holding his breath until he heard the click on the other end. He immediately fell back against the nearest wall and began hyperventilating a little bit to balance out the oxygen level.

Mark's assumed fate was given an ashen-faced nod. He and Caroline were on the same wavelength about what happened to most people who crossed Charlotte. "Yeah, he - yeah."

Lucky didn't answer for a few moments, leaving them both in an uncomfortable silence. The way in was obviously compromised - the only way out was to look for another exit and play along. Even though he was reasonably sure all she had probably left for them to find was Mark's dead body, there was that small chance it would be something else - and he couldn't help but be a little curious, especially when it distracted him from being a lot of other, less useful, much more distraught things. He tried and failed to compose himself again, re-holstering the runic torch. "Well. Let's... go see what her definition of 'gift' is."

He pushed off from the wall and hesitantly approached the first open door, peering inside from around the doorframe.

"Aw, don't know her well enough to know her gifts. You'll get there." As she tucked that tidbit away, Caroline paused, frowned, and took a mental step back. The only Charlotte she knew was her Charlotte, the girl in Delta who shared her fondness of conspiracies and knowledge of deeper meanings. By nature, it didn't seem like they could be the same person - but by nature, depending, it also seemed like she could. The Dark Side was a complex one.

But she wouldn't have forgotten her. Hopefully. The frown disappeared as she shook the idea off for the moment, watching as Lucky approached the first room. She put her hand on his shoulder as she craned to look over it, carefully staring inside with him.

"Mark said 'Lucky, don't touch anything'," she cleverly recounted, waggling one finger towards the computer and the remaining USB cord. "We can not break any 'rules'--" The loophole was her choice regardless, as it always was, and she moved past him to tap the keyboard to wake the system from stagnation. "--or you can listen to--to probably a dead man. Who maybe didn't get those plans. Or any of their cool s**t here. 'Course, hopefully he's fine, and...you know, just--doesn't have to know."

With a grin, she gestured towards the computer and sidestepped to make some space for him.

Static, and then a video began to play on the screen. It was a surveillance video, tthe timestamp on the corner of the video reading 06/07/16-00:12. As the timer began ticking upwards, two figures in labcoat were treating a third strapped to the chair. The subject's eyes occasionally turned to look at the camera, white focal points of light in an otherwise grey feed.

One of the two looked at the camera and then turned back to the patient, peeling the top of the patient's head open, where they had already made a clean cut through. He reached inside and sliced a small portion of brain tissue and put it on a tray. Instead of actual tissue, the pieces withered into what looked like seperated pieces of the root of a small tree that all individually began writhing.

The video froze at that exact frame and refused to move.

The brain tissue had stopped writhing, but Lucky's queasy stomach had only begun to.

"I don't know. I've seen people with their infection before, but I didn't see any - urgh - brain tissue." He was fixated on the freeze-frame again, as if there was anything else he could glean from it. "It must be related, though. Is anything in the picture green? Ugh, I know she's got money, she couldn't spring for a color CCTV in her secret base?"

Even if the video (and Charlotte) being in this place was a tenuous connection at best, she hadn't exactly been secretive about things when they'd found her at Opus Labs. She'd said as much; it was an infection - an infection of knowledge that humans couldn't handle. Exactly what had happened some time later, in Delta.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure she's behind it."

He suddenly looked up from the computer, right at Caroline, and took an obvious step back from her, as if she'd suddenly start sprouting branches at any minute.

"Let's go, we need more information -" Lucky was already running back out into the hallway, to the next open doorway. Not exactly a team player.

Interest piqued again, Caroline quietly repeated "she's got money..." while she refocused on the screen, only barely happening to catch the look that Lucky gave her. She scoffed and rolled her eyes as he left the room; she had no idea what he was thinking to have looked at her like that, but it was probably wrong. Probably.

She didn't disagree on needing more information, though - but not collecting the information they had so far was counterintuitive to how she usually did things. Before abandoning the computer and the room to follow him into the hall, she took a few pictures of the still image that remained on the screen, just in case.

The glimpse of more people in grey coats caught her attention first, heart skipping a beat before she saw that they weren't moving.

"Three and three," she offered, having noted that the number of bodies matched the room's number.

It was almost definitely impossible for any of them to be Mark, considering the state that they were in, but she felt that she needed to check anyway. Crouching down into a careful, defensive position, she poked at each of them with the edge of her dagger to inspect their features until she was sure, unaffected entirely by the corpses and gore.

"Dead, dead, dead. Brains' all missing, like they're scooped out. No trees in 'em either--I think? Good news is there's no sign of Mark!" Squinting in thought, she retrieved her phone to snap a picture of them too, glancing at Lucky when she couldn't settle on an answer herself. "Uh--should I be taking samples? What the hell does my division do here?"

She'd been a little too caught up in reenacting Star Wars to remember much about her actual position before now.

The dark corner of the room Lucky looked at split into a small human face-sized smile-

And then about fifty more of the exact same sized smiles.