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Now that Hanna had cleaned up her old room, gotten back in the habit of training, and already had an uncomfortable run-in with Alice and the things that go bump in the night, things were starting to feel weirdly... normal? She even had regular old Death Hunter grunt work to do. It ranged from coffee runs to carrying stacks of things to various buildings. Every now and then, Hanna would steal peeks at the paperwork, but she was careful about it. She was fairly certain they didn't give her anything sensitive. Still, Hanna didn't want to find out the hard way.

She had been working with the same girl for the past three days -- Solia, a Death Hunter like her but intermediate. It still chapped Hanna's a** to see people who were defrosted months and years after her so far ahead. It felt unfair, though she couldn't quite say, not until she knew exactly what she had done to be put back in the pods. Still, Solia was pretty fun to be around. Her excitement was a little infectious, and Hanna found herself enjoying their menial tasks.

Today, that task was just a little different: running folders for filing in storage. In the sea of boring things she could be doing, this was... actually a little more interesting. It was mostly basic stuff: reports upon reports upon reports. But that was at least better than coffee.

The box sat on table. Hanna flipped it open, peered over her shoulder, and cracked open the first one. "Let's see what we have now, Solia," she said. Numbers and figures coated every inch of the page. Keen eyes pricked across it. "Hm, looks like operations summaries. Old ones." She closed the folder and slid it across to the shorter girl. "See anything interesting?"

Hanna reached back into the box, digging around for something more interesting.

Hanna squinted at the newest file. "No pictures with these," she said. "Unless the description 'subject responds well to Fear stimulation' sounds particularly appealing to you." She placed that down and picked up another. It was more minutia, labeled only with a complicated-looking serial number. This had something to do with complicated testing procedures, more paper trash. Hanna always wondered if they blended fake files with real ones just to see if people were snooping.

It didn't stop her from, in fact, snooping anyway.

It was Solia who found the pay dirt. Hanna quickly stashed the boring drivel that she had been reading and flocked to the other girl's side. "2011...?" she said, excessive drips of eagerness in her tone. It was almost as though Solia was messing with her on purpose the way she cut off her sentences just before the best part. Old files. Pods. 2011. SEALED ROOMS. Hanna was practically vibrating with excitement.

"NO," Hanna said suddenly. "But I definitely, definitely, definitely want to."

A hand snaked up, flicking through the files. She pulled a couple free and recognized familiar names: Scarlett, Poe too. Poe? s**t, blast from the past. The Harry Potter to her Hermione. But no Hanna Nowicki. No girl with face tattoos staring up at her from a page. Her hands cracked open another file. "Whoa, I saw this girl at the training grounds yesterday," she said. Pause. "I guess that makes sense."

That file, too, closed with a little slap of papers and disappeared back into one of the boxes. "So," she said, hoisting up the box into her arms, "this room has all the pod storage info in it?" Hanna drummed her fingers on the side of the box and moved toward the door.

One thing that Hanna really liked about Solia was the frankness of her and the way she had, well, fun. Most of the people Hanna had interacted with since she got back were lowbies like her who were so scared about screwing up that they rattled with nerves. And here was someone who was willing to rub knowledge she shouldn't know in someone's face. Living the dream, man. Living the dream.

Acting casual was definitely something that Hanna could handle. Before coming here, she had to work her way out of slippery situations on the regular. It was a side effect of always going places she probably shouldn't.

"Sort of," Hanna said at first. She leaned to the side to let another pair of life hunters move past her. Saying too much might get her in trouble, especially in these hallways. She lowered her voice, "My own podding." A beat. "What would you be interested to read?"

The hallway bent up ahead. Hanna was letting Solia lead, but she was started to get excited about the prospect of getting an official word on why she was refrozen, something that explained why she couldn't remember being refrozen.

It was difficult not to notice how Solia paused at the mention of podding, especially for someone as hypersensitive to it (currently) as Hanna was. She did her best to look normal as they continued weaving through the building. It put her considerably more at ease when the other girl made an admission of her own -- about her weapon actually having people who knew his former identity.

"That's fascinating," Hanna said quickly. It was too interesting for her to pretend otherwise.

Being young doesn't make him fascinating. I may have had my times awhile ago, but I have stories about my day that could knock out the most daring... Adelphe whispered in her mind. Hanna shook her head, ignoring her mental companion for now. The Lady's past was shrouded in lies and mystery, in its own way. But, as far as Hanna knew, no one that she ever knew still existed in Halloween.

When they nearly bumped into Jackson, Hanna darted quickly out of the way, nodding at Solia's added kernel of information. It all got filed away into her mental catalogue. Just like they were about to do in this filing room.

It took a bit of self-control for Hanna not to let out of squeal of excitement, which promptly disappeared when she saw the sorry state of the room. "Jesus, one afternoon in here, and I could make this place a ******** masterpiece," she said. The redhead set the box down and quickly skirted around the desks to the row of filing cabinets flat against one wall.

The majority of them were either unmarked or marked with writing so faded that it became illegible. Some had post-its attached to them bearing description of what information might be contained. One, quite poetically, said "cold storage s**t." Without hesitation, Hanna slid out the drawer and began rifling through its content, searching for anything that mentioned her name.

"So, truth time," she said as she searched. "I actually became a trainee nearly 3 years ago -- one of the first, actually." There was a clear vibration of pride in her voice. "Only... thenIwasrepoddedfor2andahalfyearsandIhavenoideawhy." It came out in a harried rush, accompanied by the thwack of files being shoved aside.

"Thing is, I don't remember s**t. That's weird, right? Other people seem to recall why they got put back in the freezer, but not me, and I really can't stand not knowing things, especially about myself so..." Her eyebrows lifting upward. What did she want? Help, of course. She just wasn't sure exactly what she needed: a lookout, a file rifler, a pity party? Hanna wasn't sure.

Hanna had experienced a similar impulse to learn more about her own weapon's past, but Adelphe was dodgy at best. She lied and hid most truths from her past, preferring to substitute grandiose stories. It was difficult to sift the truth from the misdirection. Plus, it made it challenging when she didn't even know how old the Lady was. Beauty is ageless, Adelphe quipped quickly before fading back to silence.

The lighting in the room was not ideal. It made the entire encounter feel more dubious, or maybe that was the redhead's paranoia talking. Hanna wiped a hand across an old-looking filing cabinet. It came back dusty. "I'm not defective," Hanna snapped. She drummed her fingers on the cabinet and regained her composure. "And I know that is not it. Bix and Robert were both from my batch, and they're still around, plus others. I heard Davey is back too."

Hanna cracked open a drawer and rifled through it. "I have a weird feeling, that's all. And I have a track record of being right about my weird feelings -- the existence of monsters and ghosts and s**t, for example. Wish I could have just one moment to say that to the face of some asshats from school. And family. And, anyway." A sigh pushed out of her.

A hundred other defenses and explanation pressed against her lips, but Hanna bit them back. She just needed to know, okay, and she needed Solia to understand that. "Will you help me look? No matter what we find, I just need to know, you know? Defect or otherwise," she said with particular emphasis on otherwise.

If Hanna had to bet, she figured Solia had some sort of better understanding about how this mess was at least marginally organized. Any kind of guidance would help make this easier.

The train of words from Solia's lips brought out an array of emotions in Hanna. The first was anger, and even as that morphed into other things, it bubbled beneath her skin. She could understand there was a greater order to things and yadda yadda yadda, but that didn't make her defective. It remained as an insecurity, but she wasn't about to accept that from this other girl -- who she liked, mostly, but was starting to sour on. Not to mention the bashing of her fellow Hunters, the assumption that Hanna knew nothing of Deus (though, she certainly was missing huge knowledge gaps, it was not something she was keen to have thrown in her face).

It all served to throw Hanna immediately onto the offensive.

Solia was saying things that Hanna already knew, and it rankled her. She knew what she was, what Deus was. And the matter-of-fact condescension was alienating to her, not useful. "You're talking about logic, yeah? If I was actually defective, or if my batch was defective, we would all be dead. No one would have bothered to stuff me back in a pod," she said. Her own hands continued moving, picking through files at hyperspeed. Her annoyance was actually making her more efficient.

"You are quick to criticize those Hunters, Hunters who have been here longer than you. Your existence on this island began with us." She shut another drawer moved to another. Being a historically older Hunter was one of the only points of pride she had to claim. "You barely know me. You are making assumptions about my motivations and aspirations. I told you I want to know why I went back in the pod because there was something strange about it. Stop filling in the details of my life to suit this speech."

Hanna slammed a drawer much harder than she meant to. In the next drawer, she pulled out a file -- her name popped out. Her photo. It was hers. It was in her hands. She had found it.

She stopped talking for a moment, scanning the page. There was a document listing stats on her. No mention of weapons error. There was a mention of her being entered into a volunteer program for something, not that she recalled that. It would have been worth mentioning out loud, but the positivity she had felt blooming between her and Solia had fractured.

Nothing else caught her eye, except, well -- thick black marks obscured various lines throughout her medical file, including a series of events prior to the last entry before her reawakening:

Reentered on 08/01/2011

If it had been a simple weapons issue, the file would have said so. Hanna had seen it before, when she was doing basically this same job... just awhile ago. Instead, the reason was confidential. Why? Golden eyes flashed to Solia. With a slap of paper, Hanna tossed the file down on the table so that it slid across to the other girl. This proved (to Hanna, at least) that she was right and Solia was wrong. Yes, Solia said she planned on helping, but it was tinged with the hint of a threat.

How had things shifted so suddenly? Hanna stared coldly at the other girl. Quickly, she tucked the last of the files into another bin. The redhead opened her mouth for a second, but then shook her head. She picked up the empty crate from the floor and walked out the door without a word.