Welcome to Gaia! ::

The accident hadn’t been as bad as Mercy had feared, but as she looked at her mother, resting in the hospital bed with an arm and leg in a cast, she had no doubt it could have been far worse. She wondered, darkly, if the cold, sinking feeling that gnawed in her chest was what Delilah had felt when she’d been told her parents had been…

She shook her head angrily, wiping away hot, wet tears with the back of her hand as she scolded herself for even daring to conflate her emotions to the sheer, absolute devastation that Delilah must have felt. Her mother was fine, a few fractures, but fine. The crumple zones had taken the worst of the impact, the car had hit the median but that been the worst of it. She’d cancelled on her date with Nick tonight, though she’d much preferred to be in his arms right then. She’d promised a rain-check, she’d make it up to him - somehow.

Family first, he’d understood, he’d not been angry, far from it, all but urging her to go. So she’d gone, the only of the Haynes children there that late in the evening. Her father had driven Nathaniel home, and Jonathan was out of state for an away game. His… fiance? Yeah, fiance, had shown up to offer moral support, but she’d left as well. She was exhausted, her eyes burned from the tears as she sat there in the room, head bowed.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt the large hand on her shoulder, her body reacted out of instinct, rolling her shoulder out of the grip and driving her elbow back into the attacker’s gut, before she stood and spun, half ready to fling a punch into their teeth - to be greeted by the vision of her uncle wincing and placing a light hand on his abdomen, the other up and ready to deflect the incoming face shot. She stopped cold, fist frozen halfway through it’s motion toward her uncle’s outstretched arm.

“Hey, sorry, didn’t mean to spook you,” Lucas said gently, slowly righting himself, carefully lowering his arm. “Sam, uh, your dad called. I was surprised, I mean on account that he hates my a**, rightly so, but he wanted me to uhm… check in and make sure you were okay. He said he’d be another hour or two and then he’d drop you at your dorm.”

Mercy nodded numbly, sinking back down into her chair, wrapping her arms around her torso as she nodded at the chair next to her.

“Sorry,” she said with a sigh. “It's been a bad night.”

“I know what you mean, kid, trust me,” Lucas said, plopping down into the chair next to hers. “You got a wicked hard elbow though, that that muay thai s**t?”

Mercy couldn’t help but grin a little. “Mixed Martial Arts, but yeah, a little. I go to a gym, I get free lessons, family discount - he’s Delilah’s cousin.”

“The last time I got free lessons I was banging the instructor, so good on you kid,” Lucas shot back with a wink. Then his expression grew more sober and he looked over at Annabelle. “How is she?”

“Two fractures in her left leg, three in her left arm, not sure if the collarbone is broken yet,” Mercy said, acknowledging the elephant in the room. “She was coming home from a signing, some drunk a*****e rear ended her on the highway, cops were pretty sure he was going 80. He’s here somewhere I think.”

“Could flirt with a nurse for you and find out, you could go and kick his a**?” Lucas offered drly. “Smother him with a pillow?”

Mercy let out a weak laugh. “Tempting.. but no. I’ll let the law do its job.”

“Good,” Lucas said softly. “I’m not on my a-game anyway. You look like how I feel.”

Mercy lifted her head, cocking a brow and rubbing at what she was sure were obnoxiously red eyes. “Tired, just… tired and scared. First Delilah’s parents pass away, then she goes missing… Then Mathias and Imara’s cousins’ dying - It’s like invasion of the body snatchers here but with no replacements, just the snatchings. Now this, its just…. It's been hard.”

“You’ll make it,” Lucas said, fishing out his wallet and handing her a handful of bills. “I think I saw a coffee machine down the hall, why don’t you go stretch your legs and snag us some. My treat.”

Mercy gave her uncle a weak smile and stood up, taking the money and slipped out of the room with a nod, she could have just taken her card - most of the machines here ran on cards. Still she wasn’t going to turn down her uncle’s show of generosity, she’d heard her parents talk about him, knew he was trying hard to integrate back into society. That was probably had changed her father’s opinion on his younger brother enough to include him in this moment of crisis.

She entered an empty hallway, and the lights flickered plunging the hall into Stygian darkness for a heart dropping moment, before coming back up with an agitated hum.

A figure stood at the end of the hallway, wearing a hospital gown, hair long and untended, looking in her direction but she couldn’t quite make out their features through the unkempt mane of hair.

“Uhm, hello?” Mercy called down the hallway. “Are you lost? Do you need help?”

The humming died again, and Mercy swore under her breath as the lights winked out again, the envelope of darkness once more taking the hallway before the lights buzzed back to life moments later. The figure was closer now, and Mercy could make out features now, her body growing tense as she took in the figure’s appearance.

The gown was dirty, stained with dark brown and black splotches of, god knew what. She couldn’t determine gender, the hair was long, shaggy, oily and an absolute mess of tangles, mats, and knots. The worst part though, were the eyes. They were sunken, almost colorless, not on the bright grey of her own eyes, but the hollow emptiness of a doll or animal. The eyes were locked on her own, and the figure’s lips twisted into an open, deranged smile, exposing brown and black broken, rotten teeth.

Mercy reached for her purse - and extension her pen - before remembering that she had left both on the counter in her mother’s hospital room. She began to take a step back when the humming of the light died again, and the darkness rushed back into the hallway, before the lights angry buzzing resumed.

Mercy almost wished they hadn’t.

The figure was two or three yards away now, easily a threat, and her whole body sang with the wrongness and danger of the moment, her body shifting to present as small a target as possible to the horror in the hallway. Patches of skin seemed ready to slough off it’s face, its long, spindly fingers pointed a dirty, cracked nail in her direction. The figures head tilted at an impossible angle the smile reaching horrific, face warping proportions.

The light flicked out again, Mercy tensed for a fight, waiting to feel the weird creatures nails or grip. But, the attack never came. The light winked back on to an empty hallway before her. Mercy blinked, looking around for a cautious moment, including behind her. The hallway, and the way she’d come appeared clear. So with a shrug and a rub of her eyes she resumed walking.

The putrid, sickly cloying scent of death and decay hit her like a wall. She almost gagged on it, it was so bad. She moved quickly past the smell before her stomach could heave up her lunch, moving into the next hallway where the air returned to the normal crisp disinfected smell. Shaking her head she looked back down the hall. She was exhausted - it was the only rational explanation. That or some strange mind warping youma - which made her shudder.

She found the machine, bought two cups of coffee, and then settled on the slightly longer alternate route back - just to be safe...