Play@YSDC

Murray falls. The distance seems impossible. How could this be beneath the hospital? Where could he be? The air is warm and humid, its moisture cloying around his body. He's falling backwards though he could have sworn he'd pitched forwards. There's a disturbing click-clack-whirring sound like an old-fashioned camera. It continues again and again, the sound emanating from all around him. Then there's a sudden flash of light as he slams into something which groans, tilts, and rolls him down onto another platform. He rolls to a stop on his side, bruised all the way up one shoulder and hip, and staring out across an expanse of misty red-tinged shadows with hunks of building walls jutting up from lengths of steel grille sidewalks. The windows are all broken glass. Barbed wire topped chain link fences move out here and there and everywhere.

Somewhere above him he hears something take flight. Something massive whose wings beat the air and cause a breeze. It makes a deep gutteral sound like an angry pur that ends in a click-clack-whirrrr as it launches off into the distance. Something deep down inside Murray tells him that it will be back. Presuming he sits up to regard the place, he sees that he's on a sidewalk himself with a tall red brick wall to one side that seems somewhat familiar. There's a big glass window in the wall, smoke-darkened, yet whole.

Murray drags himself to his feet, suppressing a groan. He puts his flashlight back in his front shirt pocket, clipping it on. He grips his gun in his right hand, looking around nervously. What the hell? he thinks. Just when I thought things couldn't get any weirder. Gotta get indoors before that thing comes back. He makes his way over to the window, trying to peer through it to see what's inside.

OOC,Nice! I hadn't even noticed I was approaching the end of the chapter. Do I get to roll for skill increases?

He can see what appears to be a factory office through that smoke blackened window. It appears to be blackened and charred. It reminds him of a case he once had involving arson against a failing business to claim on the insurance. He'd been hired by the insurance agent and had found the man guilty. He'd come out of it with neither factory nor ill-gotten gains. The steel door beside the window is locked but it has a simple enough lock that should be easy to pick (+15% to your Lockpicking percentiles to do it).

OOC,Yes you do. Sorry, I forgot about that. Everything you have a check mark beside it. Since your character was extra cautious throughout the whole thing, I will let you have a free skill increase in Hide.

Murray takes out his lockpicks and has the door open in short order. He slips inside.

OOC,Thanks! :)

There's a charred wooden desk shoved up against the other door in an otherwise empty room that smells of ash, soot, and lost dreams. As Murray approaches the desk he can see a piece of paper pinned between the desk and the door. The page contains the words: I Know What I Must Do.

Murray shuts and locks the door behind him, then pulls out the piece of paper and holds it up to his flashlight to see what else is written on it.

The rest of the paper is blank, albeit a little charred at the bottom.

Well, at least someone knows what they must do, thinks Murray, folding the piece of paper and slipping it into a pocket. He then tries to move the desk aside to get access to the other door.

The desk scrapes loudly across the floor as he presses his weight against it to move it aside. As he pulls back from the desk, now that the door is cleared, he can hear a faint whimpering coming from inside followed by a man's terrified scream.

"Help is on the way!" calls Murray. He draws his gun and tries to throw open the door with his free hand, hurrying to rescue whoever might be in danger on the other side.

The door opens to reveal a bathtub situated against the wall on a rusted steel grille floor. A man lies in the tub, wrists slit, water bloody. The man is someone familiar to Murray. The owner of the business whose efforts Murray brought to the light of day. Murray hadn't heard about the end of his story. Is this what he really did afterward? Or is this just a lie from this terrible location?

There's a note folded up on the dirty sink beside the tub and no other doors out of here. It looks like if Murray wants to leave he'll have to go out the way he came in.

This isn't my fault, thinks Murray, looking away from the tub. He did this to himself. Curiousity getting the better of him, he picks up the note, unfolds it, and reads it.

The note states: I am what I perceive. I see what I am. In physics, one can't observe a situation without changing it. Even the atoms and molecules change. We'll meet soon. I've missed you. - Ash.

Wow, I must really mean a lot to her, thinks Murray. I just hope she's not sweet on me. This must be meant for me somehow, but I'm not sure how she knew I'd find it. He folds up the note again, puts it in his pocket with the other one, and leaves the office, heading back outside.

As Murray steps outside he can hear the heavy wings beating in the distance. There is, at least, only one direction to go across the rusted steel grilles that made up the floor here. Peering down below at the gaps beneath his feet he can see enormous steel girders placed here and there, as though offering support to this twisted monstrosity of a town. Gazing ahead to where the path veers right he can vaguely make out through the heat haze the words 'Post Office'.

Ah, perfect! thinks Murray. Maybe there I can find that post office box and finally get some answers. He sneaks down the path to the right, sticking to the shadows as he approaches the post office.

The post office looks like a mundane building if not for the oddly red brick walls and the cracked smoky glass window behind thick metal bars that wouldn't be out of place on a pawn shop window. The door is slightly open and there's a creaking sound coming from inside. There's also a series of metal post office boxes on the outer wall so that people can collect their post outside of shop hours.

Murray looks for box 392 as he fishes the small key out of his pocket. If he finds it, he tries the key in the lock.

All of the numbers are degraded and rusty. There must be a way to figure out which one is the right one without having to try them all. The answer seems so simple yet is just outside of his realisation.

OOC,you can either solve this yourself or roll Idea roll if you get stumped.

The boxes are probably numbered in order, thinks Murray. I'd guess from left to right in rows, but they might be numbered from top to bottom. All I need to do is figure out which box is number 392 in the correct order. He counts how many boxes are in each row and how many are in each column.