CHAPTER ONE: Cecilia: Checking In

[Kadael]

Cecilia backs up a little, braces herself, and aims the shotgun at the right door. If it's possible, she'd like to avoid hitting anything on the other side, though she's all too aware of how powerful firearms are.

When she pulls the trigger, the shot leaves her ears ringing and the recoil shakes her whole body.

So that's what it feels like.

[Laraqua]

The pellets tear through the wood but leave the door otherwise unharmed.

At least now she can peer into the other corridor, which seems empty.

[Kadael]

Cecilia kicks the door in frustration, then tries shooting again.

Briefly, she thinks of the nurse. Is she dead? Are there more like her?

Who else is in this hospital? Who else is hearing all of this noise?

[Laraqua]

Moments before she fires the shotgun once more she notices something strange.

The wood seems to be re-knitting itself before her very eyes.

The shotgun goes off again, incredibly loud, near deafening in the silence and the enclosed space.

She hears something, somewhere up above, let loose a hacking snarl -- so loud it makes her head spin.

[Kadael]

No. No, this is bad. This isn't right. What the hell is going on? Cecilia backs away from the double doors, then spins around and runs back down the corridor.

She presses herself against the wall near the door to the nurse's station, then turns a little to look inside.

[Laraqua]

She doesn't have very far too run. A few quick strides puts her around the corner of the Nurse's Station.

The door is shut, just as she left it, so she can't see inside.

She can't hear anything here either.

[Kadael]

She reaches for the door and pulls it open - just enough to see inside. It's a horrible thought, but if the nurse is... dead, then there's nothing stopping her from going through that other door.

Presumably.

[Laraqua]

The nurse lays face first in its own blood spatter.

The small refridgerator, chair, and underside of the desks are all covered in a patter of crimson dots.

She'll have to step over, or around, the nurse corpse if she wants to get to the other door.

[Kadael]

Cecilia cringes at the sight and the smell - like rust and bile. She gingerly steps around the body, trying not to think about what her final moments must have been like.

What happened to her?

But the door is there, and doesn't leave much time for wondering.

[Laraqua]

"Heeeeelp meeeeee...." gurgles the nurse on the floor. "Heeeelp meeeeee..."

Cecilia reaches the door and pulls it open, revealing another dark and shadowy corridor beyond. What could lay down there might be even worse...

"Heeeeelp meeeeee...."

Then again, maybe not.

[Kadael]

Oh, God, she's not dead--

Cecilia slowly turns away from the door to look back at the nurse. It's disgusting and terribly sad. She can't believe it, but she feels... pity.

No matter how mad and grotesque she is, this woman used to be somebody. She worked here. She had a family... a life. Now she's lying in a pool of her own blood, ill and likely in pain.

There is one way to help her, but she's not sure she can do it.

"I could..." Cecilia eyes the shotgun in her hand, then looks back at the nurse's body. "I could kill you. Now." The word 'kill' comes out oddly, almost strangled.

"It'd be faster than... this. But only if you say yes."

She's discussing assisted suicide with a madwoman who, moments ago, likely wanted to murder her with a scalpel. This nurse isn't mentally capable of making such decisions... of course, this is a place where the law doesn't matter.

[Laraqua]

"Heeeelp meeeeee..."

The lights in the room flash on, near blinding Cecilia, and she instinctively raises a hand to block her dark-adjusted eyes as they slam shut against all of that light.

"Heeeelp meeeeee..."

The words so close, breath warm against her face, against her hand, everything so bright, too bright to look, too bright to see anything. Noises all around her. Telephones ringing, fingers tapping on keyboards, the chlorine assault of bleach and other cleaners, and a bright flare of pain like a developing migraine, there and then gone again.

A childish shriek sounds behind her.

The lights flash off.

She's in an empty room. The blood spatter is still there, still fresh under the beam of her flashlight, but there are shoe prints in the blood, smeared prints that go straight between her legs and out the door.

[Kadael]

The lights left phantom colors floating in front of her eyes; she tries to rub them away as she turns to the door again.

Somebody screamed. Who? She can't remember. Too much noise.

She looks at the footprints, then back at the corridor. Time to go...

[Laraqua]

The door opens with a sharp creak to reveal a dark and dusty corridor of loose ceiling tiles and peeling linoleum. There are a lot of doors down this corridor, and then it bends left in a U-shape. She could always check the fold out map to pick a destination.

[Kadael]

Cecilia peers at the map with her flashlight, then heads to the Operating Prep Room, since it's close.

What frustrates her the most is that she's never sure what she's doing: being thorough or wasting time? Katie could be anywhere in this hospital... and maybe not even here. What if Jack lied? What if she was here, and now she... isn't?

[Laraqua]

Rusted stainless steel sinks, tables, and water-scabbed off-white cabinets line this room. A box of latex gloves, badly moulded, sits on a shelf by the door and a tray of surgical tools lays on the floor, having spilled much of its utensils across the damp floor. There's even some odd contraption that looks sort of like a microwave that sits in an alcove embedded amongst the wall of off-white cupboards. A half-open door gives a vague flashlight beam stabbed glimpse into a dark and blood-stained room where a Robbie the Rabbit doll sits on a gore-slick steel operating table.

[Kadael]

That doll. The mannequin was holding that doll.

Maybe not that specific doll, but Cecilia remembers the pink rabbit and its red eyes all too well. It doesn't look like a friend to children. Before she came to Silent Hill, she'd never seen one.

Does Katie even like rabbits?

She steps out of the room, checks the map, and decides to walk to the ICU next.

[Laraqua]

The door to the ICU is somewhat dented and splintered (from the outside) and it creaks loudly on its hinges when she starts to pull it open a few inches. The beam of her flashlight stabs through the gap, revealing the edge of a bed with a wide variety of now silent machinery sitting beside it. The saline drip seems filled with something blotchy and nasty, like some aborted chicken foetus floats within the plastic bag. She can't see the rest of the room without opening the door but she can vaguely make out a shape lying beneath the sheet and the edges of a few letters carved into the wall.

[Kadael]

Cecilia pushes the door open the rest of the way and puts a tentative foot inside. Her eyes and flashlight survey the room, but come to rest on the letters.

Walking inside, she comes to a stop before the bed, and the form that lies within it.

[Laraqua]

No one likes to be lonely is carved into the wall above the beds in jagged lines.

There are three beds in the I.C.U., each surrounded by machinery, one surrounded by the ward curtain that wraps around the bed on its little rusted rails. Two of the birds have child-sized mannequins dressed in pyjamas lying beneath the sheets, each with their left arm out-stretched as though hugging something, and each has a Get Well Card on the bedside cabinet. The third bed seems to have a slight glow coming from behind the curtain and she can dimly make out the silhouette of another figure standing over that bed, oh so still, as though waiting a silent vigil forever more.