He suddenly lunges forward, arms outstretched, desperate fingers reaching for her. “.. or I take something equal!”

Nemi takes a breath in, moving to start unclasping her axe from her equipment duffel as she looks over the man and then looks around. And then her eyes dart back to the man. Something was oh so wrong, and everything did not seem right.

“A rune etched box can lead to tortured people pretty easily.” Catrina/u/span comments, ticking off a few options. “It could have been used as part of a ritual that involved torture, could’ve needed people to be tortured to open it, or it could just be someone using the box that liked torturing people.” Catrina glances up at the ceiling, following Alice’s pointing gun.

She listens as the man speaks, and then, as if by impulse, steps back when he lunges at Xiomara, her own hand reaching for the gun that was lazily stuffed into a pocket, still poking out

When the fingers reach for her, Xiomara sneers, her fangs on display in a predatory showing. “I am not paying your debts,” she snaps at him, “If you want knowledge, you may ask. But you shan’t take from me, cretin.”

Obadiah looks unimpressed with the flailing man, “Bargain gone wrong? Attempt at a pact?” He flicks his eyes upwards following everyone’s gaze. “Huh.”

Nemi sighs softly as she looks over to Obadiah. “I was going to say something but…” She sighs, unsure of how to take this situation as she does’nt know if Obadiah and Miles are taking this seriously or not.

Matias pulls out a gun and just aims it right at the broken twisted ‘human’. “If it dies, artifact will need new surrogate. How about we just kill it and search the building from top to bottom?” he suggests in perhaps the least academic approach ever.

Agitated, Miles settles into a hasty pace, feet treading back and forth as though to dig a path into the factory floor while he mutters under the breath. He’s so caught up in whatever it is that’s got him wrapped up, wringing his hands, that he hasn’t even spared his gaze, or his thoughts, to the lurching assault of the man towards Xiomara.

“We may be able to find something by looking inside him…” Catrina says, backpedaling while trying to not look like she’s backpedaling, away from the man that reached for Xiomara. “But I would rather not get close…”

The man lunges with a desperate, animal ferocity, catching Xiomara and attempting to slam her with his full weight. They crash hard to the floor, the clatter of the hook’s chain rattling above them. Blood smears beneath them as he scrambles over her, breath reeking of metal and grief, snarling through tears, “You owe! I just need a name – just one – ann it ends!” His fingers dig wildly at her coat, searching for something he doesn’t understand but must take.

The figures in the rafters jolt like puppets cut loose and SCATTER. Six of them flicker into smoke and descend erratically, crawling along beams, walls, even light itself as they begin darting for the weak points in the room; the ones afraid, and most deliciously vulnerable.

But the seventh stays. It hovers, its faceless shape somehow intimate as it looms behind Miles.

Nemi has, No idea, what to think about some of her investigation team members currently… she unclasps her shield and slides it onto her arm, leaving her cane in place as she grunts softly and huffs the battle axe with one hand. She steadies and readies herself. Whatever the trunk had in control was coming. She looks towards Xiomara as she curses. “Someone Help Miss Mara- Those things are coming-” She states with a soft nod.

“F-FUCK!” Alice/span shouts, squeezing her eyes shut before she fires off a round, a staccato report from the end of her pistol that heralds both terror and poor decision-making. She has nearly no hope of hitting… whatever it was, and shutting her eyes makes her aim that much worse. She doesn’t have time to process what’s happening with the man and Xiomara – she bolts backwards, keeping her head on a wild, manic swivel as she tries to figure out where the monster went. “They- they’re everywhere!” She scans with her pistol, too, her shaking hands making the end of the barrel wobble madly.

Obadiah rashes into his pocket and pulls out his switchblade, flicking it open with as *shitck* as he looks between Xiomara and Miles. At Nemi’s encouragement he makes a protective charge for the woman as his eyes scan the corners for Arachne.

Raising his hands, Miles stops his pacing and looks down at them, palms turning up towards his gaze as though he were only just now seeing them for the first time. “I… what did I do? Why?” he sounds disgusted with himself.

Nemi‘ eyes widen as she realizes her grievous mistake…

Matias tries to track the monstrosity as it rushes Xiomara with his handgun but it is much much to fast and by the time they all scatter he puts the pistol back where it probably does the most good, his holster. Assuming it is possible to reach Miles and the lone unmoving entity with him, the professor begins to makes his way towards both. “You know, I never met you Mercer. Why not tell me what you did…” he says encouragingly but is really watching the entity behind him instead.

“She was… she was blonde. And so pretty,” Miles recalls to Matias, filled by an alien memory that his mouth moves to confess in his shame and disgust. “And her head,” he mimes out the struggle, grabbing and smashing. “So soft. Sticky. Wet. Broken,” he looks at his hands again, as though Miles can see the blood… on another pair of hands. “Why did I do it?” he’s genuinely confused.

“You wanted the truths inside, you were tired of her half-truths. You had to open it up.” Matias suggests to Miles as he continues to approach both the man and the entity behind him. His slate-grey eyes looking more to the entity as he insists, “But you can not force truth. That is why so many die. We could give you truth though, maybe.” as he tries to cajole the entity to hopefully not explode Miles noggin.

As the two of them crash to the floor, Xiomara lets out an agitated hiss, lifting her hansd and her long nails to claw at the man’s face. Eventually, she is able to get a grasp on the man’s cheeks, locking eyes with him to trance him into submission.

“She… she was a liar?” Miles is lost, his own memories failing to engage with these alien ones, like two pieces of machinery with one built for Imperial and the other for metric; the parts just don’t engage properly. He remains blissfully unaware of the shadowy entity behind him, or the origin of the memory itself, but the strain of taking on this recollection is written plain on his face. It’s like an organ transplant that’s ripe for a violent rejection. Miles’s nose starts to bleed.

@ob’s blade sinks deep between the possessed man’s shoulder blades, his body jerking violently as a high, unearthy wail bursts through his throat, layered and dissonant, like a choir of regret screaming through a rusted drainpipe. Xiomara’s gaze cuts through his madness, and he goes suddenly still, mouth agape as goes slack over her.

But there’s no time to celebrate.

Alice’s wild shot clips one of those flickering horrors overhead. It lets out a shriek like shattering mirrors that threatens to deafen everyone as it hurls itself toward her. It hits her chest like smoke turned solid, a brief and crushing pressure that steals her breath before the thing crashes to the ground, skittering backward on too many limbs, yowling like a wounded thing.

And just as Matias opens his mouth to coax, one of them drops. It slams into him with a weight that shouldn’t be real, mouth unhinging with an unholy scream, ravenous, trying to rip something out of him.

All around them, the air hums; not like static, but with a directionless force, with the oppressive heat and pressure seeming to come from a single direction.

[OOC: The psychic disturbance can be felt through sensation, so it can be traced. Otherwise, please do your tries to not fall under the psychic disturbance, get maimed, or other investigative things.]

Nemi grunts, being poised with a decision as she looks from Alice’s tumble to Matias’s as she hurls her great axe towards his attackers head. Blade swinging wide enough after she lunges forward to start some momentum before applying force to make use and keep it going towards its target!

Alice makes a choked “ough” noise, and then she can make no more. She hits the floor hard, landing on her back and tearing some of her stitches in the process. Worse yet, she nearly drops her pistol, jamming her hand in an attempt to keep it gripped. She can feel blood oozing from the wound on her chest, agitated by the shadow monster striking her, and as she lies on the cold ground, she arches her back in pain. The wind’s knocked out of her, her sucking gasps evidence of that, and clutches at her chest as she tries to recover quickly enough to address the clear and present danger.

Obadiah pulls the guy off of Xiomara and casts him aside as he goes to help Xiomara up afterwards. “Time to go, I think. Can you get out by yourself? I need to fined Arachne and get her out and someone needs to grab Miles.” He jerks his head around, “Nemi! Alice! Grab Miles and run!”

Falling back again, then moving to stand closer to Nemi as the chaos unfolds, Catrina’s/span hands go immediately to her ears as that force starts pushing down on her. “Not good not good not good…” She mutters, fingers turning white on her gun as she looks around franticly. Her approach to Nemi now stopped, and luckily so with that greataxe going on a trip, Catrina wobbles, before turning in a slow circle. She pauses when her eyes land on Matias and his attacker, and she takes that as a prompt cue to shoot at the thing, hoping but not too confident it seems, as her aim isn’t the best, and she’s trying not to hit Matias by accident.

Xiomara’s nose twitches as she Obadiah helps her back to standing. “…loathesome creature. Loathesome, loathesome. Vile little rat,” she hisses out, baring fangs again as she gazes on the man. Her head eventually jerks to the side in a twitch that draws her attention away from easy prey. “Out? /Out/? Why would we be leaving?”

Matias is taken from behind, slammed down onto the ground with a grunt. There is some scrabbling, an elbow thrown back to try and get some wiggle room… an attempt to turn while drawing his knife but fumbling. Even then the back of his mind is bending fate around himself to try and avoid any mortal injury… trying too while struggling in a frenzied melee with the entity.

Obadiah just looks at Xiomara and rolls his eyes slightly before watching the attack over at the other man and puts his knife back into his pocket, “So what -do- you want to do, Mara?”

“…eat this gentleman,” Xiomara answers Obadiah matter-of-factly. “And also find that awful thing so it stops possessing people.”

Obadiah lets out a long suffering sigh for the Vasquez and nods, “Of course, of course.” He then pauses and starts to look around…

@Catrina’s shot rings out like a cracked whip, slamming into the eyeless creature writhing atop Matias with a burst of flickering light and grit-slick ichor. The thing explodes – quite LITERALLY, its shadowy form detonating into a spray of glassy soot and bladed whispers, the sound of it like a chorus being yanked backward through a closing door. Matias is left coughing on the lfoor, coated in dust and fragments, but fine save for his wound.

The other creatures writhe, wounded or enraged, shrieking without sound, some flickering iwldly, others fleeing like insects back into the darkness between beams.

But they don’t scatter far. The remaining creatures begin drifting, not toward the group now, but deeper into the factory’s interior.

One by one, they crawl along unseen currents, slithering up walls and steel supports, vanishing into the shadows like smoke pulled into a flame. The air thickens with each passing moment, the temperature warping again, this time dropping, frost blooming faintly across a nearby control panel. And there: a corridor lined with bolts, and rusted signage leading to an old cargo lift, half-sunken in the floor. The man in his trance, still writhing on the floor, croaks and whispers something under his breath.

Catrina looks genuinely surprised that her shot actually hit what she was aiming at.

Then, more important matters demand her attention. Like… say, the weird pressure.

And so she’s back to turning, looking around and trying to find out where that might be coming from.

Matias is coughing on the ground and in no hurry to get up as he has had his collar bone broken. In a wheezing voice he says, “The other fucking shoulder… First Templar, now possessed shadows.” bitching a bit more in spanish and swearing up a storm he sloooooooowly rolls over onto his side, re-acquires his dropped knife and saint minted coin and begins mumbling a litany beseeching our heavenly father for some wisdom and of course the supernatural senses to follow the disturbance to its source… from his spot on the ground… covered in shadowy soot.

Matias says “This shadowy motherfucker… Do days… Days I have been searching. Waiting to complete. To let it exist. Now it fucking tries to kill me. Cunt. Bitch. Ass… Jerk!“

Nemi sighs softly, completely missing her swing after the swings shot… she is’nt going to complain. It likely would have missed anyways as she turns to watch around for more of those ‘puppets’ being on guard as she takes her shield and raises it high with a sigh, prepared and ready to fend off any of those creatures.

R[ooc: For my sanity, someone please try assisting Catrina first.]

Alice peels herself off the floor, slowly catching her breath, looking around wildly to try and get a handle on the situation. She grunts with pain in the process, pressing her hand to her chest and pulling it back wet. She looks down at the red tinge on her palm, letting out a little groan, before she clocks Obadiah, moving towards him as best she can. “Are they gone…? And this cold…” She’s scanning the darkness, trying to be ready for another assault, but fear doesn’t sharpen her senses. Each heavy breath makes itself known as little puffs of vapor.

Matias isn’t just some academic, he is an obsessed academic and so when the original litany prayer doesn’t work there is a pause. He slowly rises up, using a railing to help him stand, his right arm cradled against his chest with the collarbone broken he’s not going to swing it around. “Nemi… Come here, need you to help with something.” he says in a shakey and somewhat suspicious brazilian accented english.

The corridor stretches before them, but the trail has gone muddy. What once felt like a magnetic pull has scattered, fractured like a signal torn across too many frequencies. The residual energy coils away just beyond Catrina and Matias’s reach, as if mocking their effort. Footsteps echo where no one walks, and a faint lullaby all too familiar in those with the right leads returns; reversed, distorted, like a nursery rhyme smothered underwater.

The Hollow is withdrawing, but not in retreat. For a moment, it feels like the entire factory is breathing shallowly around them, but Miles remains inflicted with compulsions and…

Obadiah seems to be switching his gaze between Xiomara and Miles looking over the pair as he attempts to help Catrina find the possessed artifact, deeper concern splitting he pristine mask.

Xiomara blinks in a slow, feline manner, her expression screwing up in frustration. “…take Miles out,” she encourages Obadiah, “Get him out of here before something happens further. If we make it find a new host, perhaps something can be done.”

Walking towards where she thinks it is, Catrina/span pauses, takes a moment, then changes direction. This happens several times, before, in a moment of frustration, she levels her pistol and fires after the shadows that had ran away. She’s not really trying to hit anything, but it is a little bit relieving to let it out.

Nemi nods softly… eyebrow raised… heading over towards matias from her defensive position. “Yeah- Better be good I’m trying to keep an eye out for those fucking puppets-” She states with a soft grunt as her eyes dart about.

Matias places his hand on Nemi’s shoulder and steadies himself then murmurs something hushed and only for Nemi’s ears though who knows what can be heard with supernatural hearing. As he finishes saying something he closes his eyes and begins to murmur a new spanish litany prayer. Something in the realm of: Let my true confession be heard. Let it find its place with you. So on so forth.

Obadiah nods to Xiomara. That is all the encouragement he needs and sprints the few steps to grab Miles under the arms and start dragging his cousin out of the fray.

Alice glances from Obadiah to Miles. Adrenaline’s racing, and she’s trying to make a decision. Finally, she speaks up, her voice quivering despite the little well of resolve she’s managed to find. “I-I’ll help Miles,” she says, flinching at the sudden gunshots. “FUCK,” she yells again, the poor jumpy girl driven to the edge. She snaps her pistol up, eyes wide with terror, and she levels it at Catrina. “She’s gone crazy!” she declares, and pulls the trigger.

Nemi nods softly to Matias. A firm nod of understanding as she takes a breath in.

“You idiot! She’s not shooting at any of us!” Xiomara shouts at Alice, blood beginning to leech into her tulle undershirt as muscles bulge in her jaw and throat.

Fallen to his knees, with blood leaking from his nose, Miles struggles with the implanted memories. “Why? Why would I do that? I… I killed her,” he’s trapped in envisioning the scene again, and again, and again as he struggles to make sense of it. “Because… because I didn’t trust her? Because she didn’t tell the truth?” he frantically tries to fill in the blanks, only for Obadiah to dashingly grab him and start hauling him out of the factory. “I… I have to confess!” he protests, flailing, but in no state to put up any real fight.

Yelping as she hears the retort of Alice’s gun, Catrina’s first instincts come into action.

(1) Toss the vine clipping at the floor, pricking her finger in the process, as the vine begins to swell into a massive, thorny feline creature.

(2) Lift a hand to her medallion, prismatic lights swirling around it to cloak herself from Alice’s view.

And (3) Run, like, hell. Away from Alice.

Matias is almost oblivious to anything happening around him when he was whispering to Nemi but the spanish prayer suddenly stops and he falls to his knees in front of Nemi, knife dropping on the ground with a clatter and the saint minted coin slipping away. He kneels there arms hanging at his side grey eyes shifting left and right seeing something unseen. “Incomplete. I understand.” he murmurs in distant brazilian accented english. His good arm reaches up his hand clasping at Nemi’s skirts as he murmurs, “Chalk, knife… paint… I know what is incomplete.”

A cold silence swells through the factory like a rising tide, thick with pressure, and laced with the static of unfinished prayers and promises. Everyone but Xiomara and Nemi seem to be heavily affected by the psychic manifestations that begin preying upon their minds. Each step, each breath, feels harder now, as expectation and the NEED to resolve unfinished business is hard to resist, like it were waiting for them to fail.

From down below, Arachne shouts, “We need to get out! There’s no more time left! Everyone, OUT!”

Catrina meant to use running.

When Obadiah puts hands on Miles he stumbles forward, his grip failing, as he blinks his eyes. A moment later he too is on his knees, eyes starting to fill with tears. “No,” he starts to beg. “No no, it can’t be… They burned her… I couldn’t stop it and they burned her….” The sadness and anger swelling in his voice as he struggles with whatever it is he is seeing, feeling, experiencing. Anger and hatred filling his eyes even as tears start to dampen his cheeks.

Xiomara places the heel of her palm against her forehead, curling her fingers into her bangs. She stomps one of her Louboutins on the factory floor and raises her voice as she announces, “I have killed many friends in my lifetime because they were delicious! You get used to it! Stop being so emotional over the dead!”

Sometimes one’s best efforts just aren’t enough though. And the odd drive that comes over Catrina, to… to… do something distracts her.

Arachne comes running up the stairs frantically, covered in blood and soot, chasing the sound of gunfire. “What the hell is going on? We don’t have any time to linger. There’s already another dead man downstairs, and I get the feeling that we’ll be dead too if we don’t -leave-,” she hisses.

Arachne comes running up the stairs frantically, covered in blood and soot, chasing the sound of gunfire. “What the hell is going on? We don’t have any time to linger. There’s already another dead man downstairs, and I get the feeling that we’ll be dead too if we don’t -leave-,” she hisses.

“Oh, god, oh, fuck,” Alice chants as if it were a mantra. The barrel of her pistol shakes wildly – or maybe that’s her hands shaking – as she turns it on each investigator in turn, wildly and rapidly changing targets. Tears sting as they well up in her eyes, her breath ragged, her steps stiff, and she shouts, “There’s something wrong with you! All of you! It’s got– it’s got you! I have to-” She can’t finish her sentence, squeezing her eyes shut and screaming.

Nemi curses. Quickly, She has to think. Faster. Faster- She states. Yelling as she keeps an eye on the shadows as she grabs the coin Matias drops. shoving her axe loosely into its sheath as she grabs his hand and forces him along with her, stopping by Obadiah as she yells at him. “Get the FUCK UP OBADIAH MERCER!” She states. Clearly pissed. “She is =Gone= It is a fucking trick. You are Strong. You are NOT scared of some fuckers stupid magic. You Saved me and now you will IGNORE what you failed in the past and work to NEVER losing another woman like whoever you lost again in the future.” She states. yelling as him as she gives him a soft kick in the ass to jolt him away. “So GET you ass into High gear boss!!! Because I don’t want to lose you. Your the best boss I’ve ever fucking had. You listen and you care.” She says, taking a look back to watch for any of those things that had attacked them earlier. “I’m TRYING!” She states to Arachne. “Grab them or shake them out of it!” She says as she IS holding onto and carrying Matias with her.

Xiomara tilts her head to the left. She tilts her head to the right. She steps before Alice and encourages, “Shoot me. Please. Perhaps you’ll snap out of this.” She takes a step closer, trying to her Alice like a dog herds sheep.

Matias doesn’t resist Nemi half holding or half carrying him away from the spot he’d dropped. He does insist though, “No… I know the ritual. I just need chalk, knife, and paint… I can complete it, when it’s complete it will end.” though that doesn’t really sound well thought out. “If it escapes the factory… More people will corrupt it, fill it with more incomplete things. Then it will be harder, don’t you understand?”

Catrina was assumedly shot. But that doesn’t seem to bother her, her knees hitting the ground, fingers raking at the floor. “Please… Please… Don’t leave… don’t leave me!” She throws her head back, face contorting in agony as she screams, tears pouring from her eyes as blood collects on her fingertips, nails cracking against the floor. “Not again… not again… not again!”

Nemi turns back as she almost yells at Matias. “We Do Not Have Time. We are SURROUNDED and we do NOT have chalk OR paint.” She states. “Unless you love using blood and soot as replacements that may or may not work we Do NOT have time.” She yells again.

“We need to go,” Miles realizes, stumbling and pushing to his feet. He gives Obadiah a shove, reversing roles as it becomes his turn, now, to try to haul his cousin out of the mess. “Fuck this. I didn’t do that. I… I know what I did.”

Obadiah struggles to make sense of reality but when Nemi calls his full name he blinks back the tears and struggles to his feet gabbing Miles by the scruff of the neck, jacket collar and drags him out. “I’ll avenge her later. For now you come with me for your penance.”

It would seem Miles and Obadiah intend to drag each other out.

A tremor rolls through the factory floor, like a heartbeat trying to mimic a drumbeat. The air turns brittle. Frost laces the edges of rusted metal, crawling in fractal veins across pipes and beams. The temperature drops sharply, breath misting in the gloom, while the scent of saltwater and scorched paper thickens, clinging to the back of the throat. Overhead, the lights begin to flicker out of sync with the sound around them: echoes come a second too early, footfalls landing before the body moves. Time itself seems to buckle, and the compulsions that drive the affect seem to intensify, memories of the past and voices of repressed urges screaming for release; for completion.

“Get away!” Alice/span shrieks as Xiomara approaches, eyes snapping open, wide with utter terror. She tries to step back and falters, but she fires, not needing to be told twice to shoot at such an obvious threat. Another staccato report leaps from the end of her barrel, a flash and a smell of gunsmoke, the noise briefly drowning out the girl’s terrified scream.

Obadiah and Miles are loving cousins, of course they drag each other out.

Matias stares blankly at Nemi and then his brow furrows , “I can not remember mask. Was so intric-” and then the sensation of the factory and everything in it bending seems to get him walking along with Nemi instead of being dead weight. “Will write it down outside… Help me get downstairs.”

Nemi nods. Urging him along as she partially carries him- or him her? With her own strength as she hurries him along. Wait was she not the one using a cane earlier? Well she does have a battle axe.

Xiomara moves closer, letting the bullet slam into her torso. She’s sent stumbling, but the fact that she is not alive is a benefit in this moment. Her shoulders roll as she reaches up to begin digging out the bullet’s remains, breathing out through her nose. “Now, Alice,” she encourages to the woman, “…turn around, and run. Go to the street, or I am going to eat you.”

Alice widens her eyes. She’s particularly susceptible to this threat, in fact, and when she sees her bullet has damn near no effect, she takes Xiomara’s advice, turns heel, and runs. She runs screaming, gripping her pistol like it could possibly save her life, but she runs outward, desperate to avoid being eaten alive.

Obadiah and Miles find it harder and harder to resist the urges inflicted upon them, and so too do the others. Arachne wastes no time in herding whomever is left behind, flinching as the gunshot rings out as Alice discharges into Xiomara. There’s no time to process or question. The factory breathes like a closing fist.

“Mara! Do you have her?” Arachne calls out, not daring to stop, trusting the Vasquez to take command of what comes next.

Bits of bullet are sent clattering to the ground, Xiomara rubbing her fingers together after each moment. “I have her,” she confirms to Arachne, “Go. Everyone out if you are sane enough to leave on your own…”

“And if you are not, I am always hungry,” Xiomara adds, raising her voice to see if she can scare others down the stairs.

Nemi grunts, running along as she head off with Matias to the exit as she grunts. “Yeah I’m more than sane- Got Matias-” She says as they get going on out.

[OOC: Follow Arachne again please.]

Catrina is snatched up by Arachne/span and dragged along, whether she likes it or not.

Catrina can’t do much about it, even if she had the mental capacity at the moment to do so.

[ooc: Don’t forget your cdrive plot requests, too, if relevant!]

The factory doors slam shut behind them with a shuddering clang, the sound echoing like a verdict through the hollow steel frame. The moment they breach the threshold, the air shifts back to something warmer, lighter, real, but there is no comfort in the sounds of city life resuming at normal. The compulsions remain in those affected. Bearable, but still unsatisfied.
/span