[It's not yet lockdown when Davesprite messages House, but he wanted to make sure his group was inside somewhere safe before sending it. Luckily, the bus stop was right beside it.]
no go at the sealed building i could get karkat to send you the recording but its literally just me waving the chips around and slapping them on the building and going hey open up ill keep holding onto them until we find some other use
you're right by that building, right? are you in the bus station for the night? you guys should totally break your tablets, get the cloak guy to come and follow him it's close enough you'll probably survive long enough blondie said it was heading southeast in the industrial area 10-to-1 says it was headed right for our sealed building buddy
[The video feed turns on just before lockdown begins at seven fifty-five. Kid is in the morgue of the funeral parlor. The camera of his tablet is across his room and he clearly used voice commands to turn on the recording. He has a blindfold around his eyes and earmuffs over his ears, a sheet wrapped in a figure-eight around his torso and holding him pressed against the body cabinets. There is a twist-tie around his wrists to try and keep him from undoing the sheet.]
Dr. House. I wanted to inform you tonight I am attempting your experiment. I am unsure of how else to record video but to send it to someone.
As you might imagine, you were the best candidate.
[House is very dead at the moment, and even if he weren't, it would defeat the point of this experiment for him to watch in real time. Enjoy your night alone, Kid.]
I normally don't do this, but I wanted to thank you. For convincing me to stay away from Sherlock.
[Because clearly House had been right, and John was dead. How easily could that have been himself, or Sherlock? Fortunately he didn't recall any murderous compulsions, but who knew? He was incredibly thankful that House had the foresight and the intelligence to manipulate pure reason.]
[House is never quite sure what to do with gratitude. Sometimes his patients thank him. Often, they just thank his team, the ones they've actually been interacting with.]
you're an asset don't look into it any further than that, holmes just make sure you repay the favor if and when you can this isn't gonna be the last time
[ Gabriel had been checking in every so often with the kid version of House. But after Will popped up on the Arrival post, it became clear that the guy was back to normal. And probably pretty cranky about that death price. Gabriel'd give him something to lash at, if he wanted. ]
Welcome back.
We're on the west side of the new area, probably going to head to that bunker/gate/whatever tomorrow or the next day. Anything you want us to check on?
forget the bunker for now we need the key before it's relevant what else have you found?
[After the chat with Will, House is feeling a little more focused and much more himself. He'd spent the morning lashing out at everyone. Sylar isn't a particularly appetizing target when he's treating things as they should be: like that never happened.]
[With everything else going on—years of a life he never had, fucked up dreams, sorting out time again—it takes until Will's post goes up for him to think about asking House about things, but it seems the more productive route than trying to get Will to speak for him, let alone asking Sherlock. He doesn't want to think about dealing with Sherlock as he is right now.]
yo quick question pretty simple and to the point what the actual fuck were you and sherlock thinking
[This is a very calculated move. Ordinarily, she would not directly contact a target. She would not speak with them. And as she's more than aware that her voice, unless she's careful, sounds markedly different from what the Mary everyone here knows, she would not talk with this one in particular. But she needs to use House's curiosity to her advantage. And she needs to do it carefully.
So the voice on the tablet isn't familiar, not entirely. The accent isn't English, not yet--it's definitely American, and she's allowing it to be. She's allowing the confusion that she felt upon waking up and finding that she had supposedly been going about town as "Mary Watson" with a "husband" and a "daughter" to be heard in her voice. She has to play the part. And if there's one thing Rosamund is good at...]
You are one of the few people in this town willing to take risks to figure out what the hell is going on here. [She exhales. It's even believable, really. Who wouldn't do almost anything to try and figure out why they're missing years of their memory?] That makes you the person I need to talk to.
[Interesting. House eyes the username and he's aware that she's missing her memories. So she's either putting on a new accent or letting her the one she's been faking lapse.]
[Good morning to you, too, newly alive-again spirit guy.]
varied mostly poking around the housing waiting for some people to get the next area unlocked for the puzzle
[Avoiding being assassinated after Mycroft put a hit out on him...]
i need someone to check out building 68 kitkat and davesprite got something slamming itself against the locked inside door after trying to ask andromeda for help getting it open i want you to get the thing to react then record it and contact @admin and @robertmiller ask them what they're seeing/recording in the building right then and there
[Two files arrive shortly after one another. The first is a complete digitization of House's notebook and their hieroglyph lessons. There are a couple of additional pictures included, more information and annotations from Flynn, expanding on what's already there, along with some reading exercises.
The second file is just a picture of a quick scribbled note. It's hieroglyphs, again, spelling out no excuses.]
Hi! Here are those poems you ordered. You can probably tell I got a little lazy with the haiku, but it turns out it's pretty hard to get inspired when you're stuck in a snowy ghost town! Who knew?
1.Cage
There was a hole in the wall. That’s where it began. I noticed it by chance and, with foolish curiosity, peered through. And what I saw... A universe of vast depth and complexity. A reality of intense brightness and vibrance. It stretched out so much further than I could have imagined possible. I reeled back, struck wordless with awe and terror. I looked around my little room. For the first time, I saw how small and empty it was. What I’d thought was the sky was just the ceiling of a cage. What I’d mistaken for the ocean was just a tiny droplet. No, not even that. The shadow of a droplet.
For so long, I sought an escape. I clawed at the walls until my fingers bled, Trails of red marking the bars of my cell. I screamed my voice raw calling for help. Thinking I could never get out, I despaired. And in that moment, my call was answered. A gentle voice, reaching out to me from the other side. Through that hole in the wall. I had been found, and I knew I would be saved.
2. Instruments
I can’t play guitar But even if I knew how My fingers are numb
Expansion Time Interval: 15 minutes Expansion Time Distance: 2 inches Starting Diameter of Pit: 26 inches Pit Depth: Unknown (>40 feet) Pit Effects: Impulse to Jump In
There's a network of geometric 2cm wide red lines all over this side of his arm, extending all the way up his elbow and down to his hand, in a lightning-like pattern, striking vertically through all of this 'writing' and the names of his friends.]
[House listens to the songs quietly and guilt washes through him once more, heavy, cloying. The video doesn't help. This isn't his fault. He told Peter no. This is why he wishes he were a sociopath.
He takes a couple of cannabis pills and calls it even. No one ODs on cannabis.]
keep changing the gauze like i said
[And that's all he'll say on the matter.]
@Peterthegreat, text, Night 333 (cw: suicidal ideation, continuous through the rest of this thread)
[He couldn't let anyone hear him talk about this, so he goes to text, even though he's not really that great at it.
A sigh. This was just taking precautions. This was just in case.
It was getting worse. The red, his fear that he'd be made to hurt people...he needed another way out. And besides, this was like, making sure people were safe, right?
He just didn't want to hurt his friends. Well, if he went through with it, it'd hurt them. But it was better than accidentally killing them.]
do you need help with any experiments? The bad ones.
text (cw: suicidal ideation, continuous through the rest of this thread)
You having fun with your self-imposed exile? I'm wondering if you'll secretly agree that you're an extrovert by the end of it.
We're going to try and push the oven in the pizza parlor downtown over to the bakery. See if we can't plug it in and get anything. I'll let you know if we have any success.
house house house hey house graham says youre being a dumbass and not talking to people but hey im alive again what day is it tell me stuff that needs doing you like lab rats right i need to make up for dying right before the big ghost chat
[He hates you, Davesprite. He hates Will. He hates everything. Can it be day five, yet? House seriously considers making an exception. Davesprite has come back from the dead thank the spider overlords, and this is torture.]
[Stephen's hurting right now, and there's a convenient target for his anger who can't fight back without screwing himself over.]
So I'm just curious; what is your current dosage? Back to eighty yet? Just how fast did you go from deciding you could handle one here and there, just when it was real bad, to being right back where you started?
[Someone's having a bad night. It's a terrible temptation to retaliate, to point out that he's only taking 20 mg/day, that he has it under control, unlike some people. But he can't, and Stephen knows that. The 'yet' is also one of the things that annoys him... scares him. He's been taking extras here and there as-needed.
There has been a lot of as-needed recently with his growing compulsions thanks to MN poisoning. Like hell he'd tell the other doctor anyway.]
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