Unraveling Chloe - Part 2

[Suzthulhu]

<@Chloe> It had been a couple weeks since their first forray into the mind of Chloe. Since then, she had done a lot of thinking, and reading, mostly about schizophrenia and the like. She fit the bill when it came to the standard medical descriptions, and if she weren't a mutant, it would have been cut and dry. But a simple mental disorder wasn't what plagued her. Her demons were far more real and unlikely to be subdued through therapy and heavy medication. The latter helped somewhat, sometimes, but there was no way she'd be able to maintain the levels needed for total peace. The last time she and Tobias had tried, it had ended in near disaster. This time, she was much more prepared. An hour ago, she'd popped two thorazine, just to begin the heavy fog she knew they would need to confront whatever was in her head without her going all RAWR RUN AWAY again. Tobias was due to arrive any minute now, and she shook the prescription bottle again, dumping out one more and chasing it down with a glass of water. She was already hazy, and by the time the third one kicked in, they should be well on their way to... well, to wherever. She laid down on the couch in the living room, in front of a black TV screen and next to an empty, cold fireplace and waited.

<@Tobias`Brewer> The car pulled up outside and Brew, well slept for once, turned off the key. The pounding trance n' bass cut out mid note and a part of him winced a little - he never liked it when a song was orphaned without being allowed to draw to its natural conclusion. But time was money and contrary to thorazine, he was bright eyed and bushy tailed, riding up an ascending peak of adderall washed down with a $3 can of red bull. There was a strobing, effervescent pulse to his eyes, nothing visible but palpable nonetheless. He had a white shirt on which made him seem almost like a doctor. It contrasted against his black slacks chosen over jeans for comfort. 'We're redefining psychosurgery,' he subvocalized to himself, knocking on the door. 'Direct surgical manipulation of information and memory with a psionic scalpel. By god.'

<@Chloe> Chloe hauled herself up off the couch, limbs feeling heavy, her head beginning to fuzz. She opened the door and gave him a crooked, hazy half smile. "Tobias... you look good. Come in." Her hair was down, thick curls brushing her shoulders in front and the small of her back in the rear. She had on a black t-shirt with a Jolly Roger on the front, and black shorts. Her feet were bare. She stepped back away from the door to let him come inside, and headed for the couch again. "Sorry... I've been getting ready for this, so I'm a little distorted around the edges. Help yourself to whatever you want. Mi casa, tu casa." She sat back down again and leaned against the back of the couch and halfway onto one arm.

<@Tobias`Brewer> "How many did you take?" he asked, stepping inside the apartment. He spent the morning hours in meditation, pulling out his mirrors, scalpels, stitches, et cetera. Part of him had doubt - he wasn't fully in control of himself yet; dare he play around in the mind of another? What if he left her worse than the first time they met? And how selfish was the main concern that this would be a setback for -him?- But those thoughts had been brushed into a corner. Since they were going about it without ceremony, he stepped over to the fridge and poured himself whatever soda she happened to have laying around there, coke perhaps. "I've been reading a lot of theory but this is." Gulp gulp. Ahh. "Pretty uncharted ground."

<@Chloe> She watched him go into the kitchen and come back, eyes an odd shade of greenish yellow today. "Two an hour ago, and I just took a third. I think... I think we need to go further in, deal with her, with -me- first... and we can't do that if I'm, if she's not subdued." Her words were slower and more deliberate, but not quite slurred. She still seemed reasonably coherent, as though the large dose wasn't completely unusual for her. "I've done it before, taken that many, just to shut everyone up for awhile." She leveled her gaze on him. "You held back before, didn't you?"

<@Tobias`Brewer> "I didn't know what I was dealing with. And I'd rather not make any rash moves if I don't know what I'm dealing with. We're both capable of immense psychological damage. I don't want us reducing each others' minds to something that can be strained through a colander." He sat down, ice cubes bobbing in his glass. "We need to figure out how your schizophrenia is related to your power and see if decoupling it is even feasible. When you read people, it seems that their imprints stay inside your memory like prisoners with a very scary warden. We need to figure out if that's precisely how your ability works and if there's any less scary way for it to function."

<@Chloe> "I don't think you have to worry about hurting me. There are enough drugs in my system now to choke an elephant." She sat up, facing him, and pulled her legs up under her, Indian style. "Yeah... I don't know why it does that. If it's because of my powers slash affliction, or if it's because of feeling so guilty and horrible for making them feel the way they did. But I think if we can deal with the other me that's in here..." She tapped her temple. "Then maybe dealing with them will be easier, especially if we have more encounters like with the snails. Things were more or less okay until they appeared and I panicked." The third dose was beginning to slowly take effect, and she felt pleasantly numb. "We should start soon..."

<@Tobias`Brewer> "Maybe sadism as a coping mechanism because without it, the mind wouldn't be able to..." He drank some more soda and with a too-quick gesture, set it down. The stimulants ate into his brain, outlining it with the actinic surge of glutamate. He looked into her eyes. "Just like last time. Ready? Five. Four." As he counted down, a parallel sound rose up from the back of his throat, an echoing chorus of bassy chants crossed with a phase-shifting didgeridoo. It increased in volume as cerulean tides flowed from his eyes, drawing her in. "Three. Two. One."

<@Chloe> She stared back at him, for a second marveling at his brilliant eye color. So pretty... and then the voice came forth, and she felt the reverberations on a physical and psychic level. There was a brief sense of vertigo, and then they arrived. The hotel lobby was the same as it had been before, with its shifting decor. It was more dimly lit this time though, and when the scenery shifted, it did so in a slow haze. She stood in the lobby's center, hair flowing around her face as though underwater. She turned to face Tobias, black eyes shining with their hematite sheen. "I know where I am... we have to go down further." She held a hand out to him.

<@Tobias`Brewer> He had a lab coat on which wisped and shifted like it was made of pale, coherent smoke. Occasionally vague geometric images appeared within, only to vanish the following second. In his hand, he held a pipe, a flute of some sort. Around his neck, an amulet built of seven circles. But most striking was the hat sitting on his head, broad-brimmed and resembling the cap of some great mushroom. He took her hand in his (it felt weightless) and nodded. "Lead the way."

<@Chloe> On this side, Chloe had not put much thought into her form, allowing it to take shape as it would. She was more slender her, whispy and almost sylph-like, and she was clad in rippling midnight blue, a gown of some sort, that also seemed to move in its own. She smiled. "I like the attire... you look, professional, like an urban shaman." Her hand closed around his, as weightless as his was, and fell in beside him as she looked around. "There's a way down... an elevator. There." With her other hand, she pointed to the desk in the lobby, which fell away, like fog across a lake. Behind it appeared a set of elevator doors, plain and silver. She led them towards it, and the doors opened, revealing a mirrored interior. Her reflection was ghostly, only partly visible. Stepping inside the elevator, she cautioned Tobias. "It won't be pretty down there. I'll try to make it easier, but I can't promise anything other than that I am restrained, somewhere down there."

<@Tobias`Brewer> "Just try to stay close," he said. His own reflection flickered monstrously for a split second before he did something and it disappeared entirely as the elevator doors closed. "Is that where your other lives?"

<@Chloe> Her head tilted to one side as she caught the brief flicker of his reflection. She said nothing though, for the moment. She would ask later. "Yes, down deeper." The elevator began its descent, smooth and silent, save for the slight groaning of cables.

<@Tobias`Brewer> "It helps that you don't know my fear," he said. "If we're going to continue, it's important that we keep it that way." Elevators were a staple of horror movies and he thought about what might usually happen if this were one. Either it would stop or come crashing down. Or come down and open to reveal... Or maybe nothing at all. He tried to keep the balance of all thoughts equally plausible as to not call forth a reaction against a particular expectation.

<@Chloe> "I don't want to know. Ever. It... people don't want to be friends with someone who knows something like that." The elevator did eventually come to a stop, and the doors opened. Before them stretched a long hallway with grey concrete walls and dim, flickering lighting along the ceiling. "This is it. I'm down here, somewhere. I have to remember..." She stepped out of the elevator into the hallway. A low thrumming sound came from all around them, rhythmic and slow, like a heartbeat. It was coupled with the whispery sounds of deep breathing. Now and then, the breathing caught, and a frustrated groan echoed around them. Chloe lifted her free hand, and held it up for Tobias to see. The palm was black and looked burned. "I left marks to help us find our way back."

<@Tobias`Brewer> "Is there only one?" He asked. Down here, his smoky labcoat was hard to see against the concrete walls - perhaps he wanted it this way. His eyes phosphoresced softly underneath his hat. "Is there anybody else down here as well?" He took a deep breath and moved his mouth as if tasting something. "Thorazine.."

<@Chloe> "No, it's just me down here. The others are all upstairs in their own rooms. Anyth... anyone else down here isn't real. It's just me being defensive... but yeah," She nodded when he spoke of the drug. "Hopefully that will keep all of that at bay. It usually does, but then again, I don't come down here really and see things directly. I just know that the drugs make everything quiet for awhile, and I feel... like I can't move. There's something holding me down." She shrugged, and started forward.

<@Tobias`Brewer> Well, there was Ronja Dahl with her child molester and dissociative fugue but this was something else entirely, a dark edifice where nobody checked out. The hotel appearance was poetically appropriate. He felt a squirt of adderall geyser through his calm. "Steady and try to remember," he said, trying to give his voice a doctor's authority. He was no doctor but sometimes the illusion helped.

<@Chloe> "I am.. fine." She smiled, becoming more 'real' for a moment, black eyes focusing on Tobias. She gave his hand a squeeze, so much as it could be felt, and moved them forward. The hallway was lined with doors, and looked very much like the solitary ward of an asylum; the padded rooms where the terminally, criminally, and harmfully insane would be kept, jacketed and forgotten. Each door was made of glass, with a complicated locking mechanism. Each room was also empty. There was a single slab-like bench for sleeping and sitting, and a bluish light, but otherwise, they were very plain. And empty. What purpose did they have down here? The heartbeat-like thrumming continued as they came to a t-junction. A handprint, charred and matching Chloe's, was on the left side of the far wall. "This way."

<@Tobias`Brewer> The imagery had to come from somewhere. In an age where many mental patients were simply put in jail or turned loose on the streets, a few facilities must have still existed and only firsthand experience could have reproduced one so faithfully. The "place" brought back memories and with them, a creeping sense of doubt. What was he doing here? Did he have any business trying to help somebody when he... he himself... "Right," he said, glancing down to see his smoky frame fill up with a nervous synesthete's yellow. He cleared his throat and returned to neutral. One of them had to be a pillar here.

<@Chloe> Chloe could feel his doubt; she was a powerful psychic in her own right, and doubt and fear were things her particular brand of crazy was especially sensitive to. She stopped when they were about halfway down the hall, another t-junction looming ahead. "Stay with me. Don't let this place, or me, win. There's no one else down here but us. Everyone that used to be here is upstairs. This much I did. But I am still here. I couldn't free myself without help. I don't know how." So that more or less explained all the empty cells. The people in the hotel upstairs had once been locked away down here. No wonder they still had issues. It might have been better had they gone through one at a time to let them go free, but what was done was done, and that could be sorted through later, once she was in a better state. Helping herself first may well help all of them, too. Happy places, happy people, happy, happy, happy. She started forward again; this t-junction had a palm print on the right side. More cells, all empty, and they came to a hallway that only turned left. "I'm down there. At the end. Are you ready?"

<@Tobias`Brewer> As much as he read, he was playing almost completely by ear. He remembered what his mentors had told him. He'd gone over his own mind with a toothbrush but had he found every detail? Was he flexible enough to deal with a schism whose entire purpose was to seek and exploit fear? He knew exactly what his worst fear was. Moment of truth. "We're looking at an unpredictable scenario, you realize," he said. "It might not be as simple as freeing you and if freed, it might temporarily become worse. Just remember: we're dealing in constructs and metaphors." His eyes flashed cerulean. "I'm ready. Let's go."

<@Chloe> Chloe frowned, and looked away. "We are also dealing with me. I am not a thing... a construct. I am... I don't know what I am." It was sad, and as creepy and terrible as it might be, it was also tragic. The hallway in front of them opened up to an octagonal room with ceilings that seemed to stretch impossibly high. Strange geometry dominated the architecture, and light fixtures seemed suspended in mid-air, chains dangling from nowhere. Blue flame burned in sconces where there were no walls. Centered in the room was a chamber filled with smokey fog that reflected the blue ambiance. At their approach, the chamber's double doors slid open, and the fog spilled out, dissipating. A rustrated scream flooded out with the fog. "LET ME GO. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT! SHE IS NOT ME! I AM THE ONLY ONE HERE! SILENCE HER AND LET ME GO!" The ranting continued, sometimes incoherent. Chloe shut her eyes and stopped, releasing Tobias' hand and covering her eyes with both of hers.

<@Tobias`Brewer> He stroked her hair once, then released and started towards the chamber. The fog washed over him, tugging at his smoky labcoat, blurring together into one vague shape before he was gone and across the room, in front of the double doors, Chloe's third likeness appeared, brushing invisible dust off her clothes with a distinctly Tobias-like gesture before she walked inside.

<@Chloe> The outside Chloe started to say something, mouth opening as Tobias turned into.. well, her. She couldn't think of anything to say, and shut her mouth, drifting closer, but hanging back a bit. Inside, Tobias would see what must be Hell itself. It was Chloe, or what of her was in here anyway, bound in a bone-colored straight jacket. It was no ordinary garment though; the straps were made of sinew and tendons, and the fabric of the jacket itself looked like... was that -flesh-? It seemed as though Chloe was bound in her own skin. On top of this, she was strapped down to a gurney by black, spiked chains that dug into the jacket/flesh, tearing it, and dark blood dripped to the floor beneath her, where it was consumed into a churning mass of mouths and barbed wire over which the gurney was suspended. The bound Chloe shrieked and struggled against the chains, her face a mask of broken teeth, blood, tears, ash, and animalistic rage. "LET ME GO YOU BITCH! I WILL SWALLOW YOU WHOLE AND DRAG YOU TO HELL!"

<@Tobias`Brewer> He wasn't expecting anything so graphic. 3-Chloe flinched in a very realistic manner and if he came out of this in one piece, he would insist it was all part of the act. Don't believe it. The medusa-hair seemed to wilt like a sunless flower, drooping around her face in sad, straight strands. Who was torturing whom? "I can't let you go. You'll hurt me. You said so yourself." 3-Chloe paused as if gathering courage. "Why do you hate me so much?"

<@Chloe> "Damn right I will hurt you." Number 2 Chloe seemed to settle for a moment, and then raged again, tearing against the chains. Blood sprayed. 1-Chloe stood outside, where she could see in, but hidden away from view. She had begun to cry. "Why do I hate you? WHY?!?!? BECAUSE YOU KEEP ME IN HERE. I want OUT. YOU should be in HERE. YOU. TIMID AND SCARED TO LET ME OUT. You keep me locked in this... this CAGE and you think I can be FORGOTTEN? You... you made me, and you forgot me." So maybe that was it? 2-Chloe was angry because she'd been separated and locked away, like something you were ashamed of, to be forgotten and never spoken of again?

<@Tobias`Brewer> "You forced me to hurt people," he said, still the simulacrum of the girl, lower lip trembling. "You hurt them and then they looked at me and said you did this and so they hurt me back. What am I supposed to do? If we keep locking people in here, in these cells, someone will come for us, stand outside our range and they will kill us. And we'll be gone, both of us, down there." He pointed down at the row of gnashing mouths, thirsty for self-destructive masochism.

<@Chloe> "I did not force you to hurt anyone. Remember the first time? YOU wanted it. YOU wanted her to go away. So I oblidged and made her go away. I did what YOU wanted. And THIS is how you repay my generosity?! I would rather DIE down here with you than stay like this. We should not be apart. I AM YOU." The thrumming had increased substantially, louder and faster now, like a panicked beast. 2-Chloe arched violently, a spasm rocking through her body, and one of the chains snapped. "I WILL get free." And then 2-Chloe turned her white gaze on Tobias. "You do not fool me. WHERE IS SHE."

<@Tobias`Brewer> The familiar blue lights, like stars shone through the disguise. "She wants nothing more than to be reconciled," he said. He looked at the wildly swinging chain. Time flowed differently in subjective states of consciousness and there was no accounting for the hours that passed while the chemical Thorazine chains loosened and grew brittle. There was no time to dawdle. "But suppose I did let you go," he said, the silhouette fading and growing taller, the brim of his hat casting a shadow on his face like the cap of a great mushroom. "What would you do then?"

<@Chloe> Chloe, the real Chloe, stepped into the room. "It's ok, Tobias." She looked down at herself, her own face glittering with tears that had fallen, and sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do." Black eyes looked to Tobias again, questioning. "What happens if someone dies in here? What happens to them out there?" Her feet did not touch the floor, and she hovered closer to her body on the gurney, reaching out to touch the chains, snapping them one by one. 2-Chloe remained still for the moment, as though in shock.