The group arrived at the edge of university grounds in the late dark of night. There were still quite a few lights out as various dorms hosted parties, and other buildings were lit for the maintenance crews and study sessions. The campus was cloaked in shadow that seemed a tad oppressive between the lights of the lamps and the beams pouring out of windows. Finding a parking space was a bit of a hassle as they were forced to pick between visitor parking and not getting a fine, or parking closer and risking security ticketing them. Granted, given their recent history, any security official looking too long upon their car was cause for alarm, and so they opted for a slightly more anonymous parking job. There was quite a walk from where they were towards the offices of the expert they were here to see, and whether or not he would be there was debateable. That said, there was really only one way for them to find out, and that was to go inside.

Now, patrolling the grounds were a handful of campus security cars, and actual county police. The police seemed more interested in monitoring the dormitory parties in case things got out of hand, and the campus security did a more general browsing of the area for any ne’erdowells. Avoiding drawing their ire would be simple, so long as they didn’t do anything suspicious.

With the car parked and soon locked Nova was eager to get to the professor and leave. She had never had to worry about a police presence before, but now… every time an officer got too close, Nova found herself trying not to look guilty. Honestly, she thought she was doing a bang up job of it too, but she was certain Liam or Cora would still have something to say about it once they were out of earshot of officials - if she was lucky. So far the only luck they had today was that the professor’s office was hardly more than a three minute walk from the parking lot they (she, actually, despite Liam’s protests from the back that [i]any[/i] lot would be closer) had chosen.

Following close behind Nova, Kaya looked around herself at the environment in which they wandered. Cops, parties, and most of all, darkness. At such a late point in the night, she highly doubted that they would find the professor lurking in his office, and had no qualms voicing her opinion on the subject. “Is this contact of yours a night owl? Because I see no reason to believe he’ll be waiting for us in there.” Glancing longingly at the dorms, she continued in a more pleading tone. “All I want is sleep. Why don’t we see if we can find somewhere quiet, an abandoned dorm, or a rooftop maybe, to rest for a couple hours, before we track this guy down?”

Liam shrugged and walked quickly to pass Kaya. “We’re already here and making an annoyingly long walk, so we may as well see if Professor Hieroglyphics is present. Couldn’t hurt anything to check, and if he’s not then we can go find somewhere to wait and sleep and whatnot.” As he drew level with Nova, Liam held out the piece of notebook paper that had the copy of the symbols on it. “You’re the one who knows the guy, so you may as well be the one to do the asking.”

“And if the doors are locked?” Cora asked, “I doubt they just leave the buildings open at night.”

“Jet lag does odd things to a man.” Nova muttered at the first comment as she took the notebook paper from Liam and put it in her pocket. “I’m certain he’s awake and in his office. On the oddest chance that he isn’t, we can do exactly as you recommended, Kaya..” Nova simply elected not to respond to Cora, as they were soon at the building in question. She knocked against the glass pane, a smile growing across her face.

Well, Cora certainly thought she was right! The doors looked locked and shit. They weren’t, but they looked it. Unfortunately for the group, there didn’t seem to be anyone at this door at the time. Off down some halls they could see in the nighttime lighting that there was a lone janitor wearing headphones as he mopped the tile floors. He would sometimes plant the mop and spin before catching it, obviously enjoying the music he was listening to, and paying little to no attention to things like our heroes.

“Ugh, I don’t have time for this.” Pushing through the others, Kaya leaned up against the glass and placed her forehead on the pane, alongside her hand. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the light nearest them, and willed it to flicker out for but a moment.

The janitor didn’t stop dancing, as he didn’t seem to notice the light near the door flickering. Her head so close to the glass, Kaya could begin to hear him singing in the distance. He wasn’t that bad, but he should really stop dancing it’s embarrassing.

Now this was just plain irritating. Looking toward Kaya, she pointed to the light right over the janitor. “Can you get that one? Even if the lights are out for us, I can lead us through the building when we’re let in.”

Puffing out some air, Kaya again opened her eyes to look over towards the janitor. “I’ll try.” Again, she concentrated, forcing her will to flicker out the light in the hallway. She hoped to start with the one above the janitor, and then to flicker out the lights leading down the hallway towards them in quick succession. [i]Like some kind of horror film.[/i] Kaya grinned. [i]Great way to start a night.[/i]

The lights did flicker off, but instead of coming back on, they remained off. First the light directly over the janitor went dark, catching his attention. He looked up at it, a confused expression on his face. Then one of the lights down the hall to the door went out, and he turned in that direction to look at it. As soon as he turned, the other lights began to increase the speed at which they went out until all lights Kaya could see in the building went dark. While it wasn’t entirely obvious what was going on for the janitor, he certainly did feel like he was in trouble, started screaming, and ran into the darkness. 

That was the goal, right?

“Shoot.” Kaya turned to the others. “Your turn.”

“Well…” Nova mumbled, rubbing the back of her neck, “We could throw rocks at the office window?” She was definitely running out of ideas.

“I’d rather not do anything illegal,” muttered Kaya.

“Don’t need to,” Cora said before beginning to walk off. “I’ll find someone to let us in. Nova, you should come as well since you know the Prof.”

Liam rolled his eyes at the others and their nonsense. “If you just wanted to get his attention, you could have said something about your intentions. I can talk inside people’s heads, could’ve whispered at him that there are people at the door. I guess trying to make him think he’s in a horror movie is more fun though.” He sighed and shook his head. “Honestly, we might as well just wait until tomorrow and come back. If the place is locked and the janitor is dancing away in there, I bet the place is deserted. This professor is probably at home sleeping right now.”

“Probably isn’t certainly, so let’s actually ask someone who might know,” Cora replied. “You guys keep going in circles around where we’re trying to get to.”

“Whatever, do as you please.” Liam walked up to the door and turned around, leaning his back against it. “I’ll wait here, I guess.”

The door handle turned slowly under Liam’s leaning on it, and the door moved as he stood there. It wasn’t locked.

“Alright, off we go then.” Nova nodded towards Cora, until she saw the door beginning to open. “Who said it was locked?”

Kaya glared at Cora and pushed past the others into the room.

Cora gaped at the door. “You turned off the lights before [i]trying the damn door[/i]?”

Liam bent over, hands on knees, laughing at the situation. He tried but failed to get words out.

Nova pushed Liam’s shoulder, hopefully moving him off balance, before walking into the building and straight to the elevator. The dark wasn’t an issue for her. However, as Nova moved past Kaya, she stuck out her arm to grab the dark-seeing individual’s wrist. “Not all of us can see like you.”

Meanwhile, Liam fell from the shove and got all caught up in a bush. His laughter ceased and he started muttering curses at Nova under his breath as he pulled himself out of the annoying shrubbery.

Nova flinched as her wrist was gripped so suddenly, but recognized the problem. “I forgot, my apologies.” She waited for the group to hold onto each other or her as they would, including Liam (though she certainly considered letting him stumble around for a minute or two). Once they were all together, she resumed the short walk to the hopefully lit elevator.

Liam followed along, grumbling and pulling leaves and dirt off of his clothes.

The entire group made their way behind Nova to the elevator. There were no lights, but there were many sounds throughout the halls of the building. Frantic movement seen only by Nova as the janitor tries to get a flashlight on so he can see his keys to get into some room that she can’t exactly make out what it is. It seemed that all his efforts to turn the damned torch on were in vain, although if that was his own fault, or faulty batteries, wasn’t exactly clear. 

Pressing the button to call the elevator, there was no indication that it was on its way from a light of the button, just the groaning whir of the shaft as the elevator arrived in pitch darkness, the doors opening to naught but abyss in the eyes of the others. Nova could see that the elevator looked normal enough, but there was an innate wrongness that she couldn’t place her finger on about it without going inside of it. Liam felt the wrongness too, although he could not see it.

“You know what? I think elevators are overrated and we’ve done nothing but sit today. Why don’t we take the stairs?” The feeling sat deep in Nova’s stomach and made her begin to simply resent elevators in general. “Or we can talk with the janitor. He’s still around, seems perfectly nice, and we really ought to apologize for scaring him.” [i]Anything to avoid the elevator…[/i]

The janitor seemed to have heard their voices, or something, as with Nova’s little talk, he dropped the keys and the flashlight and just bolted out of there, beyond where she could see. For a moment she had to blink as it seemed as if there was another vague shape moving right behind the janitor, but she couldn’t make it out. [i]Weird[/i]. Yet the weirdest thing for Nova, was that she could clearly see the man scream before he turned and ran, and yet she could not hear it. Nor did anyone else.

“And I think I’d rather take the elevator,” Cora said as she groped forward towards where she had heard the doors open.

Entering the elevator, Cora was met with darkness upon darkness, and no sense of how big the car was. It couldn’t be too large, and with enough groping around she would find the walls and the buttons as well. Fortunately, she didn’t accidentally push one just yet, and so the doors remained open.

“The elevator’s already right here,” said Kaya, moving to join Cora. “Might as well take it instead of groping around a staircase.”

“I just have a bad feeling about the elevator. Plus…” Nova paused and took a deep breath, “I could swear I saw something following the janitor. Two odd things happening at once… I really don’t think we should take the elevator.”

“You having a bad feeling doesn’t count as something odd,” Cora said. “What’s odd is that Kaya still hasn’t turned the damn lights back on.”

Neither Nova nor Liam heard Cora say that. Kaya could still hear Cora, however, and vice versa. Nova could see Cora’s mouth move to speak, but no sound came. Instead, her ears were filled with a slow, spine tingling hiss from behind her.

Kaya rolled her eyes, not that anyone could see her. “What makes you think I can?”

Kaya too couldn’t be heard by those outside of the elevator, instead Liam and Nova heard more hissing, slowly wrapping around their ears from all angles. Cora and Kaya couldn’t hear the hissing, however, only each other.

“Well, I thought you just blocked them or something. I don’t know, their not my powers.”

Realizing that something was very wrong indeed, Liam decided to try his telepathy to get through to the women on the elevator. He included Nova for good measure. “Cora, Kaya, we can’t hear you. Get out of the elevator.”

Kaya went to stand half-in half-out of the elevator, hand holding the door and head leaning out. “What’s up?”

It seemed that whatever had been disrupting their communications suddenly stopped at this, the hissing was gone and communications were back, although the lights were still off and gone.

“Kaya’s outside the elevator and I can hear [i]her[/i],” Cora said, exasperated. “Stop dicking around and get in.”

“Nope, fuck that.” Liam took a step back from the elevator to emphasize his point. “I’m not about to fuck around with some mysterious power bullshit. The lights still being out are probably part of it too. I think we should leave and come back in the day when there are people around and whoever the fuck is doing this will be less likely to try it again.”

Nova raised her hand and nodded. “Agreed. Time to leave. Sleeping in the car sounds like a perfect idea now. Liam, you were right. Let’s [i]go[/i].” She started to back away as well. “I’ll take my chances with just Liam if you all won’t listen. I don’t want to watch you guys get hurt because of me.”

“Jesus christ, [i]fine[/i]. Then give me the piece of paper and the floor and I’ll do it myself,” Cora said as she began feeling around for the elevator controls.

[i]Seriously? We’re splitting up?[/i] Kaya didn’t get what the big deal was. Nova was being paranoid, and Liam was being an idiot. She had [i]darkness[/i] powers, not light—what couldn’t people grasp about that? She’d probably broken the breaker or something, nothing to get freaked out over. “If you guys are actually going to quit [i]now[/i] of all times, I’m sticking with Cora. No sense in anyone going alone.” Looking around herself in the dark, she sighed in exasperation. “But does [i]anyone[/i] have a flashlight?”

The silence was almost as piercing as the darkness.

“Well then, we’ll make due without.” Kaya reentered the elevator. “Let’s go, Cora.” [i]Let’s get this over with.[/i]

“Yeah, fuck it, I’m leaving. Have fun getting murdered or whatever.” With that Liam turned and headed back for the entrance, not waiting for anyone to respond or bothering to try to convince the stubborn women.

Cora rubbed at her temple in increasing exasperation, “Nova, leave if you want, but just tell us where we can find this professor of yours. And whoever has the damn paper with the copied symbols on it pass it over.”

Nova shook her head, looking at Cora and Kaya with increasing anxiety. “I’m not sending you guys up somewhere that is giving me a supernatural case of the twitches. Why don’t we just go check on the janitor?” She omitted the part where it was she who held the paper, trying to do any and everything to get the two women away from the elevator.

Kaya’s head perked up. “Supernatural?” she outbursts. “[i]Coulda said so [/i]earlier[i],[/i]” she mumbled. Suddenly stern, Kaya continued. “Have you seen anything? If this professor is here late as you claim, he could be in danger. Not to mention the damned [i]janitor[/i].”

And then the door closed. Someone else was probably calling the elevator, but the doors closed on the two within it, as the elevator began to slowly churn and move. What was strange, however, was that it felt like the elevator was going [i]down[/i] when they were on the ground floor. Nova, being familiar with the school, would know that that shouldn’t be possible for this elevator. But she wasn’t on it. So no telling the people inside. 

They’re probably fine.

The other problem, however, was that Liam was lost. He thought he turned around and headed the right way, but he’d walked far further along than he should have in order to reach the exit. Still bathed in darkness, there wasn’t a lot for him to go on for finding his way around without going to the walls.

So it came to pass that the only one who can fucking see what’s going on, was separated from everyone else, and the hissing noise began to creep back into her ear.