"Aw fuck." Liam stopped where we was as he realized he was lost. Something was clearly screwing with the building, or maybe his perception of the building. He'd walked far enough that he should have gotten to the door already, yet he was still in the dark hallway. Liam had hoped that leaving the elevator and exiting the building would stop this nonsense from happening, but clearly that hope had been in vain. Being a pessimist at heart, he was not truly surprised.

He pulled his pocket knife, a little thing with a blade no more than three inches long. It wasn't quite as good as the Swiss knives with all the gadgets, but this one had two different kinds of screwdrivers, a nail file, and a corkscrew as well, which was enough for him. Liam didn't think it would make for very good protection against supernatural bullshit that could screw with physics or his mind or whatever was going on, but it was better than having no weapon at all. He turned round slowly in the hall, staring at the dark, futilely trying to pierce the blackness of the hall in the direction he'd come from.

After a little bit of worthlessly standing there with his eyes wide open, Liam thought of a better use of his time. He brought the knife to his left hand and cut his palm open, not a very deep cut but enough to cause a rush of blood that dripped to the floor. The drops were not visible to him, but he could feel them falling from his hand and hear them hitting the ground nonetheless. With the requisite sacrifice given, he reached out with his mind to ask the first question he had paid for: [i]Is this darkness being caused by someone or something other than Kaya's power?[/i]

Liam felt a response come to his mind, not in words or images, but rather a general sense of the affirmative. The darkness was indeed someone else's creation, though he couldn't know who or what was causing it. He felt that he could still ask some more questions, so he silently asked another: [i]Is the source of this darkness inside the building?[/i] Again Liam got another sense of affirmation, and he asked another question. [i]Is the professor we came here to speak to inside the building?[/i] Yet again he got the sense that the answer was yes.

That did not bode very well in Liam's mind. He felt like perhaps fate wanted to screw with him, and by extension his companions, so he asked another question that he hoped would draw the first negative response. [i]Is the professor the source of this darkness?[/i] Thankfully, the ephemeral feeling in his head did indeed indicate that the answer was no. Liam felt he had a final question left, and he could only think of one last pertinent thing that might be answered with a yes or no, so he asked it. [i]Is the professor in danger right now?[/i] The response came in the affirmative, that the professor was indeed in danger. After that his connection with whatever the hell had answered him faded away.

Liam cursed aloud and clenched his cut left hand over his shirt, very shoddily trying to stem the bleeding. He closed the knife with his right hand and then held his arm out as he walked toward where he thought there must be a wall nearby. His intent was to find a wall and followed it back the way he'd come, hopefully to make it back to the elevators and his companions to share this new information, but there was no way of knowing if or when he'd get there with this magical bullshit going on in the building.