[center][h1]Emil Günther[/h1]
Physical state: Sick
Mental state: Rattled[/center]


Emil indeed was left, but he did not feel alone in that room, standing in the light, like in a spotlight on a stage. When he looked at the engine of his every thought lying on the table, his desire to posses it suddenly abated. He stood wooden for a long moment, looking at it. [color=39b54a][i]Will she see me later? Will anyone? Am I afraid, now that I've managed to obtain the key to this riddle, or its peripheral corridor, at least?[/i][/color] He took a short breath.

Upon the wall hung a clipboard with the signatures of the staff who reported in that morning. Fortunately, only one was a woman, signed delicately with a quirky tail on the Y and in her name: [color=662d91]Emily Eliot.[/color] [color=39b54a][i]Emily Eliot. Two dactyls. A beautiful name.[/i][/color] He flipped through the pages, seeing a pattern emerge. Emily had worked in alternating shifts, and the day after she would come to work in the afternoon, after the lunch break. When he put his hand in his pocket, he found that the key was safe inside. He fingered it. [color=39b54a][i]How cold you are, even in this pocket. Handed from hand to hand. Nothing will warm you save the lock to which you belong and to which you will return.[/i][/color]

He slowly pushed the door behind him and left. On his way he snatched a white robe and a white mask from the cart in front of the toilets. walking, he clad himself in what he'd stolen, and found that the mask had a pair of red dots on it. The robe was spotless. His figure was haunting the dark tiled hallways, like a specter of a surgeon who'd butchered more than he'd saved. He lowered his head as he passed before a wheeled table and saw on it a pair of troubled eyes looking from a confined body deathly and haggard as fresh carrion in a desert. A glimpse of humanity spastic and desperate jerked the body and died just as violently.

A familiar voice came from the corner, or the faintest echo of it. Emil halted, hid behind the corner to listen. He shot an eyeball behind the wall down the hall and knew it was Dupree still near the steel door. He clutched the key in his pocket and sharpened his ear. Perhaps he could have heard something with some luck, but an atavistic sensation hindered him in the most unfortunate of times. His tinnitus had returned. A sound of a running river, of the rustling of paper, of the wood squeaking: all in his head, or neither of them at all, indistinguishable one from another. He closed his eyes and shut his ears with his hands, grimacing. There was no pain, nothing physical, yet he couldn't lower his hands from his head. He was sweating, cursing his luck. [color=39b54a][i]Nicht jetzt... Nicht jetzt! Shceiße! Halt, bitte! [b]HALT![/b][/i][/color]

It stopped. Pulling himself together he realised he had overreacted. The episode was not something he had not endured before. [color=39b54a][i]Tired and nervous. All on me at once. Calm down. Listen.[/i][/color] Breathing warm filtered air through the mask, he relaxed against the wall and tried to eavesdrop again, but feeling he had missed his chance.