[h3][hr][color=#38547C]Keaton Plasse[/color][/h3][hr]
Keaton’s sympathy for Packet was limited. Despite the tools at his disposal, he’d gotten his information wrong, and as a result, she had too. The difference, however, was that he was heading back. This was where his level of risk started decreasing, where he started his journey back to safety, if one could call it that. His slip of the tongue was just another indicator of the divide between them, a reminder that he wouldn’t bear the consequences of this venture.

Still, she held some surface-level pity for him. He was a child aboard the Promise, doing his best with what he had, and he was helping best he could. He was right in not wanting to come with them, and in his shoes, Keaton would have done the same. So, because of that—because of the sheer sense of why she should pity him, and because all her thoughts to the contrary were nonsensical, fueled by fear and rash emotions—she kept her head and gave him a smile as she returned his wave. If they got out of this, she’d still like to get to know the guy who could talk to the Promise system, even if he deserved a thorough lecture on the importance of checking his sources.

The Spire matched the blueprints Packet had provided, which wasn’t what Keaton was expecting. It was, however, comforting, and she could see their location in her mind’s eye now. Behind the door Archie opened was a lab, which itself had a door that opened into a small corridor. There’d been various reasons this room had been chosen as their entrance into the Spire, and chief among them was the fact that it was the easiest to get to. Still, the blueprints showed that this area was an isolated one with a single corridor linking it to the rest of the Spire, so that meant that unless someone had express business in this precise room, they would be left undisturbed.

Past the pipe and waste disposal systems that designated the next room as a lab, Keaton knew very little about the place, so she was also left looking around once she stepped in. The lights overhead turned the white walls into their own sort of light, and the flooring—some sort of resin, judging by the sheen—was barely scuffed, making the place seem rather void of life. There was a distinct lack of screens, calling into question the amount of access Cara was given in the Spire, and rather than lab equipment, the room held pairs of desks and transparent enclosures fit for medium-large animals, or… 

The thought brought about a wave of nausea as her power confirmed that yes, they were a great size for both types of inhabitants, and she swallowed it, walking towards the closest desk and spreading out the paperwork on it. They were reports of—and all straightforwardly formatted. First were the identifications and serials, then various numbers and vitals, and then a description of the appearance of the subject. They were all mundane, noting nondescript changes like “listlessness” and “apparent apathy,” and Keaton shuffled through them rapidly, her eyes not wholly connected to her brain as she skimmed the words.  

As she tried to find something of interest in the pages—a hint at where the subjects were moved, perhaps, or what they’d been brought here for in the first place—she saw Archie recoil from something in her peripheral vision, which snapped her attention to him immediately. He was backing away from the table in front of the enclosure with the red-pink sludge, his face drained of blood, and when Keaton’s eyes went back to the sludge, she [i]knew[/i]. 

She inhaled sharply, raising her eyes to the blinding lights overhead and willing the heave of her stomach out of existence, then joined the gathering group. Putting words to the sludge—giving it a background, a reason and explanation—would’ve made it worse if not for the fact that she had already forced herself into numbness. 

She’d known this. What she’d failed to guess was the extent of it. 

The numbness held her still as Natalie and Lynn declared their intentions, and she glanced at them blankly, noting their anger. She should be angry too, shouldn’t she? Innocent lives had been lost here, had been forced to suffer before being snuffed out of existence, all for… for what? Science? The creation of a “weapon”? Yet all Keaton could think about was the horrible death Tabatha Ford had died, how she’d burned as Alaina Richerdson emptied gasoline into her enclosure. Had she known she was going to die? Surely she must have. The enclosures were thick enough to be soundproof, but they were transparent. 

Keaton managed a hollow nod at Archie’s words, her power telling her that he was scared—more scared than her, even—and her brain… 

She knew.

“There’s a server room on the main hallway, ten minutes walk from here.” The words left her mouth readily, her tone flat. She couldn’t come up with any rage to match the others, and acknowledging another emotion wasn’t an option at the moment, so she continued as she pulled on a lab coat, the fabric cold and heavy as it slipped over her. “It should have a computer to manage it, and that computer should be connected to the ship, and therefore the internet.”

She grabbed another stack of papers and dropped it on the table edge first, tidying it before she slipped it under an arm. “I can tell you which rooms are probably storage rooms, but past that, rooms look the same if they don’t have specific pipes or wires.” She looked up at the others, scanning their faces. “We need to walk through the main corridors to get there, so we’re going to have to do our best to blend in. To calm down and look… normal.”

Her eyes stopped on Lynn, whose eyes glowed with heat, then on Natalie, whose eyes spoke their intentions plainly. Did she fit in, with her eyes? She looked hopeless, most likely, and maybe that’s what most people in the Spire were. After all, what sort of hope did people conducting these experiments and writing these reports have, if not a loss of hope in humanity?