Upon closer inspection of the lockers, Chris notices that there is a sixth marked locker, however the letters have been scratched off, the grooves going dep into the metal. Each locker is secured by a large metal padlock.

Delilah plays a single hand, disappointed that others have chosen to opt out. For those who have clearly clambored for information, there seems to be little willingness to work for it themselves. Since they do not know what is in the lockers, they can't be certain it would be anything helpful at the moment, so there's little use in focusing on them when there is a living, breathing person to question.

But as Delilah looks at her cards, she realizes they are all Suicide Kings. Johnah, thinking he has the winning hand and need not divulge any information, lays down his cards, he realizes the same thing and the arrogant smile falls from his face.

Hank looks down at her arm, poking it quizically. She finds it strange that the wond has closed itself and that new skin has formed over the former mess. The only signs that there was ever any trouble are the smears and streaks of dried blood that flake off easily.

Cindi remains detatched, separate from the group, and is engrossed in the notebook she has found. As Hank wanders the room, poking at objects, nudging things slightly out of place, She happens to position herself over Cindi's left shoulder and glances at the page the strange woman is on. Without realizing it, Hank starts reading out loud.

Sunday December 7, F chewed off his ouwn tongue after his session with Dr. H - wrote something in his own blood ont he walls in the rec room but they made us all leave before we could see. G was wrecked. They took her to The Quiet Room but haven't her since.

Monday December 8, Dr. H told us G was sent home. Said she took the shots and they made her better. But I saw W in TQR with a bucket and a mop and big black bag. I have a yard pass tomorrow.

Tuesday December 9 - I was in the garden today. Groundskeeper planted new things all green and leafy with big colorful flowers. It just makes me sad. My second pass in as many years. No sun in my room. I tried to sneak off to the greenhouse but Dr. H saw me. He said we need to have a session soon. I want to call G.

Wednesday - I want an ice cream cone. Chocolate with rainbow sprinkles. I would use it to pop Dr. H's left eye.
Hank stops reading and leans against the counter, disturbed by the journal. "Is it all like that?"

In short, yes. The notebook is filled with similar entries. Jonah stops playing and takes a few long deep pulls from the bottle before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Cindi simply nods to Hank's question, preoccupied by what she is reading. There is more in here than what the first read would reveal. She thinks, The fact that letters are used not only indicates that identities are hidden, but this is also a very systematic place, with at least 23 people in the institute, at least initially.
This individual has written this journal, but is there a reason for it? I'll have to study it a bit more thoroughly later; perhaps there is something written between the lines. Cindi thinks, analyzing the notebook carefully.

From the sounds of it, this place described in the journal sounds like it could be either of two things. It could be a type of psychiatric hospital, or... Cindi's eyes glance over to Jonah, it could be a prison.
Hmm... because of the letter pseudonyms, it will be difficult to determine if any of the people listed at all is any of us. Cindi continues, her thought now taking a new route, However... it might be worth the effort to try; the action of doing so may bring memories with them. Of course, there's little means to tell exactly when this was written, although it must have been relatively recently, within our generation; longer, and the book would've started to show decay I'd imagine.
Cindi flips through the notebook. It was unlikely that the system of letter naming followed people's initials; what made more sense was if people were assigned a letter based on when they arrived. With that assumption, A would be the founder, B would likely be the first manager, and so on. The only problem with that assumption would be G. G was not given any rank, yet H was a doctor. However, it could mean that H was hired at a time after G was inserted into the institute.

Unable to use the names as reference, Cindi instead looks for key identifiers to perhaps find anybody of the group. Her gothic, flower bracelet tattoo, Hank's rose and vine neck tattoo, the dark person's many tattoos... Cindi glances over at Delilah, who is currently holding out her cards triumphantly. On the wrist of the hand holding those cards are scars... perhaps those could be used. Jonah also has a scar that might help in searching for him in the notebook, although it seemed he would be the least likely person to be in it. The only one Cindi finds she wouldn't be able to find without any good descriptions in the notebook is Chris. Cindi shrugs, and begins searching through the notebook for traces of the group, if anyone can be found at all.

The smile on her face faltered and fell, leaving her with a dazed and concerned visage. Suicide Kings. All of them. Impossible. As they laid their hands upon the table she grabbed the deck and flipped them all, one after another, as Hank read in a throaty, emotional voice that sounded, in Delilahs head at least, like shat she imagined the writer to sound like. Though it was entirely possible she thought that only because Hank was reading it and she thought the woman slightly unstable, though not nearly as off kilter as Cindi.

It sounded like the diary of a mental patient, in all honesty, what with mention of Dr. H and shots and sessions. the letters most likely were letters of patients and workers as well, since the writer had seen W in The Quiet Room. Ther were certainly enough clues to locate the place, if it were real. After all, a greenhouse required seeds to start, and people to build, and that meant a paper trail.

Granted, she probably woudn't find work orders for the construction of a greenhouse in here, but the seeds...wasnt this supposed to have been a flower shop? Maybe, if the place was local, they came from here? And the groundskeeper. He had planted new things. Might not they have come from here as well?

Since it was safe now outside, maybe they could go, after they checked on Hank's place and Cindi's place, and look for the greenhouse. It would be near a facility, like.... like the madical center on the map? No, that would have been too coincidental...wouldn't it?

But they had more immediate concerns now. Jonah and Josh and the lockers. Maybe there was something in them that could help them. Maybe there was something that could explain things.

"Well," she said softly. "I suppose there's little point inplaying cards if we both wind up with the same hand. Anyone have any unexplained keys ont hem? Or did you find one, Josh? A keyring? Something that might open those lockers?"

She glanced at them all, these people she had found herself now stuck with, and wondered if any of them were the nutter who'd written the journal.

"I do have a set of keys..." Cindi says, "However, I don't think they'd be for those; they might've actually been for the cash register I found them at."

Cindi returns to looking through the notebook, intent in her search for information or... perhaps the stimulation of memories.

Hank pressed her hands to her face and ran them up her face and over her hair, releasing a long, low sigh.

"Would it kill you," she asked slowly, deliberately, "to kindly loan them to us so that we could find out? I hate to bother you, consider how you're so busy not helping, and all that..."

While she waited for Cindi to produce the keys, she thought about the journal and what it meant. Maybe it meant nothing. Maube it had absolutely nothing to do with them, and finding it was purely coincidental. After all, they had found a number of things that hadn't of use.

So far, nagged a small whisper at the back of her brain, like a tiny worm in a garden. So what does this mean?
So there was journal. Written, obviously, by someone put someplace against their will. And this had much to do with them, she thought, since they were here against their will.

So what the hell were they supposed to do now?

Cindi's face twitches slightly with the tone of Hank's voice, and her eyes slide over in Hank's direction. She knew she was among the most outcast of the group, but still, that was uncalled for.

"There's no need for that. If you really wanted to see, just ask. I realize that, with these circumstances, verbal aggression isn't going to be uncommon, however, please realize it does more harm than anything else." Cindi says, toying with a thought in her mind.

With her left hand, her right still holding the open book, Cindi easily picks out the keyring in her backpack, and offers it to Hank, "There you go."

"By the way, how exactly were you feeling a few moments ago, during the walk here, Hank? You didn't look too good." Cindi says, slipping the notebook into her backpack.

"A keyring?"

Josh looked up from the binder and raised an eyebrow.

"No..I haven't found anything like that. I also haven't really investigated much either though."

It seemed the binder would offer not other information that he could use, or even find interesting. With a sigh he dropped it heavily on the table and slid his chair back.

Rising to his full height, and stretching his arms before gently flinging his braid back over his shoulder, and bringing his fingers to his pointed goatee, he glanced over the room, and those inside it once before sighing. Not much to do...for him at least...Or so he told himself. Leaning against the wall, he waited to see what would be done with the newly revealed keys.

Unsure of Cindi's motives, Hank simpy smiled. The curve of her lips was sharp, dangerous, and spoke volumes of the woman she may once have been...before now. Now she herself was unsure wha woman she was, only that she was notone to be toyed with.

"I'm fine, thanks."

Taking the keys, she closed her fingers around them, squeezing, feeling the metal bite into her skin. It wasn't fair to treat her so, just becase she was odd.

"You did a good job playing medic. Thanks." The others seemed intent on the lockers, and she had to admit that she was curious about them, as well. Hank hoped, as she approached the line of metal doors, that they would find some answers. Personally, she would be satisfied with nothing less than a one way ticket out of here.

Oddly, there was one door with the letters gouged out, like someone had tried to erase identity, and she looked immediately at Jonas, who had stopped playing cards with Delilah. There was something off about him, something not quite rght.

She tried each key, hoping to find one that fit the nameless locker.

Cindi's eyes narrow just slightly, and her right hand slips into her kangaroo pocket, "Was it really so dangerous that words fail to explain it? Or is it that you cannot trust anyone but yourself to know?"

Cindi closes her eyes, "Quarantine,"

The next moment is a blur. Cindi's eyes flash open, and the keys slide out of her left hand as she drops them, at the same time, she raises her right, now holding the gun. She levels it at Hank's head, her left hand now aiding to hold it steady as she fires, even at this near-point-blank range.

Cindi finishes her sentence matter-of-factly, "The prevention of the spread of malignant infectious material, namely by elimination to better still the source."

Chris' attention had een divided between the locker' before him and the man with the knack for keeping information concealed behind a mak of liquor and gambling. He heard the exchange between Cindi and Hank, and had just turned to pose a question when Cindi fired point blank at Hank.

"Oh God!" Chris exclaimed, the gunshot awakening the military and law enforcement instincts within him. In a single stride he had crossed the ditance to him and Cindi, coming up from behind her his arms snaking around her to bend her gun toting arm back at an awkard angle fingers pressing into the pressure points between the thumb and pointer to loosen her grip, while his free hands thumb and forefinger digging into twin pressure points on her neck and shoulder blade to sent a wave of pain down her gun toting arm to force her disarming.

Once the gun was free from her grasp, he would swing her aside and claim the dangerous weapon for himelf, to keep it out of the hands of those whose rash decisions could put a bullet in the back of hi own skull were he not careful.

(I'm hoping the literal description of the visual makes sense but the tactic i tried and true I know, I've had SWAT do it to me in a simulated excercise while attending a Law/ Security course and it hurt like a MOFO lol)

Tension, thick and tangible, filled the space between Hank and Cindi, whose motivations remained hidden from each other. Cindi held out her hand, the keys set upon the flat of her palm as if ona silver platter and Hank, still consimed by thoughts of the journal, and the locakers, and the need for answers, took them.

Brief conversation, which Hank had hoped would ease some of the disturbance between her and the woman who bandaged her, proved fruitless; rather than improve things, the situation deteriorated rapidly. Hank hadn't understood, and Cindi hadn't realized this.

Instead, Cindi bent slightly, imperceptibly, and replaced the journal into her backpack, at the same time drawing the gun from her pocket. Hank had taken only steps before stopping before the row of lockers, but the mistake had been made; she'd turned her back ona dangerous woman.

Cindi's arm extended in a single, fluid movement and her thumb expertly pulled back the hammer. The words that fell like cold rain from her lips never registered with Hank. Preston had heard only the small click, the unmistakable harbinger of death and destruction, and had time only to turn her head.

"You bitc-" was all she could manage before the click. In the small space, the gunshot is liek the end of the world. The bullet screams toward Hank, hot and unholy, and sears a trail across her cheek, its trajectory marred by the turn of her head. The scream that escapes Preston's lips is anguished and dangerous, the sound of a wild animal suddenly injured. The wound is seared by thr hrat of the bullet as it straks her face.

The resounding silence is deafening. Chris presses into action, calling upon suppressed memories of his former life, and subdues Cindi.

There is a sudden flurry of activity and emotion in the resulting aftermath. The keys dangle from the lock, abandoned by Hank in the face of her near-murder. Delilah begins to hyperventilate, while Josh stares, shocked and slightly amused by the chaos around him.

"What the hell were you...what the....?" hank seems incapable of thinking or speaking in complete sentances.

But it is Jonah who seems the most unaffected by the events unfolding before him. "I would expect that from you," he said resignedly, and it is unsure to whom he is referring. "You never did like her much."

Cindi's foxlike face twitches, and her body is strangely limp in Chris's grasp; she is not resisting.

"I did not take movement into account." Cindi murmurs to herself.

She looks at Hank directly, her eyes boring into Hank's, "As for what I was doing, I would have thought that'd be obvious. If you show signs of infection, particularly that of the unnatural, you should be aware of the risk you pose to others while you remain alive."

"It follows three steps. Infection, mutation, and outbreak. Quarantine is advised to occur at the beginning. Since quarantine by definition isn't an option in this case, elimination is the alternative."

Cindi's head turns, and as she glances over her shoulder at Chris, her mouth twists into a bit of a grimace, "Do you think it is necessary to hold this position? You already have my only weapon, and as I said earlier, it proves to be unreliable."

"As for you..." Cindi looks over at Jonah, "You haven't said much, however, your lack of speech has already given away a significant amount of information. I presume, as a chief of police, that you would know about me, considering, by a picture obtained by Chris, of past... actions. As such, seeing as you know everyone here, that means we all either have a criminal record of some sort, or work or otherwise are connected to the police department. This is entirely based on a theory, of course, so feel free to prove me wrong. I cannot be sure of them until they are verified, or disproved."

Cindi breathes deeply, her mouth twisted in a mockery of pain, as she awaits what is to happen.

Jonah sighs and takes another swig from the bottle.

"What makes you think I'm the chief of police? and what pictures are you talking about?"

"No, no, no, little lady. You've got that all wrong. He's the cop, if you really want to know." Jonah points at Chris, now in possession of the gun, and shrugs. "I never was the kind for public service."

taking another swig, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and offers the bottle to Delilah. "Listen, it will all come back to you sooner or later. I think. Maybe. Well, possibly. A little, anyway.Drink this, Henrietta. And for gods sake, woman, sit down before you Keel over. you've just been grazed a bullet."

As the pain lessened to a tolerable plateau, Hank did as Jonah Hawke suggested, and sat. Taking the bottle from the current roatation, she used part of her shirt to cover the mouth of the bottle, then dabbed the wet spot on her cheeck.

The deep gash had been seared closed by the heat of the bullet but the skin around it was slightly stippled and gritty with gunshot residue and powder.

"Thank you," she muttered, and took a long drink from the bottle. Distance crept into her gaze; she stared at the wall, at points beyond the wall, and it seemed like she forgot where she was. She seemed almost catatonic, but for blinking.




Delilah screamed as the shot rang out and scrambled back, overturning a chair. The small of her back hit the counter and she couldn't go any farther. When Chris took Cindi's weapon and disabled her, she turned to the woman and cried out in shock.

"What the hell was that?! Why did you shoot her? She wasn't sick! She's not sick now! Look at her!"

"But she was," Jonah interjected. "Wasn't she. She was pale and sick and looked like death on toast? Like there was something seriously wrong with her."

Delilah stared, unblinking, for a moment. "Who the hell are you," she shouted. "Just tell us!"

But Jonah was unwilling to share. He sighed and looked at Chris, then Hank, then Delilah, and Cindi. He looks to Josh for a moment, and smiles.

"Who I am isn't really important right now. THe bigger picture, people, look at the bigger picture. Do you all know who you are? Because I do. I just don't know why you're here. By the way, Chris, how is your partner back home? And Delilah. Poor, sad, sweet Delilah. Or, not so sweet, perhaps? Does anyone but me really know why you play with clay?"

Confused, Delilah sits on the counter and wonders why Jonah is talking about.

"You see," Jonah explains, "I know you better than i thought I did. Who were before today doesn't matter anymore. It's who you are now that is important. You have to figure that out fast or you won't make it out of here. So what if you have no memory. Memory is a tricky thing, and you're better off without it."

Delilah turned to Chris. She can't think right now, can't process Jonah's craziness. "What do we do now," she asked, feeling lost again.

Chris listened to Jonah speak about memories, and about details that to Chris at least even he hadn't fully come to understand and he figured the same was for the others.

Stepping back from everyone, and putting his back to the locker, he checks the clip/ chambers of the pistol for an ammo count before readying it once more.

"Listen man, if you know so much about us, than you probably know I'm a hell of a better shot than chicka here." With that he raised the gun toward's Jonah.

"And all I can say is who I was may not be important to you, and who we are may be damn well critical to our survival, but if YOU want to have a tomorrow to be anything other than a liquored-up doorstop of a corpse you need to quit the cat-and-mouse mind games and tell us what you know about this place, us, and what the hell you're going to do, or have us do to get out of here in one piece."