Veil of Smog, Chapter 1

[Charybdis1618]

The maps are less than helpful, but you eventually make your way to the fourth floor, east wing. A receptionist desk stands in front of a securely electronically locked steel door.

[Esprit15]

"Sarah Stillwater, the front desk should have let you know that I was coming here."

[Charybdis1618]

"Right. Which department are you with? And what's your business with Jeremy? He has no visitors scheduled today."

[Izzarra]

Yume Tsukiyomi Kitsune Shrine Maiden Conditions: None

After rapidly growing impatient watching the others standing in lines, Yume goes back outside. With no regard for human privacy she scouts the exterior of the building walking up walls and window ledges under the cover of invisibility, looking into each window on each floor checking for anything magical or unusual.

Spoiler: OOC

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* Sight Tag
- Counters Concealment/Invisibility (Vision)
- Counters Illusion (Vision)
- Magical Awareness (Vision)

[Charybdis1618]

There's a couple rooms with some magical signatures visible through the window. Most of these can be traced to an occupant with a signature about them, or ambient energies. A few rooms, however, have a stronger signature with no discernable source.

[Esprit15]

“Ah yes, sorry about that. The news only broke this morning. Honestly today was my off day - I got the call from Nichole to follow up on Villareal’s story and headed this way. Maybe she wanted it to be a sorta surprise inspection type deal,” she says. Dropping her boss’s boss’s name might backfire at the office later, but better to ask forgiveness than permission. And it would probably never get mentioned if everything went smoothly anyways. “Human services department, by the way,” she says as she rummages through her bag for an ID. “Guess they thought it might be a patient welfare thing or something. We honestly just need to speak with him and confirm that everything is on the up and up.” Finally she hands the woman the ID card.

[Charybdis1618]

She types a note into her computer. "Speak to Dr. Kohler first. He's under observation. Find Dr. Kohler at his second desk, which is to say, the nurse's station. Have a good day, Ms. Stillwater." She half smiles in the way one does when not expecting the other party to get an inside joke. The door lock buzzes, and a light over it flicks to green.

[Esprit15]

“Oh great, that type of doctor,” Sarah mumbles back, very much getting the joke. She heads to the nurses’ station.

[Xihirli]

"See something, Yume?" Leif asks when the Kitsune is near enough for him to communicate with her without shouting.
"I just see a wall."

[Izzarra]

Yume Tsukiyomi Kitsune Shrine Maiden Conditions: None

After finishing her invisible jaunt around each floor of the building she finds a place to reappear before coming over to Leif.
"I found some rooms we should check."

[Charybdis1618]

[Yume and Leif, please give me Investigation to hunt down the specific sources of the signature]

You arrive as the sleep ward is preparing for lunch. A pair of nurses moves from one cluster of patients to the next, recording responses on a clipboard. Their standard-issue scrubs are immaculately clean, but rumpled. Other nurses either sit behind a desk or move about attending to various duties. The patients all wear knee-length gowns with a checkered pattern, like a simulacrum of pajamas. In lieu of shoes, they wear socks with rubber grips on the soles. None have watches, and there are no visible clocks. Unease and exhaustion mix in the air like competing perfumes, condensing into a steady drip of idle chatter. The nurse at the seat of the desk nearest the door turns in his office chair to look at you. With a faint Southern drawl coloring his words, he asks you to please hand over any watches, cell phones, or other electronics.

[Esprit15]

Sarah hands over a slightly chunky looking flip phone, fully turning it off before handing it to the nurse. Rufus would likely recall that she does keep a pocket watch in her right pocket which she does not hand over.

[Batcathat]

Rufus raised an eyebrow at the request, but as it didn't seem like the right time – or lack thereof, given the setting – to start an argument, he unbuckled an old and rather expensive watch from his wrist and handed it over.

"I do not have a cellular phone", he preemptively answered the obvious question. "I suppose I am a bit old-fashioned. Or perhaps just old."

[Charybdis1618]

"Makes it easier for us, then. These will be returned to you when you leave. Thank you. Who are you here to see?"

[Esprit15]

“Mr. Villarreal,” she says simply.

[Izzarra]

Yume Tsukiyomi Kitsune Shrine Maiden Conditions: None

[Yume and Leif, please give me Investigation to hunt down the specific sources of the signature]

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Investigation: (1d20+2)[17]

[Xihirli]

Yume Tsukiyomi Kitsune Shrine Maiden Conditions: None

After finishing her invisible jaunt around each floor of the building she finds a place to reappear before coming over to Leif.
"I found some rooms we should check."

Spoiler: Investigation

Show

No ranks, can't try.

Leif, unable to detect magic at all, follows Yume to the best of his ability, as he could not wall-crawl.
"I don't understand what's foxish about walking on walls."

[Charybdis1618]

"Villa ... oh, yeah, him. He's under observation for the moment. Should be out in an hour or so. Why don't you have a seat? There's plenty of chairs in the common room. Dr. Kohler will come speak to you first when he's ready."

He gestures to the room behind you. A few of the patients are glancing your way intermittently, but none pay too much attention yet.

[Esprit15]

Sarah looks at the nurse for a second before giving a nod. “No worries. I’ll speak with some of the other patients in the mean time.”

If not outright told not to, she asks those present about the quality of their conditions, how they are treated by doctors, anything unusual that has happened in the past week. She doubted that Villarreal was particularly special in his experiences.

[Batcathat]

As Sarah talked to the patients, Rufus walked around seemingly at random, looking for traces of anything supernatural or otherwise off.

"C'mon, just let me out", said the voice from his bag. "I'll sneak it there, find out everything."

While seemingly admiring the cheap artwork on the wall, Rufus covered his mouth and quietly replied. "The thought did occur to me. Then it occurred to me that the hospital staff might be slightly alarmed, should they discover a garden gnome crawling around in the ceiling."

[Charybdis1618]

The patients exhibit a variety of mental states. Some are too tired to do more than acknowledge you. Some are too energetic to sit still, and talk your ear off about everything and nothing. Some seem normal, but say relatively little. They are here with varying degrees of acceptance, as you quickly find out. Still, none of the complaints rise further than "I want to go home," "This is boring," or "Hospital food sucks." Evidence for the last claim is brought around on an aluminum cart as you wait. Some complain of bad dreams, of course, but that hardly seems out of place here.

[Izzarra]

Yume Tsukiyomi Kitsune Shrine Maiden Conditions: None

Leif, unable to detect magic at all, follows Yume to the best of his ability, as he could not wall-crawl.
"I don't understand what's foxish about walking on walls."

Yume carries a conversation while invisible and running up and down the building.
"Wind Step? It is not from what I am. It is with ki. They do it in movies some times but it looks funny on screen."
While she may be sorely lacking in exposure to popular culture Yume has seen a few movies and has no idea that they use wires and harnesses to achieve the movie magic.

[Charybdis1618]

After about half an hour of interviewing patients, a man with Dr. Kohler embroidered into his lab coat sidles over. He's a surprisingly tall man, well over six feet, with a slender frame. His pale skin is bleached from a career of fluorescent lights and late nights. He sits in a chair opposite yours, and readies his clipboard.

"I'm Dr. Kohler. Who might you be? And what, precisely, is your business with Jeremy?"

[Esprit15]

"Sarah Stillwater. A pleasure," she says, offering her hand to the doctor. Should he take it, her grip is firm, though only as aggressive as that of the man she shakes with. "I work with the Seattle Human Services Department. I'm doing a follow up after we heard about Mr. Villarreal's story in the paper. Not every day a patient's panic attack is newsworthy. So I'm doing a preliminary once over to make sure there is nothing egregious or deserving of finer scrutiny. This would of course include interviewing patients about their living conditions and treatment by staff, and seeing them myself. Ideally I would also be speaking to the patient in question." She gives the smile of a bureaucrat. "Hopefully there is nothing to report and I can tell my boss that the tabloids were having an especially slow day.

"Mr. Walcraft here is a consultant of ours, and more of a subject matter expert than myself," she adds, gesturing to the man.

[Charybdis1618]

A brief flicker of fear crosses his face, but quickly hides behind the professional façade. "Of course. Mr. Villareal had no record here, or in any psychiatric facility we had access to, before this incident. I'd be happy to introduce you to him in about *quick glance at watch* 24 minutes. He has an odd tendency to sleep for around an hour, then wake up screaming and clutching his chest. His heart rate and blood pressure spike then, but the EKG shows no cardiac issue. Just to be safe, we put him on a low-sodium diet anyway. During his active times, he interacts with the other patients minimally. He seems lucid, or as much so as anyone so sleep-deprived can be, but complains of sleep paralysis and nightmares. We have him on 20mg Lexapro, which has a marginal effect. Now, Mr. Walcraft, what is your specialty?"

[Batcathat]

Rufus leaned back into his chair. "I know much about many things, doctor Kohler." His smile gave the distinct impression that he knew how smug he sounded, but did not particularly care. "But in this particular case, miss Stillwater has asked me to consult in regards to non-standard causes for sleeping disorders. I am the sort of person who does look for zebras upon hearing hoof-beats. It does sound like the standard procedure has been rather less than helpful so far, yes?"

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Yes, Rufus is basically doing his best Gregory House impression, though with his own slightly condescending formality in place of House's hostility.

[Charybdis1618]

"Well, it's hardly an exact science. The research is very much in its infancy. We have an fMRI scheduled for *checks clipboard* two days out. It might tell us something about his brain activity, if we're lucky. Until then, we're keeping him under observation."

[Charybdis1618]

What is Shroud looking for during recon? And how?

[Esprit15]

Sarah smiles politely as the experts have their exchange. Couple of HIPAA violations telling us his current symptoms and treatment. Wonder if I can prompt a major one by the end of the visit? Just to have in my back pocket.

“Hm. Precise… And were these the same symptoms that he complained of when he arrived?”

[Charybdis1618]

"Yes, more or less. The sleep paralysis seems to be worsening as time goes on, but the stress response is plateauing."