interstellar5555 | ☆TRACK III: THE STREETS ARE EMPTY

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☆TRACK III: THE STREETS ARE EMPTY

Who: Drafted Virgo Members
What: Juno makes everyone do a seance.
When: October 21st-22nd.
Where: The basement of the Virgo residential tower.
Warnings: Ghosts, apparently.

“You can't shake the feeling.
Be quiet not one sound.
But the wind seems to speak,
Something's here in the room with me.”

☆THE STREETS ARE EMPTY

Juno arrives without notice. In fact, you can’t even really remember seeing her approach. One moment you’re doing your business, and the next she is telling you that you have to come down to the basement with her, in order to complete a “task” you’ve been assigned. This sort of thing would seem preposterous to a normal person, but even if you don’t realize it, you aren’t one. As Mr Blanche’s personal assistant and sometimes second in command, her word seems to carry almost as much weight as his does.

You don’t really have any choice but to agree.

“Bring whatever instrument you know best,” she says. “You’ll need it.”

She snaps up every one of you that she sees in her initial sweep, and soon she has a whole pack of Virgo newbies following her down to the lowest floors of the residential tower. It feels weird, but it’s like you can’t quite articulate why. No one else seems to be able to either.

Most of the lights are turned off on those lower floors, but it’s easy to tell it’s a place you’ve never been before. It’s strangely...hospital like, down there, in both aesthetic and a sense of sterility. Maybe some kind of laboratory setting? Which seems like a super weird thing to be in the basement of an apartment building, but this is yet another thing you can’t quite bring yourself to ask about. Juno leave most of the lights off, except for a few central features. The ambience is dim and cold.

She tells you not to stray, and you don’t. The thought of going against her becomes somehow repulsive, like you don’t even want to think about it too long. You try not to think about your surrounding too hard, either.

She lines you all up, and then after some strangely intense eyeballing, she starts breaking you up into some incredibly lopsided groups that seem to have nothing to do with your actual bands. In the end, she looks disappointed with resulting teams, but carries on regardless. Each “group” is given some complexly timed sheet music and a funny looking mobile speaker.

She says that you have a half hour to compose a group piece to play alongside the sheet music , and that it needs to be good. Then, she wanders off to start pacing the basement in a strangely arcane series of movements, and leaves you all to it. Only among your peers do you start feeling like you can voice any of your previously stowed concerns, but make sure Juno doesn’t overhear you – occasionally she’ll come by to bluntly critique anyone who is performing inadequately.

You feel lucky that she doesn’t have a whip with her, because you’re almost certain that she’d use it without much remorse.

☆THE SEANCE

The performance is about as awkward as you’d expect, given the set up. The four groups are set up so that they’re facing each other, as if standing at the corner of a square. Each speaker is set up in the center of its group, and the precisely timed electronic beat that plays from them is what you’re supposed to perform along to.

Odds are that you do your level best, but, outside of your control...something goes wrong.

“Have you ever felt...
Something evil,
Lurking around?
The moon is full,
The streets are empty.
Shadows cover the town.”

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A fond exasperation passes over Luce's face. "Dear, I was the one to encourage her. It started at the Gala. We really must keep you in the loop better."

Wait, no, that's not what she meant to start on. Luce shakes her head, gesturing for him to follow her. "There's something just as strange as those balls of light that I need to show you."

"You- what- no- you know what I shouldn't be surprised," he stammers, shaking a finger in the air. He clears his throat. Better to follow that subject change. "All right, lead the way. I'd think it'd be hard to beat those lights though."

"In how unreal it all is? No... But they're something." Losing her usual teasing, Luce doesn't waste any time in guiding Doctor throughout the basement. Hopefully he can keep up, because she doesn't plan on wasting any time.

The end goal is a line of strange screens against the walls, and Luce points to one. "Tap it, won't you? And see what comes up."

"All right! Never could resist tapping a touch screen," he jokes as he reaches out and gives the nearest screen a quick tap with his forefinger. He's half expecting a funny screensaver or files on their band's earnings or popularity polls.

It takes a moment to boot up. As it does so, Luce goes to tap over at another screen and waits patiently herself. She already knows what she'll see.

For doctor, however, it might be a slight surprise.

"Oh. What was-" Doctor begins to wonder at the screens out loud when the light of the scanner reads his eye. Then the screen pulls up his image and number, asking for Authorization.

He bursts into laughter and points at his mugshot. "Oh that's horrible! I look like I was run over by the paparazzi and left to sleep in a dumpster. When did this happen? It must have been early in the morning after I was writing all night. I don't remember getting a company camera stuck in my face before I was tidied up better."

"Command Authorization."

"It was authorization. Have you tried that yet?" he asks her. He looks back at the screen. Curious as he always is he makes something up. "Uh yes. You are authorized! Uh. Show me more photographs!"

"I don't think it works like that..." Even with the situation, she can't help smiling as she shakes her head. He's an optimist. That's what's made him so fun to work with before.

"I don't remember getting my picture taken, either." She glances up to the strange mugshot on display to her.

"And neither does Rei. Or Kouen."

"Well it's not like everyone ever ended up wasted on the exact same night. Rei is a good girl and I only drink what I can handle-" he stops short speaking his thoughts and squints up at the screens. All the different mugshots, everyone so tired but all of them so nicely organized and numbered. He points a finger at the screens and turns to Luce again. "This. Makes. No. Sense. It's creepy actually. -Said item number 56 00 11."

"It gets the stranger the more you look it over, right?"

She should be panicking. Should be terrified. That's the rational response. Yet, still fresh in Luce's mind, she can remember standing serenely and tall amidst that group of people with a knowledge that they were dangerous but she wasn't scared. That sense of stability is with her right then as she crosses her arms.

"This isn't the number on any of my identification papers. This is something very different. All of us photographed at an unknown time and assigned numbers. Like... Test subjects," he spits out the words with a growing frown.

"We're musicians, not..." Luce makes a vague handgesture, unsure of how to put things into words for a moment. "Guinea pigs. Do you think they could be photoshopped, somehow?"

It's her only other logical guess. That, somehow, this is just some sort of horrible prank. Yet with everything that has happened tonight...

"...Maybe. By a really talented photo manipulator? Who they spent money hiring for unknown reasons..." He leans in to get a close look at the photos on the different screens. "Is everyone here? Pao-Lin and Ivan too? What about other employees like Angel?"

"I can't tell you about Angel." Luce gives a helpless shrug. "They seem to react to whoever interacts with the screen. So, anyone down here, but since Angel was upstairs last I checked..."

She can't really confirm one way or another.

"I have a very bad feeling about this. Companies have their secrets but this- this is... Too personal to keep a secret from us." He steps back from the screens and grips onto the nearest chair he can find.

"What would a record label want with guinea pigs?"

"You have about as much of an idea as I do." Sighing, Luce taps her fingers against her upper arm. It's a mystery, and that's unfortunately not her area of expertise.

"It's a shame none of us really know anything about technology... Unless you have something up your sleeve you've been keeping a secret, anyway."

Doctor looks at her to answer then freezes like a statue. His eyes almost look empty for a moment, unfocused, like he's just waking up in a daze, and he blinks several times. Then in a snap he's back with the usual twinkle in his eye.

"No. No, I'm only about as good as the regular joe when it comes to tech."

...Well. That was strange.

With how everything else has been, Luce thinks it's perfectly in her right to step closer with a furrowed brow. "Are you alright, Doctor?"

"Yes. Could be better. We could be out of this dark place or Juno could be telling us what's going on," he jokes. "...Why?"

"You just..." Luce waggles her hand in the widely accepted gesture of what the hell. "Seemed a bit out of it for a moment. That's all. With everything that's gone on recently..."

Well, she's concerned.

"I did? Just now?" Doctor points at himself and glances side to side as if Luce could be talking about someone else. "I didn't notice anything. I feel fine."

"Well, if you're sure..." She shakes her head. There's probably a logical explanation. "We've all been stuck in here for who knows how long, after all... Maybe one of us, or both of us, are tired."

"Most likely..." He nods, rubbing the back of his neck. "Now if... whatever I just did becomes a regular thing then we can start worrying about it."

The strange pictures on the screens were worrisome enough all ready.

"It's odd Juno locked us down here where we could find this. Just a little more ammunition would make a great case to sue Virgo. Was the door to this room locked when you found it?"

"I don't think there was a door, actually." Her hands flit through the air in a vague gesture. "It seemed like just an extension of the other hallways. All the other doors I've tried are locked.

Luce tucks her hands against her sides, trying to seem less anxious than she really is. This isn't what she signed up for when she entered the music business. "Perhaps she went to get help... I mean, some of the people around, like Krieg, didn't seem safe to be around for a while."

"No door?" Doctor has trouble believing it at first. He had followed her without much thought into the room and the computer had taken all his attention. He turned to where they entered and hurried over to the nearest wall, examining it up and down, tracing quickly inch by inch with his fingers.

As if he knew some clever explanation for the phenomenon of a missing door and a futuristic room that seemed to open itself up.

"Sliding door?" he suggests, "Like the ones on sci fi space ships? Or..." It feels like he should have more answers but his mind produces static instead. He glowers at the wall.

"Sci fi space ships?" Alright, now they're getting ahead of themselves. Luce shakes her head trailing after him.

"I think us being stuck here has got you feeling fidgety, dear."

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