A second was spent just breathing, Troy not able to really see too much. Tears were gathering much too quickly, to a point where it was just right-down bothersome. That gas might not have been fatal, but it had enough stopping-power alright. If they got a continuous dose of the stuff, there was no way anything could ever be done, resistance eliminated in mere seconds.

Resistance… it had been thrown to stop something.

“Just… what did we run from?” Troy asked the two beside him. He knew that both had a decent bit of context to it all. They had to have, right! Charlie had shouted…. something through the door. What had he said? The young man knew that he had heard it, yet his mind just refused to cooperate with him.

Charlie and Dr Hale looked at each other for a second. Even without speaking, Troy understood that meanings were being exchanged. Experience together just did that sometimes, allowing people to have full-on conversations without ever moving a muscle. It was also a very valid method of stopping people from listening in. One person in the room found that fact very irritating.

“I would love to tell you, but there is no way that you would ever remember it,” Charlie finally answered, getting up from his place on the floor. Troy and Dr Hale did the same, taking the cue as the small break being over. Legs had been rested enough. “It is a very irritating fact, but that is how it is. Takes weeks or months of exposure before your brain figures out what's wrong. Until then… hope you're happy not realising what going on!”

The man was not sure whether to be happy about Charlie getting around to smiling again, or to be frustrated at the lack of an answer? He wouldn't remember it. What kind of thing was that? How did that work? Troy was just expected to sit around, not understand anything, while the two others were left to be in their own bubble where they could understand it all? How was that fair?

“By the way, how did you not catch on to them being near?” Dr Hale asked Charlie, as the two moved forwards. Looking around, it seemed that they had entered into what looked like… a normal office of sorts? There were a few rows of cubicles that were used back in the day. Ancient computer stations sat at personal desks. Frankly, Troy didn't even try to guess how many decades old the machines were. Those sizes had to be close to a century or something. Might have been a little less. The history of technology wasn't really his forte.

“What do you mean?” Charlie asked back. Troy had wondered if he should interject into the conversation or not. Looking back at the fact that he couldn't remember most of the words for the first conversation, he just decided to sit it out. Their surroundings were much more interesting.

They moved through the rows, going through yet another door. The next room looked to be what seemed like a mass of workstations, where more… practical applications were made. There were a few stationary hands set around to help grab things for the workers at least. They almost looked like what the modern models had if the colouring was put back in place. Decades of inactivity had apparently not been too kind to the pain, most having fallen off in strips. It was only luck that the humidity had not reached into the room, else things would have been in much worse conditions.

“I was with the group for two years, allowing me to at least notice them when they were close. You were with them for nearly a decade. I know for a fact that you could see them. Those glances to the corners were noticeable to anybody who actually bothered to look,” Dr Hale told Charlie, their tones going over to the more casual kind. It was still a plain one with the woman, but that was about as casual as one could get with her.

Troy did not bother to listen about the actual words themselves, only noticing the length. His brain was positively censoring most of it. How peculiar a feeling. Now that he actually bothered to ignore it somewhat, he could feel the moment a certain word would come into his mind. The sensation of it being there yet not being able to recognize was weird. Troy wondered if he could learn to stop the censoring. It would take time, yes, but time was something he would have plenty of if things were to go as intended.

“... Now that you mention it, I should have been able to see them,” Charlie mused. The younger one wondered why that tone was being used. Those words had to mean something. There had to be some component that could be focused on, to draw out the full meaning. Was it some kind of mentality trick? Did he just need to think of it all as something specific, else his mind would just put it away? It was like the sounds in the other room. He remembered hearing them, but due to the fact that he did not fully realise what they were, he could still remember them. “Though… I have not actually been seeing much of them as of late. In fact, I can't actually remember seeing one this past month or so. There had been hopes to catch a glimpse a few days ago, but even then I couldn't… “

“They switched up the codes,” Dr Hale answered, the question not needing to be said. Troy actually understood that sentence full-on! He didn't understand the context, but that might just have been the reason he could understand it in the first place. Due to all the information being ignored, his brain could not match the input up as a part that needed to be clouded. Though… could that happen retroactively? Could he make some leap of logic in his mind that would force the brain to make the adjustments backwards? There was only one way to find out.

While his nose had stopped bleeding, there still was a sizable amount around it. Sliding his finger across it, he used the red liquid as a form of writing tool. Quick swipes let him form letters on his arm, writing out a small message.

‘Do you remember the screaming? If not, there is nothing to do but wait.’

There was no space for much more, Troy having messed up the size from the get-go. Not like he would have been able to write anything at a smaller size really. Fingers did not work as pencils. It was only a miracle that he could even read it now.

“Should have guessed,” Charlie said, shaking his head at the newly acquired information. “There has been a surplus of information in the banks that I haven't been able to look through. I just thought that I had been getting forgetful, but… damn it. They've improved the design even more, haven't they? At a minimum, it causes some minor confusion, making the mind think that there is a plausible excuse for it all. Anything else that you have noticed, Mara? We need to prepare something for the next time they come around.”

Okay… preparation had been set up. Now, all Troy needed to do was to make it all make sense in his head. They had been walking through the hallway when his nose began to bleed. There had been some minor headaches as well, but that had been largely ignored. He had voiced the issue, chalking it up as the air quality doing nothing good for him in terms of damage.

Dr Hale had not taken that well, throwing a gas-canister at him, luckily missing him by mere centimetres. Then… something had happened. Troy could remember running forward, getting closer and closer to the door. There were more than a few gaps in his memory there. He had tried to look behind, to see what they were running from. What had he seen? Something must have been there, even if his mind refused to let him see it.

His other senses were more forthcoming. When he had been taken down to the ground, Dr Hale had ordered him not to listen to the sounds, to not notice the screams, the crying, and all the sounds of irritation. There had been shouting. Human shouting

Dr Hale had not been shouting. Troy had not been shouting. Charlie had not been shouting. Somebody had been shouting. It required a human to shout in a human way. If all three of them had not shouted, it would mean that another had been shouting. If all three had been shouting, others had been crying, others had been screaming, others had been there.

That would mean… that would equal… Oh, god, that meant that…

…

What had Troy been thinking about? Wait, no. He just did another skip! It was brief, but he could definitely notice it that time. Charlie and Dr Hale had not been shouting, though… Why did it happen? Something must have caused it to happen… his brain shouted at him there. Troy wondered why.

“Hey, did you also just feel like you teleported a meter forward?” Troy asked the two in front of him. Both had been quiet for a few seconds now. Charlie looked concentrated about something as if he was trying to remember the barest of details. Dr Hale… well, she looked just about how she usually did. Constipated but trying to hide it with a stone-face.

That innocent question did cause both to move swiftly. Charlie brought a scanner of sorts out of nowhere, attaching it to his hand without question. Meanwhile, Dr Hale had just taken one of her hands into her coat, looking ready to bring out… something. Another weapon perhaps? Or just another canister of gas. God, he hoped it would be something else. His eyes had begun to be rid of tears, and he would hate to get another dose of it.

“Did you move your head?” Charlie questioned, looking over at Troy, his eyes serious. It caused the younger one to wince slightly. That did cause the man to tone it down a little, though not fully. “Did you do anything but look for- oh… Mara, it's a false alarm. Don't worry. Troy was just trying to outsmart the system.”

What was he talking about? Troy started to ask just that question when he began to feel something on his arm. Looking down, he could see blood. Did he get a wound while he wasn't looking? He was clumsy, yes, but that amount should have been noticed quickly. Wait, no… these were words!

‘Do you remember the screaming? If not, there is nothing to do but wait.’

… What the hell was that supposed to mean? Thinking back, Troy could not hear anything close to screaming. Well, no screams that hadn't been internal or otherwise made in private spaces. Surely not in the last few hours at least.

“Why did I decide that I needed to wait?” Troy asked Charlie, the man now looking a little witty. That was good, the younger one supposed. Positive emotions had the potential to be the greatest distractions. “And what am I waiting for exactly?”

“You need to wait for things to sink in a bit more deeply. Try not to think about it, else those memories would just be wasted,” Charlie answered, smiling like the big dumb idiot that he was. Troy did not understand what context he was talking about. “The short-term memory can easily be twisted, but the long-term is still out of its reach. Just… wait a few weeks, and try again at that time.”

And try what exactly? Was there some expectation that he would just be told to do it where he would understand exactly what that was? That might just have been what they were expecting, seeing as the two in front had just started walking again.

The workspace was not the largest of places, being more wide than long. And they weren't going to take the longest walk they could, going straight for one of the doors. This one was a bit different to the others, having no blurry window in the middle. Instead, there was obvious reinforcement made to it, a key-card reader to the side. In the older days, that would have been a sign of security to a very high level. Now, though, it was just a sign that trust was in place.

And trust could most certainly be broken. With the help of Charlie using his less-than-legal key-card, the door was opened up smoothly. This allowed them to enter easily, letting them see just what resided inside the room.

It was certainly a sight to behold.