Ward 32 – Episode 6

In your shock and horror at your predicament, the first thing that comes to mind is the sharpened bolt you found. You reach out with your left hand to grab the vent nearest you to and then reach into your pocket for the shiv.

Being careful not to stab yourself in the ankle, you twist yourself around to get a bit of leverage and then thrash out with your makeshift knife. No stranger to the weapon, you find yourself remembering its usage with ease and you make contact with the entity grabbing your ankle.

In its rush to get off you, the thing manages to gouge up your leg pretty badly — as if it had scratched you with nails or teeth. From far down the ventilation shafts you hear a horrible, unearthly scream and whatever is grabbing you releases and slams into the side of the vent, causing the whole thing to start vibrating dangerously. You get a quick mental image of the vents collapsing and hope the beast doesn’t do that too many more times. To your surprise, the thing does not try to re-attach to you, and instead you catch a glimpse of what you could only describe as a “black oily tentacle” slithering its way back the way you came.

So much for retreat.

As the vents cease vibrating, you hear a muffled thud come from the direction of the vertical shaft and a vile rotting smell fills your nostrils. You throw a quick glance in that direction and immediately wish you hadn’t. A corpse, badly decayed, seems to have fallen out of the vertical shaft and into yours. It’s not the first time you’ve seen a body, but even still you have to keep your stomach from emptying its contents into the vent. It must have been in here for a few months, at least.

With panic growing in your stomach, you use the extra space given to you by the out-flowing vents, to twist around and place your feet on the vent leading to the room with the shelves. Hardly caring about the noise you might make, you start to kick wildly at the vent cover and, with a few well-placed blows, it flies off and into the room.

As quickly as you can, you follow suit — slithering out feet-first and onto the floor. The room is much smaller than your cell — the ceiling is only a little more than five feet off the ground, and you have to crouch a bit just to move around.

Fearing that the beast that attacked you might come back for more, you drag one of the metal shelves in front of the vent.

Hopefully that will stop it.

After groping around for a light switch for a few seconds, you hit your head on a swinging bulb in the center of the room and pull the chain.

Sweet, blessed light fills the room.

You seem to be inside a medical storage closet. The shelves are full of marked bottles and various medical supplies. You see a bin in a corner with some straitjackets and and a shelf in another corner with some bizarre electrical equipment.

One of the cabinets (in the wall to the left of the doorway) is closed and locked with a thick steel padlock.

You take a moment to clean off and re-hide your shiv, as well as to hide the rest of your contraband a bit more successfully about your person. In so doing, you take a look at your ankle and notice some deep gashes (as well as some minor bleeding). You’ll probably have to take care of that, but you’re not sure you want to do that here.

Taking a peek out the door, you see that the hallway is clear in both directions. There’s a sign opposite your door indicating that the lobby is to your right and the rest of the ward is to your left.

[poll id=7]
[poll id=8]
[poll id=9]

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Notes:
You chose to stab the thing and then exit into the room with the shelves.

The first roll to stab was unsuccessful, but the second was a success. Given that, I decided that the tentacle was able to wound you before you could hit it.

You guys indicated a preference for Vlad to try to conceal his stuff better, so he took some time to do that (about 20 seconds). It took about 15 seconds to move the shelf and another 5 to find the light. All told, therefore, you’ve been in this room a little under a minute.

Given the number of things you can do in this room, I decided to present a few binary choices in addition to the choice of where to go next. Picking yes on either of these means remaining in the room longer and accepting the consequences (if any) of that decision.

Not every episode is going to have multiple choices, but I figured this one would be appropriate.

I was going to present moving the shelf as a choice, but Vlad was still crazy enough from seeing the monster and the corpse that I decided he would act unguided on that.