Jack Riggs and the Detective turned slowly to face one another.

The silence was almost a sound of its own for a moment. One could've heard a pin drop. Both of them turned into the darkness of Medical, curtains drawn on one side of the bed, pale against the sudden shadows of the room.

"Nice place you have here," said the Detective drily.

Jack shushed him.

"Okay, guessing this doesn't happen often. . ." the Detective murmured to himself, raising his hands defensively when Jack shot a look at him.

Both were listening keenly. After another moment of the utter silence, the Detective's irritated squint became a thousand yard stare, and his face grew pale.

"Do you hear anything?" he said softly, still staring vacantly into the dark.

"Not a thing," Jack said, shifting back to a more comfortable position in his chair by the Detective's bedside. "Power outages happen on occasion, even in HQ. Someone's probably on their way to fix it."

The Detective rolled his eyes.

"Jack, what happens in a power outage? People freak, or at least get irritated. Often, people get scared. After all, most species have some fear of the dark," he said, plucking the IV from his arm, sitting up on his hospital bed and grabbing his coat from its edge.

"They're not wrong," said the hunter ruefully, raising an eyebrow before looking at the Detective. "So?"

"So. . . The irritated and the fearful aren't known for their vows of silence," he said, looking Jack dead in the eye.

"So why can you practically cut this one with a knife?"

"Stick together?" Bryan asked.

"Sounds good to me," Frederick replied. "Why are we whispering?"

Frederick opened a door, and burned some tin. Immediately, his senses become much finer, and he could see in the dark as a result.

"Anyone here?" he called out.

Maz looked up at Yocherry. This was a larger task than it sounded, considering that one Yocherry was worth more than four Maz-es.

'Um. No? Yes? Um, what?'

'Something seems off,' Yocherry said, looking around, eyebrow raised.

'Yeah, dude?' Maz said, antennae standing with life. 'Like, uh, like it's all, um, I dunno, fake? Like the figment of a, um, delusional imagination, um, brought on by trauma? And then, uh, you're just about to, dude, wake up back home in, um, the Labyrinth and go on with your life?'

'Well-'

'With no talking flowers or humans, or, um, fanfiction, or, um, any of that?' Maz paused. 'No offence.'

'You know, boss,' Yocherry looked down to Maz, eyebrow still raised. 'That was close, but I was thinken more "spooky." Place looks "spooky."'

'Oh. Um. Yeah.' Maz, who had been raised in a damp, claustrophobic cave system, and had lived most of her life eating decaying matter and half-rotten corpses, actually thought it all looked quite charming.

'Pretty spooky, dude.'

She remembered the last few... minutes? Hours? Fairly vividly, and resolved herself to trudge on.

The PA rang out a message: "Stay calm. Expect rescue within 18 hours. Happy Halloween."

((Once upon a time Levy had angel's wings. Once upon a time a monster named Argus pulled them from her back. Once upon a time Levy developed a phobia of Argus.))

She frowned and got off her seat and joined Zeb by the door. "Don't tell me Tolkien stopped spinning again?" she said irritably.

Zeb shrugged, his ears flat against his head. "I don't know, but something smells... off."

“Well, off to the ICU we go!” said the Guardsman cheerfully as he pushed the hovercart laden with supplies forward. “And we’d better make it quick, too. Dunno if those guys over there are in trouble.”

“Well, that’s what that generator on the cart is for, right?” said Naya as she looked behind her at the cargo in question being pushed around by her partner. “Yeah. Let’s just hurry, all right? This place gives me the creeps.” The quarian stepped to the side and planted a miniature floodlight on the floor, then stepped back towards the trolley to grab another. “What that Security Weed said in the lobby wasn’t exactly reassuring either. People reporting strange incidents or visions or new rooms. Is this some sort of airborne hallucinogen?”

The Guardsman’s particular facial expression was hard to guess behind his gas mask, but the shrug of his shoulders said all. “I blame the new architecture on the plothole. We both saw that abattoir, right? Medical might’ve landed on top of some location and blended with it. As for the visions… well, this just makes this situation look like a cheap horror movie. No idea about hallucinogens, but the air tests from the outpost back in the lobby come back clean. Not taking any chances, though. By the gods, shame on me if I'm ever going to forget putting on a gas mask after last week's incident.”

“Well, good thing you've remembered to put it on, then,” grumbled Naya as she placed another floodlight on the floor. “Now I’m just waiting for the eventual jumpscare. I mean, look at this place. Long grey hallway, darkness ahead, semi-darkness behind us, doors on all sides.”

"Thanks for jinxing us."

"You're welcome."

Apecian was sitting back in his chair, hands behind his head, while Michael filled out the seemingly endless paperwork. Suddenly, the lights cut out. There was complete darkness for a moment before the emergency lights turned on, and when they did, the room was not the same as it had been before. Apecian picked up his hammer, which had been lying on the floor, while Michael pulled out a pair of pink-tinted glasses from his pocket and put them on.

...And was now standing cross-armed beside the door of the examining room. It was the monthly checkup, and the Nurse had reached that part of the examination, so now he was waiting until they were done with it.

It was at that time the lights flickered, before going out completely. When the red back up lights came on Ajax turned to the door, hesitating for a moment before barging in.

What did he see?