Dry laugh. "Pretty much. You'll fit right in."

Snort. "Not wrong."

"We can go shopping tomorrow, if you want. Get you a sleeping bag or a cot or something. And some more clothes so you don't have to keep borrowing Daisy's."

"That'd be nice. Thanks."

"'Course. Honestly, it's nice being around someone without so much of the--history." Vague gesture. 

"Heh. Glad I can help, I guess."

"Do you have any questions? I know this all must be, uh, a lot."

"It's a hell of a lot but 'what the fuck is even going on' seems, uh, kind of broad, as questions go."

"Yeah." Melanie sighs and leans back. "Bet Jon could get a useful answer with that. Um. The supernatural's real, it's based on fear and turns people into monsters like Jon or Daisy or Elias. Some people worship it and want to help it end the world. None of this is common but there are a lot of people in the world and you don't actually need very many of them for it to become a problem. So. There's other stuff too--ghosts, books, architecture--but we have even less of an idea about all that."

"That's, uh... unpromising. Man, I really wish I was more sure about whether the Cave Things want to end the world or not. Like, they suck! They suck so much! But depending what they want and how bad it is and what the fear monster things ending the world would look like, they might suck less, you know?"

"Yeah." Sigh. "I guess the world hasn't ended yet, at least."

"I mean, that's good, but if people keep trying... it kinda only takes one, you know?"

"Yeah. We just have to keep trying too, I guess."

She nods.

Time passes. Basira reads; Melanie watches youtube videos on her phone for a while before heading up to the offices to plug it in. Eventually it's time to sleep.

Basira wakes up three times in the night and does a full patrol of the Institute all three times. Melanie only wakes up once, but she wakes up screaming.

April sleeps like a log, with similar levels of noise and movement, right up until Melanie screams at which point she startles awake and immediately curls up in a fetal position with her hands over her mouth. It takes her a few seconds to recognize that the person screaming isn't her, at which point she drags a blanket over her head and burrows back into her nest, somewhat more tensely than before.

It's kind of hard to tell when it's morning, since the hallways are always pitch black.

Basira and Melanie will head up to the offices at some point, though.

If April keeps sleeping, Basira will come down to wake April up at noon or so.

If otherwise uninterrupted, she will totally sleep until noon.

Waking her up is pretty easy, though, all you have to do is make any kind of human voice noises or touch her.

Basira starts with a very quiet "Hey" from a safe distance, so that works fine. She isn't going to touch April unless she has to, she still has basic police training for dealing with extremely traumatized people.

The blanket nest rustles for a few seconds and then a bleary face pokes out. "G'morning. Is it morning?"

"It's noon. I can let you sleep longer if you want, but I thought I'd let you know. It's easy to lose track of time without any light to keep track."

"No, noon is good, noon seems like a decent time to wake up."

"Great, I'll plan on waking you up at noon then. Melanie had plans to take you shopping, right? There anything else you want to do?"

"Going shopping sounds like a good plan to start with. And, I dunno, if there's stuff I can do to help out around the place..." She trails off with a shrug, which incidentally helps excavate her from the nest. Up she gets.

"Not really." Does April like granola bars, here is a granola bar and a bottle of water. "Eat enough, drink enough, start working out. You can do research if you want, I guess, or if it looks like there might be anyone planning an apocalypse. Who knows, maybe I'll end up teaching you to shoot."