As promised -

She wakes up. There's a metal cuff on her right wrist.

Conveniently lax. 

She keeps her eyes closed, her breathing slow and even, and she listens. 

"You awake?" someone asks her in a low tone. The woman's voice is hoarse, a little, cracking some. 

...Possible enemy? The note hadn't mentioned anyone else, but, Lily knows herself. 

She cracks her eyes open and peers at the woman. 

She peers back.

"He got you, too?"

(She appears to be in a handcuff, too - the other side of Lily's, actually. The chain loops behind the pipe, where it can't just be slid off.)

That reminds her about all the horrible goop drying on her body.

"...Ugh. Yeah." 

She looks around - they're in a basement, a giant hole in the ground and wall across from them, stairs to the right... Leaning pillars, cracks in the walls -

She doesn't know what time it is - she scrambles for her bra, the watch first - the ceiling will fall at 2:57, she remembers that, it's 2:53 - she needs the paperclip, but it's slipped pretty deeply into the lining - 

"There's something above us, shining some kind of green light around," she whispers. "I think it's been getting closer... And we're chained to a gas pipe and that ceiling is very, very unstable."

"No fucking kidding - oh come the fuck on," she murmurs - and then, finally, she gets a good grip on the paperclip without dropping it.

Her bra is somewhat destroyed on that side, but, whatever. 

She starts picking the lock on her own cuff.

She squints over at the other girl. "You get chained up a lot?"

"Usually the one doing the chaining," she murmurs, and - hah! 

The lock clicks, and the handcuffs come undone.

She muffles a laugh. "Maybe you can show me some tricks," she teases.

...Is everyone here a weirdo.

Whatever, they need to get out ASAP -

That might he a bit complicated, what with the way the door bangs all the way open, and a thing - the skeleton, its movements jerky like an old film with every third frame removed - it drags itself, skittering, down the stairs.

It's fast - too fast, it crashes into the bookcase - it's already rolling, about to lunge - 

(A very, very loud crack echoes from above their heads.)

She freezes a moment too long.

And the other woman throws her over her shoulder and sprints for the hole.

She - somehow - manages to jump into it ahead of the lunging monster - just as the building collapses over them.

They fall.

Lily's Dream, Age 16

The concrete under her is cold and a little uneven, and her thighs are going alternatively numb and angry. She's only in shorts, and - that's dumb, even in the early fall, if she plans to spend this long sitting on the ground. 

She hadn't actually been planning to do that. She'd been planning on going into the library in front of her, getting on their computers...

" - Hey."

She glances up, then - 

"You're alive."

Her voice cracks, even though she doesn't want it to. 

"As much as a ghost can be."

She sits by the other girl.

"So - looks like we got out of there okay, but..."

"This is one of my memories," she says. "Last time I fell unconscious - I dreamed about my great-grandfather. This time..." She stares at the library. 

She looks, too, but watches the other girl out of the corner of her eye.

"That good or bad?"

"Dunno."

"It was the first step on running away."

Serious nod.

"Have you gotten all the way out, yet?"

"Not really."

"They're still alive, and I can't get a restraining order, and - I can't get a needs-based scholarship for university since their income's high, and they won't give me a penny if I don't let them dictate everything about my life. I got a merit scholarship, but... It doesn't cover all my school fees, let alone my apartment."

"So. That sucks."

"They harass me, sometimes - usually through other people, and they spy on me."

"Want me to angrily haunt them?"