An invitation to a party appears on various university billboards inviting people to the Kappa Alpha Frat house located in the mostly finished Castle Commonwealth mall on the edge of town. The notice instructs people to follow the access road at 67 Lost Nation drive and enter through the back door and promises that signs will be posted to guide people to the party itself.
"We might look at the computers more in depth later but I think it's probably better to do our exploring while it's still daylight." The next room bears some resemblance to a compressed hospital ward, there are beds with various life-support looking monitors around them arranged along most of the walls. The far left corner has what looks to be an infant intensive care unit, and the far right corner has a couple tables with the fittings for telesurgery. In the middle of the room are several other types of tables for things from dentistry to the sort of exam table you'd see in a physician's office. "I'm not sure whether to be reassured or concerned."
"Almost definitely concerned," Tamaris says, moving over to poke at the devices.
(Rex follows her, sticking close now where he hadn't before.)
"Although, I have to wonder why on earth they've provided facilities for infants. And the telesurgery equipment seems somewhat more advanced than our current standard."
"Seems like whatever the reason whoever it was had for bringing us here probably wants us healthy. Or the lab rat thought was accurate and they intend to cut us open to see how we work."
She grimaces when Rex makes a quiet, distressed noise, and Tamaris shoots her a dark look.
"Does there seem to be a standard first aid kit? This is all well and good, but really, sometimes you just need a bandaid and some antiseptic cream."
Looking around the room there aren't first aid kits in evidence. "I think if this place was intended to cut us open it wouldn't be shown to us like this. But maybe I'm being overly optimistic."
"The lack of first aid kits is really weird now that you mention it. This place looks like a clinic with no storage for medical supplies of any kind."
"That's somewhat disconcerting," Joss murmurs. "It's obviously not that they don't expect injuries to happen, it's like they didn't fully understand what a medical clinic needed. She hugs herself and shivers slightly. "This entire thing is disconcerting. Feels off, wrong."
She leaves, and leans against the wall outside, taking deep breaths, trying to establish some kind of reality.
"She'll be fine," Tamaris says, not quite dismissive. "I think she has some bad experience with hospitals and the like, she hasn't been entirely forthcoming with that information. This place, pretty creepy without that. Anyway. I'm not seeing much else we can look at here. Shall we?"
And Tamaris turns to leave as well, Rex right on her heels, both of them looking back slightly to Alice and Zahn.
"Yeah definitely," they follow her out and Alice opens the door to the next room. The room is filled with worktables, the side walls are lined with cabinets and the back wall has a countertop with a pair of sinks mounted in it. "Well this looks remarkably normal."
Joss detaches from the wall and follows behind them. She stays quiet, moving towards one of the cabinets.
What's in the cabinet is board games. Settlers of Catan, Monopoly, Life, Yahtzee, and so many more. "Well, that's sorta charming. I remain pretty confused, but I'm also charmed."
"That is strangely, almost disappointingly, normal," Joss comments. "But at least we have plenty of entertainment, right?"
Tamaris snorts behind her, not quite a full on laugh.
The other cabinets on this wall contain a mix of games and art supplies, mostly those for drawing and painting and fun projects with kids. On the other wall the art supplies are more suited to more heavy duty projects like carpentry and pottery the games also contain some more mature entries like Cards Against Humanity and Betrayal at House on The Hill. "Well, we're certainly not going to get bored any time soon."
"Is no-one else going to comment on how much of this seems geared towards children? Like, preteens and stuff? Seems odd given we got here from a frat-party invitation?"
"Well, I'm not exactly an artist, so it might make sense to use it if I decided to pick up art, but yeah, that combined with the neonatal unit in the clinic seems to suggest they expect there to be kids eventually, I think they expect us to be here for a long time."
"And we haven't seen anyone else yet." Joss frowns. "But we know our flatmates were coming here as well. And they would have let us know if they changed their plans. Which means they've ended up somewhere else... There were...six different options?"
"Anyone tried going back down the elevator?"
"Alice and I checked it, that's why we came back to the lounge really, the keyboard doesn't do anything when you try to type something in. Even if it did I'm not sure what I'd type."
Tamaris takes a smart step away from Joss as the other girl swears and punches the side of her fist into the door.
"Well, then," she says, with a surprising amount of calm. "We may have a problem then."
"You're only just deciding that? Maybe something else will have a way to switch the elevator back on?"
"There were those computers back in the library, if this place is as modern as it looks maybe the elevators can be controlled remotely. Otherwise, I think we mostly have to keep moving and see what we find."
"Then let's go," Joss says, heading back out into the hall. "I really don't think we're going to find much else here."
The next segment of the ramp leads to the ground floor. There are bike racks and a few closets but they're all empty. There's also a sunroom of sorts. There are also several doors to the outside and lots of windows. "Huh, well we've found an exit, but it doesn't look like there's much here. Onwards to the basement?"