Eyes widening, you fix the nurse with a suspicious glare as you step closer. She just looks back innocently. "Well, I'll be closing the door, now!" she announces, Daisuke nodding gratefully. Taking the hint, you step through before she shuts it, leaving you in the hall with she and your already-departing companions. Something is clearly up here, and you're still not in a position to transform and warn them of your suspicions. Besides, it may not be a bad idea to follow her. She could have simply misspoke… you honestly doubt it, but you still want to make sure.
And so it is that you turn and follow her down the hall, in the opposite direction Midori and Pallavi are headed. At first nothing seems odd, but after passing a few doors, she glances back over her shoulder, and picks up her pace. You glance back as well, but it's just the usual assortment of doctors and a few other visitors also making their way back to the front elevators. You speed up in turn, and she shifts to all-but-jogging through the hall, dodging around a thicket of people to slow you down. You're relentless, though, and do your best to regain lost ground as she turns the corner, suspicion turning into outright anger.
There's another bank of lifts up ahead, with one already open and waiting; she quickly dashes in and hurriedly smashes a button to close the doors on you. You don't even bother stopping, running straight for the doors in hopes of wedging through, focused solely on catching her without any higher thought. The opening is already shut as you close in, but you don't even care, slamming full-tilt into them -
And so you're caught off guard when you rush right through and into the open elevator shaft. Sickening vertigo pushes away your singlemindedness as you fall down, clipping painfully against a beam on the opposite wall, and in the moment of pain, fall through the ceiling of the elevator itself and land face-first on the floor, making the lift judder a tad - though that may just be dizziness from the blow.
By the time the pain clears enough for you to regain your feet, the nurse has already left and the doors are closing again. This time you're able to stop them, roughly slapping the trigger to make them reverse direction as you stagger through. You're in a sub-basement, the friendlier atmosphere of the floors above replaced by cold concrete and harsh fluorescents, but you barely process much more than that as you scan for any sign of your target. She's disappearing around a corner a little ways down to your left, and you rush to pursue again.
Turning into the narrower side hall, you see it runs diagonally downward quite a ways before leveling out and widening again, ending at a bigger loading dock door. There's another door up against the side wall, though, a fancy gold-embossed thing that seems out of place against the sparse surroundings. The nurse is stepping through as you run down towards her, smirking and sipping from another juicebox as she watches you. At the last second she's engulfed in (or rather, replaced by) tangerine-tinted black smoke and shadows, and then the door slams shut behind her, the lock turning with an audible click.
You slam into the door a mere millisecond too late, the frame flattening out and the edges beginning to fold in on themselves like origami, until nothing is left and you're facing a blank concrete wall. "NO!" You shout, punching the space it had just been, but all you get is more pain for your trouble.
Taking a moment to calm down, you think things over. You know this wasn't Nelchael, but it's obviously someone of their same race. Maybe they could provide some insight into this… but you might not get any useful answers, if this is some sort of setup. It might be more prudent to tell Midori and Pallavi, but then you might have to explain to the latter why you were here and chasing the 'nurse' in the first place. Maybe you could just keep it to yourself and investigate further on your own before sharing anything, just in case there's something you're missing here. Though with your present state, it would be difficult to ask the hospital staff about the suspicious nurse, so any such investigation would require more indirect tactics.
You make your way back upstairs, (thankfully this sublevel is almost deserted, so nobody is around to see you pushing elevator buttons) pondering your next course of action. Unfortunately, you don't see any point in sticking around here, so make your way back around to the lobby and outside, glancing up and down the city street. Midori and Pallavi are long gone by now, of course, likely back at Nel's office. With that in mind, you return to the alleyway from earlier and tap your ring, leaning against a wall as you wait and wondering vaguely why you aren't falling through.
Soon enough, another door rises up from the ground, and Nel steps through. "Varma-san is still in there," they whisper to you, "So I'll have to act like this is a false alarm, alright?" You nod and step through as they loudly announce something inane about raccoons, and slink into the far corner. You watch the discussion intently, but troubled thoughts continue to swirl in the back of your mind.
"Anyway," Midori says as Nel closes the door again, "After that a nurse came by to tell us visiting hours were up, so we didn't get to hear any more details."
Nel nods. "I see. Still, we now know this was premeditated. It means we have a culprit to look for; this isn't just a random occurrence."
Midori lets out a sigh, counting on her fingers as she offers a rebuttal. "On the other hand, we still have no clue who this person is, what their motives are, how they're transforming these people in the first place, or why these specific victims were chosen."
"Well, I think there may be a pattern to the last one, though a sampling of only three means it's by no means certain." Nel says. "First of all, all three victims are extremely physically healthy, unusually so. This man is on the older side, but keeps fit, and while the other two were less dramatic cases, they too boasted a lack of significant illnesses or conditions. Secondly, all three seemed to be alone at the time of transformation. It made it easier for them to be dealt with undetected, but also for our culprit to get at them in the first place."
"Maybe they don't want witnesses any more than we do?" Pallavi suggests.
"Possibly, yes." Nel agrees. "While the first monster did get seen by some before it could be contained, since it was so unexpected, that was only after a great deal of wandering from its initial position. The subsequent ones both went largely unnoticed despite being in densely populated areas, because they were transformed late at night when very few humans would be out and about. If this continues, we can likely expect it to occur in that same time frame."
Pallavi's intrigued expression turns into a concerned grimace. "I'm a heavy sleeper; this could be a bit difficult to get used to."
"Don't worry," Midori says, smirking in amusement, "You can just catch up on sleep during classes!" Pallavi's horrified expression in response finally breaks through your troubled mood, and you snicker a bit as Midori facepalms. "I was joking, joking."
"Anyway," Nel speaks up again, "If that's all, I'll let you both go for now. Hopefully we can find further clues soon, and put a stop to this before anyone gets truly hurt."
They nod in agreement, and a few summoned doors later, make their exits. You're left to approach Nel's desk, still feeling pensive. "Why did you return later?" They simply ask, curious and excited rather than judging as you expected. "Did you find something else?"
How much to say?
> Talk about the nurse (Nel may be able to identify them, one way or another…)
> Make something up (You just fell behind by accident, nothing special, sorry…)
Where to go?
> Home (You want to take some time to relax before something else comes up…)
> Follow Midori (To perhaps discuss with her how things went...)
> Follow Pallavi (Maybe you can learn a little bit more about her…)
> Write-In
