The two subjects haven't been talking to anyone except each other since they've been here. Samuel can see them reaching over to touch each other, can see them leaning close. Their lips aren't moving which is the problem.

He can tell that the occultist poindexters know that something is up. They keep whispering to each other, prodding each other and the more Keyes watches them, the more he thinks that someone has to go in and do something. They spent millions of dollars on following those clues, on setting this up, on failed experiment after failed experiment.

Results were going to come. No matter what.

Keyes nudges one of the interns, a small guy by the name of Franklin. He was one of the quieter ones, who never seemed to get into much trouble. "Franklin. Go and approach the subjects. It's been too long, as we need to know if they understand us and if we can get our mission going."

Franklin is nervous, clearly unsure if he should approach them. Keyes doesn't do anything except glare at the bespectacled man until he finally exits the observation deck, to venture down to the huge ring of chalk and magic they'd put together to seal them in.

For his part, Franklin really doesn't like coming down. He can feel that there is magic in the air, in a way that he'd only experienced once or twice as a child before all of this. It's brimming with it as he makes his way to the very edge where he knows he's being watched by the man and the woman, and he clears his throat. "Hello? Can you — can you understand me?"

There seems to be some recognition from them of the words being spoken by Franklin, but just as well, there is no solid proof, no response, that says, ‘yes, we can understand you’. They simply know he is there and a knot of dread is quick to form in Franklin’s stomach; he doesn’t know what to expect and though his gaze veers away from them, back up toward the observation deck where Keyes keeps his eyes glued to the scene unveiling before him, there comes no ease from his superior.

Keyes had been right – they had spent far too much money, far too much energy and time, to get this far, and stopping now would only damn everything they had done and the lives that had been lost in failure after failure for this.

“Excuse me–” he prods again with careful steps around the chalk ring, diligently maintaining his distance from it to keep it intact. One wrong stop, one wrong move or brush of his foot across the white lines, and the barricade they had set up to keep them in this place would be broken. Franklin didn’t want that on his conscience – not only because of the escape risk, not only because of the danger the couple presented, but the eyes boring into the back of his head from behind spectacle lenses.

He gulps. “My name – I’m Franklin,” he introduces himself to the two, a different tactic than most who had tried to communicate with them. It is an attempt to get personal, to be friendly in his attempts to become familiar with the two who watch him, not unlike prey, as he moves around to try and find another angle to address them from – something less frightening, less suspicious despite all that stands against him.

“We know who you are,” Franklin says after a beat of silence, nodding over to the man for a brief moment before his attention turns to the woman, “but who are you? We were only supposed to bring one.”

He wants for there to be an answer. Desperately hopes for one with Keyes' eyes on him. The woman keeps staring at him, as if she's considering if she should answer, or if she should draw away.

She finally does pull away from the man, her ink black hair shining beneath the lights as she speaks, her voice buzzing with an odd thing behind it, her voice mocking, "We were only supposed to bring one." She smiles, razor thin and sharply cruel. "Supposed to bring one."

Franklin has never been more terrified in his life, sweat beading down his face in bullets with fright. Something like a mirage shivers between them, and her head turns, barking something out to the man there, that he thinks is an insult, a wave of anger. He raises his voice, trying to keep whatever it was at bay. "Please — I didn't mean to insult you! Or him! We just need — I just wanted to m-make sure —"

The woman shoves at the man, the subject, Brand.

Shit, shit. "Don't do that, please!"

The woman ignores him. "I told you we shouldn't have been there! We should've been with Hank!"

Franklin whips his head to the observation deck, mouthing out Hank?

Keyes doesn’t have an answer for him. He remains quiet, watching as their demeanor shifts – first into that wave of anger that is followed by Franklin’s panic only to turn into violence. The shove doesn’t seem to do much other than push the man away, Franklin able to see the lines in his face grow deeper, furrow, as if the mention of Hank proved irritating…

… but who was Hank?

“What’s Hank goin’ to do about this?” The man yells back, rigidity quick to be found in his posture as there is no way, it seems, he is going to back down from the inken-haired woman no matter how angry she is.

Perhaps Keyes expects it with his lack of action, but Franklin, still sweating and still worried, only grows more so. It writhes around his nerves, makes his skin crawl as the situation goes from bad to what he perceives as worse, and there is a scratch in the back of his head that says he can’t let them continue – can’t let them do any damage to all they had worked toward to bring them there – even if they had come together.

“Ple–please stop!”

Something hard hits the barricade, a gust that blows everything within around in a torrent of wind, throwing up her hair and rustling the fabric of their clothing and slamming against the shielding magic as if a window pane; but it thankfully doesn’t disturb the chalk, Franklin’s eyes cast downward for but a moment to make sure it was still intact.

“We can find a resolution to this!” Franklin claims. “Who is Hank?”

"You know damn well what Hank has to do with this!" The woman snaps back, her voice rising in a way that makes the magic shiver again.

Franklin can feel the situation starting to slip away beneath his fingers, can feel that Keyes is going to flay him alive if he doesn't get everything under control. "Please, I don't think this Hank is the real issue here!"

He edges closer to the chalk, and that itch is at his brain again, stronger this time with the woman's eyes boring into him, as if he's beneath her. This isn't his argument, he should shut up, he should not move another step.

Still, he tries as the woman turns her head back to him. "If it's not him, you're complaining about the house or the wings!" Another shove against the man's form, and Franklin thinks the shadows have to be tricking him with the thinness of the man, with the shadows falling on him. "They've only been around a month, and all you can do is complain!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Franklin thinks he can see a rat, scurrying about as she shoves him again. "Please, Miss —"

“You haven’t done anything with them! They’re takin’ up space!”

Franklin doesn’t know what they’re talking about, but it seems to be a point of contention between the two – enough so that they’re willing to fight in front of complete strangers at a time that had to be confusing at best. Hank, wings, the house – none of it makes any sense that he can put together and Keyes, still, doesn’t respond as the anger, the shadows, appear to eat at the man’s flesh.

“Stop! You need to stop!” He shouts, looking back to Keyes urgently as the male subject’s skin starts to sluff off, dropping onto the ground as if melting before his very eyes. It doesn’t stop him from moving, from fighting back, but where words had once been, only a terrifying scream remains, launched from slowly revealing vocal cords through a skeletal jaw and bared teeth.

“Sir! We can’t let them keep doing this!”

Unfortunately, he is sure Keyes can’t hear him when it is all Franklin can do to cover his ears, attempting to block out the haunting scream not unlike bloody murder.

At least all he can do without stepping across the chalk line, Franklin’s eyes bolting down to gauge whether it was worth the risk to break through, to stop them himself, though there is no promise that they actually would.

The screaming is peaking when the woman lunges from where she is to attack the main subject. Franklin's brain can't quite seem to process what he's looking at when she shoves him against the barrier hard enough to make it all shake, like glass right before it shattered.

There's no shattering, just something far far worse when the woman takes hold of the man's still shifting frame and her mouth opens wide, showing off fangs —

— and she tears into that exposed neck and cords. Franklin is terrified to his bones seeing the display of her teeth savaging what remained of the man's neck, blood hitting the air, dousing the barrier and he's moving forward, trying to separate them like two angry dogs fighting in an alley.

That is a grave mistake, between his nice leather shoes scuffing the chalk and the blood spray going everywhere. Even if it doesn't break through the barrier, it seeps onto the chalk, and starts to ooze through it as the woman pulls back to spit out the skin, diving in for another bite, Franklin almost slipping on the hot blood that hits the floor and sprays his face.

"Stop it, stop it!"

Blood spreads as he pulls the woman back as best he can, and it's only when she turns to grin at him, mouth caked in blood, that he realizes this is a mistake.

The lights start flickering.

The screaming stops when the blood starts, just enough flesh left on his bones to provide that much needed hook, line and eventual sinker that sends Franklin into the fray and he is sure he can hear the man – the skeleton – laugh in the last remains of bloodied flesh.

“Franklin!”

It isn’t a yell of concern for the researcher that leaves Keyes mouth rather one of reprimand for breaking the very circle keeping them trapped within.

All it takes is an opening and all it takes is a rat.

As she turns to Franklin, the bones suddenly drop to the ground as if the last bit of life had been drawn from him, breaking apart in an all-too-loud clatter against the sudden silence and disintegrating into the ground; but it is far less of a concern to Franklin as he stares at the woman’s bloodied face, unable to fathom just how quick things had gone from bad to worse to this.

“Where did he go?” Keyes yells, grabbing the first person he can by the coat lapel only to pull them forward to shout once more – “Find him!” – before throwing the other researcher back again, ushering him along. It doesn’t stop there even as he turns back to the circle, hands gripping the observation deck railing tight.

“Franklin!”

The woman's lips don't move. Her voice echoes in his head anyway. Oh, Franklin. You've never wanted to deal with such scary things before.

It feels as if something is digging under his skin, flipping through his mind. The lights keep flickering and he thinks he can hear squeaks, can smell blood and his mind is trying to push forward, trying to push her out and move and he can't, he can't.

"Franklin! Someone do something!" Keyes is yelling.

The woman reaches out to grasp his face, and he thinks of his wife back at home, thinks of his sons and the woman's hands squeeze his face tightly. "Please —"

"Don't beg. It's pathetic to have the last thing you do is to beg. Have some dignity, yeah?" The woman says, and he hardly comprehends the words, the meaning.

She squeezes and pulls upwards.

The last thing Franklin thinks is: She's too strong.

Then his head separates from his shoulder in a gory, blood filled display and he hears alarms blare and then nothing more.

Keyes keeps his eyes on the mayhem even as pandemonium breaks out around him between the alarms, emergency lights and hustling bodies as if shooting daggers at the woman who had separated Franklin’s head from his shoulders. The blood hits the floor, further destroying the chalk lines in red, and she remains among the gore.

It is a perfect distraction.

He doesn’t hear the snap of a smaller creature’s death as a skeletal form seems to grow from the rat’s innards, doesn’t notice the clattering and cracking and creaking of bones coming together, doesn’t realize the shadowed shapes of insects are coming together to fill out flesh once more, chunks missing where the woman’s teeth had dug in.

But he hears his voice.

“S’pose I should let you know,” the newly reformed man says, grin clear on even a partial face, “Hank is a rooster.”