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Room after room stacked with unconscious burden after burden. The place was full of people who had suffered the same malady. They all were still alive. Most had tubes into their arms dripping slightly salty water. They didn't react to anything the two cats might do.

At one point they see a single nurse seated behind a desk. She is working on a computer, and is completely oblivious to the two indistinct cats.

===========================
In the parking lot Jayden is no closer to finding the errant felines. More and more vehicles arrive, some ambulances, but most cars. People are steadily streaming into the small town hospital. It was clearly more than they could handle.

Jayden


What the hell is going on? he thought.

And where the hell is that damned cat?

He felt foolish doing it, but he closed his eyes and tried to reach out to the cat, using the sometimes tenuous connection he'd begun to feel with the small feline.

Jayden felt nothing, had no inclination of where the damned cat had run off to. Yet almost as if in answer to his question his grandfather's voice says "they went into the hospital to look around."

Jayden


"What the hell did they..." he blurted and then stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes widening.

The words had come from... wherever and just sounded in his head. His grandfather's voice. This was getting worse than weird and Jayden suddenly realized he was trembling.

"Whe-where in the hospital?" he asked haltingly.

Tiger-Lily/Dizzy

To keep contact with Shadow, she asks.

"Any idea what we are looking for? This seems to be very widespread. So many burdens. Maybe this was to get them out of the way so they could do more mischief back home? Going to look at the working burden."

There is one burden here sitting down acting very like her burden does. She might as well check it out.

Shadow

Again he focused on the sound and drew near, replying,

"Seeing how widespread it is can be useful, though so many Burdens all here at once, I hate to think what could be done with them all. I'll see if there's any clues from the type of Burdens affected as to if the plan is here or there."

"What do you think I am boy? Clairvoyant? I saw one go invisible, and the other turn into a shadow, and go through the front door. From there how the hell should I know?" The mental voice was full of exasperation.

Suddenly his grandfather continued "oh crap I shouldn't have said that. Just disregard that. They went into the hospital, ok?"

======================================
Tiger-Lily jumped up and saw the woman was typing on a computer. It was like other letters she had seen, but it was just a silly waste of time. They often did this kind of a thing. Her own new burden was a perfect example of that. He sat in front of that glowing screen all day long, poking at the thing in front of it. Really it was much better for laying on, a little heat coming from it, after all.

Jayden


That was it... he was now full-blown bats*** crazy. His dead grandfather was talking in his head about one invisible and one shadow cat.

Jayden rolled his eyes briefly ceilingward.

"Oh, what the f***," he grumbled and went back inside the hospital. Pulling a coin from his pocket, he flipped it, consulted the binary result and turned left.

The hall to the left offered a bank of elevators. Beyond that was a bewildering array of doors. This was a big building for a small town. On the wall was a directory that offered one direction for ICU, another for XRAYS, another for Emergency Room. Up elevator offered operating rooms, patient rooms. Down offered the Morgue, Electrical, Maintenance rooms. As he read the sign he noted that the other direction was Adminstration. More than one direction to go at this point.

Jayden


Muttering something about that damned cat, Jayden shrugged mentally, entered an elevator and went down.

Tiger-Lily/Dizzy

She is wondering if this line of enquiry is going anywhere. Nothing she can see of use around the moving burden. And she is getting anxious. Who knows what her burden could get up to if left unattended for this long?

The elevator went down and the first thing Jayden was assaulted by as the doors opened was industrial strength cleaner. It was obviously used down here to clean all kinds of things because it over rode every other smell in the place.

Directly across from the elevator was a dark sign with white lettering that pointed left saying "MORGUE" ominously. Evidently there was nothing worth noting to the right, as the sign didn't even mention the almost duplicate corridor.

-------------------------------
This little machine gave off more heat that her burden's. It almost invited her to lay upon the keyboard even though the nurse's hands wee ticky-tacking away.
The

Jayden


Jayden paused and shuddered slightly as the astringent smell assaulted his nostrils. Then he looked at the sign, shook his head slowly and, not sure why he was doing so, turned left and headed for the morgue.

The corridor seemed to get more lonely. Yet he arrived at the double doors to what was identified as the morgue by the plate on the wall. Evidently there were a lot of deaths because there were gurneys about the frigid room.

His grandfather said "Chuck? Is that you?

"Well that is amazing. I know it sucks too. But meeting you again after thirty years.

"Margaret is here too? I thought she died in 94."

Jayden


He put his hands up to his ears but that did not shut out the weird words, words that weren't coming into his mind through his ears.

Jayden didn't know where this was coming from or what it meant, other than him being crazy, that is.

"What's causing all this, Grandpa?" he asked.

"Oh sorry. I forgot you could only hear my half of the conversation. An old guy I knew back in the day died here in the hospital tonight. He was waiting here for his wife Margaret. But between you and me I think he is a bit out of sorts because she died over twenty years ago in a different state." It didn't seem to bother the spirit that he was talking about being out of sorts with regard to the spirit of a deceased in the morgue.

Jayden


"No... not that," he said with a scowl.

"I mean, yes, that's part of it, but what's going on around here that makes the morgue so... crowded?"

"That is what your feline friends were trying to determine. That is why they came with you to the hospital. They seem to believe that something powerful caused the weaker of the humans to collapse into comas. That caused them to all be clustered here. Why? That is the question isn't it? The darker cat believes for nefarious purposes, or so he commented. I sure hope they are not right. It wouldn't be good to have something really bad happen in this town, especially with you here." His voice trailed off at the end, softer and softer.

Jayden


Jayden scowled, concentrating on the words which appeared in his head.

"Can you help me find the cats? And is there a way I can talk to them?"

Then he realized his grandfather's voice was trailing away.

"Don't leave me!"

The old man laughed. "I am not leaving you boy. Just keep the darn gun nearby, I am tied to it." He answered almost as an after thought.

"The cats don't want you to know how smart or powerful they are. In short it is against their rules. I ain't telling you this neither, just so we are clear. I don't want one of them banishing me or something stupid like that.

"Regardless. I have no idea how to find them directly. I can look around, but that would entail me getting farther from you. I can sense where my old service pistol is, so I can find that. But...

"They came to the morgue, I can sense their little foot prints. I think they went towards the stairs next. Or I can go and come back. Up to you."

Jayden


He rubbed the slight stubble along his jaw line, frowning as he considered what the... well, what he thought his grandfather was telling him... he really didn't want to delve too deeply into the fact that his long dead grandfather was apparently living in his mind, so he figured he'd just think about that later - if at all.

"I'll head toward the stairs. Let me know if you... sense something."

As he walked, Jayden clutched at the revolver shaped bulge in his jacket pocket.

As he headed up the stairs the bulge bounced against his hip as a subtle but steady reminder of how out of place things had become. One, two, and three floors up.

"That door, they went through there," the voice of his dead grandfather said. There was only one door, the entrance to the second floor.

Jayden


He'd very nearly given up on trying to make sense out of anything and, nodding, turned and went through the door.

Down the hall Jayden sees a long corridor. Doors on either side, likely patient rooms. Out in the hall there were gurneys too. There were a lot of people in this little hospital. To his eyes he saw nothing, other than the nurse who was behind her station looking at a computer. She was so engrossed as a matter of fact that she didn't see Jayden right away.

[OOC: Tiger and Shadow feel free to jump in here, he has caught up with you.]

Tiger-Lily/Dizzy

Sitting watching the nurse and worrying about her burden, she looks up as the door opens.. and there he is! Maybe she summoned him? Anyway, no need to be here any more. She has had enough of this strange place with the awful smells. Moving behind the desk out of sight of everyone for a moment. She materialises and heads to her burden, rubbing around his legs, purring her approval.