Re: despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow

(Anonymous)

No, you know what's really freaky? READING THIS WHILE I AM IN THE HOUSE ALONE THANK YOU ALL TO HELL, MY FRIEND.

(Also, you're quite welcome, and part three definitely fulfills the promise of the first two...except now I am so nervous because you've split them up...)

—anon, chewing her nails

Re: despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow

(Anonymous)

"Them" of course being our intrepid protagonists; damn unclear antecedents. Mea culpa.

SUBJ: mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

(Anonymous)

I think maybe you should see this [link redacted; see below for contents]

Now look back up at your original comment.

There was a theory that when the house changes, it's reacting to perceptions of the people inside it. Essentially, it reacts to their reactions, and you get an eternal feedback loop of expectations and mood influencing the surroundings, which in turn influence expectation and mood. Ad nauseum.

(Oh, and if you've looked "up," then have you looked behind you yet?)

the dark line where the eye persists in seeing something that was never there to begin with

mea culpa mea maxima culpa

I think we're in the perfect spot to take a break from Shepard. I promise I won't do this often. (That's a promise I'll probably break, but I'll try, okay?)

Now, I want you to focus on the words (ignore the margins, ignore the smell, ignore what's behind you) and imagine.

Just imagine: Shepard leaves to check and see if there's some kind of weird Cerberus secret passage. And you're stuck with just one teammate for backup, with Shepard on the other side of the Wall That Physics Forgot; you and Shepard are divided by your own private five and a half-minute hallway.

While you're waiting, one of the shelves breaks or something, and a book or something smacks the key on the living room terminal and there's Kerre again talking about if you're watching this, she guesses you made it out alive.

Your HUD flickers out. Completely. No blue dots, no red dots, just endless grid and the little light-up it does while it sweeps for heat sources and link-ups to the Normandy.

So you tap your visor (or your helmet) and make a crack about something needing calibrated, and that's when you realize you haven't heard from Joker or Cortez since you hit dirt. And Shepard hasn't checked in to tell you what's on the other side of that ungodly wall.

Maybe percussive maintainance actually works, or maybe you're just that unlucky. Regardless, your HUD goes frantic. One red dot, and another, and another, and another, going on until you squint and realize they're not dots. They're those thick blocks that mean "Atlas" or "Harvester". Huge heat signatures with no matching Normandy IFF.

The HUD does one last sweep. It corrects itself: you're not surrounded by multiple enemies. You're standing in a red zone. As in, the ground under your feet, the roof over your head, the walls around you all register as one hostile entity.

All you get when you try to raise Shepard is weird distorted noises. Like echoes, if you bounced echoes off the Normandy's comm system. Or maybe a growl.