Faust turned to the newspaperman and lifted the pen light. After a moment’s consideration, he shook his head and lowered the instrument again. “No good,” he said. “You always look as if you’ve spent the night in a trench.”
“That’s bonkers,” Rosemary protested. “I was in the tower for a day and a half, and we ate together just before I left.”
The old doctor nodded thoughtfully. “Curious,” he admitted. “When do you recall that you started feeling tired?”
“The landing bay,” Rosemary answered quickly. “Or just before that. When we were in the lift, I remember realizing that I felt enervated. Before that, I was right as rain.”
“I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the tower too,” Lamont suggested. “Perhaps you should take a look at me.”
Faust turned to the newspaperman and lifted the pen light. After a moment’s consideration, he shook his head and lowered the instrument again. “No good,” he said. “You always look as if you’ve spent the night in a trench.”
“Thanks for that,” Lamont sighed.
“I always assumed it was an aesthetic choice,” Francis admitted.
Rosemary reached for her satchel. “I wonder if it has anything to do with the purple berry things. They’re just about the only thing in the garden that obviously looks like food, and they’re right filling. I examined one in my mobile lab and it looked like a dense packet of fiber, proteins and sugars to me. Maybe you can find out more, Milo.” As she spoke, she was fishing through the satchel, from which she pulled several clear containers, setting them aside one-by-one. Finally, she peered inside the open bag, sat up straight, and frowned. “Odd,” she said.
“What is it?” Faust asked.
“I’m certain that I collected two of them before I left. They should be in one of these petri dishes.”
Curiously, the doctor stepped up beside where Rosemary was sitting and began examining the specimen containers minutely, shining his pen light inside them. After discarding a few, he lifted one in front of Rosemary. “What are those from?” He asked.
“What?” The medic asked, her green eyes regarding the apparently empty container.
“Little threads or filaments,” Milo explained. He pointed his light directly through the side of the container, and Lamont could just make out something that caught the beam like a strand of spider’s web.
Rosemary shrugged, looking closely at the dish. “It doesn’t seem possible that they would biodegrade so fast.”
The doctor clucked his tongue, taking the specimen container in the direction of one of the back rooms. “You forget, Rosemarin, that we ought never to discuss impossibilities in our line of work. What we see is what we see.”
Admiral Akbar said it best... it's a trap.
Also the Eagles.... hotel California... you can check out but you can never leave.