The inside of the room is hospital white--or at least it was before the rust and the and the bloodstains crept down the tile from years of neglect. There are no windows, just a harsh fluorescence that makes every color seem artificial and filthy. That's the thing about hospital lights--no matter how clean everything is, the cold unwanted edges of fake daylight and forced smiles make even the cleanest linoleum look positively grungy.<br/><br/>In this room, however, the false white light is simply chilling. It looks abandoned in the middle of an operation, the gurney still occupied, the tools still scattered over a battered steel tray carelessly. The blood on them has long ago turned to rust. Judging by the amount of brown-tinted scarlet, the operation had gone badly. An amateur, unsupervised, carelessly slicing flesh from bone. The evidence of motions is familiar, deep gouges and misplaced incisions suggest that the operation was performed in the way that a child would guess it to be done, simply cutting over and over until the patient was lost. The other, less innocent interpretation is homicide.<br/><br/>On the operating table is a man horribly disfigured, still dressed in a cape, a mask that only covers his eyes still stuck on his face.<br/><br/>Except when Michael blinks, it is all gone.<br/><br/>The room seems to be a small study. A desk sits straight back from the door, covered in yellowed papers. A fireplace, unused, is along the southern wall. Firewood and tools for maintaining a fire are situated on the stone hearth. The mantle above it is lined with pictures that are difficult to see if one is not up close to the dusty glass. A large window, dimmed and fogged like the others in the foyer, sits at the back of a leather chair, flanked by heavy velvet curtains.  The wall opposite the fireplace is lined with bookshelves, the dusty old volumes impossible to distinguish without handling them. A clock, not functioning, sits on the desk. The time on the face of it, if one were to notice, is stopped at the exact same hour and minute as the grandfather clock that has been silenced in the foyer. An old telephone sits next to a pen nestled in an inkwell, though the cord disappears underneath the desk.<br/><br/>According to the dead clock, it is twenty two minutes past six pm.