What choice did the orderlies have, but to comply? Either woman filtered into the chlorine-scented cell marked<em>A, </em>to be locked away and forgotten. Only when the door was fastened did one speak her mind, bitterly, promising a righteous reckoning.<br/>"You mustn't follow her, she is mad. She belongs in here, with them. She will lead you only to ruin. Don't believe her lies."<br/><br/>There was no resistance on the part of the patient restrained. Leather straps unbuckled to slough her grey-clad body into Danae's custody, loose and somnolent. One could see, from the skin of her hands and throat, that she was tanned by holiday sun and a soft woman of idle pursuits, not long at all in the ordeals of asylum life.<br/><br/>The two halves of a mask, encasing the head, required some specialized tool to loosen again. There was no recourse, for the ill-equipped, save to crack the porcelain open like an egg and carefully, so carefully hatch the head within. It could be viciously sharp, broken porcelain, but with care the pieces could be pulled clear of the skin, and the face beneath finally seen.<br/><br/>It was Eloise, one of the Saint Ezra Country Club girls from the<em>Charlotte. </em><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Eloise</div><div class="spoiler_body">(https://i.imgur.com/eSr6eFY.png)</div></div><br/>Gone were the flowers from her auburn hair, gone was the joy from her face. Eyes large, witless, she stared at her rescuer, and her tongue worked within the prison of her mouth until spit spilled down her chin. Something had happened to her mind, something had come unfastened within a glass case that no words of comfort, no amount of jostling could repair.<br/><br/>But she could stand, and she could follow, and when an object was presented to her palm, she could squeeze white-knuckled with an urgent need Eloise could no longer articulate.<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Faelyn's Perception</div><div class="spoiler_body">As the whine of the pipes intensified, the sound threatened to conceal any sound of pursuit up the stairs. Faelyn could be certain that the sound was no longer coming from somewhere downstairs, but was flowing into the attic, to one of the very nearby rooms- <em>F </em>or<em> G </em>or <em>H, </em>somewhere along the west wall. </div></div>