The brief walk down the hallway that PJ and Jack shared ended at an older looking wooden door, with the room number "145" printed right above it on a faux gold plaque. Jack could hear a voice, which sounded female, singing sweetly from the other side.

PJ extended his arm and knowcked on the door, momentarily silencing the voice behind it.

"Come in!" The voice called out, the volume of those words starkly contrasting the soft tones of song coming from inside just moments ago.

PJ and Jack complied, the former reaching for the worn out handle on the door and opening it inwards, where they were greeted by the sight of a woman sitting at a desk. She looked to be in about her mid-twenties, with dark brown hair pulled up into a bun, a dark complexion and warm chocolate coloured eyes. The desk she sat behind was covered in a multitude of papers, all of which were scattered about in a highly unorganized fashion across the surface, and various different writing utensils of all different colours and sizes. There was even a pair of rather large scissors at the corner of her desk that still had a piece of paper wedged between them, as if someone had been cutting something and then mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the act, leaving the project unfinished and abandoned.

The woman gave them both a smile, which seemed genuine, but tired and worn-out at the same time. Like she was exhausted but didn't want to be rude, and so was forcing herself through the pleasantries.

"Ah, PJ," she said, the tone of her voice matching that of her smile. Kind, but tired. "What a pleasant surprise. I haven't spoken to you in awhile. How've you been?"

"Good. Working on those newest case files, the same as you, and you know how stressful that gets." The woman gave PJ a knowing nod. "But everything else has been great."

"Glad to hear it. We can discuss those case files later, as I've got some information I need to share with you, but for now," she suddenly turned her attention to Jack. "I think it's only polite to get acquainted with our guest here."

"Hi," Jack started, feeling awkward in a conversation for the umpteenth time that day. "My name's Jack. Or, Sean I guess. Jack is a nickname, but you could call me either."

Jack was a bit less skeptical of this woman than he was of those two siblings they'd encountered back in the hall, so he'd decided to give her his real name as well as his nickname. Though whether or not that was a good idea, he had yet to discover.

"He's a new recruit," PJ explained. "I was assigned to inform him and all that."

The woman nodded uncertainly to herself for a moment, as if trying to remember something, before her eyes lit up with recollection.

"Oh, yes, you're McLoughlin! Sean McLoughlin! I was trying to input you file into the database earlier, but we didn't have much information on you, and I couldn't figure out why." She laughed to herself. "I suppose I should've checked the 'date added' at the top. That would've been smart. I've been a bit scatterbrained lately, as you can see."

The woman gestured to the miscellany of office supplies blanketing her desk.

"Anyways, my name's Sarah," she continued, sticking her hand out across the desk, which Jack shook in response. "I do administrative stuff. I used to be a field agent, but I ended up losing most of my lives on investigations and missions-"

"And the one time you leaned back to far on your desk chair," PJ interrupted, much to Sarah's displeasure. She glared at him, but then rolled her eyes in a joking fashion and continued speaking.

"So now that I'm on my last life, I do something a bit safer."

"I mean, you never know," Jack said with fake uncertainty. "You could get hit by a rogue stapler. Or you could get a really bad paper cut."

Sarah laughed at Jack's comedic approach at breaking the ice, which helped Jack relax a bit more. She was definitely a lot easier to talk to then Lin and Egan had been, which lessened Jack's stress and anxiety about this whole situation a tad.

"Haven't seen that happen to anyone yet," Sarah said, picking up some of the papers off her desk and attempting to sort them into a pile. "But I'll let you know when I do."

The conversation paused momentarily as Sarah took the small pile of papers she'd successfully manage to organize, opened a large drawer in her desk, and placed them in what Jack could only assume was a folder inside.

"Now," Sarah started again, bringing out a small laptop and placing it on the area of her desk that she'd cleared. "Let's get started shall we?"

Jack and PJ pulled over two chairs from the corner of the room and seated themselves on them, and then Sarah proceeded to ask Jack some questions and record his answers down on whatever document was open on her laptop. Jack was wary at first, fearing she'd ask him some insanely personal question out of nowhere and that the situation would escalate into some horror movie scenario, but that didn't happen. In fact, Sarah even gave him the option not to answer on some of the questions, which surprised but also relieved Jack. He just met these people after all. He wasn't exactly eager to share his life story, or something of the like.

The whole process itself took maybe five minutes, which was a lot shorter than Jack had been expecting. Questionnaire type-things normally took an asinine amount of time, usually for some stupid reason as well, so Jack was pleased when it was over quickly and the conversation no longer had to be reduced to simply reading and answering questions.

"And, we're done!" Sarah said, typing Jack's answer to what she had already stated would be the last question. "That takes care of all the boring stuff. It's painful, but it's mandatory."

Jack nodded in understanding. It seemed Sarah liked this type of thing as much as he did.

"Now all there's left to do is to head down to 134 for the bloodwork," Sarah visibly cringed as she said the last word, giving Jack the impression that she wasn't a fan of needles. "And then you'll be all set!"

"Alrighty," Jack said, turning towards PJ and preparing to leave reluctantly. "I have no idea where that is."

"Don't worry, it's just down the hallway and to the right," PJ informed him, speaking for the first time in several minutes. "The bottom-er, main floor in this place is really easy to navigate."

Jack and PJ both stood, both starting to move the chairs they'd been sitting on back where they found them, but Sarah insisted that they could just leave them as they were. Cordial farewells were exchanged, and PJ and Jack had almost left the room, before PJ stopped and frowned, as if something troubling had just occurred to him.

"Hey Sarah," he asked, turning back towards the room to face the woman he was addressing. "Egan mentioned that Alex was still here too. Where is he?"

"Oh, he had to step out to take a call a little while back," Sarah answered casually, quite preoccupied with trying to organize the mess in front of her. "Said it was really urgent, or something along those lines. He looked pretty upset to me, but I honestly don't know what was wrong."

Sarah's reply didn't alleviate the frown from PJ's face, and instead only caused his brow to crinkle in thought as he pondered the explanation he'd just heard. For the life of him, Jack couldn't figure out why this seemed to be troubling him so much, but if it was visibly perturbing PJ to this point then he wasn't sure he wanted to find out.

"Strange," PJ muttered, the thoughtful look in his eyes disappearing almost instantly after he said the word and snapped back to reality. "Anyways, we'll be going now. Great seeing you again!"

PJ waved over his shoulder as he spoke the last words, Jack emulating him and adding a quick "bye" before beginning to walk the rest of the way out of the room. Sarah gave a little wave back to the both of them in response as they finally closed the door and made their way down the hall, leaving the cluttered room behind.

"Everything okay?" Jack asked PJ, once he was sure they were out of earshot of the room.

"Yeah..." PJ replied non-convincingly. Jack waited for him to elaborate, but he never did, and instead gained that thoughtful and far away look in his eye again. It was clear PJ had just lied, and it was clear something wrong, but it was also clear that Jack wasn't going to get an honest answer out of PJ. At least not right then.

So, with a tense silence, the two continued down the hall towards room 134.

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The first thing that Jack noticed upon entering room 134 was that there was nobody inside, and the only door there was the one they'd come through.

The second thing was the giant contraption at the back of the room, which looked like the product of a transformer having sex with a vacuum. 

He felt his jaw drop in both wonder and slight horror when first laying eyes on it, not entirely sure what to make of it since he had no clue what its purpose was. There were tubes and wires hooked up to it in an anarchic fashion, each one seeming to have no designated path to follow, and some not even hooked up to anything, just hanging there uselessly.

On the left and right sides of the behemoth were two metal rectangular prisms, both of which had the appearance and shape of an air vent, which in turn gave the whole contraption a bit of a comical look, as the two add-ons looked like arms.

The front of it looked remarkably like a vacuum, even though it wasn't actually serving the same purpose as a vacuum. In fact, that front part all together appeared useless to Jack, at least currently. It wasn't humming or moving, and nothing was being put into or coming out of the contraption. He could've deduced that it was for decoration purposes, but that made absolutely no sense, because who would build something that looked almost exactly like a vacuum and call it a decoration? 

The centre of this thing, the 'body' of the machine, appeared to be either an empty aquarium or a sensory depravation tank. It was hard to tell which one it was with the blue tinted glass that made up 90% of it. All of the disorganized pipes or wires and the strange vacuum thing clearly were connected to this thing, pumping in or taking out god knows what and humming sinisterly the whole time it happened.

It made Jack incredibly uncomfortable.

Thankfully, PJ noticed him staring, and decided to try and dispel Jack's concern.

"Don't worry, we're not using that today. Or any day, for that matter."

Jack nodded, though it was half-hearted, as even though he was now certain he wouldn't have to use it in the near future, he still had no idea what it did or why.

"What does it do?"

PJ pondered for a second or too, before sighing in embarrassment. "To be perfectly honest, I don't know. Nobody ever teaches anyone about this thing, so the only people who know what it does are those who've been with the IH since this place was first established as our main headquarters. Which, believe me, was a long time ago," he said, drawing out the word 'long' for dramatic affect.

"I don't think anyone's even used it in a decade. It's just sitting here, constantly doing...something. I think it's just an outdated piece of machinery, and nobody learns how to use it anymore because it's obsolete."

Jack gave the machine another look over, trying to find anything about it that stuck him as being actively dangerous, but he couldn't find anything. The hanging wires were obviously a hazard, but other than that, there was nothing. The vacuum-looking part wasn't moving, and the only thing that appeared to be contained within the glass body of the whole contraption was whatever fluid it contained.

Still, Jack didn't trust it. 

But he didn't exactly want to keep standing near it either, so when PJ started walking away from the machine and towards a table in the far right corner of the room, Jack didn't hesitate to follow him.

After a couple of paces, Jack and PJ reached a close enough proximity to the table that Jack could not only see that there were various objects placed neatly on its surface, but he could identify them as well. There were several syringes full of different coloured fluids arranged in a way that seemed like their positions followed some sort of order, but what that order was was unknown to Jack. Next to those were a collection of what appeared to be unused syringes, all of them labeled with a number written on a piece of tape. Positioned right in front of a chair that was pushed up against the table was a microscope and what looked like some kind of flashlight, both of these objects placed a significant distance away from the rest of the objects on the table.

"Have a seat in the chair," PJ instructed. "I'll go get someone to help out with this."

Jack complied, taking a seat in the chair and watching as PJ began to turn around and walk back in the direction they came from. He started to reach out to touch the flashlight in front of him, curiosity overtaking him, when he heard PJ suddenly call over his shoulder.

"Don't touch anything!"

Jack immediately recoiled his hand and moved it away from the flashlight, slightly amused by the fact that PJ knew he would try to touch it, but also slightly disappointed that he didn't get a chance to inspect it. He wouldn't have pressed one of the buttons on it, obviously, as for all he knew this thing could be a magical ray that turned people into unicorns, but he'd kind of wanted to hold it. Just to get a better look at it.

Deciding it would be best to move his chair away from all of the equipment, just in case he actually carried out his desire to touch what was in front of him, Jack did exactly that and moved his chair towards the centre of the table. That way he was in-between the syringes and the microscope/flashlight, and wouldn't be able to just reach out and mess with any of them.

So, ignoring the objects on the table, Jack waited. Silently.

And alone.

Until he heard someone speak.

"I've never seen you around here," they said, their voice mixed with both curiosity and amusement. 

The sudden noise admittedly startled Jack a small bit, and he flinched ever so subtly at the sound of another person speaking out of nowhere. There hadn't been anyone else in here moments ago, and he hadn't seen anybody come in, so a voice suddenly talking hadn't been something he'd been expecting to happen. Turning to find the source, Jack was surprised to find another person over on that side of the room with him, standing at another table that was diagonal and to the left of him. 

The person who'd spoken was a man of about average height. The guy's nose was pointed, but not prominent, and his jawline was sharp. His black hair was a messy mop atop his head, the length of each lock varying, as if a five year old had hacked away at it all with scissors. He appeared to be going through a set of test tubes placed on the table in front of him, and sorting them into groups based on some unknown system.

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you," the man said with a small but cheeky smile. His words would indicate that he was trying to help reassure Jack, but in reality they had the opposite effect, as the fact that he'd somehow seen Jack just barely flinch without even averting his eyes from his task was unnerving. 

"Anyways," he continued, finally looking up at Jack. "What're you doing here?"

"I'm new," Jack explained, trying his hardest not to let it show that this guy's smile was making him uneasy. "Got brought down here for bloodwork, or something like that." With that last sentence, he gestured to the collection of empty syringes on the table.

"Ah, I see," he said understandingly, nodding his head with pity. "This part's worse than any mission they could send you on, if you ask me."

"I'm not terribly afraid of needles," Jack said, which seemed to take the guy by surprise. "But I'm not exactly fond of them either." 

He decided not to mention that he had had a panic attack earlier that had been caused by a needle. That wasn't something you share with strangers. Especially unsettling ones.

"Really? Most people I've met hate them with a passion. Some are too afraid to even look at them," the man replied, slight disbelief present in his words. There was something about the way he looked at Jack afterwards though, something odd. He gazed at him with the same expression a scientist would view a lab rat.

With a content sigh, the man took a step back from his table and walked towards another one, which was empty. He sat the sat on it, immediately beginning to swing his legs like a child would.

"So, my name's Alex," he said suddenly. "And you're Sean, right?"

Jack felt the entire world grind to a halt at those words.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

He felt a sharp pain suddenly overtake his right wrist, as if somebody had just taken something sharp and stabbed into it, although when Jack instinctively drew it towards himself and tried to look at it, there was nothing there.

A second later, the weird noise started. It was white noise. Static on a television. Like when you try to switch to a channel on an older TV, but it tells you that the channel you're looking for doesn't exist. It sounded like that. It felt like that. Like there was some sort of memory or correlation that Jack's conscious had tried to retrieve or make, only for his brain to tell it that whatever it was looking for didn't exist. 

Jack realized he must've spaced out for a solid ten seconds, because the man across from him, Alex, was staring at him with confusion.

"You okay there, pal?"

The way he said those words only made the pain in his wrist and the static grow worse, something about them bringing about the same sensation as before. There was something about that sentence. Something.

But Jack had no idea what that something was.

"Sorry, I just kind of spaced out there," Jack said, shaking his head with a vain hope that the action would cause the noise to cease. It didn't. "It's been a fucking weird day."

Alex let out a small laugh. "I know the feeling. We all do. It's not fun."

Jack smiled politely in return, trying his best to act natural in the weird situation, when something Alex had said jumped out at him.

"Hey, how did you know my name?"

There was an uncomfortable pause.

"Oh, well you said you're new," Alex said. "And I'd heard we were getting a new recruit by the name of Sean, so I just assumed."

Jack just nodded his head, pretending that explanation wasn't fishy coming from someone like him. Though to be fair, Sarah had given him the same one. It was just the way she'd delivered it had been a lot less... creepy.

It was at that moment that Jack stood up, fully ready to leave the room and find PJ, wherever the hell he'd gone. Alex was making him more and more uncomfortable, and Jack didn't want to be around for whatever freaky end the conversation could potentially come to.

Alex's expression promptly became dead serious, his eyes staring at Jack with a stern gaze. It was under this gaze that Jack finally took proper notice as to what colour those eyes were. He'd been too distracted by the other man's unsettling smile up until that point to take a good look at them.

They were green. Stern and calculating