An empty locker room was what came to be her designated hiding place. Without a second thought, Monika had stumbled inside and pushed the weight of her entire body back against the open door so it snapped closed with a resounding slam. With the hand that wasn't busy clutching the revolver, she dug around her pocket for the familiar feeling of rounded plastic. Her fingers closed on nothing but the papers from Ian's notes. Shoot... Of course! She'd dropped the cell phone back up in the main basement, as they had fled it. Oh, how could she be so stupid?!

Holding onto a little mobile phone wouldn't have deterred her in the least.And now she had both darkness and the guilt of running and leaving Trish and Ian to battle. Deserting her best friend when her life was in danger.Y ou would've just gotten in their way...

She felt like a traitor.

Leave it to the professionals. Trish is a cop, she knows how to handle herself. With a regretful groan, Monika leaned the back of her head against the door she was still leaning on to keep closed. She could hear something on the other side, approaching. Footsteps. "Who's there?" IDIOT! What if it's not Trish or Ian?

Monika shakily readjusted her fingers on her revolver, still wondering how it was actors on TV made handling such a weapon look so easy and natural. Like you were some kind of ignorant fool if you were not able to shoot firearms.

The wood creaked under the weight of the approaching form, getting louder with each step. It was impossible to tell if they were noises from sneakers, heels or claws, but whatever the case, there was only one coming towards the door, whatever it was.

A pause.

"...Monika?" Ian scraped a finger on the dead wood of the door as if he were petting a small animal, what he had of a nail getting caught on some splintery bits but he didn't seem bothered as he continued for a few moments before attempting to turn the handle, "Monika, are you okay? ...We have to keep going... and... your friend..." his speech faltered and he stopped moving his hand against the door. It was like he was trying to find the right words to explain exactly what had happened down the hall just a few seconds ago.

How could he, really?

Just them... Monika released her extended inhale in relief and blundered about in the frustrating dark of the locker room. Once the nose of her weapon had been carefully adjusted inside her pocket in a way that seemed safe from accidental fire, she turned around and clumsily groped for the handle.

"Oh, thank God you're both alright." with a sharp pull, the heavy door opened, it's hinges groaning at the unusual amount of force being placed on them. "Are they g--" Monika's eyebrows furrowed. With a couple of quick steps, she was out of the doorway and trying to peer behind Ian, as if he were hiding something from her. Obviously not finding it, she let her searching eyes squint down the hallway they were in, from where they were standing down to the obstructed door at the end."...where's...Trish?"She snapped her stare back at Ian, a look of utter confusion dominating her features. "Where's Trish?" she asked again.

He opened his mouth to reply and stalled, closing it again. How could he say it? Surely not go into detail of what he saw. What he heard.

The nasty crunch.

Ian tried again, looking to the side rather than at her, shaking his head a bit, "Monika... the monsters..." It really was odd calling them that, monsters. Shouldn't monsters look like nothing else on earth? So far there had been dogs, nurses, all easily mistakable for things that shouldn't be acting in such manners. Too bad for he and Monika, really, that they looked so confusing.

And especially too bad for Trish.

"I'm really sorry... but we don't have time," he gained back his frantic demeanor, taking Monika by the wrist and starting to run, keeping the rebar held away from his legs. They were close and he knew it, they had to reach the only way up.They had to go back to the other basement.The one that had scared the two girls into accidentally finding him to begin with.

All Monika's reaction could initially accomplish was following. The simple will to move her legs into a fast enough run to keep up with Ian, not even having to watch where she was going or steer her direction while being practically dragged behind him....the monsters...It was as if the implication that came with those two words had decided to hover about her as she ran forward, waiting for the most inopportune and inconvenient moment to sink in as something with a meaning she understood.

Dead.

Trish was dead, or badly injured, and they were running down the hall away from her.

Not two feet before Brookhaven's second elevator, Monika had gathered enough realization in her thoughts to reciprocate with action. A sudden tug of the arm in the opposite direction they had been running was all it took to wring out of Ian's grasp on her wrist. She had stopped completely.

"What are you doing?" Ian skidded to a stop shortly after she had, and predictably began to once again complain of their torpidity, making another grab for her wrist.Monika hugged her hand to herself protectively.

"Did you SEE her die?! Did you even check?"

"I HEARD it!" he snapped back with some irritation. "Do you want to know what I SAW? I saw her get surrounded and the dog--" Ian stopped, realizing who it was he was yelling at, and how much of their precious time was being wasted in the process. In an attempt to negate his previous bluntness, he promptly added. "It was quick..."Monika did not reply.

Her desperation was that of a cornered wild animal. Back hunched slightly forward, knees bent, and muscles rigid, she seemed very much like a tensed rabbit ready to flee at any moment. Half of her had already gone on it's way accepting this death as a fact of life. Her other half cared to hear neither what the opposite side, nor Ian had to say on the subject.

Without any other choice to turn to, he took advantage of this moment of indecisiveness and this time managed to get a good grip on Monika's hand. By the time she realized that he had pulled her inside and hit a destination button, it was too late for her to have made up her own mind.Without even a glance at what story Ian had almost accidentally chosen, she twisted about to glare at and accuse him of trying to leave her friend behind.

Trish wouldn't just... just LEAVE me alone to fight all these godforsaken monsters and deal with my own stalker. She CAN'T leave me! She had a gun, how could she die?? She left out the 'stalker' part once she voiced these thoughts.

"She didn't LEAVE YOU! She got KILLED, Monika! She got killed by the damn dogs and she's GONE. It wasn't her fault, but it HAPPENED..." Ian backed up until he was against the wall, dropping the rebar with a terrible clang and using the other hand to cover his eyes as he sighed. "I'm sorry."

Monika's expression softened, finding herself unable to hold such a fiercely venomous glare for as long as she would have liked. Once there was nothing left to hide her miserable acceptance behind, she could do nothing but mourn for her friend, and her own guilt at not being with Trish in her last moments, helping her. Too quick... Everything in this hospital was just too unpredictable and mercilessly rapid. Monika rubbed furiously at the damp lines running vertically across her cheeks.Her inability to conceal these unwanted emotions only left her worse yet, and Monika, too tired to pent it any longer, let herself lament in the most natural and instinctive way her body knew how.

She cried.

By the time the elevator had come to a stop, having reached it's commanded destination, Ian could stand Monika's hiccups and whimpering no longer. In a failed attempt to calm her, he scuffled to the girl's side and lifted an arm up to her shoulders. As soon as the distressed woman felt a presence behind her, she instinctively ducked from under it and stepped back, obviously not in the mood to be touched. Ian slouched disappointedly, seeming quite empathetic to her. "I'm sorry..." his sincerity gave Monika the slightest pang of guilt, for taking the situation out on him. Perhaps she would apologize later. For now, though, there was the matter of finding a way out of the building.

The doors of the lift slid open to reveal the basement, once again. Monika physically recoiled in surprise at the scene in front of her, which was not the one she has left in a bloody, nightmarish mess of wastes and carcasses, but how she and Trish had originally found it: an empty, ill-lit series of rooms that posed no greater danger than unseemliness. She tried not to let her extreme bewilderment of this setting preoccupy her so much as to slow her down.Ian had discovered a set of stairs up to the first story, unnoticed (or perhaps even nonexistent) before, and it was only a matter of minutes after this finding that they were leaving Brookhaven Hospital for good.