"Pleasures mine. Good to meet you how are you?" Daniel quips back to him, short of breath.
"I'm good, I'm good, just left Phil in accounting, he says hi." Ross coughs out.
"Why is the guy in accounting always named Phil?" Daniel asks.
"Are the two of you finally done?!" Jim, standing behind Daniel.
"No...wait, one more. Phil?! Phil Connors?!! Its me Ned! Ned Ryerson! Needle nose Ned, Ned the Head, come on buddy!" Daniel shakes Ross's hand just slightly.
"Don't, don't don't make me laugh oh God." Ross quivers as his belly laugh is held back causing everyone in the line behind him that's linked to him to shake a little bit on the board.
"Hey! Cut it out!" Scott screams up to Ross. "You're going to make us fall you moron!"
Ross and Daniel stand in the center of tube 1, two arm lengths apart, gripping onto one another while the rest of their tube stand behind them linked together, hand in hand precariously atop the board. The metal tacks below reflecting their scared faces as they try and maintain balance and not let fatigue knock them down.
"Hey, what if we just let go?" Dalton from tube 4 shouts back down the line. "I mean I'm pretty sure we're just above a puddle of water. What if we just let go, we take the fall and then we're on the ground at least and get a break from this, its not that far of a fall, it'll hurt, but after what we've been through."
"What if it isn't water, what if its gas, or acid or something?" Scott shouts back to him.
"I don't smell gas, and I would think acid would be doing something to the floor, even discoloring it or something." Dalton inspects the floor the best he can from his position on the plank.
"I don't think you should. He'll just make you all get back up on the board anyway." Jim calls out.
"You don't know that." Scott shouts over to the other side to where Jim is.
"The man is sick, of course he's going to make them climb back up there." Jim calls back out.
"Can the two of you stop shouting please." Ross still with sweat coming down his forehead.
"Ross, man, just relax, we talked about this, find that spot in your head, go there, hold on to what you got and hold on to my hand. Don't let go." Daniel tries to make eye contact but Ross's face is down as he pants and tries to muster up some strength and will.
"I got this. I got this." Ross breathes out.
"NO!" Scott shouts out just as he sees Ross slip from his hand and watches Ross, Daniel, Jim and the others of their side of the tube fall. The last person in their line crashes to the floor and instantly finds hundreds of tacks embedded in his flesh. A snap of a bone is heard as if the room was dead silent otherwise, and then the others come raining down on top of him. Body upon body smashing into the floor, into each other with Daniel and Jim being the final two to fall backwards and Daniel towing Ross down with him. They hit the steel floor and the plank atop the tube tips like a teeter tauter. Now Scott finds himself hurtling forward with the remainder of people behind him fast on his heels. He drops to his backside and takes the plank like a slide and as he reaches the bottom his feet dropkick into Ross's head. The impact shoves him off and throws him away from the pile crashing into the wall nearby.
The others behind Scott fall atop Daniels group, cushioned by the bodies that lay below them covered in metal tacks and screaming in pain. The other tubes just stare, scared stiff, locking their grip onto one another even tighter. Liz and Anne scream out to their friends but Ross and Daniel lie still on the ground.
Jim crawls up out of the wreckage of bodies, "Ahhhh! What the hell happened?!" He rolls off someone below him and staggers to his feet. His arms, his face, his back all spotted with small shiny tacks, as if he was spotted with metallic paint. "Daniel! Ross! Ross?!" He pulls Ross to the side dragging his limp body through the tacks, blood again pours out of his, now again, broken nose. The others in the pile who can get up begin to do so and start pulling the tacks from their body, helping one another stand and trying to wake those who were knocked out by the fall. All but two are helped up and cleared from the mess among the tacks, an older man named Eric and a woman named Allie. Its unclear if its from a broken neck, punctured lung or what actual contusion was the lethal one that left these two lifeless at the bottom of the pile.
Now like monkeys eating ticks off one another, they take turn picking off the tacks from each others bodies, pulling them out, letting out a quick yelp and tossing the tack to the floor. The P90s enter the room and the monitor kicks on. "Several of you are going to need medical attention, making the numbers uneven an unable to balance back on the board." Cipher speaks in an obviously annoyed tone. "Get into the West room, you'll remain there in the dark until morning. The rest of you get any ideas of dropping off your plank so that you can take an easy way out, know this, I'll simply even out the board with those I'm putting in the West room and you'll get right back up on the plank. P90s gather those two and take them to the North room." the monitor shuts off and Cipher is gone. The group walks to the West room, Jim looks back helping Scott inside he watches the P90s grab Ross and Daniel by their ankles.
The two are dragged to the North room leaving a trail of blood on the floor underneath them with their arms up over their heads make ticking noises as the tacks tick across the floor. The P90s dump them into the room leave and the door seals behind them.
End Day 15
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