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Dakota - the lab
Dakota shifts around on the cot, biting his lip to keep from making a noise the camera’s can pick up. He hasn’t felt good since he stepped into this room, but he didn’t want to make drama where there was none. It’s been years of investigating paranormal haunts, but he still gets anxious going into new places.
He told Tanner about it once. His best friend theorized that it wasn’t just anxiety. That maybe Dakota was a little like Zak. He had anxiety, that was official, but maybe he was…sensitive too.
The problem was, Dakota couldn’t tell the difference between being anxious about a new place and knowing what happened there, or his senses telling him that this place was bad.
Right now though, he’s really thinking it was the latter.
His stomach turns and he sits up with a small moan, swinging his legs over the edge of the cot. Sitting up proves to be a mistake, as he’s hit with a wave of dizziness. The nausea turns to something worse, a cold heaviness settling in his stomach.
“Fuck,” He murmurs, rubbing at his face. The camera in the corner blinks at him and he startles slightly. He can’t believe he forgot he was being recorded.
He says something to the camera, explaining how dizzy he feels. He tries to keep talking, but at one point he realizes he’s slurring his words, so he stops. Resting his head in his hands, he groans, feeling as if the room is spinning around him. Like he’s on a tilt-a-whirl. The floor seems to be moving underneath him and he jerks, trying to balance himself.
It doesn’t work.
“I think- I think somethings wrong,” Dakota mumbles, swaying back and forth. The coldness heaviness in his stomach has spread through his abdomen, enveloping his chest and arms. He can’t feel his fingers.
In a panic, he calls out for his friends. “Tanner! Alex, Chels, please…help me.”
The room seems to tilt violently in response. Dakota tries to compensate again, and tips his head to far back. The world drops away from him and he falls into darkness.
…
Alex - The nursery
‘ Kill…Dakota’
Alex feels ice cold fear drip down his spine at the EVP. He plays it again, double checking the sound. It didn’t say that. It didn’t say Dakota’s name.
The recording clearly says Dakota’s name.
“Shit shit shit shit,” he whispers, playing it again and reacting for the camera. He quickly fumbles for his walkie, calling for Dakota. They need to get him out of there.
There’s no response at first, and Alex calls again. “Hey Dakota you up?”
His walkie crackles in response. “Dakota?”
Silence.
“Dakota, come in Dakota!” Alex yells. “Fuck!” He checks his phone. No service.
Clicking up a channel he attempts to radio to the others. “Hey, Tanner, Chelsea, have you heard from Dakota?”
It takes a second, presumably as the two fumble for their walkie-talkies. Tanner answers first, and he sounds pretty okay which reassures Alex. “ Nah dude I haven’t heard from anyone all night.”
“ I haven't heard from him either but are you okay dude? You sound super freaked out.” Chelsea says.
Alex wants to throw up. “Can one of you try and walkie Dakota? Or call him? I don’t have any service and I can’t get a hold of him.”
Chelsea agrees to try, worry for her brother taking over. Tanner tells Alex that he’s going to start to make his way over to Dakota just in case. It’s early enough in the morning, they probably don’t have a lot of time left to sleep anyway.
There’s something telling him he needs to go. He doesn’t like that he heard that threat and now Dakota isn’t responding, but there’s more than that, like the ghosts are whispering to him that he needs to find Dakota. Now.
“ Guys I can’t get Dakota on the walkie and he didn’t answer his phone.” Chelsea radios, and Alex slams his feet to the floor, standing quickly. “ What’s going on Alex?”
“I got an EVP,” Alex puffs, grabbing his pack and rifling through it to make sure the first aid kit is still there. “It said Kill Dakota.”
“ No way,” Chelsea say. “ No way Alex, that’s- oh god.”
“I’m going to try and head down to him.”
“ Alex, I’m on my way to you and Dakota!”
Alex doesn’t bother to reply to Tanner, instead throwing everything he can into his backpack, grabbing the camera, and sprinting out of the room.
…
Tanner - Surgery room
Tanner runs a hell of a lot faster than he should without his inhaler on him.
Alex sounded so freaked out on the radio, Tanner knew something was wrong even before Alex told them about the message he got.
Hearing nothing but static over the radio when he called for Dakota made it real for him. He knows that this job can be dangerous -
He slips around a corner and rips open the door to the stairwell. Rushing through, he nearly smacks into Alex who’s coming down from the floor above.
“Shit! Sorry.” Alex pants, the two of them steadying each other before continuing to pound down the stairs. Chelsea is probably trying to find her way up from the basement, but they don’t run into her on their way to the Lab.
“Dakota!” Alex yells the second they hit the correct floor. Tanner echoes his yell and their voices bounce off the walls, mocking them almost.
Tanner is terrified of what they might find as they burst into the old laboratory.
It’s surprisingly calm actually. There’s no black mass hovering over Dakota’s bed, Dakota isn’t screaming bloody murder, and there’s no blood. The devil isn’t standing in the middle of the room.
Dakota isn’t moving though. He’s splayed awkwardly on his cot, his left arm and shoulder and head completely off the edge.
“Dakota!” Tanner yells, rushing forward and skidding to his knees next to the cot. “Dakota, hey, hey- Alex go get Chelsea!”
Alex’s boots squeak as he turns around, dropping his pack next to Tanner and sprinting back out of the room. Tanner sets his camera down on the floor and focuses completely on Dakota.
For a split second, he’s not sure his friend is even breathing.
Tanner’s hands hover, and he eventually settles a palm over Dakota’s chest, waiting until he feels movement there. Once he does, he breathes out a heavy sigh of relief. “Okay, alright Dak you gotta wake up okay, you need to wake up because if your sister comes in here and you’re fucking unconscious she’s going to kill you for real.”
It does nothing. Dakota continues breathing, slow and shallow, but doesn’t stir. Tanner shakes Dakota, says his name loudly in the hopes it’ll rouse him, but to no avail.
Pounding footsteps and panicked voices indicate the return of Alex with Chelsea. Tanner places a hand on Dakota’s forehead, wincing at the iciness of his skin.
“What happened- Dakota?!” Chelsea quickly crouches down next to her brother, shaking his arm. “Dakota wake up, wake up!”
“Is he-”
“He’s breathing but he’s freezing, his skin is like ice,” Tanner says quickly. “I don’t know what happened.”
“We need to get him out of here,” Alex says, shoving his camera into his backpack and grabbing Tanners.
“We need to get him to a hospital ,” Chelsea corrects, and she’s crying, holding her brother's face in her hands. “How are we supposed to get out of here, the RV doesn’t come back until morning.”
“It is morning,” Tanner huffs, adjusting his own pack. “You two get the doors. The RV usually shows up early anyway because we have to pack our stuff and get b-roll.”
He slides one arm under Dakota’s shoulders and the other under his knees, and he lifts, carefully situating Dakota against his chest. Chelsea and Alex get with the program quickly, Chels grabbing Dakota’s phone and the camera. Alex holds the doors open and lights the way.
Dakota is completely limp in Tanners arms, head lolling against Tanners shoulder. They exit quickly, and luckily the RV is just pulling up in front of the building, the grass under them illuminated by the dim light of dawn.
Their driver - a man in his fifties names Greg - has the door open for them and is sitting in the drivers seat, ready to go. Their yelling probably impressed upon him the urgency of the situation. Greg’s always been nice though. He tells great dad jokes and makes sure the four of them don’t kill each other during the long hours on the road.
Greg probably sees them as his work kids, which is great, because it means he doesn’t try and ask questions, or scold them for swearing when they’re still on camera. He gives Tanner a grim look when he boards with Dakota in his arms, but doesn’t tell them they need to go back for the camera’s, or any of the other shit they left.
He just closes the door and they go.
Alex and Chelsea clear a space in the bedroom in the back, and Tanner nearly brains Dakota on the entryway when the RV hits a bump. He sets his friend down on the bed, and Chelsea settles down next to him, brushing the hair from Dakota’s face and sobbing.
Alex has his hands dug into his hair, gripping tightly. Tanner would be doing the same, if he had hair. Instead he just clings to the nearest wall as Greg pushes the RV to go as fast as possible and listens to Chelsea beg Dakota to wake up.
…
Chelsea - the hospital
She’s come to the conclusion that the doctors here are totally useless.
Dakota is pale still, having not woken up yet. Tanner is sitting next to her brother, holding one of his hands while staring at the wall, the muscles in is jaw jumpin as he tenses and relaxes. Chelsea is on the other side, both feet planted on the floor as one leg jumps nervously.
Alex played them the voice recording. While they waited to get answers from the doctors, Alex pulled out the recorder from his backpack and played it.
“ It was a warning,” Alex had said. “ Someone was warning us. They wanted us to save him. ”
Chelsea agrees, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s seriously considering quitting this stupid fucking show because of this.
She is never, ever, going to forget the image of her brother, completely limp and unresponsive in their best friends arms. They went through a lot of shit as kids, a lot that Chelsea didn’t - or couldn’t - understand. But she’s not a child anymore, and she’s grown super protective of her brother.
Dakota is so important to her, and to Tanner and Alex and all their parents. But what they do now, it can be so dangerous, especially to someone like her brother. She remembers as a kid, how when things would happen in their house, they’d happen to Dakota. Her mother told her once, after a particularly bad night, that Dakota was…different.
Special. Sensitive .
She thought that when Dakota worked on Ghost Adventures that Zak would be able to help him - and he did, to some extent. Dakota learned how to protect himself from most things. But this- Chelsea doesn’t think even Zak has dealt with this.
The doctors said he was hypothermic, had a slow pulse, and was barely breathing, but they had no idea why. They ran a bunch of tests and hooked him up to a bunch of machines and said to watch and wait.
Chelsea is watching. And waiting.
It’s been hours, and Dakota hasn’t moved. Their back up crew came in at one point to talk to them, and they’ve all had conversations with their producer. No one’s in trouble, they were told they did the right thing and their safety was the most important, blah blah blah.
She doesn’t think they really believe that it was paranormal. Chelsea doesn’t see how it could be anything else. The doctors literally cannot find anything naturally wrong with Dakota.
With a sigh, she pushes herself up and stretches. “I’m going to see if I can find us food.”
Alex blinks up at her, looking a bit like he just woke up. “I will take a coffee, if it’s not disgusting.”
“Copy that,” she sighs. The cafeteria is open, which is great, and the coffee is luke warm, which is great. She finds a microwave and nukes the couple of cups she filled with regular, then balances them all on the way back up.
She’s so focused on not dropping them that she misses who Tanner is talking to when she gets back. She hands a cup to Alex, and hears Tanner murmuring something. Only when she turns around to hand a cup to Tanner, she nearly drops it on the floor.
Dakota blinks back at her, a small tired smile on his face. “Hey Chels.”
She lets out a strangled laugh, that sounds more like a sob. “I swear to god Dakota, I’m going to beat the shit out of you for doing this to me.”
“‘S fine.” Dakota slurs, half awake. “I’m not scared of you.”
“That is a complete fucking lie,” Tanner jokes, taking a cup from Chelsea so she can sit down. “I know you’re terrified of her.”
“Yeah,” Dakota whispers. “But there are scarier things.”