Sheri's hair lay over her like a curtain as she lay face down in the center of her hotel room, the floor and walls dancing in slow circles around her. She flicked her tongue at the coppery liquid beading on her cracked, dry lip, her consciousness feeling like a halo spinning around the outside of her skull.
The room was completely empty aside from Sheri's prone form. The door was locked from the inside, and so were the windows. Sheri hadn't left the small corner suite assigned as her temporary quarters since they had arrived. She had isolated herself, refusing any attempt at room service from the staff, and spent the entire time exercising or⦠well her gun had been confiscated following the fiasco at the reactor, otherwise she'd have spent the rest of her time running through gun maintenance on loop. Instead she'd taken to staring at a wall, or out the window.
Or lying face down on the floor in her underwear, dying.
"Hey, roll over. I wanna see your abs."
Sheri grunted softly and refused to move.
"Come on, I bet you look real cut right now. On account of the aggressive dehydration and starvation. Good enough for Hollywood, even."
"Dead people don't talk," Sheri mumbled into the shag carpet, her voice weak and hoarse.
"You're managing just fine," Jack teased. Sheri rolled her head toward the sound of her sister's voice, taking in the sight of slender brown legs covered in short black fuzz. Jack plopped down next to her, legs crossing in front of the same underwear Sheri was wearing.
Sheri buried her nose back into the carpet. "Go away," she murmured into the floor. "I'm not in the mood to be haunted."
"Haunted!" Jack gasped, theatrically scandalized. "You would take me for a common specter, dear lady? Why, I never!" Sheri replied with something unintelligible. Why, that's exactly right!" Jack continued, pretending Sheri was comprehensible. "I am no simple spirit, but rather the malignant hallucination of your fading mind as it circles ever onward around the drain of oblivion! Shock! Dismay!"
"Shbabena?"
"I'm thrilled you grasp the severity of the situation."
"Kuvoo."
Jack chuckled softly, leaning back on her hands. "I honestly don't know why this is the part you're stress testing," she commented, poking at Sheri's ribs with her foot. "Kinda feels like putting the cart before the horse, y'know? I mean you'd think testing the body swap thing would come first, right? Make sure dying isn't actually a prerequisite? What was even your fallback if starving to death doesn't trigger it? Or-" Jack cast her gaze around the empty hotel room. "Do you got a clone sitting on ice in the bath, or did you not consider that either?"
"Do you think I could eat my hand?"
Jack blinked several times, processing. The sound of some screaming creature shrieked past the window outside. She looked down at Sheri for a moment, then sighed and stood back up. "Oooooookay. Come on dummy. Time to get up."
Sheri felt a hand grab the band of her bra from behind and haul her upwards, and the next thing she knew she was standing upright, her fist still clenched wear it had gripped her underwear. She slowly uncurled her fingers, staring blankly at her palm as she realized she wasn't hungry or thirsty anymore. She scratched at her head, turning in place to take in the empty room as her newly cleared mind tried to recall what the hell had just happened.
".....I should go eat something," she remarked to no one in particular, and then set about getting dressed.