Right at midnight, Shiller flipped back through the window into his room. The alarm clock sounded very punctually, but this time, the entire right corridor only chimed twice, and the whole 19th floor chimed just four times.
That meant that one of the people in room 1901 or 1903 had a problem. They were no longer judged to be uncontaminated; instead, it was very likely that they had been fully contaminated.
Which one could it be?
But Shiller didn't have time to think about that now. He knew that if his hotel represented the past, then the hotel where Peter was staying would be even more dangerous. Peter's abilities were insufficient, and Shiller had to provide him with ample guidance, otherwise he was likely to struggle to survive.
The only commonality discovered between the two hotels was the alarm clock. Shiller found one in his room, and Peter, opening the door of room 1903, retrieved an alarm clock from the tank of the toilet.
Jerome said that the sound of the alarm clock was a detection routine, which would only ring if there were living people in the room. However, Peter had spent a night in that hotel and said he hadn't heard anything at night, meaning that on the entire 19th floor where he stayed, it hadn't rung even once.
So there was a problem, because aside from Peter, Jerome was also a living person. That meant if the detection device was still working normally, it should have rung at least twice on the 19th floor, even if there was something wrong with Jerome, the alarm clock in Peter's room should have rung.
Shiller instructed Peter to search for the alarm clock in his room. After just waking from a nap and feeling quite alert, Peter started rummaging through his hotel room, seeking to find the alarm clock as Shiller had instructed.
However, despite searching, he couldn't find it. In the wardrobe where Shiller had located his clock, he didn't find any trace of an alarm clock ever being there.
This was unlikely, Shiller thought, unless he himself had moved the alarm clock elsewhere.
Since he was in the past in the timeline, all his actions would influence Peter's situation. If he decided to leave the alarm clock behind, then it would be impossible for Peter to not find it. Peter not finding it meant that he must have placed the alarm clock somewhere else.
Why would he do such a thing?
He couldn't speculate now, but it was very likely due to some information he received over the next few days, meaning that the Shiller in the following days thought it better for the alarm clocks not to be in the rooms.
However, at this point in time for Shiller, the detection device was still working normally. Only if the alarm clock rang would the room be ensured safe. If Shiller had moved the alarm clock elsewhere, the unidentified creature that roamed the hallways and brought the sound of the elevator might break in.
What made Shiller risk everything to move the alarm clock away, preventing Peter from getting to it?
Another clue about the alarm clock was that the person in room 1903 had chosen to place the alarm clock inside the tank of the toilet.
Given the current situation, if Peter's temporal setting truly represented the future, the chances that everything had completely improved were minimal. More likely, everything in that period was an illusion.
It was very likely that the tall and short individuals in rooms 1901 and 1903 had been completely contaminated, which is why they displayed no signs of struggle and were completely manipulated.
Following this line of thought further, the short individual in the completely controlled room 1903 had chosen to put the alarm clock into the tank. This action must have benefited him, which also implied that not placing the alarm clock in the tank was detrimental to him.
Was the detection device still operational then?
The thought looped back, if the detection device was still operational, why hadn't Peter heard any noise?
Shiller considered another possibility, that all the individuals on the 19th floor, like the individual in room 1903, had interfered with the functioning of the alarm clock.
This was very likely. The hotel harbored two conflicting forces: one was keen on contaminating the guests, while the other aimed to prevent the spread of contamination by setting up detection devices that would activate a cleansing procedure upon detecting excessive contamination.
Clearly, the latter side lost, as at the point in time that Peter was in, the hotel still had issues; though the surface had restored peace, the terrifying contamination was concealed even deeper.
Since the side causing the contamination had won, they must have found a way to render the detection device ineffective, and the method might be to do what was done in room 1903, placing the alarm clock in the toilet's water tank.
Now that 12 o'clock had passed, and there was still no sound on Peter's side, and with the alarm clock from room 1903 now in his possession and not in the tank, this proved that the alarm clock might have completely malfunctioned.
Was the alarm clock afraid of water?
No, it might not be just simple water.
Shiller kept thinking, was the toilet in room 1905 malfunctioning really just an accident? Whose toilet spouts water outward just upon pressing the flush button? What kind of malfunction was that?
A flushing toilet doesn't have an apparatus to eject water outward. Even if it were faulty, it couldn't possibly install a powerful spraying device out of nowhere; this couldn't be explained by a simple electrical fault.
Shiller could imagine if someone unprepared came here, hearing that the toilet in room 1905 was broken, they might not touch it. However, there was somewhat of a chance they would check it, exposing them to a higher likelihood of getting sprayed with water.
The contamination of guests within the hotel must have a source, and it's likely that this source spreads contamination through a medium, most likely water.
In the Cthulhu Mythos, water represents a significant symbol; for instance, in any role-playing game, if someone is described as dripping with water, don't hesitate—just run.
Although Shiller's target this time might be an Outer God, from the perspective of scheming alone, water is also a highly effective tool since the human race has a natural affinity for water and isn't usually on guard against it. Even if they are splashed by water from a water tank, at most they'd curse their bad luck and change clothes, never thinking about disinfecting.
Therefore, the toilet is very likely a trap, just waiting for someone to inspect it and then spray them with water, thereby contaminating them.
Although the specific situations in rooms 1901 and 1903 are still unknown, Shiller guesses that the guests in these rooms might have been contaminated in this way, and they probably haven't realized they've been compromised at this point in time.
This is the horrifying aspect of the Cthulhu Mythos; it mostly distorts human cognition. For example, in room 1901, even if one's head is no longer on their neck, they might still think they are fine and want to go out for breakfast.
Shiller immediately warned Peter not to touch any device in the room that might produce water, but he knew it was somewhat too late because after Peter entered room 1903, he retrieved the alarm clock from the water tank, by which time he had already come into contact with water.
However, Shiller also thought about some issues; if he were the Behind-the-scenes Manipulator orchestrating all this, he wouldn't deliberately disable a toilet because surely not everyone is nosy, and upon hearing it's broken, they wouldn't touch it.
If water was the medium of contamination, then just wait for guests to wash their hands or take a bath. Guests staying for two or three days will likely wash their hands even if they don't bathe, and as a last resort, contaminating the drinking water would be even better—people have to drink water, after all.
Thus, Shiller surmised that the source of contamination might not be able to contaminate all water or that the water that could be contaminated wasn't infinite; he had to use it sparingly.
It's similar to how sprinklers are always used in conjunction with smoke detectors to prevent fires. To truly prevent fires, sprinklers would have to operate 24/7, ensuring any spark is extinguished, but that could interfere with normal life and waste water, so instead, a detection device is installed that only activates the water when smoke is detected.
The working principle of this medium of contamination is likely similar, not contaminating anyone who touches the water, but spraying those who perform certain actions.
For instance, Shiller pressed the toilet flush button.
Possibly, if he hadn't pressed the flush button, reaching his hand into the toilet tank or even inside the toilet wouldn't have contaminated him; only the water sprayed after pressing the button would be problematic.
Shiller shared his guesses with Peter, which slightly reassured him, and he also silently heightened his vigilance in his heart, vowing never to be reckless again—avoiding touching things unnecessarily and steering clear whenever possible.
If the detection device was still working as Shiller guessed, then the most crucial thing now was to fix the alarm clock, but Shiller chose not to do so.
Because clearly, by that time, the 19th floor was essentially beyond help. If only his room's alarm rang amongst everyone else's silence, everyone would know he was a normal person. If Peter was attacked, Shiller couldn't save him at that point.
Then Shiller began to think, why didn't he just leave the alarm clock in the room for Peter instead of taking it out? This might be a measure he would take in the future.
Perhaps it was related to the decreasing frequencies of the alarms.
Tonight, there were only two alarms left on the right-side corridor of the 19th floor, meaning one of the occupants in rooms 1901 or 1903 had probably met their end.
If the alarms on the right-side corridor or even the entire 19th floor continued to decrease in number until only Shiller was left, he would definitely prefer to throw the alarm clock away; otherwise, he would face the same situation as Peter—being targeted by the things on the 19th floor that were no longer human.
Indeed, the detection device would target items in the room after failing to detect the bell, but at that time, the occupants of rooms 1901 and 1903 were fine.
This meant that the detection device must have started malfunctioning by Shiller's time point; otherwise, tonight, if there was a room where the alarm did not ring, one person would surely have been completely eliminated, making it impossible for Peter to have encountered both of them.
Thus, by inference, neither of the two in rooms 1901 and 1903 could be saved, otherwise they wouldn't have appeared normally at Peter's time point.
No matter which one of them had problems tonight, the other one wouldn't last long either—rescuing them was definitely too late.
So Shiller decisively chose to give up, planning to seek help farther away. Currently, Peter did not know the situation in the left-side corridor; if the situation was better there, there might still be survivors on the left-side corridor, so it might be better to focus on the two alarms there.
With only two rooms making noise out of the six on the left-side corridor, it meant that the other four had also completely fallen.
If Shiller had to guess which two rooms still had people among these six, he would definitely first rule out 1913; something was very off about that room, making it highly unlikely there were people alive inside.
Then, based on his own inference, the last three rooms to fall on the right-side corridor were 1901, 1903, and 1905—all odd numbers, suggesting that some supernatural phenomenon might manifest based on odd-even rules, with higher survival chances in odd-numbered rooms on this side.
Therefore, perhaps the rooms on the left side also followed some pattern; excluding 1913 left only two odd-numbered rooms—1907 and 1909.