To The Beat Of The Devil's Drums [Supernatural]

Closed Circuit

Camera room.

The new objective is clear in Dean's head as he makes his way up the next stairwell, preparing to check out the upper floors. The first had returned nothing, but he's certain the security office must be in this building as he continues to look. Finding Sam depends on it now. It's the only chance he has to find his brother in time when searching the park manually could take days.

He arrives on the next landing and pushes open the double doors leading into the hallway. There are several offices on either side, mostly locked when he tries them and with frosted glass panes in the doorway. The only one he manages to get into is a box room filled with filing cabinets, and quickly realises it's not the room he's looking for. Dean has a feeling that the security office is going to be more...well, secure.

Reaching the end of the corridor, he takes a turn to begin exploring the next one. He only gets two rooms down when he spies the door with a keypad fixed to the wall beside it. That looks promising. The only question is going to be whether the electronic locking system is turned on...

Arriving at the door, a quick push against it tells him that it is, and Dean silently curses. Now he's sure this is the room. If the cameras are indeed working and the security office is locked...then it can only mean this is going to lead him to Sam. And of course she's going to want to keep him from getting inside.

The gears in his mind turning, Dean bends down to study the keypad. He's pretty sure he could unscrew the cover and trip the circuits if he found the right equipment from somewhere, but it's possible he might not need to. Most of the numbers are still clearly marked on the buttons, but three have almost completely rubbed off: 1, 3, and 9.

"Four digit passcode," Sam's voice says in his head. "That's a year. And unless somebody's commemorating the start of World War II, I'm guessing some security guy had a kid born in 1993."

It's the weakest passcode Dean can think of, yet it's worth a shot. He keys in the number, almost wanting to whoop when he hears the door give a click. That was almost too easy.

Yeah...too easy. Maybe he should be concerned.

He's careful as he pushes the door open to peer into the dark room beyond, hands searching for a light switch like he has been with every new hallway. It surprises him when flicking it does nothing, the room remaining cloaked in shadow. Either the lights have blown, or perhaps the security office is on a separate circuit.

He leaves the door propped open to allow some light in, able to make out the shape of another computer situated at a desk, a few stacked television monitors, and several shelves of boxes containing VHS tapes. The camera feeds have to have ended up here, even if nothing's currently turned on.

There's a server tower stood next to the rows of stacked TVs, on top of it a box with various switches and a tangle of leads plugged into more ports than Dean cares to count. The tiny blinking lights of some sort of indicator tell him that the power outlets must at least be working, even if the main lights aren't. He starts by turning on the monitors, most of them flickering to life although he's met with "No Signal" errors on half of them and static on the rest. He swears under his breath as he realises this is going to be more difficult than he thought.

The static gives him some extra light to work by as he crosses to the box, noticing half the leads are unplugged. He squints more closely at one of the port clusters, noting the label "Camera 6". The input lead is connected, but the output is empty. He's going to have to connect the TVs.

It's an infuriating task to untangle all the cables and get them into the right jacks, but within a few minutes he's got a feed displaying on one of the screens. It isn't a location he recognises, but the label by the timestamp identifies it as "Pirate Cove", wherever that it. He needs a...