Night 62: M21-30 Hallway

[corvus_veritas]

[M27]

Byrne listened to the intercom, and listened to it well. As much as he hated the sound of that man's voice, he needed to listen for any clues he could possibly get, any warnings generously given ahead of time (ha!), and anything to do with that mystery illness going around.

Unfortunately, tonight's broadcast had everything to do with that illness, and hearing about it gave Byrne more than one reason to feel ill.

Now, more than ever, he was hoping that what he and Ms. Skye (and presumably several other people) had was something harmless, and that Landel was just messing with them. It was only a bug, and he wanted to scare them. Right?

...Landel was telling the truth, wasn't he?

Byrne was stricken with a moment of panic, imagining himself turning into a hideous beast from some infection, and...no no no. Having a fever wasn't an unorthodox symptom, alright? People get fevers all the damn time. Calm down. You're okay. You'll be okay! Just...for now. Maybe.

He needed to get moving, and do something tonight. Without Badd.

Byrne grabbed the mirror shard he'd received the night before and his maps, and then threw on his scarf before heading out the door. To where, he had no idea. But he'd figure something out.

Hopefully.

[To here.]

Comments

M25

[ryuuzaki]

Dinner passed in a haze, and L ate what he ate of it sprawled across his bed. He'd been given a vegetarian entree instead of the salmon--chunks of tofu and vegetables in a garlicky sauce over the same rice pilaf that had been mentioned in the intercom announcement--but it wasn't much more to his taste than the fish would have been. Still, the fact that he had missed breakfast meant that he needed to get down as much of it as he could, so he did his level best, resigned to picking at it until most of it was gone.

The golden plum souffle was a different story: he savored its sweetness with special pleasure. The flavor of mirabelles called back one of the more pleasant passages of his childhood--a journey by train in France with his father when he was only just old enough to be able to recollect it.

He didn't think of his parents often, as a rule, but Landel had managed to do a good job of digging up associations... L was struck by the thought, not for the first time, that they would never have predicted what would become of their son. Not this imprisonment, but not the years leading up to it, either. And he still wondered whether or not he would have been willing to sacrifice them if he had understood what their deaths would make possible. On any day like this one, when it was natural to want to be taken care of, he never missed his mother. He missed Watari.

He had managed to beg two more paracetamol tablets from the nurse; he washed them down with a sip of water after he finished eating, but before popping the latest lollipop (butterscotch) into his mouth. Whether or not he should go out tonight was an open question. He had already resolved to, but if the illness slowed him down too much in the wrong situation, he could easily be killed.

As it was, it seemed mild, and the medication was effective. He still felt a dull ache in his head, and more tiredness than was strictly ideal... yet it was nothing compared to the day after the sleep study, when he'd chosen to try to go to the laboratory upstairs. Every night in the Institute felt like a compromise in which he did things that struck him as stupidly risky because the only other choice was ignorance, complacency, and stagnation. This would be more of the same tradeoff. He had a ranged weapon, which would help: it took less energy to fire a gun than to swing a blade.

The last announcement of the day began. He listened, reclining on the bed with his feet crossed at the ankle, the lollipop stick between his teeth. Orihara sat across the room with his face buried in his journal... L appreciated his reticence in terms of being penned in with him, but found him too much of a cipher to trust.

The announcement before the burst of static, before the demented laughter, wasn't unusual, but what followed caused him to sit up, appalled.

He knew that his expression was one of dawning indignance and repulsion, and maybe Orihara would find it significant that he hadn't covered it--no, a glance, one which he could excuse as conspiratorial if he had to, showed that Orihara was oblivious, possibly asleep.

L should have had a more concrete suspicion that the illness would turn out to be another one of Landel's frightening, destructive games; the fact that he hadn't worked it out sooner felt like a loss, and he was tired of other people having the advantage in a way that was almost impossible for him to directly challenge. On the other hand, a minor illness going around a facility like this, one with a shifting and transient population, was so normal that it was weird that there hadn't been more of it. It was the experience of the previous few weeks that should have caused him to more strongly suspect intent, rather than accident.

Now that he knew, his analysis of the situation--of Landel's words--would be more accurate. Certain facts were already plain.

He's talking around it because he likes to hear himself talk, and because... it's as if he wants the credit to go to him and the blame to go to Doyle. Perhaps, by association, to the rebels associated with Doyle, L thought. Either way, he won't come out and say it in simple language.

But a division between who is infected and who isn't... that's what he wants. If some of the creatures here used to be patients, why not just make people disappear? The only reason to leave the unlucky ones among the other patients until they turn is if his goal is to set patients against each other. And if we believe that the creatures we encounter at night might be what has really become of people who have disappeared, some of us, especially the ones like Lana Skye, the ones who have just lost someone, would be reluctant to fight them at all.

It didn't make his mood any less conflicted. So far, the symptoms hadn't been anything to equal the trauma of the sleep study or even the forced drug trial, but an escalation could get bad, and his feelings of resentment and physical vulnerability were the same in each case.

For tonight, there was still the basement to consider. If he was going to feel worse tomorrow, he might be incapable of doing very much. If that was the case, tonight would be the best chance for progress, maybe for a while. Maybe for good, but wasn't it always that way? If you were looking for death in the Institute, it wouldn't be hard to find.

His preparations were materially similar to the previous evening's, so he didn't have many decisions to make: his own clothing, sneakers, the Landel's uniform sweatshirt over his shirt (the ballroom had a chill), the Walther holstered on the belt from the military uniform, which made the waistband of his jeans tighter than he was used to. One of the small first aid kits went into his pocket, along with the keys to the room. He didn't like leaving Orihara alone with his belongings; he locked everything important in the desk drawer.

Lunge would almost certainly have a radio with him, so L left his own in the side pocket of the backpack, which he planned to leave behind. When he was ready, and certain he hadn't forgotten anything vital, he picked up the flashlight and the brush axe, and started on his way to meet the others.

[To here.]