damned_institute | Day 71: Cafeteria

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Day 71: Cafeteria

Korra's stomach was grumbling by the time that annoyingly friendly voice chimed over the speaker that they'd be going into the cafeteria to eat.

"About time..." she grumbled under her breath as her nurse marched her out of the sun room and into the caf. Pancakes seemed like a good idea; something at least a little similar to the food she'd eat in Republic City. She settled down with her food, the events of last night still lingering on her mind despite her best efforts to shut them out. Korra needed to get herself some closer allies, and needed to get in the know on all this talk of the basement and the third floor.

For now, though, food. The Avatar dug in like it was the first decent meal she'd eaten in months.

[Gabe!]

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The cough sputtered in his throat as he was led into the hallway that led to the Sun Room; a few steps into the room the nurse turned suddenly, and he was startled into looking up when he nearly bumped into her. He took a compulsive step back. She was frowning at him, so he put on a nervous smile that was almost half-real. He couldn't imagine what she might be thinking as she put a hand on his shoulder and steered him into the cafeteria. Maybe she thought he was tired or possibly sick; he'd been coughing when she'd opened the door. More likely she was wondering why he'd sped up when he usually kept more than a few paces behind her.

Thankfully he had an easy excuse; he could say he was hungry if she asked. To that end, he shoveled a few bites of food into his mouth before opening his notebook in lap and started scribbling.

[free]

The nurse bustled in just as the Head Doctor made his second announcement of the day, and this time, it woke Lana up. Missing a bit of the day wasn't much of a hardship; they hadn't gotten much accomplished, but they had verified that the radios worked, and that was something. She should leave Ilia her number before she left, and she brushed off the nurse's gentle shooing motions while she found paper and pen.

Except that the other side of the room was too empty. They tidied every morning, of course, or perhaps while it was still night, putting away everything from alcohol to ammunition, but there was usually some sign of inhabitation. "Has my roommate been moved?" The nurse jumped a little, and then looked pitying. "Well, yes. She made quite the improvement, and --" Lana spun on her heel and marched out the door without listening to the rest. Platitudes, in this case, which were worth less than nothing. Ilia had been sound asleep when Lana had left for the evening; perhaps she really had been sent away, rather than murdered. Either way, there would be other people who cared about her.

She strode to the bulletin, posted a note, and then swept into the cafeteria. Momentum carried her through the line, and she wound up with a bacon-and-egg sandwich and a stack of grapes without really choosing anything.

Many seats were open, but as she moved towards an entirely free table, quick motion caught her eye. A young man, scribbling in a notebook. He didn't look much like Ema except for the color of his hair, but the short, swift, almost nervous motions did, and Lana was intrigued. She set her tray down at a nearby seat and cleared her throat.

"May I ask what you're working on?"

He looked up, but as his mouth was full, he took the opportunity to glance around the room—Korra looked fine, as did Gabe and Miketsukami—before his gaze rested back down on his notebook.

'Nothing important' would be a lie; he might not be believed if he told the truth. He'd been dismissive enough of the other patients in the last few days, himself. Hall past the stairs, hair, fire-resistant, dead, rot, rabbit's foot, body parts—it made him sound pretty unhinged, possibly even dangerous if she were inclined to interpret his list of characteristics that way.

"Trying to get a better view of a problem," he said finally, snapping the book shut. "Uh, if I may ask... what was the shift before this?"

Well, that said very little about what he was doing, though quite a bit about him. Secretive and intelligent; Lana might have said the same herself, when she'd first arrived. Things had...changed, though, and most of them for the better, so instead of taking insult, she put on a rueful smile.

"I'm afraid I can't be certain, as I slept through it, but this is Sunday, and there's normally a chance to visit the chapel before brunch. Or stay in the sun room, if neither prayer nor attempting to whisper in the pews appeals." It occurred to her that she'd never seen the chapel at night; perhaps that was for the best, although now she was curious.

She slipped into the chair and started pulling grapes off the stem. Why did he want to know what shift it had been, anyway? There were a variety of explanations, but she went with the simplest. "Sleeping in a little usually isn't anything to worry about."

That may be so, but it wasn't a good habit, he didn't say. As a student, sleeping in would have meant a mark of tardiness. Although, as it was Sunday, maybe it would have been expected, but he couldn't tell if the patients had been roused late to begin with.

"I guess..." he said instead. It was something to worry about; waking up in bed without recollection of actually going to bed was something to worry about, and for that reason oversleeping was possibly something sinister. But he didn't know what had knocked him out to begin with. It hadn't, he recalled, been a problem the last time something like last night had happened, two days ago. Maybe he really had simply been tired.

He put his elbows on the table, stared at his food a moment. "There's a chapel here?"

"There is. Directly above us, in fact." She wasn't sure if he actually cared, or was merely redirecting the conversation, but she continued. "I've only been there during the daytime; I suspect it might be quite different at night." Blasphemous, even, if she were the sort to be offended by such things. Which she wasn't.

She also wasn't the sort for making chit-chat when there were obvious questions to be asked. Especially not ones for which she could provide an answer; she didn't recognize the young man, which didn't necessarily make him a new arrival, but combined with the questions and the secretiveness, implied it might be the case. Certainly not long enough to become familiar with the schedule, and with visitors arriving, he deserved more information than he might already have.

"Have you been here long?"

'Above' meaning upstairs, he assumed. There was reason to be annoyed after all; he'd missed an opportunity to safely get a look at the second floor. Nothing he could do about it now, though. The nurse would probably get suspicious if he asked her to shake him awake no matter what.

"I've been here a week, I think." Give or take a few days. Not a complete week, obviously, if the fact of its being Sunday was being used as a reliable indicator of schedule. "Is it important?"

There were, after all, better ways to determine whether someone had gone out at night. He glanced at his notebook. Well, maybe that wasn't what she was asking. He hadn't indicated that he was concerned about nighttime occurrences, although he'd gleaned from his experience here so far that worrying about it was common—straightforwardness in the initial question wouldn't be unreasonable in that case. But what other reason was there to ask the duration of someone's stay? Small talk? "Nice to meet you, by the way.... I'm Sakuta."

Lana shook her head at the question, smiling softly. She'd been wrong; not a new arrival at all. It was good to be found wrong, occasionally; it kept her on her toes. Which was not a mantra she would share with her colleagues, home or here; it would be a sign of weakness she couldn't afford. But she didn't really mind it.

"Lana Skye. And the pleasure is mine." She paused, thinking over her answer. "We hadn't met before. I didn't want to start talking about monsters at night if it was only going to sound like I actually belonged in a psychiatric facility." Not the only reason, of course; but if he hadn't guessed she was worried about sending a kid not much older than Ema out to face the night unaware, she'd drop the subject.

Then she set both hands on the table and leaned forward just a bit; if he wasn't new, it was time to share notes. "Did you get a radio? It's the first time the townsfolk have taken any interest in us besides financial; I'm curious to see what everyone makes of it."

Ryusei fiddled with his fork. The part about the monsters was true enough, and an open-ended question was open to interpretation and therefore safer. It confused him as to why being here for a week was a sure sign of believing in the monsters, though. Maybe it was just natural—patients were sure to see their roommates going out, and lacking that, the doors were audibly unlocked. Or maybe it simply made Ryusei feel slow; by his estimate he'd been late to accept the premise of danger beyond the obvious.

He had had his reasons. He shoved away the discomfort at the thought of belonging in a psychiatric facility, and crossed his hands. "I thought those were toys."

Ryusei had had a radio on his desk since day one, but Lana had said 'townsfolk' so apparently there had been radios brought back from Doyleton. He'd only seen one that matched the description, but since Kurogane's was given to him by a friend, there was a possibility that other people had also been acquiring and passing them around. The supposed involvement of the townspeople was new to Ryusei, though. "What makes you think they're interested?" he said tentatively.

They hadn't seemed so from what Ryusei had observed, but on the other hand, he hadn't been paying much attention. "I've only been there once, so I don't know...."

"They were passing out radios to anyone who would take one, and they actually work. Like cell phones, if you know the number on the other person's radio." They'd been fairly insistent about handing them out, really, which had been the first sign. "Most of the time they look at best tolerant of our presence."

"Well. Except for at night, when they're entirely too eager about eating us." The carnage from that night had only been mostly repaired, the first time Lana had been down to the town. And she'd heard -- and seen -- enough to believe all the stories. "There must be a reason; they can't only be concerned about our welfare."

Eating? She had to be joking, right? He looked up. She didn't look like a person who joked. He supposed he should hope that she'd chosen that word because that was what they were doing at the moment.

He put down his fork and reached for his book, flipped to the sketch he'd attempted to make of what he'd seen of the town. Only a few lines crisscrossed the page; he realized that he'd never finished. He closed the book again. "They seemed to be leaving me alone."

Not that meant anything, necessarily; he'd had his head down and his posture huddled for most of the trip. Depending on the person they wanted, he was— What sort of people did they want? Lana seemed competent as did Kurogane, but the latter had been given his; Ryusei had too little information to tell. "What sorts of people were getting them?"

Maybe they just wanted to lure patients in to eat. But in that case, the radios wouldn't be used to call each other, only to receive and send messages from the master radio. He believed that that would be more efficient. And the radios had been disguised to play a little tinny song and look like obvious toys. But Ryusei didn't know whether subterfuge was the right conclusion. "Are all of the radios like that, or just a few?" he added.

He didn't ask about the zombies. Good.

"Every one that I've seen, which was four of them. Every patient who asked was given one; I don't know if anyone managed to get a second, and I didn't see any of the other townsfolk take one, but that doesn't mean none of them did."

The ability to communicate was a huge asset, if they continued to work; trying to coordinate multiple teams without some form of communication was doomed to failure in good conditions; Lana had seen far too many tragedies in that vein, not even counting that night. Of course, relying on them had it's own dangers.

"I wouldn't assume the transmissions can't be tapped, though." Giving them the illusion of privacy wasn't like Landel; he liked to point out at every opportunity that he knew exactly what they were up to. But perhaps no one had yet said anything interesting enough for him to gloat about.

Taking the radios at face value required trust, and if whoever had received them hadn't even been told what they were for, it underscored the possibility that whoever was passing them out merely wanted them in the patients' possession for some reason unrelated to the patients' use. Especially since it seemed the type of person didn't matter; just that people were getting them, by Lana's account. Not that Ryusei had any proof of that, either. He didn't have proof of anything.

"What are you going to do? In case they are tapped."

He supposed keeping an eye on the patients was valuable, depending on the information the radio master wanted, but the guy on the intercom seemed to insinuate that he saw all movements within the asylum—if that guy was the radio master, it had to be some kind of fake-out or gambit. Probably. But there were only a few ways Ryusei could see in which the radios would be useful, especially if their true function had to be obscured in the day—that of tracking others' movements at night. And if the townspeople were involved, he thought that they would be more likely to coordinate around Saturdays, when the patients could go to Doyleton. That the radios weren't restricted to that day meant that something was going on here, but that much was obvious. "Did you get a look at who was passing them out?"

What was she going to do? Exactly what she was going to do if they weren't -- that was how this place worked. Everything they did might be precisely what Landel wanted, or he might merely be feigning amusement; the only time he'd seemed out of control was when Aguilar had arrived, and she wasn't sure they wanted to repeat that even if they could summon him somehow.

"One of the townspeople, at the toy store; not someone I'd met before. She'd poked her head into each of the shops at one point or another, just to investigate, but the townsfolk hadn't been especially talkative and she hadn't pressed."

A rattle of silverware interrupted her; other patients had begun clearing their trays, and a nurse was looking at her pointedly. Ah. She didn't have any particular reason to antagonize the staff, so she smiled and stood up. "If you get your hands on one, my number is 213."

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Day 71: Cafeteria

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