Night 71: Main Hallway, 1-West

[redcladidealist]

[From here.]

Still keeping a wary eye out for any kind of threat, Lloyd stepped into the hall and shined his flashlight around. Still nothing, and the stairs were just up ahead. He crossed the distance swiftly, planting his feet on the first stair steps.

[To here.]

Comments

[fourstonewalls]

[from here]

None of the others had arrived, though there was a small cluster of children plotting strategy, and she could hear a large number of people down the hall. In fact, something was definitely going on down there, and it wasn't a fight. She was tempted to check it out, but even if it wasn't an all-out brawl, walking into it without backup would be foolish at best. The others would be here soon, and their carefully laid plans had already been disrupted by the notes, assuming she wasn't the only one with one; a little more disruption seemed likely.

[Team Investigate Something!]

[ryuuzaki]

[From here.]

L's thoughts were occupied with the note in his pocket and what it might mean for their plans that night, and as such, it was fortunate that his short walk through the corridors was uneventful. As he approached Lana, he heard a distant commotion and his head snapped in that direction. After listening for a moment with a frown, unable to place exactly what was going on, he turned his attention back to her.

"We need to talk." He dug in his pocket as he spoke, and then the paper was in his hand. "I hope you haven't been waiting long."

[fourstonewalls]

"Indeed," Lana said, presenting a folded note with, perhaps, more flourish than it actually deserved. She ignored the pleasantries, and asked the real question. "Up, or down?"

They could hash out the details later; she wanted to know what his gut instinct was. She had her own suspicions...and her own preference, which just asking the question might have betrayed, but he already knew she wasn't eager for more senseless death. Even if she'd resigned herself to the likelihood.

[ryuuzaki]

He handed her his note and took hers.

"My vote is for up, but we'll have to see what the others say. Skulduggery told me yesterday that the door is hidden in the library. With Landel gloating over it these last few days... it's hard to trust it. I don't think it will be easy."

That was one of the most persistent problems at the Institute. Very little was easy, and almost none of the open possibilities could be said to qualify as a "good idea."

Still, this new avenue offered an alternative to what he was convinced had to be some kind of particularly gruesome and unpleasant manipulation. Not just an illusory but convincing death, but in a Coliseum: that implied that the death would be the result of a fight to the death. Which meant that whoever didn't die would probably be doing the killing, unless they would all have to fight one of Landel's creatures until one of them was overcome.

Some people were better off dead, he thought, but not directly at his own hand, and not these people.

[fourstonewalls]

She was about to ask if there was anything he wouldn't gloat about, but he had seemed genuinely shocked when Aguilar had burst in. "I don't trust it." Any more than you do. "I also don't want to kill anyone. Or die. And neither do you."

Her expression didn't change. "If he wanted us in a particular place, we'd be there." They weren't. "Leaving us at least the illusion of free will must be important to him."

Most petty tyrants didn't. They tightened their hold until it was a noose around their own neck when the law stepped in. Landel had broken out of Aguilar's trap; was this all his game, or was there another side to this confrontation after all?

[ryuuzaki]

He gave her a wary, penetrating look, then conceded with half a nod. It was a line that he tried never to cross, at least not in that way, and nothing that he wanted to experience. "No." He sounded rueful; the edge of a bitter laugh was in his voice. "No, I don't."

She was right about the other thing, too, so he merely inclined his head to agree with her. Then, there was time to fill while continuing to wait for the others.

"Speaking of free will... Mr. Lunge visited me today."

[fourstonewalls]

Lana turned, looking out into the gloom, as if watching for the others. "I see." She let the silence build; she wasn't going to pretend she'd known him -- or, for that matter, Ryuuzaki -- well enough for sympathy, and it wasn't unexpected. "Did he have anything useful to say?" With the notes, and the breakdown in accustomed patterns, it was just barely possible.

[ryuuzaki]

"Useful?" His gaze shifted to the side, then back, then narrowed, contemplative. "Maybe in terms of being a cautionary tale."

He paused to take a slow, heavy breath before continuing. "He was incredibly boring, and full of concern for my sanity. It wasn't just that he had dismissed most of what he experienced here as pure fantasy, some kind of folie a deux between us, it was like the edge had been taken off of him. Not like a lobotomy--I wouldn't put that past Landel, but I haven't heard anything suggesting that he's performed that specific kind of procedure here, particularly since some of the "cured" patients do return. But Lunge was like himself and not like himself." There had been enough left of him there to underline how much of the rest was gone.

"Useful in relation to all of this, however? No. Not to us."

[fourstonewalls]

Lana took a sigh; deep, and no less honest for being intentional. She hadn't known Lunge that well, but the idea of being changed like that was unsettling. She'd seen people lose their edge -- and she'd seen what they would do to hold onto one they didn't entirely had.

Not for the first time, she wondered if there had been a point where she could have stopped Damon, or if it had been too late when she'd met him. Probably the latter, but how much had having a young, up-and-coming, protege shown him how his edge was fading? Or had it merely been his ability to keep things quiet? Ambition, or a misguided, ruthless righteousness? She still wasn't sure which had predominated when he'd killed Neil, though ambition had taken over as soon as the blood was on his hands.

"What happened to him? Here, that is." If it had been on the bulletin, she'd missed it -- or forgotten it. The constant list of death reports and disappearances was mind-numbing, and she didn't have an entire staff to keep records for her; maybe she was losing her edge, too, but she would do it with more grace, and on her own terms. Besides, she had been sick, and she was better now. "You don't have to answer that if you don't want to."

[ryuuzaki]

"To Lunge? He had a 'sleep study,' but that wasn't anything unusual or particularly extreme within that category. It only seemed to unsettle him for a day or two." He hadn't ever been able to convince Lunge to tell him what had happened in precise detail, but what L knew about had seemed far less invasive than his own procedure.

"Then he disappeared one day a little over a week ago. I saw him in passing in the afternoon, but he didn't meet me after dinner. Although he told me at the time that his memory was affected, I don't think the sleep study had anything to do with what I saw today. I suppose it's possible, if it took a while to take effect.

"Still, to know that for sure, we'd have to look at whether or not there's a common, consistent passage of time between a patient's procedure and a patient's release. It's been much longer for me, for example, than it was for him, but my procedure was different. And in all, I'm not sure that it would be a fruitful line of investigation. It seems like a distraction to me... one of the wrong questions we can ask that will keep us too busy to think of the right ones."

Holding that opinion didn't stop his train of thought on the subject. The thing in his head, the minuscule device they had implanted that night... could it be altering his personality? A switch could be flipped to force him to think and behave like Daniel Laurier, but that had been demonstrated even before the procedure. The idea that the device might make it permanent caused an unhappy expression to settle in on his face.

"I don't think torture is the ultimate intent here... it seems to be primarily a side effect that comes from a lack of care and a willingness to behave in a completely unethical way. But I can admit that this is wearing on me."