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damned_institute2011-03-09 12:03 pm
tightsofmight) wrote in damned_institute2011-03-09 12:03 pm
Entry tags:
- aidou,
- alaric,
- albedo,
- anise,
- ax,
- badd,
- battler,
- bella,
- brainiac 5,
- byrne,
- canada,
- claire bennet,
- claire littleton,
- claire stanfield,
- claude,
- damon,
- dean winchester,
- dexter,
- edgar,
- edward cullen,
- erika,
- firo,
- franziska,
- goku (dragonball),
- gren,
- gumshoe,
- guy,
- guybrush,
- ilia,
- japan,
- kairi,
- kaworu,
- kenshin,
- kibitoshin,
- kinomoto sakura,
- kirk,
- klavier,
- kratos,
- l,
- lana skye,
- leela,
- lightning,
- lion,
- lunge,
- matt,
- maya,
- mccoy,
- mele,
- mello,
- minato,
- nigredo,
- peter parker,
- peter petrelli,
- prussia,
- rapunzel,
- renamon,
- rita,
- ritsuka,
- roxas,
- ruby,
- s.t.,
- sam winchester,
- sasuke,
- scott pilgrim,
- shinji,
- snow,
- sora,
- soren,
- spock,
- stefan,
- sync,
- taura,
- the doctor,
- the flash,
- the scarecrow,
- tsubaki,
- two-face,
- venom,
- yue,
- zack,
- zevran
Day 55: Cafeteria
A night spent inside his room had done nothing to ease his jitters. Peter couldn't stop worrying. Over Brainy, what he thought of him now that he knew about what he'd done to Grell, and where he was going for the night. If he'd be safe. If Indy and the others would be safe, trucking on down to the basement. (Not frigging likely, considering 'basement' was synonymous for 'giant ass doom pit'.) If that ominous intercom announcement had meant anything. Peter had spent hours staring into the dark after that, his stomach churning his supper into butter over the horrific possibilities. Whatever punishment that arose for the food fight was a mystery. It didn't seem to infect him, unless it was a particularly trying case of insomnia. No matter how badly Peter tried, he couldn't find the will to sleep. Much of the night had been spent making notations and doodles in his journal by flashlight, peppered with long stretches of staring at the dark.
Honestly, he'd rather be taking another crack at the Hall of Hallucinations instead of rolling around in his bed. Paranoia was his only company the whole night.
Morning felt like a blessing by the time it came. He wasn't sure when sleep had finally overtaken him, but as he blinked his way into life he couldn't help feeling a bit...off.
It was really quiet. Peter's face scrunched under the light, and he stretched underneath the covers. There was a zip of cotton on cotton, and his shirt half dragged itself out from under the belt.
His eyes shot open. Belt? The covers flipped back, and Peter gaped down at his form on the bed. ...Belt?!
What the frigging hell was this? Peter jolted to his feet, patting himself down. He looked like some kind of air cadet. There were freaking epaulettes on his shoulders (was that even what they were called?), boots on his feet and a beret on the dresser. A single pin was nestled into the front, looking freshly polished as it glinted in the light. Peter snatched the hat up and stared. Two letters were inscribed on the pin. Nothing more, nothing less.
"SC..."
Special Counseling? Peter's expression took a turn for the frantic. What else could it stand for? He tried to run through a few candidates, but nothing stuck. Nothing applied so neatly without being ridiculous, because it clearly didn't stand for Super Cuckoo or Spider Cadet. Was he supposed to wear this like some stupid badge of honour? God, just brand it across his forehead, why don't you? My name is Peter Parker and I totally snapped a guy's arm for Mother Landel's. Hail the Smiley!
Peter pressed the beret against his face and groaned into the fabric. This was it. They weren't playing games anymore. They were finally turning this into death match boot camp and sending them off to war. Shit. Shit he was going to be in the frigging army in some messed up alternate universe, and he didn't even know what the frick they were fighting against or why they were fighting. If they were pulling magical whatsits out of every book and TV show known to man, then who knew what wacky threat they were up against. Aliens? If it was aliens, he was quitting. He was going to curl up on the ground hugging a grenade and pull the pin. Just no. No. This was not happening. This could not be frigging happening.
Except that it was. The person who whipped open the door that morning wasn't the affably sour Nurse Rachel, but a hulking, thickly built man who looked like he consumed a toddler a meal solely to fuel his pecs. Peter couldn't even find the breath to argue as he was told to tuck in his shirt and put on his boots and come to the cafeteria. He left just as another soldier brushed past them to collect Brainy, and Peter abruptly realized that in his confusion he'd forgotten to check if the boy was okay.
Too late for that now. Peter tried to match pace with the burly man, fumbling to put his snazzy new beret on and watching with wary eyes as other patients were dragged by. Things seemed even bleaker as they hit the cafeteria. The buffet was empty. The scent of food was lacking. Soldiers packed along the borders of the room so neatly you would think they were part of a particularly tacky wall paper. And worst of all? Buckets. Mops and rags and brooms, all piled in the center of the room.
The lady officer's speech was entirely unnecessary at that point. Peter withered where he stood as she told them their duty. It was like a scolding from Aunt May, if someone gave her a gun and a license to use it. Except the joke only made things worse - now he just wanted his Aunt. The force of his loneliness bowled him over like a wrecking ball. He might never see Aunt May again. Peter's gaze fell to the floor and he clenched his fists.
Was this it? Was his life really over? Escape never seemed so far away.
There was no protest from him as they were sent to work. Ashen and queasy, Peter stumbled towards the cleaning supplies and selected a bucket and a rag. He couldn't even bemoan his lack of breakfast. His nerves were making it impossible to even think about food.
They needed to get out tonight. Everyone. Somehow...
[Lion!]
no subject
It wasn't that they had made him forget. That was almost understandable. Little as he had done in the grand scheme of things, he was bound to have struck a little too close for comfort once or twice. It was the way he worked, and it meant he had been doing something right. No, it was that they had allowed him to remember again. Everything, as far as he was concerned, from the moment his vision had gone dark under the Pont Neuf to the moment the intercom had switched on last night, had been returned to him. Was it a warning of some sort? It had been delivered through the food, or something similar; had it been random, or had the effects been targeted?
Less worrying, but of no less consequence, was the sudden disappearance of all of his belongings. It was hardly surprising; there were bound to be some changes with the institution of a new regime. But Javert found the sudden emptiness of his closet almost disappointing all the same. That sword had been worth its weight in gold most nights.
At the very least, the horrific daytime uniform had been replaced by something more socially acceptable, even if he supposed he must look terribly out of place in it. He seated himself on his bed again as the approaching click of footsteps heralded the arrival of his new captors.
"Morning, Hunt. Sleep all right?"
The voice was practically bordering on amiable, and the soldier who had entered his room seemed almost relaxed.
"Something like it," said Javert, standing up. The chain around his neck clinked again with the movement.
"Top rank," said the soldier, indicating it. "That comes with privileges. You'll get used to it in time."
There were boots and a beret to go with the new uniform, and a small pin that blinked M-U up at him as he turned the beret over. Javert's lips hardened into a thin line.
"Honored." He put as much sarcasm as he could into the word.
If the soldier noticed, he didn't remark upon it; instead, he seemed close to friendly as he escorted Javert through the halls. Disconcerting as it was, it was nevertheless preferable to his old nurse's overbearing chatter, and if nothing else, responding favorably to it allowed him the privilege of posting on the bulletin board before he was directed through the double doors to the cafeteria.
Evidently, the privileges of being S Rank, whatever it was, did not extend to avoiding the punishment for yesterday morning's insubordination. Aguilar's strategy was evident, that much was certain; already a number of patients had been lined up against the wall, clearly not cleaning. Those were the would-be revolutionaries, then. He doubted the next shift would make much of a difference to them, one way or another.
Wordlessly, Javert rolled up his sleeves, acquired a small selection of rags, and began to clean. There was little point in arguing, and it was not in his nature to shy away from hard work. At the very least, it seemed as if conversations were permitted. Perhaps he'd find a familiar face nearby.
no subject
Before this place, he'd managed to keep himself so well detached from everything else - from the world in general, with his hermit lifestyle. Human contact was overrated.
But in this place, where nightmares became real things that crawled and flew and bit in the dark, it was quickly becoming an apparent necessity, if one wanted to survive.
The brunet had to face the awful truth: there was just no getting away with being a jerk here. Of course, this was a lesson he should have learned a long time before, but it had somehow been one talent he just never picked up. It stung a little, to think that there was actually something he wasn't good at.
However, his attention was quickly refocused, as it should have been; it was daytime, and there were important matters to attend to.
Such as eating.
Matt had listened closely to the announcement he and, he was sure, everyone else had been privy to just before dawn broke, and it seemed that Landel was gone for good for the foreseeable future; this realization made him unsurprised to find himself in a completely different (though equally tasteless) uniform when he sat up in bed that morning. Instead of the usual grey t-shirt dubbed with that annoying smiley face, he found himself in a crisp blue shirt, the collar and long sleeves making him feel weirdly at ease; he attributed this to the similarities the shirt held to his usual shirt and vest combination - but it also had the bad side effect of rubbing the bandage on the back of his neck and making his wound itch. The outfit was completed by responsibly creased black trousers, black boots, and a shiny new black belt. The entire thing felt much more formal than he was used to, but he could go with it; the outfit was surprisingly comfortable, and anything was better than the lazy retirement home clothing they'd been subjected to before.
He did raise an eyebrow at the band around his left bicep; it was adorned with that same smiley face, always mocking him.
The door opened suddenly, and a gruff voice simply said his "name": "Jae."
His head snapped in the soldier's direction, more startled than surprised, and something flew right off his head and made a small sound when it hit the floor, right beside his right foot. Blinking down at it a moment before he stooped down to pick it back up, Matt wasn't very happy to see that it was a simple black hat; it seemed to be made of wool, and it was just.
Awful.
In the doorway, the soldier stared at him with a vaguely annoyed look on her face. She was just an inch or two shorter than him, but Matt had the distinct feeling that she could whip into submission quicker than he could do anything about it - and her expression plainly said that she wouldn't mind doing just that if he didn't get a move on. Before she could come in and get him, the brunet put the hat back on his head and followed her out the door and down the hall.
It was a silent trip to the cafeteria, and his stomach grumbled loudly when he got there and listened in on the speech. As disappointed as he was that there was no trace of the most important meal of the day, he held his cool and silently made his way across the room with his sleeves shoved haphazardly up his arms and a sponge in one hand, a rag in the other. When he saw Javert, he glanced over at the nearby soldiers; they didn't seem to mind a little bit of chatting, so long as the cleaning continued and got done. With that - and the fact that they had some unfinished business that needed to be taken care of - Matt approached the other man. "Care for a hand?"
Hint hint: We need to talk about last night.
no subject
Good of him to show up now. It was best to get this over with as soon as possible; to say last night had been embarrassing was the understatement of the century. He wasn't so delusional as to think the whole thing had been his fault, but he had been an unspeakably large inconvenience nonetheless.
"If you like," he said, straightening to look Matt in the eye, or something approaching it. "It appears my memory's returned."
And both Matt and Mello had gotten that much closer to earning his trust for not taking advantage of the situation. They might be valuable allies after all.
no subject
Marcus Jae
D Class
03132420M
He made a snorting noise in his head; apparently Landel's considered him a D student, which was a relatively new idea to Matt. He just wasn't cut out for the military lifestyle, but judging from the size of the guards they now had, it would take more balls than Matt figured he had to speak up and suggest they should send him back to the genius factory.
Shaking his head, he just dropped the dogtag and leaned forward again, grabbing the sponge and starting to scrub. A quick glance around told him that he wasn't the only one feeling out of sorts. "We were supposed to talk last night," he started, giving Javert a look while making sure his hand kept moving. "But we didn't." Because the new kid on the block wanted to make sure we know who's in charge now, he didn't say, but he was thinking it pretty loudly.
Hopefully it wasn't too obvious that he was still dodging the subject, in his own special way. Matt still wasn't feeling so inclined to let anyone know just how much what Mello had told him the day before was worrying him, and his anxiety seemed to be reaching an all-time high. He was just good at hiding it.
no subject
He made every effort to give off the impression that he was attacking a particularly difficult spot on the floor. "This has to do with the experimental studies, doesn't it? You said nothing happened."
no subject
That seemed to be part of the price one paid to survive at Landel's - a price Matt was becoming familiar with more and more with each passing shift.
"I guess we should've known better than to try having such an important conversation when we knew we'd be surrounded by trouble." Matt made a soft sigh at his own stupidity, but he kept scrubbing at the floor as he continued, "Yeah, nothing happened. Nothing at all. I'm not sure why they grabbed me, but there were no marks anywhere on my body."
He glanced at Javert, just a little nervous. "Morgan said it's happened before. They grabbed someone, did things to him, and then let him go, only to take him again later.
"But he said you knew more about it than he did." He looked back down at the floor, thankful that Javert seemed to be trying to make this as easy as possible for Matt. It made him almost smile.
no subject
"No doubt you're already aware of how unusual your situation is." Javert rinsed the sponge and attacked the floor again. "It's true a patient claims to have been taken before, only to be taken again later, but as far as I know, he was experimented on both times." That, or von Karma had been as much a liar about that as he had about virtually everything else. But it wasn't something he'd had any reason to lie about; in this matter, at least, Javert thought he might be able to take his former roommate at his word.
"You'll forgive me, then, if I doubt your experience was as uneventful as you claim. The fact that there were no marks on your body means little; they have no need to break the skin to introduce anything into your body." He paused for a moment, thinking. "You say nothing happened--what do you remember? Any recollections of what took place immediately after dinner?"
no subject
Was it Matt himself that Javert was doubting? There was really no other way to take that statement; if the man doubted his information in general, then that meant practically the same thing when you got down to it. The brunet couldn't blame him, of course. It was ludicrous to think that everyone in the facility would be inclined to be truthful during even one conversation, let alone all of them. Matt himself didn't even trust most of the people within these walls - the only possible exception being Mello, and that was only because of what they'd been through together since he'd arrived. Saving his scrawny butt from certain death or dismemberment was more than enough to prove someone's trustworthiness, as far as Matt was concerned.
Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Matt couldn't help shooting the nearest armed guard a very disgruntled look; no smoking and no food this early in the morning? That was just sick.
He could tell that the lack of nicotine was starting to really get to him now from the number of bitter, biting responses that lined up almost instantly in the forefront of his mind after he heard Javert out. However, being rude would get him nowhere here, so he had to learn to play nice. After all, gone were the days where he could verbally bash everyone else in the world playing Halo at three in the morning over a headset.
"Go ahead, doubt away," he retorted, settling on one of the replies that seemed least likely to get him kicked away. "All I can remember after finishing dinner is that some orderlies busted into my room, sedated me and hauled me away right in front of my roommate, and then... nothing." Matt turned and started rinsing his own sponge. "Everything was black until I woke up back in bed the next morning, and it was seriously like nothing had happened. Very creepy, dude." Squeezing the excess out of the sponge, he got back to work - or something that looked like work, anyway.
no subject
Or, he supposed, the case might indeed be that nothing at all had occurred, and the doctors in their infinite wisdom had decided that playing with a young man's highly developed sense of paranoia would be considerably more entertaining than actually doing anything to him. But given the events of last night, he was inclined to think less of that theory and more of the former.
"And you say you've noticed no changes whatsoever? Some of the effects have to be triggered."
no subject
That was when a thought occurred to him, and he remembered something strange from the night before. His surprise didn't register in his expression, but inwardly Matt was sent reeling by the realization that there indeed had been something off during the nightshift. That doesn't mean anything, he reasoned with himself, his hand continuing to move the sponge against the floor, almost automatically. Several people's heads were messed with last night. Javert was obviously one of them, and something told him that Mello's gut instinct was a similar situation. The blond had never had much of a sixth sense for trouble before - at least not for avoiding it, as far as he'd known.
The only conclusion he could draw at the moment was that it was either part of what they did to him, or it was part of what they'd done to the patients the night before - the so-called Project 2911 Aguilar had announced just after dinner. The latter seemed the more likely, given the circumstances.
"I hate how little we actually know about the way these people think," he commented as his hand kept moving. His body was on cleaning autopilot, it felt like, but whatever. It would keep him out of trouble, he knew, which he needed. "Either they experimented on me and just didn't let me remember it, which would mean there's some sort of hidden plan behind it that has yet to be set into motion, or they didn't hack into my brain and they just want to make me think they did." He pondered over it a minute. "The only reason they would do that would be just to screw with me - which also seems plausible."
There was a third explanation, but it was so unlikely that Matt had all but completely crossed it off the list of potentials: Landel's could have made a mistake.
Despite the altered regime, however, to Matt's knowledge, the facility just didn't make mistakes. No, this was a smooth running operation if he'd ever seen one. In order to make it out and stay out, they'd need to find a crack - which was going to be almost impossible, from what he could tell already.
no subject
"It would be an unusual case, to say the least, but it's possible." And worth adding to his collection of case histories, he supposed. "There's no guarantee that they haven't done something to you, but by and large the majority of the doctors here are far too fond of the sounds of their own voices. I can't help but feel you would have heard or remembered something of the experiment, however vague."
no subject
After that split second reprieve from his anxiety, however, more of Matt's doubts began to set in, and he paused in his cleaning, his eyes still on the floor they were both crouched over. "If that's the case," he started, his words slow and thoughtful, "their motive probably isn't nearly as important as what their next move could possibly be."
Matt was still seriously alarmed by the thought that he could be snatched again, at any time, for a few rounds of midnight mad scientist peek-a-boo - a session he could remember this time around.
His mouth formed a thin line at the idea. He wasn't exceptionally strong, by any means, and he was smart enough to know it. But he wasn't weak either, and he didn't like being treated as such.
He started to wonder briefly how they would try to break him, but the brunet quickly shook those thoughts from his head. It obviously won't do you any good to dwell on possible methods of torture, he told himself, his hand resuming movement on the floor before the nearest guard could bark at him.
no subject
He was doubtful he was doing much good, but Javert had never held much truck with compassion. The best he could do was offer what common sense he had.
no subject
Sudden hope and a renewed sense of determination fluttered through Matt right then. The brunet sat there a moment, staring down at the floor just beneath his gaze as he contemplated this new train of thought.
"It could be perfectly plausible, then, with that way of thinking," he started, "to assume that the studies might not be continued tonight? Or possibly any other night, while Aguilar's in charge and Landel remains dethroned?" Of course, that could also mean that Aguilar might have something even worse in mind to replace the sleep studies, if that was the case; the phrase "Out with the old, in with the new" came to mind.