damned_institute | Day 55: Intercom, Evening

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Day 55: Intercom, Evening

Snow doubled in number as the day transitioned into the evening hours. Unfortunately, none of the patients were allowed the time to enjoy the weather changes. They were instead greeted by the telltale jingle of the intercom, signaling their cue to return indoors.

Once again, they heard the voice of a familiar female. She sounded unchanged from her previous announcements, her intonation as clear and as flat as ever.

"Attention all subjects and personnel. All subjects are to return to their assigned rooms for their evening meal. Lights Out will commence shortly after."

The woman paused, seemingly for effect.

"All personnel: you are to report to your stations. Thank you."

The intercom clicked off.

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Kay would have had the sense to find somewhere to hide from the snow, Badd told himself. He'd instructed her to change clothes as soon as possible and what with her chosen hobby he was sure she knew how to pick a store's lock. They hadn't found her and that was what mattered.

Badd prodded his 'dinner', finding it even more distasteful now that he knew what it actually tasted like. At some point he'd have to get over himself and just eat it, if only to keep up his strength, but right now it could wait.

Tonight he was meeting the phantom. The thing had solidity and temperature, it wasn't a hologram, but that didn't make it human. If it was a hallucination he'd find some way to test it, there would have to be a break in reality somewhere that would prove the lie. If it really was a person dressed up with Byrne's face, who for some demented reason had trained himself to impersonate Badd's best friend, then alone at night in an isolated area would be the best place to interrogate him. The area wasn't ideal, but it was the best place he knew of for testing his hypotheses and quite far from the courtyard where it had first appeared.

Of course, if the man behind Byrne's face chose to reveal himself and explain his full master plan in a cartoonish fashion, that would just make things simple. Badd gave the goo one last prod, then shoved it away and sat back sulkily in his chair.

But nothing here was simple.

"Evening, Hunt. See you in the morning."

"Evening," returned Javert dutifully. There was no point in dropping his previously established reputation for complicance, despite the fact that his role in the grand scheme of things appeared to have changed.

Nevertheless, the day had been more successful than most, he decided as the door shut behind him. His usual dinner of salmon was waiting for him, but beside it was something unusual--a large metal box bearing the same number as on his dog tags. Opening it revealed his neatly folded clothing. A glint of metal beside it caught his eye: his saber and his axe, leaning against the desk and tagged with the same number. A mirthless smile appeared on his face. So Aguilar was doing this the proper way, was he?

He shut the box and pushed it aside. No point in refusing the food tonight; he would need it, and starving himself was pointless. He would have to write himself a note in case the amnesia resurfaced.

Across the room, Badd was staring disgustedly at his own meal. The now-standard meal, apparently, though Javert had yet to hear what made a patient S Rank as opposed to any other. "You might as well eat that," he observed drily. "Slop it may be, but it's nourishment you'll probably need tonight."

"Just working up the courage." Badd would never say it, but he was more than a bit relieved to see the inspector. It was nice to have someone confirmably sane and sensible here. He did have a nice salmon dinner in comparison to Badd's pastel oatmeal, but he also had the decency not to gloat about it--and Badd would have the decency not to ask for a bite.

Now that box, that was interesting. He'd have to find some excuse to break into it while Javert was out of the room, if only out of curiosity. Badd pulled his bowl back and stirred it with little enthusiasm.

"How long have you been here, Javert?" he asked. "That you can remember, i mean." He wanted the caveat in case he was like Lana and had lost several years of time due to the institute's treatment. It would be colossally foolish to out and ask if Javert knew why he'd been seeing dead people (and talking to them on the bulletin board), but if he asked it slantwise he might be able to get out of it without completely losing his credibility.

Javert seated himself, flipping open his journal and starting in on his dinner. Unfair as the ranking system seemed, he had never been in the habit of defying orders. But perhaps if he could acquire confirmation that the rooms weren't watched, he'd consider splitting his dinner next time.

"A month and four days," he said offhandedly, turning to a clean page. "If I've been here longer, I don't remember it."

A full month? That wasn't exactly encouraging. Javert hadn't made it out of here, for whatever reason, but he hadn't gone insane either and Badd hadn't made it three days without hallucinating.

"Then you've got a basis of comparison. I've talked to a few people who seemed pretty all right, except they claimed they'd had dead family members come up and start talking to them. And they knew it was impossible, so they weren't completely out of their minds, but something was making them see things. Is that business as usual or were people a little clearer on reality before Aguilar moved in?"

He pulled the bowl back again, looking into its depths as if for guidance. But he'd seen Byrne before they'd even been fed that morning, so it couldn't be drugs in the pink stuff. They had to be doing it some other way. Badd winced, and took a large bite of his meal.

"Business as usual, I'm afraid." It was odd that Badd had brought that up--Javert would have thought he'd have been here long enough to hear the basics, especially since there were people he knew here. "The impossible is possible here, or so it would seem. Have you spoken yet to any other patients from your precinct? Evidently it is possible to take patients from different times, bizarre as that might sound. It would certainly explain why these patients claimed they saw people whom they believed to be dead."

He tapped his journal with his pen. "There is, however, another possible explanation. These encounters. Did they occur at night or during the day?"

"Day. They weren't dreams."

Badd rolled his eyes. He'd heard that claim at least half a dozen times since arriving here, in one form or another. Kay had bought into it, which given her general silliness wasn't hugely surprising, and Lana had bought into it before he'd reminded her that it was more likely that she was just missing chunks of her memory, and Gant had claimed it and that he really had no explanation for. But he'd really thought Javert had more sense.

"You know, people keep telling me that," he said slowly. "Including a few from my precinct. And I know what they say--one person says you're a horse, ignore them, three people say it and you should buy a saddle. Overwhelming witness testimony is almost as good as evidence." He was skipping over part of the metaphor but he assumed Javert would know the rest. "But there's this one small thing you seem to be forgetting."

Badd made a plucking motion at his lips. He lacked a lollipop, but muscle memory died hard. When he spoke again it was in a louder, harsher tone. "Time travel is impossible! What in the heck is wrong with you?"

The sudden hostility from Badd was unexpected. It shouldn't have been, but so many of the patients here had accepted his explanation without question that the change was jarring. Javert himself had been skeptical at first, though the flashlights and radios had won him over quickly. Less simple to accept had been his roommate's claim of monsters--but that, too, had been confirmed in time.

He understood, or at least he believed he did, what Badd's train of thought was. And with the detective's time so apparently close to this one, convincing him would be a difficult job.

Not that he considered it his job to convince the other man. He'd come round to it in time, or he'd wallow in his own denial until the end. Quick-thinking as Badd had seemed the previous night, Javert didn't feel much inclination to argue the point with him.

"Go on, then," he said dryly, seemingly unaffected by Badd's outburst. "Ask your contacts here what the last date they remember was. I guarantee you it won't be the same as yours, and it isn't amnesia, either. Those dead family friends--did your source tell you if they looked younger or older than you last remember them? Do you really think you're the only sane man here? Don't flatter yourself. It'll only end in injury."

He was really starting to wonder, actually. “People can be drugged, and as confusing as this place is I don’t blame a lot of the weaker-minded people for buying into the lies. But I’m a lot less likely to believe that this place has a time machine in the attic than I do that the whole thing is a massive hoax intended to drive us mad.” He waved his clasped hand at Javert, as if pointing an invisible stick. “And even if they did, why dig up people who are so closely connected to us? There’s a master plan hiding in the background here and I’m going to find out what it is. Tonight, if possible. You want evidence, I'll serve it up to you on a silver platter, but time travel is not the simplest answer. If anything, it's the stupidest.”

He'd find the lie, the contradiction is the phantom's story. It was impossible that one didn't exist.

Javert shook his head. "Keep asking. Ask patients whom you don't recognize, who claim to come from different worlds and future times. Their stories match up more often than not. I asked when I first arrived. There's no-one here closely connected to me. Is it impossible to believe? Certainly. But there are patients here who have unbelievable powers, and no logical explanation for them. Where do you think I got this sword?" He gestured at the blade, the finely crafted hilt. "A young girl made it for me out of scrap metal. I don't have to tell you there are no forges within a ten-mile radius of this building, and certainly no reason for an insane asylum to store weapons of this quality."

No doubt Badd believed he was mad now, too. There was little point in arguing that he had traveled at least a century into the future--not when he had no proof, and when anything he claimed was unknown could easily be ascribed to amnesia. "I wish you best of luck searching tonight, then. This place is certainly meant to drive us mad, and undoubtedly there is some sort of master plan, but that isn't part of it."

Badd hadn't been able to see the weaponry from his position, and when he stood to peek over the desk his eyes widened. Well, damn. There were cleverly made shivs and then there was something like that. And was that an ax?

"Impossible swords have nothing to do with impossible time travel," he pointed out, still staring at the sword and ax. Unbelievable powers, indeed. Were they talking about magic now? "Those don't actually prove anything. I trust them even less if they're directly handing the weapons to you rather than confiscating them as illegal goods and punishing you for having them in the first place. Someone's playing you for a fool, stop trying to take the easy way out by believing them."

Though he wouldn't mind getting that girl's number and asking if she also dealt in firearms...

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Day 55: Intercom, Evening

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