damned_institute | Day 58: Cafeteria

Entry tags:

Day 58: Cafeteria

Anise woke up feeling lucky to be alive. She still felt a bit waterlogged, even though her skin, hair, and clothes were completely dry. During last night's adventures, she'd swallowed a lot of water, and it still felt heavy and disgusting in her stomach. Her arms and legs were tired from treading water. Lying still in her bed, she still kind of felt like she was floating and bobbing in the water.

But she was alive.

Knowing how close she came to death last night, and remembering the lengths her friends had gone to in order to save her, there was no way Anise could let a little discomfort get her down. She had to be at her best today so she wouldn't seem ungrateful to Guy and Claude. On that note, she had to remember to thank them properly, now that she was better able to express herself.

While getting ready, Anise was surprised to actually run into Claude that morning. He came to her room asking for the notebook he stored there (or maybe it was an excuse to see her cute face again), so Anise happily located it and handed it over. She was pretty tired, but the big smile she gave him was genuine. Who wouldn't be happy to see her savior so soon after a dramatic rescue?

After he left, Anise finished re-tying her pigtails into a low position so the military beret would fit on her head, and then she was ready! Even though her stomach wasn't feeling that great, she figured sitting down to a decent meal would help normalize it. And luckily for her, she was among the few who had the privilege of eating such a meal. Anise filled a plate with french toast topped with syrup and fruit, accompanied by small portions of each of the available side dishes.

It looked like she was early, which meant there weren't a lot of people around. That was okay, though. Anise could get a good head start on her meal before any company came around. She sat down at a table by herself and started on her sausage first.

[for Tolten!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The first thing Badd did upon opening his eyes was to check the color of the walls. Normal boring Landel's Institute paint, not the sickly cream yellow of Cece Yew's hotel room, and not streaked with blood from the hooves of a monstrous sheep. At least he wasn't hallucinating again.

Byrne.

Badd was out of bed long before the guard came, pounding at the door. "Where is he?" he shouted. "I took the damn pills, where is he?"

"Settle down, Mr. Savalas."

"What did you do with him?"

"Settle. Down."

Badd's eyes went to the gun, just for a moment before he backed off. It would be suicide to try and grab it, at most he'd take down two or three before they gunned him down, but if they'd murderered Byrne after all Badd had done it would be worth it. Let them see that one prisoner wasn't willing to be a peaceful lab rat. But Byrne wasn't confirmed dead yet. And if there was one thing Badd had learned as a homicide detective, it was that they weren't dead until you saw the body.

(And in a place like this, sometimes even that wasn't enough.)

Badd stalked down the hall, body tense and his heart in an iron vise. He didn't begin to start calming down until he saw Byrne's note on the bulletin board. He was alive. From the note he was in a bad way, but he was alive.

Good. Then he had more time to plan how he was going to murder everyone in the building for laying hands on him. Badd waited by the cafeteria door, hunched, breathless, aching to see his friend again. Badd would not fail him twice.

[Byrne come give me hugs]

[ooc; there are a few things assumed from a backthread here, but all has been discussed so it should be okay!]

Byrne was miserable. Of all the days he'd been here, he'd never woken up feeling like a literal train wreck until today. His neck ached heavily from the injection he'd been given the night before, but it couldn't compare to the ache he felt in his chest. The emotional ache from everything he'd seen strapped to that chair.

It hadn't been real. But goddamnit, it had felt real, and he hadn't known it wasn't real until after they'd finished 'torturing her'. He wanted to vomit just thinking about it.

The bulletin board was Byrne's first objective once he was led from his room. Luckily, he was one of the first ones there. No doubt Badd would come by here before breakfast trying to see if there was anything left for him. The prosecutor scribbled a very hasty note (http://damned-bulletin.livejournal.com/840380.html) to his partner, slapped it on the board, and then made his way to the cafeteria. He hadn't noticed the shiny new M-U pin on his beret yet, but that was probably a good thing. All he needed to worry about right now was when Badd would get here.

The wait was painful, but short. There he was by the cafeteria door, waiting for him. Thank god. Byrne stood up to rush over to him as quickly as possible, but then a terrifying thought entered his head, a second guess, a hesitation. His feet became metaphorically glued to the floor and he couldn't move forward. Would...would Badd be angry with him? When he learned that Byrne had given in to a servant of the institute? That he'd sworn to her that he would never follow the principles of the Yatagarasu ever again in exchange for Kay's safety? The Kay they had harmed before his eyes, the Kay who had only been a hallucination?

It sounded silly, but... Ever since his first day here, Byrne had imagined himself fighting against the Institute up close and personal. Maybe they'd been foolish, immature thoughts spawned from moments of anger, but it didn't matter. He'd thought of them. And in every scenario his mind came up with, he always imagined himself winning against any torture they threw at him. Resilient. Noble.

But when he had been in that situation for real, he'd given in to them, just like that. There was nothing noble about it. He was a traitor to himself and all he believed in. Foolish enough to fall for such a cruel trick. No matter how real the hallucination felt, even if Kay was a part of it, there was no excuse.

What will Tyrell say?

...He had to go. Even from here, he could see that Badd looked just as upset as Byrne felt inside. Maybe something had happened to him last night, too. He needed to go. And he wanted to go, as much as he feared Badd's reaction.

Byrne swallowed hard, then marched himself over to his friend, eyes locked on him. Not breaking eye contact was a cheap way to try and hide the doubt and shame he was feeling, easily seen through, but he didn't care. Byrne stopped a few feet away from Badd, unable to say anything at first. But he didn't care about that either. Words weren't necessary right now. Just being near the one man he trusted more than anyone else was enough.

Enough to both satisfy and torture him.

There. Badd was so grateful to see him alive that it was a moment before he noticed the look on his friend's face. The agony on Byrne's face chilled his soul.

Badd shoved away anyone in between them in his haste to get to Byrne. His friend was moving oddly, hesitantly, and it worried him. He'd seen so many horrible cases of assault and torture that it gave him too many ideas for what they could have been doing to Byrne all night.

Up close, Badd couldn't see a mark on him, but...that still meant nothing "I..." he started, trying to find some way to excuse his negligence. "I'm sorry. I didn't know," he stammered, finding it hard to breathe. "I tried to come find you. The doors were locked." No excuse. There was no excuse for abandoning his post. Hadn't the hallucinations been reminding him of that half the night?

His partner's apologies were making Byrne feel even worse. Why was he sorry? It wasn't his fault. It was the institute's for setting this all up in the first place. But more than that, it was Byrne's for submitting to it, for letting them toy with his emotions and memories. Maybe he hadn't sworn ultimate allegiance to them, but he'd still buckled under their pressure. Now they knew what to do to make him obey them, to turn on his own morals. That was just as bad as siding with them.

And what had Badd done? Try to find Byrne like any good friend would. No, he shouldn't be feeling bad, not in the slightest.

Byrne shifted his feet nervously, finding it harder to keep eye contact. "It wasn't..." He paused, feeling his face grow hot. "Wasn't your fault. They outsmarted us." Always one step ahead. They knew everything about everybody here, Byrne imagined, and all these people were just playthings to whoever was in charge. Not human beings.

Byrne wasn't upset and Badd wasn't sure if that was something to worry about. He'd seen Byrne explode over things and this was a very severe mistake on Badd's part, and yet he was acting as nervous as if it was his fault. Torture could do that to you, he knew...could turn around what you thought was right, shatter your mind and rebuild it in a different image.

Breakfast was right out. If Badd was lucky dinner wouldn't be joining it on the floor.

"Doesn't matter. I shouldn't have let them." Badd tried to escort Byrne over to one of the tables before he fell over. With the way he looked, that might be soon.

And again, Badd was asserting that it was him in the wrong. Byrne knew Badd's protective side all too well and could usually tolerate it, but right now it was only causing him to feel worse and worse. It's not your fault, damnit, it's mine! Can't you see that?!

He resisted Badd's attempt to escort him and clenched his fists, becoming irrationally upset. Upset at himself and what he'd done, upset at this place and that damn doctor, and upset at Badd's stupid over-protectiveness. Just. Everything. It was one of those times where he'd think back on his actions in a few hours and regret getting so emotional, but right now he could give a rat's ass about self-control. "Shouldn't have let them do what?" His voice grew a little louder, a little braver. "We can't stop them from doing anything, Tyrell. They're watching us. All the time. Everywhere. We can't do a damn thing."

For someone like Byrne to say fighting back was impossible? Far from his usual self. From the look on the prosecutor's face, it was clear that he recognized that, too. Four, five days, and they had already reduced him to this? He looked down at the floor in shame. He was upset and not thinking clearly, but that didn't excuse such a defeatist statement.

"I-I didn't mean that," he added hastily, "I mean...it's not that easy. And there wasn't anything you could have done then." He might've added a plea for Badd to stop blaming himself at the end of that, but he knew deep down that would be pointless.

Now the anger was here, but in the way it manifested it was even worse than that look of pain and guilt. What in the hell had they done to him? Byrne didn't just give up and resign himself to injustice. When they'd run out of ways to attack legally they'd turned to the Yatagarasu--when Badd had warned him of the dangers of their work he'd left behind a notebook stating he had no regrets. Badd had fully expected Byrne to be willing to go to prison himself to make the truth known, as Badd had been. If they'd broken him in a single night...and not a mark on him either.

Badd decided to just go for the obvious, if painful question. "What happened last night?" he murmured. "What did the bastards do to you?"

And how did he fix it?

...Part of him had been hoping to avoid that question, as inevitable as that would have been. But Badd wanted to know. Byrne sighed deeply, gearing himself up for the explanation.

"They--" He hesitated, loosening his fists. When he spoke again, his voice was much softer than it had been before. "During dinner, they took me to an isolated room and restrained me to a chair. The doctor there, she looked and sounded just like Calisto Yew. Had her act down to the tiniest detail." And that had been torture in and of itself. Of course, that was the whole point. "She gave me an injection in my neck that caused a hallucination, but I...I didn't know that until her experiment on me was over."

Didn't excuse anything. He felt his face getting hot again. He didn't want to think about this. "Kay was there. They brought her before me and started torturing her right in front of my eyes. And I didn't--I didn't know it wasn't real! I thought she was really there, that they were really hurting her, and--!!" Damnit, his voice was cracking. Calm down, take another deep breath. "...They offered me a choice. Between her and the Yatagarasu."

And that choice was the part he really hesitated to admit to Badd, even though it wasn't surprising for a father so devoted to his daughter to choose her safety over his own. In his mind, giving in to their plans was better than seeing her get hurt anymore, even if it might not be the right thing to do as far as morals were concerned. He'd chosen her over his ideals, and had made that promise.

And then she hadn't been real. How the hell was he supposed to feel about that?

Badd listened to Byrne's story, tense and nearly sweating. Of course it was Calisto Yew, they'd already used her face to get to Badd, but...

Oh, god. They hadn't left a mark on Byrne's body because they'd attacked his heart instead. Badd had encountered some vile, base criminals before but Aguilar's team were the worst he'd ever come across. The courts could never deliver enough justice for his tastes.

Badd's usually stoic demeanor was twisted in pain and rage. "I'll kill them," he snarled. "I swear it, Byrne, I'll kill them for putting you through that."

He didn't ask which Byrne had chosen. He knew his friend. If it hadn't been Kay, Byrne wouldn't have been his friend to start with. To Badd the choice was superficial compared to making a man watch his own daughter being tortured.

Byrne probably would have added some sarcastic joke to that response if he wasn't feeling so terrible. It was a nice thought, especially after everything the bastards had done to them and all of these people, but...when it really came down to it, going around slaughtering every institute employee would make Badd no better than they were.

At least he could now (try to) put his doubts to rest and be assured that his friend wasn't upset with him. It eased little of the guilt he felt for submitting to that doctor, but it helped nonetheless.

Byrne shook his head. "Don't. It was...my fault, anyway. I was the one who fell for their trap." He reached over to put a hand on his friend's arm in reassurance. If there weren't so many people around, he wouldn't have hesitated to throw his arms around him. God knew how much he needed the support right now. This feeling of fear...it was like what Kay must have felt when she was four and scared of the monsters that tried to get her at night. Only here, the monsters were real, and they were everywhere.

Badd was sharing similar impulses. He was no good at comforting people--children, you gave a candy and some soothing words, but for a grown man Badd had no idea what to do. So he stood there to the side of the cafeteria door as the prisoners filtered through and he set his hand on top of Byrne's. If nothing else, he was here. That would have to be enough.

He shook his head again, hard. "Doesn't matter. Using a man's family against him...there's never any justification for that." Killing them wouldn't make him just as bad. Nothing could make you as bad as someone who used that kind of emotional blackmail. "I don't know how they knew about us or Calisto Yew, but..."

The photo. He still had it, didn't he? Badd reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded, crumple-edged photograph. He didn't show it to Byrne just yet.

"Tyrell..." Byrne sighed. He really wished he knew how these people knew about him and Badd so well, too. And Badd was right, there wasn't any justification for such emotional trauma. It was downright cruel, plus a lot of other nasty adjectives. But still...

It was useless to keep trying to disagree with him, Byrne supposed. Badd would keep insisting the institute was the only one in the wrong, Byrne would keep tossing his guilt at him, and then it'd just be this back and forth thing, like an unending emotional tennis match. Was it worth it? Not really.

There was something else to focus on now, anyway. Specifically, the folded piece of paper (a photograph, maybe?) that Badd just pulled out of his pocket, which piqued Byrne's curiosity instantly. Hopefully this would provide him with a well-needed distraction from the events of last night. "What's that?"

"They gave me a letter yesterday. It was supposedly from my..." Badd had to work up the nerve to spit the word out. "Wife. Written to the guy on my dog tags. It came with a photo. I was going to show you last night, but...well." Let's not go there.

Badd unfolded the photo carefully. He hadn't looked at it since yesterday and barely remembered he'd had it with him until now. It was of Badd, at least a decade younger and dressed in a tux. There was an uncharacteristic smile on his face, and an even wider one on the woman next to him. Hanging off his arm, wearing a wedding dress and nearly laughing, was Calisto Yew.

Badd handed the photo to Byrne without looking at it.

A letter written to the guy on his dog tags? A letter--

AH! Crap crap crap! Right! The letter! Byrne had been so worried about his M-U that he'd completely forgotten about that letter from 'Kay' that he'd wanted to ask Badd about! His face lit up with this realization just as his partner handed him the photograph. Alright, then. He'd mention it in a moment, after he was finished looking at this.

......

"What the hell?" Literally the only intelligent response Byrne could make to the photo, with disbelief written all over his face. Seriously, what the hell? How did they manage to pull this off and make it look so real? Landel must have some seriously talented Photoshop artists on his side or--or something, because damn that looked just like Badd and Calisto. Except for, you know, that awkward smile Badd had going on there. And the whole set-up of the photo, which was Badd and Calisto getting married. Married.

The whole thing was so ridiculous that Byrne couldn't stop himself from laughing. Not so much a mocking laugh - it was closer to a nervous chuckle.

Edited 2011-08-19 04:28 (UTC)

At least something had gotten his mind off the torture. Badd scowled, in that way he did when Byrne mocked him about something. It was the way he'd scowl if things were normal and they were joking around together at the office.

"They got a pretty sick sense of humor. I guess they did it with...computers or something. Don't think I'd have a smile like that even if I was getting married." And men like him didn't marry pretty young things in their twenties, they couldn't even make it a good lie. In fact if they'd wanted to make him believe he was someone else they'd found the identity he'd least want to have even if he thought it was true. No, he wouldn't let his best friend be a murderer and a murderer be his adoring wife. He'd rather be considered insane and keep who he was.

Especially not after what they'd done to Byrne and to Kay. He'd fight them with every breath he had, with every shred of sanity left to him, they'd have to pulverize him before he'd bow to their lies.

"No kidding. Obviously these people haven't seen the photos I tried to get you to smile in." Byrne grinned a little at that, then handed the photo back to Badd before he laughed any more at it. The familiar scowl on Badd's face was a small comfort that was well appreciated. Hell, anything that kept his mind off of last night was appreciated right now. But if it had to be something, let it be something familiar, from when things weren't this crazy.

Speaking of crazy, though, now was probably a good time to tell Badd about his own letter. "To tell you the truth," Byrne began to explain, his smile already gone, "I got a letter yesterday, too. It was supposedly from Kay, but like your letter, she addressed me as the name on my dog tags. There wasn't a photograph or anything, and she even called herself a different name. But her handwriting looked way too familiar." He said familiar rather than a match, as he only knew ten year old Kay's handwriting and not seventeen year old Kay's. In spite of that, the letter had shaken Byrne pretty badly when he'd first read it. Now that he'd seen that photograph of Badd and Calisto, however, he was being convinced that it was just another dirty trick.

"She said a lot of weird things. I forgot to bring it to show you, though." The reason for that was obvious.

Badd refolded the photo and tucked it away. He didn't mention the contents of the letter, no point depressing his friend further when he was just starting to pull a smile. "Want to bet that both of them line up? My letter mentioned...I think they might have been referring to you and Kay in some way. It's like they've got this elaborate story built up about who we're 'supposed to be' and they're keeping to the party line for everyone." The why, he still hadn't figured out, but he had reached the point of not caring. The whole thing was a massive sadistic experiment and all Badd needed to know how to do was how to stop it.

He wasn't ashamed of having yelled at Javert earlier. Javert deserved it for wasting his time trying to deduce a method to the madness when all they really needed to deduce was where they were keeping those guns at night.

The letters matching up made the most sense if these people were really trying to screw with their heads. Byrne thought back to his letter, trying to remember the most important details from it as best as he could. "Hmm... Well, 'Kay' never mentioned you in my letter. But she did seem to hint at some 'elaborate story', saying that I hurt quite a few people, even murdered some." Thinking about it now, the idea was pretty dumb. As if Byrne would murder anyone. That was one moral line he wasn't willing to cross without very good reason, and he really had no excuse as he wasn't an armed law enforcement official like Badd was. If these people wanted him to believe he was some kind of serial killer in denial, then good god they were going to need to try really damn hard to accomplish that.

Then again, they'd easily made him think they had his daughter held captive and were torturing her...

Byrne frowned deeply for a moment as the thought crossed his mind, shook his head, then forced himself to stay focused on the letter. What else was important about it? And not last night? Think. "Oh, there were some spots that were blacked out in the letter, too. The only black out that made sense seemed to relate to time, if I remember right." Of course. Why would the institute want the patients knowing precious details like that? That would be a little too generous on their part.

At least he seemed to be taking the idea well. Badd was used to victims of assault and torment, but he wasn't used to treating them gently...when he wanted to be compassionate, he backed off and let someone more capable handle it. But there was no one else to do it, so all he could do was hold to Byrne's hand and keep him distracted.

"Time and location, and the names out of outside parties.I got the murderer story too. They made it out like I was some cop who went crazy after his wife left him and started falling for his prey, which I assumed was supposed to be you." He threw in a rough chuckle, to accentuate that he found it just as ridiculous. It made for good drama, a real detective noir story with some psychodrama and bizarre homoeroticism thrown in. The boys up in Landel's office must have had fun rewriting his life into such a twisted image.

Byrne couldn't resist a small laugh at hearing that, either. "Sounds almost like a cheesy drama flick, doesn't it?" Yeah, it was pretty ridiculous. All of it was.

So ridiculous that Byrne lowered his eyes, sighing deeply. The depressed expression from earlier was starting to come back as he asked what was probably the same question on every patient's mind every minute of every day: "What's the point of it all, Tyrell? Why are they trying so hard?"

Why indeed? Byrne had convicted hundreds of criminals in his career. Even the ones who claimed to commit crimes for 'no reason' had some psychological reasoning behind their behavior, something that happened to them that made them snap. Logic dictated that Landel or Aguilar or whoever wouldn't kidnap all these people, stick knives in their hearts and twist them as much as they could, just because 'they felt like it'. It was too large, too expensive, too risky of an operation to perform with so many people involved.

But trying to figure out why was starting to hurt Byrne just as much as thinking about the crimes themselves. He tried to believe in the good of people as much as he could, but not to the point where he would naively forgive anybody who stooped to these levels for any reason. It was still enough to make him wonder just how any human being could possibly want to orchestrate such a thing as this place. Perhaps it wasn't worth it trying to think about it anymore.

The brief smile had vanished from Byrne's face again. Badd had never seen Byrne so disheartened, even in the middle of KG-8 (should he tell about the hallucinations? No, no reason to worry him, and as he'd told Javert the effects would pass eventually) "Experiments, I think. Beyond that even the veterans don't know...and at this point I don't particularly care." His voice lowered--not softened, there was only so much you could soften gravel and barbed wire when you were constantly restraining the urge to murder the people around you. "Nothing could excuse what they did to you. All I want to know now is how to destroy them."

Badd made another nudge to try and get Byrne to sit down. He wished he was able to smuggling a lollipop out of his room to give to him, any tiny little thing he could do to make things comfortable and familiar for him.

This time Byrne would let his friend lead him to a table. It was getting tiresome standing here. Forget about eating, though. He'd be lucky if he could stomach lunch later on. Too much to think about, too much to worry about.

"Open daytime rebellion has proven to do more harm than good," the prosecutor responded after a short pause, "And I doubt it's so easy to find the head of it all if the veterans have been trying for weeks. Their system is clever and too perfectly chaotic at night. Fighting them will be difficult." He looked and sounded disheartened at first, but both his expression and tone hardened as he continued on. "But I bet it's not impossible. Just harder than the Yatagarasu's used to."

The torture session had taken a lot out of Byrne and would likely continue to haunt his mind for a little while. But being here now, reassured by Badd's presence and his will to fight...the possibility of victory didn't seem so impossible anymore.

Badd gave a firm nod and bit his thumbnail in lieu of a lollipop to nibble upon. There. He'd claimed it, even after they'd tried to tear him down in the worst way possible. General Aguilar had tried to have the Yatagarasu written out of existence completely but they wouldn't go down by a few holograms and fake letters.

"And we are still the Yatagarasu," Badd said, pulling his thumb from his mouth. He leaned back against the table, managing to somehow be defiant in his casual gesture. "Against time, against death, against the smuggling ring, against every conceivable law of reality and every horror they've tried to throw at us, the Yatagarasu's still flying. They're not going to be able to break us of that."

He was even less a man of speeches than he was one of compassionate gestures, and he viewed rhetoric as words ill-spent. But someone needed to make a noble statement in this worthless place...someone needed to put the fear of the gods in General Aguilar's forces and break the cycle of torture and despair.

Badd wasn't technically smiling. He very rarely smiled. But the people who knew him closely knew better than to just look at his face and his lips for signs of his true emotions.

If Byrne looked into Badd's eyes he'd know that his friend was wearing a fierce grin.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Day 58: Cafeteria

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject