damned_institute | Day 59: Sun Room (4th Shift)

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Day 59: Sun Room (4th Shift)

After an intercom broadcast like that, Kurogane felt somewhat better about the little information he'd gotten from Harrington the previous night. The man only sounded competent when he needed to but was an idiot otherwise. Unfortunately that was furthered proof of the General not employing the brightest of staff members, making another option for information closed to them.

Kurogane was again some steps ahead of his escort when he reached the Sun Room and ignored the soldier further as the ninja headed to look over the bulletin. Last time he'd missed something, and he wasn't about to have that happen a second time. With some searching he located Tsubaki's messages to others he didn't know but found nothing either written by the magician or addressed to him. That being the case, he left the board without any of his own writing and sought out a chair over a couch. If he didn't leave open a space by him, he had a better chance of being left alone. Or so he believed.

[free ~~bird!~~ bear]

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With lunch over, Harvey had one more chance to track down the man he'd been searching out for the majority of the day. If he wasn't able to find Jones now, then he'd have to wait until tomorrow to speak with him, and for some reason that felt like it would be way too long. Granted, part of it was just that he needed to see that Scott had been telling the truth, even though he knew that the kid had to have been.

Seeing it with your own two eyes was another thing entirely, though.

As it turned out, though, his search had suddenly become that much easier. Harvey exited the cafeteria out into the Sun Room and had been figuring that he'd need to check in the Game Room, but his eyes fixed on a wheelchair and he realized -- just from the back of the guy's head -- that it was the person he was looking for sitting in it.

Of course, it wouldn't feel entirely real until he saw Jones' face, and so Harvey started toward the man, trying to make it seem like he wasn't making a beeline right for him. He wasn't sure how well he succeeded at that, but as he approached he placed a hand on Jones' shoulder, digging his fingers in before he circled around and took a seat across from him.

The guy was clearly worse for the wear, but he was alive and here and that was weird as hell, but it wasn't bad. "So... we really got the wool pulled over our eyes there, didn't we?" he started with a huff. It was so much easier to handle this with some pretense of casualness.

Indy felt the hand on his shoulder and turned to see Dent standing behind him and coming around to take the chair. It was good to see him looking well (as well as he ever did, anyway) after what had happened the other night.

"No kidding," he agreed with something like a laugh. "I'm not complaining, but I could've done without the theatrics." And he suspected the theatrics would be the one thing they could be sure of about whatever was coming next. What was it about madmen that made them so fixated on dramatic flair? Subterranean ballrooms and stadia and giant snake statues. It was more interesting than your average prison, but it also underscored the feeling that they were being toyed with at every turn--which, Indy guessed, was exactly how Landel et. al wanted them to feel.

He took too deep a breath and winced at the spike of pain in his chest, then pressed on quickly before Dent could comment. "So what did I miss? Aside from Peter and Scott fistfighting in the hallways."

Couldn't they all have done without the theatrics? What had been the point of that whole charade when nothing had changed in the end? Though Harvey was starting to feel like that was the pattern of this place. No matter what went on, in the end it always reverted back to the status quo. Which was that they were stuck here with no way out and the only thing they could really do was toss themselves into danger night in and night out.

Not that he had a better idea. Complacency was even worse than falling for this place's traps over and over again; that he was sure of. Even if the accident had worn him down in some ways, it had only made him more determined in others. If he gave up, he sure as hell wasn't just going to stay here and rot. He'd do himself in and be done with it, simple as that.

It seemed that despite Jones being back, Harvey's thoughts were still leaning toward the morbid side of things. It wasn't so surprising; this sort of result wasn't exactly easy to swallow, either. Eventually his mind caught up with the man's question and he adopted a frown. "Fistfighting? What the hell?" This was the first he'd heard of that, though it might have had something to do with the fact that both of those idiot kids hadn't spoken a word to him since that night. Whatever.

"...Well, anyway, not much. You were only gone a day." Jones probably knew that by now. "Apparently there's a traitor in Aguilar's ranks, and..." What else? He'd made a deal with Grell, he'd moped with Badd, he'd been harassed by that doctor and Ruby. That was about it. Plus babysitting Ema last night, but none of that was relevant to Jones. He shrugged. "That's about it, as far as I know."

"I gather they blamed each other for what happened. Evidently they decided the best way to resolve it was to slug it out." Indy's rueful tone probably didn't leave much doubt as to how he felt about that. "Sounds like they worked it out, though."

He was more interested in Dent's answer to the next question, although it didn't add much to what he'd already heard from the kids that morning. Indy nodded anyway. "Glad it wasn't much." You know, while I was in the morgue. "Peter said the night ended pretty quickly afterwards, so it seems Aguilar didn't have a chance to say anything else."

That was too bad (and convenient, come to think of it). He'd been hoping Aguilar had told the others more about what passing the test meant, what else was down there waiting for them. No such luck.

Indy'd been waiting all day to voice the real question that was on his mind, and now he finally did so. "So what's next? I can move all right without this thing, but I don't know how long it's going to be until I can fight."

He assumed the others were with him; they weren't going to give up on finding out what (if anything) was at the end of that basement. Especially now that they'd been through that test. But he needed to know where they stood on when to keep going. Indy himself was impatient to get moving again, but he was acutely aware that going in before they were ready could be disastrous. If only he could've kept the gun.

Blamed each other? Well, that was idiotic. How could Scott have been to blame? Harvey could understand it the other way around, but it still seemed clear that the two of them had reacted to it the way children would. Which made sense for Peter, but not as much for Scott. Then again, someone in their twenties still had a lot of growing up to do.

If anything, this place was going to teach them how to do that.

Still, if they'd managed to deal with their issues by punching each other, then good for them. It wasn't really Harvey's business and hearing the news suddenly made him glad that he hadn't interacted with either of them since Jones' death. Chances were they'd be back to their normal selves now that the guy was kicking again.

For some reason, though, Harvey hadn't expected Jones to just rebound like nothing had happened. The guy had died and woken up again a day later (where had that happened, anyway? In that morgue he'd found with Lana?) and yet he was ready to just get back on the horse.

"...Yeah, we're probably going to have to wait on that. Didn't think you'd be so eager, seeing where our curiosity got us." The guy really was fearless, and Harvey didn't know whether to be impressed or bothered by it.

"I'm not going to rush into anything stupid," Indy clarified, raising his hands in a gesture of reassurance. It was probably true. "But the longer we sit around waiting, the longer it'll be before we even have a chance at getting out. And the greater the chances we'll get killed by something else." He paused. "Again, for some of us."

That was partly true. Dent might come back (and rightly) by pointing out that none of them had any proof--even any evidence--that there was anything down in the basement that would help them get back home. But they didn't have any chance of making progress toward that end if they didn't look around, and they all seemed to have come to the consensus that the basement was their best chance for now. They needed to get back down there to move on.

But that wasn't why he was so eager to do it, at least not all of it. Dent was right: it was curiosity driving him on. Indy never had been good at knowing when to quit (usually not until archaeological significant ancient buildings came crashing down around his ears). Now was no exception. He'd died for it, and now he had to know, more than ever, just what the hell was going on here.

Dent and Peter were better at containing whatever curiosity they had, though; obviously they weren't going back to the basement tonight. That left Indy with no plans. "What were you going to do tonight, if not that?" he asked Dent.

As much as Harvey didn't want to hear it right now, Jones was making some good points. It was kind of annoying that the guy could be so rational about this whole thing when he was the one who'd gotten his chest punched in two nights ago. Then again, maybe that was why. Unlike the rest of them, he hadn't spent a day dealing with the aftermath of that whole mess.

Harvey also imagined that once you died and came back, it was hard to be too scared of anything. You'd already been through the worst of it. Then again, Landel's had also taught them in many different ways that there were fates worse than death.

"I know, I know. We've come this far, we can't just turn away now. But give yourself a day or two." He didn't want to sound like he was worried, but it bled into his tone some anyway. Harvey had been forced to face that fact that Jones was the closest he had to a friend here. That had been easy enough to admit when the guy had been dead, but now...

He sighed and considered the man's question. "Not really sure. I'm not saying we sit around and do nothing. Did you have anything else in mind?" He looked Jones over, taking in what he could of his wounds. "Just so long as it's somewhere you can get to easily." The idea of him having to wheel Jones around through dark, monster-infested hallways was just too ridiculous for words.

Indy nodded. "All right." He appreciated Dent's concern, but he knew enough to acknowledge it simply. Unlike Peter and Pilgrim, Dent wasn't the hugging type.

He'd been hoping Dent wouldn't have anything else to do, so he answered readily, "I went to the medical wing for the first time last night, but I got gassed before I could look around." Before it had opened, he'd been hoping they were keeping prisoners there (under the guise of "medical observation" or "treating injuries" or whatever Landel wanted to call it), but he didn't think so anymore--if there were something that major to find, everyone probably would've heard about it by now. "I don't know if there's anything worth our time there yet, but at least I can get there without too much trouble."

Even less trouble if someone who was actually armed was with him, unlike last night. How long would a wound like this take to heal, anyway? Outside, he couldn't even make a guess; in here, it might be...a week? Two? Longer than he could afford to spare. Indy fiddled with the edge of the bandage wrapped around his left hand, wondering what the burn looked like now. Probably still not pretty.

The medical wing, huh? Harvey was shocked to hear that Jones had made it anywhere last night, but he knew by now that the other man was tenacious. What stood out even more than any of that was the mention of gas, though, and Harvey dropped his chin into his hand as he thought it over. "Gas, huh? I think I may have gotten a small dose of that myself." The effects were completely gone by now -- they had been by the end of breakfast -- but that had all seemed surprisingly random.

"Hopefully we won't have to deal with it again." Most of things that tended to happen here were one-night deals, but it might also mean that they would have something worse to contend with this time around. Still, the medical wing was easy enough to get to (no stairs involved) and Harvey hadn't seen it before, so he saw no reason to reject the idea.

"But all right, that works for me. Where did you want to meet?" Outside of that block was usually the place, but just this once he was going to go with whatever Jones found easiest. Harvey was the one who had two strong legs to walk on, and he didn't mind being the one less injured for once. His permanent burn wounds usually had him starting at a disadvantage, but here was one time that someone was worse off. The reason behind Jones' injuries wasn't something he wanted to think too hard on, though.

"So did Peter and Scott. It must've been all over." Nice to know whoever was working the switches didn't just have it in for him personally. Indy hoped it wasn't going to become a trend. The pain, and the accompanying feeling of panic as his throat had closed up, were still fresh in his mind.

He was privately relieved that Dent had said yes. "Same as usual. The hall outside the men's block, right before you get to the main hall." He could get that far easily, but he'd be smart not to go much farther alone.

So he, Peter, Scott, and Jones had all had to deal with this gas. Was it possible that Sangamon and Depth Charge had been exposed to it as well, or had it just been a coincidence that four out of the six of them had come across it? Harvey usually wasn't a conspiracy theorist, but in this case he couldn't help but wonder. Their situation was basically begging for it, anyway.

But as expected, Harvey was just going to have to go a little south of his block (the same direction he needed to go anyway) to meet up with Jones. This whole thing felt so regular, except for the fact that Jones was possibly going to be a wheelchair (or maybe on crutches, if he was lucky) this time around. "Works for me," he said with a roll of his shoulders.

And now he had to ask the one question that had been plaguing him this whole time. "So where did you wake up, and how?" He found it hard to believe that the man had just come to in his room like normal.

Indy raised an eyebrow, wondering if Dent really wanted to know, but he barreled on anyway. "The morgue. Had to kick my way out of one of the cabinets." When he put it that way, he supposed it sounded sort of tough, like a feat that might make one of the movies. Having been through it, Indy had a harder time viewing it in a positive light. "The worst part was having to get back downstairs with just a bedsheet, though."

That was enough to answer the question, but he also felt that didn't really cover it. "It didn't feel like anything," he confessed after a minute, needing to talk about it to someone, even if only briefly. "I remember feeling cold, and then the pain came back. That was it. Waking up this morning wasn't much different."

That bothered him, on some fundamental level. If he had been dead--and everyone he talked to seemed as sure of it as Indy himself had been--then his coming back was...hell, he didn't even have the words for it. (Unholy, was what instinct suggested it was, because Indy certainly wouldn't accuse Landel's people of performing miracles.) It seemed wrong that something so momentous hadn't felt that way at all.

Suddenly Indy could empathize with Willie. As irritating as her wails of "I want to go hooome!" had been back there, this was one of the first times in his life when he could really relate to the desire to get the hell back to where you were from, where nothing inexplicable happened. Half the time he was hard-put even to get anyone to listen to his stories about how he'd recovered artifacts--no one would buy this one. If he ever made it back to tell it to them.

It was as he'd guessed, then. Jones had woken up in the morgue. Having seen the room himself, Harvey could conjure up a pretty good mental image of what that had been like. Not that he could even guess at how it felt to wake up from being dead, but just the thought of Jones having to kick one of those drawers open and pull himself out of it made him feel slightly cold.

At least Harvey knew now. If this somehow happened again -- to someone he gave a crap about, anyway -- he'd at least realize that he could go search for them up there and see if the whole thing had been a joke from the start.

But then Jones gave some insight into what it had been like to be dead, at least temporarily. Harvey wasn't surprised to hear that there had been nothing at all. Granted, getting confirmation that there was no afterlife probably should have counted as a big deal. Harvey was already pessimistic enough to have assumed it, though.

"Well, I guess I'll know what I'm in for when my time comes." The comment was morbid, but this whole discussion was, so he was just adhering to that. He sighed and glanced off, wondering if there was anything else he could say. Consoling people wasn't his forte at this point, and he didn't think that Jones particularly wanted it from him anyway.

"How'd Peter deal with seeing you again?" The question came out before he'd fully realized that he'd had the thought.

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Day 59: Sun Room (4th Shift)

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