Day 62: Sun Room (4th Shift)

[dividedby]

What an unproductive day this was so far. Doing nothing but sitting on a couch, watching the bulletin board and thinking too much about things...if only his injuries weren't keeping him from getting some decent exercise. (If only he hadn't let himself get injured, period, but...)

This shift, Zero was left with nothing to do but sit around, without the promise of a useful conversation like last shift with Nigredo. It wasn't like his other option was any better, though. Showers, already being a waste of time as they were, just sounded very uncomfortable, if not impossible, to do while wearing a sling and a cast. So when his chatty nurse came up to him at shift change and tried to get him to follow her to the showers, the once-Reploid refused to budge. She seemed surprised at his refusal, tossed a few 'why not's and 'we can do this and this to protect your bandages so they won't get wet's at him, but he stubbornly shook his head at everything she said. There was no way he was going in there in this condition. Too much effort for no gain. Why did getting clean matter so much, anyway? It had only been a few days since the last time he'd bathed. It didn't matter.

Thankfully, the nurse took pity on him (only because of his injuries, he was guessing) and gave up trying to persuade him to move. She left him alone with his thoughts, and the once-Reploid carefully reclined on the couch and lay his uninjured arm across his stomach, staring up at the ceiling.

... He supposed some quiet time to think wasn't all bad. He was feeling much better emotionally than he was this morning, mainly because he'd had time to let recent events sink in. Zex and Ema's fates had hurt at first, but by now he'd managed to channel most of that hurt into more resolve to fight. His conversation with Nigredo had helped keep his mind off of things and was enough to leave him wondering for awhile, even though figuring out what to do about Landel was more important than that right now. And, he had a new self-assigned mission for tomorrow via the bulletin board - to assist Ema's sister Lana in any way he could. Not to mention he'd learned about the existence of a town outside of this place....

...Alright. On second thought, the day was not as unproductive as he'd been thinking it was. Didn't mean Zero wanted to spend the rest of this shift just lying here, but at least he could say the times he was doing so earlier in the day weren't a total waste.

[free!]

Comments

[madeinthehrl]

[from here]

Soma pulled her still-wet hair back as she entered the Sun Room, scanning her surroundings for anyone who matched Tsubaki's description. Thankfully, there weren't as many people here as she'd expected, and she quickly spotted a girl pacing along the wall.

"Tsubaki?" she called, heading over. "I'm Soma Peries."

[thecamellia]

It wasn’t long before the older women began filtering out of the showers one after another, and with them eventually came a girl with long, milky-colored hair, still wet from its wash. Tsubaki stilled when the girl approached her. She definitely looked familiar; she was sure she’d seen Rapunzel with her before.

“Yes, that’s me,” she confirmed, letting her hands fall to her sides. Although shorter in stature than Rapunzel, Soma obviously had to be a few years older like Rapunzel was, too. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said, giving a bow. Her own hair had dried well enough by lunch time that she'd been able to separate it into two braids, and when she straightened she had to push them back over her shoulders again. “I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.”

[madeinthehrl]

"It's nice to meet you, too." Soma tilted her head, observing her curiously for a moment before offering a smile. She couldn't help but sense some underlying sadness to Tsubaki--subtle, but there nonetheless. It would be rude to point it out, though, and first impressions were important.

"You asked about someone named Claude on the bulletin board?" she asked instead. There was really only one Claude who came to mind, but she was interested in finding out where Tsubaki had heard the name.

[thecamellia]

Funnily enough, the original reason behind Soma replying to her bulletin note had fallen to the back of her mind during the course of the day. She still remembered Marc’s odd message, but like most things in the Institute it had been overshadowed by other events.

“Oh--right. I did.” She double-checked that none of the staff were paying particularly close attention to them before lowering her voice. The Head Doctor was just as aware of what Marc said on the radio as the prisoners were, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. Even if she couldn’t prevent him from overhearing, she could try! “I heard it on the radio last night.”

[madeinthehrl]

That was right--the message from Marc. She thought back, trying to remember. He was safe, if on the run--that much had been clear. It was a start.

"Claude and Lydia are allies. Both of them posed as soldiers during the military takeover." Soma lowered her own voice. The stuff they were talking about was probably common knowledge to Landel and his cronies by now, but she didn't want to be held accountable for taking that risk. "They were the ones responsible for getting our powers back a few nights ago--Claude in particular. I don't know how he did it, but Aguilar had a device that was apparently keeping our powers in check, and Claude managed to break it."

[thecamellia]

Most of it was news to Tsubaki. She blinked, angling her head as she absorbed what Soma was saying--or tried to, anyway. There was a lot there she didn’t quite understand.

“Lydia… that’s the head nurse, right? She was still here when Aguilar took over?”

There had been all that talk of moles and suspicious activity during Aguilar’s time in the hospital--if one of Landel’s trusted people had stayed behind in his absence to act on his behalf, it sort of made sense. How someone could fool Aguilar wasn’t as important was whether or not it was possible, which… apparently it was.

She hadn’t imagined someone had actually broken the thing keeping everybody suppressed, though.

“Wait, so… who is Claude? Is he one of the Head Doctor’s men, too?” Her brow furrowed as she worked at trying to connect the dots. “Why would Marc be talking with people connected to Landel like that, then…”

[madeinthehrl]

Soma nodded. Tsubaki's confusion was understandable--Soma herself hadn't paid much attention to the soldiers themselves during the military takeover. Not until she'd met Cartwright, anyway, and realized there might have been something useful there. But it was too late to regret that, and at least she'd caught up fairly quickly.

"That's right. Not as the head nurse, but in disguise, as a soldier named Cartwright. If you saw a soldier walking around talking to patients during the day, that was her. Apparently she'd been working against Landel the whole time, but he'd managed to brainwash her somehow." Which was, as far as Soma was concerned, an awfully convenient excuse, but it was one that was sadly plausible, too.

"Claude...him, I don't know much more about. There were rumors that there was a mole in Aguilar's forces even before we learned about Lydia. Apparently that was Claude. I don't know what his interest in this project is, or how either of them allied themselves to Marc in the first place, but he's part of the resistance, too. He's not human, I think, or if he is, he's a human with powers. He set fire to Aguilar's device somehow, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't carrying a lighter at the time."

[thecamellia]

“So Lydia’s not really Lydia but a soldier he’s had brainwashed this whole time?”

Tsubaki did remember the female soldier who’d been selected to mingle with the prisoners, but she never would have imagined that woman had such complicated allegiances. She’d always just been a disembodied voice to Tsubaki. Just Lydia, the nurse assisting Landel. But now it sounded like she had been working against Landel first and had only become the woman known as Lydia second. It was a mind-boggling thought…

“If she’s been brainwashed into helping him, did he make her stay behind to spy on Aguilar?” she ventured in a near-whisper.

And then there was this mysterious Claude person, who seemed to have be a whole other part of the puzzle.