damned_institute | Day 64: Patient Library (Fourth Shift)

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Day 64: Patient Library (Fourth Shift)

... ... ... ...

It was shock, like failing to recognize some heavy injury following a traumatic accident. Zero's mind was reeling, still trying to accept the fact that Ciel - or else, someone who looked and sounded exactly like her - had been standing right before him, calling him by a different name. She'd spoken untruths, supporting the Institute's idea that he was mad, but her face, her voice, her mannerisms...! It had undeniably been Ciel!

No, his mind couldn't accept that. Not yet. The so-called superior thinking power of the human brain couldn't do anything to help him.

And so the once-Reploid slowly walked out of the visitation room as if in a trance, following behind his forever cheerful nurse. She, of course, thought that there was nothing wrong and began chattering to herself about how healthy that visit must have been for him.

'Healthy'.

On any other day, he would have let out some sort of displeased grunt or, better yet, some rude remark about just how 'healthy' such a visit had been for him, but any sort of response became impossible when his brain was too busy just trying to process simple facts. So he simply stared past the nurse instead, only vaguely aware that she even existed. (Not that she seemed to notice. In fact, she probably took his lack of rudeness as a good sign. Wouldn't be surprising.)

Thankfully, it was only a very short walk back to the Sun Room and, therefore, only a short amount of time spent with that woman. Zero abandoned her and then slipped into the library in order to find some peace and quiet. He could sit in a chair somewhere and try to think about what just happened...

...He ended up standing in front of a random bookshelf mindlessly staring at the rows of paper-made novels in front of him rather than sitting, but oh well. His mind was in the same place either way.

[Long Hair Brigadiers UNITE!]

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After the events of last night, today was practically tame. There was the agitation that always came with the announcement of visitors, but as the day passed and Renamon wasn’t pulled away, the frantic nerves died to a alert wariness. There were a few she needed to speak to, and here--

Ah. And here was one. This child was one Renamon hadn’t spoken with in an extended while, and there was an actual need for them to catch up. She approached the boy quietly, noting his strange pallor, too reminiscent of illness. Was Nigredo one of the ones ‘marked’? It fed into an old anger, and she inhaled, before bowing her head to him. “Nigredo. May I sit with you?”

[Nigredo!]

[from here --and for Byrne!]

The child was pulled away for a visitor, and Renamon watched him go with some kind of remorse. Hopefully it was no one too important, but even as she thought that, she wondered if that was the correct hope to carry. In the end, the Digimon shook her head, and moved to stand up. At the least, there was still some time left in the shift. Perhaps she’d find another to speak with.

…But the prospect seemed suddenly too tiring. She glanced at the aisles of books and then retreated to a table to sit at, leaning her weight on her arms atop it. How many days had she been here? How many visitors had come to torment the ones that loved them most? How much more would they all have to go through before this ended? What should she do?

She didn’t know. She didn’t know anymore.

When the intercom announced a shift change and Yomi took the opportunity to leave the library, Skulduggery asked the nurse who seemed to have attached herself to him if he was allowed to stay here and quietly read. When she nodded her consent and left him to it, he started scanning the bookshelf nearest to him, turning the day's events over in his mind.

The visits Landel had mentioned during the announcement were likely the same ones Badd talked about, and Skulduggery wasn't particularly worried about them. He hadn't met many people here yet, and none of them would have been 'cured,' discharged, and subsequently brainwashed in the space of half a day. The letters posed a bit more of a threat, but Skulduggery would tackle that problem if and when it arose. In the meantime, Yomi had been more helpful than she perhaps realized, and Skulduggery was anxiously awaiting nightfall. Some movement and danger might help to get rid of this bloody headache, even if his body didn't exactly cooperate with the whole 'movement' thing at first.

Why were all the books in this library fiction? Was that normal for a mental hospital, or was that another subtle way of making sure they didn't discover where they really were? Skulduggery pulled out a book at random, saw that it was War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, and almost immediately put it back. In a choice between a religious musical out in the Sun Room and reading about aliens, Skulduggery would very happily choose to leave them both alone and maybe find someone annoying to hit. He was already beginning to miss hitting people.

[Rita!]

They were going to be replaying that movie this shift? Sigh. It was still sort of tempting to get up and go see it, but Byrne just didn't feel like leaving the library at all. It was nice and quiet sitting here, and that was keeping any headaches from returning. Plus, now that Badd was done pestering him about his health, he could finally find a book to distract himself with...

Just as Byrne was about to go searching the shelves for something interesting, though, he spotted a very familiar face seat herself at a different table nearby and, for the second time in a row, all book searching thoughts were forgotten about. Renamon! Ahh, now there was someone he could talk to about his illness, perhaps. Or perhaps they could discuss other things and he could find a distraction from his illness with that. That would be even better.

The prosecutor rose from his seat and moved over to the table where his friend was sitting, stopping to stand near her. (Hmm. She seemed kind of lost in thought. Wonder why? Hopefully everything was okay.) "Hey Renamon," the prosecutor said in greeting.

The voice that called to her was a welcome one. She blinked upward, half-surprised she didn't notice him in the room before. She nodded in greeting, then gestured at him to sit by her. "Byrne," then, more importantly, "Are you all right after last night?"

An irony, perhaps, as she was the only one of the three that would have been actually targeted, but a question to be asked nonetheless. His strange friend who denied their companionship earlier in the day yesterday might have had some combat or military experience, but Byrne Faraday registered as a civilian to her, and more-- Someone that she actually did not wish to come to any harm.

All right, so the movie wasn't terrible. Some parts certainly were, but as a whole, it was a tolerable way to waste time. But then the movie ended, and it was announced that it was going to play again for the next shift. Rita definitely didn't like it enough to immediately watch it a second time, and so she forced herself up to her feet and made her way to the library.

While the books in the institute had failed to provide any useful information thus far, Rita supposed she might as well try some different ones. She didn't have anything better to do, in her condition. The mage immediately went for the meager-at-best occult section, then looked over the titles for anything that seemed worthwhile.

Unfortunately, without a background in Earth's magic, it was hard to guess at the contents just from looking at the titles. Rita supposed she'd just have to bring a few to a table and flip through them. A selection of texts by someone named 'Crowley' caught her eye, but as she reached up to pull some down, a sudden sharp pain in her chest caused her to drop her arm with a hiss.

Great. One arm in a sling, and the other couldn't stretch that far without aggravating her chest injuries. With an annoyed look, Rita glanced around, then zeroed in on a taller man perusing a nearby shelf. "Hey, you. Tall guy."

She pointed to the books she'd just tried to reach, up on a shelf several inches above her head. "Think you can pull some of these down for me?"

Just as a thick, familiar nonfiction book caught Skulduggery's eye, he was interrupted from his perusal by a sharp expelling of breath - possibly in pain - and he glanced around. The girl trying to reach the books across from him looked about the same age as Sora, albeit a good few inches shorter, with one arm in a sling and holding her body in such a way that suggested further hidden injuries. The presence of so many young people in the Institute was beginning to bother Skulduggery, actually. There weren't many teenagers he'd met who deserved to be in a place like this. Even Fletcher, annoying as he was, hadn't done anything downright evil.

His head tilted to one side as the girl spoke to him. 'Tall guy' wasn't the most auspicious nickname, but Skulduggery wasn't going to complain. It was better than abomination. "Of course," he answered with a smile in his voice, walking over. "Bad night?"

He was certainly quick to cooperate. Good.

At his question, Rita rolled her eyes. "What gave you that idea?" she asked dryly. She couldn't let such a redundant question go without a little sarcasm. A beat, and then she gave a slightly better answer. "It's been a couple of bad nights."

Since he was going to get the books for her, Rita stepped back to give him space, pointing to the row she'd been eyeing. "Just grab a handful of those and put them on the table. I'll sort through them in a minute." She hoped this wasn't going to be as fruitless as her last attempt to use the library for research, though on the other hand, Rita was getting used to disappointments.

"Really? What happened?" If Skulduggery was offended by the sarcasm, it didn't show. The way the girl was gingerly moving reminded him of Yomi the night before, which meant she might have undergone the same miracle treatment. And if that was the case, this girl might be a bit more willing to talk about what happened than Yomi had been.

The books she was indicating looked like a series on the occult. Technically, some of them might have been nonfiction - histories of witchcraft and such - but to Skulduggery, they read like comedies. It was all highly amusing, like watching a blind person try to describe color; it just wasn't possible without having experienced it for yourself. Of course, who was he to judge what the girl wanted to read?

Skulduggery grabbed four or five thick books off the shelf and placed them carefully on the nearby table. The name 'Aleister Crowley' on one of them caught his attention, and he made a noise halfway between a laugh and a grunt. "I hope you aren't treating this as fact," he said, an edge of amusement to his tone that would have been accompanied by a friendly smile on the face of someone who didn't have to concentrate on their facial expressions. He paused. "Then again, I don't really see this as light reading material. What are you interested in?"

Another shift, another gentle lecture about "branching out" and "personal space" and "don't you think it's time you let Mr. Bartowski make other friends, dear?" Rapunzel agreed that Eugene needed to make more friends here; everyone needed as much support as they could get in Landel's. She was of a mind, however, that Eugene making friends and her sticking close to him didn't have to be totally exclusive. Her nurse didn't see it that way. Rats.

At least she had a back-up place to go in situations like this: when in doubt, head for the library. Where had she left off in A Little Princess, again? She could barely remember after the excitement of the past couple of days. Rapunzel entered the library and tread along the aisles, heading for the shelf she had been frequenting lately.

As it turned out, there was a person already in the aisle she sought. This wouldn't have been a huge deal (though, Rapunzel probably would have said hello anyway), but for the person's hair. She knew she had seen that head of hair around in passing, but had never consciously picked up on it until now. It was almost as long as hers was, maybe the same length even, she thought. Never mind that it was a man sporting that hair. From the way Mother Gothel had always described men — thugs, ruffians, brutes — she never would have pictured one that looked anything like her before. Then again, she never pictured anyone like Eugene before he'd showed up, either.

Beyond just the hair, however, Rapunzel noticed the look on the man's face. By now, that look was getting to be familiar — a melancholy blankness, unsure of how to deal with the world around in the moment. She couldn't be sure if that was exactly what the man was feeling, but for Landel's, dulled trauma was never a bad assumption to make.

"Hey, I think I've seen you around," said Rapunzel quietly after a few moments, walking into the aisle toward the shelf where The Little Princess sat. "Need help with anything?"

Byrne took Renamon's offer and sat himself down in the seat she'd gestured to, making no attempts to hide his painfully obvious rash this time around. (Hey, he trusted her. It wasn't like she was going to hunt him down knowing he was quote-unquote "infected", right? And she might be able to offer advice on his illness, too. Maybe.)

"More or less," the prosecutor replied with a weary smile, chuckling. At least he was mostly okay after last night specifically. Everything else was, well. Maybe it would all be alright later.

"Hopefully you're okay, too?" He couldn't help looking concerned when he asked that. Those magical virgin eating birds (...still gonna have to get used to saying that) had targeted Renamon rather than him and Badd, after all. Not to mention those corpses the group had stumbled across in the entry room - did she know them? He could only imagine how she felt about it either way. And was there a reason why she'd looked the way she had just a moment ago?

Tolten had spent most of the day in something of a fog. At least following his trip to the restroom to let loose his emotions and allow himself a chance to weep. At least the nurse had been kind and not bullied him out before he was ready. He supposed he really was a pathetic thing when he wept.

But he couldn't help it, not after reading the horrific news on the bulletin. It was one thing when someone he knew simply wasn't about anymore. Someone he cared about and considered a friend? Dying?

He'd never lost anyone quite like that before. He'd been young when his parents died, and while he had lost Seth, not to death. She'd simply gone back to her own world, a place he couldn't follow.

He didn't know quite how to deal with this, really, so he found himself just moving through the motions of the day. It didn't help that he was feverish now, and achey, and that stupid rash was only getting worse instead of better.

He couldn't even cling to the sweet memories of the night before. Not now. The young king, eyes still swollen and red, curled up in a chair in the library, ignoring the books. He didn't want to read. Or do anything, really, except feel miserable.

[Free!]

This was the first time someone had asked her outright. Rita didn't want to have to come out and say she'd lost to that little twerp. How did that even happen, anyway? She'd been so sure that her magic could take down any brute, but he just wouldn't stay down.

In the end, she settled for a quick, vague summary. "I got in a fight, got knocked out, and woke up the next day in a box with half a dozen bone fractures." A bad night indeed.

More importantly, the man seemed to react to the books she'd selected. Rita's eyes narrowed at him. "I study magic. I was hoping to learn about the magic of this world, but so far, everything I've found just reads like a guide to ritualized wishful thinking." She paused, studying the man's face for any reactions that might hint at his knowledge of the subject. "Are you familiar with this kind of stuff?"

Skulduggery had to think about that one. His first instinct, when talking to someone who might not be a sorcerer, was to deny that magic even existed. It was an instinct honed from centuries of, quite literally, lying through his teeth. The former skeleton's next instinct, especially when he factored in the current situation, was simply to say yes. But with everyone coming from different realities, each with their own rules and presumably their own forms of magic, Skulduggery had no idea what the girl was looking for, and it took him a few moments to form an answer.

"With this stuff, no." He gestured towards Crowley's books on the table. "I know the theory, but the man was basically insane. No idea what he was talking about. If you're referring to magic in general, though, then... yes. I was a sorcerer, before I came here." Technically, he still was, but Skulduggery's pride wouldn't allow him to call a flame in the palm of his hand for thirty seconds sorcery. At least, not proper sorcery.

"Wherever we're supposed to be," he continued slowly, "it's definitely similar to where I come from. But since where I come from magic was, for the most part, kept secret, I have no idea how much of it still applies." He cocked his head. "What do you mean, you woke up in a box?"

.... Hm? Was someone talking to him...? Zero blinked slowly, as if finally noticing where he was standing and what he was looking at, then turned his head to the source of the voice, expression blank.

Oh... Apparently, he was being spoken to. By a young looking girl, another prisoner with...hair. Unusually long hair. About as long as his own, in fact. (Hm. How often did one see that?) He could have sworn he'd seen that hair from a distance, it being so out of the ordinary to see, but he wasn't going to think about where or when. Too much information he was trying and failing to process already...

... What had the girl said to him, again? ... Or did it even matter.

No, it didn't matter. Everything in him wanted to tell her to go away. Leave him be, he had more important things to think and worry about than meaningless conversation with a stranger. But...for some reason, he couldn't bother to say something rude. He couldn't bother to say anything at all, really. It didn't help that he felt like he was thinking five times slower than usual...

So Zero stared quietly at the girl instead, torn between responding or just turning back to the shelves and ignoring her. Either way, he wanted to be left alone.

It was futile, but Mike didn't really care. He still wanted to find a comic book. Just one. He didn't even care if it was a super hero one anymore. He just wanted to hold one in his hand again.

Back home, he only had a box that he had hidden in the rebels' base. Funny, how it had been a library, too. The library. What remained of it, anyway. Somehow, in all the years, the foot police had never investigated the place, or even looked. Mike remembered something about buying off the right people, but it never sat well with him.

Either way, libraries were safe. Shelves to your back, quiet enough that you could hear practically anything. He used to complain that books without pictures were boring, but given enough time on his hands, he started reading those, too. Some of them were pretty good. Others were boring as shell, but even the boring ones had been a distraction from his life back then.

Mike wasn't sure if he needed a distraction now, or if he needed to feel safe in a place where they were "safe" most of the time. It was a prison, but a well groomed one. Kept his hackles up, but not all the way.

He ran his hand over his face, feeling his growing beard. ... Man. He was gonna have to figure out how to shave, wasn't he? That was going to be... weird. No other way to go about it--it was just simply going to be weird....

As he walked into the library, his mind wandered.

[For Niikura!]

So these were the writings of a crazy guy. Great. That was about the level of quality Rita knew she should have expected from the institute. She looked to the books and sighed, wondering if they were even worth skimming anymore.

In the meantime, while the stranger hadn't offered any visual cues regarding his involvement in the field, he was refreshingly upfront about it when he spoke. Rita was about to press on that, when he asked for more details about last night's ordeal. "A morgue," she clarified, though her tone was hasty and dismissive. "Someone must have mistaken me for dead."

More importantly, she wanted to know about this man's sorcery. It was bound to be more informative than anything in that lousy library. "So you are... were, a sorcerer." The word 'were' was spoken as if it were a question within itself. "What sort of magic did you practice? And why keep it secret?"

While the word 'morgue' caught Skulduggery by surprise, he couldn't say the same for how quickly she changed the subject. Whether that was because of trauma, or simply because she was used to far stranger things happening in this place, he didn't know. But after studying the young girl for a moment, Skulduggery decided not to press for more details just yet.

"I'm an Elemental," he explained as he went back to scanning the same bookshelf from before the girl had asked for help. "I can manipulate the four elements. I was quite good at it, before this place. But we kept magic a secret because mortals-" He stopped mid-sentence. Maybe that wasn't the best word to use anymore. "Ordinary people," he corrected, "people without magic, have traditionally reacted badly when they find out it exists."

The book that had caught his eye earlier was the Oxford Book of English Verse. Skulduggery looked at it for a moment, puzzled - the only nonfiction book on the shelf? - and tried to pull it out. The thick tome slid out halfway and then stuck.

Part of Skulduggery was on the lookout for a sneaky trapdoor even as he turned back to her, but for better or for worse, nothing happened. "Why the interest? Is there magic where you come from?"

Rita raised an eyebrow at the word mortals. It wasn't as if magic-users and non-mages had any major physiological differences between them. While there were some ways magic could be used to protect or lengthen one's life, none of it even approached immortality. In any case, it appeared the sort of magic this man practiced was only available to certain people.

"The four elements... by that, do you mean the primary elements of magic - earth, air, water and fire?" Rita asked. It would have been an obvious assumption back on Terca Lumireis, but here, with so many people from so many different worlds, nothing could be safely assumed.

The man began to ask Rita some questions in return, and she supposed it was only fair that she answered them. "Yes. I'm a mage myself. There's no point in studying magic if you don't use it." Well, that could be debated, but frankly it would be boring as hell to dedicate her life to a field she couldn't practice or apply to anything. "Where I'm from, the only difference between mages and non-mages is knowledge. Anyone could use magic if they bothered studying it."

Rita had been watching the man's movements as she talked, however, and she noticed him poking around at some other books. "Find anything?" she asked, idly curious.

The potential sneaky trapdoor continued to deny its existence, and Skulduggery began to wonder what the sticking book meant. It was one of the classic ways to hide a secret passage. Skulduggery himself had managed to find quite a few secrets by poking around in libraries like this. If everything changed to be more dangerous at night, as practically everyone Skulduggery had spoken to confirmed, then... maybe whatever the book triggered only worked at night.

Pushing the thought to the back of his mind for now, Skulduggery returned his attention to the girl's questions. "Yes," he answered her first one. "Some are more useful than others, however." An image of Ghastly as a statue swam briefly back to mind. He ignored it.

It turned out that she was a mage as well, but in a completely different sense than Skulduggery was familiar with. "I see," he responded, intrigued. "My sorcery is a little different, I'm afraid. Relatively few people can actually use magic, but those that can become very different from non-mages." He used her word for now, with only a slight hint of hesitation. "Such as a much longer life span. I'm over four hundred years old, for example, and that's not even the oldest I've met. If it weren't for magic, we wouldn't be able to fit all the candles on the cake."

He was joking, of course. Skulduggery didn't have birthdays anymore. They tended to lose all meaning after you had died.

He was about to ask her another question when she interrupted with one of her own. He glanced back at the Oxford Book of English Verse. "Perhaps. Are you familiar with the cliche of the book that triggers a rotating bookcase?"

The Digimon was 'fine' regardless of her condition, and she nodded as if to say as much. Byrne's response had her more concerned; that and the lesion showing itself to the air. She inclined her chin towards his arm. "'More or less?'" she repeated dubiously. The rumors Landel had spread were obvious, but were there other symptoms he was struggling with?

As to the truth of the matter.... She was prone to believe it, if only for her doubts at the beginning of her stay, and the strange creatures encountered. If they had once been sentient, then... It would perhaps explain her unease, if nothing else. The subject wasn't a distraction from her own thoughts--the topic was important, especially with Landel's hint that it could be undone. The man was extravagant, but when it came to showing how 'kind' he was, the megalomaniac tended toward truth.

Well, at least Renamon was saying (through gesture) that she was okay. Whether that was actually true or not was a different story, of course, but Byrne was going to hope that she was being honest.

Just as he was going to be honest now about this illness. Of course she would notice the rash quickly; how could anyone not notice it? It was so painfully obvious by this point, covering such a large area on his arm. Kind of unnerving how quickly it had grown in such a short amount of time. The older man let out a sigh at his friend's remark, letting his smile disappear from his face. Honesty, right.

"Just trying to stay hopeful, I guess. There's not much else I can do about, well. This." He held his rash-covered arm out for a brief moment. "Other than hope this is all just one big scare tactic by Landel."

It was the only thing he could think of that could help him stay calm about all of this. Did Renamon believe in it, too? He wondered...

A name called drew Nigredo out of the unconscious, and he glanced up at Renamon, weariness etched along his features. How long had he dozed off? The numbers refused to come to him, but from the changes in scenery, he guessed an hour. Maybe two.

Regardless, he had a guest to attend to, one he had hoped to speak with on a more lucid day. Ah, well. "Hello, Renamon," he greeted. "Of course, you may." A hand gestured to the adjacent seat.

“Four…” Rita began to repeat the words, incredulous, but she quickly caught that her voice was too loud, and she finished the outburst in a sharp whisper. “…hundred!?”

She knew she had to take such an extraordinary claim with a grain of salt. Magic could be used to heal injuries and cure ailments that would have otherwise led to death, but it couldn’t do anything about simple aging. She’d heard of mages who’d tried, of course, but most only succeeded in wasting the remaining years of their lives – or shortening them, even.

Rita definitely wanted to press on the subject of his magic, and see if he could explain how his life had been extended so long, but then he answered her other question, and, being caught slightly off guard, she decided to leave the grilling until after this was examined. It would give her time to decide which questions needed to be prioritized, anyway.

“A rotating bookcase?” There was doubt written on Rita’s face, but she moved in closer to see what he was referring to. “What, you think this could be some kind of hidden switch?”

She'd reacted almost the exact same way Valkyrie had, right down to the incredulous expression on her face. "Yes," he answered simply. "Four hundred." He'd spent most of that time dead, of course, but if the fellow mage was having enough problems with his age, it was probably best to let her ask her questions in her own time.

Skulduggery tried pulling the book out again, and again it stuck before it came all the way out, stubbornly fixed in place no matter which way he tried to drag it. "See how it looks like it's part of the bookcase?" he explained, pushing it back into its slot. "It might not make the bookcase rotate, but it has all the makings of some kind of secret passage. I'll admit, I'm still fairly new, so I don't know if that sort of thing happens here. But, short girl, if it does, I'm almost sure it would only work at night. It's worth a look, don't you think?"

It probably wouldn't amount to anything - Skulduggery's luck had never been very kind to him, after all - and if that was the case, he could always go and examine that morgue she mentioned. It might help him understand how he'd been brought back to life.

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Day 64: Patient Library (Fourth Shift)

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