Day 65: Intercom, Evening

[damned_intercom]

As some of the clouds from earlier began to clear, the intercom jingle sounded over the intercom once again.

"Hello, patients!" came the Head Doctor's cheery voice. "I hope you're all feeling fresh and clean this evening! To top it all off, we've prepared a scrumptious herb chicken dinner for you to eat before bed. Of course, we have vegetarian options available, so please don't hesitate to ask the nurse if you're interested in that.

Also, since we have the pleasure of welcoming a few new patients into our family, some of you will be receiving new roommates. Let's do our best to give them a nice, big Landel's Institute welcome, shall we?"

The Head Doctor gave a friendly chuckle. "Well, anyway, enjoy your dinner!"

With that, the intercom shut off.

[Note: All dinner threads are posted in response to this entry. Be sure to check the Roommate Assignments if you're not sure what room/roommate your character has! Thanks.]

Comments

[madeinthehrl]

Soma looked up from rummaging through her box of things and returned Leanne's greeting with a faint smile of her own. If her roommate could make an effort to be cheerful, then so could she.

"Feeling any better?" she asked, even as she was fairly certain she knew what the answer would be. She had to wonder if the other girl had seen the notes on the bulletin, if she was contemplating any course of action as drastic as Soma's own.

[survives]

Leanne let her breath out in a sigh and shook her head, her smile turning somewhat sheepish. I guess not..." She hesitated, before plunging on. She'd already told Tsubaki the truth, hadn't she? That had been a good step. She could tell Soma too, couldn't she? The girl was her roommate, and she'd been nothing but kind to her from the very start. Not to mention the fact that if anything happened while she was in their room...

It was probably safer all around to tell her something. "It looks like it's just starting to get worse for everyone. Is it..." She frowned, leaning back on her bed. "Is it the same for you?"

[madeinthehrl]

Soma nodded. "Stomachache," she said, glancing at Leanne to see if the same was true for her. "I didn't have one yesterday. And after last night..."

She paused. "Have you seen the bulletin board? What everyone's been saying about a possible cure?"

This was probably a terrible direction for the conversation to go in, since it was only sure to tell her what she already knew: that the surgery was ill-advised and probably more life-threatening than the illness itself. Still, if Leanne didn't know about it, she had a right to.

[survives]

Leanne nodded wordlessly, laying one hand on top of her own stomach. She'd barely been able to eat all day because of it, and she wasn't sure she wanted to either. It was somewhat discouraging though, finding out it wasn't just some regular stomachache, but yet another one of the symptoms of their illness.

She dropped her hand back on the bed right after, raising an eyebrow at Soma's question. "Yeah... I've read it. Some people wanna cut themselves open to get that thing out, right?" She couldn't quite disguise the slight tremor in her voice at the thought. Still, it was just about the only lead they had, wasn't it?

[madeinthehrl]

"That's what it sounds like," agreed Soma. "It sounds a little drastic, but if that's what's causing the illness..." She paused, frowning slightly. "If it works, I can't help but think it'll be better than the alternative. People here have turned into monsters before."

At this point, she wasn't sure whether she was speaking to Leanne or just trying to convince herself. Hopefully it sounded like the former.

[survives]

"Y-yeah..." Leanne looked down at her lap, her heart beating uncomfortably in her chest. It'd been so easy to avoid thinking of what the end result could be, hadn't it? But having it stated so plainly was like a slap in the face, forcing her to see reality. "And if that's what's gonna happen, we've gotta do everything we can to stop it."

Tsubaki had wanted to get another closer look at the Medical Wing, to see if there really was no other way, but the truth was... "I don't know if there's even anything else we can do to help. We don't know anything else."

[madeinthehrl]

"It doesn't seem like we have much of a choice right now." Aside from death, she wanted to add, but even that possibility seemed a little too grim, despite their situation.

Maybe she'd been too quick to jump to conclusions. Maybe there wasn't any kind of end result at all and Landel was just saying these things to turn the patients against each other. They were valuable, weren't they? They were needed here, as soldiers. That was what the data Rapunzel had found had implied.

But they hadn't seemed to need Allelujah, she thought. And if they'd decided to let a supersoldier go so easily...

"I don't think this is the sort of thing medicine can cure," she said. "It's too bad I don't think there are any surgeons here." A small twist of the mouth. "What were you planning on doing tonight?"

[survives]

"No, this thing is weird... We didn't exactly get it like a normal sickness either." She sighed out another breath, folding her legs beneath her. That still bothered her, it would have been useless to deny it.

Just how had Landel managed to get all of them sick, to get that thing inside them? The food? But that would have affected all of them, not just some. Maybe something while they slept, but... Every possibility Leanne could think of met the same roadblock. There was, of course, no evidence that any of them had ever had something put inside them. How had he done it?

She shook her head, turning her attention back to Soma. "Me and someone else are going back to the Medical Wing. She wants to take another look at it before... um, before we do anything serious," she finished in a lower voice. "What are you gonna do?"

[madeinthehrl]

"We could have gotten it a hundred different ways," said Soma, staring heatedly at her desk. "Any kind of medicine they said we had to take. Or they could've given it to us between Nightshift and Dayshift. Someone has to move us back to our beds, right? It would have been easy to plant it in us then. Nobody remembers how the night ends anyway."

And now that it was happening, there wasn't much point in wondering why. "A friend of mine has a steady hand," she said. "I'm going to have a look around the operating room and...get ready, I guess. I don't think we'll have much of a choice in the end."

[survives]

"And there's probably a lot of things we don't even know about! We still don't know how they got us here in the first place, do we?" she asked, looking down at her hands on her lap. "There's a lot that guy can do in this place." And nothing they could do about it. Wasn't that just the worst part about it all, knowing they were all effectively helpless against the Head Doctor.

Leanne couldn't quite look up from her lap then, at Soma so calmly stating just what she intended to do. The very thought of it was enough to terrify her, no matter how much she tried to soldier on. But Soma... "I hope it works," she said, hoping her voice sounded as firm as she wanted it to. "It's the best bet we've got."