damned_institute | Day 66: Breakfast

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Day 66: Breakfast

What Guy had seen on that scan resulted in some mixed feelings. While he had expected to find something in Claude, seeing how he was sick, it hadn't been quite the same as what they'd seen when they had scanned that other ill patient two nights ago. What did that mean? It was possible that the shape of it just looked different because of where it was in Claude's stomach, but Guy couldn't help but feel that there was a deeper meaning to it.

Yet another thing that he didn't understand, then. With a sigh, he got himself up out of bed and went searching immediately for the single leaf that he'd taken from the X-ray room last night. It was stored carefully in his possessions box, which meant that he didn't have to worry too much about that.

While he wanted to quickly sketch the leaf's general shape to post on the bulletin, Guy wasn't given that chance, as his nurse showed up before he could even grab for his journal. He had to relent and let her lead him to the cafeteria for breakfast. While Guy considered stopping by the bulletin to leave a note, that could wait until after he ate. He suspected that Anise or Luke would try to find him as soon as possible to tell him about their findings, so leaving a note for them would be redundant.

He did need to ask about the clue from last night and see if anyone else had further insight on it, but that might be something Claude wanted to do, seeing how he had a better idea of who that baptist was and what it all might signify.

After collecting a small amount of food onto a plate, Guy took a seat near the cafeteria's entrance, keeping an eye out for any of his friends so he could flag them down as they walked in.

[For Anise and Claude.]

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If the doctor's voice hadn't woken her, the stomach pains would have seen to that. As much as she appreciated getting to know human sensations some were less welcome. Luckily, breakfast provided two means of escape, mental distraction as well as physical. Even if she wasn't paired with a suitable conversationalist at least the android would have something to eat. Pigs in a blanket was a strange name for food but Aigis had found the mix of savory and sweet to be to her tastes.

Sitting down with her tray at an empty table, the android started in on her food, ignoring the shuddering palpitations of her heart. Her thoughts trailed back to the night before, her conversation with Aidou and the strange peace that came from it. What had changed between them? It was a subtle difference in how they had handled themselves around each other the night before, so subtle yet even Aigis had picked up on the change.

She scratched at the rash on her arm idly, wondering if she should write a note to the vampire sometime today. The red splotches had stopped spreading now. If anything, they were even a little lighter than they had been the day before.

[Riley]

[eep sorry for the delay!]

And for the second time in so many minutes, Riley suddenly woke up back in that generic hospital room with no sense of any time passing, or even of having fallen asleep. Only this time, the lights were blazing, and the door - when he tried it - was locked.

Where was Ishida? What happened to that demonic-looking bird... thing? What was happening to him?

The baseball bat had been stuck into the closet by someone that wasn't him. The flashlight was back under the pillow, the radio back on the desk. Other things had probably changed, but Riley didn't have time to check on anything else before the doorknob rattled, and a smiling nurse came in.

"Ah, Mr. Lewis! Were you planning on sleeping the whole day away?" she chirped, acting for all the world like any of this was normal. "You almost missed breakfast! Come on, let's go get you some food."

Riley stood perfectly still for a second, and then slowly shook his head. "I'm not, no. I'm not... my name isn't Lewis. It's Riley. Riley Poole."

Was it just his imagination, or did the nurse's expression grow pitying? "I know it feels like that now, but we're here to help you. And that starts with some of the most delicious food you've ever tasted. Aren't you hungry?"

Riley realized his mouth was open. He quickly closed it. "Yeah," he finally responded, remembering that Ishida had said something about a mental hospital. "Um... where exactly are we?"

"Landel's Institute, remember? Stop delaying, Mr. Lewis. It's time you tried to build up relationships with other people. Let's find you someone nice to talk to for breakfast. Doesn't that sound like a good idea?"

"I don't... Look, I don't have any... what?" Riley had been swinging a baseball bat at a bird a moment ago, and now... Wait a minute. Didn't the bat hit Ishida? Oh god. The bat hit Ishida by accident. The poor kid may have been slightly out of his mind, but he didn't deserve that! "There's... there's got to be some kind of mistake here, okay? Can I talk to a doctor? I don't belong here, but there's someone who does, and I think he's hurt-"

But his protestations fell on deaf ears, and Riley eventually gave up as the nurse led him out of the room. He'd just have to try and find a doctor later and sort all of this out. He tried to ask the nurse about what happened last night in the meantime, and why no one had been patrolling the hallways, or even - as he was growing desperate - what kinds of birds lived around here and how big they could grow, but most of his questions were waved aside with a blank smile, and then a plate of food.

"Angela here has been feeling a little under the weather lately," his nurse commented as she put the plate down across from a blonde girl who looked about Ishida's age. "Maybe you can help cheer her up, how does that sound?"

The nurse bustled away before she could hear Riley's tight-lipped answer of "Great. Just perfect."

With nothing else to do and a growling stomach, Riley slowly sat down and gave Angela an uncertain smile. "Hi." He pointed at the retreating nurse. "Aren't they supposed to answer questions?"

[s'cool~]

Another new patient it seemed. If the man assigned to her care this morning was still asking questions, he could no doubt be new. Besides, Aigis had never seen him before from what she could recall, though the patient body was by no means small.

Aigis gave the man a nod of greeting. "I am afraid they are not the ones to question. You are better off seeking help from your fellow patients here."

She scratched at her arm again, once again thankful she had a distraction from the more unpleasant afflictions plaguing her. "I would be glad to answer any questions you have regarding this place, day or night. But I ask that you refer to me as Aigis. The name 'Angela' is not mine, much as I am certain the name the nurses insisted on calling you this morning is not yours."

Well, if Riley needed any more evidence that he really was trapped in a nuthouse...

Still, a part of him was beginning to rebel at the thought. This was exactly what Ishida had described, there was no denying that. The girl in front of him wasn't speaking at all like a teenager was supposed to, which was unnerving, and... were all the kids here like that?

"I think I'm starting to see that," Riley reluctantly agreed with her. The nurse hadn't even told him what part of the country Landel's Institute was supposed to be in. And Angela - no, not Angela - was right about the name thing. 'Aigis,' then. Slightly weird, but maybe she wasn't American. And all things considered, one weird name was kind of on the bottom of Riley's list of priorities. She might even have made it up herself.

"Okay, so..." Now that he actually had someone to explain things to him properly, Riley wasn't sure where to start. This all had to make sense somehow, right? Things like this didn't just happen to people without warning. Maybe he had retrograde amnesia. "You know what, I'm just going to start simple. Where are we?"

The man was at least efficient. He didn't take time stalling or denying their situation. He would certainly learn quickly if he kept that up.

"We are in a place called Landel's Institute. It is an asylum for the mentally unstable by day, however the patients are not mentally troubled at all." She paused as the face of Evangeline flashed through her mind. "Generally."

She took a bite of her sausage-filled pancake. Her stomach pinched in rebellion but she chewed through the pain. "At night... it is a different story. The institute's true colors are shown then." She took a drink of water. "Geographically, I know very little of where we are. I have heard it is somewhere in the Americas but there is little to indicate whether that is fact or simply conjecture."

"Well, of course we're in America," Riley said with a half-hearted laugh, even though he wasn't feeling particularly amused about anything. He'd actually believed for a second last night that they weren't even on Earth. "We..." It occurred to him that he didn't really know for sure, and the uncertainty wiped the smile from his face. "All the nurses are speaking English, aren't they? Where else could we be?"

This was much too surreal, not having access to a map, let alone a GPS. God, Riley didn't even know where in the world he was. This wasn't fun. This wasn't fun at all.

If by true colors, Aigis meant giant demonic birds and monsters lurking in sheds... Riley didn't know what he would do. Everything here seemed to rely on the fact that he had any clue what was going on. Maybe it would be as simple as admitting that he didn't. "Okay, look, the last thing I remember is being in Washington, D.C. I was getting into my car. Then I woke up here, and I don't know what happened, and I don't know why there's these things at night. If there was some kind of tutorial, I don't remember it."

Riley didn't know if finding out that he had volunteered for all of this would make him feel better or worse. Maybe he really had gone insane.

Aigis blinked. She hadn't heard a word in English here. How to explain... "You may not wish to believe me when I tell you this, but I have heard only pure Japanese from both nurses and patients since arriving. I hear you speaking in Japanese even now. But you see, that is because Landel has put in place a translator that encompasses the entire institute. It was disabled for one night since I have been here, but my companions and I were all lucky in that we could communicate without trouble."

That was a mouthful, but it had needed to be explained. He may not believe her. That was his prerogative. But he would soon see, even if he did not wish to, that this place was not likely to be anything like what he knew his life to be like before.

She listened to his story patiently, taking the time to also stuff her face in the process. Once again, her stomach pinched and roiled in protest but she couldn't let it win out over her common sense. A body needed sustenance, just as a machine required a power source. She would not allow herself to fall to Landel's manufactured illness.

"That is..." Aigis shivered, taken over by a sudden chill. She shook it off and tried again. "You must understand, there is no one here who was not taken against their will. My last memory was training with my friends in preparation for the battle that would decide the fate of all mankind."

She gazed down at her glass of water. How her own perceptions had changed.

"When people are brought here from whatever land or situation they were last in, there is no explanation on how they were transported here. There is very little explanation as to why we are here, either."

"You..." Riley stopped and stared again. "I'm speaking Japanese? Right now?" He couldn't even be skeptical anymore, like whatever muscles were needed for skepticism and suspicion were too strained. Unfortunately, there was nothing to take its place, leaving Riley feeling very blank emotionally. There was translation technology, sure. He didn't know if there was anything on the market capable of that, but if there was one thing Riley had learned, it was that the government kept secrets. So yeah, language translation, he could see - at least on a purely theoretical level, even if the technology was way too advanced.

But when Aigis responded to his story, Riley very quickly discovered that his skepticism muscles hadn't been as far gone as he thought. In fact, it went way beyond skepticism now. Now he was back to just wondering if everyone here was completely nuts. "The fate of all makind," he repeated in a mostly deadpan tone. "Right. You mean that figuratively, though. Like cybersecurity." She looked too young to even be in the military, let alone fighting anything.

But, turned out everyone here was in the same boat. That was just dandy. Who were they supposed to ask if the nurses never told them anything?

"Yes." Aigis blinked. "That is what I hear, even if you are not speaking it voluntarily." Even if he managed skepticism, Aigis was the last person to know how to pick up on such nuances.

She tilted her head, considering any other possible options. "My programming has always been set to Japanese recognition. There is the possibility I was reprogrammed when I was brought here. However, I find that highly unlikely considering the translator malfunction I mentioned previously."

"I am actually speaking of it in a very literal sense. Protecting humanity is what I was created to do." She stopped eating and looked down at her hands. The skin on one was reddened by her rash, but the other was a more acceptable flesh tone. Her skin was threaded as it would be for any normal human, not synthetic and smooth like it had been back home.

"As it is..." her voice was soft, contemplative, "I was unnecessary to achieving that ends. Though I still wish I could have helped in some way."

Riley was starting to feel a little guilty about assuming so instantly that everyone here was a little off their rocker. It had been so frustrating when no one took him or Ben seriously about the Declaration of Independence, and here he was doing the exact same thing to other people in an even worse situation. He was actively trying to open his mind and accept everything he'd seen when Aigis - in the same level, measured tone she'd been using for the entire conversation - started talking about her programming.

Riley peered at her. Yep. That was a really good straight face.

When she didn't so much as crack a smile, the programmer cocked his head. "I get it. This is a joke on the new guy, right?" Monsters and nighttime and sadistic nurses; all of that might be real, but not this. Not... sci-fi stuff. It couldn't be. She even had a rash on her arm, for God's sake! Robots didn't get rashes. Robots didn't look and sound so human. "You're not going to tell me I'm a robot too, are you?"

Aigis' brows rose slightly at the mention of a joke. That was as far from the truth as one could get. "This is no joking matter in the least."

She held up her hand to assure him. "Assuming you were not mechanical before entering this place, then no, I would never say you were a robot. In fact, there are only a very few artificial intelligences here. Primarily, I believe the patient body is made up of humans with specialized abilities."

There were a few regular humans, as well as several other species that were trapped in human bodies. Aigis didn't think much about it. If a robot could be placed in a human body, then why not other beings? Oh, but that did need explaining. "Pardon me, I have been here so long it has become habit to assume certain knowledge." Her hand moved to her chest. "I was not originally in the body you see before you. I am unsure of how Landel managed it, but he transferred my Artificial Intelligence into this body. It is remarkably similar to the form I had before, but it is much more life-like than anything even my creators could have crafted."

Not a joking matter. Uh-huh. "Somehow, I knew you'd say that," he grumbled. "So there are more of you, then." Riley's voice, face, and attitude had gone beyond mere disbelief, or even pandering to obvious delusions. Now, he was just doing his best to convince himself everything was a dream - or as close to one as possible - and that anything could happen in dreams. "Artificial intelligences. Stuck in human bodies. By... insane doctors who get their kicks by mutating birds and monsters and kidnapping people to put in some kind of demented experiment."

He tried not to listen to himself talk. Riley was at the point where he could feel his sanity breaking down at the edges, and any way of slowing down that process would have been completely welcome at that point. He could even feel his sense of humor shriveling up, and that... that was about as far from good as you could get without descending into downright terrible. And then some.

Aigis nodded, confirming that what he said was true. "There is only a handful of us here, but as I said, we are certainly not the majority."

If only he knew all the different types here; animals turned human, aliens, and even regular humans with little experience in any type of supernatural occurrence. It was fairly troubling to a protection such as Aigis. "I am afraid so. The Head Doctor is also notorious for disguising torture sessions and brain washing experiments as 'studies.'"

Before too long, Riley would understand that madness was as much of a part of staying sane as trying to fight off your disbelief. It was paradoxical, but necessary.

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Day 66: Breakfast

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