damned_institute | Day 66: Game Room (Fourth Shift)

During her stay at the Institute, Leanne hadn't yet had much of a chance to take a good look at the game room. Sure, she'd heard nurses mention it before, as an alternative to staying in the Sun Room, but she hadn't paid them much mind, usually more interested in staying near the Bulletin Board.

It was simple curiosity that brought her there this time, however. It wasn't like she felt any less tired, any less exhausted, than the day before, but she felt somewhat cheered after the morning she'd had, a little more like she could face anything that came her way.

Which was how Leanne found herself leaning back on a chair, having settled on a deck of cards, one of the only things in the room that was actually familiar to her. She couldn't say she knew what that weird console hooked up to the television was supposed to do, besides being something like an interactive movie from what she could tell, but this, at least, was familiar.

[Zero!]

Doubtlessly, the most frustrating part of being here (beyond...everything else about this place) was how quickly and suddenly the nights ended. How one could go from actually accomplishing something to sudden darkness, with sunrise and another 'fun' day in the Institute following shortly after. No way of predicting when it would happen. Such was the case this morning: Zero went from helping his injured allies find weapons to waking up in his bed with practically no warning once again. Grumble. Getting used to this routine seemed like it would be an impossible task...

This morning was a little different from other mornings, however. Usually the once-Reploid was at least willing to get the day over with, but this time that motivation was practically nonexistent. He kept half-opening his eyes, glancing up at the ceiling for no real reason, then closing them again for several minutes. No attempt was made to get out of bed. It felt like all of his energy had been sapped from his body, and he was left to be nothing but a lethargic heap of bones and meat.

Eventually, the nurse came into the room to fetch him, probably hoping her sickeningly cheery voice would convince him that having a fun, educational time with Dayshift activities was far healthier for his mind than being lazy in bed. If only he had enough energy to retort that the Institute's activities would sooner make him go insane than sleeping in would...but whatever.

"Yūdai? Come on, wake up." The nurse gently put a hand on his shoulder, since simply sounding annoying wasn't enough, apparently. Either way, he wasn't going to budge. Too tired. "Wake up. Come on, sleepy head! You've already missed both breakfast and lunch. The day's almost over now! You shouldn't spend the rest of it sleeping."

As if that was going to change his... Wait. The day's almost over? It's not morning?

That little detail was enough to spark a whole wave of motivation. Zero sat up at once, much to his nurse's surprise, and begrudgingly submit himself to his nurse's plans for him...whatever those were, now that it was apparently 'fourth shift' and he'd slept through everything else. How in the world had he managed to sleep so long? He hadn't intended to, nor could he remember ever being so tired in the morning before.

Well. He was awake now, and that was what mattered. He could check the bulletin board...on which he'd missed a lot, but better late than never. Getting information from there was the most important thing, the only reason to be around during the day beyond checking on allies. And then after that he could be taken away from the board to...sit in the Game Room. Because his nurse thought it was more important to be useless than it was to actually get one step closer to freedom. Wonderful.

At least he managed to spot a familiar face once he walked into that room. Leanne...someone he cared about, even more so now that he knew she was infected. (It didn't help that he'd run into another infected patient last night, one who had actually transformed. That was not something Zero wanted Leanne - or anyone else, for that matter - to go through, too.) The once-Reploid made his way over to her at once. And of course, the first words he said to her were almost the opposite of pleasantries. (Hopefully she was used to this by now.)

"Leanne. What's going on?" If he looked and sounded grumpier than usual, then oh well. Who wouldn't be after discovering they'd slept through most of an entire day?

Zero's sudden appearance wasn't exactly a surprise. She was growing used to seeing him around the Institute, after all, but Leanne couldn't say she'd been expecting that particular greeting. Sure, Zero was just about as abrasive and thoughtless as Zephyr was, and she was more than used to getting odd greetings from him too ("Where's my breakfast?" being the one most likely to get him smacked, of course.). This particular greeting, however? What in the world did he mean? Aside from discussion about the previous night, nothing that interesting had happened yet...

Her eyebrows raised, she lifted her right hand, a handful of cards still held in it. "Um... Games?" Taking a quick glance at the rest of the deck on her lap, she looked back up at Zero. "Do you wanna play cards with me?"

Leanne was a little too tired to try to get his real meaning anyway.

.... 'Games'?

That was the last answer Zero expected to receive to the question 'what's going on', and the blank expression on his face clearly showed it. (Unless by 'games' Leanne was talking about Landel's mentally deranged games, but the question she asked about cards a moment later made it clear that that wasn't what she meant.) Either way, 'playing cards' didn't sound like a rewarding way to waste what little time there was left before dinner - and no, he wasn't thinking that mostly because he had no idea how one 'played cards' to begin with...

... ... Come on. With a war to worry about? Why would he bother spending the past few years of his life re-acquainting himself with the things human did for fun? There was no point then, just like there was no point now. End of story.

"Not really," he answered, short and simple. (At least he was honest.) His staring continued, meanwhile; his question hadn't been answered yet. "Nothing's happened at all today?" No deaths, no over the top speeches from Landel, no new hints?

Straight and to the point. She really shouldn't have expected any different. It probably had to do with him being a robot or something-- and wasn't that still a little hard to swallow? Leanne couldn't really say she knew a lot about how they were supposed to work, but they probably didn't work like everyone else did, did they? Maybe they were supposed to act that way, after all. (And for a moment, just for a moment, she had a ridiculous mental image of Zephyr as a robot... before deciding her illness was probably getting to her again.)

Leanne shrugged and set the cards back down on her lap. What could she possibly say to that then? Was he expecting something to have happened during the day? "Not really. And I haven't heard a lot about everyone did last night yet." She hesitated, biting her lip. In truth, she hadn't even bothered to find out much of it yet, hadn't she? She'd been too busy worrying about her own encounter the night before, and about ensuring Tsubaki was safe. "I haven't asked a lot about it yet."

So nothing of importance had happened today. That was a bit of a relief to hear. It didn't relieve Zero's wondering about why he'd slept in so long in the first place, but it was better to miss nothing than it was to miss something...especially when one was trapped here, where a lot of things counted.

Then Leanne went on to comment that she didn't know much about last night's events. Good thing Zero just checked the bulletin board before coming here; he'd heard quite a bit about last night on there, so he felt he could share some of what he'd learned with Leanne now. But first, he should probably sit down in a nearby chair if they were going to talk for awhile...

... Now then. "Like Landel said, some prisoners transformed," he said first. "That's all I personally encountered." And personally fired at, too, but it had been a choice between his friends and something very much like a virus-driven Maverick. The choice was obvious...no hard feelings for the unfortunate soul who'd been changed against his will.

"But I've heard that they found the source of the infection, and some got cured last night." Though he didn't know specifics nor really understand how it worked, Zero was at least thankful that this much had apparently been discovered. The sooner everyone was cured, the better...

"...Yeah. I saw one of them last night, too" she said softly, thinking of Sora. He'd said on the bulletin board that his case was different, but hadn't the end result been the same? He'd transformed into a monster during the night, just like the nurses did, just like the sick would, if they didn't find a way to stop it... "But I didn't know how many it'd happened to."

The mention of a cure, however, was enough to make her head snap up again, for her mouth to open slightly in amazement. The cure... Soma had been going to try to cure herself too, hadn't she? Leanne hadn't managed to catch a glimpse of her that morning, as intent as she'd been on other things, but could it have worked? Could she have been cured? The procedure had sounded risky, but if it really did work... "Do you know what they did? They didn't... Did they really cut themselves open?"

Leanne had run into one of the 'changed' prisoners, too? ...Zero couldn't help but quickly look her up and down after she said that, just to make sure there weren't any obvious bandages on her body that he'd missed somehow. Didn't seem to be any. (Hopefully there weren't any...)

...but the cure. Yes. "That's what I read," he answered, the grumpiness on his face giving way to a small concerned frown. "They took out something that looked like a butterfly. However they did it, it apparently worked." Zero wasn't sure of the details - he knew little about human surgery and one had to be rather vague over the board, after all - but he could only imagine both the process and the aftermath hadn't been...pretty.

But pretty or not, it was a cure nonetheless... So long as no one died in the process, it was better than becoming a monster.

That settled it. As soon as she got back to her room that evening she'd just have to ask Soma what had happened. She needed to know if it really had been successful, if... if the butterfly really was as literal as Zero had heard. And wasn't that just a discomfiting thought, having something actually inside them without their knowledge.

Leanne breathed out a sigh, forcefully pulling her thoughts away from surgeries and butterflies. "I don't know how a butterfly can cause all of this." She gestured vaguely, mostly at herself. "But if it really does work... I guess it's worth it, huh?"

"Yeah," he agreed, giving Leanne a single nod of his head. As long as - again - the actual process didn't leave anyone crippled or worse, then yes, it was definitely worth it. It was proof that Landel didn't have total control over this situation, if nothing else.

...Though honestly, Zero wasn't sure how a butterfly could cause this, either. Were insects really so bad for human bodies that it would physically change them should they be ingested? He'd never heard of such a thing before. The only thing that came close was the Maverick virus from years past, and that was a program, not a living butterfly. Remembering the sketch he'd seen on the board, however... The once-Reploid thought for a moment. "I don't think it's a real, organic butterfly, from what I read. It's just something shaped like one that Landel gave to some people..." Most likely. But what that 'something' was, Zero didn't know. If anyone on the board had known, then they hadn't expressed it clearly.

"Like a machine or something?" she asked, figuring Zero would know more about that than she would. She couldn't say she had any idea whether a machine could get someone so ill, but in truth, there were quite a few things she didn't know about them. Sure, there were plenty of them scattered all throughout Basel, but it wasn't as if most ordinary people knew anything about how machines worked.

"But you know what's still really bugging me, Zero?" Leanne continued, idly shuffling the cards in her hands. "I've heard some people think they slipped them in our food or something like that, but how do you think Landel got those inside us?" She huffed out a breath, a frown on her face. "It couldn't have been that easy, right?"

A machine? Hm... "Maybe." Though to him, it was a strange idea. Zero had never heard of a machine making a human ill before. They could only do that to other machines through corruption, right? But if time travel and Reploid-to-human transfer were possible in this world...who's to say that machines causing organic beings to transform into monsters wasn't possible, too?

After all, he couldn't claim it was the craziest thing he'd ever heard...

But as for Leanne's other question, which Zero listened to without any change of expression (although he did cross his arms eventually)... "I don't know," he responded, half-shrugging, "I'm not an expert on humans." He just knew that they got into certain prisoners somehow, and that fact was what mattered more.

Leanne sighed, setting the cards down on her lap again, and looked up at Zero. "And I don't know a lot about machines either... But I guess that'd be too easy, huh? Maybe whatever that Landel guy's doing to make..." She shrugged, frowning slightly. "...all of this happen is a whole lot more complicated than a few machines."

Renamon's words to her that night, about just how far Landel's influence probably reached, were one thing she still hadn't forgotten. It was... downright infuriating, really, thinking of a man like him having so much power. "But however he's doing it, I really don't like it."

... Leanne had a good point, and not just about the infection. Everything Landel had done to bring these people here and then torture them...it seemed impossible for it to be the work of only a few machines, or even a few people. It was too complicated, too...fantastical, too advanced for it to be a small scale operation. Technological advancements aside, how can it be small when some sort of military was or used to be involved, whether it was on Landel's side or not, along with a resistance group of unknown size? Not to mention the nearby town of Doyleton that was at the very least affected by both the Institution's facade by day and the hellish transformation that happened at night...

Could Landel really do all of that all by himself?

"I wonder if he has help from somewhere else," Zero mused aloud, closing his eyes as he continued to think hard about this. "Besides the military. Something higher up." Did whatever country this place was in know about Landel's work? Was he following government orders? He hadn't considered that possibility before...but if it were true, then challenging that power would be much more difficult than he'd first thought...

Help from somewhere else, huh? She couldn't say she knew what kind of people could have helped him in the Outside World, just who could have been powerful enough to pull off something like that, but were they in Basel, the answer would have been obvious. Chandelier, the church: no one but the Cardinals and Rowen could have possibly been able to do something like that there.

But did the church hold quite as much power in the Outside World? Asking Zero would have been useless-- he was likely as clueless as she was-- so Leanne filed the question away for later, to ask once she found someone who might know the answer. "I don't know. Someone told me once that Landel himself had a lot of power, but he can't do all of this just by himself, right? It didn't sound like the military was with him, but do you think it's got anything to do with whoever was giving them orders?"

"One person can't do all of this alone," Zero replied, shaking his head. No - that would be impossible, no matter how powerful Landel was compared to whatever governments there were in this world. Even Dr. Weil had had some sort of help when he'd taken control of Neo Arcadia.

But as for the military... "I didn't think the military was on Landel's side, either. Whoever's giving them orders..." Hm. Assuming the military wasn't an independent group, did their leaders have something to do with them being against Landel? The answer to that question could change what all of this meant. If their leader wasn't on Landel's side, then obviously that meant the military was trying to take over something that wasn't theirs; in other words, all of these prisoners would technically be caught in the middle of a power struggle. Wonderful.

If their leader was on Landel's side, however, then Landel probably broke some sort of agreement with them, which got worked out when Landel regained control over the Institute. Didn't seem likely to Zero, but it was still a possibility.

...That was the problem. Always the problem. All of these thoughts were just possibilities. There was little concrete evidence for anything. "...Without knowing details, it's hard to say for sure whether they're on Landel's side or not, or if they even have higher-ups to begin with." Eternally frustrating, this lack of answers for everything...

No higher-ups? Leanne couldn't say she liked the sound of that, not with people like Landel and the soldiers she'd met involved. Then again, maybe it was a blessing in disguise if those supposed higher-ups didn't exist. After all, what kind of twisted person would it take to order... all of this? (Certainly someone as twisted as the one who'd ordered the experiments in Aetersyl, a traitorous part of her mind whispered before she pushed the thought away.)

She leaned back on her chair, arms crossed, and frowned up at the ceiling. "Yeah, it sure didn't sound like they got along. But... But there's just gotta be some way to find out, right? I know that radio guy knows a lot about Landel, but..." Leanne looked down, back at Zero. "I wish there was some way we could get him to tell us everything he knows. He probably knows about the military, too..."

The radio guy... It took a few seconds of thinking before Zero understood what Leanne was talking about. That's right...on his second night, when he'd met Ema and Harvey Dent, he had heard a radio broadcast from a man who was apparently trying to help the prisoners here. Marc was his name. It was one of those details that had slipped his mind recently, as it was something he hadn't heard about in awhile; not to mention there were just more important things to think about right now, the infection being one of the most urgent ones. But that didn't mean it wasn't important enough to remember...especially if that guy was really an ally.

Anyway. "Is there a way to meet that man face to face?" From what he remembered hearing, no one seemed to know that much about Marc. Or at the very least, no one had ever met him in person. Had he been doing broadcasts since the one Zero heard? Hm...

Leanne breathed out a sigh, her eyebrows furrowed. As much as she had seemed to know about Marc, Renamon might have been able to tell them something about how to meet him. But, as things were, she hadn't been able to catch so much as a glimpse of the girl in the last couple days, and that boy the day before hadn't seemed so sure about whether she really was still around.

The thought of her friend having been released brought with it a sinking feeling, only aggravating the state of her stomach, but she forced it aside and shook her head. "I don't know. But we should try to find out. If there's a way to do it, someone here's gotta know about it. We just have to find the right person!"

She trailed off, biting her lip. "We could probably ask the people who've been here for a long time."

People who've been here a long time... Zero couldn't say he knew many who fit that description. Harvey Dent was the first one to come to mind, although he couldn't remember exactly how long Dent said he'd been here, if he'd ever said anything about that in the first place; Zero just figured it was quite awhile since Dent seemed so experienced. But otherwise, there was...that man he'd met on his first day here, the one who'd been here before the military had taken over the Institute. What was his name again? He remembered the face and voice more than the name...oh well. Then there were Lana Skye and Nigredo, both of whom Zero was guessing had been here awhile based on their experience, like Dent. That was about it.

Would one of those people know about Marc, and how to reach him? Couldn't hurt to ask, in any case. The worst he could be told was 'I don't know'. (And wasn't that the common response to any question here, anyway?)

"Yeah. Someone has to know." Zero uncrossed his arms, resting his hands on his knees; he continued to think hard in the meantime. "It's probably something to ask over the board, actually."

Though she was the one to suggest it, with Renamon missing in action, Leanne couldn't say she was sure of just who to ask herself. There was Guy, but aside from him, she wasn't sure just how long most of the people she'd met had been around in the Institute. Maybe Tsubaki? She'd never actually gotten around to asking.

Still, Zero's idea was an appealing one. Even if no one could answer their question, at the very least, they could get some kind of idea of how much everyone knew. "It's pretty late by now, I don't know how many people would see it... What do you think about asking over the bulletin board tomorrow? We've gotta find out something that way!"

...Ah. Good point. It was the last shift of the day before dinner, after all...and considering how much time had passed since Zero began talking to Leanne, this shift was probably going to be ending soon, anyway. Putting up the question now would be a little pointless. "Tomorrow, then," he agreed with a nod of his head. "Whoever gets to the board first in the morning can put it up." Or whoever remembered first. It didn't really matter; the input they'd (hopefully) receive from the note was what did count.

For now, though... The once-Reploid's mind wandered further, to other unanswered questions and possible leads. (As if there were any shortage of them.) There was one question in particular that might be helpful assuming the answer was known. "Who else would know about Landel besides Marc?" he mused aloud, asking himself as much as he was asking Leanne. Other rebels? Zero couldn't think of anyone off the top of his head...but maybe Leanne knew more than he did?

"It's a deal," she said, the smile returning to her lips. Just the idea of getting any scrap of information, of knowing just a little more than they did before, was much more appealing than she would have expected. But it was only to be expected, wasn't it? In a place like this, where their every action was so limited, just a little extra knowledge could very well make the difference. And Leanne was going to survive. She was going to keep herself, and everyone else she could, alive. No crazy Head Doctor was going to stop her.

"The military, I guess. But they're not here anymore." She frowned, resting her elbows on her knees. "Maybe some of the other doctors? Do you think they'd know anything about the guy they work for?"

Yeah... Zero couldn't say he missed the military exactly, but it would be helpful information gathering-wise if they were still around. A lot could have been observed from them. It didn't help that the former Reploid had arrived here just before they'd been kicked out of the Institute...there might have been a lot of important information given out at the beginning of their 'reign' which he hadn't been here to learn.

Oh well. It couldn't be helped now.

Leanne's other suggestion got Zero's attention, meanwhile. "Other doctors?" Who? Not that it didn't make sense for Landel to have underlings beyond the nurses, but it wasn't something he had seen or heard about before now.

Leanne raised an eyebrow, frowning in confusion as she rested her chin on her hands. Did Zero really not know? Then again, she couldn't really say she knew how the doctors had chosen who to speak to that day, so it was entirely possible he'd never seen, or heard, anything.

"Yeah," she began, still frowning. "I guess no one told you about it, huh? A few days ago, they made me go and talk to this guy they said was my doctor. And I know I'm not the only one who's had to do that. He was really nice, but..." She shook her head, smiling weakly. "I'm really sure he still thought I was crazy."

Day 66: Game Room (Fourth Shift)

no subject

whoops, I seem to have created wordbarf.... ._.

wordbarf is always acceptable...!! aaaand idek what i'm doing sob

Yay-!! And cards!! That is...what you are...doing......?? :|a

...good enough for me!!!

\o/!!!!!!!!!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

I'M SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG sob...

IT'S COOL

;;b

and then I took forever, sob.

and then I did too, sob

sobbing party everywhere