Day 69: Sun Room (3rd Shift)

[redcladidealist]

Tomatoes in both choices. Lloyd's face fell the moment he heard the announcement, and with a groan he let his forehead thunk against the table in the Sun Room. He couldn't even ask if he could have a sandwich made without tomatoes in it. The lunches were already made, his nurse holding one of each in her hands. Unhappily, he accepted the one that had meat. Maybe something could be salvaged from it.

Ignoring his nurse's cheerful parting words to enjoy his meal, the teen waited until she'd stepped away before he took his lunch out of the bag and started picking it apart - only to freeze, heart pounding unevenly. A deep, rattling breath had just- Lloyd didn't even finish the thought. Something was here! He whipped around, not even sure how he was going to defend himself. The only thing he had was one of those plastic spoon-forks, and if he was up against that same thing they'd run from last night-

There was nothing. Nothing but nurses and patients passing by. Not even any cats. No one else looked like they'd even heard anything. Lloyd's eyes darted around, but still nothing showed up.

Come on, I know I heard it...

[For Ed and Al!]

Comments

[gald_digger]

So far, this day was turning out pretty good, all things considered. Anise was feeling healthy and energetic again, she'd had a chance to catch up with Ilia, she even heard from Barnaby after fearing the worst for him, and most recently... the packed lunches had undergone a serious upgrade. Both of the choices sounded delicious, but in the end, she went with the BLT. She wasn't even sure what that stood for, but it smelled amazing.

The only thing this day still needed was for Anise to hear from Luke and Claude. She tried not to worry too much, but each time she stopped to read the bulletin, she made sure to check Guy's note for replies. There weren't any so far, though.

Well, she was going to have to put that worry aside for now. Maybe she'd go looking for them next shift. For now, she had a promise to keep! Anise hadn't forgotten how she agreed to share her maps with Daken yesterday. She made sure to grab her notebook, the maps tucked safely inside, and brought them with her to the Sun Room. She sat down in a space with a few chairs surrounding a coffee table. That would give them space for eating and for copying information.

Now she just had to wait, and hope that the new guy hadn't gotten himself killed already. In any case, it wouldn't hurt to start eating without him. Setting the notebook and lunch bag on the table, Anise took out the sandwich and decided to get a head start on lunch.

[Daken!]

[trollverine]

Anise, he kept reminding himself. Her name was Anise. Not that he would necessarily need it, but if he somehow did, and forgot, he was going to look like kind of a dick: he didn't want to do that.

He wanted to ingratiate himself to a little girl, which was almost as stupid. But solving complex problems sometimes required the unexpected, and he needed a map. Regardless of his roommate's wisdom from the night before, not planning ahead was going to waste a lot of time.

And anyway, in the land of the blind, you had to find the guy with one eye to get anywhere.

He set his lunch on the coffee table and sat down across from her, glancing at the notebook. "Is that what I think it is?"

[gald_digger]

Sure enough, the guy she was waiting for turned up before long. Anise was about halfway through her sandwich, which she set down as she greeted him with a smile. “Yep! All the maps I’ve got. There’s the first floor, the second floor, and… I’m not totally sure where it came from, but there’s a map of the roof that was floating around on the bulletin – before they really cracked down on censoring us, I mean.”

She opened the notebook and took the loose pages out. As she glanced over the maps, however, she seemed to notice something. “Oh! This one’s a little out-of-date. I can add a couple rooms here…” The Medical Wing had opened just earlier that week, and Anise had done a bit of exploring in there. She could at least try and draw in the rooms she’d been to. “Here – you can copy these ones while I fix this.” She slid the maps to the second floor and roof over to Daken.

[trollverine]

He copied the second floor map as quickly as he could, not knowing whether the nurses would notice (and object). Anise didn't seem worried about it, but then again, Anise wasn't the one who needed maps - and he was getting the impression that she didn't worry about much.

The roof was next, and he'd sketched out half of it before he paused to read the notes.

And re-read them.

If the access tower was locked, and the vents were bolted, and there was no way up the outside, there would seem to be no normal way for anyone to get up there.

Interesting.

He resumed copying. "You have no idea how helpful this is." He shot her a brief smile. "My roommate was not having the new guy thing. He kind of told me to go to hell and figure out where not to go by myself." It was an embellished half-truth, at best, but maligning Aidou was fun and potentially profitable.

[gald_digger]

At least he was being grateful. Anise was surprised to hear how unhelpful his roommate had been, but after thinking about it for a moment… maybe it wasn’t that surprising. “Really? What a jerk!” She frowned as she continued drawing. “But… I guess there’s all kinds of people here. A lot of them can’t be trusted or depended on, so you have to be careful.”

Fortunately, Anise hadn’t seen any sign of Sync or Dahlia in a long time. With any luck, that meant they were long gone. But that didn’t meant there couldn’t be more two-faced patients, looking for an easy target to backstab.

As she mulled over those thoughts, Anise drew, erased, and re-drew the lines making up the layout of the Medical Wing. The front desk was by the entrance, there were a bunch of doors she never tried entering, there was a storage room way in the back… and an operating room? No, two operating rooms. They were probably identical, so she drew the second one the same way as she remembered the first. Hopefully that was accurate.

Finally, she appeared satisfied with the drawing, and slid it over to Daken. It was her almost-complete map of the first floor, and the large space that had been blank until recently was now filled in with everything she’d seen in the medical wing. “Here! It’s still missing a lot, but that wing only just opened up. People don’t know much about it yet.”