damned_institute | Day 32: Sun Room (2nd shift)

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Day 32: Sun Room (2nd shift)

After the couple glasses of water Leon managed to gulp down during breakfast, the mage felt immensely better. He was still a bit tired, but that was nothing a little lounging on one of the sofas wouldn't cure. Stretching his arms above his head, he couldn't help but wish he'd had the chance to grab one of his new doctor's coats before leaving his room that morning. Maybe they would have let him get away with wearing it. Maybe.

He grabbed an empty sofa, pulling out the journal he tried to keep on him at all times. It was nearly complete now. Just a couple more pages to go. It might not improve his spellcasting that much, but any improvement was better than none. It was getting to where it might be too dangerous for him to use spells at all, if it left him so worn out without even finishing a monster off.

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Now this was getting interesting. Conklin wasn't usually fairly straightforward - he was a convoluted son of a bitch - but he liked it when he could get his information quickly, cleanly, and without too much fuss.

He braced himself for the inevitable stream of crazy-babble, looked Nakago in the eye, and said, "Okay, I'll bite. What's the deal with this place?"

At the very least, his notes could be an incredibly candid portrait of insanity to give to Mo once he got out of here. If he didn't put me here in the first place...! Hopefully, the intel he could glean from this conversation would be of more use to him than to his psychiatrist.

Considering the man had forsaken pleasantries and had dove into attempting to learn what this place was almost immediately after he had sat down, Nakago could only assume that the man was either straightforward or the man simply wanted his information quickly, and with little fuss. Either way, Nakago could appreciate that, he supposed.

"Whatever you remember occurring to you prior to arriving here did actually happen to you. Never think otherwise." That much he had essentially gathered from the other people in this place. Either that, or they had simply been humoring him. "This facility is fairly normal during daylight hours. It's the night you will want to watch out for."

The first part of what Nakago had said was ever-so-slightly worrisome. Of course everything he'd lived through had happened to him; he had the scars to prove it. The idea that he'd been dropped off in the loony bin under his best friend's informed diagnosis was slowly becoming less and less likely.

Then what the hell was going on?

"You said 'during daylight hours'," Conklin said warily. "What changes at night?" He had a feeling he wasn't going to like the answer, even if it was crazy-rambling. There was nothing worse than thinking you had an excellent lead when it turned out to be misinformation.

"Everything," Nakago said, leaning back at bit to eye the man critically. Oh, really, the man absolutely no idea. Simply describing it wouldn't be enough, no. Alex would simply have to experience things for himself. "Tell me, what is your worst nightmare?" He allowed himself a bit of a smirk before he continued. "Or are you the sort who believes they are immune to such things?"

"Worst nightmare, now that's hard to answer," Conklin said cryptically. Every time he thought things couldn't get worse, they did. First it had been David's family, then his conviction that David had turned, then Marie being kidnapped, and then that whole debacle with the Jackal's return, Mo being kidnapped by the Mafia, and everyone getting shot at least once. "I think I've already lived through most of them." And oddly enough, most of them were statistically less likely to occur here.

No, he wasn't immune to his nightmares, in reality or REM. Not by a long shot. There had been a period where he hadn't slept often because he feared what he might dream...and he still heard explosions in the night, and awoke in a cold sweat.

"I thought so, as well." After all, he had lived through his own personal nightmare all those years ago. Up until now, he had assumed that would have been the worst of it. Then, he had been brought here where he had been attacked by possessed creatures and had his past thrown in his face once again. He had been here a grand total of three nights and already his own personal hell was looking far better in comparison. "However, that was before I arrived in this place. Take that nightmare of yours, multiply the pain, the fear, give it physical form, and that is this place at night."

Conklin blinked. He was kidding, right? The spook was entirely willing to write this off as the insane ramblings of someone not in full possession of their faculties, but the lucid tone Nakago was speaking in was throwing him off a little bit. The entire explanation sounded like something out of a bad horror movie. If he was going to be snarky and sarcastic, he might have said something about an overblown fear of the dark, but he was smart enough to know not to alienate people, especially at this early stage. If he was going to get out of here, he needed allies at the very least.

And here I thought with the death of the Jackal that all my troubles were over, he thought. "Sounds like fun," he said dryly. "Any idea who's in charge of this place? Because I'd like to talk to the management, get myself a change of accommodations..." Okay, a little snarky there, but it was good-humored snark.

Unfortunately, Nakago completely missed the snark entirely, although he did give Alex a bit of an odd look in response, almost as if he was having difficulty believing Alex had even said something like that. "I highly doubt a change of accommodations would help matters. However, the person in charge would be Martin Landel. I have yet to see him for myself. We mostly hear his voice, although I'm told he made a public appearance about a week ago."

Judging by the strange look Nakago gave Conklin, he'd missed the point of the sarcasm entirely. The name 'Martin Landel' didn't ring a bell to him, but he figured that was nothing new. He couldn't well be expected to know all of the heads of mental hospitals in the world, psychotic puppetmasters or not.

He was retired, dammit. That meant that whatever faction was after him ought to have the good sense to leave him alone. His only involvement with the Agency was the occasional consultation. So why the hell would they want him?

"Hm." Conklin looked around at the crowd of grey-clad people in the Sun Room, some chatting, some sitting, and some trying to sleep. That one thing Nakago had said, however, was gnawing at him. "When you said not to doubt that whatever had happened to me had happened to me...what did you mean by that, exactly?" That had to be a vital piece of the puzzle, and an explanation for why everyone was calling him 'Caine'. Things didn't seem to fit.

Of course, he was still skeptical. Any good field man would be.

Wasn't it obvious what he had meant? From the second the day began after his first night in this place, the staff called him by a name that wasn't his own, had said they weren't about to 'engage in his fantasies'...

On the outside, perhaps, this place might pass for whatever this facility was actually supposed to be (they certainly had nothing like this where Nakago himself was from, and, thus, he found himself unable to draw an adequate comparison), but it couldn't possibly be normal. After all, no holding facility he was aware of contained possessed creatures, nor did the jailors turn into demons when the sun went down.

"They will try to convince you that what happened before never did," he said after a moment. "They will say that it was a dream, a fantasy, call you by a name that isn't yours..." He trailed off, casting his gaze to the rest of the room. These people had lives somewhere before they came here, most likely. Friends and family...

No. Since when did he care about that? He didn't owe these people anything. Never mind the fact that three people had aided him without asking for it.

"We all know better. They do, too. They will claim otherwise, of course."

Conklin blinked, unable to believe what he was hearing. "That's..." That's crazy, he wanted to finish, but he couldn't help but feel that referring to the insanity of the whole operation would be in rather poor taste. What on earth did Landel stand to gain from this, anyway? But if what Nakago was saying was true (it wasn't, it couldn't be, some small part of him insisted despite the growing body of evidence, that couldn't happen, it's just a paranoid delusion...), then there was something rotten in Denmark, or wherever the hell this Landel's Institute was.

Christ, did this stink as bad as that Hong Kong debacle! It reeked of deception, positively drenched in the scent of mismanagement and abuse of power. He wished David was here, or Mo, or Marie - hell, he'd even be glad of David's psychotic alter ego at this point. But there was not a familiar face among the lot, and it finally struck Conklin that he was on his own here. No backup. Disavowed. He had to make it or break it as he was able. What Nakago was saying was either sheer lunacy...or a chillingly brilliant plan. The one thing Conklin couldn't see, however, was how it would hold up to close scrutiny. The patients - the prisoners - had friends on the outside, friends who would surely notice if they went missing. He could just see Mo now, the psychiatrist furious, pulling out all the stops to get Alex out of here, brandishing official-looking government documents signed by people at the highest levels, can't you read, you underpaid idiots, I'm his doctor, his only doctor, and I tell you there's nothing wrong with that man's head that can't be cured by a well-deserved peaceful retirement, you quacks!

That absurdly amusing image in his mind, he just had to ask: "There's no way Landel can keep this whole thing a secret, I mean, most of us have to have people on the outside who're looking for us."

"That may be," Nakago agreed, secretly amused by the look of disbelief on the man's face. How badly did Alex want this to be the ramblings of a mad man? How was he trying to rationalize this in his head? Then and only then did it occur to him that maybe, just maybe, this was the sort of thing Landel and his staff longed to see. Perhaps they took delight in seeing what this place did to the people they took, seeing how their prisoners would rationalize everything.

Nakago might have taken some enjoyment in it, himself, if he was not an unwilling participant in a game he really had no desire to play.

"However, there are some who have no one." Of that, Nakago was absolutely certain. No one would be looking for him or wondering what had become of him. He was supposed to be dead, after all, and those who would have cared were long gone. "Those on the outside, I'm sure, believe this place to be exactly what they say it is. Apparently, there are some visitors, but most here have not spoken about such visits at great length." At least, no one he had spoken to had much to say about said visits or visitors.

The way Nakago responded to Conklin's question tipped him off that he himself may have been one of those poor souls with nobody on the outside. Had it not been for a few chance occurrences, the spook would be in the same boat himself. Everyone had been pretty pissed at him for jumping to the conclusions that he had, most of all David. He hated that empty, friendless feeling that had started to rear its ugly head again in the past few hours.

And, coward that I am... He'd taken the easy way to make the pain and loneliness disappear, temporarily, via the bottle. But that was behind him now.

He was about to ask a question concerning the visitors when the intercom chimed and a nurse came to take him away from Nakago and head to lunch. As soon as he was at lunch, he was going to write down everything he had learned so far, even if it was false information. In the meantime, he limped off to pizza.

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Day 32: Sun Room (2nd shift)

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