damned_institute | Day 37: Sun Room

Joe had read some of the larger notes stuck up on the bulletin board when the announcement came on the intercom. All things considered, this Landel guy didn't even seem so bad. Even if these people were held here against their will, he was certainly nice about it.

Apparently, the new patients - including Joe - were to hang around in the Sun Room or go to Arts and Crafts with the kids. Well, there was plenty of information on the board, including maps and descriptions of monsters, for Joe to prepare for the nighttime, when he could seriously get going on fighting his way out. He could look for where the boss would probably be waiting, or where his V-watch might be, and figure out how to fight the monsters. In fact, he had plenty of time to work all that out... but this the first time he'd had to really relax since he got his powers. So it couldn't possibly hurt to enjoy the calm period, could it?

The red-head stepped back from the board, and hopped back onto a comfy-looking couch to digest in the sunlight. He reached up to pull his cap down, and sighed when he realized it wasn't there. "Oh well, nothing's perfect. I still wouldn't call this hell."

[free!]

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Even down as he felt, he still had enough sense to hear it when someone walked over, and he raised his head enough to see a pair of feet. Rubbing at his face, lest some of the tears still remained, he glanced up, hoping that it would be a familiar face.

It wasn't.

This only made him redouble his efforts to look as though he was fine, if a bit startled by the other boy. "I... um... Can... can I help you?" he asked, not quite able to bring himself to actually smile.

Oh, great. Now he was at a loss for something to say. How, exactly, was Lev going to approach the kid without sounding callous? Granted, he had already started a conversation with him and he seemed to be trying to calm down, but even so...

Oh well. Lev wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to get some proper information just because he felt a bit awkward about something. He'd long since learned to get over that.

"I was just transferred here," he started. "They told me this is a mental hospital, but I have a feeling it isn't. You've probably been here longer than me, and you'd know better than me what sort of a place this is." While seeming like a friendly person was actually a bit foreign to Lev, after being a loner for so long, he decided to sit beside the white-haired boy regardless, if only to hear his voice more easily.

"You're new?" he stated more than asked as he sat up a little straighter. He wasn't feeling that sociable, but he couldn't just deny someone who needed help.

"Ah- No, well, it's kind of a mess, isn't it?" he jumbled up the first bit, then decided to start again. "It's not a real mental hospital," he explained, "they just, for some reason, pretend it is, during the daytime. Call us by the wrong names, tell us lies about... about who we used to be. But don't believe it for a minute," he assured the boy. He'd managed to get most of the tears wiped clean, but his face was still a bit red, and the blackened tears from his left eye made things look quite a mess.

"At night, it's much different. I'd um... I'd recommend staying in your room unless you're with other people. It's dangerous."

A mental hospital. He said a mental hospital. But it couldn't have only been a mental hospital, or else why would he be here? Certainly they wouldn't transport him elsewhere, not in his condition. They would've brought in a professional to analyze him or something. Otherwise, there was simply too much risk of him detonating.

"A mental hospital, but not a real one. Calling us by the wrong names." Lev repeated the general gist of what he said. "Dangerous at night...dangerous how?" Was it the sort of Roland-beating-you-in-cold-blood sort of dangerous? Was that what had happened to him or someone last night that was making him cry? In a mental hospital, of all places, that shouldn't have been happening. Not at night, not during the day.

"And you called this a mental hospital. Do you mean it's a mental hospital, or a harvest camp?" He wasn't even sure how common mental hospitals were anymore. For all Lev knew, they might as well have just been abolished. Any crazy person was probably signed off to be unwound in their teens or something. Some other poor soul was probably walking around with part of an insane brain, scattered among the people. Harvest camps were probably the replacement mental hospitals now.

There were an awful lot of questions coming his way and he wasn't sure he had answers for all of them. He decided to take it one at a time, hoping to avoid confusion on both parts. "I... They unlock our rooms at night, but they also release... I don't know what they are, monsters I guess? Or sometimes they brainwash the other patients to fight us or... or do experiments on others. Whatever you've seen in nightmares, that's probably a good starting point for what's out there." He looked grimly at the floor, wishing he could give the boy better news.

"And yes, it's some kind of institution for insane people. A s... sanatorium? I think..." he looked confused when the boy mentioned the other thing. "Ah- I'm sorry, I'm not sure what a harvest camp is."

Day 37: Sun Room

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