damned_institute | Day 39: Intercom, Evening

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Day 39: Intercom, Evening

The Head Doctor seemed a little rushed as he spoke on the intercom, not taking as much pleasure as he usually did in describing the delicious food that would soon be served.

"Hello, everyone! Tonight is turkey night, which means turkey breast in a great turkey gravy with some nice turkey sides: peas, herb potatoes, a small garden salad, and for dessert, a slice of pumpkin pie. We of course have vegetarian substitutes available, as well as our usual assortment of drinks.

"...I believe that's it! I'll talk to you soon!"

The intercom clicked off abruptly.

[ If you are introducing your character during this shift, you may either choose for them character to wake up before their roommate gets back, or after.

All room threads go in response to this post; please post your character's room number as the subject line of the initial post. Thank you! ]

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Loud (loud enough) music, a chance to close his eyes, and a plan for the evening had S.T. in a decent mood. When he got back to his room, he was humming. It would take a great musical detective to identify the fragments of notes as Kickstart My Heart. At least he wasn't humming loudly.

When he reached his room, he shut the door firmly in the nurse's face, ignored his food, and went straight for the closet. Everything was still there. He started pulling items from the closet, stacking them in sorted clumps. A half-dozen plastic containers of varying sizes filled with tap water sat to one side. The other side had an industrial-kitchen packet of bread yeast, three loaves of bread, and a bag of sugar. S.T opened the first bag of bread, pulled out a slice, and then put it back in.

He stood up straight and started looking around the room.

Well. It looked like his roommate had been busy while he'd been asleep. Bourne forced himself to eat the turkey and potatoes - good food for energy, provided he didn't overdo the turkey. He seemed to recall something far away in his memory about turkey containing a sedative when consumed in large quantities. The asset ignored the pie for now.

"What are you doing?" he asked, watching S.T. remove the odd assortment of items from his closet with great interest.

Blackbriar assets weren't exactly trained in chemistry...you couldn't make a bomb out of bread, could you?

Whoops. Two points formed a line, and that line said his roommate would always be a silent lump under the covers. And he wasn't that much of an asshole that he'd shake the guy awake.

He grinned as he crossed the room to his desk. "Making beer. Or vinegar. Hopefully the former." He pulled the dishes off the tray and tucked it under his left arm. Then he walked over to Jason and held out a hand. "Sangamon Taylor. Been here a couple of days."

Funny how quickly "GEE, International" had dropped off the boilerplate intro.

"Jason Bourne," he said, shaking his roommate's hand and saying the name with no hint of hesitation. Nobody here cared who he'd been outside these walls, as he'd found out, so why bother trying to keep it a secret? If anyone ought to know, it was probably his roommate. "I've been here for almost a week. Why are you trying to make beer?"

He'd never really had a fondness for alcohol. Bourne's senses needed to be sharp at all times, and alcohol didn't help him on that score.

The name didn't ring any bells. The guy seemed O.K., so S.T. returned the handshake firmly, and then returned to his project. The tray went down on the floor, and he sat down indian-style beside it.

"Why not?" O.K., it was kind of lame, as goals went. But what was a planning session without beer? "Besides, kitchen seemed like a good scouting mission. Only weapon I've got is this," he said, ducking his head briefly into the closet and retrieving a rolling pin. "And I didn't have that before last night."

"Besides, I'm a biochemist. It was that or explosives, and I'd need a real lab for that. One of these nights I'll whip up something for some of those doors." He hadn't really seen a point before in brewing bombs more likely to blow up his hand than any of the overgrown fauna that called this shithole home. But brute-force lockpicks he could do.

The beer-making had been interesting enough, but the mention of explosives really piqued Bourne's curiosity. A lot could be accomplished with some volatile materials...he had only mentioned it in terms of opening doors, but an improvised explosive could probably work wonders on some of the smaller creatures, and even damage a large one.

"What a coincidence," Jason said with a small smile. "I'm someone who uses explosives."

S.T. grinned. Explosives, huh. Bet not as a demolition man. Hit man, maybe? Nah. If he had connections to the Mob, he'd have started the petty tyrant asshole mind games already.

And his voice didn't have the radio-patter ring of fanaticism -- so not the sort of extremist S.T. was careful to distinguish himself from. Heck, maybe the guy just had an overactive fireworks fetish. Nothing wrong with that.

"I'll see what I can do. It's not difficult, if you have the right ingredients. But a distraction at the wrong time would make for one grade-A SNAFU." As he spoke, a pile of shredded bread was growing on the tray.

"Any idea about matches? Lighters? Something more high-tech than trying to light off plastique with flint and steel?" The image of Jim Grandfather handing him two sticks to rub together, and then coming back a few minutes later with lighter fluid and one of those metal stove-lighters came irrepressibly to mind. Bastard probably could start a fire with nothing other than a bucket of wet leaves. He just wasn't an idiot.

"Thanks," Bourne said, and watched his roommate shred the bread. Whatever he could come up with would probably be like what Desh had used to assassinate Daniels in Tangiers - crude, but effective. Fine by him. A solution didn't have to be elegant here - that made it better, certainly, but it wasn't a requirement.

When S.T. asked him about any sophisticated, modern means with which to begin a fire, Bourne shook his head. "It's not out of the question, but I haven't found anything yet. There's a town, though - I'm sure you could pick something up there. Not exactly like they give us money, but..." And that stash of bills stolen from that broken cash register in the ruins would remain his little secret for now. He'd have to work on a way to get the money into Doyleton. "I think I saw lighters in the hardware store," he said, suddenly remembering a young girl in the store who'd distracted the shopkeeper with her newfound lighter fascination enough for him to steal the roll of duct tape.

"Huh. Might be one with my stuff." There was a non-selfish-asshole reason to try to get his crap out of storage. Nothing at all to do with wanting to have his own things back.

If they were his own things. If they were anything like his own things -- if this dead-end job loser asshole that was in their records under the name Paul Quincy had the balls to light one up once in a while.

"There's a hardware store? Any good?" Fuck, a good hardware store could solve most of his problems. Except the no-money problem. Just the smell the varnish and turpentine and dust and old wood might help kickstart his brain into finding a way out of here.

"I was going to head up to patient possessions tonight," Bourne said. "Maybe I can check for you, if you're not going up there yourself. What do they call you here?" A lighter could be a powerful tool here.

He shrugged at the question. "I guess." He wasn't exactly the reigning authority on hardware stores, since he hadn't been to too many in his memory. "It's got the standard stuff - nails, tools, oil, I think. I wouldn't recommend trying to steal a car, though, if you know how to do that." His own experience with that had ended...rather poorly.

"Sure. Paul Quincy." There wasn't that much of value in his stuff -- if his initial gut instinct was wrong, no big deal. But he figured that Jason wouldn't just take the lighter and conveniently forget about it.

The pile of bread had reached critical mass. Time for the detonator -- the yeast. He ripped open the packet and took a sniff. Smelled like yeast. He opened one of the larger containers of water, poured it in, and then added a little sugar.

"Hotwired it? What happened?" That seemed like a good idea from where S.T. was sitting.

Bourne nodded. "Great. I'll see what I can get." Since S.T. was a biochemist and at least seemed to know what he was doing - really, beer? - it was entirely possible that he could make some incendiary materials, even with the limited supplies in the Institute. What better tool to test those with than fire?

At the question, he shifted a little in his seat. This was not a point of pride for him. "The car stopped, just dead stopped, after two blocks. The fuel gauge dropped to empty from at least half-full, the engine was running fine, and..." He raised his hands in the air and dropped them back into his lap. "It stopped. The orderlies caught up with me - I got a triple dose of sedative. I don't know what happened. It should have worked." In his world, there was no room for failure. You were right or you were dead. It was that simple. And he'd been right, he knew he'd been right.

"Great." The yeast was foaming away already. Millions of dried eukaryotic microorganisms resurrecting themselves on sugar water like Jonestown in reverse. He started shoveling bread crumbs into the other containers, aiming for an even distribution by eye.

He looked up in time to catch Jason suppressing a squirm. Sore point, obviously. Hell, he'd feel the same. He'd never be able to lecture anyone he knew on car maintenance again. "The pressure dropped? Instantaneously? No explosion, nothing?" Or a gunshot, if this was the movies. But the chances of hitting the gas tank were in banana-peel-on-a-football-field territory. "Sounds like it was rigged from the get-go."

"No," Bourne said, shaking his head. "No explosion. I would have noticed that." Or he would have been dead or horribly burned, as was more likely.

"I thought it could have been rigged, but...this was one car on a lot with at least fifty other cars. All different types. What are the chances that they rigged one car out of fifty to fail if stolen? Ten? Hell, all fifty? And that's not even counting the cars parked out on the street all around the town. How would they even guess that any of us would get out of supervision long enough to successfully hotwire a car? And how long would it take to set that all up? Too much cost, not enough benefit. It doesn't make sense. Not the way they run things here." He stabbed listlessly at his pie. "I know what I'm doing. And it should have worked. It was too old a car for one of the more modern security failsafes."

S.T. did a remarkable imitation of listening patiently through the story. Or perhaps he was just too preoccupied by topping off each water-and-bread-filled bottle with some of the proofed yeast. After each one was full, he screwed the lid on and then loosened it just slightly before putting them back in the closet.

Either Jason was an idiot on the scale of some of his co-workers (which seemed unlikely) when it came to cars, or there was something very strange going on (under normal circumstances, even more unlikely). But these weren't normal circumstances. And one too-convenient breakdown was several orders of magnitude less weird than some of the things he'd heard.

"I met a guy who said he was a robot until two days ago." He shrugged. "Teleporting gasoline out of a fuel tank is probably small change to the Head Bastard."

Last bottle was in. S.T. stood up and stretched. Bubbles of synovial fluid popped all up and down his neck as he rolled his head and forth. Good thing it wouldn't really cause arthritis. "Or we really are crazy." That was still the simplest answer. Doctor Babyface had believed it, and the parallels were undeniable. A little bit of chaos theory and his life could have ended up that way.

He crossed over to the desk and picked up the slice of pie with his hands.

Edited 2009-03-06 01:00 (UTC)

The nurse knocked on the door to room M90. "Mr. Kane? Mr. Quincy? I hate to interrupt your conversation, but I'm here to escort Paul upstairs. He's being taken for one of our special CM-US trials. Don't worry, he'll be fine and you'll get to finish up your conversation tomorrow, all right?"

When the door opened, Bourne got to his feet with alarming alacrity. They'd come to take him again, jam him so full of needles and pump him so full of drugs he'd have no choice but to do what they told him. It took him a half-second to realize that the nurse had said 'Paul', not 'Charlie'. She wanted S.T.

He'd get sedated for this again, he just knew it.

"No," he said, his voice calm. "I don't think so."

"What the fuck is a CM-US trial?" Whatever it was, Jason didn't seem to like the idea. Didn't like it enough to stand up for a man he'd only just met.

Wait. He was remembering. There'd been something on the board -- two reasons they took people at night. One was to turn them against their fellow prisoners. The other had only been mentioned in terms so vague as to be not comforting at all.

"No, thank you," he said to the nurse. Politeness wasn't going to work, but it was reflexive. Nine times out of ten flacks would back down. This wasn't a corporate showdown, though. He really wasn't going to get the chance to talk his way out of this. He set down the half-eaten slice of pie and stepped next to Jason.

Edited 2009-03-07 14:49 (UTC)

"Charlie, I know you're concerned for your roommate, but please stay calm," the nurse said. She had come to the room with one prepared syringe, but now quickly prepared a second, just in case.

"And Paul, dear, Dr. Landel was quite insistent about this," she said, stepping near him. "Now, please come along," she said. Her voice was steely and there was no room for negotiation in it.

Stay calm? That was a laugh. When they were going to take S.T. upstairs and stick him full of God-knows-what? No. That shouldn't happen to him, it shouldn't happen to anyone.

Like either of us give two shits about what Landel wants. Bourne eyed the syringes, but if he was going to get drugged, he'd take it like a man. "I really, really don't think you want to push this issue," he said. If they kept her here long enough, would she turn monstrous in front of their very eyes? An interesting experiment, to be sure.

"And you can tell the Head Bastard I was quite insistent about staying right here." It was all bravado, and he knew it. But hell if he was going to go without a fight.

He took a quick second to glance around. There was nothing he could use as a shield within reach. Fuck.

She had expected resistance, and knew from the charts that Charlie was the more dangerous - physically - of the two. The nurse turned to him first, wanting to avoid the fight that would inevitably occur if she let this go on any longer. "I understand your concern," she said, reaching for his arm and quickly injecting the sedatives - "but I'm afraid that you'll just have to trust me when I say he'll be just fine."

Next, she turned to the other man. "I'll put it in your chart," she said dryly. "Now, I really hate to have to do this. But you've really left me no choice, since I can tell you don't intend to come quietly." With that, she pulled out the second syringe and quickly injected S.T. with its contents.

She then turned away, confident that the drugs would allow her to do so safely, motioning to two orderlies that were out in the hallway. "Please assist me with getting Mr. Quincy upstairs?"

As the nurse moved towards Jason, S.T. stepped forward, intending to cut her off. Instinct kicked in, a fatal hesitation. The nurse was a head shorter than him, and female. The atavistic need to protect himself slammed up against cultural mores against hitting women, and he paused.

Just for a split second, but she was faster. A tiny pinprick, and then the sliding sensation of the needle told him he'd lost this round. He stood, trying to maintain consciousness as they pulled him out of the room. By the time they were turning the first corner out of the block, he'd settled for passive resistance: being a heavy, useless lump.

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Day 39: Intercom, Evening

M90

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