damned_institute | Day 43: Intercom, Evening

Hello! I.R.I.S. here once more to announce to you, our honored guests, that you have officially made it through a day of our typical Landel's treatment. Of course, it isn't quite over: we will now have you retire to our designated patient quarters with one of your agency partners to inspect their sleeping area and the tools that we provide them with for the true bulk of our behavioral testing. On an added note, we would like you to notice once again that the meals we provide to our subjects are of the highest quality.

For those of you feeling apprehensive about taking part in our more intensive methods, please be aware that we would never imagine putting all of you in any danger whatsoever. This last shift will be your last at our Institute; afterward, we will escort you to our Head Doctor's personal observation station to survey some of our test Next-Wave participants in the rigorous trials we put them through – all for their betterment, of course.

Once again, we hope that you are satisfied with what you find, and as always, direct any questions you may have to your console.

The nurses began to escort the patients to their rooms. They didn't even seem to be brought to awareness by words such as "testing" and "subjects."

[ All room threads go in response to this post; please post your character's room number as the subject line of the initial post. (Find all of the newly changed room assignments and shift introductions here.) 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. ]

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Apollo wondered how long he'd have to keep listening to that I.R.I.S. system before someone who was living and breathing took over again. At least hearing a human voice wouldn't make the situation sound so...cold and hopeless. Whenever he heard the automated messages, it made him think Landel's just might keep operating forever, until nurses and patients alike rotted, and the walls of the building were crumbling from old age.

Yeah, that did wonders for his appetite, all right.

"Try not to look so serious, Mr. Fine," his nurse tried to soothe him.

The lawyer glanced toward her with a faintly apologetic smile. "Um, it's Justice." She gave a small shake of her head.

"I suppose yesterday's bus ride might have been a little too exciting for you," she sighed. "You were doing so well yesterday morning with the way you kept saying your name to me."

That was me telling you I wasn't sick, he inwardly griped. Can't say I don't feel a little queasy right now, though.

Still, not for the first time, Apollo wondered if she was a victim in all this as much as he was. Being held hostage and having the right mind to do everything you could to find a way out, with no guarantee for success, versus being held hostage and staying blissfully oblivious to it -- Apollo wasn't sure which was better, to be honest. The need to discover the truth took the highest priority in his mind, but, on the other hand, some part of Apollo sort of wished he had it in him to look and act as genuinely happy as some of the nurses seemed to be. It was kind of a surreal sight in a place like this.

When she left him to eat his dinner, he couldn't help but notice that Aya hadn't arrived yet. Trying to quell the small jolt of panic that coursed through him, Apollo took a small breath and cut into his steak. He hoped nothing had happened to him.

Edited 2009-08-28 07:42 (UTC)

If he, or anyone, was able to get by in Landel's without something happening that would truly be some sort of feat. Aya would just have to count his blessings in the fact that he wasn't dead. Injured, dealing with a broken team, a straining mind trying to cope and come up with something worth attempting and the fact that the one person he never wanted to know about this place was in the worst of its clutches, these things he was.

But as long as he wasn't dead or incapacitated he could do something. That's all that mattered.

The nurse led him away from Yohji and the third conflicting conversation of the day and took him back to his room. He was mildly surprised to see Apollo there, given that they hadn't since the first time they parted.

"Oh, Mr. Fine," Aya's nurse, that damnable woman greeted him while steering him into the room. Aya was getting used to moving with the sedatives still high in his system but it was frustrating at the least. Frustrating when he managed to get enough of a grip to care about it. "Kevin's had a bit of an exciting day. His sister came to visit! So he's a little tired, but he's behaving well again."

Aya only shook his head, he jerked his uninjured arm out of her grasp and stalked to his side of the room. "Get some rest, Kevin! And eat you're dinner. It's steak!" the nurse chirped this along with a farewell to Apollo and left the two to their own devices. Did the nurses even leave this place? Did anyone? The town was nothing but a sham...

[ooc: everything should be fixed now. Sorry for the delay!]

Apollo couldn't help but perk up with a hopeful expression when the door opened. Sure enough, there was Aya, alive and in one piece, though it looked he'd had a rough time of it lately. Once the nurse had left the room, he turned to get a better look at his roommate, unable to hide the anxious look on his face.

"Aya, are you okay?!" Apollo asked. The nurse had said he'd gotten a visitor. Did that mean someone who looked like someone he knew came to see him? Nothing like that had happened to Apollo, but he couldn't imagine how weird something like that would have to be.

"Y-you didn't get bitten last night, did you?" the lawyer added with a worried frown.

Weird was an understatement of the whole encounter. Aya was still trying to decide if he even wanted to know what insane reality they'd created and implanted into his sister's mind.

Apollo's voice drew him out of the thick fog over his thoughts. He nodded, looking over at the other man to see if he was injured and saw that he wasn't. A good thing. Maybe he'd gotten somewhere that hadn't been as infested with zombies as the car shop Aya, Ken and that woman Taura had fled to.

Bitten?

Aya glanced down at his arm still in its sling. "...twice," he confessed. And his arm hurt. A nurse had tried to give him something to dull the pain but he'd had enough of drugs for the day. Or week. Month.

And he'd had enough of zombies for a whole lifetime, thank you.

"T-twice?!" His voice almost came out as a screech, and Apollo had to remember to tone it down. Still, that sounded horrible. Apollo had been fortunate enough to stick with Asch, who'd volunteered to defend him against the monsters to the best of his ability. Really, he'd had no reason to...and yet he still did.

It was proof that not everyone in this place was bad, he told himself.

But apparently Aya had been less lucky. He seemed like someone who had a really cool head on his shoulders, so Apollo knew he probably hadn't done something stupid or unnecessary during the attack. His roommate must have been forced into a lot of heavy fighting against the zombies himself to get chewed up by those 'monsters', or whatever they'd been.

"Are you, um..." The lawyer paused, searching for the right words, but it was hard to do with how much his stomach was churning. His voice was considerably more quiet now. "Did it make you sick?"

Twice. Considering he normally ran into showerstorms of bullets and normally came out unscathed more-or-less the fact he couldn't dodge some shambling corpses didn't make sense. Though for awhile he'd been fighting with little better than the giant stick Ken had gone and fetched. If he had his sword it would have been a different story completely.

There'd also be a bloody swath of bodies leading to where ever Landel kept himself hidden if he had his sword. Cool headed was quite possibly the farthest description of him when it came to matters of his sister. Calm people didn't get sedated all that often.

"Sick?" Both he and Ken had been bitten. Other than their wounds probably being infected when you considered just what left them nothing else had happened. Aya shook his head slightly. "No. At least, not yet."

He'd been sparred seeing exactly what it did to a few unlucky people. "But you don't mean that." The statement prompted the question. What did he mean? Had people died because of the zombie bites? He was trying to think back to the single, horror movie he watched and failing at that.

Day 43: Intercom, Evening

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