damned_institute | Day 44: Sun Room, Second Shift

Entry tags:

Day 44: Sun Room, Second Shift

[from here]

He really had beat the rush. Suzaku found a chair as close to the corner and as far from the bulletin as he could, and turned it to face the wall before curling up in it. His nurse frowned at him again, but she was still being cooperative, and frankly he didn't care what she had to say in the slightest. He didn't care even if he got sedated. All he cared about was finally having a few moments to himself, to sort out what Euphie's love meant and what the hell Lelouch's problem was.

It felt like he had all the pieces of a puzzle and was just too stupid to figure out how they fit together. What Lelouch had said about Shirley at breakfast and the tone he'd taken with Euphie on the board, Lelouch asking how Suzaku was, Lelouch dying. . . "All we can do is move forward and look out for the ones we care about." Euphie struggling to get out her last words, pain overtaking Suzaku's consciousness while he fought pathetically to carry out Lelouch's order. . . The last couple days, when he'd felt like he was finally figuring this out, seemed so far away now.

There were a couple things that were certain, at least: he hated what Lelouch had done, he always would. But he -- he didn't hate Lelouch, and he hadn't for a while now, and that wasn't going to change. And he didn't have much time, because everyone but Suzaku was terrifyingly mortal. And Lelouch was an idiot, but he still wasn't sure about the how and why of that one yet.

[for the Saucinator]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"There certainly do seem to be a lot of us around," Edgeworth answered, raising an eyebrow. "That's five, myself included, that are here." Never mind the fact that one of them was a convicted murderer who should have been dead. The number still counted. "That fact combined with the number of police officers that are here makes me wonder sometimes if there's a conspiracy against the police and district attorneys' offices," he remarked, dryly.

"Though it is rather odd," he said, continuing on. "Counting my former roommate, that would be six prosecutors. I know of three defense attorneys, and at least two police officers, as well as a young man who had worked with the police on several occasions. I don't really know what to make of it, considering that another large portion of the patient population consists of people from Japan, and a lot of them teenagers."

Miles paused, then laughed lightly. "Pardon, I'm going on about this a bit too much. I think I'm honestly just trying to forget what happened last night," he said, motioning to one of the pages - all those small marks, each one denoting a person. It was truly frightening to think about too hard or too much.

Five? Himself, Edgeworth, and Franziska made three, but that meant there were two more that Harvey hadn't stumbled across yet. When Edgeworth mentioned the police officers, Harvey's thoughts immediately jumped to his new roommate. He was more or less a police officer, though probably in a higher rank than the usual grunt. Still, it sounded like there was a real trend for this, which did make him wonder. He doubted most of them had abandoned their positions the way he had, so it wasn't like there was even a pattern.

"Maybe Landel got pulled over too many times as a teenager," Harvey said, though he didn't sound at all amused about the joke he was making. He wasn't sure if there was actually any real reason, but once again, he had no way of knowing. Maybe it was supposed to be some sort of huge joke -- drag in a lot of people who were fixated on investigating things and they would subsequently get fixated on the fact that there were so many of them around.

But in the end, who knew? He was just taking shots in the dark.

As Edgeworth continued to speak, Harvey made sure to pay attention, though it sounded like it was all just more random facts that led nowhere. Still, this proved that this guy was serious about his research, which meant that Harvey might not have to worry about doing all this work that he'd essentially given up on already.

Unfortunately, the man then had to move on and mention last night. Even though he was only saying that he also didn't want to think about it, the fact that he'd brought it up was bad enough. Harvey sighed and nodded, but he wasn't going to say any more than that. He didn't want to let on that he was the one who had put up that post on the bulletin; with this information-gathering junkie as his conversation partner, it was totally possible the man had seen it.

He hadn't missed the tally that Edgeworth was taking, though. Harvey could easily guess what it was counting, and he couldn't stop himself from asking. "How many is that?"

"Maybe," Edgeworth snorted. It wasn't that any of this was funny, but it was interesting, the smaller patterns that were there. There were a lot of those, when he thought about it - small clusters of data that might not mean anything in the long run, but were still worth noting. It wasn't so much that he was trying to put the puzzle together with the small pieces. No, that wasn't it. It was a matter of determining whether the pieces were part of the whole, or whether they were a set of puzzles that turned into the whole only when constructed separately.

Miles realized that he was getting off-track again. Is this how it's going to be for me now? Latching on to any small piece that is going to distract me from the truth of what happened last night?

No. He wasn't going to let that happen. Last night was something that never should have happened, but it shouldn't be the only thing in this place that he was intentionally overlooking.

"Eighteen different places here, including the one I marked" he answered finally, gesturing to the map. "That's just the confirmed death count. Who knows how many people just aren't saying anything? And that's also not counting the illusions people saw before that."

At least the guy could take a joke. While he hadn't burst into laughter, he also hadn't sent Harvey a look that said that he needed to be more serious about all this. While it was true that there was nothing funny about their situation when it came down to it, they knew so little that sometimes the only thing Harvey could think of to do was make ridiculous claims like that.

Still, when it came down to it, he was no joker, and so he moved on to study the counts that the man was showing him. Eighteen was already a lot, but Harvey got the feeling that there were way more than that. As Edgeworth pointed out, a lot of people weren't fessing up -- hell, he wasn't. He realized that his little tally was missing from Edgeworth's map, mainly because he hadn't died.

The part of him that still remembered with perfect clarity what it was like to be an attorney wanted to clear that up for the man, but the part of him that had been through Rachel's death said no.

"Yeah, some people on the bulletin seemed to be saying that they'd seen illusions but hadn't actually died, so there's that to consider as well," he pointed out. There, that was some contribution, even if he wasn't admitting to the whole truth.

"That's true, and there's also the fact that there are very likely people who have seen illusions and haven't said anything about them, either." There was something else, too. Edgeworth had noted that no one had commented to Javert's question about the 'sleep studies'. That meant one of two things: either no one was admitting to having undergone them, or they didn't happen at all. He was leaning towards the latter, but that meant the schedule was off.

"There's something else odd about last night," he said, deciding that the idea was better bounced off a second person. "There's a pattern to when the brainwashing and sleep studies here occur - and forgive me for assuming that you knew about them both. Please, interrupt me and I can explain them," he continued.

"That pattern was changed the night we were stuck in Doyleton overnight. Last night, if the pattern held, it meant there should have been a series of 'sleep studies', but instead, we're hearing accounts of brainwashed patients. I'm wondering if what happened wasn't some kind of large-scale experiment, but damned if I know what the objective might have been."

Even though Edgeworth went ahead and referred to the exact thing that Harvey was doing, his half-expression didn't falter. He knew a thing or two about lying, as all lawyers did. So far this Edgeworth seemed pretty open and straightforward, which Harvey also liked, but he wouldn't be surprised if the man was also completely capable of lying through his teeth.

It looked like they were moving to another subject entirely, and while Harvey wanted to ponder over what had caused last night's incidents, he had been convinced by now that none of the patients had any more insights than he did. Besides, Edgeworth had already said he'd been trying to forget about what had happened, which probably meant this was a subtle subject change that shouldn't be argued with.

Harvey might have lost it a little, but he could still follow social cues when he cared to.

While he had heard about the brainwashing and the experimentation, this was the first time he'd heard the latter referred to as 'sleep studies.' That was likely some kind of code word, and it didn't trip him up too much. He shook his head when Edgeworth offered to explain and instead focused on what odd thing had happened.

"I'm still not sure if that whole zombie thing was planned," Harvey returned, resisting the urge to roll an eye. "If it wasn't, then we weren't supposed to be stuck in town all night, meaning that the brainwashing that was meant to happen that night didn't. Maybe they were just making up for lost time," he suggested. Sometimes it was easier to look for a simple solution rather than getting caught up in larger ideas.

Edgeworth caught the slight hesitation, and paused, going back to the prior subject for just a moment. "May I ask a question, Mr. Dent? What do you make of that 'IRIS' and 'Next-Wave' talk that was over the intercom before our esteemed former colleague, Alec Doyle, spoke? Alec Doyle being the former voice on the radios, until a few weeks ago. He was supposedly killed, a fact that the Head Doctor broadcast over the intercom. I find that, combined with what someone helpfully translated for us over the bulletin, interesting."

He hummed quietly, then pointed to the underlined quote: The dead can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts. -- J. Derrida.

"And I agree. I don't know that the zombie thing was necessarily planned, but it seems to be a strange coincidence. It happened, and then the next day, Dr. Landel was conspicuously absent, and today things go back to normal. I'm not sure what to make of it all. Maybe it is just as simple as making up for the lost time."

While Harvey did like the feeling of importance that he garnered from being asked his opinion (but what was he, some mutt looking for scraps?), he didn't want to admit that he hadn't paid much attention to last night's announcements. Most of it had been strings of numbers, unintelligible words, and screaming. After that, he'd been so distracted by seeing Rachel and then hearing her voice that he hadn't been able to focus on the announcements at all.

"I wasn't around for all of that," he explained, "but it does seem like it might actually be Doyle who's behind it this time." He didn't know about the translated note, either, but once again, he wasn't going to own up to that. So long as he didn't let on that he wasn't quite as invested as Edgeworth seemed to be, all would be well.

"I obviously can't judge whether or not he'd be capable of this sort of thing" -- whatever that meant -- "but I don't see why we should count anything out." He wasn't here to do character studies of the people who were trying to run their lives, and he wasn't going to assume that any of them were above putting them through what amounted to emotional torture.

Miles nodded. It made sense, really - while he was too polite to ask, he could definitely understand why someone would tune out the intercom in that situation. He had lost track of it himself somewhere in the chaos after Doyle's announcement. He had been too focused on what he was sure would be his dying words to even care about the screaming overhead.

"It's definitely not a possibility anyone can easily rule out. All his past claims to really be on the same side of these things as the patients could have been a ruse to get people to trust him. It wouldn't be the first time someone ever pulled a stunt like that, and it certainly won't be the last."

It wasn't a possibility he liked, because it meant things really were up to a patient population that was nigh-impossible to manage, let alone get on the same side, but such was life.

If anything, this new knowledge that Doyle had been trying to act like the nice guy who was supporting the patients just made Harvey more suspicious of the man. It was the people who tried to sidle up to you and play nice that were usually looking to stab you in the back. At least Landel was open about it during his nighttime ramblings.

"That's probably exactly what it was," he said, narrowing his one freed eye as he crossed his arms firmly over his chest.

"Hell, for all we know those two are actually working together," he tossed out, knowing that it was unfounded. The point was that there was no one they should feel as if they could trust in this place, not even each other in most cases.

While Harvey had never felt like "one of the patients," meeting like-minded people like this Edgeworth man did make him wonder. He wasn't here to make friends like the nurses kept harping on about, but he was open to talking to people who actually had something interesting to say. If anything, it got his mind off of unpleasant topics and let him shove back his anticipation for the coming night.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Day 44: Sun Room, Second Shift

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject