DAY 45: Sun Room (Second Shift)

[violent-varmint.livejournal.com]

There was something fishy going on in the Institute today. All over the bulletin board, people were talking about having "woken up", having been "cured"... and it seemed as though ZEX was one of them. Tanaka wouldn't have recognized the note at all if it hadn't been signed - his wording, his handwriting, even his name had changed - and a part of him still wondered if it had been an imposter, trying to pull the wool over the Captain's allies.

But it'd be easy enough to find out the truth. Whoever it was had agreed to meet him, and Tanaka was waiting for him just outside the cafeteria doors, ready to catch him as he came from breakfast. If "Max" was an imposter, then he'd discover the identity of a hidden enemy. And if he was really ZEX...

...well, he'd have a whole new set of things to worry about.

[for a spoiled rich brat brainwashed Admiral]

Comments

[ryuuzaki]

His hand paused on the cat's head, as he considered the answer to Hunt's question. How had he managed to find himself here?

Looking back, he still couldn't put it together: his father must have hired someone, someone discreet, the sort of people you hire when you are wealthy and your children have developed problems larger than you can handle on your own. Daniel had not been involved with drugs, or fringe religious elements, but a stint in Japanese prison could have been on his horizon. These people who must have been deputized to retrieve him... his best guess was that they'd drugged the food he ordered from room service, then kept him drugged on the long journey to New Jersey.

When he saw his father, he would ask. There was no guarantee that he would receive an answer.

"It's the same. I have no memory of it. I think my father brought me here, or had me brought here." His face was blank, and his stare level; he was not lying, but there was a great deal he wasn't saying.

His hand resumed stroking the cat's head -- delicate, deliberate motions. "I had run off to Japan. It was... it was thoughtless of me. A mistake." All in all, there was a distance in his voice, as if it was the only way he could bring himself to describe his own activities.