damned_institute | Day 47: Sun Room [2nd shift]

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Day 47: Sun Room [2nd shift]

Cloud knew he should be taking the opportunity to check out the rec field during the day. The fresh air would be a welcome change from the crowded stuffiness the Institute usually provided, and he would have a chance to scope out the area when it wasn't all under the cover of darkness. When offered a choice, however, he remained in the sun room. He told himself it was so that he could watch the bulletin, him still being fairly new and needing all the information he could get, but the thought rang hollow.

The real reason he was here, he knew, was because he would be out there. Maybe it was weak of him, but he needed a chance to breathe. Ever since he'd arrived it had been nothing but one shock after another, and seeing Zack standing in the cafeteria that morning talking to Aerith had been the final card that caused his tower to crumble. He needed to just sit back somewhere out of the way and start rebuilding.

Being able to watch the bulletin from here was just a perk. Cloud made himself comfortable on one of the sofas, watching people come and go but not really paying attention to them. He took the time to try and rate this on a scale of the biggest messes he'd ever gotten thrown into.

(for Sheena)

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Mello didn't try to mask his surprise; his eyes widened. A fucking massacre, probably a bomb strike from the sound of it, and no one had done anything, or even bothered to bury the dead? Blood still at the scene made it sound recent, but the bones and the fact that she called the site ruins contradicted that. He certainly hadn't heard about it, theoretically less than two hundred miles away in New York, but as he hadn't pinned down when the hell they were, that didn't necessarily mean anything. It still should've been dealt with in some way. And yet it sounded as if the whole thing had gone entirely unnoticed, and the site had simply been abandoned. What the fuck?

It was difficult not to jump to the conclusion that the place had something to do with the Institute, given the apparent immunity of both to interference from the outside world, but he forced himself to reserve judgment. Without seeing it for himself, or getting a more detailed description, there was no way to know how recent the carnage had been, or what had caused it. This girl was clearly too tender-hearted, but there'd be no sense upsetting her more by pressing for further information.

"Okay, that's enough to go on," he said, realizing as he did that he sounded almost gentle. Heh, no wonder she thought you were nice, he mocked himself silently.

"What did you and your friend bring back?"

"There was something written too... on the wall in the same... I'm sure it was blood," she continued, "Mello-san... before said that it might be important. It said 'you will both burn.'"

Even if he'd told her it was enough, she wanted to make sure that she told him all she could, especially the parts that had seemed important. It was hard to shake the memory though, feeling so helpless in that building while she searched for help for Bridget. She didn't want to feel so useless ever again.

It was a moment before she could shake those thoughts away and concentrate on the things she'd placed in the box. Mello had asked about those too. She nodded, "they're all things from the church."

"Bridget was hurt badly, so I..." she hesitated, looking aside for a moment. It wasn't a complete lie, but it was certainly a half truth, "I was looking for bandages. There's some old clothes I was going to tear up and... a bottle of wine to clean the wound and... and there was a little bit of American money. I thought it might be helpful, but... when I went into town, it was barely enough to buy a toy. I didn't even get a chance to buy anything before... w-well... before things turned really bad in town."

Mello nodded. The message, combined with what he'd recently heard about Landel and Doyle, made it even harder to resist slotting these events into the big picture. Could it have meant there was a third party in the middle of this feud, opposed to both? And did the victims in the ruins belong to Landel, Doyle, or neither? His guess would've been Doyle, but tempting as it was to construct a narrative using the few tantalizing fragments he knew, he hadn't even confirmed the details of the rivalry yet.

He wondered what had been so upsetting to the girl that she was leaving something out--that glance away was one of the more blatant tells for evasion that he'd seen. The significance of the items wasn't entirely clear. Wine might have meant a Catholic church, but then again, it might not; and 'old' clothes wouldn't help him pin down when this had all happened.

It was the last thing she said that interested him most, and he leaned forward. "This was a few days ago? When the town was under some sort of attack?" Judging from what Teresa had told him, that almost certainly had something to do with Doyle.

She took a deep breath to calm herself down and shook her head at Mello's question. Time enough for Bridget's wounds to heal and for most of the others who still remembered her to vanish from this place.

"Almost a week and a half now I think," she recalled quietly. The attack on the town they visited had been traumatic enough, having seen what became of Bridget's friend. It hadn't taken long for his organization to fade out after that. Kagura had to hope that not all her friends would be forgotten the same way.

Mello realized that without knowing how long Teresa had been here, he had no way of knowing how long ago the attack on the town had been. He'd assumed it had been recent, because the announcements last night had seemed to indicate the aftermath was still taking place. But what this girl was talking about had happened while the other Mello was still here. Sloppy reasoning. What would L think? He resolved to construct a timeline to the best of his ability later.

"What did happen in town when you were there? Anything you can remember would help." Now that she seemed to think he was nice, too, he found himself reluctant to disabuse her of the idea. Hell, maybe he could catch some flies with honey himself.

"Ah..." she opened her mouth to reply only to hesitate when she wasn't quite sure how to answer. Which did he want information on? Almost anyone could tell him about the incident last Saturday, right? Or... maybe that wasn't so. She hadn't kept track of how many people had been lost and how many more had come to fill their places. "Y-you mean Doyleton? Or... the broken town?"

"In Doyleton when you were there." He hadn't heard about this yet, and she'd told him enough about the ruins that he knew he wanted to see them in person and draw his own conclusions. "Someone told me that things like zombies attacked not long ago." He made a face, complete with rolling his eyes, that he said he knew this sounded ridiculous. "Is that sort of shit a regular occurrence?"

The way he asked made it seem like he didn't even want to believe that anything had happened there. She smiled slightly in return, but shook her head.

"If I hadn't seen it myself I... probably wouldn't believe it either," she started.

"Usually they let us go into town every Saturday. It was okay the time before. Nothing bad happened. We're always back here before the sun goes down," she paused, looking down at her hands, still folded in her lap. "But the sun seemed like it moved faster or... I'm not sure how it happened, but... once the sun went down, everyone changed. Everyone but us. The people all turned into those... zombie things. I've been here a few weeks, but... never seen anything like that."

She rubbed her arms slowly as goosebumps rose, "They were slow, but there was a... a lot of them. They tore up Bridget's friend. We were lucky they didn't get us next." Bridget was probably still having a much harder time than he'd ever admit, but still he managed to smile only days later.

"There's always bad things," she explained. "Some nights are worse than others. I haven't noticed any... any patterns if that's what you mean."

Mello couldn't help but feel amused at the mention of patterns: of course both versions of himself would be looking for them. A week and a half ago would've been close to the end of the other one's stay here. Was this the same incident Teresa had described? Either way, he would have bet the staff allowed the 'patients' to be left in the town after dark entirely on purpose. He frowned briefly. The answer to his question about why no one had sought help from the townspeople was one he didn't like at all: whatever the fuck was going on at the Institute, they were part of it. Willingly or not didn't matter. He wondered again just how far away he'd have to get before he reached anyplace resembling normal.

"Okay, let me get this straight. Did you and your friend find the broken town on one of these weekend 'field trips,' or exploring on your own at night?" The sarcastic air quotes he put around 'field trip' were probably audible. "And was this the same day as when the people in town changed? Did you hear anything about someone called Doyle at any point? Like the name of the town, yes."

"It wasn't the same as the field trips," she said, shaking her head. "We found it one night when we were trying to escape. It's not the same town, at least, I'm pretty sure it's not. We jumped the fence by the greenhouse and just kept running. There were some vicious dogs though, so... so if anyone goes that way, they ought to be very careful."

She fidgeted a bit in her seat, but the questions were easier to answer as they went along. They were no longer so personal and she didn't feel so much like she was hiding things when there were things she could talk so openly about.

"The people changed last Saturday, but... when we visited that place, it was at least... twelve days ago? I think. It's easy to lose track of time here. The days kind of blend together when... ah... when you don't really remember sleeping."

She was quiet for a short moment, trying to see if she could recall anything about a Doyle aside from the town. There wasn't much so she shook her head again. "I don't remember anything about a Doyle. But... I don't always pay attention to the broadcasts and I'm not so good with names."

"I've run into those dogs," Mello said. "I can handle them."

The timeline made more sense now. The zombie attack in the town and the events Teresa had spoken of happening at the Institute had been recent, just days before Mello's own arrival. The idea that the 'broken town' and Doyleton might be the same hadn't occurred to him, but it didn't fit. "No, I don't think they're the same either. The town they take you to is a bus ride away, right?" That was what Sen had said, and corroboration never hurt.

"It's all right if you don't remember," he said, to her last words. He already knew of a source for more information about Doyle, someone who had supposedly heard the announcements that night.

"Did you have problems sleeping before you got dragged here?" From the beginning, Mello had found it hard to believe that the Institute's controllers would trap people here and not fuck with them even more obviously than the imprisonment itself and the shit that went on at night. Any effects on the 'patients' that might have been deliberately created, or that had been brought on by being here, would help point to the purpose of the place.

"Oh," she said quietly. Once again she'd just assumed that because she'd had such trouble with the monsters here, the same went for everyone. If he felt competent and had handled them before, she supposed she wouldn't worry.

"Yes, we followed a different way. It wasn't on a road like the town," she explained. Though if last week was any indication, she didn't want to be in that area at night again, no matter what.

"I used to sleep okay," she tried, for his last question. The way she'd slept before was nothing like this at least. Suddenly blacking out and waking in the morning as if from a heavy sleep. She felt rested, but always at least somewhat tired. "I don't remember any problems."

Mello nodded, certain he could find the ruins with the information she'd given him.

His experience so far had been that his sleep felt normal, except that he had no control over when he slept. He'd written that off as a side effect of the imprisonment, a built-in kill switch of sorts to keep them from making too much progress at night. Mello was actually getting more sleep here than back home, where he'd lately been grudgingly grabbing a few hours every other night or so. Still, a few weeks of this bullshit? He was sure he could cope, but it was no surprise she was affected by it.

"I still don't know your name," he reminded her, giving her about half of his best smile. "Or where you're from, or anything, really." The people who seemed normal, like she did, were the hardest to fit into a working theory about why they'd ended up here.

It wasn't until Mello actually mentioned it that Kagura realized he was absolutely right. She hadn't so much as introduced herself, even when he'd clarified that he wasn't the same Mello as before and didn't remember the same things Mello from before did either.

"O-oh! I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, hands rising to cover her mouth as she realized her mistake.

"I'm Kagura Sohma," she said, bowing her head slightly. "Ah... and it... it's a pleasure to meet you... once again. I'm... ah, well... I'm from Japan. Just outside of Tokyo. I... I don't really know what else to say. U-um... I'm 19, was a first year in college, but hadn't decided what to major in just yet. Ah... I don't have any special powers like... like a lot of people here do."

College. So, modern times, probably close to his own, or reasonably so. He had met an apparently disproportionately high number of people from Japan here, but they came from such wildly varying situations that if there was a pattern, it wasn't yet clear.

"Hey, I don't bite." Mello had to wonder how someone so hesitant and timid had lasted as long as Kagura had here. Maybe her friends were tougher. The nurses seemed to be starting to round people up for lunch. "Thanks for the help. I might want to get a look at those things you found in the church, if you still have them." He didn't see his own personal bundle of cheery hell yet, so he added the question he'd decided he'd have to ask people in person instead of trying to obfuscate it on the board and decode replies in kind: "Why do you think you're here?"

Kagura tried to smile in return, to make the greeting genuine. Mello was being so nice about it all and letting her feel like she was helping, so she wanted to do all she could to make sure she really was helping him, somehow.

"I think I do," she nodded. The supplies were somewhere in her closet, untouched since she'd gotten them back from Mello last time. Well, aside from the American money she'd taken to town to try to buy a yo-yo for Bridget, but with the undead coming after them it hadn't really happened.

His last question struck her though. Why was she here? At first she'd thought it was something to do with Akito, that the head of the family wanted her somewhere out of the way. Maybe as a punishment, maybe just on a whim... Akito was like that after all. She certainly didn't understand why Akito did... well... most everything. But she hadn't really thought much deeper than that on it. Had she done something wrong? Was someone so interested in the curse of the Sohma family? It was possible. Human beings didn't just change into animals from the Chinese zodiac. It should be just as impossible as this place was. Maybe it was divine punishment, who knew for certain?

"I don't..." she hesitated, watching the nurses circle the room to pick up patients, "I don't think I should really talk about that. I... I'm sorry Mello-san."

If there were one way to pique Mello's interest, it was to avoid a topic. He'd thought there was nothing of interest in Kagura's background at all, but now he was curious. He raised an eyebrow at the girl. "Fair enough."

That stupid woman was headed for him. Mello had lately been entertaining himself by trying to decide which area of hell she ought to be consigned to. Eighth circle, obviously, but he hadn't settled on a bolgia yet. "I'll find you sometime to check that stuff out," he told Kagura, giving her a brief but friendly nod of farewell.

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Day 47: Sun Room [2nd shift]

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