Night 47: Experimental Treatments Laboratory

[toxicspiderman]

[from here]

Here they were. S.T. set the toolkit down on the bench, and ripped off the duct tape holding the flashlight down. It went on the counter, pointed up at the ceiling to spread the light. Then he popped the latches and pulled out his prizes. He unfolded the cloth, touching neither with bare skin.

"First up -- nebulizer mask. I'm going to check it for residue, see if I can tell what effects it had. Second," he pointed at the surgical spreader. It looked like a bloodstained pair of scissors that had melted in the sun, and he had a feeling it wasn't more than it looked like. "Pulled that from a second room. I don't know who got hit with the gas, and the other guy wasn't ready to talk when we pulled him out."

He took pity on Carter. "Think a dentist's chair in the pre-anesthetic days -- they strap you down, do something gratuitously painful, and laugh at you the entire time. But afterwards, instead of missing teeth, something else is off. Usually or always sense-related, but a lot of guys don't like to talk about it, so gathering information is tough."

He was in full lecture mode now. "If we can find out the aim, if there is one besides watching us squirm, we'd know something we didn't before about Martin Landel, second edition or not."

Comments

[stlg13bomber.livejournal.com]

Carter hovered around S.T., watching him work but afraid to come too close to the strange devices. The room looked like a demented doctor's office, with the tables and the cabinets and everything so shiny that it just looked wrong.

"So they used that...that thing there, they used it on a person?" Most of their encounters with the Gestapo occurred before the Gestapo had time to get their hooks into the prisoners. They'd done something to LeBeau, strung him up by his thumbs, but LeBeau rarely talked about it beyond that. Certainly nothing with blood or mangled metal.

This wasn't fun anymore. Carter hoped Colonel Hogan would find him soon.

[tartaros-avatar.livejournal.com]

Recluse glanced over the items S.T. placed on the counter, before heading to the cabinets where the chemicals were kept. He'd plotted out what he'd do with the chemicals he already had in his cell, but with more equipment here and a broader selection, he could afford to mix some of the more dangerous chemicals. "Of course they did. They already mutilated me, why wouldn't they do the same to others?"

[toxicspiderman]

"Yeah. I didn't see it in the guy, but the blood and stitches made it obvious. I want to figure out if I can tell whether they were taking something out, putting something in, whatever."

S.T. left the spread splayed out over the bench and moved to the cabinets. "Don't touch either of them with your bare hands. Keep cross-contamination --" to a minimum, he had meant to say, but the radio cut him off.

The promised scavenger hunt was on, then. S.T. ignored it and kept to the program. Cross-contamination. Blood analysis.

Plastic baggies. Top of tomorrow night's agenda. He pulled out a microscope and a handful of slides, from the same cabinet as last time. Squeaky-clean -- no brightly-colored signs admonishing them about loading the lab dishwasher here. Why bother, when the entire place just rewound. With the occasional accident when the tape knotted itself around the gears and everything went haywire.

The microscope lit up on command, the light less bright than the flashlight but just as steady. As soon as the radio switched back to white noise, he continued. "Why the fuck these things work when nothing else does, beats me." He lifted his head to sneer at the darkest corner of the room. The one he'd put a camera in if he were a psychopathic voyeur who got off on the futility of human existence.

[stlg13bomber.livejournal.com]

Carter stuffed his hands firmly in his pockets in case of any temptation to touch things. Not that he had any idea why S.T. thought he would when it was covered in blood and had been in someone. It was probably too much to hope that these people were licensed surgeons, too.

Without any direct orders that didn't start with 'do not', Carter aimlessly paced the edges of the room with a worried expression on his face. The radio was on again but it was making even less sense this time and talking around in riddles, and Carter couldn't find her voice soothing anymore.

[tartaros-avatar.livejournal.com]

Recluse stopped to listen to the radio (useless as usual), watching a second group enter the room, apparently trying to not be noticed.

Well, they'd rather failed, but they'd unlocked the door to the chemical storage for him. How convenient. "I'll be back. I need to collect some chemicals." With that he left the other two, heading for the storage room.

[To here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/830473.html)]

[toxicspiderman]

"You can check out the shop if you want" S.T. jerked his head at the door to the storage room. Either way, he kept talking. The room wasn't that big, and Carter could hear him from wherever.

Besides, he was mostly thinking out loud.

"This appears to be blood. And with just the kiddy toys, that's about all I can tell. Maybe another microchip." Like the Scarecrow, though unless the old guy really wasn't human, that wasn't where he kept his brain.

He paused. "Microchip? Computer? ENIAC? Stop me when things start sounding familiar."

[stlg13bomber.livejournal.com]

"Oh sure, I know what a computer is," Carter said, peering over the strange objects and wondering what they had to do with the hulking machines he knew back home. Maybe this whole place was run by computers, but he'd need a really big room somewhere to store it all. "I don't know anyone named Eniack, and what's the microchip made of?"

Such strange future tech. It was probably nothing like what he knew in the past, but it made him sad that someone would put such fantastic things to such a cruel purpose.

[toxicspiderman]

"ENIAC was alphabet soup for the first computer computer. Electronic Blah Blah Something Blah. Fancy name for a room full of vacuum tubes to run what we can put in a hand-held calculator today, all to blow hell out of Japan."

Warfare drove innovation. A scarcity of resources and an over-abundance of testosterone resulted in an accelerant like no other.

Warfare and pornography. Which also drove technological adoption, from the printing press to VHS. The progression was growing exponentially; Sangamon Taylor stood at the cusp of what was commonly called the Information Age. DARPANET had already given way to email, when Sangamon could find someone willing to share office space with something that might emit electromagnetic radiation and who could be persuaded to notice the world beyond the cathode-ray tube. All-you-could-watch skin flicks were just waiting on the bandwidth capacity to exceed that of magnetic tapes packaged into paper cartons and shipped cross-country.

"Now they're all silicon -- an entire computer lithographed onto a chunk of glass the size of a quarter." Instead of a room full of vacuum tubes, it was drums full of solvents, acids, and heavy metals, all of them out of sight of the clean beige boxes that were invading every home. "Some of the shrinks have them in their offices."

[timeseal.livejournal.com]

[ from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/823577.html#comments). Rolo sucks at Metal Gear Solid, by the way. You guys are free to interrupt if your characters would want to say something~ ]

Sneaking past people used to be a non-issue for Rolo, as his Geass ensured he was never caught. Therefore, this was something new and extremely annoying, having to rely on stealth and darkness and... To be honest, the assassin was winging it. When he was a child, he relied on ignorance due to his age, but now that he was older his Geass was the best option and now it was unavailable to him.

He really hated Landels.

Rolo paused when he entered through the door, feeling a tug on his shirt that meant Greta had followed his instructions. Well, that was one less thing to worry about. To be honest, Rolo just didn't want to bring any attention to them, so he hoped the other group was just too absorbed in what they were doing to notice and he started to move, keeping close to the wall and keeping his flashlight trained the floor as he moved towards the wall. Quickly, swiftly, and hopefully quietly, he walked the length of the wall and passed one door, then the other, only to look down and find that...

Rolo wished he could scream. The door was locked, so he would have to break it to continue anyway. Which meant this whole act of "sneaking around" was futile anyway. Why didn't his Geass work here? He was unused to this feeling of frustration and after a moment's deliberation, decided to just go ahead. There was nothing else he could do, and it was better to just get it over with. They could still run into this room and barricade themselves if things got out of hand.

He glanced over his shoulder once to see what the others were doing, and then looked at Greta. And then he looked down at the lock, lifted up his flashlight, and brought it down hard on the lock. Of course, it wasn't the bat so he had to do this repeatedly to make sure the lock would eventually give, rattling the doorknob in between whacks.

Come on...! There was no doubt he caught their attention, but as long as he got this stupid door open...!

[finalwitch.livejournal.com]

In contrast to Rolo, Ange had no issues ignoring anyone or on occasion, anything to an almost frightening degree. And a group of patients with attentions fixed on an unrelated task was a thousand times easier to avoid than a classroom filled with giggling, mocking girls. Easier, still, with distractions (illusions) attached.

Ange clicked off her flashlight and slipped a hand to Rolo's back, fingers grasping fabric as directed. This was a childish way of being guided, but she saw the point in the need. No complaints on her end, provided they did not go any further. She didn't feel like punching someone due to their inability to maintain personal boundaries.

Rolo advanced into the room, followed closely by Ange. She remained silent the entire trip, her eyes locked only on the boy ahead. There were snippets of static and words from the other occupants--too late did she realize they had a radio. What was it saying? She could not tell.

That, however, became a non-issue as her companion stopped abruptly, his eyes cast down at something beneath. A tilt of her head revealed a locked door as the cause. It looked like they were about to make all that snooping irrelevant.

When Rolo glanced at her, she shrugged. The decision to continue was solely on his terms. Personally, Ange did not believe a call to their presence would result in difficulties. If so, she could tell people off. It was not as though they owned the facilities.

She watched in silence as Rolo worked at the lock, unaware her hand stayed fasten to his shirt.

[timeseal.livejournal.com]

It was a good thing Greta didn't say anything, because Rolo wouldn't have even regarded her words as he furiously worked at the lock. No interruptions yet, which was a good thing, but he knew this constant abuse was going to ruin his flashlight. If not now, then afterwards, and this was one of the few useful objects that this place gave them.

There had to be spare ones, though, if they were supplying every patient with one. Rolo made a mental note to investigate that, though luck finally smiled down on him as a final twist of the doorknob resulted in a metallic snap as the lock finally gave way and the door happened.

The boy said nothing, but the look of satisfaction on his face was more than enough to show how he felt, and he quickly scooted into the room.

[ to here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/830473.html) ]