Night 47: Autopsy Room 2

[fourstonewalls]

[from here]

Her guess had been accurate: three long tables stretched across the room, and large lights hung over them. One of the lights was swinging, squeaking gently, where Lana had reached up and flipped the power switch, but nothing else happened. She touched it again with two fingers, damping the vibrations until it came to rest.

As soon as Mr. Dent had followed her into the room, she pitched her voice low and added, "There might something more suitable for self-defense in here. Scalpels...or autopsy records, if you'd prefer to play to our collective strengths." As opposed to just covering their weaknesses.

Comments

[dualistic]

Harvey was grateful that Lana had chosen to go through the second door rather than following after the pair. They hadn't even exchanged names, so he didn't want to latch onto them just because they'd happened to run into each other. Part of it was that need to be independent (as much as he could in this place), and part of it was not wanting to be seen as leeching off of the strangers.

Besides, it looked like they'd entered a room that could be promising in terms of supplies; he didn't need Lana to tell him that. Part of him was annoyed that she was acting like he didn't know all of that when he'd already told her that he'd been an attorney, but at least she was proving that she was confident in herself. Harvey preferred that to a pushover any day (or night, in this case).

"I know," he said, his tone slightly clipped as he first looked over the tables and then used his flashlight to search out some cabinets on the side of the room. "There," he pointed out, moving over to them without delay.

[fourstonewalls]

Lana joined him in moving towards the cabinet, holding her flashlight trained on them, so that, if necessary, Harvey could use both hands. She stood back a pace, allowing him room to work, but at an angle where the cabinet door was unlikely to block her view of his hands.

"So tell me, Mr. Dent. Aside from breaking and entering and improvised weaponry, what do people do here?" she said, blunting the cutting tone in favor of measured irony.

It was a wide, open-ended question; the sort she tried never to ask in court. But she still didn't know enough to know what she didn't know, and blundering aimlessly with questions was for defense attorneys, or subordinates looking to help her balance the district budget.

[dualistic]

Noticing that Lana was using her own light to give him a decent way to see, Harvey set down both his flashlight and his metal pipe so that he could open up the first cabinet without feeling like he was juggling. As expected, it was full of tools that could be used to examine a corpse, and Harvey immediately moved to the side so that Lana could have a proper look.

While he was distracted by the good find, he hadn't entirely missed her question. "Well, the question is more what people have done to them," he clarified as he reached in and grabbed a scalpel. It was small and could really only be used for precision jobs, but anything sharp was good to have. If he needed to examine one of the monsters postmortem for some reason, he would at least have the proper tool for it.

"They specialize in everything from brainwashing to experimentation here." Somehow, Harvey had been able to avoid both so far, but he knew that it could be his turn any day now. Not that there was much point in making himself crazy wondering when that time would come.

[fourstonewalls]

"On law enforcement professionals?" Lana couldn't quite stop the words from tumbling out before she'd had a chance to think better of it. No need to repeat outrage they'd already covered, but it was too late. Still, while it was a horrible thing to do to anyone, singling out those most likely to be able to fight back was astonishingly arrogant.

She leaned in, her flashlight tracing the clean, long silhouette of the scalpel as he drew it out. The shadow twisted and grew, like a scimitar hanging over both their shoulders. She blinked, and it resolved itself back into a trick of the light. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear, et cetera, et cetera. She could do this. It wasn't any different than carrying a gun; just a little more personal.

"Very well, if taking things into our own hands is what's required, could you pass me one of those scalpels? And something to put it in, if such exists. Making our captors job easier on them is not something I had planned." Those knives, if properly maintained, would be sharp enough to shred coat pockets and flesh alike.

[dualistic]

"They don't just kidnap people in law enforcement," Harvey quickly shot back when the woman had her outburst. Logically, he knew it was completely reasonable for her to have such a reaction to news like that, but he just couldn't tolerate hysterics. Though it seemed like she was more amazed that the people in charge would be audacious enough to take people who could sue them, rather than about the experimentation itself.

Granted, he got the feeling her mind would slowly start to change as she spent more time here. He hadn't taken much of it seriously, either, not at first. But he'd seen what Landel and whoever was working with him were capable of, and he didn't like it.

When Lana asked for a scalpel of her own, Harvey reached in to carefully grab for a second one and then handed it over handle-first. He wasn't trying to be downright cruel, after all. "I don't think there's anything to put it in," he said when he gave another glance at the cabinet's contents. "Anything else in there that you want?"

[fourstonewalls]

"Not even a tray?" She wasn't asking him to produce a scalpel shoulder-holster; the fact that any sort of blade was left out where the kidnapped could find it was surprise enough.

Still, Lana took the proffered handle, swinging the blade up to where she could examine it in the dim light, but without ever pointing it towards herself or Harvey. It was perfectly clean, except for two sets of fingerprints now marring the handle, but not brand-new. What have you been used for, hmm?

"Ah, are there any bandage shears? The sort that will cut wire, in a pinch?" Or bone, but most people didn't come home to countertops where dinner had become poultry autopsy practice, and what might have been a quiet evening of homework and casework, respectively, turned into a lecture on the impropriety of borrowing precinct equipment for personal uses. She hadn't gotten to the topic of hygienics before Ema had packed up her books for the night.

Ema. There was a puzzle. She was going to need more than Lana could offer, and soon. More than she could have offered, even if nothing had happened. Which was exactly what had happened: nothing, and it was going to stay that way. She couldn't afford the liability that would result from any implication of nepotism, that was all.

It was a puzzle that was entirely academic at this juncture. She joggled the knife, trying to think of a way to secure it while moving quickly. "So now that we look like proper criminals, did you have something else in mind?"

[dualistic]

"There's a box that they came in, if that's what you want," Harvey mumbled. She was being persistent, but it wasn't as if it was a ridiculous request. He reached in to grab the small box that had held the instruments and then handed it over to her. While it wouldn't be such a bad idea to keep it for himself, it wasn't necessary -- and she'd asked for it (and thought of it) before he had. He'd be fair.

When she asked about the shears, Harvey took another look into the cabinet. It was hard to see everything when it was so pitch-black in here, but he eventually found a pair of pseudo-scissors like what the woman was asking for.

Using them as a wire-cutter would be useful, except that Harvey couldn't think of any wire he'd seen that might need to be cut. If it came up, he'd know where he could find the tool to take care of it. Hoarding too many supplies wasn't all that helpful, since he couldn't carry that much each night. He could usually only take the bare necessities.

Smiling a twisted smile to himself when the woman said the word "criminals," Harvey closed the cabinet, grabbed his flashlight, and then turned to face Lana; by the time he'd turned around, the smile was gone. "I was just planning to keep searching this area," he explained.