damned_institute | Day 52: Game Room

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Day 52: Game Room

Lunch had taken his mind from his worries, if only for a few minutes. But after the intercom sounded and the nurses began leading patients onto the next activity, one look at the bulletin board brought everything back in full force. No replies from Ashton, Dias or Dad. By now Claude felt like he was practically counting down until the end of the day, when he was going to have to finally grapple with the real possibility that most of his friends from before Landel's, as well as his own father, had fallen victim to the institute.

And now he was going to have to deal with his mother being here on top of that. It didn't seem like a coincidence that she'd show up right when his father's whereabouts were so up in the air. But what did it mean? Why couldn't Landel leave his family out of this?

Normally, the announcement about new video games would have made him perk up, but his eyebrows only knit together with concern as his nurse led him into the game room. That didn't seem to stop her from trying to get him to unwind, though.

"Oh, come now, Thomas, you've worn that expression for most of the day!" she told him with a frown. "Why don't you have a bit of fun now that your eyes are all better? I'm sure you could use it."

The last thing he wanted was to be reminded of his "sleep studies", he darkly thought to himself. But before he could protest, his nurse had sat him down in front of one of the television screens. There was an old gaming console, one Claude had never seen before, and he glanced at her with a confused expression. "Go on," she encouraged as she placed one of the controllers in his hands. "I know how much you enjoy these kinds of things. Someone will come play with you soon, too, I'm sure. Doesn't that sound nice?"

He didn't have time to answer her, because she'd soon bustled off to tend to some of the other patients. Claude watched her leave with a sigh. He realized the daytime staff meant well, which made knowing what they turned into at night even worse to think about. But now he was just being negative for the sake of it, wasn't he?

Taking in a small breath, he reached over to the console and turned it on. As long as he was waiting for some kind of answer from the bulletin, there probably wasn't much he could do except pass the time. Claude watched the title screen appear on the television, his expression growing more curious in spite of himself. Super Mario Bros....

[For Prussia!]

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Even though it had only been a little over a day since Ema had last seen her sister, it really did feel like a lot longer. At least one good thing could be said about the institute and the misery it had put her through: it had made Lana a fixture of Ema's life again. There were still uncomfortable moments where they still bickered and Lana reverted to being distant and frosty, but over the past several days they really had grown a lot closer than they'd been in years. Ema honestly couldn't remember the last time they played a board game together like they were going to this shift.

Really, for a day in imprisonment, it had been a pretty good one. Kay's hypothesis about her sister's ultimate fate had lifted a weight from Ema's shoulders; not completely, but enough that she could breathe a little easier. Plus, over the course of her three waking shifts she got to talk to Mr. Spock again, she helped cheer Agatha up and got to brainstorm science, she was going to have some quality time with Lana (and ask her about this Mr. Dent person!)... if it weren't for the hovering nurses and the atmosphere, it would have been a great day.

With a bounce, Ema crossed to her sister. "Hi!"

Ema practically bounded up. She looked none the worse for wear for her day on her own. Good. That will serve her well. One more burden off he shoulders; whatever she found out, whatever happened, Ema would bounce back. She always had, but more evidence never hurt, now did it?

Lana made sure her expression nudged past polite acknowledgement towards, but not quite reaching, enthusiasm. "Anything you'd like. My investigations can wait." She'd just been cooling her heels waiting for more reports from the field, as it were, anyway. Plenty of time.

There were so many things she wanted to say, all of them dying on he lips at Ema's smile. What right did she have to take any of her happiness away with maybes and probabilities and even dead certainties Ema just didn't know. "Pick something." Before this gets awkward again. "I'll find us a table." Her hair fanned out, brushing Ema's shoulder as she turned away -- too quickly and stiffly to be natural, but not because of injury. She found a table, and spread her hands down on it; it was cool beneath them, and solid. She took a deep breath, and another.

Something was bothering Lana. After living with Lana her whole life she had learned to be able to read her sister's body language fairly well, even if she never did master being able to discern motive from it. Ema had no way of even guessing what was going through Lana's head, but she knew that it was going to have an effect on the rest of their shift together. She appreciated that Lana was trying to hide it as opposed to snapping at her or blowing her off, but she was still a bit worried. Had Lana learned something terrible? Maybe something terrible had happened to her!

Well, there was no way of knowing without asking. Lana had already walked off to reserve the table, so Ema needed to pick a game quickly and go join her.

Frowning a little, Ema turned to the selection of games to choose one. They had a pretty decent selection, although a few of the games really were designed for groups larger than two or involved more strategy than she was willing to put into a game, especially if she and Lana were going to have a conversation (a scenario that somehow seemed less pleasant, suddenly). The strictly two-person games, chess and checkers, were automatically dismissed because playing them together never ended well; Lana would strategize while Ema tended to concentrate more on queening pawns or crowning checkers than the actual game, leading to frustrated disagreement and half-finished games. It wasn't the kind of interaction Ema was looking for, so both games were quickly dismissed.

Candyland was just an insult.

Finally, Ema decided on a game of Yahtzee. All it required was some simple addition and multiplication as well as a bit of luck. It would be easy to have a conversation while playing it. Grabbing the red box before anyone else could, Ema turned and went to the table where Lana waited for her.

"Is... is everything okay, Lana?"

What part of I obviously don't want to talk about it wasn't clear, Ema?

The quiet question in Ema's eyes wasn't going away, though. She'd just come out and asked. No more shouting, and tears, and running out into the night. Maybe Lana had been waiting for this for two years. Maybe she'd wanted someone to ask. She'd spent all this time trying to take care of Ema, but there hadn't been anyone to do the same for her.

"I'm going to find out who killed Detective Goodman. Given that you said it wasn't me, there's a very short list of people to consider." A list consisting of one name, except she still had no plausible motive. That would come out; it would have to. It was the only advantage he had left, and trial or no trial, Ema would be hurt.

She nodded. Now all there was left to do was watch the investigation unfold. Dice, indeed. "Let's play. We can talk about the rest of it tonight."

"You're going to find out?" Ema parroted as she started unpacking the game. "From whom? Everyone I've talked to from the future doesn't know, and you and Chief Gant are from before the trial even started..." Asking the question was walking out on tenuous ground, which Ema knew. Lana had made it perfectly clear that she did not want to talk about it now. Still, Ema thought it was at least fair to ask about the source, not because she didn't trust her sister's judgment but because she was curious. Who else from their world was in the institute that she'd missed?

Regardless, Ema felt both confident and apprehensive about learning the truth once and for all. Despite her theory from what Kay told her, it was only that--a theory. This would be confirmation, and the answers might not turn out to be to her liking. Still, she had sworn to see this through, and she would. "You're meeting this person tonight? I'm going, too." To punctuate her determination, she tore a score sheet from the pad and handed it to Lana.

"I don't have confirmation yet, but Detective Gumshoe is here. He's worked with Edgeworth on numerous cases; was he the detective for my case?" She hadn't generally heard stellar reports, although Prosecutor Edgeworth's judgment was usually quite sound, and he had enough strings to pull that a reassignment shouldn't be impossible.

He would also make a remarkable scapegoat; his career might even survive it if he was seen to have failed through incompetence, rather than intent. That was probably unfair; Redd White had influenced dozens of cases; Mia's murder had merely been the final one, and the verdict had been just.

She was stalling for time -- Ema was the last person she wanted along on this trip, and yet the only reason she could offer was the very truth she didn't want Ema to find out. She pulled out two pens from her pocket and traded one for the score sheet, nodding assent to the real question at the same time.

"Detective Gumshoe?" He was the big guy they met with the Blue Badger, right? "No, he's not really related to the investigation at all. Neither is Mr. Edgeworth, actually; after the first trial day, the investigation is being controlled entirely by Chief Gant and the police department. It's been... a really weird case." Considering how many cases Ema had seen in her short lifetime, both from being with her sister and by following her own interests, that was really saying something. The courts back home were far from dull, even on a day-to-day basis.

Accepting the pen and finally taking a seat, she continued, "But he's still involved, so he would know. He was... you had just put in a request under Mr. Wright's name that he bring the SL-9 case files by. That was when I learned that SL-9 referred to..." Ema trailed off and fiddled with her paper, still not quite able to say it aloud despite everything. Even here, far removed from Darke by location as well as by time, Ema didn't want to say his name for fear of bringing back too many unpleasant feelings and memories. Lana would know who she meant.

"Your trial and SL-9 are related. They have to be--everyone keeps talking about it, and why would you get that file for Mr. Wright if you didn't think so, too?" Not that Lana could answer that question, coming from the previous December. However, the answer seemed obvious to Ema and should have been the same for Lana, who had always been far better at drawing conclusions.

"We'll talk to Detective Gumshoe tonight and you'll see. You didn't kill anybody." Ema could only hope that her theory was accurate. She wasn't sure she could handle the alternative.

Well, well. Taken the investigation away, had he? She should have guessed that from the beginning. Though she couldn't see Edgeworth taking that quietly. Not when he'd been part of the fallout from SL-9, for good and for ill. Or had Gant offered it as one last chance? If he'd taken it as that, more fool he.

And then Ema made the connection as well; so much for faint hopes. She ignored Ema's unsubstantiated claim of innocence, and returned to the heart of the matter. "Detective Goodman worked with us on SL-9; I'm not surprised the case has come up. Don't tell me -- is Jake Marshall involved as well?" That would clinch it, if it hadn't been already.

Why had she sent for it, though? For the same reasons she was meeting Detective Gumshoe tonight? High Prosecutor Edgeworth didn't need the files; he already had a copy buried in his bookshelves. What good would it do the defense, unless Mr. Wright was deliberately going to break the news -- no, he didn't know it. Hence the files? Every piece of information gleaned about this case tangled the story further; none of them pointed in the same direction.

She considered her next words carefully, picking up a die and rolling it around in the palm of her hand. When she spoke, her voice was gentle. "You don't have to come along if you'd prefer not to talk about that case." She rolled. One. "Looks like you're going first." She doubted that would get Ema off the subject, but it was worth the attempt. One nice afternoon, while Ema could still believe that there was a happy ending to all of this.

"He is," Ema admitted, busying herself with writing her name at the top of her sheet. "Actually, the last thing I remember from back home is waiting for him to arrive in court--Mr. Wright called him as a witness. But he's been around the investigation this entire time." And no wonder; Mr. Marshall's brother had been Darke's final victim, sacrificing his own life to save Ema. If Lana's trial was truly connected to the Joe Darke killings, then he had every reason to be as involved as possible.

If Ema had been purely objective during the whole time she and Mr. Wright had been working together, she probably could have figured the connection out herself even without Lana's explicitly saying so. Only a strong sense of denial--it was supposed to be over--had kept her blind to that fact. A mistake of perception, most definitely, but not an unreasonable one. And it was one that she was going to correct the instant she got home.

The gentleness of Lana's tone took Ema by surprise. Lana was worried about her, even now. What was left to protect her from? Her own memories? The connection between her trial and Joe Darke? The truth? No, Ema didn't want to be shielded from any of it--she wanted to know. She deserved to know. "I said I was going with you and I meant it. Are you going to pick me up from my room before you meet the detective tonight?"

As a silent concession to Lana's desire to play the game and not dwell on the topic too much longer, Ema started gathering the dice into the plastic cup.

"If you'd like. I assume you're still in F28 with Agatha?" It had been much more convenient when they'd been two rooms apart, but it seemed some people weren't kept here very long. At least Ilia had been awake this morning. And perhaps during the day before; the previous day was uncomfortably vague.

"Oh, and that reminds me. My new roommate is a scientist -- some other time you should both come by and meet her. She seems quite accomplished." A little poise and that wasn't difficult to simulate, but Ilia had no obvious motive for lying. "She was wondering about the radios. If they could be made into walkie-talkies? I'm afraid I had to tell her that was out of my area of expertise."

If she got Ema started, she could probably carry on the conversation single-handedly; it wouldn't be the first time.

"Yeah. I'm glad that Agatha's still around; people seem to leave this place pretty abruptly." Ema tapped the end of her pen against her cheek, furrowing her brow in thought. Why were some patients kept around for long periods and others quickly dismissed, anyway? It was something to look into some other time, when there weren't personal discoveries that didn't need to be addressed. Maybe she would ask Mr. Javert or Mr. Dent over the bulletin board tomorrow--they seemed like they would have good theories.

Lana finally succeeded in steering the topic away from their plans for the evening with talk of her roommate. Ema perked up a little despite herself. "A scientist? Did she say what kind?" She continued without waiting for Lana to answer her first question, thinking out loud. "Theoretically making a walkie-talkie is possible; most electronics that can receive a radio signal can transmit one if wired properly. The trick would be finding a frequency that's not monitored by Dr. Landel. I don't know much about radio frequencies, but I'm sure we can figure something out. Actually, Agatha's much better at constructing things than I am. Did I tell you that she's trying to make a taser out of my broken flashlight? When she really gets going, it's amazing..."

The conversational redirect worked just as Lana had expected. At this rate, Ema would probably need a gentle reminder to take her turn.

Lana shook her head -- Ilia hadn't specified -- but Ema had only just gotten started. Given that that reaction was exactly the one she'd hoped for, she didn't interrupt. She propped one elbow on the table, and rested her chin in it while Ema started rattling off plans and possibilities. She was listening -- the question had been genuine, and her interest in the answer likewise, but the real payoff was seeing Ema so animated. Lana propped one elbow on the table, rested her chin on her hand, and let Ema continue.

When she gets going? I could say the same about you, Ema.

"Really? She did seem to have a way with electricity." The last time she'd seen it, it had been on Agatha's sword, pointed straight at them, but clearly all had been forgiven. She looked back at Ema expectantly; Lana was perfectly content to just keep prodding the conversation along while Ema rambled. Content. At peace. Not a feeling she'd had much opportunity for. It was too dangerous; it would hurt too much when it went away, but she couldn't bring herself to watch what it would do to Ema if she pushed her away now.

"She does! If she had the proper resources, I'm sure she could build something amazing that would help us break out of here no problem!" She paused for thought, frowning slightly as she remembered the electric sword from the night Agatha was brainwashed. The memory brought up mixed feelings; it had been a terrible night, especially for poor Agatha, but the device had been a fantastic example of scientific ingenuity. Construction was definitely where Agatha shined most. "I wonder if the institute still has that sword of hers. That would help us out a whole lot. Or, if we can't get our hands on that, at least we could try to gain access to wherever they had her make it. Just for a night; I bet that's all she would need. I'd be her lab assistant to help speed the process along and everything! We'd build something amazing and show Dr. Landel that we don't plan to stay here forever!"

The minions of Mechanicsburg would have been proud of Ema's dedication to helping the Heterodyne heir. The might have even mistaken her for one of them. Not that Ema had even an inkling of what Mechanicsburg even was.

A pointed Look from one of the nurses at the increasing volume of Ema's voice sobered the girl somewhat. Her smile grew a little sad as she realized that idealistic dreams most certainly did not match up with the reality of the situation. "But even without that, she's making due. She's going to help me build a light that I can put on my head--you know, like miners wear. If we mount it right, it should increase the radius of light when compared to that of the flashlight, helping me to see better during the night shift."

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Day 52: Game Room

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