Night 52: East Wing, Hall A (1st Floor)

[doneinthree]

[from here]

"Yup," he confirmed, and suddenly veered off into the hallway containing the doctor's offices. Uhura was following close behind anyway, as he could see from the beam of light traversing the walls ahead of him. Kirk had been here twice before, once during the day for his own therapy session, and once during the night with Chekov. The corridor they entered now existed in an eerie world in between those two trips: claustrophobically half the width of the main hall and shadowed at the dead end, but the single flickering, functional light overhead at least told him that they weren't walking into a frog-shark-man-monster ambush. Small favours.

Second door on the left was Dr. Kisugi's office, but Kirk didn't need a flashlight to see the absence of a name plate. He frowned slightly as he touched the empty slot on the door. "Her name was Kisugi. Scary woman. No sense of humour. You would've liked her." Kirk shot Uhura a smirk at that, but there was no real amusement in it. Had something happened to her? True, he hadn't exactly liked Kisugi, but he also hadn't forgotten the possibility that the doctors were as much victims as they were.

Still, on the hierarchy of people he needed to worry about, hospital staff ranked several levels below crew. He knew his goal for tonight. Information. "And I have no idea how they schedule appointments," he added, dropping his hand and continuing down the rows of doors. "I didn't sign up for anything before a nurse directed me here. Same with Bones, I think. And Spock didn't have a session either, so it's not that everyone gets therapy— well, assuming they didn't just take one look at his ears and decide it was a lost cause."

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[xenolingual.livejournal.com]

The appearance of the hallway itself was enough to knock Uhura back a peg on the confidence scale, at least, the confidence she had behind what it was they were trying to accomplish tonight. Which she still wasn't even entirely sure she knew. She hadn't asked questions, just assumed that if Spock and Dr. McCoy had been following Kirk's lead, she should be no different. So far it just seemed like a lot of exploring, but this? There better be a good reason why they were purposely walking into the doctor's territory.

She wasn't nervous, not yet anyway, and Kirk certainly helped keep her distracted from said nerves with his remarks. "I'm sure she had a fantastic sense of humor, even if you didn't find it to your liking." Uhura half-hoped it was because the other woman possibly used her sense of humor at his expense, like she liked to at times, but she wasn't going to voice that.

The thought of Spock receiving therapy worried her slightly, not because she thought they would be at all successful in their brainwashing (or whatever it was they tried to do) but because of the lengths they would take to try and achieve that. Surely they wouldn't have used the same techniques that they would use to manipulate a solely human mind, so what could they possibly-

No, she wasn't going to think about it.

"What is it exactly we're looking for here? Besides the opportunity to severely anger the wrong person, or persons." There, that was easier to focus on. How completely vulnerable they would be if they got caught, sans the bat. "We're not prepared to deal with any kind of security systems right now. Or even the nurses, I'd assume." This was a hospital after all, and she had heard about patients being sedated to keep under control. That wasn't appealing to her, at all.

[doneinthree]

"What do you mean, we're not prepared? I have a bat," Kirk protested, sounding only mildly insulted by her lack of confidence in his prowess with sporting goods. Okay, Uhura had a point: his current weapon did leave something to be desired, especially if they came up against one of the larger, stronger beasts in Landel's catalogue. Right now, he was counting on the fact that most of worse ones he'd seen couldn't fit in a doctor's office. Comfortably, anyway.

But Uhura was also approaching this situation like she expected Landel's Institute to conform to some sort of logical standards for hospitals or prisons. He remembered those days. "You saw what it was like ten minutes ago. The doors unlock, we're supplied with flashlights, Landel taunts us. He wants us to be out here... which isn't to say that there aren't 'security systems' to deal with, but they tend to— hang on."

Kirk abruptly turned on the spot, nearly bumping heads with Uhura as he leaned forward to check out the name on the door he'd just passed. Venkman. He grinned, then felt his grin slip a little when he came up against a lock. But the knob wiggled slightly loose in the frame... "And what you and I are looking for is information. This office belongs to Bones' doctor."

[xenolingual.livejournal.com]

"Since when is it a smart decision to take the bait of an intentionally unlocked door?" Uhura felt like she was missing something. And there was a very good chance that she was. When he explained their situation so plainly it registered in her mind as a trap almost immediately, but if that's the way it was every night, and everyone had survived for so long... Maybe there was some logic to it. Landel obviously liked games, even if said games were dangerous and selfish and only called 'games' in that terribly ironic way. And he must have liked when the patients played along, otherwise what else would he get out of it? So. Maybe not running straight into the 'trap' was asking for trouble.

And that was when Uhura decided she was done with trying to sort through things in her mind each step of the way.

Her hands moved up when Kirk turned almost right into her, and she couldn't stop her eyes from narrowing. It was either that or let some sort of remark slip, and she realized she shouldn't even bother. Not when he was fussing with a locked door that lead into a doctor's office. She tried not to sound too derisive once she finally spoke up again. "You want to look for his patient file." It's just stated, instead of asked, and in a way that made it known she wasn't exactly completely behind this plan. "Or is there something else specifically I should be looking for?"

[doneinthree]

Kirk grinned at her. "Since when have I ever stayed out of someplace I shouldn't be?" Although that wasn't the point, was it? They were supposed to be here, wandering around aimlessly like interchangeable pawns in a game where only Landel knew all the rules. But what was their other option? Even with the board rigged as it was, the night was the only time they had to learn more.

"Stand back," Kirk ordered, and without further ado, lifted one foot to kick open the door: it took two tries, but the wood splintered as he threw his strength into it, and they were in. Fleetingly, his thoughts returned to Uhura's earlier point — if it was that easy to break into the office, did Landel want them to be poking around here? — but the sound of his radio buzzing to life stopped it short.

Marc. He always thought he had her wrapped around his little finger, but she's always fighting to resist... Kirk frowned. They'd been wary about the information from the radio communications before (there was too much they didn't know about their present circumstances, too much that didn't make sense), but Marc's words seemed to imply something stranger was going on between the Head Doctor and the rebels.

Something stranger than right here, right now? That eerie feeling Kirk had had earlier — that something was... watching them — crept back. He didn't need Marc to tell them to be careful. Kirk glanced back at Uhura. "Come on. We can talk more in here."

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