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."

Comments

[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."

[to here]