Night 53: Disciplinary Therapy Corridor

[toxicspiderman]

[from here]

"Of the times I've been up here voluntarily, a couple have gotten out before we got up here. Usually we have to cool our heels for a while." He shrugged, and then started unearthing unpleasant memories. The investigation pulled up nothing except the sneaking suspicion he could still smell SLUD-induced vomit in the cracks in the floor. "The other time, fuck if I know how long. Spider raided the drugs and the janitor's closet before passing out here."

"Don't try to kick these doors open. You'll break your leg. They're less normal than the rest of this place. The Frankensteins don't ever show on this side." A lot of people forgot that Frankenstein was the mad scientist, not the monster he created. Igor had achieved a cross-media cultural blitzkrieg that no one confused him with Abby Normal's. Just the top brass and their monster. Middle-level management strictly not liable. "Transporter doors, staff only. Have to be." He didn't have to add not to open them. Mello wasn't an idiot, even if he was getting way too into this for an impartial observer.

Comments

[swornandbroken.livejournal.com]

Mello made a beeline for the door when it opened, right behind the kids, but backed off when he got a look at who was inside. He looked back to S.T. and shook his head briefly: Not my person.

That meant they were... finishing up. Mello had been trying not to think about it, mostly successfully distracted, but now it felt as if the wall he'd sealed all those thoughts up behind were starting to crack at the foundation. Would he even be able to do anything for Matt? It meant going back into one of those rooms, which was going to be swept clean of evidence, somehow, by the time door opened, but was still the site, or its copy, of the worst night of his life.

In defiance of that uncertainty and reluctance, he walked along to the far end of the hall and worked his way back, trying each of the remaining doors in turn, rapping each with the flashlight. Nothing. He had to pace, now, a circuit of a few feet back and forth in front of S.T. For anyone who came through here at this point, eavesdropping would be the last thing on their mind.

So the doctor for S.T. hadn't been anyone he knew, unless he wasn't saying, but that seemed unlikely. Generic representation of what he hated the most? Maybe they hadn't had a specific one handy, Mello thought, and almost let a dry laugh escape at that.

"Exactly. The bastards in there aren't pretending they don't have our real info. They want us to know they do." He would've bet, though, that they made less of a point of it for people who weren't in the habit of hiding all their personal data. "And they want to dress up the torture as something else. Be a better person, whether you like it or not, only they twist 'better' as far as they fucking can. Every benefit they end up giving has a price."

[toxicspiderman]

S.T. had read off the kids' faces that Mello was going to be disappointed. He wasn't looking forward to casing the room they'd gone into. Maybe he could delegate. Except that a before-and-after was better data than most nights, and he knew what that room had looked like a couple of weeks ago. He could smell his own pheromone-laced sweat. Adrenaline and anxiety. Fight or flight, except that the people who needed their asses kicked had all gone back to their hidey-holes. Bastards.

Mello wasn't the only one trying to keep up the conversation just as a distraction.

"Fuck, you got a nice one." The sneer on his face was echoed in his voice, going beyond his usual asshole act into bitter old man territory. "Mine didn't bother with the foreplay. Just the next rat with the right genes. Squirt a little of this in, hope it survives, if not, grab the next tail. Hell, I'm surprised they don't pack us in in breeding pairs just to save themselves the trouble of firing up the transuniversal transporter."

[swornandbroken.livejournal.com]

"Heh." A bark of a laugh, almost, short and acid, and Mello shook his head. "That'd leave too much to chance."

He wasn't going to explain that, for him, the lead-up had been just as bad as the actual 'treatment,' which had certainly been part of the point of doing it that way: let him stew in his helplessness, give him ample time to turn over in his mind what he could have done to prevent it. Let him conclude that there wasn't anything he could have done. Mello was sure they'd played S.T. the same way. Lab rats, the assembly-line impersonality of it all, the bland face of someone playing god not for ego's sake, but all in a day's work. Yeah, he could understand how that would get to the guy.

He took another look at the row of doors. Fuck's sake.

"What they do in there? It's the real point of this place, or part of it." But a piece only, to a picture the prisoners hadn't even been allowed to glimpse. Mello still had to wonder, resenting it all the while, if his certainty that they never would were the product of the bugs or the sane reaction to an impossible situation. Has to be the bugs, he told himself. You're the one who, when you're blocked into a corner, brings the goddamn walls down, remember?