Night 54: Soccer/Recreational Field

[promisedawhale]

[from here]Though the night felt the same as any other, Brook felt that something was a little different than the usual. It was as though he could sense something about the place - like where things were dangerous and where they wouldn't be. Usually he knew that pretty well without the strange feeling. The Sun Room was always a big no-entry, and

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[hes_deadjim]

"It bit me on the hand, but it also got that substance on my skin at the same time. It could've been any of those," McCoy told him. It could even have been the smell, although though that hadn't been that strong. There were plenty of ways to introduce something to a human body and he'd gone through plenty of those options in a short space of time. "I didn't exactly have any way to test out which before things started going funny. By then, I thought I was back on the Enterprise."

He'd be lying if he said he wasn't just the slightest bit relieved when they came out into the recreational field and Jim commented on that wall. Jim was starting to get near where Spock had now. Now he was less ready to talk about it. Spock had seen right away what had been problematic with it. So would Jim. Most people who didn't know Kirk's reputation didn't give him enough credit when they met him, which tended to come back and bite them. They tended to see him as just some attractive, hot shot captain first thing, dangerously overlooking that Jim was a tactical genius underneath.

The easiest thing to do was to just answer it quickly, get it over with, and then hope tonight's mission got more of the Captain's attention before he thought to press it more. It really was all that he remembered clearly. It was a mess after that point.

McCoy looked at vine-covered wall with some trepidation. It was tall enough to make him think twice. He wasn't nearly that young to go scampering up walls safely like one of those old Earth spider monkeys. Neither was the Jim he knew, even though he liked to pretend he wasn't getting any older. Unfortunately both Spock and this Jim were actually young enough to do it. Jim looked like he just needed any excuse to jump that wall, and Spock would just follow him over.

[dual_worlds]

So far McCoy's story matched what he'd told Spock this morning, except Spock knew there were more details than what the doctor was willing to share. Yes, he had thought he was on the Enterprise, but something else obviously happened to make him react so violently toward an officer.

But it wasn't his place to interrogate McCoy now, and so Spock decided not to raise that point for the time being. In all likelihood, he would need to discuss the matter privately with Kirk once they weren't preoccupied with conducting an investigation of the grounds surrounding the institute.

Kirk's question only reinforced that fact, and it became clear that they were going to focus on more immediate matters for the time being. Spock glanced over at the captain, about to answer. As he did so, however, fragments of images seemed to pour into his head: the sun room, the courtyard, a hallway on the second floor, and the area in which patients exited the buses after their trip from Doyleton. Those were the locations of tonight's 'brainwashed' patients, he realized, though even he didn't understand how he'd managed to make that conclusion. Spock's eyebrows faintly furrowed, and he found himself both perplexed and skeptical of what had just happened.

But Spock chose not to mention that for now. If the information he'd just accumulated was correct, they would be safe from such an attack so long as they continued in this direction. If Spock had somehow received faulty information, then they needed to remain alert. The accuracy of the patient locations would become known to him soon enough.

"It should be possible to do, Captain," he answered after an uncharacteristic moment of silence. Spock had seen the wall with Alkaid once, and he still remembered it perfectly.

[doneinthree]

"The Enterprise?" Kirk echoed in undisguised surprise. Only a hallucination, obviously, but he had to wonder what Bones might have imagined happening on the ship to warrant attacking Spock. Then again, maybe it was too reasonable to expect that Spock would appear as himself in a hallucination set on the Enterprise, so... maybe he'd been a Romulan. Or a med student. Really, the most baffling thing about this was imagining Bones trying to hurt anybody with anything other than grouchy words or a hypospray.

Which meant there had to be more to it, but Kirk only said: "Hold that thought." The monster - zombie, creature, whatever - fighting the two prisoners in the distance had crumpled, and Kirk shined his flashlight around them again. He didn't believe for a minute that that was the only aggressor out here, not after that one night with the giant snake-bird-woman and the dogs. Honestly, the sooner they got of the rec field, the better he'd feel.

There was an odd expression on Spock's face when Kirk turned back to them, but then... Spock was one of the few people for whom, when it came to the question of "odd expression" versus "trick of the light", "trick of the light" was actually more believable. Spock answered him smoothly enough, in typical too-literal Spock fashion, and Kirk wondered if he was getting paranoid... of his own officers. This was not a habit he wanted to develop, not here, not when he had too few trusted allies as it was.

Later. If Bones said that there were no lasting physical effects, Kirk was content to believe him and worry about getting answers tomorrow - from both of them. "Then let's make it happen," he said to Spock. "Move fast, stay close. We don't know what else is out here." Kirk pointed his flashlight ahead of him again, and ran. It was a small field, easily crossed in a minute, so he only looked back at Spock and McCoy once his fingers met the brick and vine of the wall.

[hes_deadjim]

It looked like Kirk was interested but going to drop it. He heaved a silent sigh of relief. Now they could focus on this wall and what was behind it.

Jim was obviously gunning for the challenge. He probably didn't even need there to be anything on the other side to want to climb this thing. He'd do it just for the hell of it. Spock, on the other hand, did need a reason. McCoy watched him curiously at the delay. Now that was a weird little pause. The Commander had a look on his face that some people might call contemplative. For Mr. Spock, that was the same as saying water was wet.

Maybe he was calculating whether he could scale the wall. McCoy didn't see why he even had to. Spock was a Vulcan and incredibly fit to boot. He wouldn't have any trouble. Hell, Jim was already starting to climb.

He faced the wall again himself with a look of resignation. The wall stood there unsympathetically and didn't get any shorter. Too bad we can't just go out the front door, he thought. But that would have been too easy, and this place, was if anything, never 'too easy'. It wasn't like there wasn't any other way out of the grounds, but this was the closest one. It'd take a lot longer to get from here to a gate or the front doors than to climb the damn thing. At any rate, standing around wasn't going to get anything accomplished. He wasn't getting any younger here either, so he needed to just get over it and get going.

The doctor tucked the first aid kit under an arm. Maybe he was feeling a little insecure because there was a larger age gap between himself and this Spock and Jim, but he wasn't at all feeble either. He'd kept himself fit and scaling a wall was perfectly within his ability. He was forty, so what? He'd just take it more slowly than the other two. McCoy grabbed onto a crevice between bricks and began to slowly climb.

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