Mar 09, 2011 12:03
leela,
kirk,
s.t.,
klavier,
japan,
tsubaki,
badd,
anise,
minato,
the doctor,
sam winchester,
firo,
goku (dragonball),
taura,
dexter,
franziska,
claire bennet,
kinomoto sakura,
peter parker,
snow,
lunge,
lana skye,
ruby,
mello,
soren,
brainiac 5,
the flash,
roxas,
albedo,
stefan,
peter petrelli,
mele,
damon,
two-face,
ritsuka,
lion,
rapunzel,
erika,
edgar,
canada,
the scarecrow,
sync,
matt,
maya,
zevran,
battler,
spock,
zack,
kratos,
l,
shinji,
kenshin,
bella,
scott pilgrim,
gumshoe,
ax,
claire littleton,
sora,
gren,
prussia,
claude,
renamon,
guybrush,
dean winchester,
byrne,
guy,
kairi,
venom,
nigredo,
ilia,
kibitoshin,
lightning,
rita,
alaric,
yue,
sasuke,
aidou,
claire stanfield,
edward cullen,
kaworu,
mccoy
If one of the officers did end up bothering them, he would deal with it then. Peter was more concerned with what the other patient was asking him. The kid looked kind of confused. Peter knew that this current situation was totally different from anything else they'd been put through before, but...
"Did you sleep through yesterday?" he asked with a frown, tilting his head. He was glad for this distraction, but he was getting the feeling that this conversation might not end up being a pleasant one.
If the kid hadn't slept through the previous day, then that could only mean that he was brand new to this place, but Peter didn't want to entertain that possibility. It just seemed too unfair to be brought here in the middle of this mess.
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"I just got transferred here," he finally answered. "Arrived this morning, and one of th' guards brought me straight here. He didn't say much, and then that lady..."
His gaze wandered towards where the woman giving the orders had been, but it only rested there for a moment before Firo turned his attention back to the man he'd approached. "Could you fill me in a bit?"
Past the man, Firo could see one of the guards giving him a dirty look. He shot a look of his own in the guard's direction and called out, "Yeah; I'm goin', I'm goin'..."
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Secondly, maybe it was just homesickness speaking, but Peter was pretty sure that the kid had a slight New York accent, the sort of thing you only had if you'd grown up in some of the poorer areas there.
Before he could say much of anything, though, one of the soldiers quietly urged the kid to get to work. Peter almost thought about saying something, since it really wasn't fair for someone who was new to all this to be forced to clean, but he was sure that the soldier would come up for some reason for why he had to participate anyway.
Sighing, he waited for the newcomer to go get some cleaning supplies and then come back, giving him a pitying look as he returned. "So... you're going to have to bear with me, since it's a long story. But this whole military operation thing is actually pretty new. Up until recently, this place tried to act like it was a mental institution, even though none of us 'patients' are actually insane." Well, Sylar was debatable, but he was hardly going to get caught up on those few exceptions.
"That's the reason why they call us by the wrong names. Before the soldiers, there were nurses and a Head Doctor who talked to us over the intercom system." There was a whole lot more to it, but Peter didn't want to get too caught up in the details when a lot of it was moot at this point. At least for now; he wasn't completely convinced that Landel wouldn't return eventually.
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The story he was telling... sounded pretty far-fetched, actually. Even if the military guards were new around here, he'd never heard anything about Alcatraz being an asylum-to be honest, he had heard rumors of inmates going mad, but he'd never put much stock in that kind of gossip. That kind of talk was just the sensational speculation of people who'd never been there themselves and never would be there.
Firo just hoped this guy wasn't going to claim something like 'the guards experiment on inmates' next.
He finished rolling up his sleeves, but the mention of 'wrong names' gave Firo pause. He glanced down to the dog tags around his neck; he'd thought the name on the tags had been something Victor had set up, but if this guy had the wrong name on his own tags, too... He shot a quick glance at the man's dog tags, but couldn't make out the letters from where he was. In any case, the idea there was a reason for the false names was something easy for him to believe, even if the claim of supposed insanity was harder; he already had proof of a wrong name hanging from his own neck, after all.
"So everyone is called by the wrong name?" he asked for confirmation, picking up the sponge and soaking it in the bucket. He moved it to the floor, squeezing it slightly as he started rubbing across.
There could have been lots of other reasons for fake names, though-maybe it was to discourage inmates from using their infamy from the outside world, for one. He glanced up at the man again. "But saying this place pretended to be an asylum... There's no way anyone would believe that."
Except, maybe, those people who'd started the rumors of inmate insanity.
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The question about the names was simple enough to answer, and Peter quirked a humorless smile as he grabbed for his own tags and looked them over once more. "Right. My name isn't Ethan Campbell, it's Peter Petrelli." They didn't even sound alike. "They used to try and tell us that the lives we came from weren't real and that we were totally different people. I guess they're dropping that now so that they can treat us like soldiers instead."
Which might mean that this cleaning drill might only be the beginning. Maybe they'd turn it into a full-blown boot camp with barracks and obstacle courses and everything else. It seemed unlikely, but Peter was going to consider every possibility at this point.
"Anyway, you don't have to believe me, but ask anyone -- you'll hear the same story." If the kid heard it from enough people, chances were he'd eventually just have to accept it as true. Peter wasn't going to force his hand, but there was one thing about the institute that wasn't likely to change, and the kid needed to be warned.
"Also, one thing you definitely need to know is that this place might seem legitimate during the day, but at night it's a completely different story." He shifted in his wheelchair slightly, wincing when the movement stretched at his wound. But if he didn't adjust at least once in a while, though, he'd just end up cramping.
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He looked up from the floor when the other guy gave his name-or names, one fake and one real. But it was the real one that had caught his attention: Peter Petrelli. He paused in his scrubbing long enough to ask, "You're Italian?"
As for Peter's story, Firo almost protested that it wasn't that he didn't believe him-only right now? It really was that he didn't believe him. Maybe Peter's words had more weight that those of people on the outside, but the idea that the wardens were trying to convince inmates they were different people was still pretty hard to swallow. Peter seemed lucid enough, but he'd have to hear the same thing from a couple more inmates before he'd be willing to believe it really was anyone who'd say so. Otherwise, Firo had just managed to pick the one nut in the prison as the person to talk to.
He wasn't going to say anything about Peter's story one way or the other yet, but he did have another question after all that. "So what's so different at night?"
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That clearly wasn't enough to make the kid trust him implicitly, though. Peter wasn't expecting him to, but he knew that he was coming across as completely normal except for what he was saying, so hopefully the newcomer would come around sooner rather than later. If he didn't, it was only going to end up coming back to bite him, and Peter would rather not see that happen. The kid seemed nice so far; he'd gotten to cleaning with barely a word of complaint, for one thing.
Unfortunately, he was about to make the kid distrust him even further, since most people's eyes started glaze over the second that monsters were brought up. He did have a wound to prove it, though, and he also believed that in the end, warning a new patient was more important than making a friend out of them. And besides, the kid would eventually come to see that he was right.
"The lights go out, but the doors open, meaning that we can explore the building as much as we want. But it's guarded, and I don't just mean by soldiers. There are... creatures. Most of them look like animals that have been experimented on, but like something went very wrong in the process." It wasn't easy to describe if you'd never seen anything like it before, but he was just going to focus on getting the word out.
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He'd started giving Peter an openly skeptical look as soon as he indicated that prisoners could roam around freely at night, and the skepticism only grew when the man started talking about mutated creatures that guarded the grounds.
Firo gave a laugh when Peter had finished, as if the whole thing had been some grand joke. And maybe it was-he'd told Peter right off that he had just gotten here, so this could have easily been part of some kind of prison hazing for the new guy. "Don't tell me you're going to claim that 'monsters' are why this place is always said to be inescapable!"
He shook his head, a small smile on his face. If it was all a joke... Yeah, that made a whole lot more sense. He stopped scrubbing, and wiped his hand on the side of his trousers to dry it off before holding it out towards Peter. "Firo Prochainezo, by the way. I'm a New Yorker of Italian descent, same as you."
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But there was something else that stood out about what the kid said. With the way he was talking, it was as if he'd heard of Landel's before actually coming here. That wasn't something he'd ever heard of before, so he had to wonder if the protocol was changing or if the newcomer was confused about where he really was.
Only one way to find out, though. "What do you mean? Did you hear about this place before arriving? You said you transferred, right? Where from?" Even if the kid was reacting in a lot of typical ways to his explanations, mainly with the skepticism, there was enough that seemed different that Peter wanted to double-check.
And he finally got a name, and even a hand. Peter also brushed his hand off out of habit and then leaned forward slightly to give Firo's a shake, holding back a wince as he did so. "I wonder what the chances of that are. But it's nice to meet you, Firo." The name was a bit out of the ordinary, but that was nothing to judge on.
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He withdrew his own hand after shaking Peter's, picking up the sponge and dunking it into the bucket again.
"I came here straight outta New York," he answered, sidestepping the question of where he'd been transferred from as best he could. Alcatraz usually wasn't somewhere someone got sent right away, so he'd let Peter draw his own conclusions about what prison he might have been in before-since he hadn't been in one.
But for his other line of questioning, he was going to give Peter the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the guy really didn't know what kind of stories folks on the outside told about the island. "But you must've been in here a pretty long time if you have to ask if I've heard of this place. Hasn't everyone heard of Alcatraz?"
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Besides, it was what came out of the kid's mouth next that really threw Peter for a loop. He knew the name Alcatraz, of course (what person who lived in the US didn't?), but Firo was acting as if it was still in operation. As far as Peter knew, the prison had stopped functioning as one back in the sixties. It was a tourist spot now.
Suddenly, a kid who had seemed pretty normal (other than the name) didn't fit that definition so well anymore. But Peter had to take a step back (figuratively, anyway) and think things through. He'd met someone here who was from Japan back in the 1800's, so maybe Firo was from a time when Alcatraz was still a legitimate prison. His accent had seemed a bit old-fashioned.
There was an easy way to test that theory, though, and so after what had turned out to be a long pause, he tilted his head at the kid. "You know that it's just a museum now, right? They don't keep prisoners there anymore."
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When Peter finally spoke again, breaking the uncomfortable silence, Firo frowned. "Of course they still keep prisoners here," he protested. Peter was talking like it was some other place entirely, rather than the prison they were both currently in. "We're here, aren't we? And anyway, they only started transferring people here a few months ago..."
That was why all the rumors about the place had been flying around so much lately, Firo guessed. He'd heard the place had been a military prison before, but as far as federal prisons went, Alcatraz was new and flashy. It was being touted as inescapable, and so far the title stood without question.
But there was one other thing wrong with what Peter had said: "Besides, why would anyone want to turn a prison into a museum?"
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But if Firo had been expecting to go to Alcatraz (during a time when it still functioned as a prison), then what crime had he committed? It was hard to imagine someone who looked like he did was a criminal, but Peter knew that looks could be deceiving. He probably didn't look like he had the ability to blow up a whole city, after all.
"This isn't Alcatraz," he said with a shake of his head, though he gestured for the kid to keep working so that he didn't get either of them into trouble. "It's called Landel's Institute. Didn't the soldier who brought you here tell you anything?"
Some of the officers came off as pretty terse, so maybe Firo had gotten landed with one of them. Still, they wouldn't have outright lied to him, so it was clear that the young man had made some of his own assumptions.
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It was true that he didn't have any memory of his arrival on the island-but that was just because he'd been asleep, wasn't it? Alcatraz was where Huey Laforet was and therefore where Firo had been heading, but... Victor had repeatedly said things like "We'll fill you in on the details of what you'll be doing later," but if this was part of the man's plan, Firo should have at least been told of this part. He'd agreed to go to Alcatraz, but not some other place.
Peter could have still been pulling his leg, but Firo had to admit the realization that it (maybe) wasn't that island prison made a lot of sense... a lot more than if it was. He still had his doubts about mutated animals, of course, but the other things Peter had mentioned fell into place-like that up until recently the 'Institute' had been an asylum.
He wasn't completely convinced-he wanted to ask someone else just to be sure-but he felt a momentary rush of relief nevertheless. If this wasn't Alcatraz, then this wasn't where Huey was. He wouldn't need to act as the government's watchdog quite yet.
Firo let out a shaky breath, finally looking away from Peter. "The only thing the guard told me was to fix my collar and put on my boots. But... if this really isn't Alcatraz, that would actually explain a lot," he said. One hand was still holding the sponge, but he hadn't started scrubbing again yet. He glanced towards the nearest soldier. "I'd been wondering why nothing had matched up with what I'd pictured, but I'd thought I'd just had the wrong idea all along."
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But it sounded like the kid had been having some doubts after all, and this was adding to that. He nodded in response, glad that they could try to skirt around the issue of different times for the moment. Eventually someone was just going to tell Firo flat out that he was in the future, but that was a bombshell that could probably wait a bit longer. There was no point in overloading him.
"No, we're actually out in the country. No one's figured out exactly where yet, but I guess the rumor is that it's somewhere in the northeast part of the country." So not too far from New York, in other words, and yet Peter didn't recognize any of the terrain that he'd seen.
"Maybe we'll get to go outside today, and you can see for yourself," he said with a shrug; one that he almost instantly regretted for the way that it pulled at his wound. Even though it was mainly on his lower back, the slightest movements would force him to grit his teeth again.
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Maybe, as Peter suggested, he would have a chance to look around outside to see for himself, with his own eyes. He'd welcome the chance.
He looked up at Peter again just in time to catch sight of a wince, a tightening of the jaw as though gritting his teeth, as the man shrugged. Firo's next question came out quickly, and wasn't one about Alcatraz or 'Landel's Institute' or the current situation at all: "Are you alright?"
The awkwardness of the question didn't hit him until after the words had left his mouth, but he didn't try to explain himself. Peter was in a wheelchair, so of course he wasn't alright... but there was a difference between not being alright and being in obvious pain.
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