Day 55: Cafeteria

[mustbethesuit]

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[quarter_english]

Before consciousness had faded, the night before, L had heard Aguilar's announcement. The general's accent suggested fluency in Spanish; therefore, he wasn't so far removed from the origins his name suggested. It was difficult to discern anything more concrete than that about his personal history, though, and in context, past an attempt to predict his motivations, that history might not be relevant.

One thing was certain, so much so that forgetting it would mean that any accurate interpretation of their current situation would be impossible. Aguilar had been involved in everything, the entire time, and to all appearances, he felt that Landel's harshness had been insufficient.

This idea was confirmed when L woke up. He shifted position, feeling uncomfortable, and there was a soft metallic jingling. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and looked down. The discomfort was due to a change in clothing: under Landel, the Institute's uniforms had been tantamount to pyjamas, but now, L found himself wearing a real uniform. A buttoned shirt with-he turned his head-shoulder straps and an armband. Trousers with a permanent crease and a leather belt to hold them up. Boots on the floor, and a rush of heavy booted footsteps in the hall; his heart began to race. It was no surprise when the door of his room burst open and he was told to put his boots and beret on. After a long pause, during which he calculated his chances of getting out of this at almost nil, he slipped his feet to the floor and complied with the order.

Then we can expect things to get much worse, he thought. Maybe they will never be better again. In any case, almost all pretense of this being a mental health facility is gone. We're now being treated like conscripted cadets rather than like psychiatric patients. There's nothing therapeutic about this.

He peered at the silver tags that had been the source of the jingling. The name was as expected; he wasn't sure what "C CLASS" meant. There was a number, also mysterious, although something about it-squinting at it didn't tell him anything. It nagged at him as he walked to the cafeteria with the near-silent soldier. Why is it familiar? He could feel it teasing him, tugging on threads at the edge of his consciousness, almost as annoying as the itchiness of the wool beret that was now clamped on his head. Three days in bandages, and now an obligatory hat, with a pin to remind him of the pain and helplessness he had suffered.

His discomfort increased on the rest of the walk to the cafeteria. He wasn't allowed to stop at the bulletin board, and when they reached their destination, the pancakes that should have been on the menu were nowhere to be seen: instead, there were enough armed troops around to kill all of the patients with little effort. His pulse quickened again, but he took a deep breath. Aguilar could have had them shot in their beds if he had been so inclined, but that didn't appear to be his aim; L's "punishment" the previous night, if that was what his flashes of insight into Edgar's memory and emotions had been, wasn't even particularly distressing. No, you want us to be useful. Corpses are of little use to almost anyone. The pile of cleaning supplies in the middle of the room made their first duties obvious, but it was also evident that the patients were to wait for further instruction.

The false name on the tag-a name that had also been called on the field the previous morning-meant that Aguilar would follow through with Landel's determination to instill the identities that had been constructed for them. Yet the words on the intercom and the shift in ambience made L suspect that it would be accomplished in a different way: as discipline rather than psychiatric treatment.