Day 56: Bus 3
Waking carried a sense of disappointment along with it for the first time in a long time. Klavier actually sighed in irritation when he realized where he was. Damn it all. So they hadn't managed to move quickly enough to cover as much ground as they had hoped. It was a shame, really. Last night had actually proven to be relatively productive. If
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He sat up, groaning on the way. As he did, the intercom went on. The announcement was standard, except for two details: one, the benevolent new leaders of Landel's were giving them small amounts of money this time, and two, they now had a name to put to this voice: Lieutenant General Berg. Aguilar's sidekick, probably.
Good to know. Indy was just swinging his feet to the floor when a man entered--the same soldier who'd led him back yesterday, Indy realized, but in the uniform the male nurses usually wore. It didn't do much to disguise the obvious military bearing. Why the dress-up act, he wondered. Aguilar didn't want the townspeople to know the compound was under military control? It stood to reason. News of the crackdown could cause unease among the locals, fear that the patients were dangerous. Or maybe they just wanted to hide the fact that the army was involved in running this place. Whatever Landel's Institute's real purpose was, someone was very invested in hiding it from the public.
The soldier greeted him pleasantly--if stiffly--enough and handed him the usual set of regular clothing. This set was similar to last week's: waist overalls, collared shirt, good (albeit a bit moth-eaten) wool car coat. Indy changed and followed the soldier outside, where he was also given the usual, this time the sack lunch and coupons, along with the new card. He glanced at that last one and saw that it included a mug-shot-like photo (when the hell had that been taken?) and the name Harry Lucas, Jr.
$15 for supplies. Could be useful, but he'd need to allot it carefully. With the painkillers, a drink at the bar was unfortunately out. Indy climbed (still wincing) aboard the second bus and sat by himself, considering the question.
[free]
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And velcro sneakers. The kind everyone wanted at age 6 but wasn't allowed to have until they'd learned to tie a fucking knot. Or joined the space program, which generally required knot-tying ability. Astronauts used more of the stuff than late-night talk show ratings stunts, because it was easy and multidirectional. And would hold just about anything in place if you had enough surface area. Since bending over hurt like hell, S.T. didn't complain.
When he was dressed, the rent-a-cop in nurse pajamas held out a cane. It looked like a thrift-store bargain too -- old lucite top gone cloudy with age, and a little rubber nub on the bottom instead of one of those four-ended old-folks canes. It was enough, which Soldier Boy already knew, since he was looking at his wrist like he expected a watch to be part of the ensemble.
By the time he hobbled out to the buses, most of them were full. He shuffled down to the last one and levered himself up the stairs. One of the few empty seats was next to one Henry Walton Jones, Jr. He was looking at his credit card like it might spring a treasure map if he rubbed off the magnetic strip. That was unlikely, but he wasn't going to rule it out.
"You think he meant any of us last night? The thing about three groups?" S.T. settled himself next to Indy carefully. They were both a patchwork of bandages, though none of S.T.'s were visible. "What happened down there, anyway?"
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"It's possible," he answered, edging himself over on the seat to make room. Even that hurt. "I've spent a lot more nights than not getting attacked by the lab experiment of the day and never making it anywhere. If that's any indication of the average patient's progress on a given night, we probably were the most productive ones in the place." If you considered risking life and limb to get seriously injured for a trinket productive. Needless to say, in Indy's book it was about the most productive you could get.
Even if they weren't one of Aguilar's favored groups, the implication of everything they'd heard seemed clear: whatever counted as "success" at Landel's (killing attackers? running the gauntlet in the basement?), these guys wanted them to beat the obstacles to achieve it. The big question in Indy's mind was the repeated mention of resources and value. Having paid for their uniforms. Who profited, literally or figuratively, off their success?
If Indy had to guess right now, he'd say "Project 2911" was sounding more and more like some sort of bizarre super-soldier training program. But again, a secret one. To fight what?
"Four rooms based on the four classical elements: earth, air, water, and fire," he answered Taylor's question after only a beat of silence. "With the kinds of hazards you'd expect--giant boulders, pits hidden by fog, thin ice. The last room was the bad one. We had to jump across a pit of lava on sinking platforms while dodging jets of fire from the side walls. Harder than it sounds." One corner of his lip quirked up in something like a grim smile, but there was nothing mirthful about it.
"What about the other rooms? Scott said something about--er, robot dinosaurs?"
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"Sounds like fun." Like hiking on Spectacle Island. With fewer metalheads and PCBs or PCPs. Indy's thirty-first century equivalents were going to have a field day taking the harbor apart. Only big question was whether or not they'd be recognizable as humans, or if the Earth would have to wait for round two to get it right.
"Yeah, D.C. -- Depth Charge -- found his tail in this room full of armor, which is less ridiculous than it sounds. He was a robot before he got here. Looked like a harpoon on steroids." Fit with the name. Maybe he'd ask D.C. about it, if the guy looked like he needed to bitch about something or tell war stories.
"And then we ended up fighting cyborg dinosaurs. Three of the bastards." Three had been plenty. "Half machine, half reptile, all nasty." He shrugged, and then thought better of the motion. Too late. He winced. "There was a weapon for each of us, but the others went poof when we got into the arena."
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Robot dinosaurs sounded as credible as it got next to the idea of someone's having been a robot--why not, after all; they knew Landel loved his experiments, and if this one was less organic and inspired by something even older than usual, well, the man must've just branched out. If he assumed Landel was the architect, though, it did raise the question of why the things were still up and running. Did they move on their own, was he still on the scene somewhere, or were Aguilar's guys just maintaining the good doctor's murderous status quo?
"I hate that guy," Indy muttered, voicing aloud the next thought in the chain before shaking his head and moving on. "What do you know about what comes next?" The few people on the bulletin board who seemed to have been through it weren't much for talking about the experience.
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Then he moved on. Given that it didn't sound like he was pissed at D.C., there was only one real possibility for who Indy hated. Two, if he thought Aguilar had been around long enough to blame. S.T. knew some folks who'd trust the Bastard over the General just because one had stars on his uniform. He considered himself above such knee-jerk reactions. Landel had earned his place at the top of the vileness food chain. Aguilar had a long way to climb.
"Not a thing. I tried fishing on the bulletin, but the best I got was a few people short on reading comprehension and some vague alarmist bullshit about Cassandra being right." The former he should have expected. The latter he hadn't. Evasion and secrecy, fine, but near-hysteria was weird. "Said I wouldn't find answers if I kept looking down there, but he was mum on what I would find."
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Well, it was far from the first prophecy of doom Indy had heard, and he was still in one piece. Scorch marks aside.
"I didn't get much chance to see what shape Scott and--D.C. were in. Are you three ready to go back down there tonight, or do you need time for your injuries to heal?" he asked. If Indy was honest, he should probably take a night off himself, and Dent and Peter were likely to be in the same boat. But he was reluctant to take a break when they were finally getting somewhere.
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"We could always answer another riddle. Finish the matched set." He started to stretch, and then realized how many bandages that might dislodge, and stopped. "Or I could just make another beer run." They even had something to celebrate, aside from another day of not dying.
"Course, what do you want to bet something goes wrong today? Hard to look for raining blood if you're holed up in a basement." If Aguilar even bothered turning on the prophesy generators. It'd been too quiet, in terms of night-time freakouts, since the takeover.
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"And it wouldn't surprise me." He smacked the card against his leg as he suddenly remembered something. "You've been here for a while, haven't you? Someone once suggested that problems with the trips happen on alternating weeks. I think it might have some merit."
Last week they'd made it back to the compound before the doors had gone haywire. The week before had been the Zombis, of course; before that, Indy recalled his first trip being uneventful. Who had told him there'd been an incident with the buses not making it back before nightfall the week before that? Someone on the bus ride over, he thought. It wasn't much of a sample, but it still suggested a pattern.
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"Two times isn't much of a pattern, but it's not nothing." Patterns always started like that. Not enough for anyone but the credulous and the bereaved to believe, when the second person in a town came down with a rare throat cancer. Next thing they knew the CDC and the EPA and the FDA were sniffing around, and everyone just knew who to blame. Then spin control and big money showed up and everyone forgot. Except the people who were dying. And Sangamon Taylor.
This place didn't play by real-world rules, though, so his experience meant approximately jack shit. He tried to look at it objectively.
Weird shit tended to happen every few nights. Never twice in a row, for the big stuff, the stuff that wasn't just them brainwashing a patient from somewhere that made acid trips look 2-D in comparison. "The night before the zombies there was all that blood, but if they turned on the omen machine we might have missed it. Enough of our own everywhere."
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