Night 56: M11 - M20 Hallway
[M20]There had been no orders from Sora as far as Kratos was aware of; it gave him cause to worry only because he tended to do poorly without some sort of direction or objective. This might have persuaded him to indeed take the night off again, but he had by some miracle managed to finish all of his dinner, and it had granted him enough - or at
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He ran a hand through his hair one more time before pulling the door open, revealing the two men standing on the other side. He greeted them with a nod, stepping aside and motioning with the sword for them to enter. "Ryuuzaki, Lunge. Do come in while I gather a few things for the night."
Closing the door behind them, Edgar turned his attention back to his desk. Setting the relic blade beside his possessions box, he opened his drawer and began sifting through the remains of the radio that lined the bottom for his flashlight. "Any idea on where we'll be headed this evening?"
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Whatever the case, 'Lars' was apparently going to go to a meeting without them. It had always been apparent to the inspector that L felt he had reason to be especially vigilant in guarding his identity, and Lunge could hardly object to being careful; it wasn't as though he had anything to lose in agreeing.
"I'll be sure to put up a response," he answered, following the man into the next hallway until they reached Edgar's room- a room which, as the man opened the door for them, he noticed was scattered with things. Odds and ends, mostly metallic, that looked to be deconstructions of the various objects and tools he'd seen around the Institute, though even if pushed Lunge doubted he could guess how they'd once fitted together. An inventor, then? How promising- though it's not a role I'd have naturally put with 'magic user'.
This time, he didn't even have to think about which name to use before speaking; using multiple names was becoming entirely reflexive. "I'm not entirely sure," he answered. "I don't know that the second floor would be particularly useful- I believe we've covered most of that ground. What do you think, Ryuuzaki?"
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Where had it come from? It wasn't one of the items from Edgar's box in Patient Possessions, and it seemed out of the ordinary in terms of goods typically found around the Institute. There had been no indication that Edgar had been "sent home" a week earlier in a way that would explain the blade's presence, and at any rate, it looked like a cross between a ceremonial dagger and a glorified letter-opener, rather than like a useful weapon.
He could address that momentarily, after attending to the more pressing question at hand.
"There are a number of rooms on the second floor that I haven't visited yet, but whether or not visiting them is worthwhile is another question. The trouble is that we don't know whether or not we'll even be able to get to them to decide." A repetition of Tuesday evening, when he hadn't been capable of taking on what had confronted him and the night had mostly been wasted, wasn't in his plans. It was impossible to accomplish much on these nocturnal excursions without accepting a certain amount of risk--he was beginning to doubt that they would ever be able to get too much further without being in more direct danger than he liked--but in retrospect, he knew that he was lucky that the evening had only been pointless and not an utter disaster.
"Our options are limited tonight by several factors--the weather, Edgar's condition, and so on--so I thought the doctors' offices on the other side of the Sun Room might be a reasonable target. I'm still interested in taking a look at the computer system here, although I doubt it will tell us much."
Doyle had been involved in the creation of the Institute, and presumably knew its systems well, or at least an iteration of them. The fact that he had apparently been outside when he'd hacked in might also have been a factor in his success, although if that were the case, it would be unusual. Direct access to the server was preferable, most of the time. However, if the server were within reach, information related to its location would almost certainly be circulating by now, and L hadn't heard even a whisper of it. That suggested that it was kept in a place that the patients couldn't get to, no matter how strong or skilled they were, or that very few people had found it, and they weren't talking.
It went against L's instincts to take these things at face value without testing them--all the stories about the walls, literal and figurative, that he wouldn't be able to breach--but limited time and manpower meant that he had to pick and choose what to address. Information about the facility's history might still be available somewhere in the system, or L might be able to find a way to control some element of the system itself. Both seemed like long shots, especially the latter, but there was no way to know without trying. He'd have to try to do what he could do with no knowledge of the location of the server room. It might be as much as Doyle had done; it might be nothing at all.
"As an alternative, we could attempt to visit the nurses' areas on the second floor, but it would be more dangerous." He sighed, then added, "However, I doubt it's likely to tell us anything about what's happened to them.
"Edgar, I've been meaning to ask you about that knife you were holding a moment ago. Where did you find it?" He segued into the topic as if the answer to his question might be a third choice to consider.
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"I appreciate your concern," he said, glancing over his shoulder, "but I assure you I'm well enough for the evening." The gravel tone of his voice didn't help his argument. "I've been through more taxing territory than anything I've seen here, and in worse condition. I'll survive wherever the night leads us."
He returned his attention to his possessions, finally finding his flashlight and Luxord's radio. "As for the knife, I can't tell you exactly where I found it," he admitted. He grabbed the bag he'd purchased in town, tossing the radio into it. Into the bag also went the items he usually had in the pockets of his jacket: the wrench and screwdriver were joined by the roll of tape he'd taken from the upstairs storage. "Ryuuzaki, I think I've mentioned this to you before- a room that didn't fit with the rest of the building? And the undead creature my roommate and I faced there? It was guarding this."
He shrugged, pulling the strap of the bag over his shoulders before taking said knife in hand and offering it to Ryuuzaki for his perusal. "We were taken there the night the doors were enchanted, warping us all over the institute, so I can't really tell you exactly where we were or how to get back. Do you know something about it?"
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Speaking of skills, yet again he had to wonder if social delicacy was one that he particularly cared about. It seemed that he hadn't felt the need to soften the blow of mentioning Edgar's condition as a 'limitation' (true, perhaps, but I can't imagine his pride is going to take to that lightly) so abruptly, and the result was fairly predictable. Truthfully Lunge couldn't say that he was entirely convinced by Edgar's health, not even after the man's insistence that he was fine, but arguing was only going to be counter-productive at this stage.
"A room that didn't fit with the rest of the building..." Lunge tilted his head suddenly, rolling through possibilities. "Ryuuzaki and I encountered something similar on that very night- we were taken to a room with a Sphinx, who was also guarding something. Something very similar."
His eyes fell to where Edgar had placed the miniature sword; the scale of it was nearly identical to that of the shield, the detailing and colouring similar. Almost as if they'd been made to match. He considered his conversation with Dent, and then he smiled a little.
"We found a shield that night- it's roughly the same size." It was perhaps a risk discussing the shield so plainly- he didn't know how much L wanted to tell Edgar about it- but he doubted they would be here at all if it wasn't alright.
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He hadn't seen the shield since the night they'd won it. Because Monday's procedure had been followed by several days of recovery, which had themselves been followed by Aguilar's takeover of the Institute, the basement in general and the shield in particular had receded in importance and interest. Still, it wasn't hard to recall what the shield had been like in the darkness a week earlier. He could envision it from there: if the knife were laid alongside the shield, it would look like a miniature sword, and the two would probably appear to be a matched pair.
"To be strictly accurate, we won the shield from the Sphinx by answering its riddle. It called it the Coliseum Shield and said that it would be useful in the grand ballroom; Jones told me that there's a place that could fit that description in the basement. Past that, we don't know as much as we'd like to."
He paused, then added, "From the sound of it, the Sphinx's chamber has elements in common with the room you were in. I wasn't able to see any of the area outside of the chamber before we found ourselves in another part of the Institute entirely, but as you said, neither room seemed to fit with the rest of the Institute. When we discussed it before, I couldn't be sure that your room was in the basement. This"--he set the little sword back on Edgar's desk--"seems to support the idea that it was.
"Do we know of anyone acquiring any other items of this nature? If there's anything similar to be found, or won, my guess is that it will be an axe, or a bow... some other kind of small weapon. But these may be the only two. If they were full-size, you could use them together. That isn't the case with the other weapons I can think of."
He let Edgar's protestations of good health pass without comment, and without suggesting a change to a more ambitious plan for the night. It would always be frustrating to lose an ally, no matter how it happened, but his concern wasn't just for Edgar's well-being: it was also for his own survival, and for Lunge's. Edgar might be strong enough to slog out to the ruins or the mines without getting hurt or exhausted, but even if that were the case, there was no guarantee that he'd be much good for anything more strenuous, like fighting off an attack. That weakness put everyone else at risk: people who had to spend too much time defending another member of the group might not be able to defend themselves. That being the case, there was no sense in actively courting a situation where there was a good chance they would be tested. L's memory of the blade slicing into his arm Wednesday night, a hot stinging sensation, returned so vividly that he almost winced.
Instead, he retrieved the brush axe, then put on an expectant expression, his gaze moving from Edgar to Lunge. "If everyone is ready?"
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He took the sword in hand, returning it to his possessions box. The prospect of finding out its purpose was exciting, especially if that brought them any closer to the heart of the institute.
"Every time I've asked about the basement," he said, turning to Lunge and Ryuuzaki, "I've been met with either a reluctance to speak of it, or a flat-out refusal; I'm not even sure of where the entrance is located. I've heard of the ballroom, but not of these objects or how to use them. My guess was that they had to have some significance, or they wouldn't be guarded; however, why some patients work so hard to keep the secrets of this place to themselves, I will never know." He could understand the desire to keep others safe- it was a desire he had, himself- but even he could admit when it became more of a hindrance than a precaution. He wouldn't risk lives that didn't need risking, but there was something to be said for the idiom 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained.'
With his shovel in hand, he opened the door for his companions, following them out.
[To here.]
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