Day 57: Sun Room
It figured that night would end before Rita and Taura could progress any further. Rita wasn't particularly disappointed to wake up abruptly, as they had reached a dead end. Really, the institute was doing them a favor by bringing them back to the starting point, where they could regroup.
What she didn't appreciate was the loss of valuable time, ( Read more... )
What she didn't appreciate was the loss of valuable time, ( Read more... )
It also seemed odd to Harvey that there were now a few people who he knew here who could walk up to him and start talking and it wasn't awkward or distant. Lana was one of them; most of the people who he'd seen last night were also on the list.
He wouldn't call them friends, but he was familiar with them and used to speaking with them. That meant something, although he knew that it was pointless to forge attachments here. It was just as good that he wasn't certain he knew how to anymore.
"Fine," he responded with a shrug, rotating his neck as if to crack it. "Well, not terrible. I got these injuries for a reason, at least, so that's something." He wasn't going to leave her hanging, even if he easily could have. "Been making my way through the basement these past few nights."
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"I didn't think attempting to make it down there myself would be a good idea. It didn't really seem like the sort of place for a poorly-armed legal team, even if we'd known how to get down there." She wasn't sure if he'd answer the implicit question, but she was curious. Her first statement was true; most of what she'd gotten from bulletin posts and radio clues was that it was dangerous. She'd be a liability, and Ema would be helpless, and that wasn't a situation she cared to invite.
"Did anything else happen?" She'd had one theory, and she knew how disastrous clinging to an idea could be when its time had passed, but she would give it a thorough check first.
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"Last night we all just took some time to rest up." The bandages he was still wearing would make it clear that he probably could do with another night, but he didn't want to wait any longer and he doubted that the rest of the group would either. "Tonight we'll be facing the last part of it."
The coliseum. He still had an undercurrent of something -- not fear, but something; anxiousness, maybe -- running through him about the whole thing, but the only way to get rid of that was to face it head on.
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"Sounds a lot more exciting than shelving -- or unshelving -- files. We did manage to make it up there without incident, though." He still hadn't volunteered a detailed description of the basement, so she went on.
"I have to admit I was surprised; the last few times there's been a loud squeal of feedback at night, something unusual has followed it." The systems here weren't primitive, as much as they tried to pretend. "Not that I'm complaining, mind."
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"Well, getting places without incident is not as easy as it sounds here," he pointed out with a shrug. "But anyway, if something did go on last night, I wasn't aware of it. Stayed in the whole time."
It didn't sound like anything completely out there had happened, though, which meant that he couldn't turn around and say that staying in had been a good idea because it'd allowed him to dodge a bullet. His body was certainly thanking him for it, but it wasn't like his health was going to ever approach perfect again. He was surprised that he didn't contract more illnesses with the way he walked around with open wounds.
"What did the files say?" he asked eventually, because despite his guess he couldn't hold back his curiosity.
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She'd hoped for more general records. Administrative, financial, planning -- anything that would tell her about the Institute as a whole rather than just its victims. "Based on the number of cabinets, hmm." She did some quick math in her head. "Assuming a similar population and rates of change, it's not inconsistent with Aguilar's statement about fifty-four days. She scratched a few letters at the top of the page; a reminder to herself for when she had a chance to get back to the bulletin board and her conversation with Lamperouge.
"They're all very consistent with the cover story, though I didn't have the opportunity to try to look up any of the most recent arrivals." Pity -- there were two who'd arrived yesterday, the night after she'd been in the right files. "I don't know if the new administration has kept up the pretense or not."
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It would bring him one step closer to pulling off that mask, and then--
Well, he was getting distracted. He glanced up as Lana continued to explain and nodded along with her. It would do him well to pay more attention, though he was already planning to look through his maps and figure out where this second floor file room was located.
"I'm guessing they are," he said after a pause. "If they're willing to dress up for the field trip and today just to keep the cover up, then they probably want all their files in order too." Just in case someone else who was curious about this place came snooping around.
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"They've made it obvious the entire staff must be in on the secret. I wonder why they bothered pretending during the week at all." Landel's egomania, perhaps? Plausible, if useless. There was nothing to fight against if it was one administrator's whim, its enforcement subject to his star's ascendence or diminishment.
"They want us to find those files. Either as part of this so-called experiment, or merely as an adjunct to keep us in line." The room held the same disquieting stillness that the precinct file room did. Not the evidence lockers, overflowing with flotsam and jetsam of solved cases mixed in with current investigations, a forensics nightmare in the making. She was thinking of the drawers and drawers of unsolved cases, the ones that had been put on pause and left to rot along with society, while the real killers walked free. They'd both wanted to see that room shrink. To follow every thread until it lead somewhere.
That hadn't justified what they'd done. And the room still filled, cases unsolved for the same reasons they solved some that should have erred on the side of reasonable doubt, because a phone call had been made, and evidence could disappear as easily as it could appear.
She couldn't afford to take anything for granted. Deceit was a universal condition, just as much as the desire to do right, to see justice, burned in the hearts of humanity. "I wonder what Landel has planned for tonight. He can't be planning g to stop with last night's announcement. That wouldn't be like him at all."
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"It's possible that their minds were being controlled beforehand," he pointed out, seeing how Lana seemed to be echoing his own thoughts. He felt ridiculous talking about something like brainwashing so seriously, but even before coming here he'd seen signs of it. Jonathan Crane's fear gas, for instance...
"Well, if they wanted you to find them, then was there anything of worth inside?" Probably not, but Harvey was getting sick of this mindset that everything they did was simply helping their captors. Even if it was probably true -- the basement included -- he had to believe that there was some way to slip through the cracks. He was too stubborn to accept anything else.
As for Landel, well... Harvey couldn't admit that he was capable of predicting the man's actions. His original guess was that he'd gone to hide away in Doyleton, but that hadn't been the case, most likely because Aguilar already had his claws sunk into that place. "It all depends on what he's even capable of at this point -- and how much that kid he's with can do to stop him." Harvey wasn't counting on Marc being capable of much, but he couldn't completely discount him either.
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Some of that was true; some of it was a lie. Even Lana herself wasn't sure how much; how much trust she had left in herself, and how much she'd ever be able to put into someone else. More than she was willing to admit, that was sure.
"There were some carefully vague notes about treatments; barely more than cross-references, really." Relative dates after entry and proved efficacious or disappointing or too early to tell. They did seem reasonable, again, compared to what they knew of this place's history.
"We haven't even begun to unravel this place, or their goals." That was the strangest thing, perhaps, to someone who hadn't known her for long. That seemingly hopeless statement was not despair, but ambition. She'd had it in spades, once upon a time. Maybe she hadn't lost it after all.
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"Fair enough," he said with a shrug, though it was a reminder to himself that he always had to second guess people. Maybe not his fellow prisoners, though there was even a chance that a patient wasn't what he seemed. He certainly wasn't. Harvey didn't see himself as deceitful, but he was hardly laying out all the cards on the table either.
He got the feeling that people like Peter wouldn't have associated with him if they knew that he'd killed someone. Multiple someones, even.
Treatments, she said. Harvey's guess was that those were the experiments that seemed to happen with a certain regularity. He thought about Lunge, who was the only person he was acquainted with who he knew had been victim to it. He was sure there were many more out there, maybe even Lana, who weren't spilling the beans. He couldn't blame anyone for that, though, as he would have done the exact same thing.
Lana's last statement sounded surprisingly defeatist for someone who had previously proved herself to be the sort who never left a stone unturned. Maybe that was why, though -- she'd been fastidious about it and hadn't received much in the way of results. "That's not entirely true," he said as he glanced over at her. "This whole military shtick makes it pretty clear that they want us to fight, doesn't it?"
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The military's long-term purpose might be to win, but if they were looking for foot-soldiers, a bunch of lawyers, at least one of whom was badly wounded, would not have been her choice. They weren't that stupid either, so there had to be a reason.
"I'm not so sure. There are limits to what people will do, even if convinced it is in service to a greater cause, but those only come into play if they're given a choice." The trick was making choice look like none at all; maneuvering defendants towards plea bargains, letting a secret swallow her whole, it was all a part of the same game. Landel had liked it, but Aguilar hadn't seemed to. No nudges to or from anything, aside from allowing that radio broadcast to proceed.
Harvey was playing Landel's game; she would search for what Aguilar's was.
"Perhaps they simply don't need our active cooperation for whatever comes next."
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The real question was why they were being kept here instead of used for their real purpose, whatever that might be. Why did they need to be contained? It was almost like they needed to be released slowly, one at a time, hence the slow trickle both into and out of the institute. But once again, he was left to ask why.
"And either way, they have to need us for something. If you don't think it's that, then what? As raw materials?" That was a more gruesome train of thought than he ever wanted to go down, but there it was. Either way, Harvey seriously doubted this was all for fun and games. There had to be a purpose for it. He might have believed the sadism theory when it was one man running a torture show, but not now, not when a whole military force was involved.
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She stood up, and turned, looking out at the room full of patients.
"If, however, fighting is all they want, why the elaborate artifice. No, I don't think that's the goal. Or not the only one."
She took a deep breath, and turned back to Dent.
"Let's see. Alterations to senses, memory, and induced psychological conditions, both temporary and permanent. More on memory, if we assume that we're returned to our own homes rather than being some sort of duplicates. It's even possible that the effects while in this facility are only side effects, and the true impact is on the societies of hundreds of worlds, when people with at least some amount of influence are returned." That was a far-fetched theory, but sometimes it was worth throwing one out and seeing where it lead.
"Physical fighting, mostly against humans turned against each other -- our fellow patients, the townsfolk, plus some altered animals. There are supposedly much worse out there, but I haven't seen them, and luck isn't usually something I can rely on." True, they hadn't gone outside, which might account for some of their relative safety.
"Third, the population has been selected for a variety of interpersonal conflicts, though that might dovetail with the theory that our home worlds are the targets. None of us from Los Angeles are more than minor legal officials." Gant was the one with the most influence, and his was past by the time he'd arrived. Hmm. "Any other theories?"
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He could concede that fighting couldn't be all of it, but as he listened to what she had to say, he wasn't sure if any of her guesses were right either. Of course, part of that was because he was pretty sure that this place could pull people from different times and dimensions. The time thing he had seen himself, when he'd seen where Jones was from; the dimension part came from the fact that he'd met at least two people here who knew of him but who he had never met. And it hadn't seemed like some overcomplicated prank, either.
Honestly, he didn't think that much of a stink would be kicked up when he returned home. He'd probably already been written off as dead by now, if time really was progressing the way it should be. It was frustrating in its own way, to think that Gotham could forget about its White Knight, fallen or not, so easily.
"There's definitely some pretty bad stuff out there," he said after a pause, in reference to her second theory. "Things that will make you hallucinate vividly, the most horrible kind of stuff that you can imagine." That had happened back during his first night here, but the memory hadn't left him and it likely wasn't going to any time soon.
She was passing the baton to him and so took in a deep breath as he tried to come up with something feasible. "It seems like either way, messing with our minds seems to be the real point here. The brainwashing, the way that people are sent out into the world thinking they're someone else, the memory wiping... Maybe they're testing all of this on us so that they can eventually use it on an entire population." It was a serious conspiracy theory and he knew that, but what else did he have access to at this point? This was all so insane.
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"Unfortunately, it doesn't leave us with very many viable methods of fighting back." Reacting badly, but without knowing what their captors wanted the net result to be, it would be difficult to manipulate the data. If, indeed, that would provoke anything other than further manipulation. "All we can do is keep digging." Her expression showed her exhaustion, but not defeat; she was in this for the long haul.
It was odd, how much the initial trial system had turned her life into a clockwork beast; she'd been here long enough to have run two trials and be almost done with the third -- not counting Sundays. Even as a detective, most cases were done before the ink was dry on the initial statements; the system, when it worked, was a marvel of efficiency. This place, by comparison, was sloppy. Hmm.
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