Night 57: M-B Block Hallway
[From here.]
Some nights, he really did wish something would happen on his way to the men's room. Something big. Something spectacular. Something like an impromptu jazz band with instruments filched from the music room and patients that could actually play real music. Or perhaps he could find a phoenix down. Maybe someone could graffiti up the ( Read more... )
Some nights, he really did wish something would happen on his way to the men's room. Something big. Something spectacular. Something like an impromptu jazz band with instruments filched from the music room and patients that could actually play real music. Or perhaps he could find a phoenix down. Maybe someone could graffiti up the ( Read more... )
Getting out of his room made it easier for Kirk to really think about Aguilar's message, which was by far the longest and most informative screed he'd ever heard in two weeks of vague back-and-forth between the intercom and radio. His guess was right. Whatever the purpose of this facility, it didn't hinge on them accepting that they were really delusional. And in spite of Aguilar's threat to make them "become anything imaginable", it was still important for outsiders to believe the Institute's cover story. If their brainwashing was infallible, they wouldn't care. And if it wasn't, then their loved ones on the outside...
It was something to keep in mind. For now, they were all still prisoners, in spite of Aguilar's claim to want to treat them like sentient beings. Kirk rolled his eyes as he turned the corner. The Eagle could save it for someone else. You didn't keep rational beings in a cage. For all that he wanted them to believe his benevolent dictatorship was better than Martin Landel's, this was a still a rat maze, and the only difference was that the scientists were deigning to treat the rats like they had brains.
Ranks and pins. Kirk had moved up in the last day - he'd noticed the change on the dog tags hanging in his closet, but if there was a significant difference between B Class and C Class, he'd yet to see it. It might have been due to the pins. He'd seen them often enough to notice that he didn't have any. Kirk was beginning to understand how they saw him now: a prisoner with a respectable but unimpressive two weeks under his belt, and no accomplishments. Tough enough to last, but not worth paying attention to.
We will offer what you wish in exchange for your survival and accomplishments. There was the choice which had dogged him since the first day: to play the Institute's game, or not. If he picked the former, there were now a few ways to do it. To follow Landel to the basement, which Aguilar sneeringly regarded as both a death-trap and not a priority; or to follow the military's lead to the Medical Wing, where they would be rewarded for taking some kind of mystery drug.
What you wish.
It was a trap. Of course all of it was a trap.
But Kirk had already made his choice.
[to here]
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