Day 58: Cafeteria

[gald_digger]

Anise woke up feeling lucky to be alive. She still felt a bit waterlogged, even though her skin, hair, and clothes were completely dry. During last night's adventures, she'd swallowed a lot of water, and it still felt heavy and disgusting in her stomach. Her arms and legs were tired from treading water. Lying still in her bed, she still kind of

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[tasteoftruth]

The first thing Badd did upon opening his eyes was to check the color of the walls. Normal boring Landel's Institute paint, not the sickly cream yellow of Cece Yew's hotel room, and not streaked with blood from the hooves of a monstrous sheep. At least he wasn't hallucinating again.

Byrne.

Badd was out of bed long before the guard came, pounding at the door. "Where is he?" he shouted. "I took the damn pills, where is he?"

"Settle down, Mr. Savalas."

"What did you do with him?"

"Settle. Down."

Badd's eyes went to the gun, just for a moment before he backed off. It would be suicide to try and grab it, at most he'd take down two or three before they gunned him down, but if they'd murderered Byrne after all Badd had done it would be worth it. Let them see that one prisoner wasn't willing to be a peaceful lab rat. But Byrne wasn't confirmed dead yet. And if there was one thing Badd had learned as a homicide detective, it was that they weren't dead until you saw the body.

(And in a place like this, sometimes even that wasn't enough.)

Badd stalked down the hall, body tense and his heart in an iron vise. He didn't begin to start calming down until he saw Byrne's note on the bulletin board. He was alive. From the note he was in a bad way, but he was alive.

Good. Then he had more time to plan how he was going to murder everyone in the building for laying hands on him. Badd waited by the cafeteria door, hunched, breathless, aching to see his friend again. Badd would not fail him twice.

[Byrne come give me hugs]

[corvus_veritas]

[ooc; there are a few things assumed from a backthread here, but all has been discussed so it should be okay!]

Byrne was miserable. Of all the days he'd been here, he'd never woken up feeling like a literal train wreck until today. His neck ached heavily from the injection he'd been given the night before, but it couldn't compare to the ache he felt in his chest. The emotional ache from everything he'd seen strapped to that chair.

It hadn't been real. But goddamnit, it had felt real, and he hadn't known it wasn't real until after they'd finished 'torturing her'. He wanted to vomit just thinking about it.

The bulletin board was Byrne's first objective once he was led from his room. Luckily, he was one of the first ones there. No doubt Badd would come by here before breakfast trying to see if there was anything left for him. The prosecutor scribbled a very hasty note to his partner, slapped it on the board, and then made his way to the cafeteria. He hadn't noticed the shiny new M-U pin on his beret yet, but that was probably a good thing. All he needed to worry about right now was when Badd would get here.

The wait was painful, but short. There he was by the cafeteria door, waiting for him. Thank god. Byrne stood up to rush over to him as quickly as possible, but then a terrifying thought entered his head, a second guess, a hesitation. His feet became metaphorically glued to the floor and he couldn't move forward. Would...would Badd be angry with him? When he learned that Byrne had given in to a servant of the institute? That he'd sworn to her that he would never follow the principles of the Yatagarasu ever again in exchange for Kay's safety? The Kay they had harmed before his eyes, the Kay who had only been a hallucination?

It sounded silly, but... Ever since his first day here, Byrne had imagined himself fighting against the Institute up close and personal. Maybe they'd been foolish, immature thoughts spawned from moments of anger, but it didn't matter. He'd thought of them. And in every scenario his mind came up with, he always imagined himself winning against any torture they threw at him. Resilient. Noble.

But when he had been in that situation for real, he'd given in to them, just like that. There was nothing noble about it. He was a traitor to himself and all he believed in. Foolish enough to fall for such a cruel trick. No matter how real the hallucination felt, even if Kay was a part of it, there was no excuse.

What will Tyrell say?

...He had to go. Even from here, he could see that Badd looked just as upset as Byrne felt inside. Maybe something had happened to him last night, too. He needed to go. And he wanted to go, as much as he feared Badd's reaction.

Byrne swallowed hard, then marched himself over to his friend, eyes locked on him. Not breaking eye contact was a cheap way to try and hide the doubt and shame he was feeling, easily seen through, but he didn't care. Byrne stopped a few feet away from Badd, unable to say anything at first. But he didn't care about that either. Words weren't necessary right now. Just being near the one man he trusted more than anyone else was enough.

Enough to both satisfy and torture him.

[tasteoftruth]

There. Badd was so grateful to see him alive that it was a moment before he noticed the look on his friend's face. The agony on Byrne's face chilled his soul.

Badd shoved away anyone in between them in his haste to get to Byrne. His friend was moving oddly, hesitantly, and it worried him. He'd seen so many horrible cases of assault and torture that it gave him too many ideas for what they could have been doing to Byrne all night.

Up close, Badd couldn't see a mark on him, but...that still meant nothing "I..." he started, trying to find some way to excuse his negligence. "I'm sorry. I didn't know," he stammered, finding it hard to breathe. "I tried to come find you. The doors were locked." No excuse. There was no excuse for abandoning his post. Hadn't the hallucinations been reminding him of that half the night?

[corvus_veritas]

His partner's apologies were making Byrne feel even worse. Why was he sorry? It wasn't his fault. It was the institute's for setting this all up in the first place. But more than that, it was Byrne's for submitting to it, for letting them toy with his emotions and memories. Maybe he hadn't sworn ultimate allegiance to them, but he'd still buckled under their pressure. Now they knew what to do to make him obey them, to turn on his own morals. That was just as bad as siding with them.

And what had Badd done? Try to find Byrne like any good friend would. No, he shouldn't be feeling bad, not in the slightest.

Byrne shifted his feet nervously, finding it harder to keep eye contact. "It wasn't..." He paused, feeling his face grow hot. "Wasn't your fault. They outsmarted us." Always one step ahead. They knew everything about everybody here, Byrne imagined, and all these people were just playthings to whoever was in charge. Not human beings.

[tasteoftruth]

Byrne wasn't upset and Badd wasn't sure if that was something to worry about. He'd seen Byrne explode over things and this was a very severe mistake on Badd's part, and yet he was acting as nervous as if it was his fault. Torture could do that to you, he knew...could turn around what you thought was right, shatter your mind and rebuild it in a different image.

Breakfast was right out. If Badd was lucky dinner wouldn't be joining it on the floor.

"Doesn't matter. I shouldn't have let them." Badd tried to escort Byrne over to one of the tables before he fell over. With the way he looked, that might be soon.

[corvus_veritas]

And again, Badd was asserting that it was him in the wrong. Byrne knew Badd's protective side all too well and could usually tolerate it, but right now it was only causing him to feel worse and worse. It's not your fault, damnit, it's mine! Can't you see that?!

He resisted Badd's attempt to escort him and clenched his fists, becoming irrationally upset. Upset at himself and what he'd done, upset at this place and that damn doctor, and upset at Badd's stupid over-protectiveness. Just. Everything. It was one of those times where he'd think back on his actions in a few hours and regret getting so emotional, but right now he could give a rat's ass about self-control. "Shouldn't have let them do what?" His voice grew a little louder, a little braver. "We can't stop them from doing anything, Tyrell. They're watching us. All the time. Everywhere. We can't do a damn thing."

For someone like Byrne to say fighting back was impossible? Far from his usual self. From the look on the prosecutor's face, it was clear that he recognized that, too. Four, five days, and they had already reduced him to this? He looked down at the floor in shame. He was upset and not thinking clearly, but that didn't excuse such a defeatist statement.

"I-I didn't mean that," he added hastily, "I mean...it's not that easy. And there wasn't anything you could have done then." He might've added a plea for Badd to stop blaming himself at the end of that, but he knew deep down that would be pointless.

[tasteoftruth]

Now the anger was here, but in the way it manifested it was even worse than that look of pain and guilt. What in the hell had they done to him? Byrne didn't just give up and resign himself to injustice. When they'd run out of ways to attack legally they'd turned to the Yatagarasu--when Badd had warned him of the dangers of their work he'd left behind a notebook stating he had no regrets. Badd had fully expected Byrne to be willing to go to prison himself to make the truth known, as Badd had been. If they'd broken him in a single night...and not a mark on him either.

Badd decided to just go for the obvious, if painful question. "What happened last night?" he murmured. "What did the bastards do to you?"

And how did he fix it?

[corvus_veritas]

...Part of him had been hoping to avoid that question, as inevitable as that would have been. But Badd wanted to know. Byrne sighed deeply, gearing himself up for the explanation.

"They--" He hesitated, loosening his fists. When he spoke again, his voice was much softer than it had been before. "During dinner, they took me to an isolated room and restrained me to a chair. The doctor there, she looked and sounded just like Calisto Yew. Had her act down to the tiniest detail." And that had been torture in and of itself. Of course, that was the whole point. "She gave me an injection in my neck that caused a hallucination, but I...I didn't know that until her experiment on me was over."

Didn't excuse anything. He felt his face getting hot again. He didn't want to think about this. "Kay was there. They brought her before me and started torturing her right in front of my eyes. And I didn't--I didn't know it wasn't real! I thought she was really there, that they were really hurting her, and--!!" Damnit, his voice was cracking. Calm down, take another deep breath. "...They offered me a choice. Between her and the Yatagarasu."

And that choice was the part he really hesitated to admit to Badd, even though it wasn't surprising for a father so devoted to his daughter to choose her safety over his own. In his mind, giving in to their plans was better than seeing her get hurt anymore, even if it might not be the right thing to do as far as morals were concerned. He'd chosen her over his ideals, and had made that promise.

And then she hadn't been real. How the hell was he supposed to feel about that?

[tasteoftruth]

Badd listened to Byrne's story, tense and nearly sweating. Of course it was Calisto Yew, they'd already used her face to get to Badd, but...

Oh, god. They hadn't left a mark on Byrne's body because they'd attacked his heart instead. Badd had encountered some vile, base criminals before but Aguilar's team were the worst he'd ever come across. The courts could never deliver enough justice for his tastes.

Badd's usually stoic demeanor was twisted in pain and rage. "I'll kill them," he snarled. "I swear it, Byrne, I'll kill them for putting you through that."

He didn't ask which Byrne had chosen. He knew his friend. If it hadn't been Kay, Byrne wouldn't have been his friend to start with. To Badd the choice was superficial compared to making a man watch his own daughter being tortured.

[corvus_veritas]

Byrne probably would have added some sarcastic joke to that response if he wasn't feeling so terrible. It was a nice thought, especially after everything the bastards had done to them and all of these people, but...when it really came down to it, going around slaughtering every institute employee would make Badd no better than they were.

At least he could now (try to) put his doubts to rest and be assured that his friend wasn't upset with him. It eased little of the guilt he felt for submitting to that doctor, but it helped nonetheless.

Byrne shook his head. "Don't. It was...my fault, anyway. I was the one who fell for their trap." He reached over to put a hand on his friend's arm in reassurance. If there weren't so many people around, he wouldn't have hesitated to throw his arms around him. God knew how much he needed the support right now. This feeling of fear...it was like what Kay must have felt when she was four and scared of the monsters that tried to get her at night. Only here, the monsters were real, and they were everywhere.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd was sharing similar impulses. He was no good at comforting people--children, you gave a candy and some soothing words, but for a grown man Badd had no idea what to do. So he stood there to the side of the cafeteria door as the prisoners filtered through and he set his hand on top of Byrne's. If nothing else, he was here. That would have to be enough.

He shook his head again, hard. "Doesn't matter. Using a man's family against him...there's never any justification for that." Killing them wouldn't make him just as bad. Nothing could make you as bad as someone who used that kind of emotional blackmail. "I don't know how they knew about us or Calisto Yew, but..."

The photo. He still had it, didn't he? Badd reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded, crumple-edged photograph. He didn't show it to Byrne just yet.

[corvus_veritas]

"Tyrell..." Byrne sighed. He really wished he knew how these people knew about him and Badd so well, too. And Badd was right, there wasn't any justification for such emotional trauma. It was downright cruel, plus a lot of other nasty adjectives. But still...

It was useless to keep trying to disagree with him, Byrne supposed. Badd would keep insisting the institute was the only one in the wrong, Byrne would keep tossing his guilt at him, and then it'd just be this back and forth thing, like an unending emotional tennis match. Was it worth it? Not really.

There was something else to focus on now, anyway. Specifically, the folded piece of paper (a photograph, maybe?) that Badd just pulled out of his pocket, which piqued Byrne's curiosity instantly. Hopefully this would provide him with a well-needed distraction from the events of last night. "What's that?"

[tasteoftruth]

"They gave me a letter yesterday. It was supposedly from my..." Badd had to work up the nerve to spit the word out. "Wife. Written to the guy on my dog tags. It came with a photo. I was going to show you last night, but...well." Let's not go there.

Badd unfolded the photo carefully. He hadn't looked at it since yesterday and barely remembered he'd had it with him until now. It was of Badd, at least a decade younger and dressed in a tux. There was an uncharacteristic smile on his face, and an even wider one on the woman next to him. Hanging off his arm, wearing a wedding dress and nearly laughing, was Calisto Yew.

Badd handed the photo to Byrne without looking at it.

[corvus_veritas]

A letter written to the guy on his dog tags? A letter--

AH! Crap crap crap! Right! The letter! Byrne had been so worried about his M-U that he'd completely forgotten about that letter from 'Kay' that he'd wanted to ask Badd about! His face lit up with this realization just as his partner handed him the photograph. Alright, then. He'd mention it in a moment, after he was finished looking at this.

......

"What the hell?" Literally the only intelligent response Byrne could make to the photo, with disbelief written all over his face. Seriously, what the hell? How did they manage to pull this off and make it look so real? Landel must have some seriously talented Photoshop artists on his side or--or something, because damn that looked just like Badd and Calisto. Except for, you know, that awkward smile Badd had going on there. And the whole set-up of the photo, which was Badd and Calisto getting married. Married.

The whole thing was so ridiculous that Byrne couldn't stop himself from laughing. Not so much a mocking laugh - it was closer to a nervous chuckle.

[tasteoftruth]

At least something had gotten his mind off the torture. Badd scowled, in that way he did when Byrne mocked him about something. It was the way he'd scowl if things were normal and they were joking around together at the office.

"They got a pretty sick sense of humor. I guess they did it with...computers or something. Don't think I'd have a smile like that even if I was getting married." And men like him didn't marry pretty young things in their twenties, they couldn't even make it a good lie. In fact if they'd wanted to make him believe he was someone else they'd found the identity he'd least want to have even if he thought it was true. No, he wouldn't let his best friend be a murderer and a murderer be his adoring wife. He'd rather be considered insane and keep who he was.

Especially not after what they'd done to Byrne and to Kay. He'd fight them with every breath he had, with every shred of sanity left to him, they'd have to pulverize him before he'd bow to their lies.

[corvus_veritas]

"No kidding. Obviously these people haven't seen the photos I tried to get you to smile in." Byrne grinned a little at that, then handed the photo back to Badd before he laughed any more at it. The familiar scowl on Badd's face was a small comfort that was well appreciated. Hell, anything that kept his mind off of last night was appreciated right now. But if it had to be something, let it be something familiar, from when things weren't this crazy.

Speaking of crazy, though, now was probably a good time to tell Badd about his own letter. "To tell you the truth," Byrne began to explain, his smile already gone, "I got a letter yesterday, too. It was supposedly from Kay, but like your letter, she addressed me as the name on my dog tags. There wasn't a photograph or anything, and she even called herself a different name. But her handwriting looked way too familiar." He said familiar rather than a match, as he only knew ten year old Kay's handwriting and not seventeen year old Kay's. In spite of that, the letter had shaken Byrne pretty badly when he'd first read it. Now that he'd seen that photograph of Badd and Calisto, however, he was being convinced that it was just another dirty trick.

"She said a lot of weird things. I forgot to bring it to show you, though." The reason for that was obvious.