Day 59: Cafeteria (noon)
By the time lunch rolled around, things still weren't getting any better. The voices hadn't gone away; instead, Firo was pretty sure they were getting more frequent. Ennis had been silent since last night, but Czes's voice had been an insistent buzz in his ear all morning
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"So I'm not crazy, then. I was starting to wonder whether I was the only one who could smell anymore," she said with a sickened sigh, slumping onto her elbows. Though, a quick glance around confirmed that, despite what she and the man saw, others continued to eat without issue. That still didn't sit well with her on the "maybe you're crazy" front. Had she spoken too soon?
"How can they all eat that stuff? Do they seriously not notice it?" she wondered aloud, hoping the growing queasiness in her stomach would go away sooner rather than later.
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He would've shrugged if his bitten shoulder hadn't reminded him with a startling jolt of pain what a bad idea that was. Someone tear his wings off now. Please.
Gabriel wiggled his fingers in a mystical way. Or an annoying, maggot-like way. Whatever. "Maybe everyone's been brainwashed into eating rot. It's a training camp for zombies. Very Asylum of the Dead. I heard there were zombies around, at least."
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She made a face at the man's suggestion, and suddenly felt a lot more sick for everyone else than for herself. "Oh, gross! That's so terrible! We ought to tell people before they get sick if that's true." Looking a little green to go with the pink, she added with a faint shudder, "And yeah, there were zombies all right. I was here that night when they were in Doyleton. Augh, still not over that..."
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Maybe Zachariah. Nah. He had definitely had his days.
"Why bother? They seem to be enjoying the hell out of it." He didn't believe a damn thing he was spouting, but whatever. It was probably just a limited hallucination done just to piss everyone off or something. Or maybe they had been given the Matrix-They-Live contacts that showed them how the institute really was. Ooh. Spooky. So where were the posters proudly proclaiming MARRY AND REPRODUCE? Might liven up the Spartan atmosphere they had going.
"You didn't happen to turn into a zombie, right? Just happen to know someone who got munched on by Zombo the dancing canine, and he seemed bitchy, but still reasonably non-cannibalistic."
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"No, I didn't. I had to beat a few down, and a friend and I ran over a few with a car we hotwired, but we didn't get bitten," she answered, trying not to let the snark get to her (yet). "Sorry about your friend, though. He's okay now, I'm hoping?"
After a few moments, she couldn't keep the remark to herself anymore. She raised a critical pink eyebrow. "And what does it matter if they're enjoying it? They could get seriously sick if it's like you said. I'm pretty sure they'd regret eating today if that happens."
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But. In her defense, she had said something worth an archangel's interest. "You know how to hotwire a car?" Look, being a few thousand years old didn't really come with a set of entirely human skill sets. Picking locks had been one of them. Hotwiring cars would be another. In his defense, he had wings and - well. Wings kind of solved both those problems. Hooray, holiness.
"That's pretty hot." She didn't even know the definition of smarminess before this moment. He settled deeper in his seat, but it was clear the comment was mostly flippant rather than a true sleazy attempt. He could get to that later. He didn't comment on Castiel's well-being. Still bitchy was a problem enough as it was. "And? It's not going to stop anything. If they can put parasites in the food, a couple of protein-rich maggots won't hurt them. Much." He also wasn't a whiz with human biology. Practically everything killed them. It was a shorter list to spell out what didn't.
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Utena's face went completely flat at the remark. "Yeah, it's something someone taught us that night. That's all," she answered, crossing her arms. Maybe he wasn't being as sleazy and blatant as Touga, but he was still a much older man calling a girl her age "hot". That was so not going to fly on her watch, and she was going to let this guy know it.
And then he went on being even more flippant and annoying, and Utena's reactions stepped up a notch to match. "How do you just not care about people this much?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him. And after a pause, she added, "And when were there even parasites in the food anyway?"
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Something to be said for giving up.
At least she didn't throw her hands up and leave. Not like he would've cared either way, but this way had the potential for more fun. "You missed that whole thing? Not too long. Five days ago. They bugged the food, mind games were had. Fun for the whole family."
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Which made it hard for her to pay attention to the other things he was telling her, which actually did sound like things she ought to know. There was a visible twitch in her brow as she listened to the man prattle on explain. "No, I was out for most of last week," she answered. Five days, she thought; yeah, the would have been right after she blacked out and got taken... wherever the hell it was people were taken when things like that happened. "If it was anything like the 'mind games' I know Landel's likes to play, though, I wish I could've been around to help my friends get through it."
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