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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Firo frowned, giving the bowl one last look. "'Something funny' is right," he agreed, before pushing the bowl off to the side. "If it really is bad, it'll be better not to risk it."
Skipping one meal was no problem-but what if it turned into more? If the food was always like then, then...
...Ah, well, the least he could do was wait until he was sure that drug was out of his system; then he could see if he saw the same thing as everyone else. Really, it was probably just the drugs.
"What's this? You're into wishful thinking now, Firo?"
He ignored Berga this time, though his cheeks did flush at the boisterous laugh that followed.
"Say, Peter... This might be an odd question, but did the soldiers try anything funny when they brought you back to your room yesterday?"
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He wasn't going to worry too much about that yet, though. The institute usually didn't drag things like this out for too long. Seeing how it was probably meant as a punishment of some kind, his guess was that it would last to the end of the day at the longest.
With that all out of the way, though, Firo ended up asking him something that seemed to be completely out of the blue. The man acknowledged that it was kind of strange, but that didn't stop Peter from both worrying and wondering.
"No, not that I can remember," he said with a shake of his head. Since he figured that Firo could have only asked for one reason, he decided to just jump right to the chase. "Why, what happened?"
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He nudged the bowl a little further away, out of irritation.
Of course, what had happened last night was completely embarrassing, but after asking Peter... He had an obligation to explain now. "They drugged me last night," he finally said. "Me and my roommate both. He'd already been drugged before I got there, and then a guard pinned me right away to let some nurse with a needle have a go."
It sounded even worse saying it out loud, but he tried not to let his embarrassment show. It wasn't just him, after all. Claude had been overpowered, too, and others. Besides, if he was going to tell anyone, admitting it to Peter was better than admitting it to, say, Claire. At least he didn't think Peter was likely to laugh at him for it.
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Granted, it wasn't as bad as what Max was going through, for instance. Peter was concerned that he still hadn't heard from the man today, but he was going to wait a little longer before he got truly worried. Still, there was no denying that something had been done to him that had caused him to randomly get scratches on his face and his extremities, which was a bit disconcerting, to say the least.
Still, Firo had been drugged against his will, which was hardly something to brush off either. Peter didn't even consider that it meant the man was weak or anything along those lines; he'd been taken himself before, for brainwashing. It wasn't something anyone could avoid here, it seemed.
"That's horrible," he said after a pause. "So much for Aguilar's whole rant about giving us a choice." Of course, he couldn't leave it at that, not when Firo had revealed this to him. "Has it had any effects so far that you've noticed?" he asked, keeping his gaze fixed on Firo to judge his response.
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It felt like the only thing he could do was wait and see... which was frustrating, to say the least. He wanted to be able to do something about it, make it stop. Berga('s voice) had been right; he was doing an awful lot of wishful thinking today. The idea that it was coincidence was more likely anyway, anyway; his body hadn't had any kind of reaction rejecting the drug, but wouldn't it have already healed from whatever effect it might have had? He could be waiting forever if he kept blaming the drug.
"There's absolutely nothing you can do, though," Maiza chimed in, and Firo winced. He'd been hoping he wouldn't be joining the voices-more wishful thinking. "You might as well just give up, because you're going to fail."
His shoulders slumped at the thought, and Firo sighed, trying to stay focused on Peter. He nodded over towards the discarded bowl. "The food for one. It looks normal to me, but you were actually the second person to say it looks off; you two may be the ones who are right. And I've..."
He trailed off, not sure how to put it. He'd just sound crazy if he said he'd been hearing voices.
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It was kind of hard to help Firo sort through any of it when the kid wasn't being quite as straight-forward as he could have been. Peter knew better than to force him to spit it out, but he figured it'd probably just take some more subtle coaxing.
"Yeah, well, either we're seeing things or you are, but I guess there's enough of a divide that it'll be impossible to tell." In the end, all it meant was that those who were seeing the food as rotten couldn't eat and those who couldn't see it had to decide who they trusted: themselves or the people advising them to stay away from the stuff.
"It looks like that's affecting a lot of us, though," he continued. "Has there been anything else...?"
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...But then again, Peter was a nurse. Perhaps he could say whether the drug could even be responsible for the voices in the first place.
A long moment of silence passed before Firo finally said, "You can't tell anyone, alright?" He paused, fixing Peter a hard look-it wasn't exactly a threatening one, but it would make sure Peter knew he meant business. "I've been... hearing things since last night. Voices." He suddenly broke off the stare, and shook his head with a scoffing laugh. "I was even convinced that someone I knew was here, but she's not."
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As it turned out, Firo seemed to be dealing with some kind of auditory hallucination. Honestly, it could have been worse, but Peter also understood why the other man was bothered by it. It all sort of depended on who was talking and what was being said, but it sounded like at least some of the voices belonged to people Firo knew from home.
"What sort of things are they saying? Are they trying to encourage you to do things?" That was the typical thing everyone thought of when it came to hearing voices. Peter pictured someone who had gone through a psychotic break telling the men in white coats that the voices in their heads had told them to. That didn't seem to be what Firo was going through, so now Peter was just curious.
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"They've just been... talking. Mostly it's been them telling me things I already know myself," he said, carefully avoiding saying what exactly the criticisms they'd been spouting were. "The thing is, every voice I've heard belongs to someone I know. People I'm close to, even."
It was who the voices belonged to that bothered him the most, he thought. Voices he didn't recognize would be one thing, but every time he heard another familiar voice, he had to stop himself from looking around to make sure that the latest speaker wasn't really there. If Ennis or Maiza or any of the others really had wound up here too, and he ignored them because he thought he was imagining things...
Firo did a quick count and added, "If it matters, there have been four of them, so far." He wondered who might be next. Maybe Luck?
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Peter had to admit that would have probably thrown him from a loop, too. Hearing Nathan's voice -- or even his mother's -- from out of nowhere like that would have definitely at least been a large distraction.
"I can't say I've heard of anything like that before," he admitted, "but with any luck it'll fade away pretty soon." Most of the things at Landel's didn't last forever. The idea of Firo having to hear that constantly from now on was a worrying one, since that would be a way to push someone over the edge.
"For now you've just got to try and bear it, all right? Ignoring what they say is probably the best method." Easier said than done, of course, but Peter was hoping that the fact that Firo was talking to someone -- someone who was really there -- was a help.
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Still, the prospect of enduring the voices' ridicules without being able to do anything about it wasn't exactly cheering. At least Peter seemed to think there was a chance it would end on its own soon; since he knew more about both medicine and this place than Firo did, he was willing to take Peter's word unless something changed for the worse.
"I've been, er... trying not to respond to them," he said, a faint flush returning to his cheeks. He'd done a poor job of it thus far... He'd already said something in reply to Berga just before Peter had joined him; even if he kept his mouth shut from here on out, it would be difficult not to react at all. "But I'll ignore them entirely from here on out."
"That's impossible for you," Ennis commented.
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"Yeah, I can see how it would be tough to not reply, but it's not going to do you any good." If anything, Firo would end up with fellow patients and the staff thinking he was out of his mind when that was hardly the case. "Don't give them the satisfaction." By "them," he meant the staff; Peter didn't realize that it might easily be interpreted as him talking about the voices themselves.
"Good luck with it, all right?" Peter frowned at the younger man, wishing that he could do more. Some reassurance was probably all he could manage, though, and he'd just have to remember to keep an eye out for Firo in the next few days to check and see if it really did go away on its own.
The intercom sounded soon after that, meaning that they were already being cut off. At least they hadn't been interrupted in the middle of that.
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