Day 41: Intercom, Noon

[damned_intercom]

"Hello, hello," said the Head Doctor in a cheery tone. It sounded as if he'd gotten over his paperwork hangover. "I hope half of you are clean and that the other half of you are hungry! Or that all of you are hungry! Ha-ha... Either way, we'll be serving a down-to-earth lunch of crispy chicken strips and fries; we also have cole slaw, potato salad

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[141_12]

Otacon knew something was wrong when he felt himself in a soft bed, the air warmer than it usually was in the Nomad, and quieter too. No machine hums or keyboard clacking or the press of air pressure; none of the oddly comforting signs of living in a too small space flying thousands of feet in the air. And even if they were on the ground (why wouldn't they be, when there was no one they needed to evade now?), Otacon normally fell asleep on a bench, or in his computer chair. The last time he'd woken up anywhere else had been- awhile ago.

He opened his eyes now to the blurry view of an unfamiliar ceiling, not remember taking off his glasses... or going to bed, at that. No. Otacon straightened up in bed, feeling sick. He'd planned, after the wedding, to trace the last known location of Snake's nanomachines, and...

Drebin, he thought with a jolt of realization, but discounted the idea in the next second. The wine he'd brought had been drunk by everybody, and in copious amounts - everybody, that is, except for Otacon, who still had one thing more to do. At most, he'd had a sip, forced on him by Mei Ling, and if one sip was enough to knock him out, he would've seen everyone else go down first. Besides, Otacon didn't think Drebin's tipsiness or confessions had been feigned. It didn't make sense. It didn't make sense. The Patriots were gone, all the old enemies were dead... it was a new world now.

A world he'd brought Sunny into, and now who knew what had happened to her. For a moment, the crash of despair overwhelmed him: it seemed too much that after all the years they'd put into this, after all the loss, that things would again take a turn for the worse just when he'd found some hope. No matter what happened now, Sunny should have been safe, and now he'd failed her just like he'd failed Emma.

"Oh!" Otacon looked up at the sound of a woman's voice, seeing a human-shaped white blur standing in the doorway of his white blurry bedroom. "You're already awake."

He pressed a hand against his forehead, against the rush of cacophonous thoughts threatening to make him panic. "Where am I?"

"This is Landel's Institute." She moved into the room to pick something off the table at the foot of his bed, and held it out to him. He reached for it without thinking, finding the cool delicate touch of his glasses. "We're here to take care of you, Mister Langley."

"Uh..." Otacon slipped his glasses on, and saw for the first time that the woman standing in front of him was actually wearing a nurse's uniform. "'Langley'? I think you have the wrong person. I'm not-" Wait, would it be wise to tell her who he really was? "I mean, this isn't..."

She shook her head, smiling gently, compassionately at him. "You're confused. It's understandable. But I promise you, you're exactly where you need to be." It was the smile that made Otacon rethink further argument, or rather it was the assurance behind it, an assurance he didn't remotely feel. "Come on. It's time for lunch, and you must be hungry."