Day 43: Intercom, Afternoon
I.R.I.S. here again, and we continue to hope that you are enjoying your temporary stay at Landel's Institute! We will now be continuing with a repeat of the last shift; you will be able to meet more former patients in the Waiting Rooms, should you wish, or you can continue to peruse our available facilities. Our visitors this shift will be a
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What Hiro didn't know would be his own undoing. He could travel through time but he couldn't heal and if he wasn't immune to the virus, well, at least Adam could chalk that up to a death by his own hand, couldn't he?
Hiro's hand had touched his shoulder and Adam knew what was coming - the lurching jolt, the split-second relocation. He'd had only a millisecond to open his hand and let go its contents, sending the vial crashing to the floor. He hadn't been there to see it hit, but it would have only taken another half-second to hit the floor.
A race, then - how long would it take Hiro to take Adam...wherever he was planning on taking him? Longer than it would take the vial to hit the floor? Judging by Adam's own disorientation, the answer was probably yes.
He opened his eyes - this had never happened before - Hiro's teleportation always seemed near-instantaneous ; there one second, gone the next. He'd never "woken up" somewhere, lying down, eyes closed. Something was wrong.
A ceiling light buzzed overhead - garish neon light filled the room and Adam felt his stomach drop. Hiro, you son of a bitch.
Level Five. The room was different than the one he'd spent the last thirty years in, but the walls were the same stark, empty white, the beds bolted to the floor in the same manner. The layout, however, implied that someone else might be intended to eventually co-habitate the room with him - an idea that struck Adam as odd. Isolation was part of the standard Level 5 procedure. Rooming people together would allow for socialization, connection and collaboration, all things that were counter-productive to the the kind of manipulation the Company used to its advantage.
Still, Adam couldn't imagine another place on earth that would be arranged this way, except maybe some kind of mental institution. And, of course, Hiro couldn't have had him committed - there would be procedures, paperwork, red tape. It just wasn't happening.
The grey sweatpants-and-t-shirt combo was reminiscent of his own personal hell, too, aside from the smiley-face on the front. Adam smiled right back at it as he gazed down into its yellow face - a great big "fuck you". Bob must have grown a sense of humor in the month or so that Adam had been away, he thought.
But if he was in Level 5, unconscious, where had Hiro teleported him to, really, and why didn't he remember zapping in? The only thing Adam could think to contribute it to was a head injury. Perhaps when they'd teleported in, someone had cold clocked him and he'd lost a few minutes - long enough to get him in this room.
Of course, with the virus out, this was the worst place he could possibly be. Oh, sure, he'd live - he couldn't starve to death or die, but if everyone else in the Company perished, it could be a very, very long wait until he got out - longer than the thirty years he'd waited last time. If he ever got out.
The door, Adam quickly discovered, and without much shock, was locked. He wasn't getting out through that door. The room lacked the shatter-proof windows his previous cell had included, so that was out. Turning back in the direction he had come, Adam crossed to the desk that sat at the foot of the bed he'd woken up in. Atop the desk was a plain-looking notebook and a radio. Adam flipped open the notebook, finding all of the pages blank with the exception of the first - a scripty font announced that "this journal belonged" to someone. Scribbled in in a handwriting that looked suspiciously familiar to him, Adam saw the name Karl Lagan scrawled in the blank. He couldn't recall having ever met anyone with that name, but perhaps the room's other expected occupant answered to it. If so, the man's handwriting was strikingly (and disturbingly) similar to Adam's own.
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The desk drawers were Adam's next target - not surprisingly, the first one he opened was empty. The rest would have to wait.
Adam whirled at the sound of the door opening, and wished he'd been closer when it had. Whoever this was was his ticket out of here - if he could have simply knocked them out while the door was open...well, that hadn't worked so well in the past, either, had it? The one time he'd tried it during his last imprisonment, it had met with unpleasant consequences. If an escape wasn't certain, it would probably be best to bide his time and wait.
She wasn't familiar to him - must have been new. Of course Bob wouldn't give Adam Elle again - she and the Hatian had let him escape. Besides, this wasn't her ward, so to speak. She was average in every way - average brown hair, average height, average weight - not too thin, not too fat - the kind of woman you could pass on the street and never think twice about. She wore a short white skirt, white top and a lab coat - not standard Company attire, but the smiley-face on his shirt wasn't either. It was too soon to try and formulate a real idea as to what, exactly, was going on.
"Karl?"
She was addressing him, definitely, as there was no one else in the room and she was looking right at him. There was that name again - Karl. Karl Lagan. It wouldn't be the first time Adam had adopted a new name. He decided to play along.
The nametag pinned to the nurse's shirt read "Janet," and Adam addressed her by name. She smiled at him and asked him to accompany her.
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