Night 45: M21-M30 Hallway
Time to stretch his legs again. Abe set the white bishop aside--he'd spent most of dinner staring it down, in lieu of anything better to focus his attention on. His mind had never come down from that fluffy cloud land of speculation it had been hovering in ever since he got over being terrified of Beatrix, and he spoke only a food-muffled greeting to Statesman.
Scarecrow's suggestion that he find the third floor seemed to be a good one. The problem came in finding a way up there. As far as he could tell the path to the third floor never crossed that of the stairwells between the first and second floors. The area he had explored with Mr. Smith seemed fruitless even without that small creepy child making advances at them, and if the rest were that easy to find someone surely would have found the stairs by now.
Experience and training told Abe that if you were looking for something important it was probably hidden in a place you wouldn't expect. Putting stairs right next to stairs made too much sense, you had to apply some unhuman thinking to figure out where they'd put it. Somewhere people wouldn't go but disguised as somewhere completely normal--of course. The cafeteria. There were doors behind it but there was no reason for people to go into the cafeteria at night because there was nothing of use there. Abe wished he had the emotional energy to feel proud of himself for his cleverness.
He checked the closet before he left intending to see if anything had been put in there since last night. No weapons, no tools or notes, just a single dark wetsuit hanging forlornly from a clotheshanger.
His wetsuit.
Abe took the dark material in hesitant hands and turned it--Sapien was imprinted on the chest. The breathing apparatus was gone, as was the gun, but the belt had the familiar red and gold emblem on it that he'd seen so many times it had been burned onto his overlage retinas. How and why were futile questions to ask here even if it was real, Abe would find no answers from this mad place, but it was here now. Perhaps someone friendly had chosen to give it to him and remind him of what he used to be and of the frail human that he wasn't--for better or for worse, Abe's enthusiasm at being a normal human was severely flagging.
It made sense to take it. The wetsuit would give him a minimal amount of padding and wouldn't be nearly as heavy without the bulky breathing apparatus, the pouches on the belt would help holding anything useful he might find, the goggles might come in handy at some point...he'd be a fool just to leave it in the closet. But it still, in some twisted way, felt as if the BPRD had managed to suck him back in without him even knowing it. Abe donned the top part of his uniform but kept his lightweight pants, then carefully folded the goggles and tucked them into his belt pouch. Snapping the red sword-and-fist belt buckle around his midsection felt like donning a dog collar and he did it without looking down. Necessity only. They didn't own him anymore.
[ To here.]
Scarecrow's suggestion that he find the third floor seemed to be a good one. The problem came in finding a way up there. As far as he could tell the path to the third floor never crossed that of the stairwells between the first and second floors. The area he had explored with Mr. Smith seemed fruitless even without that small creepy child making advances at them, and if the rest were that easy to find someone surely would have found the stairs by now.
Experience and training told Abe that if you were looking for something important it was probably hidden in a place you wouldn't expect. Putting stairs right next to stairs made too much sense, you had to apply some unhuman thinking to figure out where they'd put it. Somewhere people wouldn't go but disguised as somewhere completely normal--of course. The cafeteria. There were doors behind it but there was no reason for people to go into the cafeteria at night because there was nothing of use there. Abe wished he had the emotional energy to feel proud of himself for his cleverness.
He checked the closet before he left intending to see if anything had been put in there since last night. No weapons, no tools or notes, just a single dark wetsuit hanging forlornly from a clotheshanger.
His wetsuit.
Abe took the dark material in hesitant hands and turned it--Sapien was imprinted on the chest. The breathing apparatus was gone, as was the gun, but the belt had the familiar red and gold emblem on it that he'd seen so many times it had been burned onto his overlage retinas. How and why were futile questions to ask here even if it was real, Abe would find no answers from this mad place, but it was here now. Perhaps someone friendly had chosen to give it to him and remind him of what he used to be and of the frail human that he wasn't--for better or for worse, Abe's enthusiasm at being a normal human was severely flagging.
It made sense to take it. The wetsuit would give him a minimal amount of padding and wouldn't be nearly as heavy without the bulky breathing apparatus, the pouches on the belt would help holding anything useful he might find, the goggles might come in handy at some point...he'd be a fool just to leave it in the closet. But it still, in some twisted way, felt as if the BPRD had managed to suck him back in without him even knowing it. Abe donned the top part of his uniform but kept his lightweight pants, then carefully folded the goggles and tucked them into his belt pouch. Snapping the red sword-and-fist belt buckle around his midsection felt like donning a dog collar and he did it without looking down. Necessity only. They didn't own him anymore.
[ To here.]