Night 46: West Wing, North Hallway 1-A

[whos_da_man]

[from here]It looked like Junpei was the first to arrive as there was no sign of a hot pink-haired flesh-eating babe. Leaning against the wall by the door that lead outside, he sighed and tilted his head back. What was he doing? Why were his senpai gone when he so very much needed them to tell him what he should really be doing

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[unheroed]

"The first time it was with his roommate, so I think it was a convenience thing," Harvey explained. Jason hadn't seemed all that upset about it the night before, even though he'd been roughed up. Maybe he was one of those adrenaline junkies. Harvey wouldn't have been surprised.

The flashlight being switched off didn't bother Harvey in the slightest, though it did make him realize something: even though this was only the second time that Jones had seen him without the bandages on, the man hadn't shown any sign of awkwardness, to the point that Harvey hadn't thought about it until now. It either meant that Jones was good at not showing what he was really thinking, or it just honestly didn't bother him that much.

He hadn't expected that to extend as far as the man asking him along, though. Even more surprising was that he was seriously considering it. Jason still hadn't showed, which meant that Harvey was starting to lose his patience. The kid had flaked on him once before, and while he apparently had had good reason, it still made Harvey suspicious.

Jones was pretty persuasive, though, since he actually managed to make what probably amounted to a pile of rocks sound intriguing. "If you're willing to wait two more minutes for him to show up, then I'll go with you," he decided. Rushing off at the first sign of another option seemed unnecessary, so it really depended on how restless Jones was.

[its_the_mileage]

Privately, Indy decided Dent's friend might not be all that bright if he was picking fights with his roommate. It was a good idea in his book to stay on the best terms possible with anyone who was around while you were sleeping. "So picking fights is a hobby of his? I'd've thought we all had enough things trying to kill us around here without adding anything else to the list," he commented dryly. Maybe the man was trying to build up some kind of reputation, but that didn't seem like a very good way to become known as a tough guy. Known as a dead guy, maybe.

That response was more positive than he'd expected, and if he hadn't been entirely serious in his request (and Indy wasn't quite sure himself), he got serious about it now. He'd rather get going as soon as possible, but the walk had left them plenty of time when he'd last been out there; he figured he could spare two minutes. Not that he had a watch, Indy remembered belatedly. Did anyone here?

"Sure," he agreed, leaning against the wall and folding his arms to wait.

[unheroed]

"I couldn't agree with you more," Harvey said with an annoyed sigh -- which was directed at the absent Jason, rather than at Jones. He figured the man could work that out on his own. Though his words weren't exactly truthful, seeing how Harvey was still in the business of hunting down a certain someone. Batman had been evasive so far, but when he thought about it, that was no real surprise. Leave it to the vigilante to be able to blend into the shadows even without his costume.

Jones didn't need to know about any of that, though, and Harvey did still think that Jason's indiscriminate fighting instinct was foolhardy at best and idiotic at worst.

Luckily enough, the archaeologist had come along right in time to offer a back-up plan, and Harvey would wait long enough to be satisfied that Jason wasn't going to show. He also leaned against the wall, glancing around yet again before looking to Jones. "So how'd you find these ruins in the first place?"

[its_the_mileage]

"Pure chance, actually," Indy admitted, though it didn't make much of a story. "My roommate and I were out in the woods trying to find anything that could help us out there--somewhere to hide; a town, maybe. We hadn't heard about Doyleton yet.

"After a while we just lucked into it. Small town; I'd date it to the 1920s or so. As I said, it's just ruins now, must've been abandoned for quite a while. Maybe even in the 20s, or not long after." He couldn't be sure of that, of course, but the old clothes and the apparent lack of more modern repairs supported that theory. "But there's a whole list of things that are wrong with it."

He'd accepted it as dumb luck at the time, but suddenly Indy thought about the odds of that being the case. He and Pierson had picked a direction almost at random, heading off vaguely from the road, and walked in what they'd hoped was a straight line. They hadn't been following any discernable path, either. With all that fog, they might've missed the town entirely if they'd come from thirty yards to one side of their actual path. Was it possible that--

No, he decided firmly and quickly. A few of his screws must be coming loose in his old age.

[unheroed]

So Jones had just stumbled upon it. At least the guy was willing to admit it, and in the end the means by which he'd found it didn't really matter. It had just been a point of curiosity, seeing how they were just standing around here and waiting for the moment.

Still, if there was someone who should find a ruined town, Jones was the guy. He obviously knew his stuff, if he could make guesses like that and sound so confident about it. Archaeology was a field Harvey had never even dipped into, so he had little choice but to take Jones' word for it. Not that there was any real reason for the man to lie.

It was no surprise that something was off about the town, though, and Harvey gritted his teeth just as an instinctive reaction. "Like what?" he asked. He might as well get the full rundown before he just went along on this adventure, after all. Seeing how Jason still hadn't showed, it was seemed more and more likely that that was what was going to happen.

[its_the_mileage]

Indy stopped and consciously reined himself in--just the facts; he didn't have enough evidence to make too many conjectures, especially not after that stupid logic leap he'd made earlier about the find's authenticity. "I haven't been able to get a good look at the whole site yet, just the church," he began cautiously. "But what I've seen is wrong on two levels. In terms of the archaeology, the damage isn't consistent. The place was heavily fogged over when I was there, and you'd expect there to be damage and rot from the moisture in the air. The buildings show some of it, but there's paper, fabric, cardboard sitting out in the open that practically looks like it's in the same condition it'd be if I left it there yesterday. And some of those pieces looked old." He shook his head. "Could be they were brought there recently, but I haven't come up with a good reason yet why anyone would want to drop off a box of old clothes in an abandoned church. There are a number of details like that that don't seem to make much sense.

"But the big thing about it is that something obviously happened there," he continued. "There's been a lot of damage to the buildings, damage that looks man-made. The church is full of skeletons--all over the pews and the floor, but I couldn't pinpoint any obvious causes of death. There's a message in what looks like blood written across one wall: 'YOU WILL BOTH BURN.'"

Indy paused for a moment to let Dent absorb all this information. "There are stories about purges of previous patients; someone suggested that that church might've been the site of one or more of them. I don't know if there's any merit to that theory, but I'd like to take a closer look and see whether there's any evidence connecting the town to Landel or the Institute." He had a hunch--just a hunch, but a strong one--there might be. Two strange places like that in such close proximity didn't feel like a coincidence.

[unheroed]

A church, huh? Harvey probably shouldn't have been that surprised. What better place to have some sort of eerie scene laid out? Still, he made sure to listen to the inconsistencies Jones had managed to work out, holding back the explanations that popped into his head so that he could let the other man finish.

The matter of the items there not being old enough was one thing, but the mention of a whole congregation of skeletons was far more worrisome. Not that Jones was a coroner (he could probably read the age of things, but cause of death had to be trickier), but it was still a bothersome image... And not one Harvey was all that eager to see firsthand. Still, with only the bones left, there were all sorts of options. Poison, for instance.

The message wasn't particularly enlightening, either. Harvey wasn't going to assume it was blood -- there were all sorts of substitutes, that he knew well enough -- but if it was...

Well, it brought up the same sort of question that had plagued him during the zombie night. Where had all of that blood come from? The skeletons? It was possible.

"I'm sure there's a connection," he cut in once Jones was done. "They wouldn't have that out there for us to find if there wasn't." If they could reach it in the time that the night allowed them, then chances were that the Head Doctor wanted them to find those ruins. Still, it seemed to add more pieces to this puzzle, and that was probably a good thing, despite all the questions that were raised by it.

[its_the_mileage]

Indy nodded, gratified that they seemed to be on the same wavelength. "I think there's a connection too. The question is whether we'll like it."

It was almost a rhetorical question, since it didn't take a lot of imagination to figure that they wouldn't. Especially if it looked like Landel was saving some pews in the back for them. But Indy was still hoping there might be another link between the town and Landel or the institute's history, information they could figure out a way to exploit.

That was part of it, anyway. To himself, he could admit that he couldn't compel himself to pass up the opportunity to work on a site like that.

He flicked the light back on and swept it down the corridor. A couple of people were making their ways in both directions, but no one seemed to be looking for Dent. Indy didn't see anyone who looked like they had any fresh shiners or broken noses, either.

"Doesn't look like your friend is coming," he pronounced, looking back at Dent. "Ready to go?"

[unheroed]

Seeing how it was pretty obvious they weren't going to like it, Harvey didn't even bother commenting about it. Being somehow linked to dead bodies in a blood-stained church didn't bode well by any stretch of the word.

Even though he wasn't expecting much, Harvey still looked around when Jones started moving his light up and down the hall. As expected, Jason was nowhere to be found. Either the kid had ditched him because something better had come up, or he was having the same problem he'd had a few nights ago, with night ending for him right as it was just supposed to be starting.

Actually, there was one more option, even if Harvey didn't want to think about it. The brainwashing or those shady experiments might be the answer, too, but it wasn't like he could do anything about that, and so he might as well make the most of his night in the meantime. He'd figure out what had really happened tomorrow.

"Yeah, sure," he said through a grumble, nodding. He motioned for the other man to lead the way, since it wasn't like he knew where they were going. Outside, obviously, but other than that... He was going to have to be the follower on this one.

[its_the_mileage]

Indy had never left the compound this way before, but the map was simple enough to follow. Just dead ahead and around slightly to the southeast once they were out.

Anyway, leading suited him fine. He moved past Dent and kept going to the outside door, then through it and out into the crisp night air.

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