Night 46: North of the Institute

[unheroed]

[From here.]The landing was rough, but not as bad as it could have been. Pressing a hand against the ground to brace himself, Harvey straightened painfully and then searched around for his flashlight and pipe. The former was easier to fine, and once he'd collected that and turned it back on, he used it to run over the ground as he waited for the

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[unheroed]

It was a few seconds after Jones had landed that Harvey found his pipe. Good thing that the forest hadn't somehow absorbed it or something -- that was just the sort of thing he would expect from this place by now. Ridiculous, annoying things that didn't make sense and were only meant to trip them up.

But he had managed to reclaim his weapon, and he could already tell that now wasn't the time to worry about saving battery power. It was darker than should be allowed out here, and if some wild animal was going to creep up on them, he'd like some advance notice if they could manage it.

He and Jones ended up walking side-by-side along the wall, with Harvey close enough to reach out and touch it if he wanted to. Eventually it was going to end, and then -- what, they'd be taking a right?

Glancing over when the other man asked a question, Harvey instinctively kept his voice low when responding. "We had some things we needed to talk over," he said, thinking back to his earlier conversation with Tim Drake. "Other than that, just more exploration. So it isn't like it was a huge loss." Their plans were going to get set back, but Jones didn't need to know all of those gritty details.

[its_the_mileage]

They still had a little way to go along the back wall, which Indy could admit to himself he wasn't sorry about. It felt reassuring to have the constant means of keeping your bearings, so at least you knew you were walking in a straight line. There hadn't been many landmarks to identify in those woods, especially with the fog; once they veered off from the road, he'd be relying mostly on instinct and luck to get them to the site.

Walking on this side of Dent meant that the damaged side of the man's face kept catching Indy's eye, even in the darkness. It was hard to ignore. He wondered again what the hell had happened. And why would Dent take the bandages off at night? What was the point of risking--even courting--infection or contamination in the wounds?

Obviously those weren't questions that seemed likely to lead to a smooth trip, so Indy set them aside in favor of a more innocuous topic. "Anywhere in particular? There seems to be a lot of interest in the basement, but I haven't had a chance to look around down there myself."

He grimaced as he realized how seriously he'd just said that. Sure, the storage rooms of Caswell Hall could be as dangerous as any desert or jungle he'd ever been in, but Indiana Jones would never have thought he'd be talking so earnestly about the perilous prospect of exploring a basement.

[unheroed]

While Harvey had heard some vague mentions of the basement over the bulletin board and wherever else (it was hard to keep track of where he'd heard what), he hadn't put too much effort into finding out about it. All of his attention had been focused on cornering Batman for a while now (why not take advantage of the fact that they were both stuck in a relatively small space?), and so he hadn't put as much effort into finding things out. He'd wanted to deal with the vigilante before getting back to the rest of people he needed to make pay.

"Me neither," he said with a shake of his head. Luckily, it was dark enough that Harvey wasn't catching the glances that Jones kept sending him. It also helped that the vision out of his left eye wasn't particularly good anymore.

"We'd mainly been looking around upstairs," he continued. "We came across a computer last night, but it was password protected." Harvey should have expected as much, but if they'd somehow lucked out and gotten into the records system, that would have been a huge advantage. He wondered if it was worth tracking down someone who might be able to crack the code, but knowing this place, it'd be impossible for even the most skilled hacker to pull off.

Sending Jones a more direct look, Harvey decided to return the question. "Have you been focusing on looking into things out here, then?" It made sense for an archaeologist, but Harvey couldn't imagine scaling the wall to run out into the cold and fog every single night.

[its_the_mileage]

A computer! There was another thread Indy hadn't really been following lately, but if he was right about Dent being from around the present time, it made sense that he'd know how to use a computer. Apparently even high-school students were experts on the things. What were the odds someone could get past that encryption Pierson had talked about?

"Any ideas about how to get past it?" he asked, hoping there weren't six obvious ways he was tipping his hand by not knowing. How many of the staff were likely to have the password? Surely the doctors, but maybe all of them, if computers were so common that anyone could use one. The nurse who brought the dinner? Hmm.

They'd hit the edge of the wall. Indy turned right and kept going along the east side of it.

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