Day 49: Late Evening

[damned_intercom]

Although the trip was longer than usual on account of the rain and wind, the buses did eventually - and safely - reach Landel's Institute. No strange happenings yet; the patients were escorted off the buses according to the usual protocol and made to go to their rooms and change back into their normal uniforms while the nurses temporarily left them

Comments

[herr_inspektor]

And blunt he was. Dent was in with his questions before Lunge even had a chance to start on his dinner. The fork paused over his plate. Slowly, he turned his eyes onto the man in a flat, impassive stare. "I don't remember the first part clearly- I would have thought that you could tell me that."

That wasn't, of course, what he was asking- the man wasn't blind, and he was also certainly sharp enough to realise that he wouldn't have been taken as a guard. What he was asking was what they had done to him that night- just how they had tortured him, what part of him they had targeted. He didn't have any obvious signs of having been experimented on; Lunge didn't blame him for being curious.

But that didn't mean he was going to find anything out with one question. While he'd decided not to make a secret of his night, that didn't mean he was going to tell every person who asked about it- and that definitely didn't mean he would tell Dent so easily. "Why are you interested, anyway?" he answered, putting his fork down and tilting his head just a little to the side.

[unheroed]

So Lunge did have things that got to him, if his avoidance of the question was anything to judge by. Harvey eyed him for a moment and shrugged. There wasn't much to tell about the side of the story that he'd been witness to. "They came in, sedated you, and took you away. There's not much more to it than that." He knew better than to try and go up against those orderlies, though he was curious about what would have happened if he'd pulled a gun on the burly men. Not that he'd ever take that sort of risk for Lunge's sake, but it was something to keep in mind if they ever came for him.

Even though he was annoyed by Lunge's question, he could understand the logic behind it. The two of them had barely exchanged words in their times as roommates, and the few that they had exchanged had bordered on hostile. Why play the curious roommate now?

There were a few reasons, but Harvey figured he would start with the one that would speak the most to Lunge. "We happen to have a mutual... acquaintance -- Indiana Jones. I had a talk with him back in the town and he was wondering about you. I guess it got me curious." He set his drink down, turning in his chair so that he could keep his good eye on the other patient. "Besides, I think anyone would want to know after what I saw last night."

[herr_inspektor]

In and out. Lunge didn't think there would be much more to it, but it was worth knowing- the more solid an image of the evening he built up, the more certain he was that he would be able to deliver a fully believable account of it once he was out of the Institute. Details were key; they provided the little touches that often decided how true a story was for many people, the stranger the more likely in many cases.

That truth was stranger than fiction was already being proved in this very room: so Dent knew Dr. Jones? Interesting. He hadn't spent much time speaking with the man, but he'd struck him as a solid, intelligent man with an eye for the practical- certainly not the kind of person who would suffer fools gladly. Hearing that he had chosen Dent as an 'acquaintance' was... somewhat surprising, if Lunge was perfectly honest, given how suspicious his roommate had always seemed to him.

Hmm. Maybe it was time to give Dent the benefit of the doubt- a little benefit for a great doubt, yes, but it was a start. One that he planned to take advantage of. "Alright. I'll tell you," he said after a moment, nodding- then giving his roommate a pointed look. "Provided you tell me something in return. Either what it is you're hiding in this room- and I know you're hiding something in here- or what it was that gave you those scars." Anything like that, after all, was bound to have a story behind it. The kind of story that spoke volumes about its protagonist.

[unheroed]

So that was how it was going to be. Harvey stared at the drink which he'd set on his desk for a moment, trying to decide if any of this was worth it. Yes, the information would be helpful, and this was the largest reaction he'd gotten out of Lunge since they'd first been put together as roommates. But was it worth it, to give out information like that just to hear the story?

It was fair, of course. Lunge would be telling him something that had to be personal, after all, and so it made sense that he wasn't going to do so without getting something in return. Harvey knew he could just shut this all down now, just step away and be done with it.

That would have been the easy way out, and yet there was one thing that kept him from that. While he didn't want to give out the details of his injury (it was something he was only willing to speak about in special circumstances, like with Shelby -- or to make a harsh point, like with Maroni), but...

Lunge already knew that he was hiding something, which meant that he might go searching for it at some point. Under the mattress was a good hiding place, but Lunge was an inspector, which meant he'd probably be able to find it if he really put the time into it. This way, Harvey could set it on the table and make a threat all at the same time, and he'd get some useful intel in the process.

Nodding, he got up from his seat and started for the bed. "Fair enough," he said, situating himself to the side of the mattress. He lifted it up and groped around until he felt cold metal, and then slowly pulled the gun out. He held it by the grip, but loosely, with the barrel pointed toward the ground. "I got it last week, from that sheriff's office in Doyleton," he explained, figuring that Lunge could work out the context on his own. "I only bring it with me when I have a need for it, but if you try to take it from me don't think there won't be consequences." It wasn't like he planned to use the gun on Lunge, after all. That might change if he tried to steal from him, though.

[herr_inspektor]

The offer was too good to refuse- that ws precisely how Lunge had planned it. For one thing, he had phrased it as a very careful peace offering (even if it wasn't entirely heartfelt just yet). For another, he'd even given Dent options to choose from, as though he were actually offering the man some sort of freedom or power in the matter. Whatever the answer, he would find out something about both options- if he told him what he was hiding, it implied that the story behind those injuries was just as horrendous as it looked to be. If he told him about the scars, whatever he was hiding was so important that it would be worth searching the room for when he wasn't there.

Dent seemed to settle on the first option with relative ease and went straight for the bed; so it's a difficult story for you. Unsurprising. Facial injuries are the most personal of all- whatever did that to you must have truly hated you, to be willing to warp your identity so thoroughly. You've taken the bandages away now, though. Have you embraced it, then?

As for what he was hiding- there was a flash of black, and then Dent was wielding a sturdy-looking handgun. "I see. I don't blame you for hiding it," he commented, eyeing the gun from across the room. He couldn't tell the caliber, but... "You shouldn't worry. I won't touch it."

Oh, but it was tempting. Very, very tempting. Anyone could use a knife, but against a creature of the size that the minotaur they had encountered in the ruins, what good would that be? But Lunge was also very much aware that the balance between himself and his roommate was tenuous at best, and Dent's threat was only too believable.

It was his turn, now. Lunge nodded, sat back in his chair and took in a quiet, precautionary breath in case of the unlikely event that his voice shook. "I was taken to the second floor and injected with various drugs. It seems the aim was to interfere with my memory."

[unheroed]

It wasn't much of a reaction that he got from Lunge, which was either good or bad. Could he really trust the man? Harvey was pretty good at telling when someone was lying, and he got the feeling that Lunge wasn't, at least not at this moment. He eyed the man for a second or two, trying to pick him apart, but he was already well aware that he didn't know enough about him to do that.

Instead, he went about placing the gun back in its hiding spot before he returned to his desk. The nurses still needed to be kept in the dark, after all, and the gun wasn't something he was going to leave lying around in general. He'd need to start checking to make sure it was there each night, though -- and checking the clip to make sure the ammunition wasn't getting pilfered, either. Lunge seemed truthful, but Harvey wasn't entirely convinced. It was always best to double-check, anyway, and he was a thorough person by nature.

Taking up his drink again, he continued to sip at it as Lunge started in on his own explanation. Unsurprisingly, he gave only the barest of details at first, but Harvey felt that he had full license to keep questioning the man. That wasn't the whole story, after all.

"Your memory, huh," he commented as he eyed the man at his desk. "What makes you so sure? What's changed?" And why would the institute do that, of all things? There had to be a reason.

[herr_inspektor]

The gun went back under the mattress, out of sight but not out of mind. Even taking it for one night was out of the question- Lunge was almost positive Dent would count the rounds left every night, now. Maybe Doyleton wasn't quite as useless as he'd first thought- though finding something of his own there relied almost entirely on their being trapped there again in a week's time, which in turn relied on him even being here then. Progress always seemed to rely on something out of his control, ifs and buts he couldn't wrangle into submission himself. And so they continued to be drip-fed information and ideas, all the while unable to divide fact from fiction, while more questions and possibilities opened up every day.

At least he could focus on making progress here on a smaller scale. Dent, too, seemed happy enough with the smaller victories, and once he'd sat down again the questioning began again. The man had nerve to keep pushing, but that was something he could certainly respect. The question was relevant, at any rate. He laced his fingers together, mostly to give them something to do- it felt intrinsically not to be able to use his hands in conversation for now.

"I have an eidetic memory, to a degree," he explained. "I can record almost everything I see or hear into my memory so that I can remember it at a later date. I've been having difficulty remembering details today, particularly regarding the events of last night, which I'm positive I recorded. I would suppose that the intention was to disrupt my investigation, or throw me off balance" It's working. No. It wasn't. It was and is.

[unheroed]

Eidetic memory. It wasn't exactly common, but Harvey had of course heard of it. It came up from time to time on cases, though usually people were lying about having it. He doubted that was the case with Lunge, though. He was too severe of a person to start making boasts that weren't one-hundred percent true. But that was a handy skill for a detective to have. In fact, that perfect memory was probably why he'd picked the job in the first place.

And now it was being messed with. Well, that was Landel's MO, so Harvey couldn't say he was too shocked. Lunge probably wasn't either, even if it had to be bugging him. Not that the man was going to show that, but Harvey wouldn't have either. "Guess you're going to have to start writing everything down," he said, though he didn't sound particularly sympathetic. There was little point in faking it when Lunge was already well aware that they were far from friends.

They weren't enemies, though, either. Not necessarily. Harvey wasn't too fond of his roommate, but the man's reaction to the gun had changed his opinion of him slightly. "You know, I met another patient here who has short-term memory loss. I think he got it before coming here, but he's got a pretty detailed system for keeping track of things." Lunge's problem didn't seem to be that bad, but it did seem worth mentioning.

This did give Harvey some interesting food for thought, though. The institute liked to find strengths and strip them away, probably as a method of breaking down someone's confidence. It made him wonder about what they would target in him. He'd already taken a pretty heavy blow before even coming here, so what could be done that was any worse than that? And yet he wasn't going to assume that Landel couldn't think of something.