Day 50: Patient Library (4th Shift)

[mitase]

Sakura had mentioned a library on the second floor, but there was one on the first floor, wasn't there? It was for the patients, sure, but that didn't mean there wouldn't be any useful books. Not that he knew for certain, since every time Hanatarou had been in there previously it hadn't been to pay a lot of attention to the reading material

Comments

[ninelivesonce]

"Thank you." It was good to talk about it. "They don't give us time to mourn." Wait, that sounded like she was implying...oops. "I don't mean Cissnei -- I think she's all right. Really. But people have died, and the medtechs insist they're better." Death was never better. At least not for the person doing the dying. Sometimes for everyone else; Taura would have no quibbles about ripping whatever piece she could grab of Martin Landel out of whatever was left. But she wouldn't argue that the experience would be deeply unpleasant for him.

"Like they've forgotten we're human." Depersonalization, not sadistic cruelty. She looked down at her hands, big and ungraceful and omnipresent reminder of how literal that first word was. "I guess all we can hope is that they forget what humans can do, too," she said, one lip twitching back towards optimism. Action, direct or indirect, was still Taura's favorite consolation. The assignments should be going up soon. One more shot, Homura. Then, plan B. Whatever that is. It probably started with finding out how they'd done whatever it was, and ended with someone finding out firsthand that he was an amateur with some fancy toys up compared with most of Jackson's Whole.

[zack_fair]

Just hearing someone else give their opinion about whether or not Cissnei was okay did make Zack feel a bit better. They couldn't know for sure, and it still meant that she was gone without them even being able to say a proper goodbye (they hadn't had that the first time, either, had they?), but still. She could be okay.

At least he had been able to see her the day before, at Doyleton. Thinking back on that conversation made it seem so trivial, but it wasn't like either of them had had any way of knowing. Still, it felt like one more regret added onto a long list.

As Taura kept speaking, though, Zack zeroed in on something. Glancing up from his hands, which he'd ended up glancing down at, he eyed her firmly. "You've seen people die here? How many?" He had assumed that people died here, but getting more details about it would be worthwhile, provided that Taura was willing to talk about it.

She had a point, though. Whatever the staff here said or did, the patients always had the freedom to never give in and to always fight back. He sent a smirk back at her despite the somber subject matter.

[ninelivesonce]

The change of subject, even to something no happier, was a relief. Zack clearly knew Cissnei better than Taura had had the chance to; trying to offer consolation felt like juggling newts, and Taura wasn't the specialist in that department.

"I wasn't there...but the person I heard it from had no reason to lie. Armand St. Just died the night of the last trip to town." She couldn't leave it at that, though. It wasn't fair to leave all of it at their captor's door, even if fair wasn't even in their vocabulary. "Another patient went berzerk. And he wasn't a fighter." In spirit, always. In training, not at all.

"He wasn't the only one, but it's gotten harder to let people know over the bulletin." Her voice was matter-of-fact through the whole thing; training meant empathy was best shown after the mission was over, although this whole place never stopped blurring the lines between on-duty and off.

[zack_fair]

The name that she gave was one that Zack didn't recognize in the slightest, which made sense since it had happened a good few days before he'd even woken up here. That didn't make the news any more sobering, even if he was pretty used to death by this point. Had the man been taken down by those zombies, then? It wasn't a pretty thought, but he knew better than to ask for more details. It sounded like Taura hadn't been a witness to it, anyway.

The second piece of news caused him to cross his arms over his chest, curiosity grabbed. He didn't want to be so clinical about this, but it came with being a soldier, and Taura seemed to understand that, if her tone was any indication. "Berserk? How so?" he asked with a frown. And how had it led to his death? It was probably another gruesome story, though. While he wouldn't shy away from the details, it was up to the woman to tell him or not.

She had a point about the bulletin, though. Zack had gotten his notes taken down a couple of times, and it just seemed wrong that the staff would keep them from letting each other know when someone had died.

[ninelivesonce]

Long blonde hair and silver eyes, that had been all TK-622 had said.  He hadn't asked for revenge, or even implied he was going to do it personally.  He'd just sounded resigned to the fact.  Taura had taken it to imply that death wasn't unusual -- with all the hazards here, it would be resoundingly strange if it weren't.

"I'm not entirely sure.  TK was pretty upset, and I didn't ask.  He'd know.  TK-622 -- he and Armand were good friends."  Taura wasn't sure why it mattered; if the woman had just gotten so engaged in killing the walking corpses that she'd missed seeing who was in front of her, or if he was asking something different.  Killing rages happened, especially among the untrained.  What else could have turned one patient on another when they had no history -- or at least none TK-622 had known about?  Unless... "I don't think she was brainwashed, if that's what you're asking."  The brainwashed patient-prisoners seemed to guard, not attack, anyway.  Which made sense: why go to the trouble of transporting all of them here only to slaughter them.  It made poor business sense, if nothing else.    

[zack_fair]

So it wasn't something that really needed to be clarified, then. Taura didn't seem to think so, anyway. If that was how it was, then he wasn't going to get pushy. Someone had gone berserk while not being brainwashed, and someone else had died as result. That seemed to be the bare bones of it, and Zack would leave it at that. He knew of the state of going berserk as it worked in spell form, but he doubted that anyone around here had a materia like that. The one they'd found last night had seemed pretty special, after all, and that was a simple Thunder spell.

Besides, people didn't usually go berserk enough to kill people in his experience. He wasn't sure what had happened here, but the fact that one of the deaths that Taura knew about had been caused by another patient was worrisome. What if the head doctor was really just trying to pit them all against each other?

"All right," he responded at a slight delay, nodding as he pulled his hands off the table and set them in his lap with a sigh. The news wasn't good, and Cissnei most certainly seemed to be gone, but he'd still learned a lot here. "Thanks for hearing me out. I'm glad someone saw what happened to her, so I wasn't left wondering."