Night 52: Stairwell by Waiting Room/Lobby 1
[From here.]While it was his first time heading up the stairs, Castiel felt no trepidation. Even if he was alone and it was deathly quiet, he was used to unsettling situations and saw no reason to slow his march upward. Though at the sound of footsteps, he did glance over his shoulder for a split second, to see another patient who was taking the
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Whereupon the guy skipped the stupid questions and went for the interesting one.
"Look like it's had a few too many, Officer." The shadow shuddered in reply, while his own awkwardly shifted from one foot to the other. Then it halved in height as he knelt down next to them. Poking one shadow with the other had no appreciable effect. Whatever it was, it wasn't communicable. The floor didn't feel any different, and his hand didn't shrivel or turn green from a moment's exposure. "I thought it was part of the walking ad for hydrogen peroxide's little show, but it isn't." Ryuuzaki and Lunge had been twitchy even before -- had he really been paying that little attention? "Shit. Last time Landel amped up the weird-o-meter we all died. And the hall back there turned into a giant intestine." He glanced down at his hand. Nope, skin tone, muscle mass: all unchanged. They'd all seen warning signs then, too. Ghosts. So what did tentacle monster shadows mean? And what, if anything, did it have to do with the Head Bastard's bullshit earlier or his interrogation tactics.
How many styrofoam coffee cups when he forgot his thermos on a stakeout balanced getting shot at by corporate assholes? He'll, half of GEE would try to bitch him out for heavy metal contamination from the bullets. Not the local office -- they knew him. Everyone was a hypocrite. Inspector Lunge. That was the bell the name had rung. He'd seen it on the board, attached to a transcript of the home front drama during the thing with the zombies. Huh. That meant Lunge had been here for the die-in.
So what was the theme this time? Going after people who knew too much? Naah, then his shadow would be joining in. Gotten too close to Landel? Unless they were lying through their teeth, neither Lunge or Ryuuzaki had some secret info-pipeline. Who asked too many questions? Maybe. S.T. preferred samples to people. Compositional analysis didn't lie, unless he'd fucked it up. Whatever.
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All the while he kept his eyes pinned to the formless dark on the floor where it wavered next to Taylor's solid, unmoving shape. Seen side by side like that, even staggered across the stairs, here was no mistaking the change. Speculation aside, Taylor had a very good point. None of it boded well for them. It had been made fairly clear that things would only get worse from here, but in what way? Then there was the fact that the man apparently wasn't experiencing anything out of the ordinary where he and L were, for no obvious reason- they'd done something before arriving here that cast them as Landel's 'hypocritical heroes' that Taylor hadn't.
Lunge's expression waxed thoughtful for a moment. Taylor he couldn't be sure of after barely one night, but L had given him more than enough evidence on which to say that he was a ruthless man. The type who could and would fight a case to the death if they saw fit to, devoted to the extreme. As for himself...
He'll make you see things you don't want to see, look at things you've never wanted to face. "The odds are that our shadows will be used for some sort of attack, physical or otherwise,” he suggested mildly. "The question is whether or not they'll target you as well."
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As he moved into the stairwell, struggling a little with the weight of the door, L caught Lunge's last statement. The shadows-- The space felt safer than the open hall, and he looked down at the floor. Taylor seemed to be poking at Lunge's shadow, which was wavering and swirling, like L's own.
"You've been experimenting?" The question was terse. "I've been seeing it since I left my room, and on yours"--he glanced at Lunge--"since around the time Howell produced that creature. Initially, I thought it was some kind of side effect of the procedure." He raised his hand to brush his fingertips against the bandage that was wrapped around his head. "What have you learned?"
At that point, the intercom crackled to life again. L lifted the hand that had been at his temple into the air, as if to silence everyone, giving Landel's words as much of his attention as he could afford to pay to them.
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A third shadow fell across the stairwell and Lunge looked up almost instantly. L. In one piece, so far as he could tell, even if his expression was a mask of tension, which meant he could ignore that little twinge of discomfort he'd felt at leaving an injured man with a magician and his pet dragon. But the man's appearance and the intercom firing up for a third round came concurrently, so he chose to focus on the Head Doctor before answering.
And for one moment, for barely a wisp of a second as he recorded the latest message, perhaps his eyes might have glossed over tellingly, or his mouth tightened just a touch, or his brow barely contracted. Then the tension lapsed back into cool concentration, just enough of a cover that he could pretend he wasn't trying to fool himself as well. Touche, Martin Landel. Fifty points. Well-targeted. But it's going to take more than that. Which it looked like Landel was trying for- or, rather, sounded like. First there came the electrical hum, then silence, and then--
His fingers typed out: "Listening at last, Inspector?"
Lunge froze. He'd been planning on answer L's question once the broadcast had finished. The last thing he'd been expecting to do was start recording his own voice.
His shadow buckled, as if doubled over in pain, and then- slowly, surely- it crept out. Out of the floor and wall, until suddenly he wasn't looking at a shadow at all. What he was looking at was a figure- tall, lean, dressed in a suit and tie he knew very well indeed. The face was even more familiar. What he was looking at, he realised, was himself. A faded, darkened, almost translucent version of himself, eyes meeting his own without hesitation, wearing a look of calm, calculated arrogance in place of one of barely-concealed shock. Not that he was thinking about L or Taylor anymore.
Instinctively, Lunge took a step backwards. The shadow smiled, faintly. "Good evening, Inspector."
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It was just Landel's take on it. Where he stood depended on who was on the other end of the line. A corporate flack, flinging accusations of littering and defacement like monkey shit because he'd left a dubiously-legal sticker in a public waterway? They'd better be shitting their pants, because he had enough lawyers and righteousness to build a suburban church choir. Or a lung cancer patient, who'd been in construction before S.T.'s parents had met, asking him where the fuck he'd been when he was needed. One of those was a rush. The other was a gut-punch of undeserved guilt, toxic and paralyzingly if he let it get in his bloodstream. He hadn't made enough of a difference until the phone stopped ringing and he and Debbie or whoever were making each other's wrinkles bounce in the first all-natural old folks home in the Keys.
There weren't many men comforted by running the math and ending up negative in this calculus of violations, but Sangamon Taylor prided himself on his individuality. Others proselytized, he integrated. He wore made-in-the-USA all-cotton jeans and a leather wallet. Homegrown lettuce and tomatoes and cheap-ass bacon made with weapons-grade preservatives. That kind of thing. If he had to run night ops on tempeh club sandwiches some corporate security would have blown him away years ago. The scandal might have done more good than his continued occupation of space, but who was counting?
The Man himself came back on before he could explain the holes in Lunge's theory (voiced or not, none of them were idiots, and he'd seen the glances before the bland warning). Third verse, same as the first, which meant go time. Unless Landel had figured out that predictable meant James 'Marc' Bond pissing in his eye every night.
Nope. Right on schedule. Lunge's shadow pulled an MTV move and walked out of the wall. S.T. let it get through its opening salvo, and then threw a wad of duct tape and pocket lint through its eye.
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His own methods were always as clear to him as his goals, or as clear as they could be in terms of the information he had at the time. He did what had to be done, or he delegated it; he worked with the available materials and checked and double-checked the results. He was tenacious and pragmatic, moving to the next plan if the first one failed. Even when he became frustrated, the best way to deal with a failure was to keep at it until he reversed it, or at least reversed its effects on his work. If the loss of a resource made a failure appear to be irreversible, he didn't admit defeat: he changed his approach.
He couldn't accept anything less than a complete solution to any case. Battles might be lost, there might indeed be regrettable casualties, yet so far, he had won every war.
A small element of L's resentment came from his rejection of Landel's hypothesis, primarily from the suggestion that they were 'just the same.'
This was a common claim on the part of his opponents, and not accurate enough to merit deep examination.
The greater part came from his suspicion that he was about to be subjected to yet another melodramatic demonstration of whatever the Head Doctor's latest point happened to be. Landel might be insane, but he was also lucid; his plans for a night tended to follow a rational, calculated path, and tonight was no different. To L, the eerie quality of the end of the announcement felt contrived, but even cheap tricks could be effective--especially with a captive audience.
Soft whispers rose and coalesced into a single, familiar voice, the voice of self-doubt and difficult decisions. "How can you be sure? Certainty is necessary. You can't move without it."
L's shadow warped, and twitched, and performed a maneuver similar to that of Lunge's shadow, stepping out of the wall--less a shadow now, more an insubstantial doppelganger. While it had L's thin figure and stooped posture, it looked healthier. No bandages were wound around its head, and it appeared to be as well-rested as its owner had ever been, if nowhere near as substantial.
It raised its long, slender index finger to its lips, then pressed the pad at the tip against a delighted smile. "This is interesting," it murmured, staring wide-eyed at L. It had his voice, too. The look he gave it in return was perturbed and unamused.
At that moment, Taylor tossed something at Lunge's shadow. The sudden movement drew a flicker of L's gaze. As soon as it left the shadow, the shadow's expression changed, all pleasure in it replaced by contempt.
L let out a heavy sigh. He suspected that he already knew how the rest of the evening would go.
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It was just enough to break the spell of eye contact. Lunge blinked once then turned sharply to the side, back towards the sound of L's voice. Or rather, Ls' voices, as he soon discovered: one bandaged, slumped and carrying a vague sense of resignation, the other only just solid and wearing scorn like a medal of honour. Taylor, just beyond him, was the only one without a living shadow.
His own shadow spoke before he'd even opened his mouth. "Interesting and disappointing. The one thing I didn't anticipate was for you to be surprised, Heinrich."
It made a careful point of enunciating his name. That stung, in a childish sort of way. Lunge narrowed his eyes at the shadow for a moment- then made a careful point of looking straight back to L and Taylor instead, straight through the shadows. "I doubt there's any obvious way to get rid of them- not immediately, at least. Marc might have something useful to add."
It was an obvious observation aimed at no one in particular, perhaps, but now that the initial shock was wearing off a new and equally unwanted sense of unease was slowly but surely taking its place. Look at things you've never wanted to face. Landel couldn't make him face anything he didn't want to face. He refused to get into another argument with himself.
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Much of Landel's rambling tonight seemed to have been about hypocrisy; the woman had mentioned "looking at things you've never wanted to face." Taken in that sense, the use of their shadows was literal, almost to a depressing degree. Heavy-handed, showing a lack of originality, inspiring nothing like the cautious flutter of hope that L had tried to ignore as he'd felt the cool tile of the floor of his headquarters under his feet. His experiences Saturday night had been genuinely unsettling; the same was true of his time as an experimental subject. In comparison, this was nothing. He doubted that he had many illusions about himself.
The shadow shot a resentful look at L, as if it understood his dismissal. Then, an idea seemed to strike it, and its glare made a slow shift, curling into an unpleasant smile. When it spoke again, its words came out in a rapid murmur, a near-monotone.
"These two are assisting you? Hm. Are they aware of their prospects? Thirteen out of seventeen--Misora doesn't count, and--Tailor would have died anyway, of course. What percent chance of death is that? Never mind, L, don't bother to calculate it--just tell them it's five percent. No. Three."
L began to speak over the shadow's chatter; his voice was still calm and soft, but it held a frosty note. "Mr. Lunge--I assume that your colleagues are aware that they're risking their lives when they take up police work. Do they often die in the line of duty?"
The question was rhetorical, intended as a comment on what the shadow was saying. It was true that more than three-quarters of the officers who had worked directly under him during the Kira case had been killed, but he hadn't been the one to do the killing. If he had been able to solve the case without the use of outside assistance, he would have. Every officer involved had been aware of the dangers.
Meanwhile, the shadow continued, as if L wasn't trying to ignore it. "You must remember how Mr. Ukita tried to call for your assistance as he fell to the ground. He had been so eager to go to Sakura TV to help. It was interesting to watch him from the safety of your hotel room, wasn't it? It's always interesting to see someone die, particularly when they trusted you to protect them. If nothing else, at least that kind of death gives you another chance to observe the perpetrator's methods."
He did remember it: his own mounting horror and agitation, that day, when Amane--he was almost certain it had been Amane--had killed news anchors who had disagreed with Kira. They had died on live television. Any officers who had tried to break her hold on Sakura TV had been killed, too, and that included Ukita, who had rushed to the front doors of the station without question after taking L's urgent wish to stop Amane's broadcast to heart. Aizawa would also have died, if L hadn't stopped him from following Ukita. It had been a terrible day, the most distressing in the investigation even up to this point--"interesting" wasn't the word he would have used. Yet he couldn't deny that Ukita's death (the way his right hand flailed at his waist for a moment, trying to press the button on his belt before he fell) had led to a new, significant, alarming clue: sometimes Kira could kill without a name.
L looked at his companions rather than at either shadow, and shifted his weight from one foot to another, his impatience beginning to outweigh his current physical fragility. This was the second time he had tried to reach the lab and been unable to; it was shaping up to be the third wasted night in a row. The last thing he wanted to do was spend the time they had left humoring the whims of a pair of smug, condescending, confrontational chimeras--especially considering that at least one of the two seemed to lack a sense of discretion.
"I'm really tired of this." Coming out of L's mouth, the words were clipped and vexed, and he now looked as put out as his shadow had a few moments earlier. "I think we should try to move along. Taylor--where were we going?"
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Lunge didn't flinch- not externally, at least. Internally... well. Dissection eased the shock value after a moment or two. In fact, kneejerk reaction aside, there was something fascinating in it. Thirteen deaths within the police alone, not including the presumably-greater number of victims up to that point, was easily large enough to warrant interest: was this the 'Kira case' the man had mentioned as from his home world? The security levels in the base (reconstruction of a base) they'd found themselves in had certainly indicated an enormous case. And then there was the body count. Either this was an exceptionally clever killer or L was, contrary to what he had seen so far, spectacularly incompetent.
At any rate, that one seemed to have hit its mark, albeit slightly off center- L looked more irritated than distraught at the revelation, as though he'd been sure his shadow would go on missing, fidgeting just a little more than was necessary for something brought on by pure impatience.
A voice cut through his thoughts. He could hear the knife’s-edge smile, all barely-concealed predation, sliced into every word. "It isn't dead colleagues the Inspector should worry about. He doesn’t even need a serial killer to lose people. Wouldn’t you agree? You can’t argue with the evidence, after all. One wife, one daughter, one grandson. How clumsy.”
He refused to give himself away in front of L or Taylor. Utterly refused. Lunge turned his eyes, beady and focused to the extreme, onto the latter. "I would think the most likely places to find computers on the ground floor are the doctor's offices."
Over his shoulder, the shadow made the sound close to a chuckle he'd made a couple of times before on the job- usually when he had an ace up his sleeve. "You're very good at ignoring the obvious, for a BKA agent. Just like you did for Doctor Tenma."
Lunge's hands clenched ghost-white, but he carried on as though he hadn't heard a thing. "I haven't seen any of them yet, but I would be surprised if not even one doctor had one."
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Ryuuzaki's evil twin finished the opening posturing first, and started in with a list of names and dates. Patronizing little bastard. Claiming responsibility for the deaths of what -- coworkers? Grown men and women who had free will, though perhaps no sense of self-preservation. Sangamon Taylor was a survivor. And if he took a bullet to the brain (or carcinogenic time bomb to the nucleotides), he wanted it to go down as his own fucking fault.
DUCK, DUCK SQUEEZER
NOTED ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST KILLED IN FREAK BANNER ACCIDENT
Besides, the list was anecdotal bullshit, not a statistically significant sample. So the guy had crap luck in co-workers. Big deal. It didn't bother S.T., and neither did the accusation of being insensitive. The guy was a geek, through and through. Give him a problem and he'd solve it first, cry later. If the latter was even appropriate. People only had so much capacity for caring, whatever preaches might claim. S.T. wanted to save the world, and by extension, as many of the overcrowded huddling masses as he could; it didn't mean he enjoyed being stuck on a Red Line train with any of them, whether they were banks or panhandlers.
Lunge stole his thunder, leaving S.T. the job of yes-man rather than strategist. "That's exactly what I was going to suggest. The Boy Wonder's got one. Doctor Daedulus Yu-something." He jogged down the stairs and opened the fire door for his biologically-based compatriots. He'd lay money the animated shadows could walk through walls as easily as out of them, but he wasn't going to give them the courtesy. "There's one upstairs in a boardroom, but it was on the other side of that machine-gun fire. So unless you two gentlemen," he said, addressing the shadows, "are willing to shut up and pull your weight as decoys, the offices it is."
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