Night 53: M11-M20
Badd ate his dinner in silence and his roommate afforded him the same courtesy. Tomorrow he'd give the nurses the slip, recapture Kay, give the nurses the slip, and go hunting for the way out of this dump. He had no idea what part of the country they were in but they'd have to run into reliable authorities eventually if they just kept walking. As for tonight, there was nothing to do but sleep off his confusion and go over escape plans in his head. He stretched out on the bed as the head doctor did his final ramble of the night, closed his eyes as the lights went out--and opened them again as the ramble continued.
Well. It sounded like the esteemed Dr. Landel was losing a bit of his marbles too. Why did criminals always have to gloat when they thought they had no chance of getting away with it? It occasionally made his job easier but it was also endlessly annoying until someone caught them in a lie and then took them away.
(Though after having Gant on the receiving end of a good hard gloat this morning, Badd was starting to see the appeal...it had been a bit immature, but it had felt damn good.)
Then the doors clicked open and a lot of things clicked in Badd's head. Kay had mentioned the doors opening at night, as had Wally, and apparently it hadn't just been a delusion. All that talk on the bulletin board about meeting at some unspecified later and going places in dreams and having bad dreams...it was code. Easily deciphered code but perhaps not for an ignorant nurse or orderly. They were planning after-hours activities under the authorities' noses, and ridiculously complex ones at that.
If 'dreams' was code for 'nighttime', Badd didn't want to find out what they meant by 'released'. He hoped it was code for 'escaped' but from the prisoner reactions he doubted it.
Badd put aside the confusing whys of this newest weirdity and focused on the whats and the whos. The who was Kay and the what was an insane asylum full of wandering loonies and god knows who else. If she was smart she'd stay in her room, but when had Kay ever been smart? She was probably going out to find 'Gummy' or some other imagined friend of hers, or maybe going to steal the truth from some place she wasn't really supposed to be in.
Badd heaved himself out of bed and picked up the flashlight he'd found earlier in his desk drawer. He'd have preferred his gun but you made do with what you had. "I know you'd never forgive me if I let something happen to her, Faraday, but I wish you'd trained her to make my job easier," he muttered. Time to go play hero again.
[ To here.]
Well. It sounded like the esteemed Dr. Landel was losing a bit of his marbles too. Why did criminals always have to gloat when they thought they had no chance of getting away with it? It occasionally made his job easier but it was also endlessly annoying until someone caught them in a lie and then took them away.
(Though after having Gant on the receiving end of a good hard gloat this morning, Badd was starting to see the appeal...it had been a bit immature, but it had felt damn good.)
Then the doors clicked open and a lot of things clicked in Badd's head. Kay had mentioned the doors opening at night, as had Wally, and apparently it hadn't just been a delusion. All that talk on the bulletin board about meeting at some unspecified later and going places in dreams and having bad dreams...it was code. Easily deciphered code but perhaps not for an ignorant nurse or orderly. They were planning after-hours activities under the authorities' noses, and ridiculously complex ones at that.
If 'dreams' was code for 'nighttime', Badd didn't want to find out what they meant by 'released'. He hoped it was code for 'escaped' but from the prisoner reactions he doubted it.
Badd put aside the confusing whys of this newest weirdity and focused on the whats and the whos. The who was Kay and the what was an insane asylum full of wandering loonies and god knows who else. If she was smart she'd stay in her room, but when had Kay ever been smart? She was probably going out to find 'Gummy' or some other imagined friend of hers, or maybe going to steal the truth from some place she wasn't really supposed to be in.
Badd heaved himself out of bed and picked up the flashlight he'd found earlier in his desk drawer. He'd have preferred his gun but you made do with what you had. "I know you'd never forgive me if I let something happen to her, Faraday, but I wish you'd trained her to make my job easier," he muttered. Time to go play hero again.
[ To here.]