Day 43: Library (4th Shift)

[quickdrawbkiddo]

Beatrix glanced briefly at the bulletin board before she headed into the library. It wasn't as if she had any interests in the book, but there was something about browsing book shelves that gave a person time to think while reducing the odds that someone would bother her

Comments

[icy_demise]

The library really wasn't somewhere SubZero would pick to spend time in on his own, but he'd seen Arlene go into it. They did need to talk, and not over the bulletin board. That was just too open for other people to read for him to be comfortable communicating.

He stepped in, and couldn't immediately see her. It took a few moments of searching for him to find Arlene. They were alone in the library for the moment, at least. "Arlene, we need to talk," Although she probably already knew that much.

[quickdrawbkiddo]

At least the first interruption wasn't one of the unwanted type.

"I imagine so," she replied, turning from the books to face the other assassin. "What do you wish to begin with?"

[icy_demise]

"The basement," That was the simplest place to start. If they were going to stop going after the basement then they needed to figure that out and figure out what to do instead, although from the discussion on the bulletin board it seemed the basement was still a likely choice.

"We're still going down there, aren't we?" SubZero didn't have anything he could think of that would be a better goal.

[quickdrawbkiddo]

"Of course, we are," Beatrix replied. "It has not been confirmed that our target has met his demise. We, more than anyone here, understand how easy it is to misdirect the ignorant through a perceived death."

She leaned back against the shelves. "Even if he is dead, the basement is a key location. Though Landel may be deceased, which I find unlikely, the new power that rises may simply assume Landel's previous duties. At the very least, I do not do things half way. We find what is behind those doors, and kill Landel should we find him or whoever has taken his place."

[bprd_fishman]

The shift change announcement confused and worried Abe Sapien, but he was cheered by the nurse's suggestion that he visit the library. Research always made him happy.

Abe wandered in unescorted and crouched beside the bookcase, running the tips of his long fingers across the spines of the books before him. He didn't probe mentally, not for something so small, but the urge to touch interesting artifacts remained. The selection at his eye level seemed to be mostly fiction, stuck in haphazardly with no regard for alphabetical order or Dewey Decimal.

"Hm." The Illiad, Dante's Divine Comedy, Frankenstein...oh goodness, The Da Vinci Code? Abe practiced a frown. This place might be some monstrous hellhole, but they could at least be discerning in their books. Someone at the Bureau had gotten it for him as a gag gift and he'd politely read it for as long as he could before conveniently losing it. In another country

Free as a bir--er, fish.

[bprd_fishman]

Abe looked up as he heard footsteps. "I'm sorry, am I in your way?" he asked politely, crawling sideways a few inches while staying in his crouch as if he were a particularly verbose monkey. "I was just looking."

It was as good a time as any to test out the extent of his limiations. Abe peered at him, noting what he could physically before he made his attempt. Tall and strong, obviously, pierced ears, no notably nonhuman aspects. He could pass for a BPRD agent quite easily, actually.

[its_the_mileage]

Indy was still reeling when the nurse led him out of the lobby and back into the hall. What he needed now was a chance to think, to process what had just happened and to figure out what the hell he should do next. He asked--and God, that rankled, especially now--to be taken to the patient library, where he found a chair in a quiet corner and sat.

The first thing to do was try to find out what happened to the visitors. Hard to believe that Landel would just send them home, not after going to all the trouble of bringing them through time and brainwashing them. And unless the good doctor wanted to know something about the Grail, he didn't need Dad. Except, maybe, as a means of controlling Indy himself

[vsyourface]

The more Scott considered adventure games like Sam & Max, the more he could see how the kinds of responses he was getting on the bulletin and from NPCs could be so detailed and specific. It felt like he was coming up with questions on his own like he would in normal conversations, but for all he knew, he was just getting really fast at selecting questions from dialogue trees. Each character obviously had a few unique, quirky options available, and each question in turn had a response all lined up for it. That had to be it. Never mind the fact that it really, really strained any semblance of logic or credibility. Scott had always known that he was a pretty awesome guy; it made sense that he would sometimes find new ways in which to be awesome, near-psychic reading and selection abilities included. Not to mention the massive numbers of crossover characters and references struck him as something LucasArts in its prime would do

[its_the_mileage]

Indy wiped the glare off his face and looked up to see a younger fellow, maybe mid-twenties and with an accent which sounded to Indy like it could be Canadian, although one sentence wasn't enough to peg it for sure. A shift to himself around here was about as rare and fleeting as fortune and glory.

But thinking wasn't getting him much of anywhere right now, and the guy seemed to be asking in good faith, so Indy nodded in acknowledgment and uncrossed his arms to show he was willing to talk. "I'm fine," he said. "Just had a visit that didn't go over as well as I'd've liked." This was a long shot, but it was better to look and turn up nothing than let what you were looking for slip by you, so he added, "I don't suppose you know anything about what happens to the visitors when they leave." Assuming they left.

[vsyourface]

Ah, so he'd picked the right option (if that was indeed what he was doing)! "Oh yeah, that I.R.I.S. thing said something about visitors," said Scott, sitting down in the seat opposite and trying not to boggle that he was looking straight at such a famous face. The guy was so realistic-looking, like he was really looking at a live person and not at a rendering on a screen.

Maybe that's because there is no screen? the words from the bulletin prodded at him.

Shut up! You're not the boss of me, Second Peter!"Sorry, man. I just woke up a couple of shifts ago myself. Was just kinda worried to see a guy looking so down and out," he answered after Solo-Jones-Ford-Person asked him his question. He had skimmed over some bulletin posts about visitors, but hadn't been paying too much attention to them in his back-and-forths with Second Peter and Porky and such. The most he could remember was that they were supposed to be people that the patient knew, but not really. Maybe they were evil twin versions of the person's loved ones? "Your visitor

[shamusdoggydog]

Listening to the announcement, Sam decided that his next course of action should be to check out these future doctor people. He followed some of the other patients- no, prisoners, but his nurse stopped him before he could leave the Sun Room

[shamusdoggydog]

Sam dropped the book he was holding on the floor and looked the other man. He seemed upset about something or other. Well that was understandable.

"Oh, I don't know..." said Sam. He thought he'd seen some sort of declaration of love on the bulletin board, unless that was more code. "Besides, I'm not reading them. I'm looking for secret messages. I... don't suppose you've ever found any?"

It was worth a shot.

[blood_and_pocky]

[free, no limits]

Once again, no visitors… And as always, limited options in regards to where he could most comfortably spend his daytime, if there was such a thing as comfort in this sideshow. Aidou was not going outside, for example. That was that. Which left the staff-approved areas in the hospital (short of arguing with his nurse to lengthen his leash, an argument he’d long ago come to accept he wouldn’t win). The changing shift, bringing with it the usual rise in noise and swarming prisoners, was something he wanted to escape once the time came, so vacating his position in the Sun Room meant he needed a new venue

[chainsaw_royal]

It seemed time was divided into orderly "shifts", not unlike what she knew of Hiro's school. A trait of commoners, with so little time that they had to compartmentalize their time beforehand to insure that every little thing got done, rather than simply allotting the necessary time to each activity, however long or short that might turn out to be. Hime did not relish the idea of having her actions dictated, in part or in whole, by clock, especially one that spoke so annoyingly over an intercom with no personality

[blood_and_pocky]

Interrupting his work just to introduce his foot to a person who didn’t know where to step with theirs would’ve been a pain. Lucky for them, they realized beforehand

[chainsaw_royal]

"Of the intercom? I see," she murmured. She had seen some discussion on the bulletin about this I.R.I.S. thing; apparently it was a new phenomenon, though Hime would never know otherwise had no one said so. If no one knew what it was, then taking down notes on its exact words would have high value in deciphering what veiled clues and half-said truths were in its mechanical dialogue. Perhaps once she had affirmed the more basic truths of this place she might look into such matters