Watchmen fic: Last Days of an Unreal City, chapter 6 - Enduring by the Favor of God
Title: Last Days of an Unreal City - Chapter 6 - Enduring by the Favor of God
Characters: Rorschach/Nite Owl II
Rating: PG-13
Word count (this section): 6169
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Alan Moore.
Summary: AU. The Cold War reaches its ultimate conclusion, and Rorschach and Daniel are among the survivors when the East Coast is attacked.
Chapter Index.
===
They remained there for a while, just sitting, abiding each other.
Rorschach tolerated Daniel's physical proximity with the unease of someone who rarely allowed others to come closer than punching range, but didn't dare to move. Daniel was close enough to notice how the other man barely seemed to breathe, and it was only prudence and a sense of self-preservation that stopped him from putting his arms around Rorschach's bony shoulders.
Eventually, Daniel was the first to stand up.
He took a deep breath, sighed, and paced around the confines of the storage room. It was crammed with pallets of cardboard boxes, leaving just enough space to accommodate two grown men, and it was lit by a single bare bulb that bathed everything in a dirty yellow light. Daniel counted his steps and tried to focus, while Rorschach went to examine the room's only exit: it was a solid, metal sliding door, just wide enough to admit a pallet truck. It did not look as if it would open with a kick.
Rorschach pushed against the door, probably to figure out where the lock bolts were. The locking mechanism was not accessible from inside the room.
Daniel turned to watch him. "Trying to escape already?"
"Not necessarily. Just don't like feeling trapped." Rorschach leaned against the door, briefly resting the undamaged skin of his forehead against the cool metal. "Just a storage room. Security can't be that good."
Daniel shook his head. "Assuming we could get out, where would we go? I don't think that fighting our way out through Adrian's surviving personnel is going to go down very well... And Christ, they were armed well enough."
Rorschach straightened his posture and squared his shoulders, making himself look more Rorschach-like, and looked up. "What were those weapons that they shot us with?"
"I think they were stun guns. No. What do you call them? Uh. Tasers."
"Never seen them before."
"Really?" Daniel was surprised, until he recalled that Rorschach's knowledge of firearms was probably limited to the Saturday Night Specials that were so frequently pointed at him. "They've been around for years, although I guess they never caught on with law enforcement. You know, I tried to build something similar once, but it was too bulky and I couldn't get it to penetrate through clothing very well, and I kind of lost interest in developing electroshock weapons after my plans for an electrified water cannon fell through."
"Don't remember that," Rorschach murmured, while still eyeing the door thoughtfully.
"Yeah, well, I think that was during the mid seventies, when...." Daniel made himself stop right there, and quickly changed tack. "Heh. I read an article the other day that partly blamed Nite Owl for the increase of guns in the city during the seventies. The reasoning was that because Nite Owl was using illegal weaponry, a lot of petty criminals felt that they had to do the same in order to... compete, I guess, and it turned in to an arms race."
"Why are you telling me this now?" Rorschach said. He abandoned the door, and went over to inspect the cardboard boxes.
"I don't know," said Daniel. "Just saying."
"That's just stupid," Rorschach replied, gruffly, as he tore one of the boxes open. "Another incidence of media using masks as easy scapegoats because secret identities mean they can't be sued for libel."
"I guess," Daniel half-smiled, then leaned back against the wall. After a moment, he sat back down. The floor was surprisingly comfortable. He yawned. "What's in the boxes?"
Rorschach paused to hold up a bar of something pink that was wrapped in cellophane. "Soap."
Now there's poetic justice for you, Daniel thought. Rorschach, locked in a room with a ton of soap. "Huh. Not a lot you can do with soap. Apart from the obvious."
Rorschach seemed to take this as a challenge. "Can put it in a sock and hit people with it."
Daniel squinted at him.
It occurred to Daniel that soap could prove very valuable over the coming months, if Rorschach was right about the risk of future epidemics. Cleanliness could save lives, and there was going to be a lot of... Well, a lot of decay around. (In some ways, it was lucky that the attack had taken place during a cold November, rather than in the summer. The lack of flies would be a small mercy.) If Daniel had been as cynical as Rorschach, he might have suspected that Veidt Enterprises had stockpiled certain items in order to supply the increased demand that would inevitably arise. Of course, if the government had any sense, then they'd probably impose a price freeze and laws against hoarding, but it would still be impossible to completely discourage a black market. Perhaps Daniel was being a little paranoid - a room full of soap hardly qualified as a 'stockpile' - but it was still enough to make him wonder what else was stored inside the building. Why were the armed guards necessary?
Then Daniel reminded himself that he was thinking about Adrian Veidt, who was easily one of the most altruistic people he had ever met. Daniel could not imagine Adrian as a war profiteer. Adrian could be tacky, but he was never sordid. At least, not in Daniel's opinion.
Daniel did not share his thoughts with Rorschach.
There was a smoke detector on the ceiling, and he saw that Rorschach was eyeing it.
"Found book of matches in desk drawer earlier. Could burn the cardboard boxes and leave the room when people open the door to put the fire out," Rorschach suggested.
"Don't even think about it," Daniel muttered, then wondered what else Rorschach still had on him, if he had matches. They'd both been patted down for weapons before being locked up, although it hadn't been a very thorough search. "...The guards took your grappling gun, right?"
Rorschach simply nodded. "Found it after they cuffed me."
Well, fuck. As if attacking the security guys hadn't been incriminating enough already. It was a stretch, but... If the guards hadn't found the grappling gun, then there was still a chance that they wouldn't have been able to identify Rorschach as, well, Rorschach; without his mask, he could have just been mistaken for a garden-variety New York weirdo in an ancient trenchcoat and a grubby suit.
Daniel propped his head in his hands, and wondered how the hell they'd both become so sloppy. Back when they'd been proper crimefighters, things had been so much more straightforward. Now, however, Daniel wasn't sure whether he was still meant to be Nite Owl, or not - he had Nite Owl's skills and equipment, but he didn't feel as if he was Nite Owl at all. In contrast, Rorschach probably still believed that he was Rorschach, even though being Rorschach was likely to get him in a lot of trouble now that he no longer had the benefit of faceless anonymity. The lines between their civilian and vigilante identities had blurred too much, and the rules of the game had changed.
"But they didn't find your mask though, right?" Daniel asked.
Rorschach shook his head. He paced up and down the perimeter of the room, then gave up and sat on the floor a few steps away from Daniel.
Because there was nothing else to do, Daniel watched him. Rorschach took an Oreo out of his pocket and began to eat it.
Daniel eyed him. "How come you've still got food left over?"
Rorschach warily eyed Daniel back for a second, then split the Oreo into two pieces and offered Daniel the bit without any cream filling on it.
Daniel held up a hand to say that he'd pass, thanks. "How're your burns?"
Rorschach crammed both halves of the Oreo into his mouth. "Same as when you asked me two hours ago," he said, speaking and chewing at the same time. Even before 1975, Rorschach had always had the table manners of someone who had been raised by wolves - which, for all Daniel knew, he might have been. It would have made a hell of an origin story. (Daniel recalled how strange it had been, back in the early sixties, to realize that such a well-dressed, quiet, articulate man still ate with his mouth open, apparently without being aware of it.)
"The swelling under your eyes looks worse," Daniel said.
"Nothing I can do about it."
"Guess not."
They ran out of things to say to each other. The storage room was unheated and bitterly cold. Daniel hoped that they weren't going to be locked in there for the long haul. He twiddled his thumbs, and fought the urge to sleep, although there seemed little point in trying to stay awake.
Rorschach snapped him out of his reverie. "Daniel. Where do you think Doctor Manhattan is?"
It was such a random question - out of the blue, one might say - that Daniel's mouth responded before his brain did. "Er... Seriously, I have no idea."
"Worth thinking about. Why did he leave Earth during such a volatile time? Don't like it. Doubt it was a coincidence."
Daniel shrugged. "It might not even matter. From the way things looked, a nuclear attack still could've happened, even if he was still around. Jon scared the crap out of a lot of people, but he was never the perfect defense. Hell, a lot of people argued that he actually made things worse, because his presence escalated the situation without acting as a sufficient deterrent."
Rorschach regarded him out the corner of his eye. "Very quick to dismiss my concerns, Daniel. Could Miss Juspeczyk have been an influence?"
"What are you implying?"
"Doctor Manhattan was reported AWOL on the nineteenth of October. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre were reported rescuing people from a tenement fire on the twenty-seventh. Wasn't exactly filled with remorse regarding disappearance of her boyfriend, was she?"
Daniel found it slightly amazing how Rorschach could go from 'apologetic' to 'abrasive asshole' in a matter of minutes. "You don't know Laurie," he said. "And you're starting to piss me off again. Think very carefully about what you're going to say next."
Rorschach just stared at him, quietly disdainful, and ultimately decided to say nothing.
Daniel closed his eyes, terminating the conversation. He was not so angry that it kept him from sleep.
===
Daniel awoke with a jolt, then looked around and took a moment to reassure himself that he was all right. The first thing he saw was Rorschach, who was already on his feet, standing between him and the door.
There were voices coming from outside the room. Daniel's body was a few seconds ahead of his brain, and he automatically stood up just in time as the door opened, to find himself facing another handful of guards and... a yuppie.
"Mr. Dreiberg?" the yuppie said, and there was a brief Mexican standoff while both parties weighed each other up. The guards were armed, but they didn't have their weapons drawn. Rorschach still looked uneasy (he wasn't the sort of guy who forgot about being shot with a taser in a hurry, although who would?) and Daniel unthinkingly put his hand on the other man's shoulder.
"Yeah?" said Daniel.
"Er..." The yuppie hesitated, then erred on the side of good manners. He offered his hand - and of course, Daniel stepped forwards to shake it. "David Santos. We've spoken to Mr. Veidt, and he's aware of your situation. He hopes that there will not be further unpleasantness between yourselves and his employees. We've been told to make you comfortable for the time being, and your co-operation is appreciated." Rorschach was pointedly ignored.
"I understand," Daniel said. "Is Adrian in the building?"
"Ah, no - he's not in the state at the moment," said Santos, before affecting a slightly more relaxed demeanor. "As you can imagine, he's extremely busy, but he's told us all about you. C'mon, I'll show you where the decontamination showers are." Santos stepped back, while the guards eyed them expectantly.
Daniel and Rorschach exchanged glances, and Daniel chose to ask the pertinent question before Rorschach did: "Are we, uh... Under armed escort?"
"Just a formality for now, I'm afraid," Santos said, which seemed to be the diplomatic way of saying 'we don't trust either one of you crazy fuckers.' "We'll have some ID cards made for you, and then you'll have a bit more free rein within the building."
Rorschach did not seem to find this terribly reassuring, and gave Daniel a dark look out the corner of his eye.
"What happened earlier was a, uh... a misunderstanding," said Daniel. "We're, er, we're really sorry about that." He wondered just what Adrian had told his people about them, then decided that he would simply go along with things, as a gesture of good faith. Daniel stepped forward to follow Santos - and, after a second, Rorschach grudgingly trailed after him.
"The situation has been explained to Mr. Veidt," Santos replied. "He understands."
They were led back through the maze of corridors. Occasionally, they passed people with clipboards, or odd platoons of men with sharp suits and briefcases. Some openly stared at them, while others displayed polite indifference. Everyone seemed to have an ID card hanging from a lanyard around their neck, and they were all clean and unharmed. It wasn't quite a 'cosy catastrophe', but it still felt like a very white collar apocalypse. Force of habit made Daniel take note of the security cameras that watched the basement's junctions. The constant feeling of surveillance did little to dispel his perception of Adrian as the world's nicest Bond villain.
In many ways, the basement - or bunker, whatever - was a bit like a cross between a hospital and a military base. There were different-colored lines painted on the floor, showing the quickest routes to its various facilities, and Daniel tried to keep track of the names on the signposts: Ventilation Plant 1, Generator 2B, Infirmary, Boardroom 2, and so on. It was all a bit grim and institutional, although fortunately the shower block was not a communal monstrosity as Daniel had expected, but a small, neat, civilised affair with proper shower cubicles, like the changing room of a half-decent gym. Daniel noticed two piles of clean clothes set out on the wooden benches, along with towels, and a pair of plastic bags that - interestingly - had radiation hazard symbols printed on them.
"If you could just put your dirty clothes and shoes in the bags provided, please," said Santos.
There was one of those uncomfortable silences from Rorschach. And then he said, "Why?"
"So we can take them to the laundry," Santos replied, nonplussed. He hesitated, then seemed to find it necessary to add, "You'll get them back."
Daniel wondered if Rorschach's clothes would actually survive the wash. It probably would've been more practical to just burn them and scatter their ashes at a crossroad. He said nothing, and stepped into a cubicle to undress; when he unbuttoned his shirt, he saw that his chest was covered with bruises from the collapse of his basement staircase. It was enough to make him grateful for having a little extra padding around his torso.
He turned the shower on, and winced. It was cold.
"How come you have electricity and washing facilities, then?" he shouted over the noise of the water, to Santos.
"Backup generators, pumps, and filters. We're quite self-sufficient," Santos replied. "In due time, the Veidt Building's office space will be used as housing for the people who've been made homeless by the attack, as will most suitable commercial buildings in the area. We're just better prepared than most." It was almost a boast, almost a sales pitch. Santos' evident pride seemed sordid in light of the city's situation, but Daniel had to admit: Veidt Enterprises knew what they were doing
"You know what's going on?" Daniel asked. "I thought the government would've evacuated places if they'd suspected that an attack was going to happen. We didn't even hear warning sirens."
Santos paused. "New York's sirens were disconnected a while back."
Daniel peered out from behind the shower curtain. "You're shitting me."
Santos' voice was almost apologetic. "They were costing a lot of money to maintain, and half of them didn't work. Civil Defense decided that they just weren't practical. Think about it: if the attack was launched from a submarine off the coast, then the missiles would have taken seconds to get here. And most people wouldn't have heard them anyway because they would have been asleep, and the power went out right before the attack. So, the sirens never would've made a difference anyway."
"Yeah, but... We'd known for days that an attack might happen. Why wasn't there ever an official evacuation effort made beforehand?" Ironically, before the bombs had fallen, Daniel had never really thought about it. The prospect of nuclear war had seemed so insane that it was easier to believe that it would never happen. Now, though, with hindsight... There were a lot of difficult questions to be answered.
"It's complicated," Santos said. "An evacuation order could have been seen as, uh, provocative. The government was always worried that if the Russians saw American cities being evacuated, they might have thought that we were planning to launch a first strike." He saw Daniel's expression, and quickly added, "Hey, don't look at me - I'm just a junior PA. I only know about this stuff because Mr. Veidt made us learn about emergency management."
Daniel tried to think of something to say to that, and failed. He yanked the shower curtain shut again and focused on rinsing the grime off the lenses of his goggles. He half-expected Rorschach to launch into a gloomy tirade about how the government had let them down, but Rorschach remained quiet; all Daniel could hear from the cubicle next door was the sound of running water.
Wow, he isn't giving us an angry rant about bureaucratic incompetence and he's taking a wash, Daniel thought, grimly impressed. It really is the end of the world.
Once he'd managed to scour most of the dirt off his skin (while trying his damnedest to keep his bandage dry, which was nigh-impossible), Daniel preserved his modesty with a towel, sucked in his gut, then stepped out of the shower. The clothes that had been provided seemed to be spare guard uniforms: grey shirts, black sweaters, black pants. Not a scrap of purple in sight, thank God. Daniel was most grateful for the clean socks and underwear provided. (Initially, it seemed strange to him that the bunker's inventory would include clean socks and underwear, but Adrian Veidt was not a man to overlook such things. In the aftermath of a nuclear attack, clean underwear would probably be very important indeed.) He wondered who he'd have to fight in order to obtain some deodorant and a shaving kit.
A pale, muscular arm emerged from behind the curtain of Rorschach's cubicle. "Hand me my clothes."
Daniel did so. He'd had spinster aunts who'd been less prudish than Rorschach was.
Daniel found that his own clothes were a surprisingly good fit, although he would have felt a lot more comfortable if he could have put them on without guards present. The towel around his waist stopped things from getting too awkward, and he opted to make conversation as he got dressed, in order to take his mind off the fact that he was half-naked and surrounded by people with weapons. "So, do you guys know how to locate people's... missing relatives, or whatever?" he asked Santos.
"The Postal Service are in charge of that. There, uh, should have been a broadcast about it," Santos said, and Daniel appreciated that 'should' was probably going to be a word that he'd hear a lot over the coming weeks. It seemed that a lot of things should have been done, but weren't. "There'll be an emergency mail service. Basically, you can fill in a Safety Notification card and send it to the last known address of the person that you want to contact, to let them know that you're okay. If your own mailing address has changed, then you also have to fill in an Emergency Change of Address card and address it to the post office that you'd normally receive your mail from."
"Yeah, so... What if that post office doesn't exist anymore?"
"It doesn't matter - your Change of Address card will just be sent to an Emergency Postal Concentration Center that'll have been set up to process your mail instead. I know it sounds convoluted, but it's just a matter of letting the Postal Service match up people's old addresses with their new ones, so that everyone can get their Safety Notifications to each other."
It sounded like paperwork hell. "So," Daniel said. "Say I'm trying to contact a guy, so I send him my safety card... What happens if he's... I mean, what happens if something has happened to him?"
Santos shrugged. "Then your card will be returned to sender, possibly with the details of where the person's body is stored. Mortuaries are meant to fill out Change of Address cards and send them in on behalf of the deceased."
"Dead letter mail," Rorschach said from inside his cubicle, and Daniel cast a dark look in his direction.
Santos coughed. "The Veidt Building has a supply of the cards already. In the meantime, we've prepared a room for you. Consider yourselves guests of Mr. Veidt. Meals are served according to a rota that's on the wall of the cafeteria. The next one should be in about, say..." He checked his watch, "Two hours from now, but I'd strongly recommend that you don't wander around the basement until we get some ID sorted out for you. We don't want any further misunderstandings."
Rorschach stepped out of the cubicle, freshly scrubbed and smelling of carbolic soap. Daniel wanted to ask him who he was, and what had he done with the real Rorschach; somehow, he managed to look even scruffier in clean clothes, probably because they appeared to be a few sizes too large for him. Rorschach caught Daniel looking at him, and fixed him with a leaden stare.
"Your own clothes and shoes will be given back to you tomorrow," said Santos. "If you'd just follow me again, please, and I'll show you to your quarters." He smiled, and Daniel noted that Santos' benign expression was not shared by the guards that surrounded them.
Daniel attempted to smile back. Rorschach did not.
===
They were given a storage room that was near-as-dammit identical to the one that they had been locked in earlier, although someone had been kind enough to remove some of the pallets and unfold a pair of army cots. Even the blankets looked like military surplus. The bunker did have proper dormitories - Daniel had seen the signage for them - but it was obvious that he and Rorschach were being kept separate from the bunker's general population. Daniel didn't imagine that they would be terribly popular guys.
Once guards had left them in peace, Daniel sat down on one of the cots; Santos had given them some of the aforementioned Change of Address and Safety Notification cards, and Daniel picked one up so that he could complete it. He'd send one to Hollis, one to Laurie - wherever the hell she was - and a few to his relatives and academic contacts. He didn't have a whole lot of faith in the Postal Service (the bastards had lost his mail before, and that was when there hadn't been a war on) but it was worth a shot.
Meanwhile, Rorschach took a paperclip and jammed it in the keyhole of the door so that it couldn't be locked from the outside, then spent a good ten minutes examining the interior of the room. Daniel assumed that he was looking for surveillance equipment, but decided not to ask.
When Rorschach lost interest in the room, he opened the door by a tiny crack, and peered out into the corridor.
"Will you stop sneaking around?" Daniel muttered. "You can't go anywhere. The guy was pretty insistent that we stay put and don't wander around. Which makes me wonder what'd happen to us if we did go exploring around the bunker."
Rorschach closed the door behind him. "Nothing would happen. If we weren't caught."
"Ha. No. I don't think so. I'm serious about wanting to stay on Adrian's good side, you know." Daniel looked up from his Safety Notification card, and offered one to Rorschach. "Here, you want to fill one of these in?"
"No."
"You're sure? There's no-one you'd want to send one to?"
"You already know where I am," Rorschach said, flatly, and Daniel dropped the subject.
Rorschach sat down on the cot opposite and watched Daniel fill in cards for a few minutes, then stood up again and walked back over to the door.
"What are you doing now?" Daniel said.
"Going for a walk."
"You're incorrigible. Didn't I just say, a moment ago, that they wanted us to stay where we are? You're already on their shit list - they're not going to let you just walk around, you know."
Rorschach shrugged. "The question isn't who is going to let me. It's who is going to stop me."
"What?"
"Will be back in five minutes."
"Jesus, Rorschach, you must have seen the cameras everywhere. It's too risky. If they catch you snooping about, it's not going to do us any favors. Don't push your luck. Stay in the room and sit the fuck down," muttered Daniel.
Rorschach paused, as if he was considering whether or not to it was worth the argument - then gave up, and sat back down on the cot. "Don't swear at me," he said.
"Sorry," Daniel replied, without much sincerity, and went back to trying to remember people's addresses. An emergency postal service was all very well, but it wasn't much use if you couldn't even recall your relatives' house numbers.
Barely three minutes passed, and then Rorschach did a few quick stretching exercises before starting a set of push ups. Raw sharks have to keep moving, or they die, Daniel thought, randomly.
"How long do they expect us to stay put?" Rorschach said, as irritable as a child.
Until one of us manages to kill the other, possibly. "I don't know," Daniel replied.
Rorschach paused, to fix him with an accusatory stare. "What about looking for Hollis Mason?"
"He could be anywhere," Daniel said, quietly. "That's why I think I'm going to need Adrian's help. I doubt I'm going to find him by myself."
"Not by yourself," said Rorschach.
Daniel didn't look up at him, but he did smile.
===
Santos returned two hours or so later with their ID cards, which was a massive relief, as it gave them a welcome distraction from bickering, reminiscing about people they'd put behind bars, getting in to repetitive arguments about socialism, and competing to see who could endure the longest awkward silence. (Rorschach always won.) Somehow, Santos managed to drop the cards off and sneak away before they could make him answer any difficult questions regarding their situation. Daniel found that Rorschach's unease was virulently contagious, and as much as he wanted to avoid further trouble, being restricted to one room was beginning to wear on his nerves - and if Daniel was beginning to resent being cooped up, then it was a small wonder that Rorschach hadn't yet chewed through the walls.
Daniel glanced over to Rorschach, and saw that Rorschach was holding his ID card and staring at it as if it was a court summons.
Daniel looked over his shoulder. The card had a name on it:
Kovacs, Walter.
"That really is your name?" Daniel said. He had expected the cards to be simple things, perhaps just printed with a serial number and a barcode. Nothing quite so... Well, nothing as precise as that, holy shit.
Rorschach didn't reply.
Daniel was quietly awed. "I've known you for twenty years, and I didn't even know that," he said - although, granted, that was mainly because he'd respected Rorschach's personal privacy. Apparently, Veidt hadn't seen that as a problem.
Rorschach threw the card at a wall. The amount of anger directed at such a small, innocuous-looking piece of plastic was almost comical, but Daniel wasn't laughing.
Daniel waited for him to calm down somewhat, then asked, "You have any idea how he could have found that out?"
Rorschach shook his head. "Could have known for years. Could have found out when I was young and stupid. Didn't look over my shoulder often enough." His voice was flat and subdued. "Veidt always was stealthy. Quick. Hn. Egyptians believed that knowing an entity's name could grant power over them."
"Well, Adrian's not the sort of guy to sell you out to the cops," said Daniel, stupidly. "Perhaps he's just pissed at you for beating up his guards, and this is his way of saying that you should learn some humility."
Rorschach shot Daniel a look so ugly that it could have caused birth defects in unborn children.
Daniel opened his mouth to speak, then reconsidered, and said nothing. He went to pick the card back up off the floor. He didn't really see the card as a threat, per se, but it was definitely a message. It was a warning. It was a demonstration of power. It was Adrian's way of telling Rorschach to behave.
And, in some ways, it was an insult. Or at least, Rorschach seemed to view it as such.
Daniel took a deep breath, not wishing to choose a side in the matter. Adrian always had been very inquisitive - even when they had first started out, he had shown a freakish aptitude for investigation. It gave Daniel cause to wonder if, back when they had first met in the mid sixties, Adrian had also ran a background check on him. It was not a comforting thought. You were meant to trust your fellow masks, not worry about them spying on you.
Rorschach - Walter Joseph Kovacs - sat down on one of the cots, and Daniel gave him a wide berth for a while.
===
Daniel wasn't quite sure how they managed to pass the rest of the day without anyone getting stabbed again. Rorschach did not take well to captivity. The ID cards gave them some free rein to explore, although Rorschach made a point of keeping a low profile.
"Two days," Rorschach had said, at one point. "Will remain in Veidt's bunker and obey Veidt's rules for two days, maximum. Then I'm going to investigate circumstances surrounding Doctor Manhattan's disappearance."
Daniel hadn't been sure what to say to that. He fully intended to remain in the bunker for as long as need be, and help Veidt Enterprises with the relief effort.
So, while Rorschach skulked and brooded, Daniel walked through the bunker alone, familiarizing himself with its layout. He gathered that the facility housed an impressive communications center, and supposed that this might have been what Veidt was so hell-bent on protecting. Knowledge was power, after all.
The bunker's Operations Room had a good list of all the hospitals that were still functioning, and Daniel knew that he could at least use that information in order to find Hollis; he reasoned that he would check the hospital admissions first, then the temporary homeless shelters that would inevitably spring up in the wake of the destruction. He also supposed that he would have to check the mortuaries, although that might be a waste of time; having asked around the bunker, he'd learned that bodies would be disposed of as quickly as possible, likely without identification.
As the day drew to a close, Daniel sat by himself in the bunker's cafeteria with a mug of weak coffee. There was food available, but he'd lost his appetite.
===
It was cold at night. Of course it was cold at night. They were underground, it was November, and their room was unheated.
It was the sort of cold that seeped in to your bones and stayed there, no matter how close you pulled the blanket around you. Airfield cold, thought Daniel. Kalahari at two in the morning cold. He wondered if they had been given an unheated storage room out of spite. Falling asleep was not impossible, but it was far more difficult than it really needed to be. Both Daniel and Rorschach went to bed with all of their clothes on.
Daniel considered getting up and seeing if he could scrounge a few extra blankets from somewhere, but decided that it wasn't worth the hassle. Instead, after a good ten minutes of miserable fidgeting, he got up, crossed the small room, and went to sleep next to Rorschach.
Rorschach immediately sat bolt upright, but Daniel spoke before he did. "Shut up," he said. "It's cold."
Daniel rolled over and tightened the blanket around his shoulders. Rorschach still sat upright for a minute or so - Daniel had no idea what his expression was like, but imagined that it was one of total indignation - and then lay back down again.
Daniel flinched. Apparently, someone had put a pair of feet-shaped blocks of ice under the blanket.
"Christ, why aren't you wearing socks?" Daniel muttered.
"Already wearing them on my hands," Rorschach replied.
"Why are you wearing socks on your hands?"
"Because they're even colder than my feet. Can always go back to your own bed." Rorschach's tone was as icy as his feet were. "Get a blanket from somewhere."
"I don't know where they're stored. Hell, I don't even know who does know where they're stored."
"Surrounded by cardboard boxes. Could unpack one and use it for insulation."
"Hell, Rorschach, I don't want to mess around with cardboard boxes, I just want to get some sleep."
"So sleep, then."
Daniel dropped the conversation.
Rorschach shifted away from Daniel as much as humanly possible, as if Daniel had some sort of contagious disease - and, out of cruelty, Daniel furtively wriggled over to take up the unoccupied space, until Rorschach was in serious danger of falling out of the cot completely.
Rorschach was perfectly silent, but his shoulders heaved with a long-suffering sigh.
Y'know... Daniel mused, rather belatedly, this is going to be really awkward if one of us wakes up with morning wood. Although it was so cold that Daniel felt as if his cock was trying to nestle into his crotch and hibernate, like a dormouse.
He fell asleep before his train of thought got any stranger.
===
Daniel woke up when Rorschach elbowed him in the ribs.
He sat up. The words "What the hell was that for?" had barely left his mouth when he realised that Rorschach was, in fact, still asleep, and that they weren't in danger, and that everything was okay. In a fit of juvenile pique, Daniel briefly considered elbowing Rorschach right back, but decided that it wouldn't have been worth the broken teeth.
Daniel made a mental note to never sleep in the same bed as Rorschach again. It was like sharing a cot with a sack of crowbars.
And, even in sleep, Rorschach still scowled.
During the night, Rorschach had managed to kick off most of the covers, and Daniel reached over to pull them back up again. As he did so, he saw the scrap of white material that was sticking out of Rorschach's pocket. It took Daniel a second or so to realise what it was.
Slowly, carefully, and against his better judgement, Daniel pulled out the piece of material, and examined it in his hands.
It was only when he saw Rorschach's mask up close that he realised how worn and grubby it was. On inspection, the material was not actually white, but had faded to a dingy grey. It was still slightly damp, as if Rorschach had tried to wash it in the shower earlier. Daniel turned the mask inside-out, and regarded the map of faded bloodstains that had been hidden for the past twenty years or so. The bloodstains formed an asymmetrical, off-color parody of the black ink blots.
Daniel turned the mask right-side-out again. Absently, he ran a thumb over it, yet the ink did not react to the pressure. Daniel squinted, blinked, and tried to get his tired eyes to focus, but still the pattern did not change.
At first, when Daniel tried to rationalize this, he told himself, irrationally, that the mask did not change because Rorschach was not wearing it. But, as his brain began to wake up, a more plausible explanation sprang to mind: the ink was heat-sensitive, and must have reacted somehow to the heat of the flash, freezing like the face of a Hiroshima clock.
Daniel rolled the mask back up, and left it by Rorschach's side.
===
Author's Note: I have to credit The Day After World War III by John Zuckerman; if I get a technical detail right, then it's due to that book. If I get a technical detail wrong, however, then, well... I'm probably just Dan Brown-ing.
Characters: Rorschach/Nite Owl II
Rating: PG-13
Word count (this section): 6169
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Alan Moore.
Summary: AU. The Cold War reaches its ultimate conclusion, and Rorschach and Daniel are among the survivors when the East Coast is attacked.
Chapter Index.
===
They remained there for a while, just sitting, abiding each other.
Rorschach tolerated Daniel's physical proximity with the unease of someone who rarely allowed others to come closer than punching range, but didn't dare to move. Daniel was close enough to notice how the other man barely seemed to breathe, and it was only prudence and a sense of self-preservation that stopped him from putting his arms around Rorschach's bony shoulders.
Eventually, Daniel was the first to stand up.
He took a deep breath, sighed, and paced around the confines of the storage room. It was crammed with pallets of cardboard boxes, leaving just enough space to accommodate two grown men, and it was lit by a single bare bulb that bathed everything in a dirty yellow light. Daniel counted his steps and tried to focus, while Rorschach went to examine the room's only exit: it was a solid, metal sliding door, just wide enough to admit a pallet truck. It did not look as if it would open with a kick.
Rorschach pushed against the door, probably to figure out where the lock bolts were. The locking mechanism was not accessible from inside the room.
Daniel turned to watch him. "Trying to escape already?"
"Not necessarily. Just don't like feeling trapped." Rorschach leaned against the door, briefly resting the undamaged skin of his forehead against the cool metal. "Just a storage room. Security can't be that good."
Daniel shook his head. "Assuming we could get out, where would we go? I don't think that fighting our way out through Adrian's surviving personnel is going to go down very well... And Christ, they were armed well enough."
Rorschach straightened his posture and squared his shoulders, making himself look more Rorschach-like, and looked up. "What were those weapons that they shot us with?"
"I think they were stun guns. No. What do you call them? Uh. Tasers."
"Never seen them before."
"Really?" Daniel was surprised, until he recalled that Rorschach's knowledge of firearms was probably limited to the Saturday Night Specials that were so frequently pointed at him. "They've been around for years, although I guess they never caught on with law enforcement. You know, I tried to build something similar once, but it was too bulky and I couldn't get it to penetrate through clothing very well, and I kind of lost interest in developing electroshock weapons after my plans for an electrified water cannon fell through."
"Don't remember that," Rorschach murmured, while still eyeing the door thoughtfully.
"Yeah, well, I think that was during the mid seventies, when...." Daniel made himself stop right there, and quickly changed tack. "Heh. I read an article the other day that partly blamed Nite Owl for the increase of guns in the city during the seventies. The reasoning was that because Nite Owl was using illegal weaponry, a lot of petty criminals felt that they had to do the same in order to... compete, I guess, and it turned in to an arms race."
"Why are you telling me this now?" Rorschach said. He abandoned the door, and went over to inspect the cardboard boxes.
"I don't know," said Daniel. "Just saying."
"That's just stupid," Rorschach replied, gruffly, as he tore one of the boxes open. "Another incidence of media using masks as easy scapegoats because secret identities mean they can't be sued for libel."
"I guess," Daniel half-smiled, then leaned back against the wall. After a moment, he sat back down. The floor was surprisingly comfortable. He yawned. "What's in the boxes?"
Rorschach paused to hold up a bar of something pink that was wrapped in cellophane. "Soap."
Now there's poetic justice for you, Daniel thought. Rorschach, locked in a room with a ton of soap. "Huh. Not a lot you can do with soap. Apart from the obvious."
Rorschach seemed to take this as a challenge. "Can put it in a sock and hit people with it."
Daniel squinted at him.
It occurred to Daniel that soap could prove very valuable over the coming months, if Rorschach was right about the risk of future epidemics. Cleanliness could save lives, and there was going to be a lot of... Well, a lot of decay around. (In some ways, it was lucky that the attack had taken place during a cold November, rather than in the summer. The lack of flies would be a small mercy.) If Daniel had been as cynical as Rorschach, he might have suspected that Veidt Enterprises had stockpiled certain items in order to supply the increased demand that would inevitably arise. Of course, if the government had any sense, then they'd probably impose a price freeze and laws against hoarding, but it would still be impossible to completely discourage a black market. Perhaps Daniel was being a little paranoid - a room full of soap hardly qualified as a 'stockpile' - but it was still enough to make him wonder what else was stored inside the building. Why were the armed guards necessary?
Then Daniel reminded himself that he was thinking about Adrian Veidt, who was easily one of the most altruistic people he had ever met. Daniel could not imagine Adrian as a war profiteer. Adrian could be tacky, but he was never sordid. At least, not in Daniel's opinion.
Daniel did not share his thoughts with Rorschach.
There was a smoke detector on the ceiling, and he saw that Rorschach was eyeing it.
"Found book of matches in desk drawer earlier. Could burn the cardboard boxes and leave the room when people open the door to put the fire out," Rorschach suggested.
"Don't even think about it," Daniel muttered, then wondered what else Rorschach still had on him, if he had matches. They'd both been patted down for weapons before being locked up, although it hadn't been a very thorough search. "...The guards took your grappling gun, right?"
Rorschach simply nodded. "Found it after they cuffed me."
Well, fuck. As if attacking the security guys hadn't been incriminating enough already. It was a stretch, but... If the guards hadn't found the grappling gun, then there was still a chance that they wouldn't have been able to identify Rorschach as, well, Rorschach; without his mask, he could have just been mistaken for a garden-variety New York weirdo in an ancient trenchcoat and a grubby suit.
Daniel propped his head in his hands, and wondered how the hell they'd both become so sloppy. Back when they'd been proper crimefighters, things had been so much more straightforward. Now, however, Daniel wasn't sure whether he was still meant to be Nite Owl, or not - he had Nite Owl's skills and equipment, but he didn't feel as if he was Nite Owl at all. In contrast, Rorschach probably still believed that he was Rorschach, even though being Rorschach was likely to get him in a lot of trouble now that he no longer had the benefit of faceless anonymity. The lines between their civilian and vigilante identities had blurred too much, and the rules of the game had changed.
"But they didn't find your mask though, right?" Daniel asked.
Rorschach shook his head. He paced up and down the perimeter of the room, then gave up and sat on the floor a few steps away from Daniel.
Because there was nothing else to do, Daniel watched him. Rorschach took an Oreo out of his pocket and began to eat it.
Daniel eyed him. "How come you've still got food left over?"
Rorschach warily eyed Daniel back for a second, then split the Oreo into two pieces and offered Daniel the bit without any cream filling on it.
Daniel held up a hand to say that he'd pass, thanks. "How're your burns?"
Rorschach crammed both halves of the Oreo into his mouth. "Same as when you asked me two hours ago," he said, speaking and chewing at the same time. Even before 1975, Rorschach had always had the table manners of someone who had been raised by wolves - which, for all Daniel knew, he might have been. It would have made a hell of an origin story. (Daniel recalled how strange it had been, back in the early sixties, to realize that such a well-dressed, quiet, articulate man still ate with his mouth open, apparently without being aware of it.)
"The swelling under your eyes looks worse," Daniel said.
"Nothing I can do about it."
"Guess not."
They ran out of things to say to each other. The storage room was unheated and bitterly cold. Daniel hoped that they weren't going to be locked in there for the long haul. He twiddled his thumbs, and fought the urge to sleep, although there seemed little point in trying to stay awake.
Rorschach snapped him out of his reverie. "Daniel. Where do you think Doctor Manhattan is?"
It was such a random question - out of the blue, one might say - that Daniel's mouth responded before his brain did. "Er... Seriously, I have no idea."
"Worth thinking about. Why did he leave Earth during such a volatile time? Don't like it. Doubt it was a coincidence."
Daniel shrugged. "It might not even matter. From the way things looked, a nuclear attack still could've happened, even if he was still around. Jon scared the crap out of a lot of people, but he was never the perfect defense. Hell, a lot of people argued that he actually made things worse, because his presence escalated the situation without acting as a sufficient deterrent."
Rorschach regarded him out the corner of his eye. "Very quick to dismiss my concerns, Daniel. Could Miss Juspeczyk have been an influence?"
"What are you implying?"
"Doctor Manhattan was reported AWOL on the nineteenth of October. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre were reported rescuing people from a tenement fire on the twenty-seventh. Wasn't exactly filled with remorse regarding disappearance of her boyfriend, was she?"
Daniel found it slightly amazing how Rorschach could go from 'apologetic' to 'abrasive asshole' in a matter of minutes. "You don't know Laurie," he said. "And you're starting to piss me off again. Think very carefully about what you're going to say next."
Rorschach just stared at him, quietly disdainful, and ultimately decided to say nothing.
Daniel closed his eyes, terminating the conversation. He was not so angry that it kept him from sleep.
===
Daniel awoke with a jolt, then looked around and took a moment to reassure himself that he was all right. The first thing he saw was Rorschach, who was already on his feet, standing between him and the door.
There were voices coming from outside the room. Daniel's body was a few seconds ahead of his brain, and he automatically stood up just in time as the door opened, to find himself facing another handful of guards and... a yuppie.
"Mr. Dreiberg?" the yuppie said, and there was a brief Mexican standoff while both parties weighed each other up. The guards were armed, but they didn't have their weapons drawn. Rorschach still looked uneasy (he wasn't the sort of guy who forgot about being shot with a taser in a hurry, although who would?) and Daniel unthinkingly put his hand on the other man's shoulder.
"Yeah?" said Daniel.
"Er..." The yuppie hesitated, then erred on the side of good manners. He offered his hand - and of course, Daniel stepped forwards to shake it. "David Santos. We've spoken to Mr. Veidt, and he's aware of your situation. He hopes that there will not be further unpleasantness between yourselves and his employees. We've been told to make you comfortable for the time being, and your co-operation is appreciated." Rorschach was pointedly ignored.
"I understand," Daniel said. "Is Adrian in the building?"
"Ah, no - he's not in the state at the moment," said Santos, before affecting a slightly more relaxed demeanor. "As you can imagine, he's extremely busy, but he's told us all about you. C'mon, I'll show you where the decontamination showers are." Santos stepped back, while the guards eyed them expectantly.
Daniel and Rorschach exchanged glances, and Daniel chose to ask the pertinent question before Rorschach did: "Are we, uh... Under armed escort?"
"Just a formality for now, I'm afraid," Santos said, which seemed to be the diplomatic way of saying 'we don't trust either one of you crazy fuckers.' "We'll have some ID cards made for you, and then you'll have a bit more free rein within the building."
Rorschach did not seem to find this terribly reassuring, and gave Daniel a dark look out the corner of his eye.
"What happened earlier was a, uh... a misunderstanding," said Daniel. "We're, er, we're really sorry about that." He wondered just what Adrian had told his people about them, then decided that he would simply go along with things, as a gesture of good faith. Daniel stepped forward to follow Santos - and, after a second, Rorschach grudgingly trailed after him.
"The situation has been explained to Mr. Veidt," Santos replied. "He understands."
They were led back through the maze of corridors. Occasionally, they passed people with clipboards, or odd platoons of men with sharp suits and briefcases. Some openly stared at them, while others displayed polite indifference. Everyone seemed to have an ID card hanging from a lanyard around their neck, and they were all clean and unharmed. It wasn't quite a 'cosy catastrophe', but it still felt like a very white collar apocalypse. Force of habit made Daniel take note of the security cameras that watched the basement's junctions. The constant feeling of surveillance did little to dispel his perception of Adrian as the world's nicest Bond villain.
In many ways, the basement - or bunker, whatever - was a bit like a cross between a hospital and a military base. There were different-colored lines painted on the floor, showing the quickest routes to its various facilities, and Daniel tried to keep track of the names on the signposts: Ventilation Plant 1, Generator 2B, Infirmary, Boardroom 2, and so on. It was all a bit grim and institutional, although fortunately the shower block was not a communal monstrosity as Daniel had expected, but a small, neat, civilised affair with proper shower cubicles, like the changing room of a half-decent gym. Daniel noticed two piles of clean clothes set out on the wooden benches, along with towels, and a pair of plastic bags that - interestingly - had radiation hazard symbols printed on them.
"If you could just put your dirty clothes and shoes in the bags provided, please," said Santos.
There was one of those uncomfortable silences from Rorschach. And then he said, "Why?"
"So we can take them to the laundry," Santos replied, nonplussed. He hesitated, then seemed to find it necessary to add, "You'll get them back."
Daniel wondered if Rorschach's clothes would actually survive the wash. It probably would've been more practical to just burn them and scatter their ashes at a crossroad. He said nothing, and stepped into a cubicle to undress; when he unbuttoned his shirt, he saw that his chest was covered with bruises from the collapse of his basement staircase. It was enough to make him grateful for having a little extra padding around his torso.
He turned the shower on, and winced. It was cold.
"How come you have electricity and washing facilities, then?" he shouted over the noise of the water, to Santos.
"Backup generators, pumps, and filters. We're quite self-sufficient," Santos replied. "In due time, the Veidt Building's office space will be used as housing for the people who've been made homeless by the attack, as will most suitable commercial buildings in the area. We're just better prepared than most." It was almost a boast, almost a sales pitch. Santos' evident pride seemed sordid in light of the city's situation, but Daniel had to admit: Veidt Enterprises knew what they were doing
"You know what's going on?" Daniel asked. "I thought the government would've evacuated places if they'd suspected that an attack was going to happen. We didn't even hear warning sirens."
Santos paused. "New York's sirens were disconnected a while back."
Daniel peered out from behind the shower curtain. "You're shitting me."
Santos' voice was almost apologetic. "They were costing a lot of money to maintain, and half of them didn't work. Civil Defense decided that they just weren't practical. Think about it: if the attack was launched from a submarine off the coast, then the missiles would have taken seconds to get here. And most people wouldn't have heard them anyway because they would have been asleep, and the power went out right before the attack. So, the sirens never would've made a difference anyway."
"Yeah, but... We'd known for days that an attack might happen. Why wasn't there ever an official evacuation effort made beforehand?" Ironically, before the bombs had fallen, Daniel had never really thought about it. The prospect of nuclear war had seemed so insane that it was easier to believe that it would never happen. Now, though, with hindsight... There were a lot of difficult questions to be answered.
"It's complicated," Santos said. "An evacuation order could have been seen as, uh, provocative. The government was always worried that if the Russians saw American cities being evacuated, they might have thought that we were planning to launch a first strike." He saw Daniel's expression, and quickly added, "Hey, don't look at me - I'm just a junior PA. I only know about this stuff because Mr. Veidt made us learn about emergency management."
Daniel tried to think of something to say to that, and failed. He yanked the shower curtain shut again and focused on rinsing the grime off the lenses of his goggles. He half-expected Rorschach to launch into a gloomy tirade about how the government had let them down, but Rorschach remained quiet; all Daniel could hear from the cubicle next door was the sound of running water.
Wow, he isn't giving us an angry rant about bureaucratic incompetence and he's taking a wash, Daniel thought, grimly impressed. It really is the end of the world.
Once he'd managed to scour most of the dirt off his skin (while trying his damnedest to keep his bandage dry, which was nigh-impossible), Daniel preserved his modesty with a towel, sucked in his gut, then stepped out of the shower. The clothes that had been provided seemed to be spare guard uniforms: grey shirts, black sweaters, black pants. Not a scrap of purple in sight, thank God. Daniel was most grateful for the clean socks and underwear provided. (Initially, it seemed strange to him that the bunker's inventory would include clean socks and underwear, but Adrian Veidt was not a man to overlook such things. In the aftermath of a nuclear attack, clean underwear would probably be very important indeed.) He wondered who he'd have to fight in order to obtain some deodorant and a shaving kit.
A pale, muscular arm emerged from behind the curtain of Rorschach's cubicle. "Hand me my clothes."
Daniel did so. He'd had spinster aunts who'd been less prudish than Rorschach was.
Daniel found that his own clothes were a surprisingly good fit, although he would have felt a lot more comfortable if he could have put them on without guards present. The towel around his waist stopped things from getting too awkward, and he opted to make conversation as he got dressed, in order to take his mind off the fact that he was half-naked and surrounded by people with weapons. "So, do you guys know how to locate people's... missing relatives, or whatever?" he asked Santos.
"The Postal Service are in charge of that. There, uh, should have been a broadcast about it," Santos said, and Daniel appreciated that 'should' was probably going to be a word that he'd hear a lot over the coming weeks. It seemed that a lot of things should have been done, but weren't. "There'll be an emergency mail service. Basically, you can fill in a Safety Notification card and send it to the last known address of the person that you want to contact, to let them know that you're okay. If your own mailing address has changed, then you also have to fill in an Emergency Change of Address card and address it to the post office that you'd normally receive your mail from."
"Yeah, so... What if that post office doesn't exist anymore?"
"It doesn't matter - your Change of Address card will just be sent to an Emergency Postal Concentration Center that'll have been set up to process your mail instead. I know it sounds convoluted, but it's just a matter of letting the Postal Service match up people's old addresses with their new ones, so that everyone can get their Safety Notifications to each other."
It sounded like paperwork hell. "So," Daniel said. "Say I'm trying to contact a guy, so I send him my safety card... What happens if he's... I mean, what happens if something has happened to him?"
Santos shrugged. "Then your card will be returned to sender, possibly with the details of where the person's body is stored. Mortuaries are meant to fill out Change of Address cards and send them in on behalf of the deceased."
"Dead letter mail," Rorschach said from inside his cubicle, and Daniel cast a dark look in his direction.
Santos coughed. "The Veidt Building has a supply of the cards already. In the meantime, we've prepared a room for you. Consider yourselves guests of Mr. Veidt. Meals are served according to a rota that's on the wall of the cafeteria. The next one should be in about, say..." He checked his watch, "Two hours from now, but I'd strongly recommend that you don't wander around the basement until we get some ID sorted out for you. We don't want any further misunderstandings."
Rorschach stepped out of the cubicle, freshly scrubbed and smelling of carbolic soap. Daniel wanted to ask him who he was, and what had he done with the real Rorschach; somehow, he managed to look even scruffier in clean clothes, probably because they appeared to be a few sizes too large for him. Rorschach caught Daniel looking at him, and fixed him with a leaden stare.
"Your own clothes and shoes will be given back to you tomorrow," said Santos. "If you'd just follow me again, please, and I'll show you to your quarters." He smiled, and Daniel noted that Santos' benign expression was not shared by the guards that surrounded them.
Daniel attempted to smile back. Rorschach did not.
===
They were given a storage room that was near-as-dammit identical to the one that they had been locked in earlier, although someone had been kind enough to remove some of the pallets and unfold a pair of army cots. Even the blankets looked like military surplus. The bunker did have proper dormitories - Daniel had seen the signage for them - but it was obvious that he and Rorschach were being kept separate from the bunker's general population. Daniel didn't imagine that they would be terribly popular guys.
Once guards had left them in peace, Daniel sat down on one of the cots; Santos had given them some of the aforementioned Change of Address and Safety Notification cards, and Daniel picked one up so that he could complete it. He'd send one to Hollis, one to Laurie - wherever the hell she was - and a few to his relatives and academic contacts. He didn't have a whole lot of faith in the Postal Service (the bastards had lost his mail before, and that was when there hadn't been a war on) but it was worth a shot.
Meanwhile, Rorschach took a paperclip and jammed it in the keyhole of the door so that it couldn't be locked from the outside, then spent a good ten minutes examining the interior of the room. Daniel assumed that he was looking for surveillance equipment, but decided not to ask.
When Rorschach lost interest in the room, he opened the door by a tiny crack, and peered out into the corridor.
"Will you stop sneaking around?" Daniel muttered. "You can't go anywhere. The guy was pretty insistent that we stay put and don't wander around. Which makes me wonder what'd happen to us if we did go exploring around the bunker."
Rorschach closed the door behind him. "Nothing would happen. If we weren't caught."
"Ha. No. I don't think so. I'm serious about wanting to stay on Adrian's good side, you know." Daniel looked up from his Safety Notification card, and offered one to Rorschach. "Here, you want to fill one of these in?"
"No."
"You're sure? There's no-one you'd want to send one to?"
"You already know where I am," Rorschach said, flatly, and Daniel dropped the subject.
Rorschach sat down on the cot opposite and watched Daniel fill in cards for a few minutes, then stood up again and walked back over to the door.
"What are you doing now?" Daniel said.
"Going for a walk."
"You're incorrigible. Didn't I just say, a moment ago, that they wanted us to stay where we are? You're already on their shit list - they're not going to let you just walk around, you know."
Rorschach shrugged. "The question isn't who is going to let me. It's who is going to stop me."
"What?"
"Will be back in five minutes."
"Jesus, Rorschach, you must have seen the cameras everywhere. It's too risky. If they catch you snooping about, it's not going to do us any favors. Don't push your luck. Stay in the room and sit the fuck down," muttered Daniel.
Rorschach paused, as if he was considering whether or not to it was worth the argument - then gave up, and sat back down on the cot. "Don't swear at me," he said.
"Sorry," Daniel replied, without much sincerity, and went back to trying to remember people's addresses. An emergency postal service was all very well, but it wasn't much use if you couldn't even recall your relatives' house numbers.
Barely three minutes passed, and then Rorschach did a few quick stretching exercises before starting a set of push ups. Raw sharks have to keep moving, or they die, Daniel thought, randomly.
"How long do they expect us to stay put?" Rorschach said, as irritable as a child.
Until one of us manages to kill the other, possibly. "I don't know," Daniel replied.
Rorschach paused, to fix him with an accusatory stare. "What about looking for Hollis Mason?"
"He could be anywhere," Daniel said, quietly. "That's why I think I'm going to need Adrian's help. I doubt I'm going to find him by myself."
"Not by yourself," said Rorschach.
Daniel didn't look up at him, but he did smile.
===
Santos returned two hours or so later with their ID cards, which was a massive relief, as it gave them a welcome distraction from bickering, reminiscing about people they'd put behind bars, getting in to repetitive arguments about socialism, and competing to see who could endure the longest awkward silence. (Rorschach always won.) Somehow, Santos managed to drop the cards off and sneak away before they could make him answer any difficult questions regarding their situation. Daniel found that Rorschach's unease was virulently contagious, and as much as he wanted to avoid further trouble, being restricted to one room was beginning to wear on his nerves - and if Daniel was beginning to resent being cooped up, then it was a small wonder that Rorschach hadn't yet chewed through the walls.
Daniel glanced over to Rorschach, and saw that Rorschach was holding his ID card and staring at it as if it was a court summons.
Daniel looked over his shoulder. The card had a name on it:
Kovacs, Walter.
"That really is your name?" Daniel said. He had expected the cards to be simple things, perhaps just printed with a serial number and a barcode. Nothing quite so... Well, nothing as precise as that, holy shit.
Rorschach didn't reply.
Daniel was quietly awed. "I've known you for twenty years, and I didn't even know that," he said - although, granted, that was mainly because he'd respected Rorschach's personal privacy. Apparently, Veidt hadn't seen that as a problem.
Rorschach threw the card at a wall. The amount of anger directed at such a small, innocuous-looking piece of plastic was almost comical, but Daniel wasn't laughing.
Daniel waited for him to calm down somewhat, then asked, "You have any idea how he could have found that out?"
Rorschach shook his head. "Could have known for years. Could have found out when I was young and stupid. Didn't look over my shoulder often enough." His voice was flat and subdued. "Veidt always was stealthy. Quick. Hn. Egyptians believed that knowing an entity's name could grant power over them."
"Well, Adrian's not the sort of guy to sell you out to the cops," said Daniel, stupidly. "Perhaps he's just pissed at you for beating up his guards, and this is his way of saying that you should learn some humility."
Rorschach shot Daniel a look so ugly that it could have caused birth defects in unborn children.
Daniel opened his mouth to speak, then reconsidered, and said nothing. He went to pick the card back up off the floor. He didn't really see the card as a threat, per se, but it was definitely a message. It was a warning. It was a demonstration of power. It was Adrian's way of telling Rorschach to behave.
And, in some ways, it was an insult. Or at least, Rorschach seemed to view it as such.
Daniel took a deep breath, not wishing to choose a side in the matter. Adrian always had been very inquisitive - even when they had first started out, he had shown a freakish aptitude for investigation. It gave Daniel cause to wonder if, back when they had first met in the mid sixties, Adrian had also ran a background check on him. It was not a comforting thought. You were meant to trust your fellow masks, not worry about them spying on you.
Rorschach - Walter Joseph Kovacs - sat down on one of the cots, and Daniel gave him a wide berth for a while.
===
Daniel wasn't quite sure how they managed to pass the rest of the day without anyone getting stabbed again. Rorschach did not take well to captivity. The ID cards gave them some free rein to explore, although Rorschach made a point of keeping a low profile.
"Two days," Rorschach had said, at one point. "Will remain in Veidt's bunker and obey Veidt's rules for two days, maximum. Then I'm going to investigate circumstances surrounding Doctor Manhattan's disappearance."
Daniel hadn't been sure what to say to that. He fully intended to remain in the bunker for as long as need be, and help Veidt Enterprises with the relief effort.
So, while Rorschach skulked and brooded, Daniel walked through the bunker alone, familiarizing himself with its layout. He gathered that the facility housed an impressive communications center, and supposed that this might have been what Veidt was so hell-bent on protecting. Knowledge was power, after all.
The bunker's Operations Room had a good list of all the hospitals that were still functioning, and Daniel knew that he could at least use that information in order to find Hollis; he reasoned that he would check the hospital admissions first, then the temporary homeless shelters that would inevitably spring up in the wake of the destruction. He also supposed that he would have to check the mortuaries, although that might be a waste of time; having asked around the bunker, he'd learned that bodies would be disposed of as quickly as possible, likely without identification.
As the day drew to a close, Daniel sat by himself in the bunker's cafeteria with a mug of weak coffee. There was food available, but he'd lost his appetite.
===
It was cold at night. Of course it was cold at night. They were underground, it was November, and their room was unheated.
It was the sort of cold that seeped in to your bones and stayed there, no matter how close you pulled the blanket around you. Airfield cold, thought Daniel. Kalahari at two in the morning cold. He wondered if they had been given an unheated storage room out of spite. Falling asleep was not impossible, but it was far more difficult than it really needed to be. Both Daniel and Rorschach went to bed with all of their clothes on.
Daniel considered getting up and seeing if he could scrounge a few extra blankets from somewhere, but decided that it wasn't worth the hassle. Instead, after a good ten minutes of miserable fidgeting, he got up, crossed the small room, and went to sleep next to Rorschach.
Rorschach immediately sat bolt upright, but Daniel spoke before he did. "Shut up," he said. "It's cold."
Daniel rolled over and tightened the blanket around his shoulders. Rorschach still sat upright for a minute or so - Daniel had no idea what his expression was like, but imagined that it was one of total indignation - and then lay back down again.
Daniel flinched. Apparently, someone had put a pair of feet-shaped blocks of ice under the blanket.
"Christ, why aren't you wearing socks?" Daniel muttered.
"Already wearing them on my hands," Rorschach replied.
"Why are you wearing socks on your hands?"
"Because they're even colder than my feet. Can always go back to your own bed." Rorschach's tone was as icy as his feet were. "Get a blanket from somewhere."
"I don't know where they're stored. Hell, I don't even know who does know where they're stored."
"Surrounded by cardboard boxes. Could unpack one and use it for insulation."
"Hell, Rorschach, I don't want to mess around with cardboard boxes, I just want to get some sleep."
"So sleep, then."
Daniel dropped the conversation.
Rorschach shifted away from Daniel as much as humanly possible, as if Daniel had some sort of contagious disease - and, out of cruelty, Daniel furtively wriggled over to take up the unoccupied space, until Rorschach was in serious danger of falling out of the cot completely.
Rorschach was perfectly silent, but his shoulders heaved with a long-suffering sigh.
Y'know... Daniel mused, rather belatedly, this is going to be really awkward if one of us wakes up with morning wood. Although it was so cold that Daniel felt as if his cock was trying to nestle into his crotch and hibernate, like a dormouse.
He fell asleep before his train of thought got any stranger.
===
Daniel woke up when Rorschach elbowed him in the ribs.
He sat up. The words "What the hell was that for?" had barely left his mouth when he realised that Rorschach was, in fact, still asleep, and that they weren't in danger, and that everything was okay. In a fit of juvenile pique, Daniel briefly considered elbowing Rorschach right back, but decided that it wouldn't have been worth the broken teeth.
Daniel made a mental note to never sleep in the same bed as Rorschach again. It was like sharing a cot with a sack of crowbars.
And, even in sleep, Rorschach still scowled.
During the night, Rorschach had managed to kick off most of the covers, and Daniel reached over to pull them back up again. As he did so, he saw the scrap of white material that was sticking out of Rorschach's pocket. It took Daniel a second or so to realise what it was.
Slowly, carefully, and against his better judgement, Daniel pulled out the piece of material, and examined it in his hands.
It was only when he saw Rorschach's mask up close that he realised how worn and grubby it was. On inspection, the material was not actually white, but had faded to a dingy grey. It was still slightly damp, as if Rorschach had tried to wash it in the shower earlier. Daniel turned the mask inside-out, and regarded the map of faded bloodstains that had been hidden for the past twenty years or so. The bloodstains formed an asymmetrical, off-color parody of the black ink blots.
Daniel turned the mask right-side-out again. Absently, he ran a thumb over it, yet the ink did not react to the pressure. Daniel squinted, blinked, and tried to get his tired eyes to focus, but still the pattern did not change.
At first, when Daniel tried to rationalize this, he told himself, irrationally, that the mask did not change because Rorschach was not wearing it. But, as his brain began to wake up, a more plausible explanation sprang to mind: the ink was heat-sensitive, and must have reacted somehow to the heat of the flash, freezing like the face of a Hiroshima clock.
Daniel rolled the mask back up, and left it by Rorschach's side.
===
Author's Note: I have to credit The Day After World War III by John Zuckerman; if I get a technical detail right, then it's due to that book. If I get a technical detail wrong, however, then, well... I'm probably just Dan Brown-ing.