Night 53: M21-M30 Hallway
S.T. was lying in his bed, eyes closed, while his stomach made gurgling noises turning tryptophan into serotonin and melatonin. He wasn't asleep, although passers-by could be excused for making the wrong assumption. Metabolizing and meditating. Not sulking. He felt pretty good for being a lab rat.
The intercom dinged its way to life. S.T. started paying attention, although he didn't move. What would it be this time? Threats? More philosophy?
Landel was looking for someone to blame. Sign number one in identifying things going pear-shaped. He was grabbing in both directions, too. Bitching at Lydia and letting slip a new tidbit.
Could all be another ruse, but what the fuck for? This Codename Eagle guy? If he was the kind of boss to micromanage intercom announcements, Landel was fucked. If he wasn't, Landel had just spent several minutes of his ostensibly precious time blathering. Again. Tomorrow they'd see. Tonight, unless Landel had been so careless as to forget, there were a bunch of poor bastards doing an Eddie van Halen number on their vocal cords upstairs.
Fuck, he hated this gig. He'd take mixing concrete chained to a rock face half-underwater while thunder boomed like the mother of all rock concerts all night over ten minutes dealing with other humans. At least there wasn't any resistance. It was one thing to play hero, it was another thing to get shot for the trouble. He'd done that, too, going after Basco, but he still didn't plan to make a habit of it.
S.T. crouched down and flicked open the hinges on his toolkit. Everything was accounted for, so he popped a couple of aspirin in his mouth as a good-luck token and dry-swallowed them as he headed for the door.
[to here]
The intercom dinged its way to life. S.T. started paying attention, although he didn't move. What would it be this time? Threats? More philosophy?
Landel was looking for someone to blame. Sign number one in identifying things going pear-shaped. He was grabbing in both directions, too. Bitching at Lydia and letting slip a new tidbit.
Could all be another ruse, but what the fuck for? This Codename Eagle guy? If he was the kind of boss to micromanage intercom announcements, Landel was fucked. If he wasn't, Landel had just spent several minutes of his ostensibly precious time blathering. Again. Tomorrow they'd see. Tonight, unless Landel had been so careless as to forget, there were a bunch of poor bastards doing an Eddie van Halen number on their vocal cords upstairs.
Fuck, he hated this gig. He'd take mixing concrete chained to a rock face half-underwater while thunder boomed like the mother of all rock concerts all night over ten minutes dealing with other humans. At least there wasn't any resistance. It was one thing to play hero, it was another thing to get shot for the trouble. He'd done that, too, going after Basco, but he still didn't plan to make a habit of it.
S.T. crouched down and flicked open the hinges on his toolkit. Everything was accounted for, so he popped a couple of aspirin in his mouth as a good-luck token and dry-swallowed them as he headed for the door.
[to here]