Night 56: M21-M30 Hallway

[human_sponge]

Dinner had seemed to pass by too quickly, while night had come on quietly, with just the click of the door opening. Nonetheless, Peter had managed to get his new duffel bag packed with all of the medicine, syringes, and medical supplies that he might need without it being too heavy to manage. He still had to carry his shovel in his other hand,

Comments

M30

[toxicspiderman]

No message. That was different. Aguilar wasn't as big on hearing himself talk. That had been clear from the get-go, but he'd still done his little song and dance about goals, or stuck one of his underlings on the job. Still, it was time to unpack his crap from the boxes. That was Aguilar's style. Making someone pack all this stuff up every day, just to get unpacked at night. S.T. was surprised they didn't make the patients do it themselves, along with mandatory bed-making and the rest of that pseudomilitary Boy Scout bullshit

Re: M30

[unheroed]

[From here.]M30. Right at the very beginning of the hall, just like his own room. That made things easy, although the door wasn't even ajar and he could only see the barest bits of light coming through from underneath it

Re: M30

[its_the_mileage]

[from here]

Indy knocked and entered a minute later to find Taylor and Dent already there, gathered around an upturned flashlight, a meager offering of lousy food and--most importantly--six beers. He regretted not having stopped by the pantry to grab some better food (obviously a bottle of wine, the usual party offering, was out), but as beat up as they were, they'd be safer making a run together later anyway.

"Evening," he greeted the others, joining Dent in the circle of chairs (he eased into his gingerly, trying not to move the bandages at his hip at all; he wasn't too successful). Taylor was playing a Tetris--stolen from the game room, Indy could only assume--and all three of them were evidently pretending they weren't interested in making a dive for the beers. "How's the Tetris going?" he asked Taylor, just for the sake of small talk while they were waiting for the others.

[toxicspiderman]

It was Mario Kart, actually, but Indy hailed from vacuum-tube-and-Nazi territory. The computing power that was squawking out an accent heavier than an North End red-sauce baron who was third generation and faking it could have won the damn war by itself. No banks of British housewives and Navajo braves, just rows of acid-eaten silicon.

S.T. had been winning races left and right with the vicious abandon that came of ten years experience with Boston traffic. The computer opponents cheated like the simpleminded electronic bastards they were, but a well-timed barrage fixed that.

Playing video games during a party was more fun with a big screen, so he flicked the off switch and slid forward on the bed. "Not bad. I'll have a leg up on everyone in," he made a show of checking the back of the machine, though he couldn't actually see the date embossed next to Patent Pending and Made in Japan. "Thirteen years. Assuming no one has shot me by then

[unheroed]

Tetris. Right. What other sort of game would they offer here

[vsyourface]

[From here]

"Spider-kid, Spider-kid - does whatever a spider did..." Scott sung quietly to himself as he caught the tail-end of whatever Harvey had said last. Clicking off his flashlight and stuffing it in his pocket, he made his way over to the sweet, sweet sounds of the Game Boy.

"Oh dude, you're kicking so many asses. Nice," Scott commented over S.T.'s shoulder, dropping his bat on the bed and setting the sugary cereal with the other comestibles. "I have not played this version since I was a kid. The nostalgia - it burns."

[its_the_mileage]

Indy wasn't sure what Vicodin was, but he was fairly confident he didn't want to snort it. "Er, no thanks," he said politely, following suit in grabbing and opening a beer. He took a long swig and nodded at Pilgrim as he entered. If fewer than six of them showed up, what happened to the extra beer, he wondered idly. "Where'd you get these, out of curiosity?"

He was itching both to drink the rest of the beer and--more importantly--to keep looking at the Raiders of the Lost Ark book peeking over the edge of his jacket pocket, but Indy forced himself to hold back on both in favor of talking with the others. "You manage to keep yourself away from that kid?" he asked Pilgrim with a raised eyebrow. Yeah, he'd told himself he'd stay out of it, but the only ones Skywalker might be in danger of being mauled by were probably Pilgrim and Spider-kid.

[toxicspiderman]

He flashed Scott a grin and gave Indy an answer. "Grocery stores. No blue laws in Hell." Technically those were only the laws that shut liquor stores on Sundays, and not the arcane mess that meant every time you hopped state borders a different kind of store could sell beer

[unheroed]

All right. Jones had grabbed a beer. That meant that Harvey was more than allowed to do so himself. He glanced up when Scott walked in and had to hold back a sigh. It wasn't that he didn't like Scott, but it did break up the pattern of men-in-their-thirties that they had going. And Scott was still a kid, but he was a kid who was legally old enough to grab one of those bottles without getting any flak for it. Which meant less for him

[toxicspiderman]

S.T. spoke the same time Harvey did.  "Bullshit, man.  Fucking bullshit."  D.C. wasn't here to try to defend Marc's honor, so Sangamon could rip through his rant uninterrupted.  "Always knew that voice of the rebellion crap was too good to be true."

He took a sip to wash the taste of corporate spin-job out of his mouth.  It stank like plug-in air freshener over explosive diarrhea. Just a Jello mold and a crocheted toilet seat cover short of a Honeymooners sketch

[unheroed]

And suddenly, Sangamon showed an uglier side. While Harvey couldn't really judge someone for being negative, it was the "fight the man" tone to what the man was saying that made him sound like an idiot. Maybe it was because Harvey had, for so long, been one of those government workers who tried to fix things the right way, and he still hadn't quite accepted that it hadn't done a thing. But it rubbed him the wrong way.

More than that, Taylor was simplifying things. He assumed that just because the radio kid had let Landel use his equipment, that now meant the two were best of friends. There were way too many factors to consider. It was possible that Marc was trying to find the perfect moment to wedge a knife in between Landel's ribs -- or, as was more likely, he didn't have a choice because Landel was untouchable, even nowThat was a worrying thought

[toxicspiderman]

It was hard to read Harvey's face, given that half of it was missing. S.T. had spent enough time knee-deep in decaying fish and raw sewage that it didn't really bother him, but it threw tinfoil in the conversational radar. Language was redundant enough to stand up to accents, valley girls, and phone lines patched back together with electrical tape, but body language took a little more doing

[unheroed]

As far as Harvey could tell, Jones and Scott were looking through some book. Jones had probably bought it at the store in town, but Harvey was wondering what was so interesting about it and he had to fight the urge not to crane his neck to get a proper look at the cover. He might not have minded the private conversation if it hadn't been going on when there were two other people in the room

[toxicspiderman]

The intelligence of small-town losers was the battleground S.T. fought on, more often than not. At least on the East coast, downtowns still had Brahmins and socialites who hadn't all fled to the suburbs, and while they pretended that if they just ignored hard enough, Chinatown would pack it's bags and move back to the hundreds of countries it called home.  That had worked so well for the Indians, but that was how people were.  So companies dumped on the fringes, or in the little towns with one streetlight and two diners

[unheroed]

As much as Harvey wanted to argue back, he had to admit that Sangamon had a point. While a chemist wasn't likely to be useful in most areas, Harvey had been a goddamn attorney. He was one of the people who should have really been able to make waves here, and yet that hadn't been the case at all. None of the other prosecutors that seemed to be scattered through the patients had, either. If anything, it was the doctors and nurses who were probably the most useful

[toxicspiderman]

Harvey thought he was tilting at windmills. Sometimes he damn well knew he was tilting at windmills, so that was O.K.

A piece of Indy and Scott's conversation drifted over, and he had to cough to get the beer out of his sinuses. Being an arrogant asshole got you more dates in movies than in real life, but not everyone could be Harrison Ford.

"Healing at warp speed. Like normal. I dislocated a kneecap. By all rights it should still be as big around as my head and twice as sensitive." Believe it or not, people called him too sensitive almost as often as insensitive. The ones that did the latter tended to know him better, though