Day 58: Cafeteria

[gald_digger]

Anise woke up feeling lucky to be alive. She still felt a bit waterlogged, even though her skin, hair, and clothes were completely dry. During last night's adventures, she'd swallowed a lot of water, and it still felt heavy and disgusting in her stomach. Her arms and legs were tired from treading water. Lying still in her bed, she still kind of

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[tasteoftruth]

The first thing Badd did upon opening his eyes was to check the color of the walls. Normal boring Landel's Institute paint, not the sickly cream yellow of Cece Yew's hotel room, and not streaked with blood from the hooves of a monstrous sheep. At least he wasn't hallucinating again.

Byrne.Badd was out of bed long before the guard came, pounding at the door. "Where is he?" he shouted. "I took the damn pills, where is he

[tasteoftruth]

Badd refolded the photo and tucked it away. He didn't mention the contents of the letter, no point depressing his friend further when he was just starting to pull a smile. "Want to bet that both of them line up? My letter mentioned...I think they might have been referring to you and Kay in some way. It's like they've got this elaborate story built up about who we're 'supposed to be' and they're keeping to the party line for everyone." The why, he still hadn't figured out, but he had reached the point of not caring. The whole thing was a massive sadistic experiment and all Badd needed to know how to do was how to stop it.

He wasn't ashamed of having yelled at Javert earlier. Javert deserved it for wasting his time trying to deduce a method to the madness when all they really needed to deduce was where they were keeping those guns at night.

[corvus_veritas]

The letters matching up made the most sense if these people were really trying to screw with their heads. Byrne thought back to his letter, trying to remember the most important details from it as best as he could. "Hmm... Well, 'Kay' never mentioned you in my letter. But she did seem to hint at some 'elaborate story', saying that I hurt quite a few people, even murdered some." Thinking about it now, the idea was pretty dumb. As if Byrne would murder anyone. That was one moral line he wasn't willing to cross without very good reason, and he really had no excuse as he wasn't an armed law enforcement official like Badd was. If these people wanted him to believe he was some kind of serial killer in denial, then good god they were going to need to try really damn hard to accomplish that

[tasteoftruth]

At least he seemed to be taking the idea well. Badd was used to victims of assault and torment, but he wasn't used to treating them gently...when he wanted to be compassionate, he backed off and let someone more capable handle it. But there was no one else to do it, so all he could do was hold to Byrne's hand and keep him distracted.

"Time and location, and the names out of outside parties.I got the murderer story too. They made it out like I was some cop who went crazy after his wife left him and started falling for his prey, which I assumed was supposed to be you." He threw in a rough chuckle, to accentuate that he found it just as ridiculous. It made for good drama, a real detective noir story with some psychodrama and bizarre homoeroticism thrown in. The boys up in Landel's office must have had fun rewriting his life into such a twisted image.

[corvus_veritas]

Byrne couldn't resist a small laugh at hearing that, either. "Sounds almost like a cheesy drama flick, doesn't it?" Yeah, it was pretty ridiculous. All of it was.

So ridiculous that Byrne lowered his eyes, sighing deeply. The depressed expression from earlier was starting to come back as he asked what was probably the same question on every patient's mind every minute of every day: "What's the point of it all, Tyrell? Why are they trying so hard?"

Why indeed? Byrne had convicted hundreds of criminals in his career. Even the ones who claimed to commit crimes for 'no reason' had some psychological reasoning behind their behavior, something that happened to them that made them snap. Logic dictated that Landel or Aguilar or whoever wouldn't kidnap all these people, stick knives in their hearts and twist them as much as they could, just because 'they felt like it'. It was too large, too expensive, too risky of an operation to perform with so many people involved.

But trying to figure out why was starting to hurt Byrne just as much as

[tasteoftruth]

The brief smile had vanished from Byrne's face again. Badd had never seen Byrne so disheartened, even in the middle of KG-8 (should he tell about the hallucinations? No, no reason to worry him, and as he'd told Javert the effects would pass eventually) "Experiments, I think. Beyond that even the veterans don't know...and at this point I don't particularly care." His voice lowered--not softened, there was only so much you could soften gravel and barbed wire when you were constantly restraining the urge to murder the people around you. "Nothing could excuse what they did to you. All I want to know now is how to destroy them."

Badd made another nudge to try and get Byrne to sit down. He wished he was able to smuggling a lollipop out of his room to give to him, any tiny little thing he could do to make things comfortable and familiar for him.

[corvus_veritas]

This time Byrne would let his friend lead him to a table. It was getting tiresome standing here. Forget about eating, though. He'd be lucky if he could stomach lunch later on. Too much to think about, too much to worry about.

"Open daytime rebellion has proven to do more harm than good," the prosecutor responded after a short pause, "And I doubt it's so easy to find the head of it all if the veterans have been trying for weeks. Their system is clever and too perfectly chaotic at night. Fighting them will be difficult." He looked and sounded disheartened at first, but both his expression and tone hardened as he continued on. "But I bet it's not impossible. Just harder than the Yatagarasu's used to."

The torture session had taken a lot out of Byrne and would likely continue to haunt his mind for a little while. But being here now, reassured by Badd's presence and his will to fight...the possibility of victory didn't seem so impossible anymore.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd gave a firm nod and bit his thumbnail in lieu of a lollipop to nibble upon. There. He'd claimed it, even after they'd tried to tear him down in the worst way possible. General Aguilar had tried to have the Yatagarasu written out of existence completely but they wouldn't go down by a few holograms and fake letters