Day 58: Sun Room (Second Shift)
[From here.]The room was mainly empty when Michael reached it, which was fine by him. It wasn't that he didn't feel sympathy for the other patients, but he also didn't know if it would be helpful for him to talk to them. The staff seemed to think that forming bonds amongst themselves would lead to recovery, but to him it felt more like they would
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The bulletin board was Byrne's first objective upon entering the Sun Room, of course. Distractions from negative thoughts, he could use them. Was there any need to write a note to somebody?
...The girl from a few days ago suddenly came to mind. Rei, the young girl he'd met on his first night here. Now was that a blast from the past. Right, he'd accidentally scared her when he'd told her he didn't believe her story about reading his mind or something similar to that; he'd felt guilty for his reaction after realizing the truth about this place some time later. Yeah, he should quickly make amends for that ( ... )
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When he stepped out into the sun room, Gren was feeling more like himself than he had in several days. Even the return of the military uniforms wasn't dragging him down as much as it might have, otherwise. There was the issue of the new pin on his hat--some sort of reward for surviving their experiments, he assumed--but he couldn't see it while it was on his head, so he was putting it out of his mind for now.
Looking around for a place to sit, he spotted a familiar face, and walked over to the couch Byrne was occupying.
"Is it okay if I join you?" He looked a little lost in thought, and Gren didn't want to bother him if he'd rather be left alone.
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"Sure, I don't mind," he replied. He tried to smile as best as he could, but it came out weaker than it usually did. Today just wasn't a good day, with or without Badd's reassurance at breakfast. But he would try to make it seem like a good day to someone trying to interact with him, as difficult as it may be. It wasn't fair to throw his emotions at a stranger.
Maybe Gren could help him figure a few institute-related things out. Or, well, a general light conversation could always help a bad mood, too.
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"Everyone seams a little high-strung today," he commented, watching them go. "I must have missed something." Apparently, it was a bad idea to sleep straight through the night, even if it meant less suffering in his part. He didn't like the idea of missing things that could have this much of an effect on people.
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"Yeah, same here." He scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. "I was...busy last night, so I don't know what was going on with everyone else. Looks like something big may've happened, though." No, he wasn't going to explain why he had been busy unless Gren specifically asked, and even then Byrne wouldn't give full details. His priority was to forget about that as much as possible, thank you very much.
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He arched an eyebrow slightly at that wording. "A good kind of busy, I hope." Because he could think of all too many ways in which one could be 'busy' under thoroughly unpleasant circumstances in this place. And none of them were things he would ever wish on his fellow human beings. "Someone's bound to know. I'll just have to ask around." As nice as it might have been to stay uninformed about what went on at night, it was also dangerous, and he didn't need any more of that in his life.
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As to whether his kind of busy had been 'good', however... Byrne sighed a little. Might as well let Gren know the basics and not go any farther than that. "Let's put 'busy' another way, then: stunning night time treatment by the staff here." He frowned heavily as he said that, not with the hope that Gren would get the message - it was pretty clear what he was implying - but just the thought of what they did... How many other patients had been subjected to 'research' like that? Was this something that happened every night to a 'lucky' patient? The thought was enough to get his blood boiling.
There was no excuse for this kind of inhumane torture, as Badd had repeatedly told him earlier. No excuse.
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It made him angry that other people were still being hauled off like he had been, and it frustrated him that he hadn't been able to do anything about it, yet. "I've been trying to stop that from happening since I heard about it," he admitted. "Never managed to get very far. And then they took me, and I haven't..."
He trailed off, running a hand through his hair. "I haven't been able to make another go of it, since then."
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Gren had known before he'd been taken away by them, even tried to stop it. As much as he'd been in a defeatist mood earlier, Byrne really couldn't blame him for trying. What had happened to him, though? It was probably better not to ask for details...
There were a lot of other questions and concerns raised by Gren's response, too. The first and foremost one on Byrne's mind was obvious. "How many other people have been through it?" And how had he not known before? Damnit...and what had he just been saying about being out of the loop?
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"Total? I don't know." There was himself and Edgar, and presumably someone who Matt had known about, and now Byrne. "Too many, anyway." Even one was too many.
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"Guess it's pointless to ask why they're doing this. Why they even bother." It was exhausting trying to find reasons, and as much as Byrne was dying to know, it almost wasn't worth the effort anymore. Understanding why could open up more opportunities for fighting against the injustice, but at this point he was finding it harder and harder to care why Landel or Aguilar wanted to control and harm all of these people. There wasn't any excuse that justified this.
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Not that he had any idea what those goals were... at least, not in a definite sense. It was all too easy to realize they wanted strong soldiers for some purpose. It was the purpose, and their reasons for using such shoddy methods that remained the true mystery. "It's all people like this ever do."
He tried to swallow down the bitterness. This wasn't the place for it. Byrne deserved sympathy, not his anger.
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