Day 58: Sun Room (Fourth Shift)

[human_sponge]

Peter's lunch meeting with Tear had gone far better than he could have even expected. It was a good thing that he wasn't the sort of person who judged by age, seeing how the girl had proved herself to be very capable despite the fact that she was only a teenager. Not that Peter would ever admit it out loud, but Tear was a lot more mature than his

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[gald_digger]

[from here]

After leaving the showers, the first thing Anise did was check the bulletin board. It looked like there were a few messages for her. Tear had received her little gift bag, which was nice to see. Claude left a message, too... It looked like they weren't going back to the basement after all.

Anise was a little relieved to see that, actually. If she and her friends had to do last night's trials again in their current state, they might not have made it out alive. They had to assume the next trials would be at least equally dangerous, so they couldn't attempt them unless they were all at their very best.

Now Anise didn't know what she was going to do tonight, though. If Claude was taking it easy, he probably wouldn't mind if she kept him company (unless he was still flustered over her earlier note - which would honestly just make it more fun). Although... since Anise wasn't in too bad shape, maybe she could find something productive to do with herself. She didn't have any ideas at the moment, but maybe she'd come up with

[tasteoftruth]

Byrne was going to dock his metaphorical pay for not mentioning the hallucinations earlier, Badd could sense it coming. Of course Badd had every reason to hold back on the less important stressful news, but Byrne wasn't much for priorities. Badd would tag him something on the bulletin and explain in full later. It was a small problem and the stuff had to wear off fairly soon. As long as Badd could walk and swing a paper cutter with some measure of accuracy, the rest of his problems were incidental

[gald_digger]

Anise was about halfway through the first braid when she realized she was being watched. An older man was staring at her. Maybe he was captivated by her beauty? Or else he was just spaced out... He did look kind of tired.

It looked like there were a lot of people in the Sun Room, so maybe there weren't a lot of isolated seats left. Flashing the man a cheerful smile, Anise waved and asked, "Do you want to sit down? There's lots of space over here!" She gestured to a nearby chair, figuring it was only polite to invite him.

[tasteoftruth]

She was so small. Badd couldn't get over how small she was. There didn't seem to be a frown or a hard point on her anywhere. Like a man entranced Badd slid down into the proferred chair, still staring.

If she was here before, he wasn't sure how she'd missed her. There were children here but none of them reminded him quite as much of Kay when she was younger. If Badd had a hard enough time surviving at night there was no way a little girl could do so on her own, and there didn't seem to be anyone here to protect her. After last night, bitter and rage-fueled, he'd decided that nobody here besides Byrne was worth protecting or trusting. Someone like this might have made him slip from his principles.

"What's your name?" Badd asked quietly. He held back the more relevant but far stranger question of 'are you real?'. Maybe his hallucinations had taken a more peaceful turn.

[gald_digger]

No, he was definitely staring at her. It was a little weird, but maybe it was something to be flattered about. It just had to be because of her cuteness!

Her first braid was finished now, and she tied it off with a yellow ribbon before turning her body a little to face the man more directly.

"I'm Anise!" she replied with a bright smile, but she couldn't hide the curiosity in her eyes. Seconds passed, and soon she found she couldn't hold back her desire to know just what he was looking at her for. "Say, you've been watching me pretty closely... Are you interested in me?" A playful grin crossed her face.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd started. "I-I..." The straightforward answer was 'yes'. The answer that wouldn't get him picked up by the authorities in a more sane setting was a different story. He hadn't been thinking about the outside implications of old men staring at little girls...hadn't been thinking about much of anything, really. Her existence had interrupted his day so sharply that he was having trouble getting his noirness back on track.

"Aren't you awfully young to be here, Anise?" he finally managed after a few false started and stutters. "Is someone looking out for you?" There were noble people in this wretched place, but there weren't very many useful noble people.

You had people following Javert, a man who was a few centuries out of date and still considered himself elite enough to hold on to all the weapons and leave Badd out of the information loop. That spoke paragraphs about the judgment of the prisoners.

[gald_digger]

As the man stammered, Anise tilted her head to the side, growing more and more curious about his reaction. Finally, he managed to speak, and it became clear that he was worried about her, mostly because of her age.

"Young?" she echoed, tapping her chin with her finger. "Maybe, but it's not really my choice, is it?" Her smile returned. It was kind of a funny question, even if she understood what he meant.

"Don't worry!" she assured him, brightening. "I have some really strong friends here. And I've been here a pretty long time myself, so I know what to do to stay safe." Not that there was any way to be completely safe, but Anise was good at surviving, at least.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "How long?" Must be some damned strong friends if they could protect her from both the guards and the more malicious of the older inmates. And...he'd been trying to avoid pondering the Institute's motives, too. It just turned his brain in knots and wasted time that could have been better spent figuring out how to destroy them. Still, a little girl? What use was that?

Badd tugged his little notebook out of his coat pocket and scribbled his room number down on the edge of a page while he waited for her answer. Even if Javert was on his bad list at the moment for general incompetence and reckless timetraveling he trusted the man to protect a child.

[gald_digger]

How long? That was a pretty good question. Anise looked down at one of her hands and started counting the weeks on her fingers. The easy way was to think of how many field trips she'd been on, which was... five? Oh, wow. It really was a long time...

"... Almost five weeks now, I think," she answered once she was pretty sure she'd done her math right. "Wow... I didn't think it was that long. Um, how long have you been here?" She guessed he wasn't totally new if he understood that this was a horrible place for a young girl to be... but he probably hadn't been around that long if he could still be shocked to see someone like Anise among the patients. In her long stay, Anise had even met kids smaller and younger than her... but that was a fact best kept to herself, she decided.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd gaped. "Five weeks?" He'd been expecting five days. Her protectors must have been pretty strong, or she actually had that survival instinct that most children her age seemed ot lack. Wow

[gald_digger]

Anise couldn't blame the guy for his reaction. She nodded to confirm that he hadn't misheard, then started to braid the other half of her hair.

She had to stop for a moment to accept the scrap of paper, but when she saw the room number and heard the man's offer of protection, her face lit up with a bright smile. "You mean it? Thank you!" The paper was given another glance, then placed in her pocket so that she wouldn't lose it. "Don't be afraid to ask me for help too, okay? I've picked up a lot of stuff over the weeks! Like information and supplies. - Oh, I have some spare first aid supplies right now, actually. If you want some, you just have to ask!"

And speaking of asking, there was one little question that Anise wanted to ask. "Come to think of it, I don't think I got your name."

[tasteoftruth]

That was cute. A little kid offering him aid. On the other hand, little girls tended to have sharp eyes, big ears, and a tendency to have people ignore their presence.

"Tyrell Badd." It would be 'Detective' six months ago. A policeman, a symbol of protection and safety, someone to look up to. Now he was just as untrustworthy as any civilian. Badd hoped no one less savory tried Badd's technique. "The first aid's nice, but the information would be even more useful." He forced a paternal smile--being nice was hard, especially on a day like this. "You must be a pretty sharp kid to have lived this long. I'm a bit newer...anything you could give me would help."

Especially about the rooms upstairs. Badd had learned valuable information about them last night...he'd just learned it far too late.

[gald_digger]

"Badd? That's a pretty funny name," Anise commented with a small giggle. He really didn't seem like a bad guy to her, especially if he was offering to protect her. But people usually didn't get to choose their names, did they?

"I don't mind sharing! What kind of information are you interested in?" The nice thing about sharing information was that it was free on Anise's end, but it was hard to know where to begin with that kind of stuff. "Like, I could tell you about major stuff that's happened here, or about hard-to-reach places, or where to find things, or what to be careful of. All of that kind of stuff!" She was like a cute little encyclopedia, in a way - except that there were a few things she either wouldn't or couldn't talk about.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd flashed back to that bizarre discussion he'd read on the bulletin board regarding the basement. Supposedly a dangerous place...but you put the most danger in the place you wanted to keep people out of. If Aguilar had guards or monsters down there it was for a reason.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "I've heard a little talk about a downstairs area, or a basement. Do you know anything about that?" A sane builder would put the stairs to one level at the same place as the stairs to another level. A builder wanting to hide something would put the stairs to the more important places somewhere the prisoners couldn't get at.

And yet someone had. Why wouldn't they share that information with the class? Probably the same paranoia that had kept Javert and his friends so quiet.

[gald_digger]

As soon as the basement was mentioned, Anise's smile faded. Of all the things to ask about... Maybe it made sense that lots of people were curious about the basement, but that worried Anise more than anything. She didn't want more people to go and experience what she'd been through... Going through those trials meant dying, or killing a friend, or watching a friend die! She wouldn't wish those things on anyone.

"Y, yeah, I know about it," she replied, her voice quieter and more cautious now. "I can't say a lot about it, but it's really dangerous and... horrible, in a lot of ways." She was being careful not to trigger that mental block that would stop her from relaying the most important details to Badd. It didn't hurt or anything, but it was kind of scary to be stopped mid-sentence by an unknown force, so she wanted to avoid it.

There was a bit of a pause as she hesitated to ask her next question. "Um... you weren't thinking of going there, were you?"

[tasteoftruth]

Couldn't say a lot about it, hm? Was someone threatening her? She'd been so eager to talk a few minutes ago. Aguilar might have been threatening them into silence, an easy trick to pull on a young girl with little ability to defend herself, but on everyone? It only aroused Badd's curiosity further.

He tried not to be overbearing in his demeanor, and to ask questions in a polite and friendly fashion. This wasn't a suspect he was trying to intimidate. "Maybe. Have you been down there? Where are the stairs? And what's in the basement that Aguilar wants to protect so badly?" He seemed happy to let everyone scamper where they pleased during the night. Badd had only rarely found doors locked or barred to him, and one was for an active torture session.