Christine sits alone in her room, flipping through radio channels, listening carefully for even a crackle out of place. Easterman's voice rings through the room, poisoning the air with false promises and lame praise. There is a tension growing in her shoulders, but she persists. She's been at this for hours, since she woke up, and she intends to continue until she is forced into a trial by the guards.
Gunner gently knocks on her door. Christine doesn't respond. He knocks again.
"What?" Christine growls, not moving from her place at her desk.
"You missed the therapy today. The others are worried. I'm worried. Behavior like this is how... I... Nevermind. Have you eaten yet?" Gunner asks gently. He's been a little off the last few days, seeming a bit dazed and out of it, but he is regaining his gentle concern for the well-being of his girls.
"I don't need food right now. I can't miss her again, I can't let this go. I was so close! I could have left here with only a scar on my hand and rage at the cruelty of this place but I was too late. They'd already found her. Stopped us from leaving. And I've been stuck here, feeling their claws rip my brain apart piece by piece as I sit here, rotting, waiting. I knew she was alive. I knew she would be back. I can't miss her this time. I have to be here," Christine rambled, a sob pulling at her chest as she thinks of every piece of herself she's lost while in Sinyala. She stubbornly swallows it down.
She'd been horrified when she'd seen her first trial victim, the union boss if she remembers right. A rough first core trial. Her actual first trial had been a brief MK in the orphanage, no real humans hurt by her own hands. Only the corpses of those who had failed before her. When she saw the Union boss for the first time, she'd been confused. A real human. How... bizarre. And Franco, god he was insufferable but at least she'd had Gunner. He'd been with her from the moment she got to Sinyala, forced her to stop staring at Amelia while she hung there, suffering. He comforted her, telling her that he'd keep her safe and help her survive this. She believed him. She still does.
When they got to that meat packing plant her stomach finally gave up as she realized what she was going to have to do. She vomited everywhere, finding a safe area in the dark to hide and recover while Gunner threw projectiles at the targets and... well... Liquidated the Union. Christine still heard his pleas in her dreams occasionally. It made her sick. Trials with real human victims became more common, and every time she felt her empathy drain. She tried to remind herself that these were people, she should feel disgusted! But it was so difficult when she saw so many of them die over and over. The carnage was constant and unavoidable. It was kill or be killed. She felt ashamed by how numb she was becoming.
"She offers you false hope, Christine. Something to cling to and worship when your place is here, with Murkoff. We're safe here. If we perform well, they let us stay. They feed us, clean us, give us our own spaces to decorate and sleep in! What more could you want?" Gunner offered, placing a hand on Christine's shoulder that she promptly shrugged off, turning to look at Gunner in horror.
"Safe? We fight for our lives every day! Everyone and everything wants us dead in this facility, and you act like this is actually a place of charity!" She spat, disgust dripping from her words.
"You're young, and sheltered. You don't understand how bad the world out there can be. Men are cruel, and dangerous. No where is safe out there. The only safety is this, the sleep room. Nothing can touch us here, nothing can hurt us. We're safe. The trials are just a way to prove we should be here to begin with! We kill those who would dare to try to take this sanctuary from us, and Murkoff rewards our loyalty with safety," Gunner explains, his tone growing more stern and serious. He means every word.
"You're insane Gunner. You've been here too long, and you're fucking insa-"
"DON'T!" Gunner takes a deep breath. "Call me that. I'm not insane. I'm lucid. I am trying to protect you. The world outside these walls is just another trial. It's just as dangerous, just as violent. The only difference is that the people put there will lie to you. They'll tell you youre safe, they'll tell you you're loved, and they'll ship you off to fucking Europe to fend for yourself. They'll watch as you flounder, a scared little child with wide eyes growing duller and duller as your friends are slaughtered in front of you, and then they'll kick you to the streets when you come back changed. We are safe here. If we perform well, we get to stay."
There is a long pause, Christine gets the impression Gunner wasn't making up random details for shock. He'd just told her something about himself she hadn't known. She feels bile prick at the back of her throat at the disgusting ideas he spat at her, but she doesn't even know where to begin arguing with him. Her life outside of the facility was better than inside, but it wasn't peaches and cream. No one took that flier because their life was going well.
"I'll eat. But I'm never going to stop looking, Gunner. You can't make me. I'm getting out of here one day, and it won't be because Murkoff lets me," She says, standing from her desk and pushing past him to make her way to the mess hall.
Sydney was standing in the hallway, clearly listening. Christine eyes her skeptically, but says nothing as the girl begins following her, a file folder of documents clutched to her chest.
"I found these while we were in there. You're gonna wanna see this. Gunner was more wrong about all that than you think, I just haven't had the heart to tell him," She whispers, not wanting Gunner to overhear as he wanders back to his own room, likely a bit too frustrated to eat with Christine at the moment.
"More wrong than insisting that fighting for your life every day is safer than living a normal life?" Christine asks dryly, looking around for a place to sit as she approaches the mess hall counter for food.
"There was a new trial today. A prison farm, Coyle's running it with the help of the victim," Sydney explains in a hushed tone.
"Help? The victims can't help, they're always restrained," Christine says, looking at Sydney with concern etched on her face.
"He's barely a victim until we make him one. I got the impression that before we killed him, he was exactly where he wanted to be. That's what I'm saying. Murkoff is noticing more and more when the people here don't want to leave. When they're obsessed with the primes or crave the pain. That's two trial victims that are obsessed with their respective primes now, and this one isn't even tied up until we have to kill him. Before that, he's happy to just follow Coyle around. They're tracking down those freaks who have the hots for him, and shoving them in there as Wardens. Submissive little freaks gunning to get a taste of Coyle's... ahem... baton," Sydney finishes her explanation with an awkward pause. Christine's eyes widen.
"Wait they... the victim... gross..."
"Mhm. The point is, Murkoff isn't taking kindly to folks that like it here anymore. The second you overstay your welcome, they're gonna make you the next trial victim, and it doesn't even have to be because you did poorly anymore. Gunner's advice is dangerous," Sydney says, eyeing her own tray of food with eyes that didn't look particularly hungry.
"I never cared much about escape before this. I wanted out, sure, but I don't have anything waiting out there for me. I didn't care if I got out or not. If I saw my chance during another escape I'd take it, but Inwas never as devoted as you. I need out now. I can't let these bastards turn Gunner into a trial victim, and they're gonna if we let them. He'll follow us if we all go, he'd never let us fend for ourselves out there without his help. I wanna help you with this, Chris.
"Keep me in the loop, please. Gunner is the only family any of us got left, I can't let them make him the next victim. The execution was brutal, Christine. More personal this time. There weren't any fancy machines, it was just us and a weapon. We had to kill that man with our own hands, no separation. I can't let them do that to Gunner," Sydney finally concludes, her eyes desperate as she looks at Christine.
Sydney liked to pretend she was an emotionless little chaos junky when she was in trials, but Christine was seeing more and more of this genuine side of her these days. The crow must be a good influence, she'd overheard Sydney venting to the creature a few more times since she discovered that the girl had been letting it stay with her.
Good.
"I'll keep you posted, Syd. Thanks for the documents. We're gonna figure this out. We just have to be vigilant, and wait."
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Have you guys heard? Amelia's back oh boy I haven't felt this happy unless I'm on whatever drugs murkoff gives me!
(OOC: I genuinely didn't see this until just now hi hi sorryyyy lol)
Christine grabs the little prompt machine, shoving the others out of the way as she rereads the words.
"She's... She's awake? She's free???"
Sydney grimaces momentarily. "Woof. That's good news and all, but you KNOW this is gonna make Easterman insufferable until they catch her again." Then her lips pull into a grin. "This is gonna be crazy!"
"They aren't GOING to catch her again, Sydney. She'd never make the same mistake twice! I bet she's hiding somewhere crazy safe and hidden, OH! I need to start combing my radio! I heard that last time she'd communicated through the radio! I gotta go!" Christine sprints out of Gunner's room, where the gang had been hanging out when the ask went through. She likely will only be leaving her room for meals and trials for the foreseeable future, the rest of her time will be spent in her room answering asks, fixing her gear, and flipping through various radio frequencies with the hopes of hearing Amelia's voice.
Gunner seems... Nervous. The idea of leaving always left him that way. Sydney and Grace both seem curious, rereading the note more calmly to make sure they understand it, but otherwise they are much more calm. Well. As calm as Sydney gets, she's still grinning wildly.
"This is going to be chaos..." Grace murmurs grimly.
"Yeah. It's gonna be so much fun!" Sydney replies.
Hi this is 3.6k words and I summarized a lot. So. Uhm. Deal with that. If this is incoherent then just... bully me gently? I'm okay with light bullying. TW for very light descriptions of gore and adult situations.
Summary:
The gang experiences the new trial for the first time. The girls bond. Gunner demonstrates healthy coping mechanisms for when you are tasked with killing someone in an unnecessarily direct and cruel way. Sydney does the same. Christine has big feelings. The end. I need to do more with Grace she has a lot of interesting lore I do nothing with and I feel bad. Also peep me desperately trying to stay off my soap box at one point.
The moment the trial gates open, Christine grimaces. “Ew. Immediately ew.”
“Grow up, you've drilled a guy's dick off his body before, a grunt humping a mannequin is the least concerning shit we've seen all week,” Sydney shoots back. Christine supposes she has a point. She still didn't like seeing the man grind himself against the plastic doll.
“Let's just get moving, I don't particularly want to stare at the man either,” Grace speaks up, looking to Gunner to lead. He hums in agreement and begins trudging forward, giving the frisky grunt a wide berth.
“Stay where I can see you all or stay hidden, we don't know what to expect while we're here and I can't risk someone going down while Grace or I are too far away to help,” Gunner says, flipping his x-ray on as he rounded the corner and entered the prison gates.
“Lots of idle grunts nearby and… One of those new things, a, uh, biter? Is that what we're calling them?” Gunner asks as he drops to a crouch and peeks around the edge of the fence to see the armless human before them. This one is male, at least he's pretty sure.
“A what?” Christine asks, peeking past Gunner to see just in time for the biter to jerk its masked head up and lock eyes with her.
The biter growls furiously as it spots Christine, and charges. She yelps, springing back slightly before the chain attached to the biter goes taught, and yanks the poor thing back. It lands flat on its ass with a painful thud, and begins to try to scramble back to its feet again. Sydney giggles a bit at the sight.
“Into that shed. It's dark and the dumb dogs don’t have much of an attention span, it’ll move on pretty quick if it can’t see us.” Sydney points at a doorway leading into a storage area, the interior pitch black. The group all slink over, and as they disappear into the darkness, the biter grunts and thrashes a few more times before going silent.
They find the key they need quickly, Gunner sneaking back to the locked room they'd passed to get the detonator. Everything seems to be going well until Sydney peeks around the corner one more time to look at the biter while Gunner sets the detonator timer.
“I can't believe they're letting us use bombs,” Christine says idly.
“Don't stand too close,” Grace chastises Christine briefly before the snarls of the biter picked up again. It had spotted Sydney staring at it, and was beginning to charge once more.
Sydney smiles at the creature, giggling as it yanks at its chain once more, then twice, and then…
SNAP!
The sound seems to echo through the trial environment, and the biter falls flat on its face, momentarily prone but free. It begins to scramble to its feet quickly.
“Shit! Hurry it up with the bomb!” Christine yelps just as the wall explodes.
Sydney hucks her stun at the biter frantically as it screams and lunges, giving them just enough time to bolt for the now open sewers.
“I didn’t know those chains broke so easy! Damn!” Sydney says with a slight panicked pant as they pass through the sewer.
“I guess we didn't alert the one in the courthouse enough to let it break free. We'll have to be more careful,” Gunner hums, ducking into the next room.
There is a strange energy in the stairwell, and an even stranger set of noises echoing through the area. Coyle is nearby, talking rather quietly to… someone else. Another man? The other voice is deep and masculine, but nasally, like his nose was broken or plugged up. Both of them sounded out of breath, and Christine and Sydney exchanged a look.
Christine and Sydney hadn’t had time to tell the others about the documents Sydney had found or the things she’d learned about the trial from other reagents before a guard had called Christine by name to participate in the therapy this time. Then they’d kinda jumped right in, Gunner was still tired from the last therapy session and wouldn’t be much help for much longer, so they were in a bit of a hurry. As they round the corner and look out at the showers though, everyone in the group quickly learns exactly what kind of trial this was going to be.
Gunner enters first, to make sure the room is clear of threats, and freezes where he stands, silently looking out at the showers as his face turned crimson and his shoulders tightened.
“What, what’s happen-” Grace begins, but as she and the other two girls push into the room, they all freeze.
“You didn’t tell me they were gonna be doin’ that where we could see them…” Christine whispers to Sydney, trying not to stare.
“No one said they’d be all out in the open like that, I assumed there’d be some sort of obstruction!” Sydney hisses back, very much staring.
The trial victim, the Warden, is down below, on his knees for the Sergeant. He gags and whimpers and praises the vile man above him, while Coyle talks dirty to him and urges him to continue. Christine feels a strange pang of anger pull at her gut, watching them like that. She’s heard the Sergeant talk during trials, she knows his beliefs.
“Just another fuckin’ hypocrite,” She growls, slamming her fist down on the button to start the trial.
For a moment, the group isn’t sure the button worked, but then there’s a rumble in the nearby pipes, and the hiss of water spraying out everywhere. The mist it creates is cool to the touch, and the Warden jerks his head in surprise, letting out a whine at the sudden cold shower. In doing so, his jaw must have clenched, because Coyle howls in pain and backhands the man to the ground, throwing himself back and away from the pain and winding back to strike again until he seems to notice the water dripping off of his wide brimmed hat and onto his gloved hand. He turns, furious, towards the group in the office, and immediately clocks what had happened.
“You wanna cut in on this dance?” Coyle screams, turning to hold a hand out to the Warden, who flinches away for a moment before he recognizes the gesture and nods. He’s still clearly nervous, but he seems less immediately afraid. “You’re gonna die on your knees, and I don’t mean prayin’! Back to your pin, Fuckpig!”
“Some victim,” Christine growls as the pair leave.
“He seems like he’s exactly where he wants to be, based on the shit he was saying,” Sydney huffs with a bitter laugh.
“I can’t fathom finding a single thing worthy of worship about that man,” Gunner grumbles, trudging out of the room and down the stairs with a huff.
The trial was… frustrating. The steam valves were simple enough, Christine and Gunner had knocked those out quickly, it barely took them 5 minutes. The pig heads however…
“I swear I’ve been in every fucking room in this stupid fucking farm and there’s nothing! Where the fuck is it?” Sydney growls, pacing a bit in the dark of the cafeteria where they’d regrouped. Coyle’s shock prod was buzzing distantly, but he wasn’t within earshot of the reagents quite yet.
“I’ll do one more sweep, we’re sure no one dropped one while running from a grunt?” Gunner asked.
“Positive. I know the one I dropped got picked back up and shredded,” Grace sighed, also visibly frustrated.
“How is your stun charge, Sydney?” Gunner asked, shifting his ESOP a bit to get more comfortable before he began sneaking about again.
“About a minute left before its battery is charged again. Need me to cover for you incase the dog gets loose?” She replies.
“You really shouldn’t call them dogs, Sydney. They’re people. We need to remember all of the enemies we face here are people. Humans,” Grace chastises lightly. Christine nods in agreement.
“Barely! Look, I get wanting to remember that the victims are people, they’re pretty lucid most of the time, but the ex-pops barely even know what’s going on around them, some of them can’t even talk!” Sydney shoots back in defense.
“Enough. We don’t need to sit here arguing about who is and isn’t human while a very real and dangerous man is hunting us like prey. Let’s find this last pig head and get a move on,” Gunner interrupts, moving to the door that led to the farmyard. Sydney follows, her footsteps quiet, but noticeably heavier as she pouts.
The pig head is located on a bench in a perfectly well lit barn that Gunner and Sydney both agree they had already looked in. Sydney grumbles and complains about the whole ordeal but Gunner seems like he’s in a hurry, and keeps walking rather quickly back into the safety of the dark cafeteria. Just as the pair enter, they hear a delighted cackle and the sound of retching.
“Serves you right you bigoted pig,” Christine says with a manic laugh as she and Grace round the corner of a dining table, just barely out of reach of a now staggering Coyle, who was angrily growling and screaming between bouts of nausea and vomiting.
No one in the party was particularly fond of Coyle. Grace, strangely, seemed the least phased by him. She still hated him, same as the others, but his bigoted remarks rarely got to her as often as they did the others, in particular Gunner. Grace had explained once that it was because she was used to the comments. Many people felt brave enough to speak to a black woman the way Coyle spoke, even in a big city like New York.
That had surprised Sydney the most. She’d assumed things were better up north, farther from the deep south where she’d grown up. People from up there always acted like racism didn’t exist and that the south was making a bad name for Americans as a whole. Grace had explained that it was alive and well in the North, just a little more subtle to those who weren’t directly affected.
None of the crew had really known what to do with that information, so the conversation had died shortly after that. It was uncomfortable to realize that not a single one of them had been raised without the pressure of bigotry weighing on their shoulders in one way or another. Gunner had it the easiest, but even he had been hurt by others assumptions about his lifestyle before he’d joined the military.
Gunner cracks a smile as he watches Coyle hunch over and vomit one more time, and then takes the opportunity the distraction has bought him to lug the pig head out into the courtyard to shred the rotting flesh.
The final puzzle had been simple. Everyone took a number, and shared what they found over their radio. Grace had been the closest to the keypad when the final number was found, and types it in quickly. Excitement buzzed around the crew as the final gate swung open. Every one of them was tired and just wanted to go back to their sleep room cell and relax. The sooner they got this execution over with, the better.
Sydney ran up ahead first, checking everything out to see if there was anything they needed to worry about, any insertion gates nearby whatever device they’d be operating to kill the poor warden. She froze as she opened the door to reveal… nothing.
“What? How are we meant to kill him?” Grace mused, looking around the empty room and rather pointedly not at the naked man tied down to the desk.
Gunner and Sydney exchange a glance. They were the only members of the group who had ever been incarcerated, and they both recognized the objects tied to his desk.
“The name of this trial makes more sense now…” Sydney says grimly, stepping forward gently and picking up one of the socks.
“You don’t mean…” Christine looks at the poor man in horror, picking up one of the socks as well.
“We kill plenty of people in these trials, this is no different,” Gunner says, picking up a sock on the other side of the table as Grace joins him.
The weight of the locks feels heavier than it is in the girls’ hands. Gunner’s eyes are noticeably duller, and he seems unaffected by the prospect of what they need to do.
“This is different. This is direct. No devices, no levers or pulleys, just a weapon and a man and our own hands,” Christine murmurs, saying aloud what the other two girls were thinking.
“He isn’t a man. He’s a pig. Said so himself, he’s Daddy’s little fuck-pig. And what happens when pigs get all nice and fat and outstay their welcome?” Gunner’s tone is flat and aggressive in a way the others have only seen reserved for knocking a prime asset away from one of them. He’s pushing something down, steeling himself for something. For murder, the girls all suppose. The Warden does his best to cower away, whimpering sadly, but he can’t move far.
“Fat pigs get butchered,” Sydney whispers, her eyes getting a little duller as she says it. She was thinking about something else now as well, far away from that room.
Gunner raises the sock as high as he can, the tether keeping it attached to the desk limiting his range a bit, and swings it down with a disgusting thud. The Warden screams in pain, but it doesn’t even look like they’ve done anything to him yet. Sydney swings next, and the two trade blows on the Warden for a while before Christine closes her eyes, turns her head away, and joins them. Grace feels bile rise in her throat, but she follows suit. None of them wanted to be there longer than they needed to, and this was going to be a slow process.
Coyle never showed his face during the execution. The reagents were left alone in the room with the Warden the entire time, listening to him beg and cry for mercy and help that would never come until he let out one final gurgle of breath and went limp. None of them could tell if they’d just finally hit an important organ or if he’d just finally bled out, but the pile of gore that was his body was an ugly sight regardless. A trial gate opened and Coyle busted down the doors only after the Warden was long dead, and the group scrambled quickly away, Sydney hucking her stun at him as they left to buy them a little extra time. She’d found a rig recharger while looking for the last pig head, so she wasn’t worried about getting to the shuttle.
They were all pleasantly surprised to find the shuttle already there when they arrived back at their starting point, but the vile nature of the execution still hung in the air and stifled any comments they would have normally made. The ride back was quiet. No one wanted to talk about what they’d done. It had been similar when they’d killed Lot 7 for the first time, or the Idol. The brutal methods used on the Lot and the personable nature of the Idol had left a sour taste in their mouths when they’d been forced to participate. This was similar.
When they stepped out and into the decontamination area, Easterman’s praises rang through the chamber. All A+’s, they had all avoided detection for most of the trial and outran anything that spotted them. Trials with Gunner tended to end in A+’s though. He was a valuable teammate.
When they all got back to the sleep room, Gunner wandered off to the cafeteria to eat and play chess. He always enjoyed playing chess after a trial, it seemed to pull him back to reality after a particularly rough execution. Grace went back to her room to sew, she’d been itching to finish a project for a long while and had been very close when they were summoned for their trial. Sydney and Christine just stood near the nurse’s station for a while, not really doing or saying much. Both seemed a little dazed before Christine’s endorphins finally wore off and she began to cry. Sydney turned to her, startled and still a little dazed, and Christine bolted for her room. Sydney followed at a trot.
When they were in the safety of Christine’s cell, the girl finally let out a scream that sounded equal parts angry and devastated, throwing her hollowed out book on her desk at a wall and watching as various contraband scattered around the room as it fell open. She kicked her bedpost, threw her chair, and screamed again, tears streaming down her face as Sydney watched quietly.
“Fuck!” Christine howled, slumping down to the floor knees first, her legs splayed beneath her as she grabbed at her hair and pulled gently on the root. She never pulled hard enough to yank it out, but the slight pressure tended to comfort her in a weird way.
Sydney padded over to her and plopped down on the ground nearby, placing a gentle hand on her back and leaving it there, knowing that moving the hand was likely too much for Christine to handle.
“We didn’t have a choice, Chris. We never have a choice. It was him or us,” Sydney said, trying to comfort her friend as best she could.
“I’ve never had to do that before…” Christine whimpered softly, sobs still shaking her body as they escaped.
“What are you talking about, you’ve been here longer than me, you've killed plenty of people.”
“I’ve never killed someone with my bare hands. It’s always been with those stupid… Machines. The mechanisms. That separation. I’ve never killed someone like that. We fucking killed him. All because he liked Coyle too much,” Christine said, slumping over and leaning on Sydney for comfort. She was exhausted.
“You get used to the feeling the more you do it,” Sydney replied quietly, wrapping her arms around Christine gently and rubbing at her arms in a way she hoped was soothing. It had always been soothing when her mother did it to her as a small child, before everything had gone wrong.
“I don’t want to get used to it. I want to never have to do it again. Ever.”
“That isn’t how a place like this works and we both know that,” Sydney hums.
There’s a pause for a brief moment, then Christine speaks up again, her sobs beginning to calm but her throat still spasming on a hiccup every few moments. She’d moved a bit so her head was resting in Sydney’s lap while Sydney combed her fingers through the other girl’s hair.
“Did we kill him for being queer?” She asks. Sydney doesn’t respond for a moment.
“I mean… We didn’t. But it may be part of why they wanted us to kill him. I think it was more about the corruption of power he represented though.”
“They wanted me dead back home for being a dyke. S’why I left. I had a good life there, but I got sloppy. Comfortable. They found out and…” She paused. “She didn’t even have to leave. She still lived there last I heard. Went to some sorta meetings, repented, all that. Pretended she never knew me, that I’d taken advantage, said she never wanted nothing to do with me. Not a word a what she told them ‘bout me was true and I couldn’t even start to defend myself because everything she said was something they already believed. I was the bad seed from the moment I was born and she was beautiful and perfect and good. Of course I tried to tempt her, to defile her. It’s all monsters like me do.”
It was a bad time, but Sydney always found it cute that Christine's accent would get thicker when she was tired or upset. She smiled softly. “I don’t think you’re a monster, Chris.”
“You must be forgetful, last I checked I’ve killed dozens of people in this hellhole. Of course I’m a monster,” Christine huffed, curling in on herself a bit.
“I know monsters Chris. I’ve been one since I was 13, probably before that. Mother Gooseberry made sure of it. You aren’t a monster,” Sydney said with a gentle hum.
“You were a baby. Babies can’t be monsters,” Christine replied, her eyes getting heavy as the feeling of Sydney’s fingers on her scalp slowly pushed her anger and fear away.
A strange box sits on Gunner's desk, next to his radio. It has a little screen, speakers and some sort of printer. It looks like one of the broadcast TVs almost. Next to it sits a small(ish) microphone. Gunner tinkers with the TV device while Christine, Grace, and Sydney look on curiously. He pokes it, examining the little box. They watch as it buzzes to life, and a doctor, their face covered by googles, a mask, and a hood, blinks on screen while holding a clipboard.
"Good afternoon, Reagent," A female voice chimes with fake kindness. She sounds disinterested under the facade of hospitality. "Your efforts and the efforts of your most frequent teammates have been recognized by the Murkoff Corporation as particularly remarkable and worthy of praise, and as a result you are being rewarded with this special broadcast machine. Various messages and queries will come through this device from around the facility. We expect you to record your responses using the audio recording device attached. Responses will then be examined by staff to better determine to progress of your therapy. Enjoy, reagents, we hope this gift will inspire you to continue to complete your therapy effectively and with pride."
The reagents stare at the little television as the screen blinks out of focus and then dims to black, a little slip of paper printing from the slot in its front.
AN ICE BREAKER FOR 1127 AND CREW: WHERE WERE YOU BORN? PLEASE PRESS THE LARGE GREEN BUTTON ON YOUR QUESTION BOX UNIT AND SPEAK INTO THE MICROPHONE ON YOUR DESK.
Gunner presses the button hesitantly, and begins to speak.
"My name is Gunner, and I was born in Cincinnati."
Sydney pipes up next.
"Hiiiiiiiiii! My name is Sydney! I was born in Atlanta! Ohh, this thing is so high tech!" Her voice almost peeks the microphone.
"My name is Grace. New York." Grace mumbles, feeling a bit awkward talking to the device.
Christine eyes the device suspiciously.
"I don't like this. The scientists know enough about us already, why should we tell them anything?"
"Just tell them where you're from, it's not like they don't already know!" Sydney points out. "If they ask anything too personal, you can just pass, but right now it's just information like the stuff they had us shred when we got here!"
"I guess..." Christine huffs. "My name is Christine. I'm from a town you've never heard of in Missouri."
"Come oooon, be more specific than that! Missouri is a big state!" Sydney whines, shaking Christine by the shoulder dramatically.
"...Fine. I'm from Cedarbrook, Missouri. It ain't on any road maps save the ones they sell at the only gas station in town," Christine finally grumbles.
Gunner lets go of the little button, and a chime plays from the speakers of the little unit, a check mark dinging on the little screen to indicate the audio was recorded and submitted wherever it was going.
i may need to make a new oc or be REALLY mean to Gunner tonight... i wanna do something with that new coyle line.... it would be for my eyes only i think because its gonna be cringe as fuck but yk
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The crow appears by the tv device in gunners room next it holds the same paper with the spider,eye and lamb checking for a slight change in his movement. it seems to look for a reaction of sorts?
-🐦⬛
Gunner was writing at his desk when the crow flew in. He quite enjoyed writing letters in his journal, even if no one but the room-check guards and perhaps a scientist or two ever got to see them.
He puts his pen down gently and looks at the bird for a moment. His eyes are kind and curious for a moment before he spots the paper. His eyes scan across the images and the energy in the room shifts. Gunner's eyes dull, his muscles seem to relax and stiffen in strange, almost unnoticeable spasms, and he sits up in his chair again. He otherwise doesn't move, seemingly waiting for something. Some sort of stimulus or input. He doesn't lash out, he isn't violent, but his face is pulled back into that same uncanny smile as he waits for his orders. He seems to be more than ready to rebirth, the therapy has clearly worked. So why is he still here?
Bonus Info and More Room Pics Below
Mun Comment: Gunner's room is full of theater equipment and props, despite his rather stoic appearance and his tendency to wear army uniforms during trials. Perhaps his gentle personality outside of trials is more than just a symptom of his fractured psyche? He's been here much longer than any other reagent in his cell block so, who's to say what his life on the outside was like? Even he may struggle to remember at times.
