99: Revelations

[walk_ins]

This time, when he gets the call about an Episode, Dr. Lin isn't making his rounds; he's at dinner. While lunch is segregated by block classes, most of the Academy eats the final meal of the day at the same time, and by and large together; although the Blue Hands never eat in front of the other staff, waiting until after they've vacated the Staff lunchroom.

He leaves his protein paste and canned beans and hurries. It's Lilli again, according to the tinny voice on his comm. He heads this time not to the large main dining hall, but to the Advanced Students's Mess, swiping his keycard at the electronic door to get in. She's made so much progress.

As he moves towards, once again he activates the listening device in his tie pin.

Comments

[walk_ins]

This dining hall is quieter. Calmer. The Graduates eat together, mechanically efficient and emotionless and nearly silent; the others watch, and envy, and try to imitate them. They can't always quite manage -- of course they can't, not yet, not while they still flinch and mutter and watch empty air with apprehension or fascination -- but they try.

Lilli often succeeds as well as any. Not today, though. Today she is breathing fast, staring at the far wall, lips moving inaudibly. Some of her fellow students watch her with concern; others ignore her. The Graduates keep eating, unruffled, with no sign that they've even noticed.

[walk_ins]

"Lilli?" Dr. Lin says gently. Nurse Susan Todd is with him again, rapidly moving around and asking the blue-handed guards to step outside, then reappearing at his elbow with a small case of injectors and various drugs.

"It's Dr. Lin."

[walk_ins]

Staring at the wall, still. Unmoving.

And then a blink, and she looks at him without moving her head. A second more, and her eyes actually focus on him.

"Doctor Lin."

Beat.

"Doctor. They're, they're moving. Gathering intention, changing trajectory... Paths collide. I don't -- too many variables, I don't -- I can't --"

[walk_ins]

"Shhhhhh," he soothes. "See close. See clear. Let it all go."

"Don't focus on what you can't. What can you see?" He hunkers near her, listening intently.

[walk_ins]

"See close," she echoes, nodding, her face pulling into a frown of concentration. "See clear. I." She squeezes her eyes shut, taking a deep breath, and opens them to stare at nothing again.

"She's still changing. I knew her but I don't but I did. Do. Don't. She doesn't, I don't -- Let it go." Another deep breath. "People talking, people everywhere, under the sky. It's blue. Light rays refract. Isn't happening yet. She's coming."

[walk_ins]

I knew her but I don't but I did. Dr. Lin makes an intuitive jump. "Is it River, Lilli? Are you picking up River Tam?"

Intent, he doesn't hear the door swoosh open and then closed behind him.

Or perhaps it doesn't.

[walk_ins]

Her face goes even more intent, until it looks as if she's trying to burn a hole in the air just by staring at it, to burn up the clouds in her mind.

"River."

"Yes. Maybe. Yes. She's -- she's changing and changed and she isn't but she's -- River. Yes. I think so."

[walk_ins]

Gathering intention.

"What is she up to, Lilli? What is River doing?" He's possibly pushing too hard, he knows, but... she's the only one he's ever lost. Dammit.

[walk_ins]

"Doesn't--"

She squeezes her eyes shut, face twisting.

"Too many variables, too much -- Hard to quantify. She can't. There's too much. See close, see clear, let it go... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. She's walking and there's sky and I can't, I can't see it. Contextualize the visual. It's not in her eyes. I'm sorry, Doctor, she's trying --"

Her voice is rising, tremulous and almost teary with frustration.

The other students are watching.

The Graduates aren't. They're still eating, not looking around. They're beyond caring about episodes or undergraduates.

[walk_ins]

"Lilli, it's---"

"Dr. Lin." It comes from immediately behind him, and he nearly leaps into the air.

[walk_ins]

Lilli startles, head jerking round, eyes snapping open.

She shrinks back against her chair, fingers tightening on her chopsticks until they're in danger of snapping.

[walk_ins]

"Doctor Sanshing." Tooth-gritted courtesy.

It doesn't do to offend the Doctor (and what a mockery of a title that is). Not with the Hands supporting him as they clearly do, and not with his position in the... organization.

A guest, the Hands called him. A guest, in Lin's own quarters. Fèifèi de pìyăn.

It doesn't do to offend him. But this is a delicate situation, gorram it, and Lilli needs careful handling still, and anger is flaring deep inside him.

"Can I speak with you in a few minutes? We're at a delicate stage here--"

[walk_ins]

He's very tall; taller than Lin, a tall man himself, and at times, his feet don't seem to quite touch the ground. He folds his arms, the wrists sticking out far past the width of his body.

"Yes. It's clear that we are. And you're upsetting things. I'll talk to the girl in private, thank you."

Under the surgical mask, the Doctor smiles, and the corners of his eyes skew up with it. Skew up too, too far, almost drifting in the flesh of his face for a moment.

[walk_ins]

There are several levels of Sergio Lin's brain currently insisting that flesh does not do that, cannot possibly do that, and therefore has not just done that.

There is a deeper, more primal, and probably wiser part going straight back to the hindbrain screaming at him to run while he still can.

He's frozen briefly, abruptly paler, and then he tries to rally. Dry-mouthed, "But -- Doctor Sanshing, with all due respect, that's totally against procedure -- hey!"

The two blue-handed guards taking hold of Lilli's upper arms and lifting her to her feet do not give a good gorram about procedure, it seems.

He gapes, outraged, and then pulls himself back into a semblance of professionalism. He didn't work his way through the cutthroat politics of the Boros Medical Research Institute to earn this position by losing his temper with colleagues, no matter what the provocation.

"Doctor Sanshing, I have formed something of a rapport with Lilli. She trusts me. I fail to see what this--"

[walk_ins]

Lilli moans, bucking in their hold involuntarily. Their fingers tighten -- not quite bruising, but painful, and she stills, but she throws her head back, face twisting in fear, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

No one is looking at them now. The other students shrink back in their seats, staring fixedly away.

Several of the Graduates look over coolly, and then turn back to their food.

[walk_ins]

"You do fail, Doctor Lin." The Doctor cuts him off smoothly, in his gutteral growling accent. "Again and again. You control a facility full of readers, yet you know nothing."

"Your methods have failed. Now we try mine. Take her to his office, children," he tells the Blue Hands. He glides along behind them. He looks over his shoulder, twisting his neck a degree too far. "You may wait outside. Doctor."

[walk_ins]

There is a moment where he is frozen, choked, caught between rage and horror and that primal terror that whispers to him run, run, run, get away from it NOW.

In the end, it's that very muddle of tangled emotions that allows logic to take the upper hand. Time to salvage what he can of this situation.

This is, here in his own school, a fight he can't win. An authority he can't challenge.

Gathering the tatters of his dignity around him, choking on fury, terror trailing icy fingers down his spine... he follows. To wait outside the room.

To salvage what he can.

[walk_ins]

The Blue Hands take her into the room, with the Doctor following them. A moment later, they come out, closing the door behind them, and standing between Dr. Lin and it.

Their face are absolutely still, but mockery hides in every line, as their murky eyes regard him.

From inside, there's the soft sounds of voices, and then a cut-off scream, and then silence.

[walk_ins]

They're laughing at him. Under their faces, where he can't see it.

His jaw is clenched until it hurts. He sits, too straight and too still, and gazes fixedly at the wall.

They are laughing where I can't see, and they don't care if I know it, while a monster tortures my student--

This is madness.

(And if there is any place where people know madness, it is here.)

If he starts swearing, or ranting, he will never stop.

He learned long ago to keep control of himself in the face of a setback. It's just the same principle.

So he sits, teeth gritted, and works on keeping his hands from clenching into fists.

[walk_ins]

It's not much longer before he comes out with Lilli. She's unconscious, and he's barely managing her in stubby arms. Before he can drop her to the floor, Dr. Lin starts forward and seizes her limp body from him.

She's breathing steadily, in and out, her face slack and stupid-looking.

Some pink fluid is crusted around her eyes, like the dried particles found after sleeping. Only pink.

[walk_ins]

Dr. Lin holds Lilli with the automatic gentleness of someone used to holding injured people. With a healer's gentleness.

He glares up at the Doctor, and not all his terror and all his logic and experience can keep him from blurting out, "What did you do?"

No procedure. No collegue observing. No measurements, no notes in her medical record, no checking her current meds first -- what good is this supposed to do? How is he supposed to use this to help her progress?

This Academy is not meant to hurt children for no reason. It's a school, it's a place of scientific investigation and God's work for a higher cause. Not some crime-lord's private prison. This is an affront to everything Lin's Academy stands for.

[walk_ins]

"Take her to her room. She'll be well again with sleep." The Doctor turns away from him, and begins to speak in a low voice to the Blue Hands.

Praxed is one word. Sunday is another.

[walk_ins]

He's just been dismissed like a first-year resident. In his own Academy, with his own student.

Not now. I'm not in a position of strength. NOT NOW.

Anger burns through him.

Silently, he resettles Lilli in his arms, and turns away.

Not now. But later. Oh yes, later. He'll get this straightened out. Make it clear to the Hands and Sanshing both who is in charge here, and what is not permitted. Or send them all back to whatever

(hell)

place they came from.

...As soon as he has the slightest clue how.