Park Meeting

Who: Emily and Chris
Where: the park
When: morning

Chris was thankful that the black eye Lina had given him a couple of days before was starting to go down now, but the bruising was still evident as he headed around the park that morning. It was quiet here at the moment - though, really, it was quiet everywhere in the small town most of the time. But here, he supposed that it could be referred to as 'serene', with the expanse of grass, the scattered trees and the small lake to one side. And, it being well into fall, the place probably also classed as 'beautiful', given the torrent of colours from the turning leaves.

Chris bent and picked up an autumnal leaf, holding it by the stalk and turning it over to look at the veins running through the leaf. He smiled a little and shifted, crumpling the dead leaf in his fist, before letting the pieces fall to the ground as he continued his walk.

Emily was sitting on one of the benches that had been placed around the lake at intervals, although the cynical side of her found the whole scene to be a little too picturesque and so serene that it made her skin itch a little. Still. It was nice. It was normal. Normal-looking anyways, and any relief from the spin that Jeremy's little journal confession had sent her into was something she'd willingly grasp at with both hands. She'd grabbed a shawl to wrap around herself as she sat out on the lake, watching the wild geese and thinking that next time, she'd bring some bread or something to feed them with, before it got too cold and they all flew.... where ever it was they'd fly to.

She heard the crunch of footsteps off to her side and couldn't help the tiniest wince as her shoulders hunched a little bit. It took a lot to not bolt wildly, to remind herself in a repeated mental mantra, that whoever it was, was NOT sneaking up behind her to throttle her, or anything else.

She got so tired of being afraid of everything sometimes.

Chris curved toward the woman sitting by herself, changing his path slightly to approach her from the side so he could see if she was someone he recognised. Given that the people he'd met in town so far had been related to experiment A, that was a question that would come up. And it would also define his actions - but he didn't recognise her. That didn't mean she might not be a labrat from one of the other experiments as well, so he remained cautious as he approached - after all, another black eye wouldn't go down too well. "Hi," he said, his voice friendly. "Mind if I join you?" he asked, keeping a little ways away, not intruding at all on her personal space.

Emily looked up, looking... cautious and oddly determined. Her arms were wrapped around herself in a naturally sort of defensive pose, but she shook her head slowly, opened her mouth to say something and realized her throat was very dry. She swallowed, and smiled a little wryly, shaking her head. "No... I don't mind." She didn't really. Despite her unease, she was really rather desperate for some human contact. Sitting in her pretty little house and wondering and imagining all sorts of terrible fates wasn't exactly a fun hobby.

Chris gave her a small smile of thanks and sat down by her, though not too close. He held out a hand. "I'm Chris and being here is kinda weird?" he suggested, looking for the best way to put that. "I mean, knowing you'll know some people, but not knowing who. And then there being other people you won't know at all? And with everyone having gone through what sounds like hell of many different colours, it's just...." he let that one trail off.

Emily relaxed a little once she was certain she didn't recognize Chris from Experiment D. She gave him a wry smile. "An open air nuthouse? That's why they didn't just let everyone go home of course. They're not entirely sure we're all safe." Whether Emily meant safe for others, or safe for themselves was unclear. She laughed a little uncertainly. "Sorry, that probably doesn't sound entirely sane in itself. I'm Emily. I try not to think about the hell and think about what I used to do before." The result being, of course, that she couldn't think about much else. "Not that it works, but it's a good faith effort."

When she said that, he mentally put her down as a labrat, but he was in conversation now, so he really should continue it. "What did you do before?" he asked her, cocking an eyebrow. Not that it mattered, but he was good at sounding interested in their little so-called lives.

Emily shrugged, relieved that he hadn't pried. She wasn't quite sure yet what her story would be if someone asked her directly just which of the experiments she'd been in. She couldn't say D, obviously, because people from D would know she was lying. The same went for any of the others. It had her a bit stumped, really.

"I was a social worker in New York. Harlem, actually. Working on my doctorate in sociology." It was a risk, she suddenly realized, admitting even that. Most people in the middle of studying for a doctorate wouldn't just jump ship and sign up for a year to get stuck in a hole somewhere. She fidgeted a bit with the ends of her shawl, trying to think of some way to make it sound less... intern-ish, but came up blank. She bit her bottom lip, staring out at the geese blindly.

Chris raised an eyebrow and wondered at that. Maybe she wasn't one of the condemned, after all. Then again, there'd been a shrink in A, hadn't there? Took all sorts, really. "I've been hoping to get my doctorate one day," he told her, coming at the subject from a different angle, simply because he could and it amused him to do so. "Hopefully once they let us leave here."

Emily's eyes flickered over him for a moment, unable to hide the interest there. It had been ages since she'd talked to someone about her work. She'd withdrawn almost completely from her fellow interns after her experience in the maze, and she couldn't help but be intrigued at the idea of someone else with an interest in doctorate work. It could have been in liberal arts at this point and she would have been interested.

"I'll finish it someday. I have a feeling I'll change my thesis completely around though. It hits a little too close to home nowadays." She smiled wryly.

"What was your topic? If you don't mind me asking, of course," Chris asked, leaning forward a little and looking across at her, resting his elbows lightly on his knees and shifting his weight to them. Hmm, labrat or workerbee? Could be either - sociology suggested intern, but - who knew. Couple of the interns had ended up as labrats, hadn't they? People fell - it happened.

Her laughter was low, musical, but tinged with a slight edge. "The effects of delusional paranoia on a person's social interaction. I was still in the research stage when my professor recommended..." She trailed off, blinking a little bit as she realized how easily it had nearly slipped out. It was odd, he seemed remarkably easy to talk to, and she wasn't quite sure how she'd managed to let her guard so far down. "Anyways, it wasn't so far along that it won't hurt to scrap it and start over." It could have been done and she still would have scrapped it.

Chris blinked and thought to himself that that sounding downright fascinating. "You were an intern, weren't you?" he guessed, sure about that, and glad. It would make a change to talk to an actual person for once. "Which experiment?" He really hoped he was right - he'd only really gotten to speak to labrats so far and he was sick of having to play nice with them.

Emily blanched and and the easy smile slid away into a terrified sort of blankness. "Why would you say that? I didn't... I mean... I never... " Her carefully constructed façade fell down entirely too easy under the direct question and she couldn't help but think to herself, a little ruthlessly, that she was never going to make it out alive, if stammering and freezing was the best she could manage. "Please don't tell them. You saw how angry they got at that Jeremy boy. I just want to get home." She swallowed sickly, as it hadn't quite hit her that Chris might not be one of the many people who would want her blood. "D. I was.... D."

Chris held up his hands. "Don't worry - you've got nothing to worry about with me." He pointed to the fading black eye. "Where'd you think I got this from? I interned with A. Same as.. Jeremy before he disappeared." He pause before he used Jeremy's name was infinitesimal, almost unnoticeable. He'd mentally thought of the guy as 'labrat' from the moment he'd found out, but sometimes identification was necessary. "But, one of the participants, she realised and... Yeah, good right hook, that's all I can say. Lucky I got off with that, I think," he added with a wince, as though the bitch would have done more. Then again, she'd killed a guy, hadn't she? Who knew what she'd do if her temper was raised. She'd really laid into him the other day.

"See, and that's exactly why I'm terrified of telling anyone," she said vehemently, looking at the injury with a sort of morbid fascination. "And that guy, just telling everyone in his journal and now, he never said anything else, has anyone even seen him? It's just stupid. I just want to get this over with so I can go home and pretend it never happened." Emily shook her head. "You'll have to be careful. In case she tells others."

"There's no careful about it - I know she will. She was part of... A group? Maybe - gang, possibly. Three or four of them? All palling around together all the time - nasty work, bad history," he told her, affecting a slight shudder. "They're ones to avoid. How about you - any notorious ones from your group?" he asked, a trade of information.

She shrugged slightly, trying to think. "Not really. There wasn't a lot for them to get notorious about. They were stuck in a bunker and by the end of it, most of them had so much vitamin deficiency, they probably would have broken a bone if they sat down to hard. Sort of curbs the tendency to do violence to each other, knowing that you'd end up just as bad off, I suppose." Emily had tried not to get to know them as individuals, as it had only made her more uncomfortable with what she had been doing to them.

She gave Chris a considering look. "Do you think they'll come after you again? I can't believe they stuck us here with them. They had to know that it'd come out eventually. Sooner or later, they're going to realize we're here too." She bit her bottom lip, looking thoughtful.

"I'm - I'm hoping not, but I'm not holding my breath. I think a lot about this place is short sighted. I think some naive types decided that a simple explanation that we didn't know what we were getting into either and that we were as much victims as the participants were would be enough to keep us safe. But it's not - not when half of the participants seemed to be unstable from the very beginning and those tests just made them worse," Chris shared with her. "And - did you really - was your experiment really underground for the whole time? Some of the subjects from my experiment got moved for a little while, whilst renovations were going on, but the whole time? And they have vitD deficiency, really?" he asked, unavoidably interested. He didn't know anything about the other experiments and he was fascinated to hear about them.

"The whole thing was surreal. I mean, you'd watch them on the monitors, right? And after a while, it was like... I don't know, it was like they stopped being people. It was like watching a television show, and they'd make jokes and take bets and it was so... de-humanizing." She said, a little desperately. "I didn't know it was going to be like that. I mean, it was one thing to test the effects, sure, but... they didn't give them any medical treatment. We messed with them, on purpose. For no discernible reason except to do it." Emily's words were rushed and a little frantic. She'd never been able to talk about it, to anyone before and it was like a dam had broken somewhere inside her. "They became so brittle. The slightest injury became something dangerous and usually fatal. Even now, I don't think a lot of them go out in sunlight." Not from what Emily had observed, anyways, since she tended to be out in it as much as possible to avoid the dark.

Chris noted her use of the word 'they' in that. So, she hadn't joined in then - or, if she had, she wasn't admitting to it now. But she was right - it was dehumanising, but that was because they were labrats. They weren't really human at all. They were test subjects, they were volunteers. They'd asked for this and then they complained when they got it. It was pathetic. But she was obviously traumatised about it and Chris nodded along, sympathetically. "I never worked out what the point was," he told her when she'd finished speaking. "The things they made us do - even the information we had to note down. It was all so random. You know, I was set for a whole week comparing how often the people on the third floor went to the bathroom with how often the people on the first floor went? It just - totally incomprehensible."

"At first, I thought it was all sort of boring. I mean, watching people on monitors, day after day, you sort of couldn't help it. Making up little stories, I mean, about their lives, or what they were doing, or how they thought." She shrugged. "It just stopped being funny after a while, I guess."

She didn't mention the maze. No matter how easy he was to talk to, there wasn't anything anyone was going to say that was going to make her bring that up. "You notice how they're not all here, though? All the interns, I mean. Why is that? I mean, why only some of us?"

"I used to wonder about them - then they started to disappear, the ones in my experiment. We never found out what happened to them," he told her. It had been the not knowing that had annoyed Chris. The things they just hadn't been told. Being kept out of the loop like that. It wasn't fair - had they thought he couldn't be trusted? Some of the others, maybe, but they could have trusted him. "Only some of the interns, only some of the participants. Maybe they have their reasons - maybe they're in the hospital in town or something. I'm not sure," he admitted.

Emily looked... skeptical. She was pretty sure it was something more sinister then that, but she knew that she had no proof. Only the certain knowledge that they were still out there, waiting and watching. She knew it sounded crazy, might even be crazy, but it didn't make the conviction go away any. "No, they just... go away somewhere and no one ever talks about them or mentions them. They make a little note in the records and that's all." Her fingers twisted the ends of her shawl, not really realizing she was doing it, making the bracelets on her wrist jingle. "Maybe. Or maybe they've got more then one town set up like this." That was a more comforting thought, although it was, to Emily's mind, unlikely.

"That's possible as well," Chris agreed. "I suppose anything is. I wish they'd tell us what was going on though - they've just thrown us in here with no real clue of how long we'll be here for, or anything."

Emily tilted her head, giving him a smile that was both sad and strangely sympathetic. "Or maybe they just don't want us to know. They aren't exactly known for keeping us in the loop after all. Not many of us knew exactly how far things would go, clearly, or we wouldn't be here, messed up and waiting before they'll let us go. Or maybe this is performance review time, hmm?"

"You make it sound like you think the same guys are still in charge," Chris observed, carefully. He didn't think that at all - he would have heard something from them, surely? After what he'd done to try and protect them. No, the scientists had been shut down, whoever they were. It was over, and now they were just stuck here, waiting for... whatever.

Emily went strangely silent for several moments, no sound except the jangling of her bracelets and the birds on the lake fluttering and calling to each other. "I think," she said carefully, as if she was measuring each word before it was spoken, "that it would be foolish to make any sort of assumptions where they are concerned. No one knows much about them, really. We've got no idea how many experiments were actually going on, where they all were, if they've found them all. There's too many questions and not enough answers, and I'd rather be safe then sorry."

"Then what do you suggest?" Chris asked, frowning slightly, though his tone was tinged with curiosity. He wondered at that, and her opinions on it. He shifted, turning to face her more as a bird fluttered in the trees above them.

Emily shrugged, her expression turning wary, eyes moving to track the bird's movements for several seconds. "Just... be careful. Keep an eye out. Be careful what you say and who you say it to." She looked back towards the streets of the town and arched a brow. "It's all just a little too picture perfect, don't you think?"

Chris chuckled a little at that. "Yeah, maybe," he allowed. "But - being careful's always good advice. I'll take that," he said, getting up. "But - I should also get going. It was nice to meet you, Emily - maybe I'll see you around?" he asked, with an edge of hopefulness in his tone.

"Well, it's not like I'm going anywhere, so I'm sure we'll run into each other again sometime soon, even if we didn't want to." She blinked, realized that might sound rude and hastened to add, "But yes, I'd be glad to see you.. around, too." She smiled, a little shyly, but sincere.

Chris chuckled a little at that. "Right, thanks - I think. You know, I'm not sure..." he told her, making a show of looking confused. "But, okay, see you around, Emily," he said, before heading off.

Emily blushed, feeling she'd made a bit of a mess of things, but she nodded and waved to him, watching him walk off, fingertips pressing to her bottom lip as she stared after him thoughtfully and hoping she'd done the right thing in telling him about who she was.