ArchivedLogs:Unpleasantries

Unpleasantries
Dramatis Personae Jim, Malthus
In Absentia	2013-07-27 Malthus visits Jim.
Location Undisclosed
The room Jim Morgan finds himself in is similar to the room Masque has been placed into; the steel-rimmed glass casing is manuevered via a variety of mechanisms until, at last, he is deposited into a STEEL PLATED INTERIOR with humming walls -- and only a narrow strip of glass interrupting the otherwise featureless space. There is a drawer, for allowing objects to go in and out of the room; there is also! A toilet. And someone's been kind enough to install sunlamps inside the space, to keep Jim's disposition... well, sunny. Soon enough, Jim's being offered a standard three-course meal -- steak, potatoes, corn. Thirty minutes later -- regardless of whether or not he's eaten it -- Jim finds himself with company. Malthus Rogers, like the Grim-fucking-Reaper himself; dressed in black with a scar down one eye and mouth. An evil version of John Malkovich. Jim probably /does/ know who that is. "Good evening. My name is Malthus Rogers; if you like, you can call me Captain Rogers. May I ask /your/ name?" Jim's endured his transplant from truck to cell with about as much environmental involvement as a god damn potted houseplant. Remaining seated back in all his undressed glory, iron gray hair in dirty clumps and sporting his own deep snarling scar that runs up the center of his face and vanishes beneath his hair at the temple, intersecting three parallel dents beside his eye socket. The singe-blossom shape burned into the center of his forehead has already begun to fade in the light of the sunlamps. His eyes skip to the door when - oh my god, he looks like mother fucking John Malkovich - Malthus enters, tracking him across the room as nominally the most interesting thing in the room by merit that Malthus happens to also be /moving/. He has one knee semi-drawn up, over which he drapes a forearm. The food hasn't been touched. "You can ask," he rumbles underhand. He is almost smiling through a tight fixed line of teeth. "Captain, huh. Captain of /what/." There's a beat and, impulsively, he asks, "I smoke in here?" Malthus doesn't answer the first question. He does, however, address the second: "Yes, although I'd prefer you not. Would you like cigarettes? A particular brand?" Malthus' eyes drift toward the plate of unfinished food. "--also, do you have specific dietary needs I should know about? If you'd rather not tell me your name," he soon adds, "I will refer to you as your numerical designation. 014." He pronounces each digit on its own; oh, one, four. "Otherwise, a first name would suffice." "Oh-one-four," Jim's faded blue eyes watch the other scarred man while he scratches at the side of a chin with his mauled, three-fingered hand. "There an oh-one-three before me, cap? Oh-one-two?" There's a lot of messy spots across his person; a few faint dents in the sides of his neck, further snarly melted-wax drags down his arms. If Malthus has inspected the melt-work Masque had done on his two men, he'd recognize the handiwork. "Marlboro. Reds." He looks vaguely at the food and, after a moment, grimaces. "Dirt. Water. 'm a fucking houseplant." Malthus smiles, though it's an expression with very little joy; indeed, it seems to have been recently eviscerated and every ounce of pleasure carefully drained from it. "I'm afraid that information is classified," he tells Jim, in response to the question of /other/ inmates. "Marlboro, reds. Dirt. Water." Malthus repeats these things as if he is memorizing them. He soon adds: "Would the inmate you were interred with be able to help you with some of your injuries? Would you trust him to do so?" "Yeah, 'cause god know I might tell somebody," Jim is fallen into scrubbing a hand over his face, kind of just - groaning those words. He is leaning back, if not relaxed than just exhausted. "Mn - other inmate? Scrappy old dude? Bad teeth? Half his face like a bashed fruit?" Mrglh scrub scrub, he leaves his eye socket mashed into the heel of a raised palm. The other eye is scanning over the melted smears down his arms like it's the first time he's seen them and still it's the least of his worries. If anything - a kind of mean, hard smile slants his mouth cornerwise, "Kinda got sloppy, didn't he. - that mean he's still alive, huh?" He finally drops his hands again and tips back his head, smoldering a black look at the far wall with his brows furrowed down low. "I'm guessing I didn't get brought here just so you could gimme steak and jerk me off all slow." "Mmn. He's still alive," Malthus agrees, "and if you feel comfortable with it, I'm willing to let you interact with him -- to deal with your injuries. Otherwise, we have several excellent doctors on call -- you'll have to follow a very rigid set of security protocols, of course." That last bit seems to get an amused quirk of eyebrows from Malthus. "You're here," he informs Jim, "because someone thinks you're more valuable alive than dead. Otherwise -- mmn. It's not my place to explain the details." He adds, more quietly: "We had reports of telepathic interference. I don't suppose you'd be kind enough to tell me about that...?" "Suuuure," when Jim draws out vowels, the dry rasp of his smoker's voice grinds out like a shovel being sunk into dirt, and he makes a pretty morbid chuckle. One hand is raised up in a finger-pistol, pow. It manages to look both irreverent and drunk, "/Wheel/ the old bastard over. Show 'im off my sweet new pad. My new... hah, little modus vivendi." In spite of his order for snack treats, he reaches towards his plate of food and snags a few kernels of corn to try tossing back into his mouth. "Your Latverian tinkertoy asked the same. An' that," he misses his mouth by a mile, a little yellow kabibble sailing past his open mouth to dink off an ear, "is about all I can tell you. - That what all this shit is?" He points around the ceiling above. "You think I'm a /telepathic/ houseplant, Cap?" "I'm not a man in the business of taking unnecessary chances," Malthus replies, perhaps somewhat cryptically. "I /am/, however, the sort of man interested in information." The kernels are thrown; Malthus watches them arc with a slightly raised brow -- but otherwise, no comment. Hands clasped behind his back. "You're likely reasonable enough to understand the direness of your situation; you likely understand we have no intention of freeing you from your incarceration. There /are/, however, certain decisions you can impact; decisions such as which facility you might be heading to next. Are you familiar with some of our -- less comfortable facilities, 014?" Malthus' eyelid lowers; his expression darkens -- but his mouth /threatens/ a smile. "What we do, there?" "Dissection, mutilation, experimentation," which reminds Jim of that old Arlo Guthrie song, adding, "injected, inspected, detected, infected, /nee/-glected aaaand selected." So faintly, you can hear that old languid flowerchild brogue slipping between his city-short verbal pacing. And though he's still cramming corn one-by-one in the side of his cheek, he's suddenly dead serious as he chews, in a sideways bovine manner. "I know my life's about to get real small, Cap, and it's gonna happen real soon. But it wasn't that big to start with. You raid a nest of freaks, you're gonna get bit by a mind-reader sooner or later. But I'll tell you this - if I were one." He tosses another kernel into his mouth. And /makes/ it this time - chomps it right out of the air. "You'd have a lot of cops right now that'd be spending the rest of their lives lookin' for their own assholes. 'Cause I'd have scrambled them so bad, they'd not be men." He swallows his yummy corn. "--Nox?" "Alive," Malphus responds, /almost/ thoughtlessly; as if this information were so trivial that he had no compunction about releasing it to his enemies. "I had wondered what my superiors were thinking, going through such lengths to bring her in alive rather than dead -- then I found out. Just yesterday. Very interesting, actually. She's being transferred to a secure facility; one I wasn't even aware /existed/ before now." Malthus' one eye focuses on Jim. Very /tightly/. "--I suspect that this facility," Malthus adds, "is much different from the ones you're familiar with. It would likely be very little exagerration to describe it as the closest thing you'll encounter to Hell on earth. And the interesting bit, 014, is this: You're a candidate to go there yourself. Unless," and here! Malthus' mouth twists into a hint of a smile! "--I refrain from telling my superiors about the full extent of your capabilities." "I get a pony, too?" Jim asks /very/ seriously. "...mmn. Think on it," Malthus replies, eye narrowing. "Your life /is/ going to get very small, 014. But whether that time will be spent in /relative/ comfort or excruciating anguish and horror -- that is a choice you have. Savor it; it's one of the few choices you have left." Malthus turns to go. "How about a hooker?" Jim calls after him, suddenly leaning forward on his knees to pound against the glass with the heel of a palm. "One of those /fancy Japanese/ ones. Where's my /phone call/. C'mon, Captain Gobblecock, why you gotta go. You're not gonna forget my smokes are you?" He's kind of -- /grinning/. Or snarling. Yet his voice sounds bizarrely bored. He has all day, and a million more.