Logs:EMpty chairs

EMpty chairs
Dramatis Personae Nahida, Nevaeh, Sriyani
In Absentia	2023-05-04 "We're...not very good heroes, no."
Location <PRO> Cafeteria E-16 & Commissary E-17 - Lassiter Research Facility
The cafeteria is single the largest room in this wing, tiled with the same multi-gray linoleum throughout, its walls clean but bare of any decoration or relief for the eyes. The floor space is mostly taken up by rectangular tables with attached if often creaky bench seating, with a long stainless steel counter at one end serving up bland, often overcooked, but reasonably nutritious food day in and day out. It's noisy and crowded here at mealtimes, but no so much that it's impossible to have a table to yourself. Or be exiled to your own table. Adjoining the cafeteria but still accessible from its own entrance in the hallway is the much smaller commissary. It's an awkward room divided by an L-shaped counter, behind which are rows and rows of shelves holding labelled bins. Basic hygiene items can be requisitioned here for free, but everything else, from personal care products to snacks and beverages, must be purchased. Given the limited options in paying work details, purchased commissary items are coveted luxuries. Somewhere in the big wide world outside Ohio, right about this time of evening, many devoted M-Kids fans are checking for their usual updates and many devoted M-Kids fans are getting kind of a letdown, because pretty uncharacteristically, tonight there is No Content. No new missions, no new pictures, not even a silly little short of them just messing around in the (totally not a secret hideout!) secret hideout Sriyani scoped out for them last summer. Thankfully, the internet is huge, and not short of Content, so for many devoted fans of the M-Kids, disappointment is an extremely short-lived thing before the algorithm moves them on to the next hit of dopamine. Somewhere here in the suddenly extremely constricted world in [redacted], Ohio, Sriyani has traded cape and mask for slightly oversized beige scrub pants and slightly too-small scrub shirt. Currently they are staring -- have been staring just a little too long -- down at their dinner, down at fake-silvery plastic utensils against a fading green tray. Not for the first time, they swallow -- almost pick up their fork, don't quite do it. Almost pick it up again, don't quite do it. It's only on the next try, with a small glance to the side, that they seem to be able to will their hands into motion -- finally picking up the fork if only to carefully segregate their portion of tater tots, scrape them off to the next tray. "Here. You should eat these, you didn't nearly have enough lunch and I know you're going to hate those soggy green beans." Nevaeh is staring not so much at but through her food where she sits next to Sriyani. She's practically swimming in her scrubs already, and slouching with her shoulders pulled in so tightly makes them look, if possible, even more ill-fitting. When they speak to her she blinks and transfers her staring to the donated tater tots. "Thank you." Her voice is tiny and quiet and almost drowned out by the drone of conversation all around. She picks up her fork to spear one greasy lump of potato and put it into her mouth. Then another, and another, slow and mechanical. Processing has been slow, the children from the ill-fated mission trickling out through the long and miserable night and the long and miserable day that followed. Nahida wasn't there for breakfast, wasn't there for lunch, who knows what kind of administrative red tape has been holding her up. She's here now, though, plucking unhappily at the drab olive scrubs she has on as she picks up her food. She's trying gamely to ignore the stares -- most an expected kind of new-people lots-of-gossip curiosity, a few with accompanying jeers a bit more pointed at her neatly-tucked black headscarf. An expression of relief breaks over her expression when she spots Sriyani and Nevaeh and she hastens over, setting her tray down and dropping into place. "Oh my goodness that was a nightmare it took forever -- I was so worried they wouldn't even put us in the same place, did you..." This trails off as she frowns, first down at the others' trays and then around the cafeteria. "-- Wait, where's Brendan? Is he not out yet?" Sriyani's eyes pull up slowly -- then narrow at the jeers, their fingers curling tighter around the fork. They stay in their seat by main force of will, exhaling hard once Nahida sits down. "Oh -- oh you're out. Thank God, I thought -- I don't know what I thought. I don't know what I could've thought that's worse than..." Their eyes flick over their friend in a cursory appraisal, lowering back to the tray once they don't spot any immediate injuries. They're just starting to look back up, almost on the verge of speaking again, when Nahida's question catches them, catches their words in their throat. "Out?" comes out squeaky and much louder than they intended. Overcorrecting, this time, to just a whisper: "Nahida, they shot him." Nevaeh looks up, too, at Nahida's approach. For just a fraction of a second her eyes start to light with relief, and then she's suddenly crestfallen again. She carefully puts down the tater tot she had skewered probably harder than was necessary. She huddles a little closer to Sriyani, and flinches at their words. Her own words are soft and plaintive. "I didn't see it. Toward the end I saw so many horrible ways it could go but not that one." She swallows, blinking to keep the tears in her eyes from brimming over again. "Not him." Nahida's expression doesn't change, at first -- just perplexed, just a uncertain confusion. "He could stop bullets." She's still searching the cafeteria as if despite these words she might, actually, still find Brendan there. "He --" Her eyes catch on Nevaeh and she stops herself short, staring at the younger girl's brightening eyes. "... no." First only that, soft, ragged. Then sharper, still unbelieving but in a different direction now: "Those guards were mutants! How could they -- how could they." Sriyani curls an arm around Nevaeh's shoulders, leaning in against the younger girl's side. "You can't see everything -- you shouldn't have to see everything, we should have..." Their shoulders slump here, though. "We were trying to go get help. I was trying to go get help. But we didn't -- I didn't get to the door, they just -- the guards were there and we couldn't --" Their fingers squeeze gently against Nevaeh's shoulder as their eyes skim the room. They're a little more hushed than before when they speak again. "Do you think all the stories are true?" "Black cops shoot Black people, too." This dull, matter-of-fact assessment might sound jarring coming from any child, to say nothing of one like Nevaeh. "Maybe they want to prove something to the flatscans." She leans back into Sriyani, bony shoulders shuddering though she doesn't cry. "Before they got us I saw so many..." She squeezes her eyes shut. "I was wrong about the door I was wrong about everything. But I think some of the stories are true." "Why did they take a flatscan. If the stories..." Nahida trails off in her attempt to make sense of any of this, her eyes dropping down to her tray here. "Our parents. Will be looking. A lot of people... will be looking. They can't just..." Her eyes go just a little wider, hand starting to lift toward her headscarf, but then falling back to the table. "Oh, no --" Her voice is a little hushed. "Are we terrorists now?" "No! He's not a --" Sriyani's jaw sets firmly. "We're heroes." And then, a little less confident: "Well, we tried to be heroes." Still not entirely confident here, but a bit more determined: "We'll get better at it, we just -- this was bigger than the..." Their eyes dart around the loud cafeteria, the knots of older inmates at other tables. They take a deep breath, nod half to themselves. "If the stories are true," they add, hopefully, "then there's even better heroes who'll break us out soon." "Maybe he knows too much so they can't let him go." Some of Nevaeh's usual curiosity is returning. "Maybe he is a mutant, just very closeted. Or we can ask him. But no matter what, he's in here, and that makes him more like us than the mutant traitors keeping us all here." She looks up at Nahida's scarf, then out across the cafeteria as if daring anyone staring to keep staring. Several people do, undeterred by the opaque wrath of a twelve-year-old on the verge of tears. "We're...not very good heroes, no. But the better heroes are also terrorists I think." Nahida looks unconvinced, but she doesn't argue with Sriyani's hope. Doesn't argue with Nevaeh about the better heroes, either, although she looks distinctly uncomfortable at this suggestion. She pushes her food around the tray before spearing a tater tot and eating it without much appetite, and only then finally speaks up. "Brendan was a good hero." Her voice is quiet, but firm. "Sometimes, good heroes die."