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Old 05-24-2017, 12:45 PM   #172
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Let Slip the Dogs of What?

Agent Danny O’Toole walks ahead, apparently impatient to get back to the central building of Manhanock Asylum for the Criminally Insane, where he and Cam Townsend are having to act as ad hoc incident commanders until somebody else lands. Dr. Anderson looks thoughtfully at Agent O’Toole’s broad back as he starts after him, wondering what could have required his presence here in the almost empty J Wing. As far as Anderson knows, there is nothing there but Ms. Bell’s room. And she and O’Toole have hardly spoken two sentences to each other since they met.

From I Wing back to the central building is a walk of a couple of hundred yards, through corridors and connecting walkways between the en echelon wings of the Kirkbride Plan complex. As they walk through the populated wings of Manhanock Asylum, Dr. Anderson and Danny O’Toole can hear conversations, shouts for nurses and orderlies and screaming from what sounds like several people. Dr. Anderson looks inquisitively at Agent O’Toole.

O’Toole: “I Wing is the high security ward now, I don’t know how it worked when you were here. There ought to be a nurse checking in here several times over the night, a doctor on call and at least two orderlies in addition to the guards. Since we can’t trust any of these [fornicating] people on their own, I had to ask an orderly to take some people from the kitchen and look it over. He says the patients are frightened and confused, but nobody seems to require immediate medical assistance. [Excrement], if anyone did, how would we even handle security on it? Use guards who were trying to kill us less than an hour ago?”
Dr. Anderson: “You would not want to spend time with any of these patients without an orderly present, at least. If they are agitated, guards would seem indicated. When I was here, some of the high security patients could extremely dangerous. Serial killers, spree killers and highly disturbed, violent patients who have been transferred here from other facilities.”
O’Toole: “According to the lists I could find on Warden Tyrrell’s computer, that’s not all by a long shot. There are some twelve patients here who were in the military before being committed here, aside from Cherry Bell, and eight of them require secure sign-in and confirmation of TS-SCI clearance just to look at their [fornicating] names. I don’t even want to know what you’d have to do to see their service records.”
Anderson: “Some kind of special operations personnel with serious mental issues?”
O’Toole: “That’s my guess. Maybe some of them took part in something like Project Jade Serenity and went crazy from drug side-effects. Others, who knows? Ex-Delta Force or Green Berets who’ve had one deployment too many? Ex-SEALs who’ve run into Cthulhu? That bare-chested retard with the big-ass knife was probably some kind of special operator, from what the orderlies say. He’s listed as ‘Derek’, no last name, in the lists they get and pretty much everything about him is redacted.”
Anderson: “I suggest you carry this rifle. I am, after all, a non-combatant, whereas you are a trained federal agent. If one dangerous patient was on the loose, there could be others.”
O’Toole: “I’ve put people to counting the patients in their living quarters and checking if any doors are unlocked, but I guess the rifle can’t hurt.”

In G Wing, Anderson and O’Toole come across Bob the orderly and two other orderlies whose names they haven’t gotten. According to Bob, the patients of the low security ward are settled in again. They are waiting for permission to have a nurse distribute sleeping pills to those who request them. Anderson suggests that any food, drink or medical supplies not in sealed containers might have been tampered with by Dr. Cotton.

Bob: “It’s the guards who went crazy, so anything meant to go to the patients should be fine. After all, they’ve come through this looking like the sanest people here.”
Dr. Anderson: “Even so, I recommend that we avoid anything that might be contaminated. Surely we have enough bottled water and snacks to last until the Coast Guard lands.”
O’Toole: “Hell, even if the Coast Guard lands right now, you think they bothered to bring supplies for over a hundred people?”
Anderson: “We are only eight miles from shore. I will ask for lists of medicine the patients require on a daily basis and someone can probably take care of the food and drink situation.”
O’Toole: “Goddamn it, doc, I’ll add to my infinite [fornicating] to-do list!”

When they finally get to the main building, there are at least some good news. Dr. McKinney and Dr. Emma King have opened up the medical facilities on the grounds and the badly wounded have been transported there. Nurses Arthur Reilly and Justin Foreman were found in their own living quarters and are prepared to help with any necessary medical procedures. Dr. Roy Frasier has also turned up locked in a room and while there is no way to know if he was among the victims or perpetrators, he doesn’t appear threatening and Townsend has permitted him to assist in taking care of the mental patients.

Dr. Anderson wants to go and check on the situation in the medical facilities, but before he can do that, Cam Townsend asks him to take a look at Nurse McRae. Anderson confirms that she is in a deep hypnotic state and very susceptible. Townsend says that she hasn’t responded to anything he has said to her and Dr. Anderson explains to him that she doesn’t recognise him as the voice she was told to obey. After a discussion on hypnotism, Dr. Anderson agrees to see if he can ‘hijack’ control of McRae in her trance and get her to answer some questions.

Townsend orders everyone else out of the room. Before O’Toole leaves, Dr. Anderson asks him to make up a list of everyone on the island, where they were during Dr. Cotton’s speech over the intercom and radio, their medical status and where they are located now. As they are assuming that Dr. Cotton’s speech contained a post-hypnotic trigger, it might be important to know who would have been exposed to it and who was not.

After establishing hypnotic induction by making McRae focus on his voice, Dr. Anderson starts to patiently question her. He discovers that Dr. Cotton has been carrying out ‘scientific’ experiments at Manhanock Asylum ever since he was hired there just over five years ago. Dr. Cotton kept most of his work secret from other staff there, but appeared to have a lot of pull with the Chief Administrator and the Deputy Warden. Step by step, Dr. Cotton brought the guard force under his influence, working through Deputy Warden Tyrrell.

McRae was aware that Warden Tyrrell and many of the guard force exhibited symptoms of paranoia and delusions that intensified over the years. She claims that Dr. Cotton was experimenting with shared delusions and the founder effect of a strong leader in an isolated community with a belief system radically removed from reality. McRae confirms that the food and drink of the guard force was adulterated with drugs developed by Dr. Cotton that made it easier to induce a hypnotic state and also made them more suggestible.

Nurse McRae has heard tales of lizard people and hyper-intelligent rats in the tunnels below the asylum, but has never seen either. She is not familiar with any experiments that Dr. Cotton performed that might have led to the rats, but admits that she was not privy to all of his work. When asked if Dr. Cotton ever experimented on animals to her knowledge, she asserts that he did.

Nurse McRae: “There are the dogs.”
Dr. Anderson: “Dogs? What dogs? You will tell me about these dogs!”
McRae: “They were subjected to regular injections of a modified version of Substance M from weaning. The effects were encouraging, enhancing their speed, power and ferocity, as well as their intelligence.”
Anderson: “Tell me, how big are these dogs?”
McRae: “Bigger.”
Anderson: “Bigger than they were as puppies? Bigger than normal for their breeds? Bigger than normal dogs?”
MrRae: “Yes.”
Anderson: “Oh, dear. Where are these dogs now?”
McRae: “In their kennels.”
Anderson: “How many of them are there?”
McRae: “Nine dogs.”
Anderson: “And can you keep them in check?”
McRae: “I have nothing to do with the dogs.”
Anderson: “Wonderful.”

When questioned further about how the current state has come about, McRae says that if anyone among the staff complained or threatened to report some of what Dr. Cotton did to the authorities, Dr. Cotton would order them brought to his laboratory for ‘re-education’. McRae has no information about what happened in the laboratory, but the subjects were usually much more cooperative after it.

Dr. Anderson: “You will tell me if you were a willing participant in unauthorised experiments with Dr. Cotton.”
Nurse McRae: “I was.”
Anderson: “Tell me why you helped Dr. Cotton with his secret work.”
McRae: “For science. To expand the boundaries of knowledge. Because I wanted to know what would happen.”
Anderson: “Were you working for any branch of the US government?”
McRae: “No.”
Anderson: “To your knowledge, was Dr. Cotton working for or reporting to any branch of the US government in relation to his experiments?”
McRae: “He was not.”
Anderson: “What about foreign powers? Was Dr. Cotton in contact with any foreign organisation about his research?”
McRae: “Yes.”
Anderson: “What foreign organisation?”
McRae: “VVA.”
Anderson: “You will tell me about VVA.”
Townsend: “OK, Dr. Anderson. That’s enough. We’ll finish this interview once we have some experts present. And a secure room. Can you leave her in this state?”
Anderson: “I can, but it would be harmful to her if left too long.”
Townsend: “Well, then don’t leave her like that too long. But for now, just let her sit here until Ford gets here.”
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