"What have they. done to you" Completely stunned, Kat leaned against the door, slipping slightly on the cold cloth-covered rubber at her back. Her face was flooded with a mixture of emotions- horror, pity and utter bewilderment all fought for space on her features. She reached out a hand to this man, this man who she'd known six years ago, but then pulled it back. It rested at her lap uncomfortably.
If the man who sat huddled at the centre of the drooping cords registered her reaction at all, he didn't show it. He stayed still, regarding her without interest. His arms were wrapped firmly across each other by the restraint jacket, which had been modified to allow for the cloth-bound tentacles that trailed in four lifeless loops to the walls.
"Do I know you?" he said. His voice was cracked from lack of use, a near-monotone.
Kat drew herself up, fighting the shock. "Don't you remember me?" she asked, carefully, cautiously, though she knew the answer already. Those leaden, blank-page eyes told it to her. A vague frown bunched his forehead with the effort of unaccustomed thought.
"I remember something about a a sun? And, and-"
Abruptly, the words stopped. One look at his waxy face told Kat that he hadn't just lost his thread- he'd blanked Needless to say, when judging someone's mental health, trances like this were never a good sign. This was one of the first lessons she'd learned while grabbing onto a social life - that when someone stopped talking in the middle of a sentence, it was bad.
It was nearly three minutes before he moved again, transferring his gaze from the floor in front of him up to her once more. "Do I know you?" he repeated.
Kat made a decision. It was impulsive at first, but then her schooling kicked in as well as her logic. Her instinctive first thought, based on their friendship that had been so strong six years ago and the wealth of information she had gathered on the way his mind worked in that time, was that however Otto had got caught, (and to be quite honest, she didn't want to know) he didn't belong in this place. It was a loyal thought, but as well as being a good friend Kat was also a good psychologist and this was when her psych classes kicked in. As a psychologist, she had to admit that at first examination this man looked as if he had just as much reason to be in here than the other two patients that she had just visited. More, probably. At least Star and Karos had both been able to hold a semi-coherent conversation.
So she gathered her feelings and rolled them into a little ball and shoved them to the bottom of her stomach. She took a deep sigh, and tried to step back and look at the individual in front of her like a patient. Taking him out of here if he's really gone off the deep end will hurt him more then he already is she thought to herself, so let's see if he's supposed to be here or not.
It was better not to risk showing her horror at finding him in this condition. Then again, she wasn't about to lie to him- that idea went against her training as well as offending her own sense of fairness. She was going to have to find a balance.
And to do this, she decided to start again. In response to his repeated query, she summoned a smile that most would know as sardonic, but to Otto in his right mind would see it as her trademark joking beam, and Otto like this wouldwell, she had no idea.
"Yeeeup! We met a few years ago. My name's Katarina Morrigan. Kat."
"My name is Otto." he said, but it was unclear if he was addressing her or reminding himself. She had to consciously think about not frowning at his voice. His insecurity made her worry more and more. Even when arguing with his actuators, he was never this unsure. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
Kat's first thought was to jump up and shake him till he fell. He didn't belong here. And she knew it. His voice, no matter what it had degenerated to, slammed into the back of her head like a baseball bat, brought back her memories of that hazardous ion haze of machinery and microelectronics, mingled with the tawny old-leather scent of his old trench coat; that had been a sort of olfactory signature of the doctor and his creations.
Kat would never admit to this, but she sniffed the air. There was nothing like that here, just a smell of antiseptic and rubber, the smell of those who had gone too far. It reeked of failure, and the attempt to cover said failure up but not really doing too well. The irony was, the smell that saturated the air around her was one of the only things that had every really bothered her. Kat had often wondered if she would ever get used to this aspect of her job, despite the fact that the nature of the profession she had chosen had often taken her to places that smelled the same of failure and decay, other such hospitals and prisons. It also reminded her very strongly of those pear drop things that her mother thought she loved, when in truth, she had abhorred the evil candy.
She realised that Otto was now staring up into a corner of the cell, at the softly-angled place where the walls met the ceiling, weirdly two-dimensional in the harsh white light that devoured the texture and shadows of the room's surfaces.
"What'cha looking at, Otto?" Kat asked, trying to find the energy to sound bright. She did, actually. And she looked for that energy in the hope of pioneering some kind of exchange. There was none, and when there was no reply, she turned to see for herself.
To her surprise, even in this hyper-sterile environment, one life form had apparently slipped through the institute's net of undiscerning cleanliness. Up in the corner, in the delicate web it had created, strands utterly invisible in the light, was a small house spider, a tiny dark speck suspended against the arctic wall. Kat turned sharply back to Otto, whose eyes were still lifted to the corner- moving his entire head was apparently too much of an endeavour- and as she looked at those eyes, she saw the glassy beginnings of another tune-out blank begin.
" Spider." he said, smiling faintly. The greyish was fading. But even as the grey faded, the brown did not appear. Instead, where it would have, was a fuzzy, glassy color. The color of catatonia began to embrace him and then the grey was there again, helping its partner to swallow this man's life in its essence of death.
Not too much different from the mechanical actuators that had helped their partner, the doctor.
And then, an infinity later, he looked at her and gave a half of frown. "Do I know you?"
Kat's shoulders sunk, "No"
"I didn't think so" He stared at the ground, his grey eyes fading as if to be absorbed by the rubber.
"Tell me about yourself, Otto," she said, trying to sound as kind and welcoming as possible. She opened her notebook and poised her pen, watching him with a sad, forlorn expression.
"I don't remember a lot" he replied, his voice hollow and empty. "My name it's Otto, right? Yes My name is Otto Otto Octavius." An eighth of a smile ghosted across his lips. "And I" He blinked repetitively, trying to recall. "I have more then enough arms."
Kat lifted an eyebrow. That last one was spoken rapidly, as if he were trying to get it out before he forgot it. Made perfect sense, after all.
"Eight. I have eight arms. They're mechanical." He stared at the ground, eyes intensely focused but hidden from psychologist's view. "I used them to create a suu.. no I don't have a son. I never never.."
"Never?" She tried to peek down to see his expression, her stomach twisting again. The sudden drop in the tone of his voice, from that almost excited, enthused one, told her he'd blanked out.
He had something going there, for a moment. He knew what was going on. Maybe if she got him to keep talking like that he could break whatever was holding onto him so tight. Maybe. Hopefully.
She stood up, watching the blanked Otto. He was really out of it this time. Maybe it was reverse effect. The more he remembered, the worse he zoned out. Pondering this for a moment, she looked over at the doctor. She smiled sadly, then turned back to the door. She'd continue her meeting with Karos wait
He had said she would
Shoving the thought aside, she stood up and walked towards the door, "I'll see you again, Mister-"
Otto's head shot up and he blinked, brown lustre suddenly searing back into his eyes as his entire body burned with life. One could argue even the tentacles twitched as he rattled out; "Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction, remaining a perpetual possibility only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present."
"What the hell!" Kat turned on her heel and watched Otto in complete amazement. Though the words themselves had made next to no sense to her, the rapid monologue he'd just delivered had been anything but incoherent. It had, in fact, sounded exactly like a recitation from a textbook, prose locked away and so desperate to be freed from the padded prison it was trapped in.
Come to think of it, it had sounded like something from a bookmaybe even a book Kat knew. And another thing; whatever it was from, she was willing to bet that it was word-perfect. Nothing that sounded so spontaneously fervent could possibly have been anything other than verbatim.
This change had been so sudden that the shock of it nearly eclipsed that of finding Otto here in the first place. Heart thudding, Kat took a step back towards himbut even as she did so it became clear that this coherence was no more than illusion; nothing better, just different and puzzling. He subsided as she neared, eyes half-closing beneath the hooded lids as if the effort of keeping them open had become too much. It was doubtful if he even knew she was in the room any more.
Another illusion, and a chilling one, was that of life in the tentacles. As he moved, they swayed slightly, the loops at their lowest extremity trailing the floor, but it was obvious that they had no movement of their own. Now this did make perfect sense - Kat imagined that a cell like this would hold the tentacles in their active state for just about as long as it took to say where did the wall go?' The question was, what made them so inert?
Heavy canvas and buckled straps held the heads to the walls, joined to the enveloping cloth shrouds that completely covered the tentacles' pitted alloy surfaces and were seamed into the back of the straitjacket, so that only the rough ribbed outlines of each arm were suggested through the folds. The snowy sterility of the cloth was so disparate to what she knew it concealed that she had to suppress a shudder.
And then, as she regarded the arm nearest to her, Kat's gaze landed on the tethered throat' of the actuator, and this was very possibly the real restraint.
A collar, barely thicker than her wrist, looped around the area just below the claw. Another integral part of the design, clearly. It looked deceptively simple and harmless, rather like a handheld remote that, despite its neat little palm-size appearance, happens to be designed to launch a nuclear missile. What could be more innocent than a small, shiny band of silvery metal, set with a single diode light that shone a constant, friendly blue? There was one on each tentacle in the same place, she saw. Each glowed calmly, almost as if they were sure of themselves, and for a fleeting moment, Kat thought maybe that those lights were a personality dominating the ones she knew well. Another second dismissed the thought; the bands were far too small to contain another personality which could fight that of the actuators. She had become strangely fond of the actuators and their rather unappealing personality, and looking at the dead segments made her sad. She missed the arrogant tentacles very much.
Those cool cyan lights, she noted dully, were certainly a marked contrast to the sharp-focus, bloody scarlet heart lights that she could see with perfectly in her mind's eye. Saw Otto as he was. Tentacles and all.
And another wrench in her heart. This was seriously bad for her emotional health.
Seeing the tentacles so static was jarring, like a wrong note in an otherwise tranquil chord. She remembered them as things of constant, calculated movement, remembered the slow scanning figure-of-eight weave they slipped into even when their host was standing entirely motionless. On the rare occasions that they did freeze, in fact, they were at their most dangerous. When they were still, they were about to strike.
This was no coiled-rattler pause, though. This was dead. The tentacles appeared completely drained of any kind of energy, drooping like snapped wires. If their heads weren't held vertically, flush against the walls, Kat knew that they would just fall to the floor, segments sliding against one another into whatever shape gravity decreed. And they would stay that way, too, for as long as those smug blue lights still shone.
He looked up at her again, and to her despair she saw another vague frown begin, another question start to form. Kat didn't think she could bear to hear him ask a fourth time. Instead, she moved a hand in the direction of the nearest tentacle, "What are those, Otto?"
She felt an absurd stab of guilt for testing him with such a basicwell, frankly, dumb question, which if asked under what for the sake of argument could be called normal' circumstances would have won her a look that silently placed her IQ next to that of a lampshade, but she thought that it might help to try and gauge how constant and complete his memory loss really was.
For a moment, he didn't seem about to reply at all. Kat was about to repeat the question, when all of a sudden the invisible textbook was back in front of his eyes, as was the fever within them, "Shape without form, shade without color." he said, fast and low. And then, with an eerie aptness; "Paralysed force."
Before Kat could think of a reply, he was gone again, his head lowering slowly forwards so that the empty gaze was once again scrutinizing the padded floor. Kat tried to attract his attention a few more times, but she might as well have been talking to her notepad for all the response she got. Eventually, she sighed and gave up.
It was time for second meeting with Karos. She'd find out how he had learned all of this prediction the future was impossible. She blinked several times, opened the door, and walked out.
Behind her, a pair of lifeless, catatonic eyes gazed into the nothingness. And they wouldn't be stopping anytime soon.
She slid into Karos's room and looked at the back of his head evenly for a moment. He didn't turn like last time, something that somewhat calmed her. Maybe he'd just been insane that time. One of those moments. Maybe he'd just been guessing or had heard about it from someone else. People couldn't tell the future. The end.
"But I do."
Kat blanked worse then Otto at that, every thought fleeing. Thiswell, what was this? "I didn't say anything."
"But you will. You were going to ask me how I knew that and that people can't tell the future. Weren't you?" Even so, he did not turn around, "I have an itch in my neck. Would you scratch it for me? I'm rather incapacitated at the moment."
She rolled her eyes and walked over, her footsteps silent on the rubber. She squatted down and scratched under his hairline for a second.
"That's better. Thank you."
"Welcome."
Karos sighed and rolled himself over to his side, staring absently at the wall. He shook the hair out of his face and laid there for several moments, while Kat watched him intently. The back of his head was unmoving, but after maybe a minute of this, his body rocketed up so fast he pushed himself up to his feet and stood, shockingly tall- Kat guessed around six foot, probably over. His body was even lankier then it appeared while he sat, and the straitjacket didn't help. The girl's shock at the sudden movement was apparent.
"Later then I saw. I must be getting bad at it" Chuckling softly, the man (boy? His age was impossible to tell) paced in several circles, muttering to himself. Kat looked up at him curiously from her spot on the ground. His emerald ovals sparkled, "I was off. I thought I would get up before you got here."
"Perhaps you were."
"Incorrect? I doubt itI just judged the time wrong. When nothing happens, one becomes rusty." He sat back down cross-legged in front of her and watched her with his hawk-eyed gaze. "So, tell me what happened with Otto."
"Why?"
"Because you have to, of course. I've seen it." His voice was smooth, his shoulders gesturing languidly, even though his arms were tied.
"How could you have seen it?"
"I just do, Katarina Morrigan." He chuckled. "And it's impossible to understand why. Not even I know. I see things before they happen. And then they happen."
"You're strange. Like him."
"But not exactly like him. I can hold an intelligent conversation. But you don't think so." He smiled a too-wide smile, exposing stark white teeth. This spooked Kat, for people who lived in rubber rooms weren't supposed to have such brilliant teeth.
She nodded. By now, she'd figured that arguing with him was pointless. Not only was he right, but he was sure of himself too. Sanity was questionable, but lucidity was certain. "Otto is..brain-dead."
"They have him on so many medications, I'd run out of correct predictions before I named them all." He grinned manically, green orbs flashing. "And I haven't made a false prediction yet."
"What do they have him on?"
Kat was drawn to Karos. There was no doubt about it. Drawn to him just as she had found her interest piqued in Otto and his tentacles. The comparison frightened her more then anything else unlike Otto, this man was clearly disturbed- unlike Otto had been, she reminded herself painfully- and also, Karos obviously had no problem with using her perception of his craziness to unnerve her and gain the conversational upper hand. This was something that she couldn't imagine Otto doing- no, he had struggled to hold on to his sanity too hard for too long to ever think of using itor pretended lack thereofto play such power games. She told herself that it couldn't be the same sort of interest, after all. She had first been intrigued by Doctor Otto Octavius because, contrary to all expectations, she had realised- pretty much at their first meeting- that he was essentially sane. Chet Karos, on the other hand, was pretty certainly one wave short of a shipwreckand he knew it. More than that, the fact actually seemed to amuse him.
But he wasn't amused by her latest question.
"I don't know yet." His eyes darkened. "You don't know yet so I can't know yet so you have to find out before I can tell you or how would I know?" Shaking his head, he turned away from her, laboriously resuming his sitting position. "I can't tell you things you don't tell me, Katarina Morrigan. You have to play fair, or else we won't get anywhere." The bright eyes blinked at her, mockingly, over his bony shoulder. "No-one gets inno-one gets out."
"Idon't understand what you mean," said Kat, carefully. Chet turned his head away, once more giving her an uninterrupted view of his back.
"You will..." he said, calmly. She was nearly out of the door before she heard him add;
"in time."
Kat stepped out of the room silently and slid the door closed. Her thoughts were hidden, masked and confused to even herself as she moved smoothly into the one next to it. Star was on his back and staring at the ceiling, her entrance apparently unknown to him.
"Star?"
He brought himself up a sitting position and looked over at her, "Yes, Kitty?"
"What were you thinking about just now?" She walked over to him and moved into a lotus-style sitting position near him as he watched her with his jaded baby blues.
"I was thinking about them, like I always am, silly. " He smiled at her, a sort of forlorn smile. "You are such a funny little cat. I always think about them. They used to be up there," he gestured with his head to the ceiling, "but then they took them away. The evil, evil stealers. But I'm happy you're not a stealer, because kitties can't be stealers."
"Of course not," she said vaguely, not really knowing what a stealer was, "Who are the stealers, Star?"
"The stealers are just stealers. They're so evil and mean and evil and mean that I can't even describe them. They would never never take me in if I ever described the stealers."
Sighing, Kat mentally swore. If Star kept expecting her to know things, she'd never know anything, if that made any sense. "Well, I bet if you tell me what the stealers look like, I promise to go find out about them."
"But then they'd hate you too!" He scooted a little closer to her. "And I wouldn't like that. I can't talk to anyone who they don't like. And all the other people, well they don't like them, or they're stealers."
"Other people?" she inquired. Could she go somewhere with this? Would he just give her the default answer that other people were just other people?
"People who come in here! They come and they look at me like I am some sort of little boy and tell me that the things they took away mean nothing! They are only helpers of the stealers and I hate them and I never want to see them again and I want what the stealers took back!" he shouted, throwing a tantrum. If his hands weren't tied to his side, Kat could see they would be flailing, and if there wasn't so much trouble involved with getting up in a straitjacket, he'd be jumping up and down.
The child part was accurate. But telling him that wouldn't be the smart thing.
"What do they look like?"
"They wear white coats and call me Mr. Toren!"
Kat's eyes widened in sudden understanding. Of COURSE! Why hadn't she seen it before!
"Starare the things the stealers tookare they bright and high in the sky?"
"Yeah." he chimed enthusiastically, but then his voice dropped in an instant. "But not in this sky."
I'm such an IDIOT! Kat reprimanded herself. Star! He loves the stars! And there are none in here and the "stealers" are the people who put him here away from the stars!
Beaming at her new discovery, she smiled at Star and ruffled the boy's hair. He just about purred in contentment and leaned his head on her shoulder. "Kitty?"
"Yes?"
"You sort of remind me of them. You're bright and sparkly like them."
"I'm glad I can make you so happy, Star. It's my job. But I have to go now, okay?"
"Okay! I'll see you later!" He scooted away from her as she stood up and slid out, then pressed the button for the elevator and stepped in, the door closing behind her.
Kat ran a hair through her blond ringlets as she leaned back in the elevator. She had barely any notes, and was purely overwhelmed. Star, cute but psycho. Karos, his visions of the future far too correct for her liking and his hawkish face haunting. Otto, well, that went without saying. She didn't want to think about it for the moment, but the fact was clear, she'd need help. She needed to know more about Otto in these past six years. Maybe that girl who he had "kidnapped" would help. Escher Griffin, right? She made a mental note to check the white pages for that name. And Spider-Manwell, how could she find him? As the door opened and she stepped out, her thoughts on Otto were squished into a ball in her stomach and she counted the doors to Doctor Mereii's office, then sat down across from him. The man looked up at her almost immediately.
"I trust you were surprised."
"Understatement of the century, John."
Mereii leaned his elbows on his desk and scratched the faintest of faint stubble. "You will be all right in assessing the three of them?"
With a shrug, Kat responded. "I don't see why not. Though I think learning about them is less notes and more conversation. More casual life, if at all possible."
He frowned, something that seemed to fit his face very well. The girl absent-mindedly wondered if he had practised the frown earlier. "About the third subject we understand you have had certain relations with him in your past."
"They were hard to miss." She frowned as well. She wasn't liking where this was going- in fact, she had a very good idea just where that was.
"Mister Octavius is here for a reason, and any attempts at friendship with such a deranged mind would be rather hopeless."
That was over the edge. She narrowed her purple-contact-covered eyes and scowled. "What are you implying? Quit beating around the bush."
"Do not try and get him to escape."
A harsh bark was the response and Kat practically spat out, "He wouldn't know escape if it hit him in the head. He's so brain-dead that he asked me if he knew me three times."
John nodded. "Quite understandable."
"What do you mean, UNDERSTANDABLE!" Kat almost leaped out of her chair and almost growled, "How do you expect me to study a vegetable? I'm not some sort of psychologist goddess. I can't study a man who can barely remembers that THINGS ARE ATTACED TO HIS SPINE. I can't just snap my fingers and know your answers, John. If you want me to play shrink, I have to have a patient that can perform simple arithmetic."
"You're defensive of him." The man leaned back in his chair and watched the girl intensely.
His stare, however, had nothing on Chet's."It's not just that. I can't do what you're asking. I can't turn lead into gold."
"You can find a way, I'm sure."
"John, let me get this straight." She leaned over the desk, pushing a few pictures aside, "You want me to study Otto, correct?"
The man nodded, and she continued, "You want me to find out why he did what he did, and give you a reason that doesn't involve the tentacles." Another nod. "He doesn't remember what those things he did are, John. He doesn't even remember he did anything at all."
"I am sure you'll find a way, Katarina," he repeated, steepling his fingers.
The amount of self-control that Kat used at that very moment was equal to what she had used in the previous year, but she just nodded. "I'm going to head back home. That all right with you?"
"Your first day on the job, and you are dismissed. Have a safe ride."
Well she thought grimly, spotting her car and walking to it once she'd gotten out of the building. That went.surprisingly unwell.
Kat slid into the small Focus and put it on, backing out of the parking spot and out of the lot. Her apartment was downtown from here, and she wanted to get home. Wanted to call this Escher girl. She was edgy, and Katarina Morrigan was not an edgy person.
Driving like a good driver was of secondary importance to the day.
Star. Star, Michael Alexis Peter Jare-Toren. Well, what was there to say about him? He was adorable, and clearly over-obsessed with the sparkling things in the night sky, his namesake and apparent reason for living.
She drove with one hand and opened a file with another, alternating between the road and the paper she pulled out of said file. Apparently, the boy had been arrested for a bad habit of climbing things and not coming down. Trespassing and disturbing the peace when people saw him outside their window and scaling their buildings like a madman. They'd thrown him in jail, and he'd escaped.
Thirty-two!
She received a rude honk from the person behind her as she forgot to go at the green light. This jolted her back as much as the number written on the stat sheet. That boy couldn't be thirty. She had guessed him at maybe twenty at the oldest. The obsession had taken years off his body and his mind, but she didn't think this was exactly a good thing. Thirty-year olds were not supposed to look twenty or twelve.
Butwhat was she supposed to do about him? His only care seemed to be the complete lack of stars in his little padded cell, and there wasn't anything she could do about that. She couldn't let him out though, she really wanted to to see if he got better. And she had a very interesting feeling that if he were let out, all he'd do was continue climbing things that shouldn't be climbed except if you had mechanical arms or able to shoot webs out of your wrists. But that was another story entirely.
Whereas, Chet Karos, well, she could write a book on him and had just met him.
Navigating a conversation with the bright-eyed enigma in room 709 was harder than she could believe. He was lucid, he was quick-witted and fully understanding of the rules of a civilized dialogue although the latter was soured by his inexpressible aura ofcreepiness. But what made it so hard, what made her throat tighten even at the memory of his calm voice, was the unshakeable sense that, as the two of them talked, he alone had the script. To talk to Karos was to get a sense that one was being steered, prodded along a predetermined path. Controlled. And it was not in Kat's nature to enjoy being controlled, not one bit.
From a psyche that seemed made to control to one that had turned so massively passive was a mental jump, but Kat made it nonetheless as she slammed on the indicator and zipped up a bus lane across a busy intersection.
Ottowell...thinking about him made her nauseous. All she wanted to do was get him out of there. It wasn't a place for the doctor and his creations. The actuators brimmed with life, brimmed with intelligence and ability whilst Otto was a quiet ball of genius and a bit of snide amusement.
But now, both had been apparently destroyed; ripped up by people who believed him a bad thing. She couldn't understand it, really, and if she hadn't had years upon years of schooling, she would have broken him out the moment she knew it was him. And to even think he was someone else was completely amazing, the man had been so strong in his own way, his own little mental battle and social battles had changed him into something else, something no one else could attain, and to even think to mistake that something for someone else was preposterous, and only showed Kat how terribly wrong Otto was for an insane asylum.
Otto was saner then anyone would ever know. If anything, half of New York should have been thrown in that nuthouse for merely thinking he wasn't.
Andhow had he gotten in there to begin with? Was it right after they'd lost touch, or had he only been in there for a few weeks, or what..she couldn't tell. She couldn't fathom how he'd manage to get himself drugged to hell and the tentacles disabled as they were. He was just smarter then that, and even if he wasn't, the tentacles would clearly help with that one.
Unless.
There was an unless, and it was a bad one. It was a hulking, unpleasant unless so big that it deserved its own zip code.
Of course, on an intrinsic level, we ARE one and the same. If I get hurt, they experience discomfort. If I get angry, they getdispleased. And things get broken.
Those words echoed in her head as she barely ran through the yellow light, which was more of a red-orange then an actual yellow. Oh well. No cops around. Kat had heard those words from him, a long time ago, in a place that hung in her memory rather well, sort of like a large wad of glue on a surface meant to be pristine.
"And if you went crazy, Otto?" Kat murmured to herself, fingers tapping idly on the steering wheel as she carved up a furniture removal van with impressive accuracy.
Only humans went crazy. But machines broke, and computers malfunctioned. Andto be honestshe knew better than anyone that the A.I personality that governed the smart arms wasn't exactly the most stable creation in history. Oh, yes, it was balanced, all right. As balanced as certain tower located in a certain Italian city.
So, if for whatever reason, Otto had let go of reality of his own accord, if something terrible that she couldn't even guess at as yet had pushed him over the edge, then technically there was every chance that the intelligence that shared his mind would just go straight over with him. It was simple to theorize that he would have been easy to catch, if that happened.
And if that had happened, then all this was pointless. If that had happened, Otto Octavius belonged in that celltentacles and all.
A few more horn honks told her that she really, really, needed to start paying attention to the road. Luckily, she was also just about home. Pulling into the parking lot and into the apartment was a sort of lost on her, deep in thought about her friend and his condition and this new girl she was going to talk to, and how little she knew about the girl. Her words formed in her mind as she nearly ran down the hallway and pulled out the key to her apartment.
Slamming the door to her apartment open and closed, Kat sunk down into her fluffy computer chair and stared at the screen before moving the mouse and causing the screen to flicker on in a haze of blue and Windows. With several quick clicks she was at and a quick search revealed (thankfully) only one Escher Griffin living in New York City.
This was for Otto, for the tentacle-boy, for the tentacles. She wouldn't let him live like that, and if he was doomed to do so, then she'd find out why.
She picked up the phone and read the number off the website, pressing the buttons on the pad then hearing the slow, repetitive sound of the dial tone. Finally it stopped, and there was a girl's voice, one that Kat estimated could not be any older then when Katarina Morrigan herself had first met Otto Octavius and started the strangest friendship in existence.
"Hello?"
"Is this Escher Griffin? If so, well, I have one hell of a story for you. Well, you don't know me, but my name is Katarina Morrigan, I'm a criminal psychologist and I work at an asylum. I have a certain connection with a certain doctor that has more then two arms there, and it is not a good thing. I need your help."
