"Four," Park said, with as serious an expression as he could muster, accepting Abby's mustard jar with all manner of pomp and circumstance. He huffed and he puffed and he quietly twisted off the lid, all the time keeping an ear toward the shift talk going on to either side. He'd been assigned his fourth year, one more than his former, he assumed, because of his relative seniority. But now...
He felt his tablet vibrate at his side, and immediately, though with an unhurried care, turned the entirety of his attention toward the incoming message. Suppositions on a dead man were all good and well, given the circumstances. But he had real, almost-clients here and now, and if ever one of them so much as breathed a thought that they might require his aid, he would be there.
As it were, he only smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling in genuine pleasure as he read Pauline Weber's message. He had yet to meet the young woman in question, but even the pixels of her words seem to exude a light and hope most would have guessed impossible. It was...refreshing, to say the very least.
Pushing his glasses to slide a bit down the bridge of his nose, he squinted at his tablet, tilting it to and fro, until at last he was able to type some semblance of a message back -- No pressure to come see me today, Pauline. Just letting you know my door is always open. That said, if you're up for it, I would love a tour of the gardens. I hear you're very familiar! -- before he tucked his tablet away and returned to the conversation at hand.
"I'll take that, if you don't mind," he said, with another smile at Abby, nodding at the veritable tub of pickles behind her, though his tone was a bit more distracted. He had, he thought, a good idea of just precisely where Gavin was going with his otherwise enigmatic question, because he'd been thinking much the same himself.
The details made available to him on the strange and tragic case aboard the mostly-sleeping Copernicus had pertained largely to Sylas Adams's mental state, as well as the states of those impacted by his actions. He'd heard snippets here and there, mostly gossip and whispered judgments, but nothing he took all too much to heart. Even so, spare as the details might be, he could not begin to conceive how so elaborate and odd a plot could be carried out by a single man, in particular one so utterly...normal. For once, it was not the man's state of being that stood out to Park, but the action itself. It was rare -- very rare -- that he reduced people, patients or otherwise, to their (probably criminal) acts. It was, he'd found, the quickest way to alienate and literally dehumanize.
But in Adams's case, he made the necessary exception, and had come to the same conclusion Gavin had by the time the younger doctor swept an inquiring gaze his way. Park looked back sagely enough, his appetite temporarily muted over his open-face not-so-melty tuna melt.
"Pardon me for looking ahead," he interrupted quietly, "but, reading between the lines, Gavin, it seems you have some concerns any...accomplices Adams may have had may still be...around?"
Deli started violently when she heard footsteps echo outside her office, and only then knew she wasn't really fooling herself. There was, had been for years, really, a very precise reason she was now crouched on the floor of her office in a nest of old papers, candy bar wrappers, singed wires, and dissipating wisps of smoke. Or perhaps there were several. In any case, the primary one was evasion of thought, and none of what she was doing just now was helping.
"Ay," she muttered to herself as a slow consciousness began to return.
Like any daydreamer worth her salt, Deli could lose herself for hours in whatever project seemed most compelling at the time. Parents, teachers, friends, even Deli herself had been somewhat alarmed by the intense focus that could sweep over a girl who, half the time, forgot to finish sentences. There'd been days when she was younger she wouldn't eat or even use the restroom until her mother physically dragged her, dazed and usually annoyed, to her feet.
She'd been in a similar trance just before her brother had died. She knew, because her father's lawyer had tried to call it something, something it wasn't, a seizure or dream or hypnosis or something. She'd plead guilty after that.
Right now, there was nothing and no one dead around her, just a pile of metal scraps and gears, and half a can of oil she was probably going to get yelled at for later on. She could tell by the faint smell of burned hair, and the blisters forming on the back of her hand that she'd done something wrong (or right?), and had the random thought that she ought to crack a window before Reece or Curmy found her. But then she remembered that might actually, literally kill all of them, and while it made for a genius comic scene in her head, she didn't think Curmy would look all that great, frozen screaming at her for eternity.
Instead, she reached automatically to one side, seized a handful of gummy bears, and absently shoved them into her mouth, humming under her breath as she squinted at the notes she was knelt on top of. Pages on pages of the physical and chemical makeup of the blasting materials (and/or mineable asteroids) she was supposed to be studying. A cursory glance told her she knew most of what she needed to know, or at least the jargon-y bits of it, just from her term serving on the Mountain, though detail recollection had never been her strong suit. She was much better at improvising.
She was sort of curious what she could say to get Reece to trust her out in the dark.
Remembering Reece made her remember that conversation she wasn't looking forward to in the slightest, and then a morbid curiosity pushed her to peek at who it was who'd interrupted Deli Time. She looked out into the hangar (still gnawing on a hunk of solidified gummy gelatin so dense it made her jaw hurt) just in time to see a flash of blue and brightened instantly.
"Hey!" she called, abandoning her work, metal scraps and all, behind the door on which she'd hung a construction paper sign labeled, "DELI'S PLACE!"
"Um...Hey...Blue! Come back, where'd you go? I have gummy bears, you want some?"
Little Bill