thecapitol | [open]

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Who: Dennett Norton and OPEN
What: Unhappy nerd exploring the Capitol after his first inauspicious Arena death
Where: Mostly District 1
When: Nowish
Warnings: none I can think of.

Dennett had thought that the last week back home had been the worst week of his life: he'd testified before Congress, and had gone from a private citizen to the target of a firestorm of controversy. Controversy he fully deserved. He'd told himself, when it happened, 'nine days' wonder'--that they would move on to something else, some new scandal, some new controversy. It hadn't been nine days so he didn't know if that was true. Instead he'd woken up here, thrown into some gladiatorial death match...thing. And now here, in a place that looks like it should be hosting a chess competition. Or an old tuberculosis sanatorium. It was so far removed from the brutality of the Arena that it hurt his head to try to think about it.

1

The boardwalk shops cast garish light through the gathering evening, filled with trinkets like souvenirs, everything but shells with googly eyes glued to them. Who would want souvenirs of this place? And did that mean he could go somewhere else, like home?

He was pondering that latter as he turned off the boardwalk, up the road that led to the hotel(?) where he was staying, when a snowball smacked into the back of his head, followed by fast footsteps pounding into the shadows. And Dennett is not going to take this anymore: he runs--as fast as his middle-aged softness will let him--following the sound. "Come back here!"

2

He's never been a fan of rumors, but after meeting Clara--painfully--he'd kept his ears open. Alex was here. That was beyond doubt. Which was bad enough, but the other rumors were even worse. And he didn't want confirmation but, well, he'd run away before. And he owed Alex, whether Alex knew it or not.

He talks to anyone who makes eye contact, and even a few who assiduously try not to. This is important: comfort zone be damned.

"Yes. Please. Alex Murphy. He's...quite tall. Have you heard anything, please? Where I could find him?" He just hopes Alex doesn't slap him, too, when he finds him.

3

He's at the training area, but he's not training. This isn't him. He can't do this. He doesn't even know what half this stuff is for! But still, they seem to expect him to 'train', and he doesn't need psychic powers to deduce they were disappointed with his 'performance'. So he's here, but he's watching, instead, looking about as lost and uncomfortable as you could imagine. "I..there has to be another way.".

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When the door opens, Alex stares blankly Dennett Norton like he's never met him before. The bonus is he doesn't slap him point-blank range like his wife: with Alex's strength, decapitating the doctor would've been a real possibility. The conversation wuld've been over before it started.

He stands there towering over Dennett, trying to work out if he's supposed to know him or this is another one of those Capitol peoplle trying to figure out what paint stytle they can stick on his chassis. Rig. Prosthetic. Alex isn't entirely sure which one it is and he's not entirely sure he wants to know, either. Anyway, this old guy looks reassuringly plain compared to District 5's Escort and the Stylist team, Alex a little bit more inclined to trust his opinion at this point.

"Yeah?" Alex doesn't let him in just yet. "Please don't tell me you're here to color coordinate this damn thing."

He gestures at his suit.

Believe him, Dennett had been thinking of Alex's strength and the possibilities of a slap. It was why he fully intended to stay out of range.

'Damn thing'? Damn thing? Excuse him for huffing for a second, because he designed most of that suit, Alex. And he finds the silver and black to be rather, well, aesthetically appealing. Far better than the black Sellars had insisted on. "What's wrong with it?" He means at first, the color, but then, also, the suit itself. "I mean, it's functional, yes?" Clara had spoken about seizures. Who knew what that meant?

Yeah, this must be the tech guy. He looks so normal Alex feels his guard starting to relax despite himself: he's not sure if its the gray hair that hasn't been dyed blue and hit with sparkles or it's the slightly lop-sided glasses.

"Yeah, I guess it's functional," Alex says with a little frown, shooting the old guy a look. How would he know? All he has to go on are the stupid messages that keep popping up in front of his eyes like floaters. "Come in. I'm Alex."

He steps to the side, figuring he should hold out his hand and get this over with. Clara said he couldn't get out of the rig but he's hoping this man can tell him differently. Or at least tell him how much he had left of his body, if he lost an - an arm or something.

"So where do we start? Like, the...maintenance," Alex pauses on the word.

"The tech guy?" Excuse his parroting. It's a bit of a blow to his ego--on top of the other blows to his ego, his self-concept, his eye. "I suppose you could say that." He designed it, installed it, did all the biomech hookups. Tech guy? Reductive, but accurate.

"I know. Alex. It's me, Dr Norton." You know, Dr Norton. Your old...uh...pal you tried to strangle on first meeting. But he's using his patient bedside manner voice, hiding the confusion and alarm. "We can, well, I'd need to take a look first. What's wrong?"

Alex looks right at him and there's no flicker of recognition. He wonders briefly if he's supposed to know him but, wracking his memory between waking up in the suit, the Capitol's idea of a doctor looking at him, and walking out to the car that night, he's got nothing.

At least he can focus on the "what's wrong"?

"I keep...uh, I keep seeing things here," Alex points at his eyes. "Like error messages and whatever. Can you get rid of them? It's distracting."

And then get him out of this rig but he'll start with this first.

The blank look tells Dennett something, but not enough. Alex should--shouldn't he?--still have the entire Detroit police database in his head. And while Dennett wasn't exactly a criminal, he did have records Alex should access: his driver's license, if nothing else.

But that train of thought gets derailed by 'error messages'. "What did they do to my--I mean, what kind of error messages. Do have codes?" He can try to remember--there was a reason he wrote a manual, after all. "I could, well, with the right tools."

"Uh," Alex pauses to wrack his brain, trying to remember what was popping up in the arena. "Stuff like Targeting Offline and Thermal errors."

Alex would be horrified if he found out there was a damn manual to him now.

He does that rapid, involuntary blinking motion ike he's got dust flying in his eyes: a marker labeled [ DIAGNOSTIC REQUIRED ] pops up, right on cue, Alex fixing Dr. Norton with a quietly pleading look.

"Please tell me you can turn it off. Where do you get the tools?" And when he means "turn it off", Alex really means all of it.

"Thermal?" He steps forward, in spite of manners, reaching to touch Alex's cheek, trying to read his body temperature. "And you, are you feeling feverish? Disoriented in any way? I mean, other than being here." Which, well, was still knocking Dennett for a loop.

Well, most of the manual is in Dennett's head, at least. The important parts.

"I'd have to ask. I mean, I just got here myself. I'm honestly not sure they'd let me have them." Then again, what better way to arm a surgeon than hand him a scalpel?

Alex started to jerk his head back before he remembered Dr. Norton was on his side. "No, I feel okay. It's just driving me real crazy to see that crap all the time is what I'm saying."

He let the man do his job, touching his cheek, holding still. The man had the long spidery fingers he's seen on people like surgeons and pianists, and none of the scars or knobby knuckles of the cops with broken fingers he's seen back home.

"So are you a Tribute or they pull you in for cyborg duty?" Alex has to know.

"It's meant to get your attention, yes." The idea being, of course, Alex would come back to base for a diagnostic.

Alex's face feels fine, the skin not waxy or showing signs of rejection or missing the chemical protocols. He ponders for a long moment, trying to figure out what he could do with what he had...which wasn't much.

"I'm a...Tribute, I guess. Though not much of one." He peers up at Alex's face. "What's the, uh, the last thing you remember before here?" It was the same question Clara had asked him. Maybe it was a key.

He's...a Tribute. Alex has trouble processing that because when he looks at Dr. Norton, he just sees an old man who seems like he should be collecting retirement or something, not running after people half his age trying to kill them. Actually, Alex has the feeling Norton probably does more running (and hiding) than actual killing.

"Checking out my car back in Detroit. Then waking up here." Weird, Clara had asked that question too - seems to be a popular topic. "What's that got to do with anything? You're serious about the Tribute thing?"

Alex seems to be temporarily hung up on that thing, cyborg and memory issues aside. He really, really can't picture this guy in the Arena no matter how hard he tries.

Dennett has several years left before retirement, thank you very much. But his career field has different standards than Alex's, before and after the accident.

"Not a very good Tribute, apparently," Dennett said, distracted, studying Alex's armor for signs of damage. "I got stabbed in the eye." By a woman. And a knitting needle. But only one embarrassing revelation at a time.

"It's just that," right, and maybe he could talk about his embarrassing Arena death again? "We met. In China. I made you. Well, this." And maybe Dennett should consider stepping back out of range. Maybe. Because their last intro had gone so not well, too.

Alex winced. "Christ. I'm sorry."

He knows sorry doesn't change anything, but it pops out anyway. Luckily his imagination doesn't try to fill in the blanks.

"We did?" Alex seems almost glad for the distraction - somehow it's less awkward to talk about memory gaps than to talk about Norton getting shish-kabobed in the eye. That or it hasn't really sank in yet. Maybe he doesn't want it to. "What do you mean, China? If you made the rig, can't you take it off?"

He's doing a fairly decent job keeping his voice together, but there's the slightest wobble, as if he's really, really banking on the man saying yes.

"It was an...interesting experience. Without anesthesia." At least when he does his thing, painkillers and sedatives are involved. That makes him better, right?

"China. An OmniCorp testing facility. You were there for four months with me, getting used to the suit, passing Mattox's tests." There's an implied 'stupid' in between the last two words.

"Alex. We...we can't take it off. It's you."

"What." Alex's voice goes so flat he almost doesn't recognize himself. He gets that same tightness to his face that he got when Clara told him the same thing, feeling as if all his blood vessels froze over, as if he's got a mask instead of skin. "Sure you can. I'm healed now."

His voice rises. Four months he can't remember. Tests that don't exist for him. Alex can't tell if he's ready to flip out or not, and he guesses that getting thrown into the Arena only a few weeks before might have a hand in that.

"I. Uh." Dennett, this is your chance to do better than you did the first time: Alex won't throttle you, he won't try to run, he'll just take it calmly.

If you do this right.

N-no pressure!

"Alex. You're healed, yes. But that's because of the suit. There was an explosion, the car exploded. You were standing right next to it."

It's one of those things Alex somehow manages despite having a body straight out of a factory: he seems to swell up, something behind his face going dead in the look that Jack calls his "shit's going down" expression. To his credit, he doesn't go for an instant-replay of the choke-hold back in China.

"Clara told me. Got it. But I'm good now, so get it off."

Alex takes a step forward, not even realizing that he's a lot more intimidating looking now than when he was in Detroit. He doesn't like the idea of shaking down some old man. At the same time, Alex and good and tired of this damn suit.

Dennett's not sure he'd come up with the same name for that look, but he does know it is not a happy look, and possibly dangerous to his wellbeing. Will they revive him if he dies not in the Arena? He's...pretty sure he doesn't want to find out.

"Alex. It's not a suit. It's you. The other--I mean, your body--there wasn't much left, after the explosion." He doesn't expect Alex to believe him. "Trust me, you wouldn't have liked to live as you were."

Alex has that two second pause where it becomes more obvious than he'd like that Norton hit something on the head, something he hadn't even told Clara. It'd been in the back of his mind ever since he woke up and couldn't pry off the panels. When he realized he could be stuck like this. Now it's becoming the stark reality.

"How much is left?" Alex's voice doesn't squeak out, but it comes close. He feels a little bad picking on some random guy who, from the sound of it, did save his life. At the same time, he wants answers. "This isn't real, is it?"

He holds up his left arm, the hand that looks like it's armored instead of skin and bone.

Oh....dear. Not this question. At least Alex isn't running from it this time?

"I...I don't find that a productive line of thought for you, Alex." Translation: Not much.

"And that's very real. My own design." There's just a thread of pride, there. He does good hands.

Yeah, don't think you got away with the evasion there: Alex is onto you, doctor. He's seen every kind of liar on his job and he can tell when someone's trying really, really hard to hedge around the truth. It gets his hackles up, Alex scowling even deeper now.

"Yeah, well. Thanks for saving my life and all. You didn't answer my question."

He almost dares Dr. Norton to evade him a second time, eyes boring into him like an accusation.

He didn't think it would work, so he's not particularly surprised that it flopped in the air between them like a dead fish. He's hardly one of the hardened criminals Alex might have had lying to him before.

"Alex." He sighs. "Your spine was severed. You'd lost one eye, possibly both. Hearing, as well. The hand...it was just about the only intact thing left." He's going to not mention the face, though he figures Alex can figure it out.

Imagining what could be hiding under this rig was one thing. Hearing about it from someone who definitely knows, though? Alex is sorry he asked because he can see fine out of his eyes but now he has to wonder - are they even real? Are they prosthetic eyes or something? Instead of optic nerves, it's wires threaded into his face? Nausea rises in his throat, Alex swallowing.

He probably doesn't even have a stomach. Couldn't even throw up if he wanted to.

"Jesus Christ." Alex doesn't know what to say. "So I don't even have a body if you could open this thing up right now."

Maybe Alex shouldn't ask why he can see HUD displays, since they are projections on his optic structures, whether the visor is down or not.

"Alex." He can only imagine what it's like: to wake up in this body, no matter how finely engineered it was. "There was extensive, unsurvivable damage. Otherwise Clara wouldn't have agreed to this." Though he wasn't sure if she knew all she was getting into. They rarely did, but the point for her was she'd have her husband, the brain and personality of the man she loved. And that was what mattered.

Wasn't it?

Clara. Bringing up her name seems to get Alex to back down slightly, his shoulders relaxing with a soft hum, his face relaxing a fraction. "Yeah. Yeah, she basically said that."

He turns away from the doctor, paces for a bit, and then stands there with his hands on his graphene hips like he'd meant to shove his hands in his pockets only to realize he wasn't wearing jeans anymore.

"So this is how it'll be. The rest of my life. I starved back in the Arena." Alex turns back to Norton. "So that means I can't even eat like a normal person?"

The very least he can do is find out what he can and can't do. The Capitol techs have been a lot less helpful, come to think of it. Maybe that's part of the entertainment value, the whole seeing how the newbie cyborg handles it on the fly.

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