2/2
After a pause when she'd finished, his voice came slowly, spooling from him in his 'thoughtful' tone, his mind cataloging all of the stuff he saw and everything Hunt had said even as he formulated words: "Huh. I'll look at that bedding shit later." Shifting his weight a little to the side, his head lightly brushing against Hunter's behind him as he did, Archer moved a hand over the floor of the cell. "Smooth," he murmured. "Dunno that it's gonna have any cracks in it, but we can check. Systematically test the walls, hit points all along the sides. Maybe something'll give." Archer had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn't but ya never knew 'til you tried, yeah? Yeah. What's more, it was something to do. He was fine in enclosed spaces -- he'd had to be, over the years -- but he was also a guy who walked the long and broad decks of his ship at night when he couldn't sleep. There was a chance to get out into the open air. A chance that didn't exist here.
The tree and the tubes made more gears turn in Archer's mind. It reminded him of something and for a few seconds, settling himself back with his weight on both hands and his shoulders touching Hunter's, he couldn't figure out. It gnawed at the back of his mind in a really fucking annoying way, the same way his guilt and the worry about Bran and everyone did, like there was something here he should be able to see.
Then it popped right into his mind; he thought of pet-store cages.
And something not unlike a growl emerged from his throat to preface his next low, somewhat angry words. "Fucked if we might not be fucking pets of some fucking sort. When y'get a hamster or something, y'make sure and get all the shit for the cage. Get the woodshavings or whatever for 'em to sleep in--" he gestured vaguely toward the bed-sofa-guts-whatever thing. "Get a wheel for exercise--" he jerked his head toward the tree. "And one of those... whatchacallit? the water bottle thing, clipped to the side of the cage, only lets out a drop at a time when the hamster needs to drink. How much ya wanna bet the tubes in the ceiling have something to do with that?" He turned his head to the side, looked up. A muscle in his jaw jumped; Archer was trying very hard to keep his temper in check because neither of them needed that right now and he was supposed to be the calm one. So he took a few audibly deep breaths. When he noticed his hands had curled into fists, he flattened them against the ground again.
When he was sure he could speak calmly -- don't focus on the stuff y'don't know; focus on the shit you can examine -- Archer said, "So maybe we should examine the bunch of weird fucking tubes."