WHO: Nelly Dupuis, Stephen Knight WHAT: Walking back from training. There are theories. And things. WHEN: June 5th WHERE: Somewhere between the warehouses and the dorms STATUS: Complete
Training was, as ever, monotonous and lacklustre but with the clocks arriving at the time that would end the torture, Stephen felt infinitely better about the whole thing. Usually, that would be that and he wouldn't see his training team until the next training session, but seemingly this was not the case as he spotted one of their newer members. He was not quite sure what to make of Nelly Dupuis just yet, but she was new and he understood he had to be cautious.
Caution, however, did not mean he could be rude. Deciding to allow his manners some free reign, he sped up slightly and opened the building door for her. Small talk was one of the more revealing things with new people, so he could rationalise it to himself as that. "After you, Miss Dupuis." If he hurried up, he could probably eat within fifteen minutes and set up a new canvas and get a good few hours in.
“Mr Knight the Fourth,” Nelly said, trying not to laugh or ask him if he’d stepped right out of a Jane Austen movie. He was a weird one, Stephen, but it amused her more often than not, so it was all good as far as she was concerned. “Or is it just Mr Knight?”
She walked through the opened door ahead of him and waited for him to catch up. “I thank you kindly,” she added, as formally as she could possibly manage. “How did you find training?”
“Given the mocking, I would have thought you would go for ‘Sir Knight’,” Stephen said neutrally, fully aware he could have some old fashioned attitudes in the strangest of circumstances but he wasn’t about to change his behaviour simply because he was shipped off to Australia. “Though I suppose given our,” he made a face at the concept,” team member status, I think you can say Mr Knight if you wish. Or lose the title.”
He was slightly surprised by the open invitation to walk with her, but quickly suppressed it. “It’s training, it’s not exactly taxing.” It was, in fact, regular and monotonous and he was starting to bristle at that. In all honesty, starting to was the wrong term: he had bristled a good six months or so ago. “But then, my power isn’t exactly complex.”
“Knight Knight maybe?” she suggested, although she did dial down the mockery just a bit. It was no fun when he was so... neutral about it. But that was kind what he was like, so she wasn’t exactly surprised that he didn’t take the bait. “I’ll lose the title when you do, Mr Knight. It’s only fair.”
Nelly’s training was probably a bit more entertaining than Stephen’s, if only because she’d snuck one of the keys Ansel had given in with the boring objects the IVI had provided her with. She’d gotten more than a handful visions out of it, one so fascinating that she’d almost overdone it and gotten lost in it, an experience that was never very pleasant. Apart from that the gift had been a good one in every way. “I can’t complain about mine being boring,” she said. “But yes, putting people to sleep all day long probably isn’t that stimulating.”
“My great great grandfather,” Stephen deadpanned, which could well be true for all he knew. There was only so many times you could recycle the same name before it become completely ridiculous. “But as you wish, Miss Dupuis. Though generally making someone go night-night is all I spend my training doing, so perhaps it would be appropriate.”
He didn’t mind his power so much. He could occasionally specify limbs to put to sleep, which was always fun if someone was getting the hell on his nerves and if someone was a sleep talker, that did make for the kind of footage that youtube was created for, but in training, these weren’t of much interest. Especially after this much time. “I get my stimulation elsewhere, thank you.”
Nelly laughed. “I’m sure you do, Mr Knight. As long as you get it without putting Shannon to sleep first I have no objections. That’s a bit creepy.” Not that she thought he would. He was way too much of a gentleman for that sort of thing. That was part of why she found him so strange, probably. She’d never met a guy her age who was so damn polite, titles and all. Though admittedly there were a lot of weird people here, and he didn’t even make the top-twenty of that list so in a general sense he wasn’t so bad.
She hiked her bag up on her shoulder and glanced his way. He’d had a lot of opinions on the network over the last few days while she hadn’t written as much as a single comment. She still didn’t know what to think, or how to react to this new law passing. She did know that the urge to send her step-mother, the reason she was here, a less than pleasant thank you note was growing larger by the minute, but that was about it. “You have an opinion on this new IVF stuff, right?” she asked. “What it means and things like that.” If she’d been online she most definitely would’ve put a ~ on each side of the word. Or one side, at least. It seemed appropriate, given the situation.
That joke got even less funny with time. It would have been more amusing if he didn’t struggle with keeping his power under control during intense moments, but he wasn’t about to share his sex life with the new girl. “I reserve being creepy for other areas,” He said, deciding he wouldn’t elaborate on that one.
He regarded her quizzically, “I have an opinion on most things.” It was vague, but his brain didn’t process things as quickly as he wished it would and he tended to need to buy time to make connections in his mind. “As for what it means, Miss Thompson was correct in one way: it hasn’t changed anything. It’s just made it open for the first time, but some of us have been expecting it for a while.” He wasn’t sure if that was what she was after, but it seemed a safe enough way to answer the question. “Why?”
“Thompson?” Nelly said, drawing a blank. She could remember most people by now, but last names were harder, especially if it was someone she didn’t talk to regularly. “Oh, Sadie?” she said after a moment, hazarding a guess. “The angry one with the baby?”
She wasn’t sure why she was asking. She just couldn’t quite make sense of it herself and he seemed like a smart guy. That was good enough for her at this point. “Like you said, you seem to have an opinion on most things. And I haven’t exactly been one of you for all that long. I’m not used to this stuff applying to me. It’s a bit weird.”
“GI Joe’s sister,” Stephen elaborated, feeling a little accomplished that he could remember a name for her without having to look it up. Sadie was on Shannon’s team and they did seem relatively close, so he always tried to put a little extra effort in when this was the case. It seemed to be paying off. “I’d say she has issues, but it would be harder to find someone without issues around here.”
Weird was relative at IVI. “What part is troubling for you, beyond the obvious infringement on civil rights and general doom?”
“Ah yes. He seems charming.” As far as Nelly could tell Sam Thompson meant well most of the time, but he did suck up to IVI something fierce, and managed to come off a bit superior whenever he opened his mouth. It wasn’t a good look on anyone, but besides that and the fact that he was a Bruins fan (!!!) she didn’t really mind him all that much. “There are a lot of weirdos here,” she had to agree. “Some people I just kind of have to mark as ‘are you for real’ in my book.”
Having to actually voice what didn’t feel right about this whole thing was even harder than she’d thought, even though she’d asked simply because she didn’t quite know how to make sense of what was going on. The hope that he’d supply her with a tidy answer to base her own theories on was fading, unfortunately. What were smart people for, if not to help you along?
“Well,” she said slowly, thinking as she talked. “I know you’ve had problems with kidnapping and stuff in the past, and in that sense the law kind of... isn’t too bad. If it’s really protective and such. But the ones making the most noise out there are VR, and they’re pro-vol. So I can’t decide if they’re trying to protect us from the anti-vols, or keep us from joining up with the pro-vols. If it’s the former, why are there so few answers and why are they so strict with attending classes and stuff? Wouldn’t their main priority be to keep us at least vaguely happy? And if it’s the latter, how can they get away with treating us all like precious little twelve-years-old fawning after the ‘dangerous guy’ who moved in across the street? They should need more than that suspicion, in my opinion.” She shrugged, pretty sure that Stephen could find about a dozen holes in this so called theory of hers. “I don’t know. It’s just weird. Too many coincidences I guess.”
“They - or we, I willingly submit to my level of being strange - were weird before ever being vols,” Stephen said, dismissing the comments. He had no real love of a us and them mentality, but having someone like Thompson made him bristle against it. Split loyalties always seemed to end badly.
He let her finish before he continued, wanting to gather his own thoughts again. “The answer to that seems relatively simple,” He said, completely matter of factly. “It comes down to power, fear and loyalty. We have some sort of unexpected advantage, which given the time it took to set this up I do believe was at least partially unexpected and not due to outside influences which puts us in a position of power. The simplest way to strip that is exert influence and restrict control of things we don’t want to lose, such as our freedom or if you’re so inclined, family.” It was a massive power play that he had expected before Christmas, but perhaps Cooper threw them for such a loop that things had to be delayed. He didn’t like to speculate that, however, without more proof.
“So, manufacturing ways of control means removal of outside influences, regulating behaviour while refusing to allow damage to what I’m sure is seen as possible assets while allowing small acts of compassion and kindness to induce a little Stockholm Syndrome.” It wouldn’t take with everyone, but they were likely hedging their bets. “So, when every part of life is scheduled, when you are controlled to that level, when you are placed in a team with other people so you fear for them and will not endanger them due to forming some sort of attachment to them, you manufacture loyalty, which is the purpose.” He didn’t doubt that for a second.
“VR may be pro-vol, but it’s destructive and it’s powerful. I believe they would rather see us either in the cells provided or dead than allow that power shift.” He looked back at her, making it slightly more personal. “I’m not a supremacist, but we do often have an advantage over anti-vol people and even when we don’t, I don’t believe people were rescued for their own good. I believe it was a test run to see how we work to ‘rescue’, how we work as a military organisation, how we take orders, what we’re willing to do for our freedom and our friends. I believe they got them back because they believe they’re too dangerous not to be retrieved. That we are too dangerous to make our own decisions about or loyalties so they have more or less done everything, from fear to rescue, to accommodate that and to keep their assets in the best condition possible. They can’t risk us not being loyal to them and eventually, despite the anger, people will return to the routine and start defending them again. It’s already started.”
As she’d suspected, he had a lot of opinions on this matter. A lot of them. They seemed very definite too, as if he’d actually sat down and written this all out at some point. It wouldn’t surprise her one bit if he actually had. He did seem the type. “It’s natural for people to make friends,” Nelly said, although she wasn’t great at it herself. “That’s what we do when tossed together like this. I’m better at acquaintances, admittedly, but some people are hard to keep on that level.” Like Hailey, one of the most intense people she’d met. It was hard not to call her a friend, even after just a month or two of knowing each other. “So yes, loyalties. Yes, teams. You think they put us together with roommates and teams for a reason other than their convenience?”
Nelly hadn’t come to IVI hating the idea of the school in no way other than the whole ‘I was having a great time travelling, you dicks’, and had changed her view only as she slowly found out how much people were doubting it, how angry and downright suspicious they were in regards to the motives of IVI and everything surrounding it. “We can do things they can’t,” she agreed. “Sure. And they know it. Which is why they try so hard to control us, I guess. The most interesting part is definitely people’s different reactions to their methods, though.”
She thought about the secret network and the many different people on it. She didn’t know all of them, but they were all really different, with different motives and reasons for being there. Stephen might be one of them soon. He would definitely be great to have on their side if needed, with all these analytical skills. Not that she hadn’t suspected as much, even before this conversation.
“I think too many coincidences form a correlation.” Stephen said, thinking of the fact they had more or less tried to placate people with both fear and support and leant themselves to those who were pro-militant with the training and anti-militant with the schooling. It was all too manipulative for his tastes. “People who want things are always easy to manipulate. They want friends? They won’t want them hurt. They want money? Offer them a position. They want to trust you but aren’t sure? Make sure they don’t realise that people can disappear to never be heard from again.”
None of this was news to him, but he had always been open about his views. “One way or another, they are trying to appeal to as many of us as possible as a viable option. For those who aren’t likely to, they’ll try fear. Or have tried. While I don’t like to speculate without proof, there is one thing we can be absolutely sure of, Miss Dupius,” He gave her a wry smile, “They are lying to us. More worryingly, they seem also to be lying to their own people. That’s not an organisation I will ever trust.”
“You’re one of those ‘never ignore a coincidence’ people, aren’t you?” Nelly said. “I thought so.” The way he was talking about it was a bit creepy, but he might just be right. She had absolutely no idea, but yes. Possibly he was. She’d heard of that Anika girl who disappeared, she’d been told what happened during the kidnappings, but on the whole she didn’t know half as much as some of the people who had been here for months. The crash course wasn’t all that pleasant either.
“I didn’t think it was that bad when I got here,” she said. “I was mostly annoyed that I had to go back to school. The more I talk to people though... the more I start to ask questions, I guess. There are a lot of people who aren’t happy. Those who are seem to try to focus on a really small slice of reality. So yeah, I think I agree. Mostly.” She returned his smile. “Mr Knight. The Fourth.”
“Two things is a coincidence, three is a correlation.” Stephen said, with the finality of someone who expected no argument on the subject.
That was the only problem with IVI: it was dressed up enough to look like a school so people assumed it was. It was part of the reason he had given as much as he could to David as insurance. “It only looks like a school,” Stephen said, with a shrug. “Look a little deeper.” He thought back to when Cooper was exacting his sadistic machinations and they were told that he would be going to the prison area and they had realised that they had no idea how many people were there. The problem was always not knowing the threshold. “The more you look, the more you have two options: pretend it’s normal or acknowledge otherwise. I doubt either is happy. If you’re happy like this, you’re either a sheep or an idiot.”
Nelly shrugged, more or less agreeing with him. Things were lining up a little too neatly. That just didn’t happen for no reason. Not on TV, at least, and the longer she spent in this place the more it felt as if it was a cable show of some sort, from the sexually adventurous in one corner to the doomsday predictors in another, with a range of character actors doing their parts in the middle, some more outlandish than others. “I’ve figured that out by now, yeah,” she said, a little annoyed that he seemed to think she hadn’t. “There seems to be a few people on IVI’s side,” she said. “Maybe ‘happy’ isn’t the perfect word, but they at least seem content to not ask any questions. Publicly, anyway.”
“True,” Stephen said, giving her a tacit nod of approval. However, he needed to go and find his girlfriend for lunch and stimulating as the conversation was, he had not managed to see her today at all. It was perhaps a tad amusing to think of something so normal after saying their lives were in danger, but they still needed to eat and while that was the case, he would do it how he liked it. “I will leave you to dinner, then. Try to minimise the nightmares.”
“Thanks,” Nelly said. “I’ll do my best to sleep well tonight. And if I don’t, I know both who to blame and who to go to for help. Two birds, one stone. All those things.”