Post by Stormm on Jul 28, 2014 18:17:11 GMT -5
There was one wing of the Sedgwick County Detention Facility that had been closed off for renovations. All the inmates from that wing had been moved elsewhere, and due to low population, made it easy to do. This particular wing had become so quiet; you could hear a fork drop in the cafeteria on the other side of the jail.
As the doors opened and closed down this hall, the clang and clatter of the sliding steel and solid locks became a constant reminder of what that place really was, despite the serenity of the silence that fell there. Justin Michaels was being escorted down the hall by the Sherriff of the Sedgwick County Police Department, Jeff Easter, while the warden waited impatiently at the other end.
Justin and Jeff had gotten to know each other very well over the course of the past eighteen months. After the Force of Nature's first half a dozen or so phone calls to the Wichita police, he was finally handed over to the Sherriff for special handling of the case that had finally come to a close just a few weeks ago. Jeff was the only one on the force to have actually believed a word Justin had to say about the man he was coming to visit, and after all those years, that man was finally in his place, behind a locked door just like so many he had put in similar situations, for far less convincing reasons.
Despite this wing being close off, one man had been kept in a cell, at the far end of the hall. It had been the first cell to be renovated with the new specialty cells that were being put into place there. Justin carried a black, more than likely very uncomfortable, fold-out chair with him. He had been given special visitation rights given his past with this particular inmate, and despite the warden's disapproval, the Sherriff had convinced him to allow this visitation, as well as any subsequent ones that would follow.
"You want me to stick around, or will you be alright by yourself?" With a stern look and deep voice, the Sherriff glanced at Dr. Damian Sorrow before turning his attention back to Justin.
Without hesitation, Justin extended his right hand to the man in uniform. "I think I can handle him from here."
Pointing to a small panel on the side of the cell, Jeff explained what each of the buttons did, one to allow communication in and out of the cell, and another to darken the thick Plexiglas to prevent vision in or out of the cell. Justin nodded and Jeff walked away. Unfolding the chair and placing just a couple feet away from the glass, he pushed the button to allow communication and sat down, watching the man inside of the cell cozy up to the glass himself.
"My my Number One, to what do I owe this pleasure?" His obvious condescension accompanied a malevolent smile.
Justin finally took a seat, and paused for a moment as the echoing sounds of footsteps trailed off while he waited for the Sherriff to be out of earshot before he began his communication. "I have no desire to be here, and no patience for your cheap tricks; so cut the bullshit, and let's get through this as quickly as possible."
The man who would obviously soon be a former doctor looked saddened by Justin's attitude, and he cocked his head off to one side. "Now is that any way to greet an old friend?" He questioned. "You are obviously here for a reason, and it is not to say hello; so if you are looking to get anything from this visit, perhaps you should play along... Justin."
Pushing his tongue into his lower lip, Justin crossed his arms and stared at the ceiling for a moment while he composed himself. He knew better than to think this would be an easy visit, and he knew almost immediately that it wouldn’t be his last either, given the way this one had started already. "Alright Damian, I'll humor you; but don't think I won't walk away at the first sight of you not giving me what I want in return." With a deeper tone than usual, Justin leaned forward and uncrossed his arms, placing his hands on his knees, and stared right through Damian.
The elderly man nodded with that devilish grin, and leaned forward as well. "Now that is a good boy."
Ignoring the old man's ominous words, the Force of Nature jumped right into it. "Tell me where..."
Damian quickly cut him off. "No no, let me guess." He said leaning back in his own chair, his yellowed teeth still visible. "You are missing a small handful of my patients, are you not?" Justin nodded with his eyes closed. "I had no doubt in my mind that you were not telling the whole truth when you said they had all been safely transported to another facility."
"There was an incident on the bus, and five of MY hospital’s patients escaped. We alerted the authorities, and I had my guys go looking, but if there is no doubt about anything, it's that you planted some kind of escape plan in their heads; so tell me where they are!" It was obvious that Justin had enough of this man over the years, he was in no mood to be forced to communicate with him, but the world had different plans.
Damian's smile quickly disappeared, and his brow furled as he quickly stood up, causing his chair to go crashing backwards. He sprung forward and slammed his hands on the glass; the excitement caused Justin to flinch, even though he tried to play it off as he leaned back onto the black, barely padded chair. "No, this is NOT how this game works!" The rumble of his voice, even though the speaker that allowed Justin to communicate back and forth with the man, could be felt by him on the other side of the glass. "If you want to play properly, you are going to give me something before I give you anything!"
The man known as Stormm inside of the squared circle echoed his nemesis' actions, and vaulted from his chair and turned down the corridor. "I don't need this shit, I'm out of here!"
"You will never find them without me!" The old man's response seemed scripted, as if he expected Justin to react the way he did. The game was all Damian had now, and he would be damned if he didn't play it the best he could. "You will NEVER... find them... without... ME!"
Stopping dead in his tracks, Justin hung his head. He knew the crazy son of a bitch was right. He only had files and as good a guess as anyone else where the six men he sought were. The five that had escaped the bus that day, and the man he wanted to find most, Kaden Calix. He returned to his chair, Damian tidied up his cell, and returned to his seat. "Fine."
The unsightly teeth were exposed once more as Dr. Sorrow scooted closer to the glass. "In return for information about my patients..." Justin scowled at the man, as if to tell him to stop living in denial, and to accept the fact that Southwind Gardens was no longer his. "In return for information about the hospital's patients, I will require information about my most favorite patient of all; you."
For a moment, Justin considered storming off again, but remained planted on the awkward fold-out. "You've had your claws dug into me and my family for too long, there's no way I'm trading my personal life for information about the people you are responsible for corrupting so badly that I'm this situation in the first place!"
"I am a fair man; if not your personal life, what about your professional one? Your career?" Grinding his teeth with excitement, Damian’s smile seemed bigger than humanly possible. "I do enjoy it when grown men, so absorbed with themselves, jump into the confines of a twenty by twenty to beat the living daylights out of each other; and the emotional distress that it must cause in the end." By the time he finished his statement, he had begun to rub his hands together in some diabolical fashion.
Justin let out a heavy sigh and nodded his head. "As long as nothing gets personal, and it stays purely about wrestling, then I guess I can live with that arrangement."
Having gotten what he wanted to this point, Damian seemed to be pressing his luck with his next statement. "There is one other thing."
"Of course there is!" Rolling his eyes, Justin submitted without even putting up a fight that time.
"You don't get to pick who I tell you about in ANY order." His yellowed teeth had gone back into hiding as the former doctor looked to have gotten serious. "I will not confirm or deny your accusations towards me in knowing who the escaped patients may or may not be, but for the sake of argument, let us say that I do." Damian continued. "But there is one of your six me that I will not, actually, cannot, help you find."
"Who?" Justin questioned immediately.
Taking a deep breath, Damian seemed to prepare himself for some sort of negative reaction from Justin upon answering that question. "Patient Seven Twenty-Seven." He answered, referring to the patient by the number on their file, as he had been known to do. "One mister Christopher Kaden Calix."
In a fit of rage, Justin flew out of his seat, grabbed the flimsy fold-out chair, and slammed it down onto the ground. "What fucking good are you to me then?!" He clamored.
"Mayhap with my assistance, finding five might lead to finding a sixth?" He asked as if it were a riddle. "I have been in search for that which you are after for many years, and since I am unable to follow through on this plan which I had laid out for myself, I will have to take resolve in seeing how it end by helping you do it for me."
There was no doubt in Justin's mind that this whole thing had been orchestrated from the start, he was not at all thrilled with it, but knew he was going to have to go through with it, or risk losing his link back to a man he was responsible for being put in this situation five years ago. "So how does this work then?"
Damian stood up and placed his chair back into the far corner of his cell before approaching the glass, placing his right hand flat on the surface. "I am so very glad you asked Number..." He cleared his throat. "...Justin." Removing his hand from the glass, he crossed his arms and began to pace back and forth in front of the Force of Nature. "You will come to me, and answer any number of questions that I may have about your previous match, your upcoming match, or even potential future matches. When I am satisfied with your response, I will provide for you one single clue about your next target."
"Hardly seems fair!" Justin retorted while cracking the knuckles on both of his hands.
"Fair, my good sir, has nothing to do with any of this. If you want to talk about fair, I am in this cell while the rest of you are out there!" Damian's bitter attitude about being locked up for his crimes began to surface, but he quickly calmed himself. "This is just the name of the game, and fortunately for me, it is my game, so you will just have to, how you would say, deal with it!"
"Well then, get to asking; I don't have all day!" The Force of Nature had grown very impatient of the old man, and was ready to be on his way.
The pacing stopped, and Damian turned to Stormm. "I will start you with a quick and easy one, since you do not seem to be in the mood to play properly." He responded. "I want to know your thoughts on this tag team match you are in at Trauma One Fifty-eight."
For a man locked away for, well, probably the rest of his life; in a soundproof cell that could prevent him from sight outside of the walls he was confined to, he seemed to have a pretty good grasp on what was going on outside of prison. "What do you want me to say?" Justin queried immediately. "That I've had little to no luck when teaming up with LoKi over the years? That the last time we were forced to team up, I left him hanging out to dry against Lantlas and Non Compos Mentis? It's pretty obvious that there is no love lost between the two of us, whether it be in tag team action, or our little war over the World title a few years ago."
It was Justin's turn to start pacing now. "Go on." Damian pressed.
"Or would you want me to go into detail about how one of our opponents is a former World Champion, himself, and that I've never beaten him? Andy D and I have had two run-ins in the past, not for any reason other than we were booked against one another. He wrestled me to a draw in one of his first matches ever in PCW, and then ended up beating some time later in our second meeting." The Force of Nature was sure he had begun to ramble.
Once more, Damian's disgustingly sinister smile became plastered on his wrinkly face. "Are you not forgetting someone?"
"Yeah, yet another first for me in PCW. Derek Cosmos. Honestly, I'd probably have more to say about him if I didn't think that Andy wanted to do away with him more than me. He'll be an interesting man to face, but there's no need to think too heavily about it, he's just another son of a bitch that wants to put me on my back for the three count!" The Force of Nature was more riled up about it than he lead on in the first place, and to be quite honest, a bit relieved to have someone to talk about it that wouldn't be completely partial to his situation; the way it would be if he were talking to Lindsay or Aaron.
"Anything else?" Damian asked for good measure.
He shook his head at first, keeping silent, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized he did have more to say, and his head shake turned to a nod. "Yeah, that Brooks guy. The one that kept the ruling that Skylar Marshall had forced on me before he was removed as president." With his head still nodding, Justin's temper began to flare thinking about the whole ordeal. "I've held up the first part of this bargain, I won and defended the Genesis title before he took that away from me. Based on our agreement, rather, the stipulations he forced onto me, I should be more than ready to be going after the North American title by now!" Stormm kicked the chair he had slammed onto the ground moments earlier. "Hell, the performance I gave in the Icemann Invitational alone should be enough to convince that crazy bastard I deserve a shot at that title!"
All worked up, Justin seemed to have gotten it all out in the air, and he turned his attention back to a man he never thought he'd be confiding in about any of it. "I would say you have a good grasp of how this game is going to work." He admitted, his smile still firmly in place. "You upheld your end of the bargain, so I suppose it is my turn to repay, in kindness."
"So who am I going after first?!" Impatiently waiting his clue, Justin couldn't wait to get it out of the old man.
Damian nodded, and paused for a moment as he turned around to get a drink of water from the sink in his cell. Returning to his previous spot, nearly pressed up against the glass of his cell, he finally gave Stormm what he had come looking for. "All you must do is turn the pages to find this individual, and with any luck, they will help you along the way to finding target number three."
Justin looked perplexed, and angry, and any number of negative emotions all at once. "Is that... is that it? That's all you have to say? That's all I fucking get?!" Slamming his fist up against the Plexiglas, Stormm wanted to badly to be inside that cell; he didn't care about how old and frail Damian was, he wanted a face to hit so badly at that moment. On the inside, though, Mr. Sorrow seemed to have shut himself off, and did nothing but ignore the Force of Nature; which angered him even more. "I'm glad you are in jail, to spend the rest of your life rotting away; I'm just sorry that they gave you such a nice place to do it in!"
Hitting both buttons, he turned off the communication device while at the same time darkening the glass to the cell. In an immature fit, the middle finger on his right hand was raised towards the darkened glass as he stomped away. Not that the elderly man was going to hear it, but in an effort to make himself feel better about the situation, Justin let off a little steam as he continued to march back down the hallway. "Fuck you!"
As the doors opened and closed down this hall, the clang and clatter of the sliding steel and solid locks became a constant reminder of what that place really was, despite the serenity of the silence that fell there. Justin Michaels was being escorted down the hall by the Sherriff of the Sedgwick County Police Department, Jeff Easter, while the warden waited impatiently at the other end.
Justin and Jeff had gotten to know each other very well over the course of the past eighteen months. After the Force of Nature's first half a dozen or so phone calls to the Wichita police, he was finally handed over to the Sherriff for special handling of the case that had finally come to a close just a few weeks ago. Jeff was the only one on the force to have actually believed a word Justin had to say about the man he was coming to visit, and after all those years, that man was finally in his place, behind a locked door just like so many he had put in similar situations, for far less convincing reasons.
Despite this wing being close off, one man had been kept in a cell, at the far end of the hall. It had been the first cell to be renovated with the new specialty cells that were being put into place there. Justin carried a black, more than likely very uncomfortable, fold-out chair with him. He had been given special visitation rights given his past with this particular inmate, and despite the warden's disapproval, the Sherriff had convinced him to allow this visitation, as well as any subsequent ones that would follow.
"You want me to stick around, or will you be alright by yourself?" With a stern look and deep voice, the Sherriff glanced at Dr. Damian Sorrow before turning his attention back to Justin.
Without hesitation, Justin extended his right hand to the man in uniform. "I think I can handle him from here."
Pointing to a small panel on the side of the cell, Jeff explained what each of the buttons did, one to allow communication in and out of the cell, and another to darken the thick Plexiglas to prevent vision in or out of the cell. Justin nodded and Jeff walked away. Unfolding the chair and placing just a couple feet away from the glass, he pushed the button to allow communication and sat down, watching the man inside of the cell cozy up to the glass himself.
"My my Number One, to what do I owe this pleasure?" His obvious condescension accompanied a malevolent smile.
Justin finally took a seat, and paused for a moment as the echoing sounds of footsteps trailed off while he waited for the Sherriff to be out of earshot before he began his communication. "I have no desire to be here, and no patience for your cheap tricks; so cut the bullshit, and let's get through this as quickly as possible."
The man who would obviously soon be a former doctor looked saddened by Justin's attitude, and he cocked his head off to one side. "Now is that any way to greet an old friend?" He questioned. "You are obviously here for a reason, and it is not to say hello; so if you are looking to get anything from this visit, perhaps you should play along... Justin."
Pushing his tongue into his lower lip, Justin crossed his arms and stared at the ceiling for a moment while he composed himself. He knew better than to think this would be an easy visit, and he knew almost immediately that it wouldn’t be his last either, given the way this one had started already. "Alright Damian, I'll humor you; but don't think I won't walk away at the first sight of you not giving me what I want in return." With a deeper tone than usual, Justin leaned forward and uncrossed his arms, placing his hands on his knees, and stared right through Damian.
The elderly man nodded with that devilish grin, and leaned forward as well. "Now that is a good boy."
Ignoring the old man's ominous words, the Force of Nature jumped right into it. "Tell me where..."
Damian quickly cut him off. "No no, let me guess." He said leaning back in his own chair, his yellowed teeth still visible. "You are missing a small handful of my patients, are you not?" Justin nodded with his eyes closed. "I had no doubt in my mind that you were not telling the whole truth when you said they had all been safely transported to another facility."
"There was an incident on the bus, and five of MY hospital’s patients escaped. We alerted the authorities, and I had my guys go looking, but if there is no doubt about anything, it's that you planted some kind of escape plan in their heads; so tell me where they are!" It was obvious that Justin had enough of this man over the years, he was in no mood to be forced to communicate with him, but the world had different plans.
Damian's smile quickly disappeared, and his brow furled as he quickly stood up, causing his chair to go crashing backwards. He sprung forward and slammed his hands on the glass; the excitement caused Justin to flinch, even though he tried to play it off as he leaned back onto the black, barely padded chair. "No, this is NOT how this game works!" The rumble of his voice, even though the speaker that allowed Justin to communicate back and forth with the man, could be felt by him on the other side of the glass. "If you want to play properly, you are going to give me something before I give you anything!"
The man known as Stormm inside of the squared circle echoed his nemesis' actions, and vaulted from his chair and turned down the corridor. "I don't need this shit, I'm out of here!"
"You will never find them without me!" The old man's response seemed scripted, as if he expected Justin to react the way he did. The game was all Damian had now, and he would be damned if he didn't play it the best he could. "You will NEVER... find them... without... ME!"
Stopping dead in his tracks, Justin hung his head. He knew the crazy son of a bitch was right. He only had files and as good a guess as anyone else where the six men he sought were. The five that had escaped the bus that day, and the man he wanted to find most, Kaden Calix. He returned to his chair, Damian tidied up his cell, and returned to his seat. "Fine."
The unsightly teeth were exposed once more as Dr. Sorrow scooted closer to the glass. "In return for information about my patients..." Justin scowled at the man, as if to tell him to stop living in denial, and to accept the fact that Southwind Gardens was no longer his. "In return for information about the hospital's patients, I will require information about my most favorite patient of all; you."
For a moment, Justin considered storming off again, but remained planted on the awkward fold-out. "You've had your claws dug into me and my family for too long, there's no way I'm trading my personal life for information about the people you are responsible for corrupting so badly that I'm this situation in the first place!"
"I am a fair man; if not your personal life, what about your professional one? Your career?" Grinding his teeth with excitement, Damian’s smile seemed bigger than humanly possible. "I do enjoy it when grown men, so absorbed with themselves, jump into the confines of a twenty by twenty to beat the living daylights out of each other; and the emotional distress that it must cause in the end." By the time he finished his statement, he had begun to rub his hands together in some diabolical fashion.
Justin let out a heavy sigh and nodded his head. "As long as nothing gets personal, and it stays purely about wrestling, then I guess I can live with that arrangement."
Having gotten what he wanted to this point, Damian seemed to be pressing his luck with his next statement. "There is one other thing."
"Of course there is!" Rolling his eyes, Justin submitted without even putting up a fight that time.
"You don't get to pick who I tell you about in ANY order." His yellowed teeth had gone back into hiding as the former doctor looked to have gotten serious. "I will not confirm or deny your accusations towards me in knowing who the escaped patients may or may not be, but for the sake of argument, let us say that I do." Damian continued. "But there is one of your six me that I will not, actually, cannot, help you find."
"Who?" Justin questioned immediately.
Taking a deep breath, Damian seemed to prepare himself for some sort of negative reaction from Justin upon answering that question. "Patient Seven Twenty-Seven." He answered, referring to the patient by the number on their file, as he had been known to do. "One mister Christopher Kaden Calix."
In a fit of rage, Justin flew out of his seat, grabbed the flimsy fold-out chair, and slammed it down onto the ground. "What fucking good are you to me then?!" He clamored.
"Mayhap with my assistance, finding five might lead to finding a sixth?" He asked as if it were a riddle. "I have been in search for that which you are after for many years, and since I am unable to follow through on this plan which I had laid out for myself, I will have to take resolve in seeing how it end by helping you do it for me."
There was no doubt in Justin's mind that this whole thing had been orchestrated from the start, he was not at all thrilled with it, but knew he was going to have to go through with it, or risk losing his link back to a man he was responsible for being put in this situation five years ago. "So how does this work then?"
Damian stood up and placed his chair back into the far corner of his cell before approaching the glass, placing his right hand flat on the surface. "I am so very glad you asked Number..." He cleared his throat. "...Justin." Removing his hand from the glass, he crossed his arms and began to pace back and forth in front of the Force of Nature. "You will come to me, and answer any number of questions that I may have about your previous match, your upcoming match, or even potential future matches. When I am satisfied with your response, I will provide for you one single clue about your next target."
"Hardly seems fair!" Justin retorted while cracking the knuckles on both of his hands.
"Fair, my good sir, has nothing to do with any of this. If you want to talk about fair, I am in this cell while the rest of you are out there!" Damian's bitter attitude about being locked up for his crimes began to surface, but he quickly calmed himself. "This is just the name of the game, and fortunately for me, it is my game, so you will just have to, how you would say, deal with it!"
"Well then, get to asking; I don't have all day!" The Force of Nature had grown very impatient of the old man, and was ready to be on his way.
The pacing stopped, and Damian turned to Stormm. "I will start you with a quick and easy one, since you do not seem to be in the mood to play properly." He responded. "I want to know your thoughts on this tag team match you are in at Trauma One Fifty-eight."
For a man locked away for, well, probably the rest of his life; in a soundproof cell that could prevent him from sight outside of the walls he was confined to, he seemed to have a pretty good grasp on what was going on outside of prison. "What do you want me to say?" Justin queried immediately. "That I've had little to no luck when teaming up with LoKi over the years? That the last time we were forced to team up, I left him hanging out to dry against Lantlas and Non Compos Mentis? It's pretty obvious that there is no love lost between the two of us, whether it be in tag team action, or our little war over the World title a few years ago."
It was Justin's turn to start pacing now. "Go on." Damian pressed.
"Or would you want me to go into detail about how one of our opponents is a former World Champion, himself, and that I've never beaten him? Andy D and I have had two run-ins in the past, not for any reason other than we were booked against one another. He wrestled me to a draw in one of his first matches ever in PCW, and then ended up beating some time later in our second meeting." The Force of Nature was sure he had begun to ramble.
Once more, Damian's disgustingly sinister smile became plastered on his wrinkly face. "Are you not forgetting someone?"
"Yeah, yet another first for me in PCW. Derek Cosmos. Honestly, I'd probably have more to say about him if I didn't think that Andy wanted to do away with him more than me. He'll be an interesting man to face, but there's no need to think too heavily about it, he's just another son of a bitch that wants to put me on my back for the three count!" The Force of Nature was more riled up about it than he lead on in the first place, and to be quite honest, a bit relieved to have someone to talk about it that wouldn't be completely partial to his situation; the way it would be if he were talking to Lindsay or Aaron.
"Anything else?" Damian asked for good measure.
He shook his head at first, keeping silent, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized he did have more to say, and his head shake turned to a nod. "Yeah, that Brooks guy. The one that kept the ruling that Skylar Marshall had forced on me before he was removed as president." With his head still nodding, Justin's temper began to flare thinking about the whole ordeal. "I've held up the first part of this bargain, I won and defended the Genesis title before he took that away from me. Based on our agreement, rather, the stipulations he forced onto me, I should be more than ready to be going after the North American title by now!" Stormm kicked the chair he had slammed onto the ground moments earlier. "Hell, the performance I gave in the Icemann Invitational alone should be enough to convince that crazy bastard I deserve a shot at that title!"
All worked up, Justin seemed to have gotten it all out in the air, and he turned his attention back to a man he never thought he'd be confiding in about any of it. "I would say you have a good grasp of how this game is going to work." He admitted, his smile still firmly in place. "You upheld your end of the bargain, so I suppose it is my turn to repay, in kindness."
"So who am I going after first?!" Impatiently waiting his clue, Justin couldn't wait to get it out of the old man.
Damian nodded, and paused for a moment as he turned around to get a drink of water from the sink in his cell. Returning to his previous spot, nearly pressed up against the glass of his cell, he finally gave Stormm what he had come looking for. "All you must do is turn the pages to find this individual, and with any luck, they will help you along the way to finding target number three."
Justin looked perplexed, and angry, and any number of negative emotions all at once. "Is that... is that it? That's all you have to say? That's all I fucking get?!" Slamming his fist up against the Plexiglas, Stormm wanted to badly to be inside that cell; he didn't care about how old and frail Damian was, he wanted a face to hit so badly at that moment. On the inside, though, Mr. Sorrow seemed to have shut himself off, and did nothing but ignore the Force of Nature; which angered him even more. "I'm glad you are in jail, to spend the rest of your life rotting away; I'm just sorry that they gave you such a nice place to do it in!"
Hitting both buttons, he turned off the communication device while at the same time darkening the glass to the cell. In an immature fit, the middle finger on his right hand was raised towards the darkened glass as he stomped away. Not that the elderly man was going to hear it, but in an effort to make himself feel better about the situation, Justin let off a little steam as he continued to march back down the hallway. "Fuck you!"
