Digging Up the Crazies (Open)

[Jennifer Ehle Lynn]

Jen strode quickly towards the insane asylum, spring in her step.  She rather enjoyed selecting new test subjects. Each guinea pig offered a whole new world of opportunities. And the insane asylum was a lovely place to collect them. No one much cared for the people that were left to rot here.  If money was passed along to the right hands you could take home whoever you pleased, claiming you were a relative or a friend or a friend of a relative come to care for them.  A few workers at the asylum, namely a manager and a  psychiatrist, had to sign off saying that the patient was competent enough to leave the facility but with the money piece of cake. You could sign them out under false names and addresses or pay a little extra to have their records wiped clean. It would be as if the person you snatched away had never been here in the first place.  Yes, such a convenient asylum. This was a horrible place to go if you wanted to test intellectual drugs or anything directly relating to the brain; but, it suited Jen's purposes just fine at the moment.  She was working on a drug to improve human speed. If her theories were correct it should increase a person's speed 10 fold. She had a lot of trials to run and for something physical like this, insanity wasn't an issue.  These people here existed to slip through the grid. She was gratefully to be working on speed. If it was a drug to increase intellect or the like her financial backers would need to arrange for abductions. It wasn't that kidnapping troubled her. Far from it. She was simply excited to begin her trails and she didn't want any delays. You had to first find acceptable targets before abducting them, after all. But in this fine institution all the men and women were lined up and right for picking.

Her visit had already been arranged. She flashed her I.D. to the man at the front desk.  He nodded his head and she walked past without another word.  She went to one of the manager's rooms. Louise knew her well by now.  Without any prompting she handed Jen a copy of all the patients' medical records on file.  Louise had a guard escort Jen and she began further investigating the patients.  The first patient brought forward was a Mr. Jerry Leswich.  He was 29.  She took his pulse and heart rate before drawing a blood sample to take back to the lab for testing.  Based on his height, weight, hear rate, and blood pressure he seemed to be a good candidate. His medical records suggested no problems.

[Jonathan Crane]

Jonathan entered the room silently and with out notice. He stood in the corner as he watched the woman draw blood.

"Hello there," he spoke up hoping to spook the woman, "I don't believe we've met."

He adjusted his glasses before holding out his hand.

"I'm Dr. Crane."

[Jennifer Ehle Lynn]

Jen was focused on the task at hand, contemplating what this Mr. Leswich's blood might reveal under scrutiny. He looked so promising. Hopefully there wouldn't be any unforeseen complications. He'd make a very nice lab rat. Jen was startled by the sudden noise but she hid her surprise. She almost always looked calm and collected, the most notable exceptions being whenever she couldn't solve an experimental problem or whenever she misplaced one of her research notebooks. She was the antithesis of calm and collected in these cases.

"Hello there, Dr. Crane," she said pleasantly, shaking his hand, white lab coat sleeve fluttering at the motion. "The name's Jennifer Lynn." She chuckled. "I have my PhD so I'm technically a doctor too but somehow I think our specialties differ."

She tried to recall if Dr. Crane was one of the people who signed the paperwork, leaving these lovely mental patients in her care. She couldn't remember. The names themselves were irrelevant to her research.

"No, I don't believe we've met," she agreed. She wondered if he was a new psychologist here or if he simply preferred to work in his office. Or maybe she usually didn't come during his hours. She was somewhat surprised she hadn't seen him before given her frequent visits. Yes, this asylum was good fall back place for guinea pig collection.

She wondered what the good Dr. wanted from her. Was he bored? Or was he actually concerned about the welfare of the men and women about to be released into her care?

[Jonathan Crane]

"Nice to meet you, Dr. Lynn," Jonathan flashed a fake smile, "What do you happen to be working on, if you mind me asking?"

Dr. Lynn's test subjects cowered when their eyes met with Crane. Not too long ago, they were just test subjects too. But that wasn't something he was going to share with this woman.

Crane already knew all about her and her experiments. He wasn't in charge of Arkham, but that didn't stop him from knowing everything there is to know inside these halls.

[Jennifer Ehle Lynn]

Jen was very perceptive, especially with respect to all matters concerning her experiments. She immediately noticed the terror Dr. Crane seemed to instill in his patients. The moment Dr. Crane made eye contact with any of them their faces crumpled and they fell back. It seemed as though they would willingly rip out their own eyes to avoid looking at him.

"So you don't seem to be a very nice doctor either," she said shrewdly. "What in the world did you do to these people to make them fear you so badly?" She didn't use the term poor people. She didn't care about these people beyond their usefulness in terms of her experiments. They were either valuable lab rats, potential lab rats, or a waste of space. "I don't suppose I'll find any traces of what you did in the blood. No, you'd be much too smart for that." Even though Gotham was a fairly corrupt city as far as cities went and little effort was expended to oversee the workings of the asylum as few cared about the fate of hardened presumably insane criminals,you still had to be crafty enough to hide your illegal research on a basic level. Especially since the patients were often sold out to Jen's financial backers. She just hoped that whatever he did wouldn't interfere with her work.

"I don't mind the question," she said, coming back to his original remark. "I love to discuss my work but sadly my research is classified. All I'm at liberty to say is that I'm a genetics researcher." As far as criminals went Jen was surprisingly reliable. She would throw herself wholeheartedly into whatever commissions she accepted. She would steal nothing from her employers; and, she'd keep their secrets. This was why she was highly recommended. She never had a problem finding interesting work. It also helped that she was really good at what she did. She'd yet to find a better genetics researcher. And she had no moral scruples. She would do anything for her research. Others might view her as a monster; but, she was practical and prioritized the success of her work above all else. Nothing hel her back.

There was only one issue that could potentially cause problems if anyone found out. Technically once an experiment was finished she was supposed to turn in or destroy any of her notes that related to the project. She never did so.  She wanted to remember either her success or failure and be able to look back at her previous projects to help with new ones.  Nothing was typed up. No hackers could take it. She just always kept the notebooks filled with equations.  They were hidden well in her home. And even if someone discovered them she doubted it would do them much good.  Almost nothing was labeled. There was just page after page of endless equations and relevant notes. No dates no further descriptions of the notes. The notes weren't even typically in sentence format, more bullets and sentence fragments.  Jen doubted that anyone besides herself would realize what it meant or what it was for.  Some of the equations were even wrong; and, they weren't marked as such. Jen knew which ones were which.  Her memory wasn't fantastic outside of her work but when it came to her research her memory was impressive indeed.

"Maybe I can help you though," she said thoughtfully. She knew the patients weren't scared because Dr. Crane was a physical brute. This Mr.Leswich was in perfect health as far as she could tell. There wasn't a single scratch on him so either the good doctor had terrified his patients with mental games or he was experimenting on them. Or both. That fear reflected in Mr. Leswich's eyes was very familiar. Many of her own patients regarded her with similar levels of terror. The drugs she forced into their systems weren't always pleasant. Something could go wrong or perhaps the drugs were meant to weaken and deteriorate their immune systems. Then there were those that experienced nasty side effects. Yes, the patients had plenty of reason to fear her presence.