Firstly, I have to apologize for any plot holes or inconsistencies there may be in the story. I'm not used to writing this sort of material. But after I wrote "Sorry, Angel", this story came to me in a crazy, crazy flow of ideas and characters and situations. I hope I've sorted them out to be comprehensive enough to tell a decent story. If not, then I'm very sorry to have wasted your time.
Rated T for some violence and a few certain situations that I'm sure can all be read and handled with great maturity.
This title came in the form of a Rammstein song of the same name. At first, I chose this title out of pure desperation from having written just about the whole thing without having a name for it. But then when I thought about the translation (Stirb Nicht Vor Mir is German and translates to "Don't die before I do" in English), I thought it was actually kind of perfect for the determination and kind of thinking Snake is doing in this story.
But, enough blabbing from me. Read and enjoy. Once the whole story is posted, I'll put up the notes for it on my Profile page under the "Story Notes" section. --Andi M.
Hal shined the small flashlight in his hand under the couch and quickly swiped the beam from it from side to side.
Nothing.
He got up and walked to the dining room and checked the seats of all the chairs again but this time with the added variable of the light.
Nothing.
"How in the hell can I lose an entire laptop? I'm going to be late. It's days like this I wish we would have kept the Nomad." he said to himself opening the cabinets under the sink of the kitchen, somewhere he knew it'd never be.
He dashed past Snake on the living room sofa. He watched Hal with the bordom born curiosity of a cat as he combed the crevices of space between furniture, some of them not being big enough for a laptop to fit into.
"Are they holding the plane for you at the airport or something?" He asked. Hal looked up and smiled with the same sarcasm that had been given to him through the question.
"I'm trying to get out of here, Snake, but I need my laptop and I can't find it."
"Don't you have three of those things?"
"Yes, but those are useless for what I need them for. I need the MacBook. It's got all the files that me and Mei Ling are going to be working with."
"Oh," Snake said as if suddenly enlightened. "Well, I saw Sunny with it earlier."
Hal lifted his head from under a side table and looked back at Snake.
"Sunny had it?" He asked when he saw Snake wasn't going to offer more information on his own.
"Yup."
"Did you see where she put it?"
"Nope."
"Are you sure she had the MacBook, Snake?"
"Is it the white laptop with the big apple on it?"
Hal's shoulders dropped. "Why would she be using the MacBook today? She knows I need it for my flight. She never uses it any other day." Between his musings, he saw Snake shrug.
"I don't know but she wasn't exactly using it when I saw her. She was hiding it under her shirt, sneaking it back into her room." He gruffed out a laugh. "She's an amateur but she shows promise. I think I may be able to teach her a trick or two."
Hal huffed in slight annoyance at his friend and got up."That wouldn't be funny even if I wasn't in a rush." He said, making sure Snake heard him even as he went down the hallway towards Sunny's room door.
Hal lightly twisted the doorknob sensing it might be locked.
It was.
"Sunny," he lightly called to her, "can I come in?"
A hesitated moment later, the knob on the door unlocked and opened for him. Sunny's face glowed with a secret and exploded into luminosity when she tried to smile to cover it.
"Uncle Hal...I th-th-thought you'd be gone by now?"
"Well, I was on my way until I realized I didn't have my laptop. But when I went back to my room to go get it, it wasn't there."
"Did you l-l-lose it?"
"Yes but, I think I know where it is now." The smile quickly evaporated off her face with Hal's tone. "Sunny, do you know where my laptop is?"
She shook her head to keep from talking and having her nervous stutter give her away. That was the only time when it ever came back now.
"Please, don't lie to me, Sunny. If I find out you have it, you're going to be a very big trouble when I get back from visiting Mei Ling. This is very, very important."
Sunny stayed still in a silent rebellion against his wishes but with the mounting irritation mixing into his blue eyes at her, she quickly resigned her stance and opened her closet door.
"Here you go, Uncle Hal. I'm sorry I hid it." She quivered out when she handed the laptop to him.
"Why did you hide it, Sunny? I don't understand."
"Because I don't want you to go." She rubbed the back of her hands over her eyes. It then occurred to Hal how fast and urgently his trip to visit Mei Ling had come up. He hadn't actually talked to Sunny about it—he had just told her that he was leaving the next day. He had been so busy trying to get everything ready on such short notice that he didn't think about what him leaving her behind actually meant for them.
He lifted the little girl into his arms and sat down on her bed with her. They sat in silence for a moment as he held her, his head resting on top of hers.
"This is the first time we're going to be apart for this long, isn't it, angel?" He felt her head move under his as she nodded. "I'm sorry I have to rush off like this. It'll only be for a week. I promise it'll go by so fast, you won't even have time to miss me."
"I wanna go with you."
"You know that's not possible. Mei Ling needs me to come alone. Besides, I need you here to watch after Snake. He's still very sick even though he's up and around." He looked down at her, "But don't tell him that you're looking after him because Snake sometimes gets a little mad when he knows someone is watching him. He doesn't like to be treated like he's sick."
"I know."
Hal brought his forehead to Sunny's and closed his eyes. He could still hear her snuffling between sobs and knew that he couldn't afford to look at her if he didn't want to start doing the same thing.
"You know I love you, right? More than anything in this world."
"Always and no matter what." She said low as if it were a secret only between them.
"This is going to be hard for me too, Sunny. Even though it's only a week. But I promise when I get back, we'll do something, okay? Just me and you."
"Can we go to the plant store and buy some more flowers for my garden? Oh, and the Savanna?"
He smiled at her. "We can do anything you want to. I'd love to do both of those. Do you know what else I love?"
"What?"
"Fresh, ripe little girls!" Hal playfully rubbed his face and hair in the spot between Sunny's chin and neck that he knew was the most ticklish and made a chomping sound. She laughed wildly and wiggling free of his grip.
"Keep that smile for me, okay, angel? Just until I get back."
She nodded and accepted a final peck on the bridge of her nose from him. It had become their way of saying 'goodbye' without actually having to say it.
Snake's expression didn't change when he saw Hal again, laptop in hand but lacking the triumphed expression.
"So, she still had it?"
"Yeah."
"You don't sound too happy about getting it back."
"I kind of wish I didn't even need the stupid thing back."
"Thinking about canceling your vacation plans?"
"More than you'll ever know...but this is hardly a vacation, Snake. This will be good for Sunny, to stretch her independence a little bit while I'm gone. I feel like I hover over her too much but I know you'd let her run amuck if she wanted to."
Whether it was intentional or not, the pertness from Snake's tone dropped. "It's not like there's much I'd be able to do to stop her if she did. You guys have your own language and it's the only one that matters to her. She probably won't even leave her room for the next week."
"That's not true. She cares about you, Snake, she just...doesn't know what to think of you sometimes. I've known you for nine years and I still have that problem myself. Maybe you two should try bonding a little bit. It'll be good for both of you."
"It's pointless, Hal. I'm going be dead soon and all the bonding in the world isn't going to help anybody then."
"Snake..."
"Don't you have a plane you're supposed to be catching or something?"
"Oh, yeah, well...I'm never quite as late as I think I am. I scheduled myself twenty minutes ahead because I figured I'd lose something important like a disc or—" he checked his pockets briefly and then went over to his packed belongings next to the front door and unzipped the front portion of the suitcase. "...the plane ticket!" he said with certain relief once he had it in his hands.
Snake shook his head. Half in amusement of Hal and half in amusement of himself for actually hating to see the engineer go. When a horn honked from outside, Snake looked out of the window.
"It's...a cab." He said.
"What? I haven't called a cab yet." Hal joined Snake and peered out at it himself. "I guess Mei Ling really did take care of everything."
Snake grunted in suspicion. "Well they certainly don't have the wrong house number. We're in the middle of nowhere. Something's not right."
"Well, Mei Ling did send the plane ticket so why not the cab? She sounded pretty urgent in her email...like she just wanted me to get there."
"That's not what I was talking about but even that's a little bit odd. Mei Ling usually calls you personally when she needs something."
"The email was legit. She even sent it with her special 'Respond Immediately' encryption."
"Couldn't that be faked?"
"Yes," he admitted, "but it would take someone with some serious skills and a lot of time on their hands to duplicate Mei Ling's email encryption. It even baffles Sunny. It would be less time consuming to hack into the Pentagon's files. Believe me, I know."
Snake grunted again. "It's still fishy."
"You worry too much."
"What about that Resistance group? Could they be doing this? They want our heads after all."
"I doubt it, Snake. They're a small time vigilante group with a lot more smoke than fire right now. They wouldn't have caught up with us this quickly even with the best men tracking us."
"But they're still tracking us, Hal." Snake reminded him.
"Look...I'll contact you as soon as I touch ground at LAX. If you don't hear from me by tomorrow afternoon, then and only then can you begin to assume the worst. I gotta go. Apparently, my ride is waiting."
Snake caught Hal's arm as he was gathering his bags.
"Call Mei Ling. Just to confirm things."
"First Sunny. Now you. What's gotten into you guys?"
"I don't feel right about this. It's not all adding up."
Hal untangled himself from the straps of his luggage and began dialing Mei Ling's number on his cell phone. After a moment, he disconnected. "She's not answering. She's probably busy."
"Try her Codec."
"C'mon, Snake. I doubt she even has it on. Do you have yours on when you're not on a mission?"
Snake didn't say anything.
"Uncle Hal!" Hal turned to Sunny who rounded the corner with a blue rose extending from her hand. "I'm happy I caught you. Look what I found in my garden! I can't believe it grew!"
Hal took the flower from her and rewarded her with a smile. "Thank you, Sunny. It's beautiful." He once again loaded himself down with his bags and looked at Snake. "If Mei Ling calls back, tell her I'm on the way."
And with that, he was on the other side of the door. Sunny ran to the window to watch him get into the cab and waved to him until he disappeared completely down the road. The bad feeling in Snake's gut only got stronger in the minutes that passed by. Even after everything he had seen along with Snake, Hal was sometimes still a little too naïve for his liking. He had been proud of himself for not letting the experiences make him the jaded human he saw Snake was...but it left Snake in a world of uneasiness when he left Hal to judge certain people and situations.
As Snake picked up the phone with Mei Ling's number on his fingertips, it rang in his hand. When he realized it was Mei Ling, the bad feeling grew enormously.
"Did you or Hal just try and call me?"
"Yeah. It was Hal."
"Is he around? I need to talk to him anyway."
"He's on his way to see you, actually…"
"Is that so? Well, I wish he would have given me a heads up before deciding to do that. My house is a mess! It's hardly in the condition for company--"
"Mei Ling...you didn't know he was coming to visit you?"
"No. I was actually going to call him to tell him not to email me anything at my regular address. I think someone's been tampering with it. Strange, huh? My phone line's been acting a little crazy as well but that may be because of the storm. Is something wrong?" she asked when the line became too quiet for comfort.
"We have a very big problem."