This is my first attempt at a Man from U.N.C.L.E. tale. I hope it doesn't disappoint too much.
The Windows of the Mind Affair
While Napoleon had been searching for his missing partner, this wasn't how he had wanted to find him. He was pale, even by Illya's normal standards, laying firmly bound to a medical table wearing nothing but pants. His face was covered with a white cloth, but there was no doubt that body belonged to his partner. He knew the scars on his partner's skin as well as he knew those on his own.
As he froze for a moment at that first sight of Illya, the barrel of a T.H.R.U.S.H. rifle urged him to keep moving. Napoleon had to satisfy himself at the moment with the hardly comforting thought that if Illya was as dead as he looked, they wouldn't have him so securely bound to the table he was lying on. The woman standing beside Illya would have been beautiful in any other setting. As it was, her lab coat combined with the scalpel in her hand and her almost predatory stance over Illya wiped out any attractive qualities.
"Oh good, Mister Solo. We have all the pieces we need for the initial demonstration. Strip down to your waist."
"I normally at least get dinner first."
The additional nudge from the rifle encouraged him to begin removing his jacket. The woman gave her reddish curls a shake as she called over her two lab assistants with a hand gesture.
"Your glib tongue will not avail you here, Mister Solo. Position him beside Mister Kuryakin. Make sure the straps are quite firm. We don't want him signaling his partner."
That remark puzzled Napoleon. In Illya's current state, it would be easier to signal the wall. She waited until her assistants had finished strapped him into the heavy chair then looked over the straps herself.
Satisfied, she moved to where Illya's head lay and removed the cloth before using the scalpel to make an incision on the top of his head. The strength of the straps were fully put to the test then as Napoleon was forced to watch the pale blond hair start to take on a reddish hue. Worse, the mirror mounted above showed him something he didn't want to see. Napoleon saw Illya's eyes - they were open and full of pain.
The woman just laughed when she heard Napoleon's curse as the full realization hit him.
"I'm sorry, Mister Solo. Did you imagine Mister Kuryakin was blissfully unconscious? No, no. He can see, hear - and feel. He simply cannot move for the moment. The machine's systems need the blood to form the needed connections. He must to be awake for this part. Don't worry. He'll be unconscious soon enough. I'm told the pain that occurs when the connection forms is excruciating."
While Napoleon continued to struggle, the lab assistants carried over a nasty looking piece of gear and began to attach it to the top of Illya's head. Napoleon locked eyes with his partner through the mirror, not looking away even though he didn't really care to watch. It was all he could do for Illya for now. Be there and let him know he wasn't alone.
Probes were inserted into both nostrils as well as both ears. When the casing was locked down, it sealed off Illya's eyes. In fact, once the device was fully secured, nothing could be seen of his friend's head above his mouth. The lab assistants moved away once their part was done, but the woman did nothing else for the moment but look at her watch.
"Late for a date?"
She gave Napoleon a thin smile that practically dripped venom.
"Just waiting until the paralyzing agent wears off Mister Kuryakin. I'd hate for him to miss any of the main event."
The woman began to lightly stab Illya's left arm at sixty second intervals. Napoleon had called her the equivalent of a bitch in nine different languages before Illya reacted involuntarily to the pain, emitting a sharp gasp - the first sound Napoleon had heard him make since he'd come in.
"Ah... that's better."
She walked around the table, pausing briefly to wipe some of the blood from the scalpel off on Napoleon's pant leg. Then, as casually as if she were flicking on the lights, she activated the power to the machine.
Napoleon's stomach twisted as he heard his partner scream like he'd never heard from him before. If someone has told him it was a scream from the damned in Hell, he'd have believed that faster than he would have believed that sound had come from Illya. Illya's body stiffened in his bonds for several long seconds before going limp.
"My... I am impressed. I never would have believed that anyone would have lasted that long before going under. I'm torn between complimenting you on your choice of partners or commiserating with you."
A voice over the intercom interrupted her.
"Doctor - the Russian translator has been delayed by an urgent mission from T.H.R.U.S.H. Central. He should be here tomorrow if there are no further delays."
She frowned as she moved over to the device.
"I suppose these things cannot be helped. Just as well, I suppose. The longer the device is in place, the less resistance he will have. Yes. That will work quite nicely."
Clicking off the intercom again, she moved to a screen that dominated the wall in front of Napoleon.
"Well, I have other things to attend to before my T.H.R.U.S.H. superiors come for a demonstration. No reason why your partner can't entertain you in the meantime, Mister Solo."
Another switch flipped and the screen flared to life. But not a projected image like Napoleon was used to seeing. This was more like looking out through a window. But this particular window opened on a very desolate landscape.
"Welcome to your partner's mind. Hm - no wonder he's such a wet blanket if that's the sort of thing he dwells on. No matter. He'll feel a bit more at ease soon."
Napoleon narrowed his eyes as she came over and removed the straps from Illya's right arm. Lifting the hand carefully, she settled it to rest on Napoleons' forearm. Since the doctor was proving to be one of the chatty ones, he bit his tongue and let her speak.
"There we are. I haven't quite determined how this all works, but we have your voice - or a reasonable facsimile - being piped straight into his brain. We have found that the mind tends to reject the input unless it is accompanied by a tactile connection to the person in question. Something I will eventually find a way around, but since you're here, nothing we need to be concerned with at the moment. Oh - and no point even trying to communicate with Mister Kuryakin. He is both blind and deaf to everything but our stimulus. Enjoy the little tour of his past. After a few hours, we'll be able to move him up to current affairs. Just think - we'll walk through a day with him. See how to breach your headquarters. Know where everything is located. Build files on all of your personnel and attend to them after they've left the security of your little fortress. Everything known to Mister Kuryakin will be known to us. And then? Then you will have your turn, Mister Solo. I would hate for you to feel left out."
The doctor chuckled as he rounded out his count with a tenth language. She gave him another thin smile and stabbed Illya with the scalpel again, this time leaving it embedded in his arm as she exited and sealed the door behind her.
Napoleon scowled down at his own arm, frustrated that he couldn't even move it enough to shake off Illya's nerveless hand. Giving up for the moment with a sigh, he looked back up at the screen. Then he frowned.
Despite what the so-called doctor had said, the scene he found himself viewing was obviously not from Illya's point of view. Because he could see Illya. Or a child that had to have been Illya. He couldn't imagine that there were that many children with such an unruly thatch of pale blonde hair combined with piercing blue eyes. At any rate, he decided to call the child Illya in his mind for now.
The pain of the device must have been influencing his partner's thoughts because they certainly weren't memories of happy times and sunny days. Illya was somewhere dim, cowering along with several others including another boy who was even younger. The group was obviously hiding, but the younger child was frightened and crying. It was obvious from the reactions and fear on the others there that the noise might draw the wrong attention. One of the adults grabbed hold of the boy, clamping their hand over the child's face to silence him. Illya saw the panic in the other child's eyes as the adult cut off his air as well as the noise, but when he tried to intervene, he was cuffed hard and fell to the ground. By the time he had recovered, the other child was dead.
One scene followed another, some lasting for only seconds, none of them pleasant. Napoleon felt helpless as he witnessed some of the things Illya had only hinted at or glossed over about his youth. As the scenes progressed, Illya was growing thinner. His remaining family had made the decision that the bulk of whatever food they could scrounge would go to the adults and to the youngest ones. Falling in the middle, Illya was having to survive on less than half of what his siblings were being given, made worse by the thoughtlessly cruel way the other children teased him with their food.
It didn't shock when the scene shifted to show the now far too thin child starting to sort through a rubbish pile in a bid to find anything that might ease the ache in his stomach. It did shock him when he saw the discolored insect ridden meat that was pulled out as if it were precious. Napoleon felt more than a little nauseous. The food was so obviously spoiled beyond any hope that he wanted to yell at the boy not to eat it. There was no way it would do anything more than make him sick if he ate it. Possibly even kill him in the weakened condition he was already in.
There wasn't an opportunity for the boy to take that risk though. His head snapped up at the sound of growling and he turned and fled with his 'prize'. The three dogs were lean, but still larger and stronger than the boy. The small pack quickly overtook him. Napoleon did have to look away then as they savaged the boy. Only Illya's instinctive curling into a ball kept them from getting at his stomach and throat. The rotten meat he'd tried to save was ripped from his hand.
Some noise scattered the pack before they did any more damage, but it was several long moments before the trembling child moved. Napoleon found he'd been holding his breath. Stupid - you know Illya lived through it. He's right here beside you.
He looked from the child's bleeding hand to the hand still resting on his arm. Now that he knew where to look, he could see the faint, nearly invisible scarring left behind.
"Illya..."
Napoleon spoke outloud to his friend and partner without really meaning to, but then he got the eerie feeling that he was being watched. Looking back to the screen, he found a pair of icy blue eyes staring straight at him. No, that had to be his imagination. Didn't it? He felt a little foolish, but he decided to speak the screen. After a moment of hesitation, he spoke in halting Russian.
"Illya - can you hear me?"
The pint-sized version of his partner stepped 'closer', nodding his head slowly as he seemed to be studying both Napoleon and the room. What the hell had that T.H.R.U.S.H. madwoman created? Napoleon's mind raced. He'd thought of the image as being a window. His analogy had apparently been more accurate than he'd known. And just like with most windows, the view went both ways. His partner's subconscious was apparently able to see out.
And his partner - well, the representation of his partner - had that look on his face that Napoleon knew so well. The face studying the problem was considerably younger, but almost comically the same in expression as when Illya was puzzling out something.
Finally, the blue eyes met his again and the boy spoke to him. It also became apparent that however old the boy looked, he had at least some of the grown Illya's memories.
" Napoleon. Trust me."
"With my life, Illya."
That brought the first hint of a smile that Napoleon had seen touch the boy's face. Then the boy sobered and clenched his bleeding hand. As he did, the hand resting on Napoleon's arm suddenly twitched to life. It reminded Napoleon a bit of watching a marionette being manipulated.
It was a bit surreal to watch the hand move over, jerky at first, but slowly getting steadier. It took a couple of tries for the hand to find and grip the scalpel and pull it free. Looking friom the hand back to the screen, Napoleon quickly realized that the stress of the concentration needed was showing on the boy. He was sweating now and his hand was bleeding freer.
It gave Napoleon a bad moment as the hand came back toward him with the scalpel, but he'd already promised to trust his partner. The blade was shaking a bit, but the child directed it to start cutting the strap. Wisely, Illya had chosen to concentrate on where the strap attached to the chair rather than at where it crossed his partner's flesh.
Napoleon forced himself to be patient. If he tried to jerk out of the restraint too soon, he might knock the blade from Illya's hand and then it would be lost to both of them. When he glanced back to the screen, he stopped worrying about the scalpel.
The boy's eyes were focused on his task, but his body was trembling now and blood dripping from the injured hand. Part of him wanted to call out – to tell the boy to stop before he hurt himself. But Napoleon took a deep breath to steady himself. Right now, this was the only real chance that he and his partner had to get out of this. And if they didn't escape, not only would they suffer, but so would U.N.C.L.E. and countless others.
The strap above Napoleon's elbow was abandoned and the wrist strap started. The boy's skin had started to take a grey tone, then with what seemed to be a final burst of strength, the blade was driven into the wood where Napoleon would be able to take hold of it. That is, if Illya had managed to cut through the straps enough for him to free himself. Illya's hand flopped down nerveless again as it had been before. His younger self was panting.
"I am sorry… I have done all that I am able…"
Napoleon felt the upper strap give slightly, but the sight in front of him had his full attention as the boy dropped to his knees.
"Don't apologize. You did everything you could and more. I promise that I'll get us out of here."
Then their eyes locked again and Napoleon swallowed as he saw something he'd never seen in those blue eyes before. Something you never saw in eyes that didn't belong to a child. Absolute faith and trust. Unquestioning.
"I know you will. You and I are the same side of the coin."
Illya's problem with American sayings always brought a smile to Napoleon's face, even in tight situations.
"That's 'two sides of the same coin', partner mine."
"Nyet."
The denial was surprisingly strong. At first, Napoleon couldn't see the boy's eyes because he had collapsed all the way to the ground. But he looked back up and gave Napoleon that half-smile he knew so well.
"The same side. Always you and I. The same side."
The blue eyes closed and the screen went blank. Fearing what that might mean, Napoleon jerked at the straps and after two attempts, they finally gave way.
Working feverishly, he freed himself, then immediately checked on Illya. His pulse was erratic. The first thing he needed to do was get his partner free of that machine. Powering it down might set off alarms, but he had to take the chance.
Running through his mind what he had seen them do, Napoleon rapidly reversed the steps. The blood that covered the probes when he extracted them did nothing for his peace of mind. Though it did lead to some rather creative thoughts about what he would like to do with those probes should Illya's tormentors reappear.
He was in the process of removing the last of the bindings on Illya, when he felt his partner move. That was encouraging, but even more welcome was when he opened his eyes a minute later. They quickly established that even though he seemed to be recovering his mobility surprisingly quickly, Illya's hearing wasn't working. Fortunately, they had been partners long enough that no words were needed for communication. The speed of recovery set off an alarm in Napoleon's head, but he decided not to question their good fortune. At least not until they were out of T.H.R.U.S.H.'s hands.
The first lab assistant back through the door was unlucky enough to have Illya vent his annoyance on him. The second one was even more unlucky – Napoleon vented on him and even managed to work in two of the alternate uses he'd envisioned for the probes before destroying the machine. Some alarm must have warned her, because the doctor abandoned the area before they could find her. While that irritated Napoleon, he was more concerned with blowing up this particular THRUSH lab so he could get Illya to a doctor. After all of this, he didn't want to lose his partner to something like a hearing problem.
As for blowing the building, he left the explosives work to Illya while he undertook dragging out the two lab men. Illya tackled the job with even more than his usual enthusiasm. They stood side by side as the labs imploded.
"Good riddance to bad rubbish."
With those five words whispered softly, Illya collapsed like he was still that marionette, but now with his strings cut. Napoleon didn't begrudge carrying the slight Russian out, but that didn't keep him from being glad his car wasn't very far away.
-Three days later - U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, New York-
"I trust you will be pleased to learn that Mister Kuryakin is due to be released this evening. I know that the doctors are thrilled. The phrase 'difficult patient' was invented with your partner in mind, Mister Solo. On a pleasanter note, there was no damage to Mister Kuryakin's hearing."
Napoleon smiled and let out a soft sigh of relief as he watched Mister Waverly studiously refilling his pipe.
"Very good news indeed, sir. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, sir, but..?"
Mister Waverly glanced up, looking a touch bemused.
"The device they used on Mister Kuryakin apparently was far from gentle. But his hearing problem was cleared by them flushing blood clots out of his ear canals. No damage at all to his actual hearing apparatus. And by the way, medical does not believe you that he made it out of the building under his own power, let alone that he was able of rig explosives. Something about one of the drugs in his system interfering with higher brain functions. Mister Kuryakin has no memory of any of the events beyond his initial ambush either."
Frowning slightly, Napoleon thought back to the boy on the screen. And the way that Illya suddenly collapsed once they were both safe. Just like the hand had flopped once the boy had finished manipulating it. Then he remembered how whole-heartedly Illya had dived into working with the explosives. The words 'child-like enthusiasm' sprang to mind.
"What about his sub-conscious brain functions, sir?
Mister Waverly flipped open the folder on his desk and glanced over the report.
"Those would actually have been enhanced somewhat. Are you actually suggesting that Mister Kuryakin was able to do all of that subconsciously?"
"I would never contradict the doctors, sir. So if their report is accurate, the two of us are still in T.H.R.U.S.H.'s gentle care, the two lab assistants aren't being questioned and that lab is still intact."
Giving his agent an exasperated look, Waverly dismissed him with a wave of his pipe.
"Go collect your partner, Mister Solo. Before I have to go to the expense of hiring an all new medical staff. This is Thursday. I expect to see you both in my office first thing on Monday. And do see if the two of you can manage to stay out of trouble for that amount of time. Seems either one or the other of you is attracting trouble. If not both."
"We'll try, sir. Good night."
As he headed down the hall to Medical, Napoleon was already making plans. Somewhere in the subconscious of his partner was a strong-willed, hungry boy that had somehow managed to save both of their lives. The least he could do was to buy him dinner.