Hal and Dave belong to Hideo Kojima. I think he's showing admirable restraint with them.


Echoes

Hal couldn't say what had woken him up. He fumbled sleepily for his glasses, and stared at the off-white artex of the ceiling for a moment. David was lying on the sofa beside him. The scientist looked up tiredly, expecting to see the girl somewhere nearby.

A movement on the other side of the room caught his eye, and he turned. It was her. She was standing in the bedroom doorway with the early afternoon sun behind her. It made her short hair glow red. There was a gun in her hand, and she was aiming it towards him. His eyes widening, Hal started to push himself to his feet, and he just has time to say, "Don't-" before she fired it.

There was no bang, only the click of the bolt. Pain bit savagely into Hal's shoulder. He screamed, and something smashed into the back of his head, driving him to his knees. Above him, he saw for the first time a stranger dressed in black, before a heavy boot thudded into his abdomen.

As he curled on the floor with his eyes shut, too frightened to move, an exchange of silenced gunshots ricocheted above him. There was no sound at all, save for the metallic clicking and eventually two heavy thuds. As if to compensate, his own heartbeat seemed to echo like hammer blows and the blood roared in his ears as the pain in his shoulder intensified steadily.

"Hal?" That was David's voice, slurred as if he were drunk. Hal opened his eyes and struggled to his knees, clutching his shoulder, the pain and the fear only increased as he saw the legendary soldier weave unsteadily across the room.

"I thought you were on watch!"Yelled Hal. Suddenly, his shoulder hurt to much for him to touch. "Dave, help!"

He rubbed his neck as he knelt beside his partner. "I was on watch. They must have shot me with a tranq needle. You're lucky it slipped out, or you'd have to stitch this yourself," he said, his voice still loud and indistinct. He clumsily but firmly grasped Hal's shirt, ignoring the yelps this provoked in it's owner, and tore it open. Suddenly, the colour drained from his face, and he seemed to sober in an instant. "Alright. Don't panic. I'm going to find a knife."

"What?" Hal glanced down at his arm. There was no wound, but his shoulder was turning black. Glistening patches, like gangrenous burns or fresh tar, were trickling down towards his elbow. He screamed again. "Dave, do something!"

While the recently tranquillised man tried to wrestle his survival knife from his gear with fingers that felt like they belonged to someone else, someone who'd been dead for weeks, the girl crept out from under the coffee table. The gun was still in her hands; she had to climb over the small, prone bodies of the two unconscious intruders, but she made her way to Hal's side and bit down on his arm.

The pain was excruciating. Hal fainted. David rushed over, about to pull her away – and then hesitated. Tranquilliser needles didn't just slip out, and it wasn't like he had a better idea, short of a hasty amputation. Instead he stopped, reached down, and took hold of the black ski mask that covered the face of one of the felled interlopers. Cautiously, he peeled it back.

He'd expected it, but it was still startling. It didn't just look like the girl, it was her. Dark eyes, dull with drugs, stared at him with the patient intelligence of a wolverine in a trap, just waiting for a more opportune moment to attack again. These things didn't know the meaning of the word defeated. Literally. Looping cable ties around their wrists and ankles before they regained enough conciousness to quietly kill everyone in the room, he frisked them briefly. They had no weapons; but their fingertips bore no nails. He didn't have to get close enough to touch their hands to know they held long, poisoned claws.

Hal was crying softly into the carpet, and his arm still looked like it had been dipped in hot tar, but the blisters of dead skin seemed to have stopped spreading. As David sank to his knees and pulled the man onto his lap, the shiny blackness cracked like a burned crust, and once he'd fought down the urge to puke he could see skin – red, bleeding skin, but not wet, sliding muscle or yellow bone – underneath. The girl was licking blood off Hal's arm, then pushing her claws into him. Her eyes were still blank and expressionless. He wondered if she knew what she was doing, or if she was just mindlessly following an instinct.

"David?" The man's voice was hoarse and weak, but the skinny engineer was awake.

"Everything's fine." An automatic lie, but it might be true. "Looks like I won't have to chop your arm off after all."

"I'm gonna be sick."

"Hold on." He picked Hal up, the movement making the injured man shriek as the black crust flaked off, and carried him into the bathroom, putting him down as carefully as he could on the linoleum. "We have to get out of here. I'm going to get our gear packed up. You'll be alright here until I get back." It was an absolute assurance. The girl had followed them, and knelt to resume blood-swallowing. David wanted to grab her and demand to know what the hell she thought she was doing, but he had to trust her. Trust the blood-drinking mutant freak, he told himself as he ran to gather the many, various and heavy tools of their trade scattered over the apartment. He heard Hal cry out with pain, presumably as she gave him another dose of anti-venom. Trust the psycho lab-grown clawed monster chick. Kicking the would-be assassins lying on the living room floor might have alleviated some of his frustrations, but fuck it all, they probably didn't know what they were doing any more than she did.

So he just shut down and gathered up all the computers Hal had set up in the bedroom, disassembled and packed away all the weapons he'd deemed necessary and not been able to defend himself or his partner with. Loading himself up like a contestant for World's Strongest Man, he'd taken it all down to the car in a single trip. It was a really nice day outside. The sun was bright and the air was fresh. Birds were tweeting. When he ran up the stairs and back into the apartment to the sound of Hal throwing up, he realised how much he couldn't wait to get back on the road.

The girl was sitting in the bathroom doorway, licking her claws like a cat. David stepped over her to kneel behind the shaking, sweating man. He reached for the first aid kit they'd stowed next to the sink, rummaged through it until he found a pair of small, silver scissors, and started to cut Hal's shirt off. "Looks like she's finished. Can you move your fingers?"

"It-it makes sense," Hal managed to stutter from between chattering teeth. "These are some powerful t-t-toxins. I c-can't think of anything else that could tu-turn a man into a mummified corpse in m-minutes." He suddenly tensed and retched into the toilet, but after a few moments of deep breathing, he seemed to calm down. "The researchers would want plenty of antidote nearby. She can analyse your body chemistry, manufacture the correct cocktail, and deliver it exactly where it's needed. It's a neat idea."

David snorted as he pulled the tatters of Hal's shirt off him. "You come up with that while she was drinking your blood?" There were rows of angry red pinpricks all over his torso. Antidote was one thing, surgical tools cleaned with saliva were another. He poured alcohol over a piece of gauze. "You're probably right. It'd explain why I found her in the autopsy room. A specimen gets big ideas in their last few moments, you'd want her nearby. This'll sting." What an understatement. The gauze brushed away black flakes as he dragged it over the raw wound, like scraping the burnt bits off toast. Hal shrank down within himself and moaned softly, but didn't struggle. "Christ, you're a mess."

The man didn't respond. Pain and nausea were occupying his full attention right now. That, and a strong wish to die in peace. Instead, he was due for an eighteen-hour road trip, possibly interspersed with death and amateur amputation. He tried to move his fingers, and with a great effort managed to get them to twitch. Were his hacking days over? Not to mention his MMORPG's, there was no way he'd be able to play them one-handed. Suddenly, a cold flannel between his shoulder blades interrupted his dwelling upon the unending misery his life was surely about to become. David reached around and pressed it to his forehead for a moment, brushing aside the strands of blonde hair stuck to his brow with sweat "That's nice," Hal murmured, his thoughts abruptly diverted from suicide. David slowly moved the wet cloth up over the back of Hal's neck, leaving a trail of sweet coolness on his fevered skin, and the man shivered with relief. "Aaah... That's really nice." He leaned back into his muscular partner's hands, feeling well enough to make a weak quip. "I thought you said you weren't going to leave me alone with her?"

"You might be better off with her. I didn't even hear the shot that put me down." He didn't sound like he was joking. In fact, Hal might have guessed there was more than a note of remorse to his voice.

"It's not your fault," he said. "Anyway, it was me who told you to find her. Were you really going to cut my arm off?"

"Sure. I need to give you some survival training. If someone gets bitten by a snake with neurotoxic venom, and there's no antidote nearby, get that limb off." This time he didn't sound like he was joking, and there was more than a note of positive enthusiasm to his voice.

"But that's snake bites, not clone scratches. What if you'd cut my arm off and I'd still died?"

"Eh, you've got to try." He soaked the flannel under the cold tap, and put it in Hal's left hand. "You flannel, I'll bandage."


"Why do I have to go in the back?"

"Because. The seat belt'll rub your arm. Tell me where I'm supposed to be going."

Hal reeled off directions to the diner where he and Hank had agreed to meet. "Are you sure it's not just because you're worried I'll throw up again?"

"It is for general reasons of your comfort. This heap of junk's on its' last legs, anyway. We'll be lucky if it gets us halfway home."

"You're so territorial." He stared out of the window at the trees and houses, trying to remember the last time he'd been on a car journey like this, not hunched over the steering wheel worrying about David or balancing three computers on the dashboard and trying to correlate their readouts, but dozing in the back seat with pillows and blankets. Worrying was a hard habit to break, though. "You must be tired. Just stick it in third gear and I'll take over."

"You concentrate on regrowing your arm, before I have to find myself another nerd."

The girl was sitting in the passenger seat beside David, dressed in Hal's clothes. She looked like a young mental patient, kidnapped in order to be sexually exploited by two opportunistic vagrants. He hoped no-one called the police, since they had no way of proving that wasn't the case. "Do you think Hank will take her?"

David shrugged. "I guess so." He fumbled in the glove box for a pack of cigarettes, lifted it to his mouth and pulled one out. That signalled the conversation was over for the next few minutes, and the companionable silence lingered. Hal found himself lulled by the motion of the car, and was surprised when he felt it pulling to a halt, the tyres crunching over gravel.

"I'm going to go find him," announced David, opening his door. "We're too damn memorable like this. You hungry?"

"Who, me?" Hal asked, sleepily.

"No, all the other sentient beings in here. What do you want to eat?"

"Um." His stomach rebelled at the thought of food. "Something not greasy."

Hank the Rogue Geneticist wasn't in the diner. David looked out of the window while he ordered at the counter, hoping he could catch the man before he got out of his car – it would look a lot less suspicious. It was a tacky little place, and while the mercenary wasn't fussy about the manner in which his food arrived – silver service, cardboard carton, four feet – he wasn't sorry they'd be eating outside in the sunshine.

It'd distract him from the burning rage he felt every time he looked at Hal's pale, pain-lined face. Snake walked into war zones. He was shot and stabbed and electrocuted and blown up, and that was alright, that was what he'd been made for. Otacon stayed behind, doing the thinking. He wasn't supposed to be the one who got hurt. When they'd first met four months ago, David had thought that the skinny geek could do with good shake-up, although in his defence that had been something of a stressful time all round. But he soon realised Hal's realm was that of the intellectual, not the physical; even if someone punched him every time he showed them his stupid little plastic robot toys, he probably still wouldn't put two and two together. Perhaps it was a requirement of a good scientist. If you got put off the first time something exploded in your face, you'd never get around to making it explode in someone else's.

Not that that had ever been Hal's intention.

The waitress put the plastic packets of sandwiches and chips and cookies in a paper bag, and slotted the cups of coffee into a cardboard holder. David handed over dollar bills, dusted with an innocuous white powder that prevented the transfer of fingerprints or traces of DNA, and broke down to housedust in an hour.

He said he'd got the idea from parrots. Parrots, said David. Yes, parrots, replied Hal, the ends of some of their feathers dissolve into fine particles as they groom themselves. It helps repel parasites.

He'd said a lot more than that, more than David had ever wanted to know about any avian, but not why he was thinking of parrots in the first place.

A slow trickle of cars filtered into the parking lot from the road. He scanned the licence plates as they drove past, and here came the ones he'd been told to watch for. He slowly walked towards the car, letting the driver see him, then turned and made his way back to his own.

The girl was where he'd left her, but Hal had shuffled across and opened the door, and was sitting in the sunshine. He was clutching his bandaged right arm, but seemed bright enough. "Is that him?"

"Yeah." He wondered if he could go and find a quiet place to have a smoke while the two scientists exchanged their indecipherable chatter, but decided he'd rather stay and guard Hal. Especially if anyone was going to get any clever ideas about poking around with the girl. She might be a tame mutant, she might be the good side to their evil coin, but some risks it was just plain stupid to take.

Hank pulled up and opened his car door. The first thing he said was, "Oh, wow." The second was, "Are you guys okay? It smells like a leather factory over here."

"We've got two samples for you," deadpanned David, putting a cigarette in his mouth. "They're on the floor of our old base. They're exactly like this one, except they broke in and tried to kill both of us."

"Watch out for their hands," added Hal. "They've got retractable claws instead of fingernails, and if they touch you, you'll die unless you've got this one with you. And we need her."

"Awesome." He didn't look like he'd heard. Instead, he turned and stuck his head back into the car. "Do we have facilities for two humans?"

"We can probably make room." The voice was deep and rumbling, and followed by the sound of a door opening. A hulking man-mountain stepped out. "They put a fight, you say?" The man was a good deal taller than Dave, and almost as powerfully built. He folded his arms on the roof of the car, and put his chin on them. "Will a tranquilliser rifle work?"

"Depends. You could try hitting them with it." Feeling both irritated and relieved that Hank had showed up with unannounced but less dumb backup, David leaned back against the warm side of the car and put a cigarette in his mouth. "This one's pretty docile," he said, indicating the silent girl beside him, "But the others are deceptive. Don't let your guard down. They're still and quiet until they see a chance to strike, they move like cats, and if they break your skin you'll die horribly."

"This is just what we've been looking for," said Hank. He turned back to the car and fumbled with something in the front seat for a few moments. When he looked up again, he was wearing latex gloves and tearing open a sterile packet. "Can I get a cheek swab from her? It won't hurt or anything."

She didn't look at him. She just put her hands over her face and pulled her legs up onto the seat.

"I think she's scared," said Hal, redundantly. Awkwardly, he slid out of the car and leaned over the open door, his legs still feeling weak and numb. The girl didn't move when he reached down and stroked her head.

"You trying to get your other arm torn off?"

"You were stroking her head, and she liked it." She wasn't responding now, though. Hal glanced over at where the pair of geneticists were watching him curiously. "Sorry. Snake found her in a cage in a laboratory. I think I need a stronger word than 'traumatised' to describe her."

The huge man had taken out a digital camera. "You guys wanna step back? Unless you feel like making this a Kodak moment." Once the members of Philanthropy had beat a hasty retreat, he began to take photographs of the girl. At least with her hands covering her face it was easy to get good shots of her short, blunt fingers. While his partner snapped away, Hank sat wandered around with his hands in his pockets, complaining loudly about how it would only take a second and if the other two hadn't shown up she'd be the only sample they had, traumatised or not.

Dave hadn't come out here to listen to some scientist bitching. He grabbed the swab from Hank's car, then went over and pushed the girls' hands away. "Okay," he said calmly, taking her jaw in his hand. "We're going to open our mouth. Yes? Aah. Good, that's a good girl." He kept talking to her in a low, gentle murmur as he dragged the cotton bud over the inside of her cheek, hopefully picking up some of the large, loose skin cells most animals had there.

"Nice one." Hank had the plastic envelope held out ready to receive the precious genetic material, and stored it carefully in the glove box of his car. Steam leaked out as he did so; Hal hoped he hadn't really rigged up a cryogenic freezing unit in the dashboard, and if he had, he hoped they wouldn't crash into anything as they drove. "She's fucked up, isn't she? If this doesn't bring the place down, nothing will.

"And the drugs you're working on?" Hal might have been leaning heavily on Dave for support and fighting the urge to pass out on the floor, but he was still determined to talk shop. "Are you any closer to human trials?"

"We've been getting some mad results from the mice," he replied, starting to pack his DNA-collecting kit away. "But we don't have a cloned monkey, let alone a human. If these things are what we think they are, someone else could have beat us to the push, and bang goes our patent."

"On the other hand," continued the bigger man, "Even if we have to keep it under the radar, a life-extending drug is going to have plenty of buyers. If we can make it, we'll hook you up." He shook his head as he tucked the camera back into a pouch on his belt – clearly, it was a treasured research tool. "Still don't believe you're a fucking clone, man. Wanna give us a DNA sample, eh? Expand our pool of resources?"

"Go to hell," replied David, amiably. "You've got two freaks full of all the blood and spit you could ever want tied up in an apartment just down the road." He fumbled in his pocket for the keys to their old base, and tossed them to the muscular one, who seemed more likely to catch them. "Hey. Are you a scientist or what?"

"What else would I want with yo' freaks, man?"

"Just wondering."

They said their farewells and drove away. Hal watched them leave with a look of extreme trepidation on his face. "Do you think they'll be alright? Did we warn them enough?"

Dave shrugged. "I'd be surprised if they hadn't both gotten free and were coming after us right now. If they're still there, they're dumber then I gave them credit for." He picked up the paper bags of food and the coffee holder. "Can you walk? My hands are full." Tugging the girl to her feet, he lead them towards the grassy field that ran alongside the diner car park and the road.

"If they're coming after us, is this really the right time for a picnic?"

"Sure, it's the last thing they'll expect." Even if the cloned mutants were running after them with all the speed their gimpy shanks could muster, Dave would still have been startled if they could cover the twenty miles the trio had driven in less than a day. "Huh. You think they can drive?"

Hal glanced nervously at the small girl in baggy clothes as she was gently pushed to the ground. "It depends whether she's the exception or the rule, doesn't it?" Gratefully, he accepted the cardboard cup of steaming coffee from his partner, wincing as he had to flex his arm to shift position. "Oww! I don't know how you do the fighting stuff, Dave. I don't like this getting-hurtness at all."

"Heh. Nor do I." He glanced up from under his long fringe – the trademark bandanna was packed away when he was dressed as a civilian – and gave Hal a rare and genuine smile. "You're doing pretty good, for a computer geek."

He found himself unconsciously smiling back, and suddenly felt shy and stupid in a way he knew he should have gotten over by now. Staring down into his sandwich to hide even the remotest possibility that he was blushing, Hal wished he was back home in front of four or five computers. Furtively, he glanced over at Dave. Still talking to her in that singsong murmuring, was opening up the girls' sandwich and lying it down on a napkin so she could eat it. He'd never seen the man act so tenderly before. The way he'd held her chin, in one hand that was strong enough to crush bone but gentle enough to calm a frightened child.

Now he knew he was blushing. Hal scowled at the innocent lettuce and tomato before him, trying to pull his mind back to more pressing matters. What did he think he was doing, composing gushy fanfiction about the legendary mercenary? He bit into his lunch savagely, and was in a bad mood for about ten minutes until Dave took his good hand to help him to his feet.

Gushy fanfiction it was, then.