Aaron is irritated back into consciousness by meaty fingers prodding at the side of his neck, and when he cracks open his eyes, Chris' equally meaty face is hovering above him, his bulging brow furrowed.
"Welcome back, mate," he says with a grin, then calls out: "He's awake, boss."
Lawrence hoves into view beside Chris. "Splendid!" he says with twinkly-eyed good humour. "We were starting to worry about you."
He clasps Aaron's knee briefly, but despite his professed concern, it's no reassuring squeeze he gives. His fingers dig in so deeply that it feels as though he's trying to detach Aaron's kneecap.
"What happened?" Aaron asks. The words grate together like gravel in his mouth and emerge sounding thin and abraded.
"You've been out cold for almost an hour," Lawrence says. "Someone clearly doesn't understand the meaning of 'proportionate violence'."
"It was an accident! I haven't quite got the hang of that thing yet. It didn't come with instructions, you know."
Robert's voice. Aaron tries to prop himself up on his elbows, turn his head towards the source of it, but his arms just twitch feebly and his brain feels to slosh from one side of his skull to the other, battering against the bone.
He groans, and Lawrence tuts disapprovingly. "Oh, for... Number Four, help the poor lad sit up, would you?"
Chris grasps Aaron's shoulders and doesn't so much help as haul Aaron up into a sitting position. Aaron's head swirls again, and everything else swirls with it; colour and light bleeding together to form a dull, muddied blur.
He hunches forwards and blinks frantically until his vision begins to clear and recognisable shapes and details drift into focus out of the fog: the black leather sofa beneath him; the blood red walls surrounding him; the dusky grey deep pile carpet underfoot. A wide, marble-topped desk behind which Lachlan is sitting, messing about with his phone and not paying the slightest bit of attention to anything that's happening around him, concussed 'superhero' very much included.
They've brought him to dark study beneath Home Farm, then. Aaron wonders whether he's going to be expected to use of the escape hatch or badly-secured vent Robert had shown him on their tour to make his way out of here. If so, Chris will likely have to carry him there, because his legs feel like they've been replaced by overcooked spaghetti.
He looks towards the door, considering his options, and sees Robert leaning against the wall beside it, his fiancée standing at one shoulder, Lady-Chris looming at the other. He's clearly fresh from the shower, his face lightly flushed and hair damp, and wearing a clean suit, whereas Aaron has just been left to air dry. There are small twigs still stuck in his hair, blades of grass clinging to the knees of his jeans, and mud dried in clumped splatters across his skin.
He scowls at Robert as he rubs at the largest patch on his arm, powdering it into dust. Robert smiles at him serenely.
"Here, you should drink this," Chrissie says, hurrying forward to hand Aaron a glass.
Mindful of Robert's advice, he sniffs at the clear liquid it contains cautiously, and smells nothing; takes an even more cautious sip, and tastes nothing. It seems safe to assume that it's just water, and he drains the rest in a single gulp.
It sooths the raw feeling in his throat sufficiently that he sounds a little less like a forty-a-day smoker when he asks, "What happens now?"
"There's nothing else our end. Unless Robert...?" Lawrence glances towards Robert, who shakes his head. "No? Then you're free to leave whenever you wish."
"Really? That's it?" Aaron asks, perplexed. "I thought..."
He'd thought he'd be marched off to one of the interrogation rooms for some manacling and menacing, or suspended over the fish pond by his ankles and threatened with whatever mild physical discomfort koi were capable of inflicting, but if those possibilities haven't occurred to either the Whites or Robert, it's doubtless in his best interests not to voice them. He swallows back the rest of his words and stays silent.
"I think you've done quite enough for two level ones on your first time out," Lawrence says. He claps first Aaron and then Robert on the back, full of avuncular cheer, as though congratulating them on having played a great round of golf or something of the sort. "Both of you boys did very well."
Robert beams at the compliment, clearly pleased, but it just washes over Aaron like so much water. He doesn't care if Lawrence thinks that their pointless grappling was the finest example of supervillainy he'd ever laid eyes on, because he's covered in itchy mud, his head's still pounding, and all he really wants is to have a hot shower and then a long lie down, preferably somewhere dimly lit, quiet, and, above all, lacking in spectators. Ideally, his own bed.
It seems prudent to leave whilst the going is good, and before anyone has any changes of heart about tying him up.
"Okay," he says, "if that is everything, I should be getting home, and..."
When he leans his weight forward, the room starts spinning around him again, and his knees tremble, buckle, and then give out completely, pitching him straight back down onto the sofa.
"You're in no fit state to drive," Lawrence says chidingly. "Number Four, could you—"
"I'll drive him," Robert cuts in. "I'm going to the pub anyway. Meeting Vic for a drink."
"Well, if you're sure..." Lawrence says, sounding dubious.
"It's fine," Robert says, grabbing hold of Aaron's elbow with one hand, laying the other, fingers spread wide and steadying, between his shoulder blades. "No problem."
-
-
Despite Robert's breezy and nonchalant reassurances, they don't even manage to make it to the door before Aaron trips over his own feet, stumbles into Robert, and almost brings them both crashing down to the floor.
Chris steps in then, brisk and efficient, and half-drags, half-carries Aaron the rest of the way; down the corridor, up in the lift, and across the lawn to the front of the house once more. Aaron's vision's still swimming, his legs still shaking, but whenever he loses his balance and collides with Chris' side, it's like running up against a brick wall. Chris doesn't falter, he doesn't let Aaron fall, and Aaron reaches his car physically intact, even if his dignity is somewhat tattered.
Chris bundles him into the passenger seat, squeezes his shoulder, and then sternly tells Robert to, "Drive carefully," before lumbering away.
Robert stands beside the car and watches him go, but the light's too bright outside for Aaron to do the same for long. He screws his eyes closed, tips his head to rest against the back of his seat, and concentrates on his breathing in the hope that it will distract him from the ache that is slowly spreading out from his head to permeate the rest of his body. Even his teeth hurt, throbbing in time with his heartbeat.
"That went even better than I was expecting," Robert says a moment later when he clambers into the driving seat.
"For you, maybe." Aaron snorts. "I thought you didn't use weapons?"
"I don't."
"What was that thing, then?"
"This?" Fabric rustles, the car rocks slightly, and then Robert drops something into Aaron's hand, which is resting, lax and open-palmed, against the top of his thigh. "It isn't a weapon."
Against their stinging protests, Aaron opens his eyes a slit. The cube is dark now, and though he holds it up close to his face, carefully studies every inch of it, he can't discern a single imperfection in its smooth sides. There's no sign of lights or buttons, or any clue as to its true purpose. It's lightweight enough that it feels as though it might be hollow, but when he flicks his fingers against it experimentally, it doesn't sound as though it is.
"It does have a self-defence mode," Robert continues, "but that's not what it was designed for."
"Which is...?"
"You can use it to communicate, record things, open locks; all sorts, really. It's like the Swiss Army Knife of evil. Cutting-edge Guild technology."
He reaches out to take it back, but Aaron tightens his grip around it. "If you're planning on ever using it on me again, make sure you figure out the settings properly first. It feels like my brain's been scrambled."
"I will," Robert promises with what appears to be real sincerity before plucking the cube from Aaron's fingers and pocketing it. He then holds his empty hand out expectantly. "Give me your keys, then, and I'll get you home."
-
-
Despite the brevity of their journey, the hum of the car's engine and the low rumbling of its wheels soon lulls Aaron into a light doze; one that's finally broken not by Robert's heavy foot on the brakes, or the screech of tyres as he takes corners far too fast, but by him muttering under his breath, "What the fuck?"
They're already parked up in the car park behind The Woolpack, and when Aaron rolls his head a little, follows the direction of Robert's gaze, he can see Ross Barton, lurking by the pub's back door.
Robert's apparently so transfixed by him that he hadn't noticed Aaron stirring, and acting on an instinct he can't begin to explain, Aaron takes pains to keep it that way. He stays quiet and still, and a moment or two of silent glowering Robert launches himself out of the car and stomps off across the tarmac towards Ross.
The conversation that follows looks to be a heated one, and judging by the curt hand gestures Robert makes – towards Ross, to the car, and then back to Ross again – if this was a planned meeting, it had been planned to take place elsewhere.
Eventually, the swing of Robert's arms becomes less exuberant, the scowls fade from both his and Ross' faces, and Ross exchanges an envelope that he withdraws from a back pocket of his trousers for one that Robert produces from the inner lining of his jacket.
Then, Robert points towards the bag Ross is holding. The tightness of Ross' grip on its handles and the shiftiness of his eyes when it's brought to notice suggests that it might as well have SWAG printed across its side, and the furtive glance he sweeps across the car park before opening it just confirms it.
Robert paws through the bag's contents for a while, and then holds something aloft that's so small that Aaron can't see it clearly. Ross shakes his head. Robert's face turns puce and he snarls out something Aaron can't hear. Ross shakes his head again.
Shoulders slumping as though in defeat, Robert takes out his wallet, extracts a thick wad of notes and holds them out towards Ross. Ross snatches them from him, and takes his leave with a wide grin and fatuously exaggerated wave.
Robert glares after him until he's disappeared from view, then stomps back to the car again, his steps gradually growing lighter and slower when he realises Aaron is watching him.
He opens the passenger door almost gingerly, opens his mouth with what appears to be even less enthusiasm, and ultimately closes it again without saying a word.
Aaron inclines his head towards Robert's clenched hand. "Been buying something from Ross?" he asks.
"No," Robert says, his fingers twitching. "Not buying." They twitch some more. "He just found something he thought I should have." His hand unfurls, revealing a ring nestled in his palm. "It's one of Chrissie's."
"He 'just found' it, did he?" Aaron says, cocking one eyebrow sceptically.
"So he says."
"And you paid him for it, because...?"
"It was a reward," Robert says smoothly. "I wouldn't want this falling into the wrong hands."
He slides his thumbnail beneath the ring's huge, multi-faceted stone, and it lifts up to reveal a shallow, gold-lined depression filled with a fine white powder.
"What is it?" Aaron asks.
"Honestly? I don't know," Robert says. "But that's why you don't ever want to drink her martinis. Her weapon of choice."
"Right," Aaron says, nodding even though he's not convinced by any part of Robert's story, save the part about the killer martinis. Robert sounds confident enough in his words, though, that it seems likely they'll be his final ones on the subject. "And what about the envelope? Did Ross just find that lying about the place, too?"
Robert's lips thin, and his eyes look wild and hunted, but only for an instant. "That was what you'd probably call 'supervillain shit'," he says in a perfectly even tone, his face now a blank mask void of expression. "Nothing you need to worry about."