Chapter Three: Another soldier, says he's not afraid to die.
The four-hour drive turned into seven. Peter left the interstate just out of town, picked smaller and smaller roads until they were on a winding two-lane road that was crowded at the edge with dry, brown weeds. Olive didn't complain, didn't even question it and that worried him as much as anything that had been happening recently. He didn't want to bring it up, though, in case it sparked another fight. Being trapped in a car with an angry Olive was not high on his list of things to do. A sullen Olive wasn't all that much better but it was easier and less painful to tune her out. He let her brood and tried to enjoy the drive.
Autumn was well underway, and the vivid colors of the countryside were beautiful. He didn't really like autumn and the promise of the cold winter to come but the colors were almost an acceptable apology. Trees arched over the road making ragged tunnels for them to pass through and Olive relaxed slowly, responded when he pointed out a particularly vivid tree. She turned on the CD player after an hour or so, teased Peter about his choice of music.
The tension from the previous night bled away and they slipped into well-worn patterns, brushing against each other's mind for reassurance before retreating. Just her presence so close to him, the awareness of her proximity was enough to set him at ease. Peter was worried that he didn't feel the echo of her link to Nick, but the worry faded as he drove. She was smiling by the time they pulled up in front of the shabby motel that was just off the interstate despite their back road approach but there was a current of anxiousness under it, a keen awareness that they were very much alone. He gripped the steering wheel and listened to the engine cooling and considered for the first time that this might have been a very dumb idea. He got out of the car without looking at her.
Peter's feet crunched on the gravel of the parking lot as he crossed to the office. He turned back to her when he was halfway there, uncertain. He wanted to reach through their link and dredge up exactly what she was thinking but that felt like cheating. He winced inwardly at the thought and pushed the ball of guilt over to her side of the court.
"One or two?"
"One's good." Her voice was steady -- he couldn't really tell anything from it. He wondered for the billionth time how normal people managed relationships relying on words and body language alone.
He took a few more steps before turning again. His heart was thudding in his chest; she could probably hear it from across the parking lot. She was scrambling to keep her thoughts neutral, keep her walls up, but something close to panic was whirling past the barriers. Behind the panic he was pretty sure he caught hints of excitement.
"Rooms or beds?" That was, he thought, the closest they'd ever been to breaking the unspoken agreement, the truce that had held the three of them in balance since childhood. She didn't pretend to misunderstand. He could see the blush color her cheeks. He felt bad making her be the one to choose. She didn't have any less to lose than he did. The thought of breaking Nick's heart made him sick but the thought was there all the same and they were both thinking it.
She took forever to answer. They stood in the dusty parking lot for years, ages. "One room, two beds."
"Right." He felt his own cheeks going red and pulled his walls closer to his thoughts. This was the dumbest thing ever. He should just get two rooms and be done with it, give them their separate spaces to retreat to later. It was habit, though, to share a room in the field even if it was usually all three of them. He paid for the room.
They dropped their bags on the beds. The room was clean although its decor was a bit dated and that was a bit of an understatement. Peter wasn't sure he'd ever seen flocked wallpaper outside of a couple ancient pornos that he and Nick had gotten hold of when they were teenagers. Olive busied herself checking gear, refolding uncharacteristically rumpled clothing. Peter took his cue from her and pored over the building plans and aerial photos. They had reasonable intel about the security. His lips twitched into a smile as the plan started to form in his mind. When he glanced up he was surprised that the sun was setting.
"Hungry?"
Olive looked up from the gun she was cleaning. "Yeah, a little."
Peter held up a flyer that had been on the table in the room. "Uncle Ronnie's Smokin' Pig. Yum yum."
She wrinkled her nose. "No fucking way."
"I think that might be the only gig in town."
"Peter, that thing has a picture of a giant pig's ass on it. I'm not eating there."
"That's actually a picture of the restaurant. It's shaped like a pig's ass." Peter studied the menu. "They've got sandwiches and baked potatoes."
She made a little sound but it wasn't exactly agreement.
"There was a McDonalds out near the interstate."
The next sound was definitely not agreement. It was closer to disgust.
He flipped through the phone book. "There's a pizza place but they don't deliver…"
"Hey, Peter?"
"Mmm?" He looked up and started at how close she was. He hadn't heard her move. Her pale hazel eyes were worried and he was reminded of when they were little and had screwed something up, botched some test and were trying to figure out how to not get in trouble. His chest felt tight like he couldn't get enough air.
"About earlier…"
"Forget it." He shrugged and tried for nonchalant. "It was nothing."
She dropped her eyes and nodded. "Yeah. Okay."
He wondered if people could guilt themselves to death.
Supper was crackers and sodas out of the vending machines and they tried to watch TV. When he as brushing his teeth he had a hard time meeting his own eyes in the mirror. He pretended to be asleep when she got out of the bathroom. The roar of the highway played along the edge of his senses and as he was drifting off to sleep he imagined it was the ocean and that he was at the beach house when they were kids and everything was simple.
*****
Olive was in a dark place that smelled of dust and dried blood. The walls were too close together and shadows spread across the floor like jagged, thorny vines. She was barefoot and the thorns snagged her skin. She shouldn't be alone here, there should be someone with her but she was alone. The shadows whispered that she'd be alone forever because that's the way they wanted it to be. She ran from the shadows and the hallway turned into white walls and floors, all brightly lit. It was worse than the shadows. She walked aimlessly. All the hallways looked the same but she could tell where she had been because she was leaving bloody footprints behind her. The wall ahead of her had a window and she didn't want to look through it but she couldn't stop walking towards it.
*****
Peter ran his hand over the bare skin of Olive's arm and settled on the bed next to her. She was whimpering softly, burrowing into the blankets like she was trying to hide from something. He pushed carefully at the part of her mind that was dreaming, pushed the dream away without waking her. It was second nature, soothing the nightmares from her sleeping mind. It didn't happen as much now as when they were children, but this pathway between them was well worn. She quieted and her breathing evened out. He brushed her hair back from her face and smoothed the blankets over her.
He watched her until he was sure she'd stay asleep then booted his laptop and curled up on the other bed to finalize his plan.
*****
Nick was small again, and part of him recognized that he was dreaming but part of him thought he was awake, too. He was in his room at the school and it was filled with shadows. He thought it was the ZFT school where they'd grown up but maybe it was the school where he'd been working. The window was covered with newspaper and it cut his fingers when he tried to tear it away.
The only furniture in the room was a bed, a tall, spindly looking thing, tall enough that he could almost walk under it without stooping. There was a knife lying near one leg and he picked it up. It was heavy and warm in his hand.
The door was heavy and squealed on its hinges when he pushed it open. It was the hallway from the dormitory. Green and white checkerboard tile covered the floor. He made his way down the hall, stepping only on the white tiles. There was a room down the hall where he'd be safe. There was someone there to protect him. He was nearly running when he reached the door.
The room was empty. No, not empty. The shadow-thing was laughing at him from the corner. It coiled and sprang at him and he fled down the hall. The green tiles grabbed at his feet and he fell and the thing was on him. Its cold breath gusted against his cheek and he tried to curl into a ball. He remembered the knife and tried to strike the shadow-thing with it but his hands were slick with blood and the thing knocked the knife from his hand and it fell towards his eye.
He was crying when he woke. His pillow was wet with tears and he flung it away and grabbed another one. He wasn't sure why he had so many damn pillows but he was glad he did anyway. He curled on the bed until he was just sniffling, rose on shaky legs to look around the room. He dressed quickly. Nick got the feeling that he was intruding in someone else's apartment.
The refrigerator was empty. The only food he could find was a box of oatmeal cookies. They made his stomach turn and he threw them away.
He was nearly to the front door when his chest tightened and his heart started pounding. He felt dizzy, nauseous. He wanted to curl up on the floor and never go outside again. The shadows were tugging at him, pulling him outside, and he was too tired to fight them. He had to go outside anyway. He had to go to work. He ran his hands over his head and the short, bristly hairs pricked at his fingers making them tingle. His hands were shaking as he locked the door behind him.
Nick made it outside before he nausea overcame him and he retched at the side of the building. He felt like he had a hangover but he never drank so it couldn't be a hangover. He thought maybe he was coming down with something. He pulled his helmet on and sat on his bike, taking deep breaths to calm himself before kicking the engine to life.
*****
The drive to the site passed in disjointed flashes, one moment on a familiar road, the next certain he was lost. There were shadows everywhere now, pale duplicates of the trees and buildings. People wavered in a faint, gray halo, like they were just out of sync with themselves. The rush of the cold air cleared his head, though, drove off the nausea and crawling sensation that skittered over his skin. By the time he reached the school he felt better.
It was cold in his dusty office, crowded with shadows. The shadow-thing was lashing its tail in time with the dripping and it sounded less like dripping and more like someone tapping on something. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see a room like his office only different. The hallway wavered under his feet when he walked to the classroom. The pairs of children unnerved him and he almost turned around immediately and left. He took a deep breath and sat at one of the little tables.
The room shifted and the shadow-children were watching him. They were faded and rippled like mirages. One of the pairs was lying on the ground in a pool of gray blood, still holding hands.
The chair clattered to the floor behind him, knocked away when he bolted from it. The kids made sharp noises of surprise and he thought someone was calling his name. The other room canted sideways and his stomach dropped with a sickening sensation of movement. When he blinked it was gone, he was back in the brightly colored classroom, wide-eyed kids staring at him. A woman with curly brown hair was calling his name but he ignored her and fled.
Nick was on the road when he remembered he should have grabbed his helmet. Someone worried about that, nagged him about wearing it, but he couldn't remember who.
*****
Peter had vanished from the hotel sometime before dawn and she felt a moment of panic when she woke up alone. She scrabbled along their link, still foggy from the remnants of nightmares. A low hum of calm radiated from him, the focus he felt when he was working, and she relaxed back into the warmth of her bed. He returned with breakfast and a stolen car. Olive wrinkled her nose at both.
"What?"
"I don't like fast food."
"Not a lot of choice around here." He offered a greasy biscuit sandwich. "I got you one without bacon. That's gotta count for something, right? They had yogurt cups but they had fruit mixed in them so I didn't think you'd eat that."
She glanced out the window. "And that… wreck?"
He grinned at her around a mouthful of breakfast. "All part of the plan."
*****
They were parked maybe half a mile from the site, hood of the car up, Peter rummaging around underneath. Olive was leaning against the side of the car, sweeping both mind and eyes towards the nearest gate. To the casual observer she was bored and impatient. Peter was counting down the time in his head, had worked out how long they had until security came around.
"Anything?"
"Not yet, but they know we're here. Are you sure this is going to work?" She turned and leaned down to look under the hood with him.
He grinned at her.
"Trust me."
She rolled her eyes and leaned back against the car, hugged her arms around her. Peter abandoned the show of checking the engine and moved around the side of the car to stand next to her. "Wassa matter?"
"Mmm. Cold."
"How can you be cold? It feels like summer."
She shrugged and was opening her mouth to reply when she shivered violently. Her eyes went wide, went black despite the bright sun, and a low whine rose in her throat.
"'Livia?" Peter cupped his hand along her cheek, tilted her head up. "What?"
She shook her head, curled her hand around his wrist. Terror burst across their link, bright and jagged.
"Something's wrong." Whispered, lips barely moving. He stepped closer and pulled her into his arms, fought for balance against the torrent of her emotions. The calm he tried to push towards her was drowned by fear and it left him gasping for breath. The mental timer of how long they had before someone from the lab got worried and came to check them out was nearing zero.
"Okay. It's okay. All right, get in the car. Come on." He guided her in, slammed the hood shut on his way around. He swept his eyes towards the gate briefly. The car roared to life and he drove, aimless down the backroads, carried on the wave of her panic.
She was taking deep breaths, trying to ground herself. Her hands were shaking when she ran them through her hair, combing out tangles that were instantly replaced by the wind whipping through the open window. The hot wind felt good on her skin, warming her, pushing away the chills that had been threatening all morning. She finally gave up on her hair, dropped her hands to her lap. Peter was glancing over at her every few minutes and she could feel the tentative push of his mind across their connection. He pulled the car off to the side of the road, killed the engine and waited. She closed her eyes and leaned back, slumping against the seat before flinging her mind open.
Her sense of Peter was immediate, encompassing, warm scents of the beach and dark blue and sounding like stars. Past him was quiet, empty space of fields and stands of trees, the bright spark of people concentrated in the lab, dim glimmers from houses, and past that was nothing. The glossy threads weren't there, the tethers to Nick that were as much a part of her as a part of him were nowhere to be found. The emptiness made her ache, brought panic rising to the surface.
"I can't find him."
Peter measured his words carefully. "He doesn't want to be found?"
She shook her head, chewed on her thumbnail. "No, it's different from that." Fear was rolling off of her in waves, seeping in to his skin and he fought the rising terror. The car roared back to life and he pointed them back towards the town. They were out of the hotel quickly, ditching the stolen car in the parking lot and that would probably come back to bite him but he didn't really care. She was trembling and silent by the time they were on the interstate. He twined his fingers around hers. Her face twisted in pain as she stared at their joined hands but she didn't pull away.
Guilt licked along their connection like flames. Peter swallowed hard against the nausea and tightened his fingers around hers. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window.
*****
Nick tore the gray shirts from the closet and flung them across the room. There were a few boxes of running shoes at the bottom but it wasn't inside them. He crouched on the floor in front of the closet and panted. He was sure it was here somewhere. That bitch had probably hidden it. If Olive were here she'd help him look but it wasn't her, only the other one and he couldn't let her find it. The cat-thing said it was here but he wasn't sure he believed it.
He heard a sound from the front of the apartment and froze.
"Nick?"
The voice sounded worried, unfamiliar.
"You in here, Nick?"
He rose slowly and padded out to the hallway. The man in his living room was skinny and sallow. His bald head was shiny in the sunlight and he wore a wrinkled suit. He smelled like fear and cheap cologne. Nick tried to curl his thoughts around the man's fear and use it to make him leave but he couldn't. His mind slipped and scrabbled against the other man's emotions like they were coated with ice. The man smiled and spread his hands in a placating way.
"Nick. I know things aren't going so well right now. I can help. We can go in together and we can get help for you, all right?"
Nick tried to grasp at anything, any emotion he could, but there was nothing he could get a hold of. Fear pooled in his stomach, cold and heavy.
"I know you're trying to use your ability. The Coriteral treatment has had some unintended results. We didn't expect it to affect your ability in the manner it has. We think the disorientation is due to your connection to your partners being severed. That should be temporary. You need to come in with me and we can work that out."
Nick backed up a few steps. "Treatment…?" The shadow-thing was watching from the corner. Its sibilant voice suggested this strange man was the one who sent Olive away.
"Don't be stubborn, Nick. Clearly your ability is dampened to the point you can't do anything with it. You need to come along with me now, soldier. That's an order."
The man advanced towards him. When he got close he placed a hand on Nick shoulder and smiled. "That's it. Come on. We'll go in together and get this all fixed."
Nick drove his fist into the man's throat and he staggered away. Nick followed. He caught the man easily as he tried to flee. Sound was gurgling in his throat and his face was turning red. Nick curled his fingers around the back of the man's neck and used his weight to drop him to the ground. The stranger's legs twitched violently when his face hit the floor. Nick pulled his head up and drove it into the floor again for good measure and the body under him stopped moving.
The shadow-thing lashed its tail.
Nick rose on shaky legs and watched the blood trickling from under the stranger's face. It flowed to the edge of the rug and was absorbed, seeping between the fibers. The pattern of the blood was important, he knew it was, but he didn't like looking at it. He backed away and went back to searching even though he was sure it wasn't there. In the back of someone else's closet he found a box of clues, signs to follow. The shadow-thing rubbed against him and purred that it had left the clues there for Nick to find.
He didn't believe it.
His arm burned where the thing's fur had touched him, tiny hairs burrowing into his skin. He scratched until his fingers came away bloody. He looked into the box again, felt a flicker of recognition but the shadow-thing growled at him and he had to leave.
He knew where he had to go.
*****
The door to the apartment was unlocked. Olive met his eyes for a moment. He wished now that he'd gotten a gun from the trunk of his car but he knew she wouldn't wait for him to go back downstairs. He eased the door open and they moved in silently. She was into the closet next to the door immediately and passed a gun to him. Peter swept his eyes over the room, extended his mind to the rest of he apartment. Everything was quiet. The place was fucking trashed.
There was also a corpse in the living room.
Peter raked his fingers through his hair and rested his hands on his head. "Fuck."
He knelt next to Harley and checked for a pulse despite the obvious signs that he'd been dead for a while. Olive leaned over him.
"Oh, shit. Peter, what happened?"
They checked the rest of the apartment quickly and regrouped in the kitchen. Olive was digging the fingers of one hand into the back of her arm, not quite breaking the skin but she was getting close. He pulled her hand away. The rest of the apartment was trashed, just like the living room. Peter found Harley's briefcase and was riffling through it.
"Do you think Nick killed him?" She chewed on her thumb. "Why would Nick kill him? I mean, I know I joked about it but I was just joking, he wasn't that bad." Tears were sliding down her cheeks and Peter understood it had little to do with the loss of yet another handler. "He's been… I mean… Why didn't we do something? We should have done something." Her voice was a ragged whisper, thick with tears and pain.
Peter stared at the papers in front of him.
"Peter?"
He held the file out to her.
"These are… about Nick." She paged through the notes. "What's Coriteral?"
"It looks like a drug. Something they were testing."
She sounded small and young. "They were testing something on Nick?"
Peter dug through Harley's files, sickness and fury roiling in his stomach. "It blocks empathic abilities in test subjects, rendering abilities temporarily unreliable or unusable. 'Occasional psychotic break possible in highly sensitive subjects.' They were fucking experimenting on him."
Olive was staring at the files scattered on the table. "That's why I couldn't find him? Peter… I thought was just hiding. I thought…" She shook her head and stared at the files. Fear threaded through her and spread over her connection to Peter. "I couldn't find him. He wasn't there. They made him so I couldn't find him."
"Olivia." He curled his hand around her wrist. "Where would he go?"
She looked up at him and shook her head. "I don't know."
Peter licked his lips and tried to think. "Okay. We need sedatives and you guys keep a tranq gun in here, right?
She choked back a sob.
"If we don't find him someone else will, Olivia."
She nodded and ran shaky hands through her hair. "Gun's in the bedroom closet. Drugs are on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet."
Peter grabbed what they would need from the bathroom. When he reached the bedroom Olive was crouching next to the bed, leaning over something. Her voice was flat. "I know where he is."
"Where? How?"
She held up a seashell and he knelt beside her. There was a shoebox in front of her. He reached in and picked out a green stone, perfectly round and exactly the color of her eyes. He had found it out on the breakwater in the rocks in early spring, just before his 12th birthday. He'd kept it all summer until they visited, kept it until the last day. He liked giving her things because even during summer when they weren't being tested or trained she didn't smile enough. She always smiled at the presents.
He rolled the rock between his fingers. "He went to the beach house."
She nodded.
"You kept everything."
She looked up at him, startled. "Of course."
He pulled her to her feet and she was trying to keep the fear under control but it was spiking past the barriers like shards of ice. He cupped his hand to the side of her face and brushed his thumb across her cheek.
"He'll be okay, Olivia."
Her eyes darted away and she blinked rapidly before nodding.
*****
The sky had gone gray and the temperature was dropping rapidly as evening approached. Nick's bike was laid down in front of the house, careless in a way that screamed that something was wrong. Like everything else that had been happening, Peter thought, everything that they had been ignoring. The trail of destruction in the house led to the bedroom that he and Nick had shared during summers when they were children. There were smears of blood on the walls.
Nick's eyes were cold, huge discs of blue ice around pinprick pupils, red-rimmed, feral. He was crouching by the window seat, digging through the storage bin built in underneath it. Peter and Olive glanced at each other, a silent conference before she advanced slowly. Nick turned on her. He scrabbled on the floor next to his feet until his fingers found the knife.
His arms were raw, deep scratches in his skin along with places that looked like he'd been digging the tip of the knife into his arm.
Olive felt like her eyes were betraying her. Her mind found no trace of Nick, not even a shadow. She swallowed against the stinging tightness in her throat. Her voice was soft, just above a whisper.
"Nick."
He brought the knife up defensively and watched her.
"Hey. It's okay. It's me. Put the knife down, alright?"
Nick's eyes flicked back and forth between Olive and Peter. "Get the fuck away from me."
"Nick…"
"Shut. Up. I know you're one of them. You look like her but you're not." His voice rose to a whine. "Just leave me alone."
"I just wanna help you. Please Nick, I'm sorry we didn't see earlier. Let us help you, okay?"
He raised his fists to the side of his head; her eyes tracked the knife. Her voice was a ragged whisper. "Nick, put the knife down. We'll go home and we'll figure out what's wrong. Please."
"I can't go home." His voice was keening. "Don't you see? It's there."
"Okay. Okay, we'll stay here. Whatever you want, just let me have the knife."
Nick studied her face. It looked like her but there was nothing there when he reached out for her. The shadow-thing rubbed up against him, cat-like, lithe. It hissed at her and Nick snarled. The cat-thing's voice was in his head, it was where she used to be but it didn't fit, it was sharp and jagged. It didn't belong there. It didn't belong there and he wanted it gone. It growled at him and the sound resonated in his head, it rang behind his eyes.
He set the point of the knife against his forehead, just above his eyebrow, right where the growling sound was. Her eyes went wide and for a moment he was sure it was really her but the thing in his head screamed.
*****
Olive didn't need any sort of connection to read his intentions but her mind balked at the situation. The knife was moving before she could react. Time dilated to unreality, each second dragging on for eons. Behind her she could hear Peter's raspy breathing quickening into panting as Nick's hand moved. She could hear the knife skidding against bone as it arced in a circle across his temple. He was screaming as her hands caught his, forcing it back before it could complete the upward sweep towards his eye.
Blood welled from the wound and sheeted down his face. Blood slicked her hand as she struggled for the knife. Peter's weight hit her back and he scrabbled to pin Nick. Nick was screaming, thrashing under them and they both tried to punch through the walls he had up against them but even when it felt like the walls crumbled there wasn't anything behind them. Peter got his hands on Nick's wrists, got his weight mostly over his legs. The knife clattered away. The needle sank into Nick's neck and he howled.
Recognition flickered across Nick's face and he went limp under them, sobbing. Peter pulled his sweatshirt off and held it against the side of Nick's face. Olive wrapped her jacket around one of Nick's arms.
"First aid kit in your car?"
Peter nodded but was reluctant to leave her alone with Nick. There wasn't much choice and he hurried. Nick whimpered a little when they were securing the makeshift bandages but gave no other sign that he was aware of them. They slung his arms over their shoulders and carried him out to Peter's car. Olive wrapped him in a blanket in the back seat. She looked up at Peter, worried.
"Do we go in?"
"I think we have to. Too much attention if we go to a civilian hospital. Besides, it's their fucking drug, they'll know how to get it out of his system."
She was curled on the floorboard, wedged in behind the passenger seat. Her head was resting on his chest. Nick was staring at the ceiling, sightless.
"You staying there?"
"Yeah."
Peter swept his mind towards the blank space where Nick should be one last time before heading for the ZFT compound.
*****
Peter watched them. As dark as the hospital room was, he was certain the one-way mirror was doing nothing to hide his presence. Not that it mattered. Nick was still unconscious, pale against the sheets. Peter thought his breathing seemed far too shallow, but it was probably lingering fear that was making it seem that way.
They'd been at the medical facility for hours. Peter's watch told him it was nearly dawn though he had no sense of time in the windowless rooms. The doctors had stitched the worst of the cuts on Nick's arms and the one on his face. After the first relapse into hallucination resulted in one of the doctors needing stitches of his own, they were keeping Nick sedated to let the drug work its way out of his system.
Peter had been assured that the drug would work its way out of his system but that did little to alleviate the icy fear that circled him and Olive.
Olive was swaying on her feet, knuckles whitened around the rail of the bed. He wasn't sure what was holding her up at this point. He pushed the thought to her as gently as he could.
Bed.
She nodded and stood watching Nick for another long moment as the thoughts tumbled through her tired mind before she moved. She kicked off her shoes and climbed into bed next to Nick, ingrained behavior from childhood. The comfort of touch set them at ease, always had, and trauma resulted in a tangle of limbs and warmth. Peter blinked. It was no wonder he loved them. He didn't really think he had any choice.
A sound behind him scattered his thoughts before he could examine them too closely. Nina was, as always, completely unreadable to him at an emotional level. The expression on her face hovered between barely controlled fury and something Peter thought looked like shame.
"Peter."
"Nina." He scratched his fingers though his beard. "What the fuck was this?"
She looked annoyed at the vulgarity but didn't comment. Her words were careful and measured. "There were some liberties taken with internal trial procedures." She moved to the window and Peter thought the expression on her face might be real sorrow. Might not, too -- she was a conniving bitch. "When Mr. Handenberg checks in he will be… reprimanded for breaking protocol and endangering Nick -- endangering all of you."
Peter snorted. "Given that his corpse is rotting in their living room, I doubt he's terribly worried about reprimands at this point."
Nina turned towards him and raised an eyebrow.
"Nick flipped the fuck out and killed the bastard. If it weren't for the fact that it's going to severely screw with his head when he remembers it, I'd say it was for the best. I'd appreciate a team being dispatched to clean the place up before they go home."
Nina sighed. "Of course. Peter, please understand that this was not a sanctioned test."
Peter wanted to hit something, clenched his hand into a fist. "Save your bullshit for someone who hasn't heard it all before, Nina. You can't expect me to believe that this happened without someone knowing about it. You needed a guinea pig and Nick fit the bill. Jesus, did any of you even bother to think what it would do to him, what it would do to her?" His lips were drawn back in a snarl.
Nina's expression hardened. "Of course we considered it. That's why the trials were to be conducted in a controlled environment. This," Nina gestured towards the window, " would not have happened if the proper trial procedures had been followed."
"Fuck the drug trials. Putting him in that situation was completely irresponsible, controlled environment or not. You've broken them. I swear to god, if they can't be fixed I will decimate you and anyone else I decide was responsible. And if you hurt them again…"
"Rest assured, Mr. Bishop, this isn't something that will happen again."
"You're goddamn right it won't. Nothing goes to them without going through me first. No assignments, no drugs, nothing. No more handlers. We're done playing that game. If you want us, you get us on our terms, not yours. I'm not going to let you do this to them again." He loomed over her, crowding into her personal space and using his height to intimidate. The chill little smile she gave him said it might not be such an effective tactic.
"You're willing to take responsibility for them?"
Peter didn't hesitate. "Yes."
Nina's smile widened. "Not the circumstances I would have wanted. But it's about time, Mr. Bishop."
Peter's forehead creased in confusion.
Nina's eyes were drawn back to Nick and Olive's sleeping forms. "I know it isn't much comfort now, but I do wish them the best. If there is anything I can do to help during their… all of your recovery, please don't hesitate. When all of you have had time to recover we'll discuss your new responsibilities."
She turned back to Peter before leaving, met his eyes and for a moment her walls slipped. Her grief washed over him, and it was deep and cold like a river in winter. It was gone in an instant, fast enough that he almost thought he imagined it. He sifted through the lingering images until he found the one that had startled him -- a man long dead and how much she missed him, and how much Peter reminded her of his father.
