"Maybe we should just wait for Wheeler, and Kwame, and Ma-Ti," Gi breathed, stumbling over twigs and branches. "Captain Planet is still around. Maybe we should wait for them. They'll come. I know they will."
"Nyet," Linka panted, clambering over the splintered remains of yet another tree. "I waited ten years for somebody to rescue me from Viktor. I could have prevented ten years of pain and misery if I had saved myself first." She glanced back and helped Gi over the broad trunk of the destroyed tree. "We have to save ourselves," she said, giving Gi a determined look. "Waiting amounts to nothing, Gi."
"You sound like Jin," Gi moaned, staggering again. She clutched her injured arm to her chest.
Linka wasn't sure what to say to that. Not too long ago, Gi had been sobbing on the beach on Hope Island because Jin had called to say he was getting remarried.
"You talk of him a lot," she ventured.
"I guess so," Gi mumbled.
"Do you still love him?" Linka stopped to help Gi over another fallen branch.
Gi looked at her in surprise, and then shifted her eyes to the next obstacle in her way. "I don't know," she admitted. "I didn't think so, until he called me the other night." She staggered again. "Can we rest?" she breathed.
Linka helped her down, feeling slightly frustrated at the lack of progress they seemed to be making through the shattered forest. Gi's arm was affecting her balance and the heat and humidity seemed to have grown worse.
Linka decided to ask a question that had been hovering at the edge of her mind for some time. "Did Wheeler like Jin?" she asked.
Gi gave a short laugh. "At first," she said. "Things changed after Jin and I started trying for a family. But I think it was because I was so stressed out and Wheeler was the outlet for all my tension. He only heard my frustrations. The bad side of Jin. Not the good side." She looked at Linka curiously. "Does he talk about him?" she asked.
"Not really," Linka answered, resting her chin on her knees and gazing out over the muddied lake in front of her. "He said you and I have a lot in common. I have been wondering what he meant by that."
Gi sighed and shrugged. "Jin wanted things a certain way," she said. "He had his life planned out and a schedule to keep. When it started looking like I wasn't going to fit into it properly, he tried to shape me the right way."
Linka looked at her in surprise, but Gi was quick to continue.
"He wasn't like Viktor," Gi said defensively. "At least – from what I heard when you told us all about him. Jin wasn't like that. But I guess I did have to sacrifice a lot of things I didn't want to give up. Like my job..." She shook her head. "I don't know. After we got married I realised our dreams didn't match up anymore. He wanted a family and I wanted a career."
Linka kept quiet. In her opinion, it didn't take fists and a temper to be manipulative and cruel. But she conceded that she was probably hearing the worst of Jin. There was a lot she didn't know about him, and Gi seemed to look back on her time with him with a certain fondness Linka couldn't recognise within herself when she thought of Viktor.
"We should keep going," she said after a moment. "We need to catch up to Blight."
"How do you know they came this way?" Gi asked, struggling to her feet again.
Linka shrugged. "They were standing near here. Perhaps we can track them somehow."
Gi sighed and followed her. It was the best plan either of them seemed to have.
Wheeler was still above the ocean when he became aware of MAL's presence.
He was a ghost, really. Barely a face. Just a pair of eyes and a mouth staring at him from one of the monitors on the control panel.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Wheeler muttered, feeling rather nervous after realising he wasn't truly alone.
"Watching you," MAL answered, sounding rather fuzzy and full of static. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Do you have control of this thing?" Wheeler asked, clutching the flight controls.
"Regrettably, no," MAL answered. "I am not my full program."
"Didn't think so," Wheeler muttered.
"Where are you taking Dr. Blight's jet?" MAL asked. "Not back to Hope Island, this time?"
"No," Wheeler answered, leaning back in his chair tiredly. "I don't suppose you want to save me a trip and answer some questions about what Blight's up to, do you?"
"I'd rather not," MAL answered. "I'd rather see you try to figure it out yourself."
Wheeler rolled his eyes and scratched his cheek. "Where's Plunder?" he asked.
MAL's image wavered for a moment. "Looten Plunder?" he asked.
Wheeler rolled his eyes again. "Yeah, that Plunder," he answered.
MAL chuckled, fading in and out of sight. "Dr. Blight is very secretive when it comes to her past with Plunder," he said. "She hides things from me."
"I find that hard to believe," Wheeler answered.
MAL frowned. "I am a program she designed," he said. "I am always under her control. If she wishes to hide certain files or actions from me, she can do so quite easily."
"Doesn't that piss you off?" Wheeler asked, smirking at him.
MAL gazed back at him quietly. "You're chasing a woman all over the world," he said after a moment. "You feel strong loyalties with her. Why is it so difficult for you to understand I have strong loyalties with Blight when you feel the same way about your blonde?"
Wheeler swallowed carefully. "You're a handful of pixels," he said. "You're designed to have strong loyalties."
Mal chuckled. "I'm more than a handful," he assured Wheeler. "And as for being programmed – all that tells me is that my behaviour is rational and yours is not."
Wheeler sank back into his seat, blinking tiredly. "Forget it, MAL," he muttered. "People have been trying to convince me to travel the path of rationality for years. I haven't listened yet."
"And you wonder why you're losing," MAL answered, fading from sight.
Wheeler watched him go, a sick feeling settling itself in his gut.
Blight wiped sweat from her brow and gazed back at the five strangers Zarm had ordered into a semi-circle in front of her.
"They're Planeteers," she said after a moment, sounding accusing and rather angry.
"Yes," Zarm answered. "They're my Planeteers. Not like Gaia's Planeteers at all."
Blight began to feel a little excited by this. The Planeteers stood in front of her silently. On each wrist they wore a silver gauntlet – the substitute for the rings she was more familiar with, she supposed.
"So what's the deal?" she asked suddenly. "What are you planning to do?"
"Gaia is all I'm interested in," Zarm answered truthfully. "I have a score to settle with her."
Blight smirked. "Oh yes?"
Zarm gave her a withering look. "I've tried to settle it before," he admitted. "She and her damn Planeteers bested me. But not this time."
"So then what?" Blight asked. "You destroy Gaia, you destroy the world, and what am I left with?"
"No, Blight," Zarm answered impatiently, "I will not destroy your petty little environment. Not totally."
"But if Gaia –"
"You are forgetting I am quite capable of sustaining an environment myself," he answered coldly. "I will simply take her place. And I will admit that things will be a little more – interesting – after I do so, but I assure you, Earth will remain quite liveable for you and your friends."
Blight blinked, and smirked. "Good," she answered. "I've got a list of chemicals and technology a mile long. I'm aching to test it all on some of the bigger cities. I think I could flatten London or New York with the push of a single button." She shivered, her eyes wide with delight. The urge to prove she could wreak such destruction was so much more thrilling than simply presenting the theory of possibility.
Zarm rubbed his hands together. "Shall we go, then?" he asked.
Blight hesitated. "Not yet," she answered. "I want to discuss this in more detail. I need assurances, Zarm."
He gave her another look of impatience.
"You've waited nine years," she snapped. "You can wait another hour. I don't want to return to Earth only to have this all blow up in my face."
"What do you want, a written contract?" he asked incredulously.
"No," she answered, smirking. "I've got a better way of doing things. Why do you think I brought MAL, and why do you think I designed a ray that can destroy non-material beings?"
Zarm watched nervously as she began to set up the laptop she'd been carrying.
He was beginning to think he'd underestimated Dr. Barbara Blight.
It took Wheeler a long time to reach Plunder's supposed headquarters. Mainly because he wasn't entirely sure how cloaked Blight's jet was when it came to official detection and radars. The last thing he wanted was to be ordered back by the government – or worse, to be shot down.
He wasn't sure if he'd made it undetected or not. The important thing was, he'd landed, and Plunder's building stood in front of him.
It looked deserted. The windows were dark – except for one or two on the top floor – and the high fence around the outside ensured visitors were kept at bay.
"Do give Mr. Plunder my regards," MAL drawled as Wheeler prepared to leave. "I haven't seen him in years."
Wheeler shot him a look and staggered out onto the pavement. Night had fallen and everything was eerily quiet. He stole around the fence, looking for a way in. A padlocked gate seemed to be the best bet. With a sigh, he heaved himself up the railings, throwing his jacket over the barbed wire at the top and rolling his way over. He fell heavily, too tired to fully prepare himself for the landing.
"Damn it," he coughed, staggering to his feet.
He looked up and froze. Argos Bleak stood in front of him, looking furious and nervous at the same time – something Wheeler hadn't ever considered possible.
"Hey," Wheeler said, giving him a small wave.
Bleak tightened his fists slightly, too surprised to say anything in return. All indications had been that it was Blight's jet to have touched down nearby. Plunder had immediately sent him to investigate – and this was not what Bleak had expected.
"I don't suppose you'd believe me if I told you I was only here to sell cookies, huh?" Wheeler asked.
Bleak flinched and scowled. "What the hell are you doing here?" he asked. "I thought you were dead."
"Feels like it," Wheeler muttered. "But nah. Is Plunder home?"
Bleak grabbed him by the back of the collar and hauled him almost off his feet, forcing him forwards.
Wheeler looked up at the towering building as Bleak pushed him forwards. At the very top, silhouetted against one of the few lit windows, he thought he could see the shadow of a tall man.
"Are you sure about this, Ma-Ti?" Kwame asked nervously.
Ma-Ti chuckled. "Not at all," he admitted. "But unless you have a better idea..."
Kwame shook his head tiredly. They were surrounded by tangled wires and circuit boards and tools. Ma-Ti was pouring over the prints for Blight's ray gun as Kwame and Captain Planet followed his instructions to bind everything together.
So far, everything indicated that Ma-Ti had been right. The tools to make a duplicate of Blight's gun did appear to be in the lab, and Ma-Ti was somehow able to interpret the designs on the numerous scrolls of paper. With Captain Planet's help, everything was taking place surprisingly quickly.
Kwame had previously ventured the idea of using the gun already sitting in the middle of the laboratory – but they had each then decided against it. The last thing they wanted to do was accidently destroy it and perhaps trap Linka and Gi forever.
So, duplicate it was.
"I can keep going if you guys need a break," Captain Planet offered after a while. "Maybe we can get this done by the time Wheeler gets back."
"Has anyone heard from him?" Ma-Ti asked worriedly.
Cap glanced at him. "I haven't tried. Do you think you could handle it?"
Ma-Ti swallowed nervously and then shook his head. "Let's give him another hour. He may not be there yet. I'll call his cell if we haven't heard from him soon."
Kwame looked over the finished portion of the gun – all tangled wires and remote connections that blinked and flickered. "It took Blight nine years to do this," he said. "She will hate us even more when she finds out we did it in two days."
Ma-Ti grinned. "We have the advantage of knowing what the finished product consists of," he said, waving the papers at Kwame gently.
"How'd you get so good at this stuff, Ma-Ti?" Cap asked, sounding suitably impressed and rather proud.
Ma-Ti smiled and shrugged. "Working in an office with a hopeless IT department forced me to get along with technology," he said. "And I decided to take some classes. Once I started, I found it interesting..." He looked down at the plans in front of him with a slight frown. "And, I admit," he said softly, "it all reminded me of Linka, and I suppose it helped me feel a little closer to her even when I never heard from her."
Kwame squeezed his shoulder. He knew what Ma-Ti meant. Not knowing where Linka was for all those years had been difficult. He could understand Ma-Ti's desire to grab hold of any tenuous connection to her.
"So, we finish this – and then what?" Cap asked.
"Gi was transported remotely from Hope Island," Ma-Ti said, frowning in concentration as he taped another set of wires together. "The big ray gun over there is essentially the same as the hand-held gun Blight has – it's just the set coordinates that are different. You get hit with the hand-held gun and it's supposed to send you to the platform over there." He pointed to the far wall where Gi had appeared after being hit by the gun the first time.
"But Gi is not here," Kwame said nervously, wondering again if what they were doing was a good idea.
Ma-Ti nodded. "There's a glitch," he agreed, "between the hand-held gun and the gun Blight used to transport herself. A connection Blight missed. But she'll fix it. She has to, or she won't get home herself. It doesn't matter, anyway," he said. "We know the coordinates we want to set for Linka and Gi. The difficult ones are the ones we want to retrieve them from – but they're already programmed into the gun behind me. We just need to reverse them, hit the switch, and hope Linka and Gi appear in front of us."
"What happens if we get it wrong?" Kwame asked. "Will it hurt them?"
"I don't think anything will happen," Ma-Ti admitted. "We could try it on the gun already built, but I don't want anything to go wrong. If we jam it, or damage it somehow, I'm not sure what could happen."
"Maybe Wheeler should have stayed here to help," Kwame suggested, suddenly feeling a little more optimistic. He barely understood his own cell phone – he had no idea how Ma-Ti could be so sure of what he was doing, but the confidence was rather catching.
Ma-Ti shook his head with a smile. "I think beating some answers out of Looten Plunder is more Wheeler's style," he answered.
Plunder poured himself another glass of whiskey, listening to the ice shift and roll as he tilted it to his lips. From what he'd seen on the surveillance monitors, a drink was a sudden necessity.
He flipped through the folder slowly, letting his eyes trace each word of each document. It had taken a while, but he'd managed it. On four of the Planeteers, anyway. The blonde, apparently, had not been in touch with any of the others, and was thus more difficult to keep tabs on. But the others had all kept some sort of network between them – albeit patchy – and Plunder had traced each line and each link until he'd gained every available scrap of information.
The Heart Planeteer had been relatively easy. Working for a big environmental protection agency didn't really afford him much privacy. His name was scattered across treaties and documents like confetti.
The Water Planeteer had been a little more difficult. Earth, too, until his more recent appearance at a construction company in central Africa. Plunder had since discovered they'd each been off trying to start families.
Fire, however. He smirked. Fire had been the easiest of all to trace, and it was merely due to the fact Plunder had suffered an unfortunate run in with him several years ago. One of his timber mills had suffered a premature closure thanks to a meddling article published in some ridiculous eco-friendly journal. It had been easy to trace his name and his history, after that.
More importantly, it had been easy to trace his weaknesses.
He drained the glass and set it down, strolling towards the elevator.
The Fire Planeteer was putting up a good fight. It was true that Bleak was as strong and muscular as he'd ever been, but he wasn't as nimble, and Wheeler was doing a good job of staying free of him and the rope Bleak was trying to bind him with.
Wheeler spotted Plunder. "Call off your goon," he snapped. "I'm not here to fight."
Plunder smirked. "Leave him, Bleak." He ran his eyes up and down Wheeler's frame. He was thin, and pale, and his eyes were red and strained. He still looked like a drug addict. Plunder wondered what the hell had brought him here.
Wheeler straightened up, breathing heavily. Fighting off Bleak had drained him of what little energy he'd had.
"I need to know about Blight," Wheeler said. He looked on, noting the muscle that twitched in Plunder's jaw.
"I haven't seen or spoken to Dr. Blight in years," Plunder answered coolly. "I have no idea what she's doing."
"Yes you do," Wheeler snapped. "She's got a photo of you on her lab desk."
Plunder was silent for a long moment, but when he spoke, his voice was still hard and cold. "I wouldn't know anything about that," he answered.
"What are she and Zarm up to?" Wheeler asked, his voice rising as his patience completely left him. "Where did they go? When are they coming back and what the hell do you have to do with all of this?"
Plunder glanced at Bleak, and that was all he needed.
Caught by surprise, Wheeler was unable to fight him off. Bleak wrestled him into a chair and trussed him tightly.
"Fuck!" Wheeler roared at him in frustration. "I don't care about you two! All I want is Blight!"
"It'll be a cold day in hell before I hand Dr. Blight over to you, Planeteer," Plunder answered in a hard voice. "Why don't you sit there and ponder your choice to come back to meddle in our affairs?" He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small vial, setting it on the table in front of Wheeler. "Maybe I can convince you to drop your new campaign?" he asked, smirking.
Wheeler swallowed and forced his eyes away from the heroin on the table. "Go to hell, Plunder," he answered.
Plunder chuckled and adjusted the cuffs of his shirt quietly. "Every junkie has his limits, Planeteer," he murmured. "Why don't you sit there and think about whether or not the pain of this crusade is worth it?"
He closed the door behind him, leaving Wheeler alone, staring at the little packet on the table.
