A/N: I had fun writing this chapter, so I do hope you enjoy it. Thanks to everyone for reading it.
Andrew and Alia had walked out to the park and were now sitting on one of the benches, filling out forms. Andrew had wanted to do it on campus, but Alia had figured getting away from it would decrease the likelihood of any of Andrew's real friends turning up and talking him out of things. She knew the Doctor wouldn't've taken his friend out of the Holding Chamber, since if he'd been a leapee and remembered it, he would know that the leapee couldn't leave if the leaper was going to leap, but she worried about the fact that she hadn't leaped yet. Her only hope was that once Andrew got things down in writing, he wouldn't be dissuaded from his new path very easily.
"Alia!"
Alia jerked her head up at the sound of the Doctor's voice and caught sight of the Doctor and Zoey on the path in front of her. She grabbed the papers she'd been filling in before they slid off her lap. "Why aren't I leaping?" she asked, having already looked around and deciding that no one else was in earshot besides Andrew.
"Zoey here?" Andrew asked, glancing around.
Alia nodded distractedly, listening as Zoey started complaining bitterly about the Doctor's attempts to destroy their Project. "Shush up," the Doctor said, interrupting Zoey's tirade. "Limited time, remember? More important things to do."
"I am Alia's partner, Dr. Smith, not you," Zoey replied coldly. "I'll answer her question however I like."
"Well, you weren't really answering her question," the Doctor said. "I'm not the reason she's not leaping. Well, I shouldn't be. Besides, it'll take more power if I need to conduct your voice pattern to Andrew as well, so keep quiet for once." He shook his head, then looked back at Alia. "Grab Andrew's hand. He'll need to hear this."
"What?"
"Grab hold of his hand," the Doctor repeated, pulling out his sonic screwdriver. "I just need to tweak a few circuits, reversing the polarity and extrapolating—"
"Yeah, okay," Alia said, snatching Andrew's hand. "I think I get it. You're going to try to reverse the process. Instead of me seeing someone you're touching, someone I'm touching can see you? And you've rigged it for sound as well?"
The Doctor grinned. "Oh, you're brilliant, you are. Yes. Exactly." He finished whatever he was doing and looked up. "It working?" Andrew nodded, clearly having guessed what was going on, and the Doctor continued, "Now, there's something I need the two of you to do. I need you to see if you can spot anything that's not quite right. Something that's odd, or out of place, or feels wrong. Something that doesn't quite match up, I mean. You'll probably be the one to notice it, Alia. You're the one who's leaping, the one who touches time. It'll take longer for things to catch up with you and realign the way they do for everyone else. Andrew here can help you with that, then. If there's something you see that he doesn't, even a small thing, that'll be the first one."
"How many of these things are there?" Alia asked slowly.
The Doctor looked troubled for a moment. "If I'm lucky," he finally pronounced, "not many. Well, if I'm really lucky, none at all. But my luck's not usually that good, I'm afraid, so you'll have to keep your eyes peeled."
"But I'm not entirely sure what you want us to look for," Alia protested.
"It can be anything," the Doctor said. "I don't know what'll turn up. But whatever it is, it will be wrong. That's the most I can tell you."
"That's really not helpful," Alia said bluntly. "You know that, right?"
"We'll try," Andrew said, catching the Doctor's exasperated look.
"Why do we need to do this?" Alia asked.
"Enough questions, Alia," Zoey interrupted. Alia glanced at Andrew. He looked confused, and she imagined that the Doctor hadn't extrapolated her voice pattern after all. "We haven't time. Just do as you're told."
Alia shrugged. "You're not the one doing the telling. Is this why I'm not leaping? Because we need to see if we can find anything that's wrong?"
The Doctor shook his head. "Not exactly, no. Anything that's decidedly out of the ordinary will be the result of a change. It'll mean things are coming through the cracks. Well, coming through or falling through, one way or the other. Physical things, visible things, more than just energy. It'll mean some of the cracks are widening."
"What cracks?" Andrew asked.
"Long story," the Doctor said. "I'll let Alia tell it. I don't think we—" His image flickered. "Oh, yes," he said. "We most definitely do not have the time. I'll try contacting you again in fifteen minutes. Start searching…. Start searching in the clearing, Alia. Something might've ripped with the fluctuating energy. I was careful, but that spot will be weak."
"And what if we find something?" Alia queried.
"Be careful," the Doctor said. "I can't really say much more than that; I don't know what you'll find. Just be sure to use your head."
"So don't do anything stupid," Andrew translated, chuckling. "Yeah, I guess sometimes we don't use common sense if we get panicked. But there's no way to contact you?"
"'Fraid not," the Doctor answered. His image flickered again. "No more questions, right?" he asked, despite their confusion. "Good! Well, best of luck. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." Then, he and Zoey vanished completely.
Andrew looked at Alia. "What was he talking about with these cracks? And who was that with him?"
"That was Zoey," Alia responded. "They were in the Imaging Chamber, and the Doctor somehow fixed it so you could see them. As for the cracks…. Well, the Doctor says time is cracking, so the cracks are in the timeline. I don't really understand it, but he says it's bad." She handed him her stack of papers and stood up. "Come on. Clearing's this way."
"What's special about this clearing? Why's it a weak spot?"
"Don't ask so many questions," said Alia. "Especially when I'm the only one around to ask; I don't know most of the answers." She waited a few seconds, then added, "The Doctor had kept his time machine in the clearing. That's what he meant when he said it would be weak even though he'd been careful."
Andrew still did ask her questions—she supposed she couldn't really have expected anything else—but did seem to be trying to make sense of it all. She had to hand it to him for trying; she wasn't even bothering to attempt making sense of any of it by now. She'd tried, and she still only really came out of all the Doctor's explanations with nothing more than strong impressions of a dire future. Some of that was her fault; she was refusing to think about the fact that the Doctor was from some point centuries in her future, or that he had evidently come back to her general time period frequently. He knew Grace Holloway, after all. He'd be bound to meet other people.
How many other people had the Doctor run into, preaching about imminent disaster if they didn't help him or do as they were told?
Had anyone ever actually ignored him?
Ignoring him was difficult, yes, Alia knew that from experience, but had any of the horrors the Doctor had undoubtedly predicted at one point or another ever actually come to fruition because someone had refused to help him, or had he managed to stop them all? Had he always needed the help he seemed to think he did, or did he just request it to keep people busy, distracted from the real danger?
They didn't find anything in the clearing, and Andrew suggested they work their way around the park before heading back to campus. Alia had nixed that idea; they wouldn't make it back to campus, she pointed out, before the fifteen minutes the Doctor had allotted them elapsed anyway. They might as well just spend their time in the park.
She didn't add that, the way the Doctor had been talking, it might be the last peaceful time they'd have in a long while.
She wished, not for the first time, that she would just leap out and be done with it.
Not that she'd be done with it at all if the Doctor was right, not if she understood that part correctly. Cracking here, cracking there—it didn't sound like this cracking was something that could be escaped, and he'd made it quite clear that it would affect her. Somehow. It would affect everything. Whatever changes were wrought, she'd be caught up in them, for better or for worse.
Frankly, however, she couldn't imagine much worse than her life at the Project.
"What was it we were supposed to be looking for again?" Andrew asked, interrupting her thoughts as he came to a halt, grabbing her arm to stop her from moving ahead as he stared ahead of them.
Alia glanced at him, then peered ahead, too, trying to discern what he was looking at. "Something out of the ordinary, far as I can gather. That, or something that I can tell is different and something you can't."
"Maybe he got it wrong," Andrew said. "The Doctor, I mean. Maybe he got it backwards."
"What are you talking about?" Alia asked.
"It's darker up there," Andrew said, pointing.
Alia followed his finger and raised an eyebrow. "It's called a shadow. You can see the outline. It's cast by a cloud."
"But it's not cloudy," Andrew pointed out quietly.
Alia looked skyward and realized he was right. She looked ahead of them again, following the outline of the shadow—or whatever it was—with her eyes. "Well," she said softly, "that's certainly something that's wrong."
It wasn't conspicuous. It did just look like a section of the park was in a shadow. It was darker there, just slightly, as if the sun wasn't quite as bright. She might as well have been wearing sunglasses; it wasn't much different than that. A slightly different tint, everything a shade darker than normal, but otherwise exactly the same.
If it was a crack, Alia wasn't sure what the fuss was. The world wasn't ending. Nothing was falling apart. No pieces were lost. It looked normal.
It was just cloudy on the other side of the crack or something. The world on the other side just happened to be different enough from her own to make the day a cloudy one. Everything was still there. It wasn't really different, not in any important way.
She couldn't decide if she really believed that or if she was just trying to convince herself.
"So that's a crack, you think?" Andrew asked.
Alia nodded. "Can't think of what else it would be."
"You stay here. I'll check it out."
"What? No! You can't!"
Andrew laughed. "Why not?"
"Because you're being idiotic," Alia retorted. "You're just looking for an adventure, aren't you? Open your eyes, Andrew. This is real. It's not some story. I'm not going to let you go and get yourself killed."
"I don't intend to get myself killed," Andrew replied. "I'm just going to check it out and make sure that it is what we think it is."
"Don't. We'll just wait for the Doctor."
"If he's a hologram, he can't do anything."
"Then he'll come back," Alia shot back. But she didn't know that for certain, and Andrew probably knew that, judging by the look he was giving her. And…she didn't want to fight about this. Andrew might still be the reason she wasn't leaping. Maybe she hadn't really done what she'd needed to do. Maybe the Doctor was wrong and talking to him hadn't really solved anything. Maybe Zoey was right, as always, and Alia needed to take slightly more drastic measures.
Or, in this case, let Andrew do that for himself.
But if that were the case, why did she have to feel so rotten about the whole idea? She'd learned to stomach these sorts of things after her first few leaps. Better someone else than her.
She'd believed that until she'd met Sam.
"This is your choice, isn't it?" Andrew asked, looking at Alia. "The choice you needed to make to guarantee your freedom." Alia shook her head, but Andrew ignored that. "But it's not really a choice, is it, if you think about it? I have to go, Alia. You can't—you're not even really supposed to be here—and there's no one else about. Even if there were, we couldn't ask them to do this. We don't know what will happen."
"You can't go," Alia protested. "We don't know if it's safe."
"But that's why I have to go," Andrew said. "I don't want anyone else to get hurt."
"The Doctor ought to be here soon," Alia said. "It won't kill us to wait for him."
"But if I look at this," Andrew pointed out, "we'll have something to actually tell him about it. I want to be useful, Alia. I want to be helpful, like you and the Doctor. Don't tell me I can't."
Alia stared at him. "You don't understand," she began slowly.
"No," Andrew agreed, "but neither do you, really. So, I'm up for a bit of exploring so that I can find out. I'll be fine. You're worrying too much."
Alia closed her eyes. This leap had softened her. She couldn't afford to have a heart, to care. Survival at the Project and on her leaps had always meant protecting herself, whatever the cost. She'd blend in and lie and beguile and trick to get her way, taking more serious measures if that didn't work. But meeting Sam had shaken her, and that was why she'd been able to take the hit, just that once. She'd gotten her own taste of Hell instead of condemning him to it, or the kid he'd leaped into. It was funny. Jimmy hadn't really been a kid. But she'd…. Even as Connie, she'd had a soft spot for him.
And yet she still hadn't noticed the change, hadn't noticed when Sam had replaced him.
Not that there had been any reason to notice the change; she was simply there to wreck havoc and leave as much destruction in her wake as she could. That's what she did. Home wrecking. An easy assignment.
Until Sam.
She still thought she could have tasted freedom if Zoey hadn't been on her back, if she could have just talked with Sam for a bit longer before being informed that she had to kill him. She didn't know why she thought that, exactly. Sam was about as helpless as she. He just didn't have threats hanging over his head. And he helped people. She didn't. No matter what Andrew thought.
"Go on, then," Alia said, keeping her voice dull and uninterested. She didn't see any point in telling him to be careful—how could he, when they had no idea what was in front of them?—or saying that there was nothing she could do to stop him anyway. He was determined, yes, and perhaps he would have gotten around her. But the truth was, she probably could have stopped him one way or another. She just couldn't make herself do it.
She was still afraid that she'd done something wrong and that that was why she was still here, why she hadn't leaped.
If she let him go, or if he got himself killed, she could probably leap out of here. Assignment completed, no chance of error, no way to correct the path. Another leap, and another shot at going home.
Forget the Doctor and his vague hints at a choice. Things could be changed. She was looking at the evidence right now. He knew what was going on, true, but he didn't know everything. He wasn't sure how to fix things up; if he did, he'd be doing it already. He wouldn't need her.
He still didn't need her. Especially after this, after what she was allowing to happen. He'd blame her. He'd claim she was affecting Grace, that she was changing the girl's future to the point that it would change his past, and then they'd have consequences to live with. Not that he'd ever truly said what those consequences would have been. Would it matter, if time was cracking?
Would it even have begun cracking if it hadn't been for the Doctor?
Would it have even been susceptible to this cracking if it hadn't been for the Doctor?
Was he the cause behind it after all, in his desperate attempt to keep time from changing? Perhaps he'd had it all wrong after all. Perhaps she wasn't the one changing things; perhaps it was him, entirely him. Was it possible to see the effect before the cause if you could see all the different levels at once?
Oh, she wasn't even going to go there. She had enough trouble processing everything the Doctor had told her, let alone speculating about what he hadn't.
Andrew had approached the shadow, pacing its edges. Alia turned her back. She just knew he was going to get himself killed. She wasn't sure how, but after everything the Doctor had been preaching, she didn't think that death was much of a stretch here. She may not be able to bring herself to stop Andrew's explorations, but she didn't have to let Grace remember watching her friend die. She'd kept her bargain with the Doctor. She'd tried. She'd talked to Andrew, and she hadn't done anything Grace could truly regret. Grace Holloway probably wouldn't have been able to talk Andrew out of exploring anyway. Alia had had much more practice at that sort of thing, though she'd spent more time talking people into things.
And if Andrew did meet his maker, then she was satisfying the conditions of her contract with Zoey, the one she'd signed when she'd been too naïve and desperate to argue about its finer points and when she'd been in too much of a rush to read the fine print. Soon enough, Andrew would be out of the way. Permanently.
"I can't do this," Alia muttered. She'd talked to Andrew, truthfully. She hadn't done that in…. Well, she hadn't done that since she'd met Sam. Heck, she liked the kid. He was nice. She hadn't gotten to know someone this well in ages, not at a time when she hadn't been lying through her teeth every second sentence or so. She turned back to call him away.
She was too late.
Andrew was gone.
"I think your fifteen minutes are up," Zoey observed, checking her watch.
Dr. Smith ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it looking more ridiculous than usual. "The connection's gone," he said dumbly. "I don't understand it. It can't be gone." He started fiddling with the handlink once more, using that funny little tool of his as if he could possibly find out something useful with it.
"Evidently it is."
"No, no, nononononono," Dr. Smith said, "you don't understand. It literally can't be gone."
"Then enlighten me," Zoey drawled. "Why can't it be gone?"
"You're still here," Dr. Smith pointed out, "and you're fine. And as long as you're here, I have a connection."
Zoey decided against acknowledging that bit of nonsense. "Then make the connection instead of blathering on about it."
"But I can't," Dr. Smith repeated. "I just…. There's nothing."
Zoey raised her eyebrows. "Really. How intriguing. But if your efforts towards that don't pan out, then why not focus on getting us out of here?"
Dr. Smith frowned at her. "You seem to be missing the point. This is bad, Zoey, or have you forgotten that already?"
Zoey rolled her eyes, ignoring Dr. Smith as he continued his prattling. He was clever, yes. She'd never denied that. But he was insufferable, and that hadn't changed one bit since she'd last seen him. To be trapped with him in the same room, when he had the potential to get them out and refused to do so…. She would have strangled him by now if she thought she could still get out without his help.
She didn't want to be indebted to him, and she could reason away any debt he might think she owed him. He was the reason she was trapped and, as far as she was concerned, he could very well get her out. She would show her gratitude by making his eventual death a quick one. Thames would be disappointed, and in truth, so would she, but she wasn't about to risk letting the infuriating man slip from their grasp again.
It was some time later when she realized Dr. Smith had stopped talking and indeed even stopped tinkering with the handlink. The handlink itself lay a few feet from him now, along with that silver tool he'd been using on it. Dr. Smith himself was curled up in a tight ball, and from what she could see of his face, he wore the same expression that she had seen on so many of the leapees. Pain, and overriding terror.
"Something wrong?" she asked lightly.
He didn't answer her.
"Would you prefer if I asked what is wrong?" she continued. She didn't care one whit, of course, but at least if she found out why he had stopped working, she had a better chance of making him start again. True, going about things this way was far more tedious than her usual methods, but as much as she hated to admit it, she stood in unfamiliar territory. She'd never truly understood Dr. Smith when he'd worked for them, and in spite of recent revelations, she still wasn't sure what made him tick, or what would set him off.
She still didn't receive an answer.
Zoey stood up and walked over to Dr. Smith. Crouching down, she gave him a good shake. "Snap out of it and get back to work."
"Don't touch me."
"Fine." Zoey released him and stood back up. "Get back to work."
Dr. Smith uncurled himself and glared at her before eyeing her carefully as if trying to assess her next move. "I can't do anything," he informed her, his voice low. "It's too late. I'm too late."
"I don't care if you're too late to contact Alia," Zoey snapped. "I want to get out of here."
"That's not what I mean," Dr. Smith retorted, though he couldn't seem to summon the energy to put as much venom behind his speech as she had in hers. "I took too much time. The cracks must have begun widening before I even came here, and I was too thick to notice. I'm too late, Zoey. Time's cracking. Some things are lost. Some things are new. Some things have just shifted a bit. But time's still unravelling."
"Well, we seem to still exist, so at least your prophecy that we'll come out of this with nothing hasn't come to pass."
"Don't count on it," Dr. Smith returned. "It's hardly started. There are—" He broke off abruptly, his breath hissing through his teeth as he winced at a sudden flash of pain. "There are more cracks opening up every second, Zoey. Each second, every second, and within those seconds, cracking are widening and things are changing, and you may not think the world will be that much different, but if things keep going the way they are, you won't even be in it."
"Is that supposed to be a threat?" Zoey smirked. "I must say, it could use a little work."
"You're not helping," Dr. Smith muttered, climbing slowly to his feet. "Just…stay back, all right?"
"Gladly," Zoey said, though she didn't miss Dr. Smith's irritated look when she didn't move any further away from him.
He took a few steps back and leaned against the wall. "Things are starting to break apart," he gasped. "Past, present—I don't even know how much of the future will be left. I'm having a hard enough time keeping myself together, let alone trying to determine the extent of the damage so far. I can't…. I can't do anything. History is being destroyed, and I can't do anything."
Zoey laughed. "Oh, really? How disappointing."
Dr. Smith had a wild look in his eyes, one she genuinely had never seen before. Not the first time she'd met him, not in any of the leapees she'd seen since, not in any of the fools they'd employed—including the ones who had snapped. "I don't know how bad it's going to be," he confessed, grabbing at his hair as if he could pull answers from the recesses of his mind. "I don't know how much is going to change. I don't know how long it's going to take."
"Pity," Zoey remarked, wondering how long this state of his was going to last.
"It wasn't even supposed to end this way," Dr. Smith said softly. "Not any of it. Not the world, not your little Project, not my life. Something's still coming. It wasn't this. Something's still coming, and I won't be there to greet it, let alone stop it." He leaned his head against the wall and looked up. "And the worst of it is, I can't even stop this. I can't even slow it down. It's tearing the universe apart and sewing together seconds that were never meant to touch. That won't hold, you see, so whatever else is coming to fill the gaps will come, and no one will be the wiser."
"Except you, of course," surmised Zoey, having heard enough of Dr. Smith's ramblings by now to know where he was going with this.
He turned his head to look at her. "Not this time," he admitted quietly. "No free passes out of this one. I don't even get to sit out. We all have to play to the end." He took a few steadying breaths. "Can't say I know how long the game will last, though."
Zoey snorted. "Please. I know from experience that you're horrendously difficult to kill. If I thought your stupid cracks could do it, we wouldn't be having this conversation; I'd be sitting back for the show."
Dr. Smith tried to give her a smile, but even she could see through it. It looked more like a grimace than anything else anyway. "Even if things do change in my past," he said, "you'll still go before I do." He must have seen the look on her face because he added, "Simple, really. I've lived longer. I've seen more and done more than you. It'll take some time to rip me from existence."
Zoey frowned at him. "Well, if that's what's happening to you now, I can't see how you're supposed to outlast me."
The smile, if it could even be called that, became more ragged. "It'll be quicker for you. I've got more than a few knots in my timeline that have to be undone. It'll take a while."
"Especially since you're trying to hold yourself together?"
"Well, yes," Dr. Smith agreed, looking surprised that she had recalled that. He probably thought she didn't listen to a word he said. Normally, she didn't—she left the likes of that to Thames if she could—but she was trying to screen through the nonsense now to get to something she could actually use.
It was slow going.
"But the thing is, I'm coming apart at the seams," Dr. Smith continued. "Unless things change, the very thing that is supposed to be holding me together no longer exists. I'll be unravelling from both ends." He sucked in a breath. "Should go quicker, then."
"I'm thrilled," Zoey said, rolling her eyes. "Is that your excuse as to why you aren't trying to get us out of here?"
Dr. Smith started to laugh, but it quickly turned into a sputtering cough. When he recovered, he shook his head. "No point in trying to get out anymore," he said. "Not really. There's no place to go. There's nowhere safe. Nothing's untouched. Everything falls to the ravages of time. You ought to know that better than the average person." He looked upwards again, craning his neck back, the top of his head pressed against the wall, peering at the ceiling as if he could see through it and all the floors above them to the sky. After a moment of blessed silence, he said, "I think we might be lucky."
"Good," Zoey said. "Try using some of that luck to unlock that door. I don't care if I can't go anywhere safe so long as I'm not stuck here with the likes of you."
Dr. Smith looked at her again. "That's not what I mean," he said. "I think there'll be something after this. I don't think we'll get nothing. Well, not nothing for long. The replacement timeline is trying to force itself through. Won't be pretty, and won't be pleasant, and it certainly won't have all the details the same even if some of the facts still seem correct, but I think something might exist for everyone else."
"Lovely."
"Thing is," Dr. Smith continued carefully, "my time's still up."
"Splendid. Then maybe someone else can let me out of here."
Dr. Smith shook his head. "No. I'm sorry, Zoey. Really, I am. Even for you, even when you're pushing away so much good potential in search of something else, even when you're delighting in all the havoc you wreak through this Project and all the harm and violence and destruction you spread. I am really very, very sorry. But you're too close to me."
Zoey stiffened, stamping down on the flash of fear that threatened to rise and consume her. "Meaning?" she ground out darkly.
"You weren't cut when you touched me," Dr. Smith explained slowly, "but you will be if splinters fly, and even if they don't, there's too much friction between the two of us for things to go smoothly. Thames and everyone else outside of this room may get rewritten into whatever's coming, but we won't."
Zoey glared at him, knowing that even in his near-delusional state that he wouldn't mistake the loathing on her face for anything but what it was.
"I'm sorry," Dr. Smith repeated. "I am so, so sorry. But I can't give you a choice. I literally can't. There's absolutely nothing that I can do." He sagged against the wall. "What would you do," he asked quietly, "if you had a choice?"
Zoey knew precisely what she would do, choice or no. She started with a good slap that sent Dr. Smith crashing painfully to the floor. "I wish you'd never stepped foot inside this Project," she hissed. "You, with your lies and your promises and your idiotic visions of grandeur, thinking yourself better than all of us. You're the cause of this. You're the reason we're here, the reason we're in this mess. Tell me this, Dr. Smith. What would have happened if you'd never come into our lives?"
Dr. Smith pulled himself to his feet again. Facing her, he said, very quietly, "This would have happened sooner, and you would never have known about it." Turning away from her, he added, more to himself than to her, "But if I'd never met Sam, it could have been prevented altogether." He sighed and turned back to her. "Trouble is, that's been done. It might be becoming undone, but it has been done, and I certainly can't change it. It's all a sequence, Zoey, but the timing's off, and things aren't in place, and the pattern's cracked and the patches are worn through and everything's falling to pieces."
"So you're admitting that this mess is entirely your fault," Zoey deduced, ignoring another spasm of pain as it shook Dr. Smith. She leaned closer to him. "Fix it."
"I can't!" Dr. Smith retorted. "That's what I've been saying all along. I can't do anything." His voice cracked, and he fell silent at last. Zoey turned her back on him.
She lost track of time. Her watch had long since stopped, and she wasn't sure whether it lent credence to Dr. Smith's ridiculous story or whether it was just plain coincidence. She refused to meet Dr. Smith's gaze, and he didn't bother trying to make any further conversation. This silence was a different silence from the times she'd had him in the Holding Chamber. She'd been in control, then, letting the silence stretch between her questions. Now, neither of them had control.
The silence stretched on, broken only by Dr. Smith's occasional hisses of pain or explosions of breath as he lost control of whatever he'd been fighting against. That part was no different from the time in the Holding Chamber, at least.
The difference came later, when Dr. Smith began screaming, curled tightly in a ball, hands clamped to his head.
Zoey closed her eyes. Normally, she liked that sound. But it was no signal of her control of the situation now; it was quite the opposite. And this…. It didn't sound human, that tortured, chilling sound that issued from Dr. Smith's mouth. Pain and horror and who knew what else bursting forth in a torrent of sound that never seemed to stop.
When it finally did, Zoey actually got to her feet to check on him. His screams still echoed in her ears, hammering against her skull, giving her a headache. She tried to ignore it, instead turning her attention to Dr. Smith.
He didn't move, and when she pushed him onto his back, he just lay there. He didn't even twitch. She was experienced enough to know that he wasn't even breathing.
She'd wanted him dead. She'd been cursing him since the day he'd left the Project. Before that, even—since the time she'd had him in the Holding Chamber and he'd refused to talk. She hadn't been able to break him, and she'd hated him for it. She still did. But now…she didn't have to.
Zoey shivered, suddenly realizing that the room was darkening again, the temperature dropping. Everything had been cut off again with her luck. Well, Dr. Smith was right about that, at least. They were stuck. But he'd been wrong about her. She'd outlasted him. She'd had the last laugh.
It was a bitter one.