Two by Two by Two, Part 8b
The gǒushǐ hits the fan…
This chapter rated T.
It was a bright, sunshiny day, and the campus of Dunsmuir University was bustling with activity, with students and professors moving across the quad on their way to lectures. Some were taking advantage of the fine weather to study outdoors under the shade of the large Paulownia trees, but Ip couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that had settled on him since the restaurant incident. Why did he feel like they were being followed?
He was anxious to conclude their business and return to Serenity. He greeted Professor Guzman, an acquaintance who had been a post-doc while he was still a grad student at Harcliffe University on Bernadette, and introduced River as his research assistant. While River settled in and read scientific journals at Professor Guzman's office in the Geology building, Ip discussed the experiment with the professor. Ip knew that River was also listening, which was just what he wanted, because he intended for her to conduct much of the experiment herself, under his supervision of course. Professor Guzman was prosy—Ip remembered well how tedious the grad students' journal club had been whenever she gave the presentations—but her research plan was solid, and he was glad for the income the work would provide, as well as the chance to co-author a paper that would, with Guzman's help, almost certainly be published. He concluded his arrangements with her, trying to disguise how anxious he was to get out of there. At last, having arranged for the crate—it was not a large one, but it was too heavy to hand-carry—to be sent to the docks, he and River left the professor's office. Ip was about to turn left down the central hall towards the main staircase to the front entrance when River suddenly—and with shocking force—pulled him to the right and into a low side corridor that led to the labs.
Ssshh! He wasn't sure exactly how she silenced him, since she didn't appear to have made a sound. One moment they were racing down the corridor, with River tugging him along by the hand and glancing nervously over her shoulder, and the next moment, she had disappeared. He had looked away only for a second, following her gaze down the corridor behind them, and when he looked back she was nowhere that he could see.
Don't look down, don't look down. Why that thought popped into his head, he couldn't say, but of course he looked down. What he saw when he looked down was…the floor. It was entirely unremarkable, so he looked back up, to see two men in unremarkable black suits striding purposefully along the corridor. They must have been engaged in lab experiments, for they both wore protective blue gloves on their hands. "Gentlemen," Ip said, nodding a greeting as they passed. The pair nodded shortly, without any warmth, and continued down the hallway as if on a mission. That was when it struck Ip that their appearance was in fact odd. Who wore a business suit while conducting lab experiments? At the very least, a typical scientist would throw on a lab coat to protect their good clothes, and most scientists didn't dress up in the first place. And the pair did not seem to belong in this corridor, for instead of turning into one of the labs, they stopped outside first one door, then another, as they came to them, pausing at each one and seeming to consider whether or not this was the right lab to enter.
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask them if they needed help finding their way, when the thought struck him, Let them figure it out for themselves. He wasn't much interested in helping these unsympathetic strangers. He was much more interested in finding River and getting back to Serenity. Something held him back from calling out River's name while the strangers were still in the corridor. He waited until they had reached the end of it and passed through the door to the staircase.
"River?" he ventured cautiously, looking both ways along the corridor. She was nowhere to be seen. "Riv—gah!" he exclaimed as she suddenly dropped down from the ceiling, where, now that he looked up, he could see that she must have been bracing herself up there amongst the exposed piping. She must be stronger than she looked, and a talented gymnast to boot, to hold a position like that for more than a few seconds. "What was that all about?" he asked, quietly.
"Hens do not laugh and I don't like Russian!" River replied. Ip wanted to ask what in the worlds she meant, but he didn't have time. She grabbed his hand and tugged him along, not to the stairs at the end of corridor where the suits had gone, not back to the main hall either, but into a room containing lockers, with a couple of padded benches affixed to the floor. He recognized it as a kind of changing room and lounge, where people who were monitoring all-night experiments could stop to catch a nap.
He was about to ask what they were doing there when he heard, or rather felt, Ssshh! again. River froze in her tracks, so he did, too, almost not daring to breathe. Maybe paranoia was infectious, he thought, feeling more and more like a character in a pulp spy novel.
"Not infectious," River answered, though he didn't believe he had voiced that thought aloud. "Paranoia is a symptom, not a disease. The causality is—"
"River," Ip interrupted, and his voice was about an octave higher than usual. "What are we doing? What is going on?"
"Hens cackle. She eats her children! 提取 的计划 Tíqǔ de jìhuà," she muttered, as she began pulling labcoats and scrubs off the hooks in the room. She knotted the sleeves and legs together, and as he watched open-mouthed, she tied one end of the makeshift rope to the leg of one of the benches. Giving the clothes-rope a sharp tug to test its strength, she opened the frosted window of the room, tossed the rope out, then gestured with her eyes, indicating unambiguously that he was to climb out the window and down the rope. He looked through the opening. It opened into a narrow shaft of an alley that cut most of the way through the massive geology building. The distant end of the alley opened onto Broadway Boulevard, the busiest street around the campus of Dunsmuir University. "Go somewhere safe," the Captain's voice echoed in his head, "a public place. Can't kidnap you or take you down easy in front of witnesses." Ip understood that the busy street represented safety, but he couldn't understand the anxiety, the almost palpable fear, that was building in him. Gotta reach the street. Without questioning why he was doing so, Ip swung himself over the sill and climbed backwards down the wall of the building, three floors down, hanging onto the rope. No sooner had he reached the alley below than River descended, dropping the last ten feet and landing with the grace of a dancer—a fighter—a dancer.
A fighter, he decided, observing that her body was tensed to spring, and noting with alarm that she had a knife in her hand. Following her moves, imitating them without knowing exactly why he was doing so, Ip made his way down the dim alleyway in River's wake. Despite the fact that it was still broad daylight, the alley was in shadow, and now Ip began to feel that he had stepped onto the set of a B-grade film noir. Everything had an unreal quality, as if it were a dream.
Not a dream, River said. Nightmare. Sshh! Don't speak!
Suddenly she shoved him hard against the side of a dumpster. Don't like Russian, don't like Russian, don't like Russian, she repeated, more and more frantically. Two by two, Hands of Blue, two by two…. Her voice rose in pitch, even as the volume diminished to a whisper. Ip became aware of the voices of some men on the other side of the dumpster, between him and River and the distant safety of the open street.
"…with a man, late twenties, tall, Asian features," one of the voices was saying.
"Neutralize him," the other replied. "I'll speak the safeword."
Not listening! Not listening! Not listening… River's panic was palpable.
The first man stepped past the dumpster. He was dressed in a neutral black suit, like the other pair Ip had seen in the corridor, with blue gloves on his hands. He held a long rod in his hand—Ip had no idea what it was, but his gut wrenched with the instinctive knowledge that it was something terrible. He looked into the face of his assassin.
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glossary
提取 的计划 Tíqǔ de jìhuà [Extraction plan]
A/N: That's some cliffhanger, isn't it? I'll post the next chapter soon. Meanwhile, would appreciate your comments.