Kai-Rhee still couldn't command her body to her satisfaction, but her mind was wide awake. Doctor Carrion's examination had introduced a host of ideas that she had never considered before. After an hour steeped in speculation, she stood in the middle of a simulation, poised to test one of his farfetched theories. With barely the strength to stand, her mind was filled with more questions than answers.
'What the hell d'I get myself into now?'
From behind the thickly plated glass of an observation area, Carrion spoke through a PA system to Kai-Rhee on the other side of the concrete wall. "Try to relax your mind. You don't need to force anything to happen."
Evans was drawn into his soothing voice because it rang with genuine caring. If his operation did turn out to be using people unethically, she had trouble believing that Matthew had anything to do with it. Everything about him revealed nothing but the best intentions with his work.
"Don't think of it as a gun. It's not a cold mechanism. Don't even think of it as something separate from yourself. Instead try to imagine that your hand is whole again. Attempt to accept it as part of yourself."
'Easier said than done.' Releasing her phantom limb hadn't been an easy assignment. She'd returned to active combat long before she could shake the feeling that her middle digit was still attached, and sometimes in mind-bending pain. That was her secret. Evans had lied to her physicians when it came time for her re-eval. She needed to be back with her unit. For her, that was priority one.
It was Simon who'd left the mirror on her doorstep, even though Kai-Rhee had no idea why at the time. When it sat untouched, he'd risked capture to come and show her how to use it. That was the first time she saw her guardian's face up close after the day they'd detained him.
With only silent motions, Simon asked her to sit, placed the mirror between her knees so that the reflection faced her left hand, and prompted her to wiggle each of her fully functional fingers. When Evans saw the illusion of a restored right appendage working in the mirror, her mind released her from agony. The pain was gone. Her phantom limb sensation returned from time to time, but free of discomfort.
Between that day and his later appearances in combat, Simon had literally saved her life with smoke and mirrors.
Carrion interrupted her remembrance, "Try moving your hands without looking directly at them. Just catch their movement out of the corner of your eye."
Standing stiffly, alone in a cell block of discarded test equipment, she felt closed in by grey walls pocked with burn marks. Evans hadn't regained full control of her reflexes, but she was able to comply to simple requests slowly. She gave herself permission to play along until her quicker faculties came back. 'This little exercise might reveal all the intel I need.'
"Good. Now look ahead to the target. Notice the threat of the M16 pointed directly at you. Imagine you could block the bullets just by holding your right hand up to stop them."
A loud 'ga-chung' of the dummies' gun firing startled the room. Evans' adrenaline shot through her veins. She hit the deck before her conscious mind issued any executive orders.
Carrion congratulated, "Okay. You're half way there. The device registered enough impulse to trigger the sensors on the dummy."
Shannon explained through the speakers, "The sound heightens your response level, but there are no bullets. You can get up now."
'Sheesh, scientists can be some twisted muthas.'
"Coulda warned me."
Matthew explained, "Unfortunately, no, that would have lessened the response beyond its effective range. Apologies for that."
She pulled herself gradually back to standing. Most of her joints remained slow to respond, but due to the internal chemical boost, her muscle fibers surged with increased energy to overcome their stricture. Evans asked her heartbeat to slow. She wanted to clear her head for another try.
"This time try imagining that you can knock the weapon out of it's hand, as if you were standing close enough to swat it away."
Kai-Rhee tried to picture the image, but didn't move her hand as she did so.
A sensor registered a benign clicking noise, but no sound of gunfire. Matthew's mouth turned down in disappointment. He suggested, "Can you throw a punch? Try closing your eyes and seeing the attacker right in front of you, within striking distance."
The Valkyrie stood tensed in her internal battle, motionlessly striking out against invisible demons, wondering why or how any of this meant anything.
When she didn't move Carrion coached, "Don't worry about swinging your arms. The intensity is set very low. At most you might get a little singe, but no permanent damage. This is just a test. There's nothing to worry about."
Kai-Rhee's curiosity rose, 'If he neglected to tell me about realistic gunfire sounds, I wonder what a real punch would do?' Having no interest in curving her hand so that the device's tip pointed in any direction except away from her, she closed her eyes and drew her ki into the preparation for knife hand strike. After 6 seconds of gathering intensity, she opened her eyes wide, issued her silent "key-eye," and sliced the air with a precise thrust.
Instantaneously, a chorus of sensors alarmed the room. The rifle flew out of the dummy's arms and skidded across the floor.
Shannon stood abruptly sending his chair toppling backwards behind him. He wasn't on the PA, but shared his surprise with the Doc. "She did it! She actually did it. No triggers."
Matthew Carrion nodded at his co-worker before depressing the button to release his voice into the test chamber. "I believe that it exactly what we are looking for." His mature eyes lit up in something like boyhood glee. "Do you think you could do that again?"
\o/
On the way back from their group inspection of the second lookout tower, Hoax tried to engage Esposito with a little conversation. It was grating on the big guy that Espo could stay so intense and broody for so long. As the person present who'd witness the most action with Evans, Hoax was NOT very worried about Kai-Rhee. Of course he was ready to help, but he didn't like anyone's chances against the Master Sergeant. Mostly, he wanted to get in on some of the action before she took everyone out single-handedly. 'I'd be just like her to save all the ass-whoopin for herself without sharing. Greedy, greedy.'
As Esposito's pace naturally migrated him ahead of the group, Hoax jogged to catch up, asking, "Do you miss this?"
Espo was trying to keep himself calm, but irritation inevitably spilled out. "What? Wondering if my friends are alive? And hoping that I can do something to save them? No. Definitely not."
"Not even a little? Not even the adrenaline?"
"Well, it's not entirely gone from my life. You wouldn't believe the shit Castle and Beckett get us into. But I am much happier making the deaths right, than being the one to carry them out." Javier still had it in him if he needed to use his gun, but he didn't have anywhere near as much ignorant bliss allowing him to pull the trigger.
"Is zat why you joined homicide?" The big man had been trying to understand the differences in his old buddy. He didn't feel like much had changed since the time they'd graduated from Horatio and Javier to Hoax and Roc. The missions metastasized, the guns got bigger, but the people all had the same bullshit excuses for not enjoying their lives while they had 'em. Krypton and the clients were no exception. And even though the scenery was different, in Camacho's mind the world still stepped to two drumbeats solamente: the battlefield and the dance floor. No matter if his feet followed the fife of war or the cajon of a neighborhood block party, he was all in. That's all folks needed to know.
Espo answered before thinking. "I didn't really know how much I'd like it until after I joined…" The detective's thoughts drifted through the faces of his partners, and the feeling he consistently got in the morning when it was time to get ready for work. "…but now I wouldn't trade it."
"I can't imagine the desk, the paperwork, the city, ugh…commuting. Sounds like hell in a to-go box, brother."
"Well, I don't love the sitting. But New York's got a life of it's own, and it's good to be home…" Javier added quietly, "…now that I've got something I love doing."
"I don't get it. What do you love about it? You arrest people, right?"
"Well, most of my job is figuring out which people to arrest. And, yes, some of it can be ridiculously boring, but being with good partners makes up for that part." He stared ahead down the trail, explaining, "No, what gets me out of bed in the morning is the whole process. A murder, a mess of lethal secrets, a way to make it as right as it can be."
"Huh? But why? Why do you care who did it?" To Hoax, dead was dead. No matter how it happened, end of story. He'd rather see folks toasting his name, and enjoying the sun, than trying to put together the gory details of what eventually did him in.
"Look around." Javier motioned to the rag tag group of volunteers trying to bring Kai-Rhee home, from the millionaires to the public servants. "Every person you ever meet is headed toward this thing, this end that no one wants to look at or think about. People make big deals about the beginning of life, spend tons of energy on everything about birthdays. But not many can look the other way, thinking about death just scares them. I'm not judging, but I need to look. Everyone's eyes are facing this one way, but there's something bigger than us in the other direction. That's where I can be the most use."
Hoax gave Espo the same concerned look that most people don when someone admits a fascination with death.
Javi defended, "I get that most people can't handle it, or find it morbid. But for me, that's where the answers are. When I think about my last day on earth, I know exactly what I'm supposed to do with today. All the distractions melt away."
Camacho lit up with a devilish smile. "Oh, I know what to do with the day when I wake up." He punched his right fist into his left, so that the tattoo of a black rose collided with a the swirly scripted palabra, 'RedKisses.' "Her name might change, but the urge is always the same." The hulking giant mimed something like a mechanical bull ride, flailing wildly, complete with pleasurable howls that scared a dozen birds out of the trees overhead.
Espo laughed before he could check himself for an appropriate response. 300 pounds of man muscle actin' a fool was no match for propriety.
The ridiculous display broke Javi out of his reflective trance. After he snapped back to the current moment, and familiar jesting with Hoax, he realized how odd it felt to talk about his feelings on work. Clearly, his worry was getting to him. If anyone could open him up to peek at the contents, it was definitely Kai-Rhee. He couldn't imagine Evans in New York inducing that kind of navel-gazing honesty in his everyday life. 'Between that and the sex, I'd never get anything done.' He admitted, 'Alright, maybe I wouldn't mind it so much.'
\o/
"I saw her!"
Simon burst into the kitchen to find everyone assembled and ready to go over the tactical plan Espo and Hoax had been working on.
"Where?" Rick was first to ask.
"Is she okay?" Espo followed.
"All one piece. On beach."
Castle had never heard Simon speak more than three English words in succession, though he appeared to speak extremely fluent 'you-grunts-are-sorry-sacks-of-unskilled-mental-midgets' in half a dozen other languages. Rick rather enjoyed being berated in the mellifluous tones of foreign lands while ramming his knees into his elbows for an exercise called 'spider man mountain climbers.' It was a nice change of pace.
"Is she back?" Hoax looked out the window.
"No. Over there."
Javi's patience waned. "What was she doing? Why didn't she come back?"
"I show. Come."
\o/
When the adrenaline wore off, so did most of Kai-Rhee's fine motor control. Whatever caused her to black out did a number on her. She hadn't ruled out foul play, not in the slightest. But there remained much to see, and she had a much better chance of seeing it from the inside.
Still, she had to get word out to Simon and the gang before they put themselves, and others, in danger. 'If I can buy just a little more time, maybe I can get my answers without involving anyone else.'
However, her first priority was discretion. She didn't want anyone in Emerald City to have any electronic link whatsoever to the folks on Krypton. They didn't need to know who or how many were over there, that's why she'd left her cell phone at home. At least the contacts were safe. If she used any of their phones or computers, they'd have a way to trace the person on the other end. In her mind, that was an unacceptable risk.
She didn't know if they'd let her waltz back over to camp, but anyone following her would immediately recognize Ryan and Beckett, and expose their deception. All roads lead to premature escalation, unless she could send word without direct contact.
Nonchalantly, she asked, "Doc, can we try this on the beach? I've heard that's where you bring out the big guns."
"Well sure, but I don't think we should move on to higher intensities, yet. There are still so many tests to run. And your eyes…I couldn't guarantee safety until we take a number of precautions."
Evans saw his words saying 'no' and his body saying 'yes,' as he got up to gather items.
"I'll take my chances." She baited, "I just feel too confined in here. I know I could get better results, with a bigger playground."
Carrion couldn't believe how his luck had turned around in one week. Months of stagnant number crunching, and failed trials, and redesigns, and dead-ends had brought him close to the edge of sanity. If he'd had any semblance of a life to go back to, he surely would've abandoned the project. But in the past 4 days, his work seemed to be having it's own Archimedean epiphany, with two Eureka moments in close succession. The first one had blown a hole in the roof of his biomechanics lab, but the results had been pretty inspiring.
Shannon couldn't believe his ears, 'This is her, confined?'
Matthew prattled aloud, "We'll need to gather some safety gear…" So much movement, after so much stagnation, felt like free-fall. Paranoia that Evans' results were too good to be true, that terrible consequences might result from haste, fought with his desperation to prove his time on the island had come to something, that he could still contribute something needed to the world. "…and my suit. Shannon, will you fetch it?"
\o/
Simon lead the group to the same jetty that Beckett and Castle had visited when they spotted a worrying scene. The grotto beyond was empty, but he described what he'd seen.
"Kai-Rhey there. Suit a Man." Simon moved his arm in a striking motion while extending two fingers long. "Green light fah."
Beckett clarified, "You saw the Master Sergeant in that cave, Simon? And a green light? Simon, did you see them use a laser, a thin beam of light?"
When he nodded affirmatively with a gravely serious face, Beckett's eyes searched Castle's. "Simon, are you sure you didn't see her get hurt?"
"No hurt. She shot."
Esposito could barely hear the words his alarm was so great.
Luckily, Ryan was standing next to him and knew what to do. He placed a grounding hand on his partner's shoulder, and waved his other hand at Adnan standing at the back of the group. "Hey, Champ, you help us out with this?" Kev knew asking Javi to use his French wouldn't give them the objective intel they needed. He'd protect his best friend from having to hear the news first if he could.
Delphi pardoned his way through the group, and started making a number of overtures to Simon in various languages. Eventually, they began to flow back in forth in less choppy cadences.
The New York foursome's eyes darted back forth as the volleys and returns between the Nigerian and the Mediterranean increased in speed and length.
When finally they rested their tongues, and the flourish of curious hand gestures that accompanied them, Castle's curiosity nearly tackled Balboa. "What? What'd he say?"
"Kai-Rhee is okay. For now. She signaled to Simon the sign for waiting." He lifted his palms skyward and wiggled his fingers. "Whatever she's got cooking in there. She appears to be in control of the situation, for the moment."
"Control, my ass. Then why didn't she come tell us herself?" This was not the news Espo was looking for. More waiting.
Beckett attempted some clarifications, "So, if she's not hurt. What did Simon mean by 'she shot.'?"
"Apparently, it's Kai-Rhee who was doing the shooting. And quite successfully by the sounds of it. If you can see those two rather large boulders over there just to the right of the grotto's entrance…?" Adnan pointed and waited for their squinting eyes to zero in. "It seems that those were two halves of a whole, not but an hour ago."
Beckett shot Castle a knowing look of 'this bares out your theory,' that she hoped the others didn't see just yet.
"Are you trying to tell me Valkyrie did that?" Hoax had seen her go loco before, but not usually on large pieces of bedrock.
Simon nodded, while Adnan answered for him. "It seems that way."
\o/
By the time Kev and Javi made it back to Kai-Rhee's quarters, Espo was a mess.
"Bro, I gotta get in there. I have to know if she's alright. She can't be allowed to do this by herself."
"I know it's not what you want to hear. But if she said we should wait, then we should wait."
"And then what? How are we expected to know when waiting is over and she needs us?"
"Simon's still out there. He saw them re-enter that green tower. If they come out again, he'll let us know."
"And then what? Hoax and I couldn't come up with anything much better than our first approach. If we can't find another way in, they'll have the upper hand no matter what we do. We can't take that kind of risk. There aren't enough of us. It's cool that her clients want to help, but most of those boys are untrained. For a place that size, Hoax and I aren't much of a rescue op."
Kevin was concerned with the level of desperation in Javi's voice, which rarely rose to that level. Espo wasn't talking Ryan out of something, he was asking for help. "Bro, nobody's letting you and Hoax go in there alone." 'Isn't it clear by now that Kai-Rhee and those bodies mean something to more than just him?'
Espo shook his head in frustration and paced before he sat himself on her bed.
Kev attempted another pass. "What if we could find another way in?"
"What do you mean?"
The wheels of Kevin's deductive reasoning were turning wildly, lighting up his blue eyes with dancing sterno flames. "Wait here."
Espo watched Ryan run down the steps and out to the beach. From there he looked back up at Kai-Rhee's cliffside home with an opened-mouth smile. When he ran back up to his partner, he took the steps two at a time.
Breathless at the door, Kev hung just his head inside to say, "Come with me!"
\o/
Crowding all 11 people into Fitzy's computer-laden bed chamber was no easy feat, even the dogs wanted in to soothe their worried masters. The programmer nervously wormed his way through the crowd warning Espo and Hoax not to trip on the wires that criss-crossed his floor. "And you two!" He motioned to Cannon and Castle. "Don't touch anything!"
Both men shrugged in twin 6 foot towers of innocence.
Kevin Ryan drew attention to the first screen showing a map of the island. "So, this is Krypton…and this is Emerald City."
The group quieted to give the young detective their full attention. All week Castle had been bragging to his cohorts about the synergistic specialties of his NY team. They suspected they were in for a treat.
Kevin continued, "The people we heard on our headsets seem to be settled into a nice cozy long term stay somewhere on this island. But none of the buildings on this schematic match something that could house that many families without someone being seen."
Beckett concurred, "Except in those blue prints you got from the developer, which don't seem to match any of the buildings on the schematic."
He tapped on the screen. "Right. Unless we zoom out." The image reoriented to a cross section of the topography with sea level as the x-axis and the hill at the center of the island as the tallest vertical point.
Ryan's eyes glinted at Castle and Beckett. "See anything that might be tall enough to hold our missing persons?"
Just as Kevin had hoped, Caskett answered excitedly in unison, "They're under the hill!"
\o/
"Bro, I don't know what you think she's gonna say when she finds out we didn't wait. She doesn't really seem the forgiving type." Kevin didn't think Espo was thinking through what their plan might do to his relationship with his old flame.
Espo handed another pack of C-4 to Hoax who was lining them against Kai-Rhee's kitchen wall. He gave his partner a sly smile. Now that there was something to do, and an action plan in place, Espo's crippling helplessness was replaced with plenty of sauce for his partner. "I'm not worried. I'mma tell her it was your idea."
\o/
After Fitz and Krueger finished hauling the last rolling cart full of explosives over to Cannon who was running them up the steps, the programmer turned to congratulate the raven-haired young man. "So, how does it feel to be the intel linch-pin in our plan to save Kai-Rhee?"
"I didn't do anything that she wouldn't do for us. You would've done the same, too."
"I would, if I could. But, alas, I know nothing about geologic formations, natural or otherwise."
"Guess something from those 2 semesters in Geo sunk in." Kreuger's tone turned sad, "…even if I was high for most of them."
"And to think I worried that you were all bod, and no brains." Fitz playfully punched Kreuger in the arm knocking him off his lean against the railing.
"Yeah, well, if any of my brain cells are still salvageable after what I put them through, I'll happily share some with you. Looks like you know what to actually do with them."
Kreuger certainly wasn't the most articulate of guys, but who could expect a smooth flow of sentence structure when he hadn't open his jaw in months? Fitz thought he was more likely to find rust around the dude's mandible than saliva.
Fitz was so surprised to hear him talk, he could barely accept the compliment. "Sometimes. Sometimes, I'm the biggest idiot I know."
\o/
After Evan's south-facing wall looked like an invasion of large grey lego's had infested, Hoax began to insert the blasting caps.
She'd chosen a hidden cavern for a home by design. To protect herself from hurricanes and whiny clients, Kai-Rhee wanted to build her quarters removed from base camp. When she found a cave three flights up, burrowing itself into the side of the cliff, she knew it would protect her from high winds and dolts prattling about minutia. If someone cared enough about their issue to make the trek and climb, she'd be assured that it was important.
To keep the water in the pipes cool, they'd run her plumbing as far back into the dark crevasse as possible. Hence, her kitchen provided the most penetrating access point to whatever was inside that hill.
Ryan looked around Evans' flat. "Maybe we should clear some of this out?" The idea of facing Kai-Rhee after they blew her home to smithereens didn't seem like an attractive option, even if they did manage to save her life.
"I'm on it." Esposito was already wrapping up the journals from her step-dad under her bed. After counting to make sure he didn't miss one of the 13 volumes, he found a waterproof duffle in her closet, wrapped the stack in her dress blue service uniform and shoved them inside. Then he started filling a box with everything on her desk. Before he left, he threw the Franti CD on top of the pile, covering her manuscripts.
\o/
Hoax reported in to Beckett. "I think we're ready to blow. As soon as we get the sign, I've got the detonator."
Castle didn't know what he was rooting for. Blowing up any portion of Kai-Rhee's island seemed like a version of stabbing a wasp nest: it might just piss them off, and make them all the harder to catch. He wasn't eager to anger his Master or whoever thought themselves big enough to take her on.
On the other hand, since he had indeed been assigned command of a four-wheel ATV retro-fitted with a rocket launcher, tomorrow's surprise attack might register up there with saving New York from nuclear threat, in terms of excitement level.
Beckett questioned Hoax, "And you're sure we are not going to injure whoever is on the other side of that cliff?"
"I'm not sure of anything. But you saw the sample we drilled through her wall. My guess is we've got at least 20 feet of sediment to blow through before we get to something else. And who knows how strong that wall will be. If it's made of alloy, instead of something porous like concrete, we might not even make a dent."
No part of this conversation was making Castle feel safer that Kai-Rhee wouldn't behead his man-parts. Even though he had nothing to do with the formation of their cockamaimy plan (well except for the part where he gets to drive the quad with the hand cannon), the writer felt sure that the Kai-wrath would be gunning for him first, before any questions were asked.
\o/
"Castle, what are we doing? None of this lines up."
At Kate's question, Rick snapped out of his daydreams of an all-American style rescue at red dawn.
Beckett continued, "Almost 2 dozen bodies, all with different times of death, piled in a mass grave, and left to rot. Kai-Rhee goes missing, but sends word to Simon that she's not ready for extraction."
Her eyes trailed over the impromptu murder board she'd made on the back of the pantry door. "And all those voices we heard, none of them seemed to be under duress or made mention of something wrong. We've got a chief researcher with an impeccable record, who's most likely working on something to help wounded soldiers. The Coast Guard hasn't seen anything except target practice on armored vehicles. And almost nothing Ryan and I saw inside was suspicious. If a nervous lab tech trying to pretend that he's the man in charge is the most evidence of deception we have, this case could be leading us to jump to conclusions."
"Well, what could those bodies be doing there? Why wouldn't they be buried? Or cremated?"
"Maybe that wasn't an option for whoever put them there. Maybe they didn't have time. Maybe the smoke would call attention." Beckett was running through all the logical branches of thought she could track.
Castle's eyes lit up with the familiar thrill of unexplored ideas. "Or maybe they didn't need to. If no one ever goes outside on that compound, maybe a pile on the ground is all the obscurity the killer needed to hide the evidence."
Beckett looked away in frustration. "I wish we could get Lanie here to examine the bodies. A cause of death would answer a lot of my questions right now."
Flush with the excitement that problem solving with Beckett always inspired, Rick shook the cocktail of resources at their disposal and sipped the possibilities. "Maybe we can…come with me."
\o/
Welcome, CastleFicathon readers to the most Marlow-ish mystery I've ever imagined, let alone tried to write. As the person most likely to space out and focus on the Castle cast's hair-dos and outfits as our beloved characters drone on about suspects, murder weapons and time of death during the actual show, it's basically a miracle that Kai-Rhee accomplished these details through my hands. Complaints can be directed directly to the muse, as I'm just the Sibyl with typing skills.
As always, I'm thankful for the excellent folks I've met in this fandom. Anonymous and otherwise, thanks for reading.
Next up: Lanie Parrish and Matthew Carrion drop the science. How do our lab-coated duo help to save the day?