Chapter 25: Eureka

Velma had not been sure whether or not to trust the voice on the other end of the door. She knew that there were hostile forces in the facility, but SHARI had been meant to contact security, and it occurred to her that despite all that had happened since then, it was not really that long ago. So she opened the door and was greeted by two uniformed guards, both carrying TASERS.

They briefed her, quickly, on the confrontation going on now at the main offices between their own people and the unidentified hostiles that Velma had seen back in the Security office. They explained how their systems had been backed up all night and they that had only just now gotten the call from Marcie's SHARI system about the attack.

"Marcie was in the building with me" Velma said when the basic explanations were done. "I think the people who attacked us might have gotten her."

One of the guards nodded gravely. "Some of our guys are reporting someone matching Miss Fleach's description in the area. Rest assured we have everyone on hand to bring order back to this facility."

Velma sat back down on the couch again. She had stayed standing when they came in, but had quickly regretted it, noticing just how much her legs ached.

"What about the patients from the GF attack? Are they safe?"

One of the men took out a small handheld computer and pulled up a report. "They're all accounted for except for one, a Miss Madelyn…" The guard paused, glancing from his tablet to Velma and back again. "Dinkley" he finished lamely.

The other man stepped forward. "Miss, we have men looking for her, we believe she left of her own volition, there's no reason to believe she was taken." He said all of this in a placating tone that Velma may have appreciated if she had heard it. But she was too busy devising an exit strategy.

There was no way that the guards would just let her leave. There was, for all intents and purposes, a war going on out there. It would be dangerous and stupid for her to just run away. So instead, she began hyperventilating.

One of the guards immediately rushed to her side, sitting beside her. "What's wrong?"

Velma made a big show of coughing her next words. "Inhaler" she choked, jabbing her finger towards the bedroom.

The guard nodded and ran for the bedroom. From within she could hear the sounds of him frantically searching for the nonexistent medicine. The other guard was now sitting next to her, trying to give her advice on how to control her breathing.

"Where is it?" The man screamed from the room.

Velma looked at the man next to her, bugging out her eyes as much as possible. "Help him" she said, hacking out every syllable.

The man frantically ran to help his comrade. As soon as he was away Velma stopped choking. She straightened her glasses, stood up, and walked right out the door. It was a dirty underhanded trick, faking an illness like that, preying on the kindness of strangers.

It was a trick Madelyn had taught her after she found out that when you are mousy and bespectacled, as Dinkley girls tended to be, people had an easier time believing that you had problems you simply did not have. Velma, for instance, had never had asthma, and was a poor actor at that. But the guards had believed what they wanted to believe.

Besides, desperate times called for desperate measures, and these were very desperate times. Velma did not know where her sister was exactly. She had some idea though, Madelyn had been mumbling about the vents, and according to Fred and Daphne she had been following them into the cafeteria when she and the others were attacked. However drugged up and tired she was, the cafeteria was probably the first place she would go, trying to finish what she had started.

As Velma tried to remember which way the cafeteria was a new thought occurred to her, something Dream Madelyn had said, something about the attack in the fabricator lab, and something about the way that the attacks had occurred in general. It was always either a race to safety, or, as it was now, a team vs team match. All in all, something seemed very familiar about everything going on. And then all at once, Velma understood.

It had been right in front of her the whole time. She must have seen it subconsciously for her dreams to tell her, to hand her the answer in moderately clever wordplay. It was all so simple in the end. Perhaps it was not the most obvious conclusion, but the pattern of attack, the methods used, indirect murder, something Velma and the others had had attempted on them before. Suddenly, in that instant, Velma Dinkley knew who was behind everything, and in that instant, she began formulating a plan.

Step one was still finding her sister though, so she ran towards the cafeteria, ignoring the sounds of fighting from the main office complex, and ignoring what sounded like a confrontation brewing over by the gates.