Breaking of the Fellowship
I've been working ahead with my handwritten "vignettes" for this story, and decided to try to cram a lot of it into this one chapter. More segue, mostly, with intrigue, jokes and a little borderline smut!
The remnant of the party look dazed as they made their final approach to Luxor, skirting the ruins of THEhotel. "What do we do now?" Austin asked.
"There is no more `we'," Sibyl said. He literally gaped, with a look that went rapidly from uncomprehending to disbelieving to heartbroken.
"Go, Samaritan," Luna said.
"What? But- You asked for my help! You asked my help in freeing the lepers in there! I risked everything for you! And now you're just sending me away, before we've even tried to break them out?"
"Do you think you are being judged a failure, Samaritan?" Sibyl said. "Do you think we would judge you?"
"You- you-" He looked imploringly at Sibyl, but found her gaze inscrutable, except a certain look he had seen before... "You told Krista- you promised her- I would return alive. You think- if I stay with you- I'm going to die. You- Do you think you are all going to die?"
Luna gave him a backhanded slap across the back of the head. "That's not no problem to you, Samaritan!" she said curtly. "Go! Go back for La Peliroja! Keep her safe!"
"No." He looked down in humiliation, but raised his head in defiance. "I came to do this, and I refuse to go before it is done."
"Then it will never be done," Sibyl said, "because we will do nothing more as long as you are with us."
He took and let out a deep breath. "All right... I'll go," he said, backing away.
"Deceit does not become you, Samaritan," Sibyl said. He felt a sharp sting in his neck. "You aren't very good at it, either." As he slumped to his knees, she said, "And another thing... Once you are together again with La Peliroja... Get out of Vegas."
"Hour three since exposure," the Mechanic calmly spoke into the recorder. "Symptomology is highly unusual. Physical symptoms indicate subject is well into prodromus, yet said subject remains surprisingly lucid... Doctor, please tell me, how do you feel?" The only reply was a string of curses. "Despite a high level of agitation, the subject is still capable of coherent speech- however resistant he is to constructive conversation... Come now, doctor, let's try to be objective, dispassionate."
"We should kill him. Now." So said a woman beside him.
"Nurse... which of us has seniority here?"
"You do," she grated, with an unmistakable note of contempt that left no need to add that "seniority" was not always synonymous with "superior".
"And, were we or were we not ordered very specifically to observe closely anything recognized as unusual in an HPNE infection?"
"Yes. We're observing him," said the Nurse (for she answered to it as a name among her peers). "We're observing him going crazy. Can we kill him now?"
"Nurse... Someone without so much confidence in your abilities might suspect you are beginning to panic."
"Someone with less confidence in yours might think you just have a big ego."
"If you think one of my decisions should be reconsidered, you are always free to speak to the Colonel." There was a hiss of breath, which made it clear enough she would do no such thing. "Now, as it happens, the Colonel has requested my presence..."
The Nurse stared through the glass, at the colleague who crouched with his face to the far right corner of a holding cell. As she looked, the sound came again. She had heard it before over the company channel, and the Mechanic had heard it with his own ears, on the first mission in which they had lost a man. Yet, he was the one who would not agree to terminate the teammate.
...Who was laughing, laughing like a hyena, like a demon, like something with a terrible, twisted kind of intellect, but no trace of humanity.
Austin awoke, to gaze up at his wife. It took him a moment to realize it was no dream. "Where am I?" he said.
She ran her fingers through his hair, and kissed him. "You're in Planet Hollywood," she said. "One of the perimeter guards saw someone really tall leave you just out of range."
"When?" he said.
"An hour ago."
"What time is it?"
"Four in the afternoon."
"Has- Is anyone watching Luxor?" He was already taking account of their surroundings. He was stretched out on a lounge chair. She knelt beside him. They were alone. She had a short skirt on, and somehow, he could tell there was nothing underneath.
"Everything's fine," she said as she straddled the couch. "You're a hero. You're my hero. Everything's fine, as long as you're with me." He nodded, with a hint of a smile- the sign of surrender. "I knew you wouldn't let me down," she said as she lifted her skirt and lowered herself. She swore like she was saying a prayer, and her boots scuffled and squeaked. He was surprised when she spoke again. "God. I- I think I'd die without you." He murmured something and pulled her down, just to keep her from seeing tears in his eyes.
The eerie cackle rang through the darkness. The man who answered to the title and name of the Colonel stepped back instinctively. The Mechanic, who was nothing if not unsusceptible to imagination, pushed a button and said, "That may be amusing to you, but it is only an annoyance to me."
"My mistake, then," answered the voice of Jack Ketch. "I thought maybe you had my kind of sense of humor. Or a sense of humor."
"There is someone here who would like to speak to you." The Colonel stepped forward, all but shouldering the Mechanic aside.
"Mr.- Ketch," he said, "I am in overall command of this operation. I am genuinely sorry that events have placed us so much at- cross-purposes. It has truly, always been our wish to treat all of your– people humanely. Tell me- is there anything we can do for you?"
"Bite me... C'mon, I bet somebody at least started to smile." The Mechanic looked sidelong at the Colonel, who happened to choose that moment to cover his mouth and cough.
The Mechanic spoke again: "How are you feeling? Any lightheadedness? Mood swings? Headaches?... Heightened light sensitivity, perhaps?"
"Okay, you just go to hell and you die, you SOB."
"I will take that as a yes... Can you tell us, how many other lepers were with you?"
"Ask Tuerto. Come in here, and I'll arrange a meeting."
"I didn't find our intelligence clear... What was your plan? Did you have a plan?"
"Sure, we had a perfect plan. Kill you. Free our people. Play cricket. Cricket optional."
"Enough," the Colonel said. "Mr. Ketch, I am prepared to make you an offer: We will release you, and everyone who does not wish to remain among our subjects- and I assure you, there is no shortage of individuals who, being fully briefed or our work and the objectives it serves, have agreed to remain entirely of their own free will."
"Yeah? And what would be in it for you?"
"You- that is, you, your leader, and your friends- would put an end to any action against our base. We would arrange to meet to discuss a more open and amicable way to provide for each other's needs and wants. And it is absolutely non-negotiable that we would be meeting in private with the individual called the White Tiger."
Ketch chuckled. "You really don't get it, do you? What went on, wasn't our plan. It's his. And if you want to end it, you've gotta talk to him."
The Mechanic covered the microphone. "It's imperative that you evacuate the main helipad."
"Already done."
"The Package?"
"Secure."
"Secure? I'll tell you how to make it secure. Give it to me."
"Doctor... With all due respect... your service has been long and excellent, but you do not have clearance for anything like the Package, and there is no way I could justify providing you access to my superiors."
"Fine. Then get it, in your hands, and stay with me. At all times."
"Doctor... If I did that, how could I continue to manage overall operations?"
"Look at it this way, Colonel. There is no threat to this operation greater than him, and nothing will be as important to him as getting control of the Package." The Mechanic whirled abruptly, dropping halfway into a defensive judo posture. From inside the cell, the demoniac laugh came, and another laugh could be heard answering it.
"I will make arrangements for the package," the Colonel said, coldly and calmly. "In the meantime, I order you to have Meadows put down."
Krista giggled as Austin gripped her hips again. By then, she was the one stretched out on the lounger, no longer wearing her boots or much else. "Again? What are you trying to do, put me in a coma?"
Austin leaned down and whispered, "You know, that would be so good for my ego." Then he turned her over, not rough but hardly delicate. She moaned happily, burying her face in a cushion as her husband's lips kissed the back of her neck and his hands went to work at the base of her spine.
Sibyl approached a helicopter pad, alone. "I know you are here," she said. She turned her eyes, to look directly into Tigre's eyes.
"Did you send him away?" Tigre asked caustically.
"He would not leave of his own accord, but he is gone. And we warned him."
"That won't be enough."
"No, but La Peliroja may be persuasive."
Tigre laughed a single, cynical "ha!". His eyes tracked Sibyl's gaze to the helipad.
"Nothing left there. 'Cept a trap, of course. Not a big one."
"You may find what you are looking for," the Sibyl said sadly, "but you will never have what you want."
"What would I want?" he said, stepping back. "What I've done, nothing can undo, and where I've gone, nobody comes back from. I've no illusions, and don't go into any pretty speeches. There's no happy ending left for me. The closest I can get, is making sure no other poor, decent bastard gets himself where I am." Sibyl shook her head but said nothing as he turned and stalked away. Just before he disappeared into the shadows, he looked back and said, "If anybody follows me- them, or you, or even him- one way or the other, they are going to die."
Krista snuggled under a blanket, drifting in and out of sleep. She smiled at the approach of soft but unmistakably masculine footfalls. "Austin?"
"Ahh... That'd be no." She stifled a shriek and almost rolled onto the floor at Sydney's brogue. "Never mind me!" he called back hurriedly. Already, he was speaking to Detroit: "See if anyone knows where Austin is. And, uh, clean that couch. Or just cremate it."