AN: Just heard about yet another horrific shooting spree—this one targeting a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Please pray for the victims, and that all this senseless violence will cease.
XXIV. It Comes with a Price.
My surroundings looked exactly as they had before I fell asleep. Of course no sunlight could reach us, but I did wonder if we'd be able to tell time down here at all without my handy wristwatch.
Sarah sat alert by my side, running her hands down the length of the sword, like she was wondering if she had the nerve to use it for real. Gollum crouched nearby, messily devouring…something. I opened my mouth to ask what he was eating, but thought better of it.
"Good morning, Amy," Sarah said pleasantly. "When you've eaten, and Nico has finished his breakfast, we'll get started for that Institute." There were blackish circles around her eyes. I gathered she hadn't slept well either.
I yanked myself to a seated position, sore and filthy. "Do you remember the way, Nico?"
"Of course," he snorted through whatever it was he was eating. "Smico doesn't forget things like that."
He'd better not, I thought.
If I now said "I knew Gollum couldn't be trusted", all you wonderful readers will surely smite your foreheads and grumble "Thank you for pointing that out, Captain Obvious." So I won't say that.
But if we didn't follow Magnus' instructions and stick with Gollum, we'd probably never find the Institute.
And if we didn't find the Institute, then we were pretty much leaving Ron and Nudge to die in agony, and we couldn't let that happen.
So, back to square one. Back to Smico. All I could do now was pray that he wouldn't see fit to throttle us, and that if he did we could repel him successfully.
My stomach had been one huge knot for what felt like days. Usually I wouldn't eat feeling that way, knowing that I'd probably get sick. But I also knew that I'd need energy for today's adventure, so I grabbed a protein bar from my backpack and started munching absently.
"Sarah?" I whispered.
"Yes?"
"What's our plan?"
She turned. "Nico! Can you tell us what the building is like? What should we expect?"
He started hissing like a scared cat. His breakfast splattered all over his mouth and chin.
"Ssss…first, there's a big white room full of computerses. There weren't many nasty white-coatses there when we went through, but they might have upped the security since then; after the human birdses broke out. If someone's there, then you'll have to fight them. If not, you can proceed to the glass wall with the cageses. We thinks that's where they'd have your brother."
I shuddered. "Why would he be in a cage?"
Then I answered my own question. "Oh, dear God, no…"
"Yessss. They wouldn't let him get away. Tubeses! Tapeses!" He kept on ranting till his words devolved into unintelligible snarls punctuated with sprays of spittle and…uh, breakfast.
Sarah sheathed the sword. "Let's say we get in and the white room is unguarded. We find the glass wall and the cages. What next?"
"Nice legacy has to type the passsssword into the computer nearest the glass. Thissss will open the door."
"Great! What's the password?"
"Ssss, ssss!" He smote his forehead. "What was the passssword? Think, precious, think! We can't have forgotten. Magnusss told us to remember. He said he wouldn't bring us to Taki's again unless we could remember."
"Taki's?" I asked.
"It's a nice restaurant. They lets Smico eat nice raw fisssh. The other restaurantses won't serve us nice raw fisssh. No precious. Salmonella poisoning, they says." He spat contemptuously. "Smico's been eating raw fisssh forever, and he's never been poisoned! Stupid nasty humans. They doesn't know anything—"
"Password," Sarah cut in.
"Ssss, we're thinking, we're thinking." Gollum cradled his head in his hands.
Awkward silence.
I finished my energy bar and stuffed the empty wrapper back in my knapsack.
"Have you eaten?" I asked Sarah.
She shook her head. "I have an extremely nervous stomach. If I ingested any food now, I'd upchuck all of it."
"But won't you just pass out after a while if you don't eat?"
"Actually, I have more energy when I'm hungry. I can always eat after the raid." She smiled at me reassuringly, but it didn't reach her eyes.
Of course she was speaking optimistically. No matter what we found there (assuming Gollum even brought us to the right place) we were just two adolescents with zero fighting skills. I did not like to think about our chances.
"MAX AND DYLAN!" Gollum suddenly screamed.
Panicked, we shushed him.
"Inside voice, Nico," I said through gritted teeth.
"That was our inside voiceses," he sulked.
"Can you please repeat yourself quietly?" Sarah whispered.
"Max and Dylan. That's their password."
"Max and Dylan," Sarah and I muttered. I grabbed a flashlight from my backpack and we were on our way.
….
The trek was slow and extremely nerve-wracking. Gollum loped ahead of us, occasionally rasping over his shoulder for us to keep up.
That was a hard order to follow. Soon my feet were sore. Sarah kept tripping on her shoelaces and falling on her face in the grime. There were no images on the walls or bumps in the floor—nothing I could use as a landmark. For all I knew, we were going in circles—
Pain struck me like a thunderclap. My stomach felt like it was about to explode.
I sank groaning to my knees, the pain too intense to walk through.
"Amy?" Sarah crouched next to me, eyebrows raised in alarm. "What's wrong? Are you sick?"
"Ssss, ssss, why are they lagging behind?" asked Gollum from far ahead. "Mussst keep up if they wants—"
"Please don't leave us," she told him. "We're having a bit of a medical emergency."
Why did she look so tall? She has a good five inches on me, but at the moment I barely came up to her knee.
I tried to stand up, only to discover that I was already standing up.
The stomachache had vanished as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come.
"Sarah? What happened?" I asked.
It sounded like "ree, ree, ree."
I looked down.
My body had shrunk to the size of a small housecat and was covered in thick white fur. My feet—hind feet, to be exact—were long and built to jump. My hands—front feet—were velvety, and I had lost my thumbs. My ears felt long. I felt a pressure on my tailbone—because now I had a tail, fluffy as cotton.
I gave a little bunny shriek and blacked out.
This is a gift
It comes with a price
Who is the lamb?
And who is the knife?
And Midas is king
And he holds me so tight
He turned me to gold in the sunlight…
"It's a gift," Magnus had said, before stuffing the energy bars into my backpack.
AN: Song lyrics taken once again from "Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)" by Florence + the Machine. Awesome song, BTW.
While you're here, check out the Redwall fan fic The Last Champion by Varkanax40 (s/8146193/1/The_Last_Champion_The_Riddle_of_Arken_Book_I). Warmly recommended for pretty much anyone, no matter what you think of the Redwall series. This fic has twists by the truckload, heart-wrenching characters, brilliant action sequences, and a truly awesome villain.
On a sober note, please pray for the victims of the Oak Creek shooting and that a change will come.
