II: A Lesson in Waiting
In two weeks and three torturous days, Quinn learned that there are two kinds of waiting.
There was the waiting that had a definite timestamp. Like at 10:33AM, the bus would arrive. The hardboiled eggs would be done in eight minutes. The movie would start at 9:50PM. Patients would arrive, coffee would be served, subways and buses would come and go. Life would continue because it operated on the ticking arms of a clock; Quinn spent her life learning to tolerate that kind of wait because she could see the end of that wait approaching.
But in the two weeks and three days since Santana had gone missing, Quinn learned there was a kind of waiting that hollowed out her chest and made an emptiness wide enough to fit the Pacific Ocean and then some. It was the kind of waiting that may or may not be infinite, vague like a clock that had no arms so she never knew if the end of the wait was approaching. Quinn had an idea of what she wanted at the end of that wait but she would be grateful just for that end to come, let alone fulfill her wishes.
So when Quinn woke up two weeks and three days later, she swept her arm across the empty space next to her bed. It had been long enough that Santana's imprint in the mattress faded away. Quinn left her hand on the space anyway, imagining what it was to have her warm shoulders shifting under Quinn's palms, the bed moving as Santana scooted closer in her sleep, the quiet humming she did when she was sleepy but awake.
The orange vial sat on Santana's nightstand, just a few feet away from Quinn. From where she lay, she could see the small white tablets that Santana would take every morning. Then Santana began to have increasingly severe seizures. When that happened, a small pen-like syringe took a permanent place next to the pill bottle. Xion had put Santana back on injections, instead of pill-popping. "The medication works more quickly and effectively once it is directly put into your bloodstream," he had told her. The brunette cringed at the sight of the syringe and Quinn had to remind her to do it every morning.
Their lives returned to normal on some level for a few weeks. Well, as normal as their lives could be. Quinn went to work, helping save people from their own monsters, and some nights, she brought work home. Those nights, she sat in Saint, reading and writing case files, while SNIX bustled around, saving the world from its own monsters. Santana would unconsciously reach for her hand while they sat around the conference table, discussing this and that. Allele came up more and more often as the four of them discussed how best to approach the institution without the risk of losing all their DNA blueprints in the destruction. Their DNA would solve each of their genetic problems, Quinn learned, because Xion, with the help of Erica in Peru and Stephen in Thailand, could map out the flaws in their genes and supplement it. Quinn began to recognize each sibling as she spent more time.
Santana and Quinn would go home. They would make love on the sheets, on the counter, against walls, on sofas, the floor, any surface area that would support their searching bodies. Their limbs would find each other in the darkness, urgent and desperate with wanting. Quinn would fall asleep, relaxed and content with the pace of their lives. In the morning, she would find Santana by the radio system, headphones engulfing her ears. Quinn would place a cup of coffee and Santana would look up and smile at the blonde, adorned in only in a thin cotton t-shirt that always smelled like Quinn's skin.
Santana would go to work, an earpiece tucked in her ear, always listening for Eric's sign. Santana would come home, bags of camera equipment slung over her shoulder and an excited gleam in her eyes from a successful day of photography. She won a few awards and recognitions; Santana downplayed it but Quinn quickly found that Santana was leading one of the nation's most innovative creative team in the industry. The awards sat in a cardboard box behind her technology equipment, lost under the stacks of research papers (both Santana's and Quinn's), dust settling on the recognition that mattered so little to Santana.
And even though their lives embraced each other wholeheartedly, Quinn had always felt the threat of Allele, the dark storm cloud loomed overhead, in the back of her mind. She knew, some day, their lives would plummet through the thin ice they skated on.
That day came two weeks and three days ago.
When Quinn came downstairs and found the headphones and earpiece on the tabletop but no Santana.
When Quinn went to Saint and didn't find Santana.
When her text messages and voicemails went unanswered.
When Iris called Quinn, asking for Santana, and Brittany came to return a sweater she borrowed but the brunette wasn't there.
Before, Santana had reasons to leave Quinn behind; now, she had reasons to stay for Quinn and her family. This wasn't like Santana leaving. This was Santana being taken.
The day came two weeks and three days ago to teach Quinn about the two kinds of waiting.
Two weeks and one day ago.
"No, I haven't seen her. She didn't come home," Quinn tried to say the words without her voice wavering with worry. Her hands gripped the mug, threatening to break under the tension in her body. Nothing in the apartment indicated that Santana would leave. No missing duffel bags, not a piece of clothing missing from its hanger. The headphones sat on the table by the radio, set in a way that made it look like Santana had gotten up to go to the bathroom.
"I haven't seen her either but she wouldn't just leave," Iris' voice came thinly through the phone. "Oh, shit."
"What?"
"Nothing, I just almost spilled our Starbucks. Open the door, I'm here," Iris demanded in a endearing way that only Iris could manage. It was sisterly and argumentative at the same time.
Quinn opened the door to the loft, the petite sister on the other side with her hands full of Starbucks and a white box of pastries. Quinn could smell the raspberry through the box. Iris always resorted to food as a default for comforting people.
But when Quinn tore her eyes away from the box of pastries and reached for her tea, she looked up to find Iris scanning the room cautiously.
"What?" Quinn sipped her tea.
"What is that sound?" Iris shifted uncomfortably as she leaned against the kitchen counter.
Quinn stopped drinking. She listened carefully. "I don't hear anything."
Iris rolled her shoulders, as though trying to get some sort of sound out from her body. "How can you not hear that? It's grating.. and eerie." Her ears perked, trying to identify the source of that high-pitched sound. "It sounds like the end of a tape recording, you know, that kind of empty screeching."
Green eyes glanced at the headphones just a few feet away, in the living room space. She walked over to the equipment gingerly, hesitating to suggest it. That maybe Eric called. That maybe Eric said something to take Santana away. And that maybe, just maybe, Santana was at Allele.
She picked up the headphones, turned and held them out to Iris. Iris turned, hearing the sound closer, and saw black headphones in Quinn's outstretched hands. Her sharp dark eyes narrowed as she took them and gently placed them over her ears. Iris adjusted different knobs on the system, muttering, "I gave her and Eric this stupid relic of a machine. I didn't know she kept it."
Quinn watched her face carefully, looking for answers in her expression. "Do you hear anything?"
Iris shook her head, "Only that sound at the end of a recording. Maybe- we can-" Iris started and stopped sentences as she fiddled with the machines. "If we can-"
And she stopped suddenly, pressing the headphones into her ears.
Iris' nimble hands rewinded the sound, a sound that was inaudible to Quinn's ears.
She rewinded and played, rewinded and played, rewinded and played.
Quinn didn't want to know, she didn't want to ask. She stared at the way Iris slowly pivoted on on her heel, reminding her of the way Santana did that when she was reluctant to share something. A genetic habit, Quinn mused. Her emerald eyes made its way up from Iris' pivoting heel to her wide-eyed expression. Her dark eyes stared intensely at and through Quinn; Quinn could almost hear gears turning in her head.
"Eric sent a message," Iris spoke softly with disbelief. "We need to go to Saint." She pressed a button on the black-faced machines and a small disc slipped out from a slit along the side of the larger machines. Quinn would have never guessed Santana had been recording the frequency the whole time.
Quinn set down her tea on the countertop, grabbed her keys, and walked out the door, closely followed by Iris.
The box of pastries and tea would sit untouched for two weeks and one day, when Quinn finally took a rest and finally came back to the loft.
"You know she wouldn't just leave and I know it, too," Iris declared as Xion settled into his seat at the conference table. Neil placed a mug in Quinn's listless hands before taking his own seat. Iris continued, "And when I went by their place," Iris nodded in Quinn's direction as she moved towards the audio equipment set up a few feet from their conference table. She slid the disc into one of the slots. "I heard this."
They waited.
Or more accurately, Quinn waited while Xion and Neil listened to something she couldn't hear. Quinn watched their eyes shift as they looked at each other, as they looked at everyone but her. She sat with her hands under her thighs to keep from slamming her hands onto the desktop with frustration.
The question found its way out of her mouth anyway: "What? What's happening?"
Neil nodded at Xion and Iris, whose lips were pressed together firmly. He explained, his striking
California face distorted with concern and reluctance, "We learned a method of three-dimensional mapping based on numbering," he grabbed a pen and began dotting a pad of paper. "See, this is zero, zero, upper right hand. And then here would be x1, x2, x3, along this way until you have a width. And then here, this would be y1, y2, y3, and so on." He sketched a three-dimensional cube, his long fluid lines forming a drawing.
Quinn looked puzzled. "So?"
Iris nodded encouragingly, urging him to explain what she couldn't to her close friend. Neil continued, spinning the pad of paper to bring closer to Quinn across the table, "He built her a internal map of the system." Neil turned to Iris and spun his finger as to tell her to rewind the tape. She did and he furrowed his brows, listening carefully.
A sketch of a building began to form on the paper. When he finished, a complex blueprint of a multi-floored building emerged. Neil's sketch was admirable, the precision of his drawings to scale.
Neil set his pen down and passed the pad to Quinn. Her green eyes searched the page, soaking in the enormity of what she was about to command with a tone reminiscent of a head cheerleader. She stood up, her fingers pressed firmly into the paper, "We're going to call the others and then, we're going to rescue her."
Xion's eyes widened slightly, seeing this side of Quinn for the first time. Iris grinned mischievously, despite the circumstances, because she saw the commander-in-chief in Quinn. From the Rubiks' cube to a sharp mind, Quinn was equipped to commandeer this operation. Neil pumped his fists excitedly, whooping like a teenager, "Yes! Operation Snixitude is underway!"
Sweeping her sharp eyes across the table, carefully internalizing the busy bodies compiling the equipment for their plans, Quinn felt the ache of loving, caring, and wanting Santana and relished it; it fueled the fire that burned in the pit of her stomach, the one that threatened to consume her body and burn the trail all the way to Santana. And then burn down the walls keeping her body apart from Quinn's.
Now.
Somewhere far away, a brunette stirred in her drugged state, her limbs heavy. Her lids felt swollen, her fingers barely twitched, and her head ached. The small figure strained her ears. Her body may have betrayed her, in the one place that could immobilize her, but her mind stayed sharp, picking up on the details, conversations, and slips that informed her that she was in Allele.
And that Allele had certain answers.
And that Allele did not have other answers.
And that she had seen Eric once, a devastating, heart-wrenching instant that firmly gripped her lungs and squeezed until the air left her body and she was dizzy with disbelief.
And that she was missing the sensation of arms wrapped around her, a warm body. Instead, the only thing wrapped around her was metal, cold metal, around her wrists. But the gears in her mind continued to turn.