Chapter 14
Kowalski was startled from his reverie by the sound of his Lab door sliding shut with an audible click.
Skipper crossed his flippers, eyes downcast and expression grim as he focused on the floor. "I spoke to Private. I'm apparently forgiven, but he wants to know everything."
Kowalski nodded slowly, placing his clipboard back down on his makeshift table. "That's probably for the best." He decided.
To say things hadn't gone well would have been a gross understatement.
Kowalski already knew where he went wrong, coming hot out of the gate with a statement like 'we used to be human', was downright moronic. It was a shame he hadn't been able to realise that before he'd done in it. Following that, letting slip about Frances Alberta had been mistake number two. There are ways to drop information like that, and leading with her execution didn't even break top ten. He was learning more and more that simply keeping his mouth shut was the right move.
Not that did him much good now.
Even with the revelation of the white room and what it could mean Private hadn't been sated. Kowalski could understand that, he himself had reacted poorly when he thought Skipper had been hiding information at the police station. Being left out of the loop was never a good feeling, and as Private's voice had started to rise again after the realisation they had finally found something, it had taken Skipper too long to figure out why.
Private had bolted, storming up the ladder and out of the base before anyone had been able to figure out just why he was so upset. Strangely enough the only person who actually got it was Rico.
For all of the fighting he and Skipper did, there was always this safety net underneath them. They were different, yes, but their inability to accept they were wrong was one common denominator that always landed them in hot water. Skipper could never back down from his point once Kowalski started raising his voice, and Kowalski couldn't simply leave well enough alone even when he knew he wouldn't win. It was arrogance pure and simple, and he knew, even now as he was able to dissect the aftermath of the argument now in the privacy and quiet of his lab, that the next argument would end the same way. But that was where the safety net came in.
Neither of them could apologise.
It sounded backwards, but it worked. If neither of them were able to reconcile in words then there never was a period where they had to. Once the screaming was over, so was the argument. They ended just as sharply as they started.
Private didn't work like that. Like them.
Blame it on whatever you wanted to, an overgrown empathy, morally uptight children's programming, it didn't matter. It all lead to the same place. In his mind, when you hurt someone, you apologised.
A fact Skipper had still not yet managed to wrap his head around.
So while he and Kowalski had simply started dumbfounded up at the recently slammed tin fishbowl Rico had been the one to grunt irritably and sharply shove his flipper in the direction of the exit.
"Apologise." He'd barked, eyes locked on Skipper.
Skippers eyebrows had creased, confusion spelled out in a thick bold font across his features. "For what?"
Kowalski would have liked to have said he understood the situation completely, but honesty dictated he be truthful. He had no idea, still too wrapped up in the white room and everything that came with it to remember anything that had come before it.
Thankfully their commanding officer had been able to work it out with a bit of heavy handed prompting and rushed out lines of gibberish from the weapons expert, finally resulting in him sighing heavily as he dragged himself over to the ladder and followed Private out into the night, leaving Rico and Kowalski alone in the base.
That was, ironically, when things had gotten complicated.
Rico had had his face turned away, beak pointed like a bloodhound as he stared in the direction Skipper had left, concern wrinkling in the corners of his eyes. Kowalski had known if you had given him a mirror, he would have looked the same, but for entirely different reasons.
The portrait had still been there, hard lines and scratchy shading abandoned among the snapped pencil halves and unfinished game of cards on the table.
The memory was still there, fresh and imprinted in inverse just on the inside of his eyelids. Rico was a good artist, that was a fact that couldn't be denied, but good artist or no it was the details that were jarring.
He looked different in the drawing, smiling instead of frowning, skin not marred by the mottling of fresh bruises. But every detail was there.
His reflection had a bruise just above the tail of his right eyebrow, the bump still a bright red and still yet to oxidise like the one under his eye had. Right there, dead in the centre like the bullseye of a target was the faint brown spot of a mole.
And there, on the drawing, the exact same mole.
It was so insignificant, not even a blip on the radar when it was lined up along the rest of the issues bearing down on top of them with a crushing intensity, but that one tiny pencil dot was enough to cave out the bottom of Kowalski's chest.
It was so insignificant, he doubted he would have even remembered it if it hadn't been for the bruise. There had been other moles, but even with the startling clarity of his memory he wouldn't have been able to pick their exact location, the faint skin markings shimmering and sliding around like they were lost in the heat haze of a mirage.
But Rico had remembered it. Known about a detail so small and meaningless enough to recreate it perfectly. There were other moles on the drawing, two under the ridge of his left eye, another on his cheekbone and one on his chin. He didn't doubt that they were all in perfect accuracy. The question was how.
What kind of picture perfect memory would Rico need to have to be able to recall details like that? What kind of memory would he have needed to have recovered to be able to see them so closely?
His thoughts had been racing, and that was when Rico had called out to him. "Walski?"
The concern on his face had only doubled, and Kowalski felt pinned under that stare like a butterfly preserved in a shadow box.
He'd shelved his suspicions. Hell he'd done it today, even if it now felt like a lifetime ago. Rico was just an enigma, leave at that, and leave it alone. Every action he'd taken had been out of genuine kindness and a depth of knowledge Kowalski kept missing even when it was obvious.
Rico was an artist. An eye for detail came with that sort of thing right? It could be as simple as that, and knowing Rico that was likely all it was. Everything about him was deliriously simple when you broke it down. He could help Private through a panic attack because he had dealt with his own night terrors. He could draw in perfect replica because he had skills as an artist. He knew they were in danger before he had been let in on it because he could read Skipper and Kowalski like open books when he was present. The rest of it was psychosis and an inability to talk. If he could who knew what he would say, what explanations he could provide.
Maybe he could explain his behaviour. Explain just how he had remained just a step ahead of the curve while appearing to all the world he was still meandering at the start line and wondering where everyone had gone. He'd had to convince Skipper and Private, but not Rico. And maybe he had just been listening, stunned into silence and soaking up what information came forth in the screaming match that had ensued. But Kowalski couldn't just believe that. His behaviour had been off this whole time, so happy to ride the wave of everything that was happening and coast along beside them without so much as a single question.
"You ok?" Rico asked, gently stepping closer.
But how was that fair? That's just what Rico did! That's why Skipper liked him so much, he followed orders and didn't ask questions. So why now did it all feel so wrong?
He was giving himself a headache, talking himself round and round in ever tightening circles, again, just how Rico usually left him. The things he did should have been impossible, choking up lit dynamite, surviving impossible accidents and yet here he was, a proud spit in the eye of basic biology, anatomy, physics. He'd said he would let those things go, but Kowalski couldn't. That wasn't who he was. And it drove him insane.
Rico reached out, and Kowalski knew without even seeing where his flipper was heading that it would catch around his elbow. Never his shoulders. He reeled out of the way. The pounding in his temples was starting to hurt, and he could feel his stomach tying itself in knots.
He'd been so ready to throw accusations around, doubt the people closest to him at every minor turn. Skipper was cagey, he lied, that's what he did. His favourite word was classified for Geoffrey Chaucer's sake! Yet at every beat where he had hidden something or challenged him on his assumptions the words had been so clean on the tip of his beak. Are you a part of this? Every step of the way he had been ready to believe it, believe that someone in his team not only knew what was going on, but was deliberately keeping everyone else in the dark about it.
But the only person still lying was him. The only person who had hurt someone was him. Burning someone alive in a room he had rigged to trap them inside. Where did he find the gall to question others when he couldn't even account for his own actions?
There was no simple answer, but the problem was that one definitely existed. He was swamped in shades of grey when while the black and white was just out of reach. Either Rico or Skipper were lying, or they weren't. Either he had hurt someone or he hadn't.
The memories, the police station, the forest fire, the fact they were human. All distinct points he had seriously stopped to examine his commanding officer and been more then ready to label him a traitor, even after everything he had done to help them. Even after they were still alive despite Skipper knowing everything they knew.
Rico was the same, but for some reason this felt worse. He had explanations, he had proved that today, he just couldn't articulate them.
But none of that silenced the voice in his head telling him something was wrong.
"Did you throw Mrs Perky in the trash?"
The question came out before he had room to think about it. A microcosm of everything Rico was that was sitting wrong under his skin. He loved that doll! He'd been obsessed since Skipper had let him pick it up out of the abandoned box out the back of the toy store on one of their early missions. Rico had been worse then, some kind of mindless puppet with the strings cut. A wild hurricane of violence and erratic, worrying behaviour, but something about that doll had settled him. And now he'd thrown it out, and Kowalski had no idea why.
Rico stepped back, flippers up like he was worried Kowalski had been about to strike him, and maybe if Kowalski had had the presence of mind he might have noticed how his chest had been heaving, eyes wild and voice stretched into a hiss. But he hadn't, and Rico had folded in on himself.
"Walski." He murmured, and the softness in his voice was grating along every single one of Kowalski's raised feathers like the sound of talons on concrete. "I… Needed better to be her." Kowalski didn't deserve that kindness, not now, not when he was the one refusing to trust his teammate over something as silly as a Doll.
Rico's face pinched inwards, beak forming a shallow growl. "Better. I'm. Need to be. A stick." He grunted, throwing his head into his flippers. "You! Stick not a – Other thing!" The frustration in his voice was palpable as he tripped and stumbled over his words, flippers tightening on his temples as he crushed his skull between them, eyes scrunched shut in a vicious fit of concentration. "Don't need you. Her! Better thinking, here needed be too."
He looked like he was in pain. There was a feral desperation building, swarmed in anger and frustration and Rico just kept trying, words spat out harsh and raspy to such a degree Kowalski couldn't make them out. And his only thought was, I did this.
He probably made an excuse, but he can't be sure now. The next thing he had been fully aware of he had been in his lab, back pressed against the now closed door, forcing his breathing to try and settle.
Decisions had been made then, and rules set with them. No more doubting others. No more questioning his team.
This situation was awful, downright terrifying, and while he could excuse his misplaced paranoia out of self-preservation it clearly wasn't even helping himself, so it had to stop.
There were facts he could cling too. They'd come so far already, and they were all still alive. If anyone had been a traitor, by now they would be long dead. And why would the powers-that-be even bother? They were supposed to live out their lives here none the wiser, and even if something in their mystifying plan went wrong, they had cameras for that. No one was lying for some grand darker purpose.
Rico had drawn him so accurately because he was an artist. Skipper had refused to believe him because he was scared.
Finally, he had to come clean about the fire. Sooner, rather than later. If he wasn't allowed to doubt his team-mates he had to trust them with everything. Let them all be prepared for what they might find, and be ready to get rid of him if he wasn't who he thought he was.
It sounded so simple. Kowalski knew it wasn't, but it had been enough to calm him down.
From there he had tried to be productive. It hadn't really worked, even when he had gone back to the blessed simplicity of science.
Turning someone into a penguin would be a sophisticated procedure involving re-writing entire DNA strands, and trimming back the chromosome count. Penguins only had 38 after all, and humans had 46. That was if that was even what had happened. It could be that their minds had simply been swapped outright, and that somewhere out there wearing his face was a mindless arctic bird.
He doubted that though. If the powers-that-be had simply wanted them out of the way, and following Genevieve Waters as a blueprint, clearly didn't intend to murder them outside of the event something went wrong, being stuck with a human body with a penguin brain in it was a lot worse. It would take a lot of leaps in logic to conclude that swapping them into penguin bodies and then getting rid of their original bodies didn't technically count as murder. And how would you even care for a human in such a state? And for two years at that.
As backwards as it sounded, it made more sense to conclude that, at least on some level, these were their original bodies, even only in the fact that the cells had at one point been coded with human DNA. That meant, there was a strong likely hood their original cellular blueprint was still somewhere in there, a dormant, secondary chromosome set that housed their human selves. Unfortunately that wouldn't be able to be proven without a thermostatic cylinder, and the likelihood of the zoo veterinarians office having a machine like that was next to zero. You didn't need equipment that sophisticated for a simple sex classification; even he had been able to build something that simple, though it had drained power from a large chunk of the zoo when they had used it.
No the DNA analyser (with optional beak shiner!) was useless in this situation. It had only classified weather a double xx chromosome or xy chromosome pairing had been present, it hadn't even delved into unravelling the tightly coiled strands of DNA they were made of, and trying to build something accurate out of disparate parts was out of the question. It also wouldn't help them get back into their original bodies anyway, even if he could confirm that the dormant chromosomes were there, he had no idea where to even start to translate that into swapping the active set back out. If he couldn't even remove blockages on their postsynaptic receptors without risking total brain failure, this would be far too risky.
And that was as far as he'd gotten.
Back in the present, Skipper was slumped heavily against the door, eyes downcast and beak curled downwards in a tight curl of thought. "If we're going to fill both Private and Rico in we should do it properly. Run this whole shebang from the top down."
Kowalski nodded gently. "I agree. It would also help us clarify the sequence of events."
"Good. I'll rally the troops then, no time like the present after all." Skipper affirmed, shoving himself off the wall to turn towards the handle.
"Wait."
Skipper raised an eyebrow, turning back to face Kowalski. "Yes?"
Even at this distance Kowalski could see the bags under Skippers eyes, the raw pink of his waterline stark even if the slump heavy in his shoulders hadn't been enough to spell out his exhausted state already. The words Skipper had spit were still raw in his mind, the freight train of his lost state leaving phantom fractures across Kowalski's ribs. This whole time he'd thought Skipper had been keeping it together. Sure, there had been cracks here and there, but he'd wrongly assumed the plaster of false hope and a terrific acting Skipper had continuously been applying had been working. But he was just as lost as Kowalski was. Only difference was that Skipper had actually put effort into hiding just how deep the structural damage went. And yet he'd still thrown himself in the firing line.
"Why did you tell Private I had nothing to do with lying to him?" He asked, voice dropping. "We both know I was just as complicit in that as you were."
Skipper frowned slightly, eyes hardening as he sighed and turned back away from the door. "Because it was my idea and I convinced you to play along in my misguided, protective subterfuge." He sighed. "I've been forced to realise it was the wrong move. Private and Rico had a right to know, even if I only did what I did to protect them."
"It wasn't just you though." Kowalski defended. "I went along with it willingly in case you've forgotten. He should be just as upset with me as he is at you."
Skipper shrugged half-heartedly "And what good would that do?" He asked searchingly. "It's better he believes he can trust at least one of us to be honest with him. Sure, thus far it's been us keeping things from him, but that white room proved he's perfectly capable of withholding information as well, and we all need to be on the same page."
He wasn't wrong, but the guilt still spinning inside Kowalski couldn't abate. "But-"
"I'm the commanding officer of this unit Kowalski, it's not my job to be liked all of the time." Skipper interrupted, his eyes hardening. "I can handle it, and I'd rather your reputation be saved over mine. Private has to forgive me if this unit is going to function. You may be the lieutenant, but a rift like that could go on a lot longer without being fixed and I'm not going to have any loose wheels on this bus when we're driving this close to a cliffs edge, you understand?"
He did, and a hollow laugh was punched out of his chest. "Whoever trained you certainly did a good job."
Skipper puffed his chest out, flippers falling squarely on his hips as he did. Even with the shadows of the lab's economic lighting emphasising just how haggard he truly looked, for a second Kowalski could almost imagine him back in top shape. "They did a good job with all of us, especially if its stuck around this hard even with a brain-washing."
Kowalski looked away, fidgeting with the edge of his abandoned clipboard. "That they did." He mused.
Skipper's eyes narrowed slightly, head cocking to the side. "I'm sensing there's something else there Solider."
"It's just…" Kowalski laughed again, the same hollow sound. "We never even stopped to wonder why someone would train four penguin commandos. It makes no logical sense the second you start to look at it too closely." He shrugged, a poor mimicry of Skippers earlier movement. "Just another thing that makes more sense if we were actually human before."
It was clear he had struck a nerve, and Skipper's eyes fell. "It does." He admitted. "I just wish it didn't."
It wasn't an apology. But it was close. "We all do." Kowalski returned gently.
Skipper smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes, still pointed at the floor. Kowalski expected him to turn, open the door and leave. But he didn't. There was a shadow of something there, and it was only growing as the silence stretched between them. "Skipper?"
"Kowalski, I need to know-" He looked up, seeming for all the world like he intended to cross over to him, but stopped himself before he even took a step. His gaze was searching, and worried, and Kowalski felt himself freeze under the gaze. He was missing something here, and he grappled desperately for an answer. "I…" Skipper shook his head, pinching the bridge of his beak and sighing. "Actually, never mind. It's not important." He closed his eyes, and Kowalski had to wonder just who his next words were really for. "You're my lieutenant."
Kowalski had no idea what this was about. Suspicion started to squirm, but he flattened it instantly. He had rules now, and facts were facts. "That is my rank, correct." He replied instead, trying to keep his tone light.
Skipper removed his flipper, eyes flat in such a dead-pan stare it could only be satirical. "Cut the sass solider." He griped. "We have work to do."
It wasn't until Skipper swung the lab door open that Kowalski remembered why he had escaped into it in the first place and his stomach turned. Private had returned to the table in their absence, flippers folded coolly over his chest even if his eyes were still faintly red from the salt of his tears from earlier.
Rico was also there, and his eyes shot up as the door opened, intent and searching.
There were words, and Kowalski should use them, but they were sticking in his throat. He needed to say something, reassure Rico that what had transpired between them didn't mean anything, that it had been stress, or anxiety, or some toxic combination of both.
He didn't need to. The concern on Rico's face dipped the moment they locked eyes, and Kowalski was struck with the knowledge that he had only been worried about him. Even after everything.
Rico smiled thinly, dipping his head once before looking back towards Skipper who had rounded the left edge of the table, now standing opposite Private. Don't worry about it.
As he exited the lab Kowalski sucked in a hard breath, trying to force the oxygen to saturate every square inch inside his lungs. This is why there were rules.
"Right." Skippers eyes narrowed, flippers flat on the surface of the table. "If we're doing this, we're going to do it right." He shook his head. "No more lies, no more half-truths."
Private puffed his chest out, beak gritted as his eyes shone under the fluorescent lighting. "Right." He agreed.
Skipper nodded in his direction before sweeping his gaze around the rest of the circle. The momentary softness Rico had displayed was gone as he stood too rigid attention, a feral intensity in his eyes, like he was forcing himself to concentrate. Kowalski could only meet the sharp look directed his way with a tight determination. "Kowalski," Skipper said, "Give us the intel from the top. Let's re-hash this nightmare in full."
Kowalski let out a slow breath, carefully measuring the rate of his exhalation, pumping the breaks at even the slightest indication it might hitch on the nerves caught in his throat. There was no more room for fear or disbelief. They'd been there, and it had left them running circles around the major issues time and time again as old arguments were played out over and over until they lost sight of where they were supposed to be. So much time had been wasted playing complicated mind games in the name of some unspecified greater good, but they were quickly running out of it.
There was a hard knot of dread coiling somewhere in Kowalski's chest, all of the wayward complex emotions that had been ruling him lately clawing inside the pitted tumorous mass. It had left his mind like the fabric of spacetime, everything spiralling without his control down into the gravitational well of his fear and anxiety. But facts were facts; he didn't understand emotions, lest of all his own, and his inability to regulate them properly was a gaping wound that had been left to fester with no outlet.
He narrowed his eyes, squaring his shoulders. It was time for that to be over. Consider it surgery.
If his brain worked best with data and facts, then let it eat cake.
"Approximately three years ago Genevieve Waters had her memories removed." He started, voice ringing clearly as he spoke. "Prior to that she was a robotic engineer, near the top in her field with a record for assaulting a protester at an anti-death penalty rally. According to her recent arrest report, she claimed to have awoken in an apartment in Hoboken leased under the fake identity assigned to her, with a series of voicemails, one of which requested her presence at a final interview for a Zoo Keeper position at Hoboken Zoo. This aligned with her forged zoology degree."
"That fake identity was Frances Alberta, right?" Private asked.
Skipper flicked a flipper outwards in a sharp point. "Exactly. The forged degree and pre-arranged placement at the Hoboken Zoo points tells us that the people responsible wanted her there for a purpose."
"Following that, approximately one year later we underwent a similar procedure." Kowalski continued. "The details she outlined to the NYPD detectives correlate directly to our symptoms. She believed information given to her from outside sources, overlooked blatantly missing memories and disregarded information that did not align with her current situation. We also know from our encounter with her that she did recover certain pertinent memories which would lead her to using her robotic engineering skills to develop sophisticated android doubles of the zoo animals under her care." He ticked off the evidence on his flipper as he went. There was momentary longing for fingers to better keep a tally that he squashed quickly. "We'll come back and detail how those symptoms, for lack of a better term, are not only possible but also corroborates the working theory that the procedures that both all of us and Genevieve went through are the same, and as such, perpetrated by the same group."
"Good. Keep going." Skipper urged.
Kowalski was more than happy too. "There is one key difference between Genevieve and us, is that in addition to removing our memories we were also subject to DNA manipulation that changed our species." He swallowed down the questions rampaging through his head. Focus on the facts. "We were once human, as is obvious in our memories, both the perspective, subject matter and my own personal account."
Rico tapped furiously on the drawing still sitting on the table.
Kowalski felt himself frowning slightly even as Skipper and Private nodded sagely at his attempt at input. This was without a doubt the most invested he had been this entire time, which while on its own was something to be thankful for, it didn't make up for the fact that the manic intensity he was displaying was something far beyond the usual. Even before this he had never been this intent about a mission, choosing only to invest himself at the crucial moments something was either on fire, needed to explode or fish was somehow involved. This was… it was almost bordering on unhinged. Part of him had to wonder if it was for his benefit, a clumsy attempt at reconciliation. After all, he'd made it clear his trust was a fickle fragile thing, and even though he'd made the conscious choice to place it fully in his team-mates there was no way Rico knew that.
"Kowalski?" Private prodded gently. "Isn't this where the white room comes in?"
"We're hoping so." He mumbled. He had to take a moment to shake his head, attempting to dislodge the intrusive thoughts. "I mean, without any confirmation as to whether or not we knew each other before this the true meaning of that particular memory is still cloudy, but it is still the only confirmed instance we have of all of us being in the same place at the same time prior to this event." Kowalski clarified. "That in of itself gives it meaning, regardless of the truth."
"You did point out that our training is suspicious." Skipper added, flippers folding across his chest. "Surely if we all have similar training we would have been together before all of this?"
Kowalski blinked. He had said that hadn't he? "It would make the most sense I suppose, but we can't confirm that yet. Regardless that white room is still our best chance considering the limited information we have."
"I agree." Private piped up. "If we were all there then it at least means something!" He paused for a moment, head cocking to the side as he thought. "Wait, if we need to know where we came from doesn't the Zoo have shipping records?"
"No dice." Skipper sighed. "Our zoo records were falsified."
It took Kowalski a moment to remember, trawling back through everything that had happened. Mason and Phil had helped them find those records, hadn't they? "The Bronx Zoo." He muttered.
Skipper shook his head again. "Again, there has never been an arctic exhibit at the Bronx zoo, so why would they have four penguins for transfer? Alice probably didn't even notice that fact."
"It doesn't even matter now, anyway." Kowalski interrupted. "We weren't penguins at all, so who cares what the record says, it would have had to have been falsified regardless."
Skipper's brow furrowed, beak opening sharply only for him to falter. He paused, beak snapping shut with a click and he awkwardly tried to re-centre himself. "You're right." He agreed, words clipped. "The first memory we have is in the box on the way here. There's no way they sent us somewhere else first." He mumbled, eyes focused hard on the surface of the table.
Private looked between Rico and Kowalski nervously. "Skipper?"
"I'm doing my best." He said, an insincere lightness to his words. "This is what we all agreed happened. Let's focus on that."
"It is hard Skipper." Private said, shoulders slumping sympathetically. "I'm still trying to understand it myself, but we need to work together-"
"Private." Skipper's face was pinched into a mask of a smile, a simmering anger visible only in the wide whites of his eyes. "Not the time for a pep-talk, ok solider?"
"Oh. Right." Private ducked his head, twiddling his flippers nervously. "Of course Sir."
Kowalski shifted uncomfortably. "Riiight…"
Rico's intensity hadn't faltered, and it was clear just how hard he was trying to keep himself focused on the conversation, blatantly ignoring the momentary diversion.
Skipper sighed irritably, waving his flipper in a loose circle. "Just keep it going Kowalski."
"Well," It took him a second to work his way back through the conversation and figure out the point it had derailed. "Of course, the next point we can pin down was waking up in the shipping crate just prior to our arrival here. We accepted the fact we were penguins, and what persistent memories we had influenced our behaviour as the team we are now."
He could keep going, work through the past couple of years as they occurred, but there was little there that was truly relevant. A few incidents here and there that had grown sinister in retrospect, but the need for brevity insisted he put them to the side. Marginal relevancy wasn't what they were there for.
"The next event was…" He paused here, trying to find the correct place to restart the tale. "I suppose it was Private."
Private's eyebrows shot up, eyes widening. "Me?"
Kowalski nodded slowly, trying to gently tease out the thread of events from everything else it had become entangled with. "I think so… you asked me if I remembered my mother, that's what set the off alarm bells initially."
"Oh." Private blinked, clearly confused. "Um. Ok, sure. I suppose."
"Wait, it was Private that started this?" Skipper looked confused. "I thought it was those headaches?"
"It was both." Kowalski clarified. "We didn't know at the time they were connected. I didn't even know if you were all missing memories in the same way. It wasn't until…"
Oh. Somewhere in the madness he had forgotten hadn't he? And now it was there, a misshapen puzzle piece that didn't quite fit right.
"Until what?" Skipper barked. "Spit it out Man!"
"Hans." He blurted out. "It wasn't until Hans. He was the one that correlated the headaches and the memories, but I don't think he knew they were memories. We certainly didn't, at least not at that point, but that's was why we went to the research centre and had brain-scans."
"Wait, hold on, doesn't that mean Hans is also missing memories?" Private looked rightly perturbed. "If he's having memories slip through like we are then he has to be… right? Only that doesn't make any sense."
"That's what I'm now realising." Kowalski murmured. "But he's a persistent memory too isn't he? At least for Skipper. They share some sort of past they both tangentially remember-"
Private gasped. "Denmark!"
Skipper frowned, twisting slightly away from the table. "That's not the only thing though, we also all remember Manfredi and Johnson don't we?"
Private looked around sharply, clearly confused. "Wait, they're real?"
"What do you mean they're real?" Skipper barked. "We all remember their names don't we? Like I knew who Hans was before I saw him."
Kowalski's mind was racing. "But if we were human, how did you recognise him in the first place? That made sense when we were all penguins but now it-"
"Hold on!" Private shouted. "Hold on, you all remember Manfredi and Johnson? Like their names and stuff?"
Skippers eyebrows raised. "Uh, yeah? Are you saying you don't?"
"No! I thought they were a cautionary tale or something!?" Private's flippers flailed. "Like a dumb fake example not to do something stupid because you'll get hurt! I didn't know you all actually knew them!"
"We can't say that for sure." Kowalski stammered, trying to wedge his way back into the conversation. "The names have persisted, but we don't know anything about them-"
"Why in the name of sweet Alaskan smoked salmon would you think we made up a pair of PSA mascots about the danger of this job?" Skipper interrupted. "Of course they existed!"
"I don't know! I thought it was weird but I just went along with it!" Private cried.
Kowalski lent forward, one flipper flat on the table's surface, the other pointing sharply in the same way Skipper and Private were flinging theirs around as they shouted. "I didn't do this, I only recalled Johnson's name, Skipper is the one-"
He was cut off by a harsh, gravelly shout, "Oh Shut-UP!"
All at once their eyes shot to Rico as he threw his flippers up with a round of angry, frantic gibberish.
He was almost vibrating, feathers spiked up around his shoulders as he quivered, eyes slitted to sharp points as he shoved his flippers down again in a grand gesture to show just how fed up he was. "Stop it!" He snapped, fixing a hard glare first and Private and then at Skipper. "Need focus!"
They both did, beaks still open in a dumbfounded silence. Kowalski wasn't about to waste it. "Yes, he's right. Skipper how did you recognise Han-"
Rico slammed his flippers down on the table with a sharp crack, the sound loud enough to make everyone else jump. "No!" He snarled, eyes now fixed on Kowalski. He shrank back unwillingly under the force of his stare. "Not here." Rico gestured around him with a sharp sweep of his flipper Private had to duck under to avoid being struck. "Don't care!"
Kowalski didn't even know where to start. Being scolded by Rico of all people? It hardly seemed real. Skipper and Private clearly also weren't coping well with it, and somehow that only made it worse. "Rico," He started, hating the quiver in his voice as he spoke, "this is important-"
"Doesn't matter!" He snarled.
Kowalski was still trying to unpack that when Rico once again waved his flippers around the table, thankfully in a smaller, more contained circle. Private still ducked out of the way on instinct. "Matters." He said decidedly, the ice in his expression thawing out slightly as a desperation took over.
It clicked with such a sharpness Kowalski could have sworn it was audible.
"Again, and in English this time if you would." Skipper snapped. "I don't-"
"No, he's right." Kowalski said, lifting a flipper to try and get Skipper to stop.
Private shuffled hesitantly forward, clearly still confused. "He is?"
Skipper didn't look any more clued in. "I can't lie, never thought I'd hear you of all people say that Kowalski." He muttered, one eyebrow raised.
"Neither did I." He admitted. "But he is. We need to focus on what we know, the whole problem is that there's too much we don't know, and we keep letting that distract us. Once we solve this we'll have those answers, but the first and most important thing is making sure we're actually able to do that." He looked carefully at Rico. "Manfredi, Johnson and Hans don't matter to the big picture, we do."
Rico let out a loud breath, slumping inwards as he did, a faint, relieved smile on his beak as he nodded gently. "Yup."
"The only thing that matters is finding out who did this, and where they are. Everything else can wait." Kowalski stated, summing it up a finality he didn't fully believe.
"I mean that does make sense doesn't it?" Private said
"I agree, if we keep arguing semantics we'll be dead in the water before we even get going." Skipper added, shrugging at Rico and Private as he did. Turning his attention back to Kowalski he smirked, propping his flippers up on his hips instead. "As for you, congrats on finally being able to let something go. I'm almost proud." He laughed.
Kowalski wished he could. There were still questions, more than he was able to count, flitting around with a caustic need to be answered in his head. But they weren't going to get anywhere if all they were trying to do was answer questions that didn't matter in the short term. That realisation made nothing easier. There was a latent fear he couldn't shake, the bubbling feeling pressing in tightly on his ribs. The metaphorical key they needed could be in those questions, lost in the jumble of seemingly disparate parts they couldn't fit together yet.
They didn't even know who they were yet, and that was the biggest problem. There was no use trying to figure out who they knew and when, or ascribe a motive or plan to the powers-that-be before they could answer that first question. Bending over backwards to make parts that don't fit together seem like they do would only lead to wasted time when they could figure this out later once the danger was dealt with.
He took a deep breath and forced himself to remember why they were all here. Get everyone on the same page, outline what they knew and create a uniform starting point. From there they could question all they wanted too. But first, clarity was needed.
Three pairs of eyes were on him once again, clearly waiting.
"Hans put together that the headaches came with images, that's why Private and Skipper had MRI's." Kowalski said. "I didn't think it was related to the absent memories Private had made apparent before that."
Private coughed politely, hesitantly raising his flipper.
Kowalski raised an eyebrow. "… yes?"
Private shot his flipper back down, eyes flicking intermittently between Kowalski and Rico, clearly waiting to be cut off. "Oh well, I just wanted to, um, clarify, that I only asked about Kowalski's mum because I thought it was funny I couldn't remember much about my mum and I wanted to know if that was normal or not." He paused, scuffing his foot against the ground. "He said he did, by the way, and I figured I must have just been being silly." He muttered, looking up at Kowalski expectantly even as his head was still tilted downwards.
Kowalski sighed irritably. "I'm sorry, ok? We've all learned now that lying is wrong. Can I keep going?"
If Private had noticed the cynicism he didn't let it show, bouncing quickly back to his default chipper disposition. "You're forgiven, please continue!"
He rolled his eyes. "Glad to hear it, now back to the current issue. Those MRI scans showed us the blockages on our postsynaptic receptors, that's how our memories were blocked in the first place. They're also reflective so the electricity out brain functions on when experience thoughts is diverted harmlessly to other unblocked synapses. That's why we don't notice . They also trigger a pain response when activated, another method of insuring we don't look to closely in the event we do somehow notice."
Kowalski looked around, noticing the blankness beginning to creep into in the stares pointed in his direction. Skipper stifled a yawn into his flipper. A momentary twinge of annoyance flickered in his spine, but he shoved it aside. As much as he found this downright fascinating, it was clear his intended audience did not. Time to move on.
"The reason we recover memories with sleep is that the primary component of dreams is our memories. When we aren't awake we don't have the control needed to choose to think about something else, leading to the erosion of those blockers, which again, causes us pain. That's why we wake up with headaches and memories. These breakthrough memories, the deflection they cause when we are faced with contradictory information and the willingness they create to believe what we are told align with what Frances went through, so we can assume these two events were perpetrated by the same group or individual. We know it's not Blowhole, because there are still lingering effects of his mind jacker present in Skippers scans, and not Privates. While the effect is similar, what we have been through is far more sophisticated and the methodology differs drastically."
Skipper waved a flipper. "Yeah, we get it. You were right, moving on." He groaned.
There was an urge there to keep going, if only out of spite. However both Rico and Private leaning forward in is periphery was enough to keep him in check, swallowing the sarcastic remarks building in his throat before they could spill out. "The next step was Frances," He grit out. "The android doubles she created were input with memories, meaning that at least on some level she has skills in neuroscience."
He paused, feeling the tension in the room suddenly grow around him.
Everyone had gone still again, but to a higher degree than an a simple attentive audience would have. There were no slight adjustments for comfort, or subtle shifts in expression as the remaining penguins all froze in place, each of their expressions a calculated neutral.
The words were sticking in his now dry mouth, and he had to look down at the table to escape their eye-line. "Those android doubles attracted police attention when we were forced to fight them. Later, when we recovered her arrest report from that incident we found she had been murdered in her cell not long after. She had been afraid, shutting down completely during her interrogation, claiming that now that they knew she was aware something bad was going to happen to her." He shut his eyes. "The cameras were cut later that night and she was fond in her cell dead from a single bullet that struck between the eyes. Three other on duty NYPD officers were also murdered." His voice had dropped to a murmur, such a far cry from the shouting from earlier it was almost eerie.
No one said a thing. He could hear breathing, carefully measured but still hitching on each exhale. It was too loud in the vacated quiet.
"Did she mention anything about who did this to her?" Private asked. He was trying to sound strong, but the decided quiver in his voice gave him away plainly.
This was someone they knew. A bad person, yes, undoubtedly, but still someone they knew. And now she was dead. It didn't sit well at all.
"No." Skipper clearly looked uncomfortable, even if he was trying to hide it, eyes cast downwards and one flipper clenching and unclenching at his side. "The reports were detailed, but there was nothing about who might have done this, she only said what Kowalski relayed."
Private was holding his shoulders again, opposite flippers curled around the top of each one in some kind of self-hug. It was self soothing, if Kowalski were to hazard a guess. He certainty looked like he needed it. "Oh. That's not good." He mumbled.
Skipper hummed in response, his flipper that had been rhythmically curling into a fist and then back out moving sporadically for a moment before he broke, burying his face in his flippers again with a groan. "It isn't good." He repeated. "The transcripts… it read like she was looking for help. She was telling the police everything, she was desperate, but once they started asking about the androids she… she shut down completely. Wouldn't say another word." His flippers moved up to his head, pressed harshly against the feathers there as he dragged them backwards. Kowalski didn't doubt that if he'd had hair he would have been running his fingers through it. "She wanted help, but once she realised they only wanted to get information for a conviction it was over."
Private looked like he was choking, flippers tightening. "Poor Frances…" he whispered.
"That's why I think we're here, at a zoo." Kowalski said, forcing his eyes back down to the table. "It's the same reason she was set to work at one. It's the cameras. They're observation tanks." He felt a rouge shudder escape, fleeing lighting quick down his spine before he could force it down. "This is, what was done to us… its new. We would know about it if it wasn't. We're here so they can keep an eye on us, make sure whatever plan they have is working."
"That's a good thing, right?" Private asked, a desperate hope lighting up his features even as they remained shadowed from the lightbulb above them. "If they have a plan they don't want to… you know…"
The words were there, right on the tip of his beak and ready to finish the sentence, but the sound wouldn't come. Kowalski refused to blink even as his eyes started to burn. Blinking would mean seeing it, red and thick pained on the inside of his eyelids and staining the imagined ice floe in his head.
"Kill us."
Skipper finished it for the both of them, voice a hollow humourless laugh. "Maybe. But it's clear what they're willing to do if it doesn't work, and we all know it hasn't."
Private had ducked his head down, neck vanishing as his beak pressed into his chest. His eyes were closed tightly, feathers fluffing outwards in a protective shield. "The cameras, they should have seen us right? If they were really watching?" He asked. His voice was all wrong, light and strained even as it lilted along with its uneven cadence. It sounded like a child's voice, somehow even younger than Private usually sounded. It sat wrong in Kowalski's head, off balance and centre pushed outwards like so much else.
"The Zoo security system only holds images for three days if they haven't been flagged." Kowalski mumbled. "Black and white, no audio, intermittent image capture to save file space." He added afterwards, searching for any nugget of safety in the words as they left his mouth, but they were only falling flat. "We're careful, we try and keep out of their line of sight but it's not possible every time."
"We think whoever this was, they were the ones that intervened to keep the zoo open during the bankruptcy period." Skipper added. "Couldn't risk losing their eyes and ears."
Private huffed a wet, shuddery breath. "The anonymous donor… you think it was whoever did this?"
"As Kowalski would say, It's the most logical option." Skipper said. There wasn't any attempt at gentleness in his tone, but the usual vigour was long gone as his flippers finally fell back at his sides limply. "You know what that means, don't you Private?"
If it were possible, Privates eyes shut even tighter, shoulders hunching inward like he was trying to make himself as small of a target as possible. "We're in danger." He whimpered.
"We have no way of knowing what's been flagged, or when, and worse, we don't know if any of that footage has been snatched by whoever is watching." Skipper needed to shut up. Private's breath was hitching unnaturally, snagging on something in his chest each time he tried to draw a rapid breath and it was making Kowalski start to panic himself. They'd all seen Private break down, the last thing they needed was another panic attack for Rico to try and clean up.
Speaking of Rico he still hadn't moved, stuck motionless as his worryingly intense eyes stayed locked on something just over Kowalski's shoulder. He already knew there would be nothing there if he looked, but the dissociative fog was missing from the normally simple equation. In its place a transparent fear and desperation. Like everything else it felt worse.
Even the lighting had never felt so intense, and Kowalski could almost feel the walls closing in around him, entombing him alive in the shadowed concrete where he couldn't move, or breathe or think. His mind was racing, but there was nothing he could grab onto to try and hold his balance. It was all wayward fear and misplaced paranoia and a sinking feeling of absolute bitter hopelessness so deep he could drown in it.
"So now you know everything." Skipper concluded, but there was no triumph in his words. "And I have no idea where we go from here. I feel it in my gut that we weren't strangers before this, which isn't a good thing. It means our only lead could mean nothing at all, but it's all we have." A half laugh left his chest, and Kowalski almost flinched at the sound. "That white room could mean nothing."
Kowalski hated it. He hated this whole situation. He was the options guy, he gave options, that was all he was good for and all he did. Skipper was supposed to lead and Private was meant to be an unending supply of blind optimism, but their leader was defeated and their heart was now hitching out soft tears into his own fluffy white plumage. Rico still hadn't moved, and while his eyes had hardened, the fear was still there and so very tangible Kowalski could almost feel it radiating off him in sucking, black, waves.
There was something. There had to be. Something they had overlooked or failed to see in the right light but even as he turned the problem over in his overcrowded mind all he could see was blood. He'd run every equation and come up blank, tried to fill the empty spaces with everything he could think of and everything fit because there were no parameters left.
He could try and remove the blockages, the option had always been there, but without the skill or even a platform to jump off he had nowhere to start. It would take months on the short end, and they might not have that time.
There was dark water flooding into his lungs, salty and ice cold and it felt like drowning.
The only thing they had was one white room, but even as he tried to remind himself it could be the answer it rang hollow and empty. One of his flippers was tracing a path up and down the inside of the other, a sharp back and forth line carving through the feathers and leaving a hair thin line of skin behind. Skipper was right, they probably did know each other, and it wasn't just a feeling or the familiarity. It was the training, the ranks they all fit into, the persistent memories of Blowhole, Johnson, Manfredi… all of it spoke to the fact they knew each other back in a past none of them could now remember. There were no answers there so why bother looking?
It was Blowhole all over again.
Skipper had moved at some point, passing behind him around to Private's side to press the youngest penguins face into his chest, flippers patting gently on his shoulders as the smallest penguin had started to sob fitfully into his chest.
And there, just faintly was a spark of light on the surface of the ocean.
This wasn't an equation. It was an investigation. There wasn't going to be an answer without clues, and every time he had thought they had hit a wall they had found some. Even in the dead ends there was information, even if all it was came down to an option they could strike from the record.
The white room probably wasn't an answer, but it could be a clue.
"We were all human in that room." He said, voice shaking as he spoke.
Skipper only looked at him warily, a confusion on his face. He didn't even try a snarky comment, no biting cut at him spelling out the obvious. "Yes?"
"We were there. We were physically there." He reiterated. "And people don't just vanish. Animals, sure, all the time, but people are missed. No one can just vanish and leave nothing behind them, not even us."
Skipper was starting to straighten, eyes focusing back into a hard wash of printer blue ink. "I wouldn't say that, we're pretty good at it." He challenged.
Kowalski's heart had been beating fast already, a frantic and loose drumming of anxiety and fear, but it felt different now. There was a purpose, a steady thrumming tempo heaving blood through his body, each half-step jolt a bold proclamation. Not dead yet. Not dead yet.
"There are paper trails everywhere, employment contracts, birth certificates, passports, drivers licenses. We would have had neighbours, employers," for a flash there was the eyes, a hot liquid aquamarine blue framed by untamed dark lashes. "friends, lovers; people who would miss us." He could feel the intensity in his voice even under the tremor still shaking in each word. He clenched his flippers and every muscle moved when he did, tightening as he commanded it, powered by blood and electricity and the life that was still his.
Private had lifted his head from skippers chest, eyes puffy and raw, still leaking tears down his wet cheek feathers.
"The white room might not be an answer, but if we can find it we can start there and find us." He swallowed thickly around the air flooding his airways. "And from there, we can find who did this." Theory spoke now, but he delivered it like fact. "No one goes to this much trouble for strangers. This was personal, which means we knew them."
The shift to the air was blinding in its brightness, like staring directly upwards into the mid-day sun. Skipper's eyes were flickering, beak parted even as his brows started to furrow, all the tells he was thinking, and thinking hard.
"How do we even find it?" Private spoke instead, and where his voice was still soft with his emotions a raw edge on every word, Kowalski believed he could feel hope in it. He needed to.
"The same way we know it exists at all!" He was shouting. "We use what they thought they had taken from us, we use our memories." He flailed a flipper outwards. "I remembered my face because I'd bruised it in that memory just like I had this morning, I remembered that I set the fire in that building because I was thinking about it! We can influence our memories if we try, we just haven't had anything too fixate on!"
"We can fixate on that room." Skipper finished for him. "Remember that first, know where it is then find out why and when we were there." His flippers fell from Private's shoulders, turning sharply to face Kowalski, face lit up. "Then we find whoever did this!"
It was nothing, not even a point of a point of a decimal place of a percent of a lead, but it was their only one, and just like Frances Alberta it could at least tell them something. But only if they looked for it. This was an investigation, and if this was their clue, then so be it.
But there was something else. Honesty hour was over, and where everyone else had come clean he hadn't. There was no telling what they'd find when they looked, and even now long after it had been cast aside there was a figure in his mind, brightly coloured beak with a mocking slow clap ringing between his ears. He had rules now, no more doubt, and no more lying.
Private had started smiling again, a watery weak little thing, but as he scrubbed his cheeks it was only growing. Rico's gaze had returned from the empty space behind him, intensity still there, only now a complicated mix of something Kowalski would dare to call hope if given the right lighting. There was something else as well, making his feathers tick upwards in discomfort. It wouldn't feel right naming it, but his brain supplied one anyway. Awe.
He'd already seen how lying played out, all fireworks of hurt emotions and angry outbursts. It might never seem it, but honesty was always the best policy for a reason.
His throat constricted like a hand had tightened around it. "We need to be prepared, we might not find things we like." He started, trying to keep his voice gentle, but missing the mark as the razors edge of his fear sliced through it.
Skipper frowned, head tipping to the side. "What do you mean?" He asked pointedly.
It felt like a spear through the chest. Kowalski remembered telling them about how they were human, wishing he had drip fed them to the reveal, letting the facts build to the point he needed. He wasn't about to make that same mistake twice. "Our memories…" He clarified. "It clear we've seen bad things. There's no shortage of violence even in the small sample size we have, what we find could be worse."
Private shuddered. "I don't think that's possible." He mumbled. "Besides, that's just me, right?"
Kowalski shook his head. "Skipper too. The forest fire wasn't real. He was…" There was careful phrasing needed here, but as he looked to Skipper for permission to continue he was met only by the back of his head.
"He was lying." Skipper stated clearly. "I was. I lied. At the time I thought I was helping, that it was a one off, but with the hit squad you remembered and Genevieve Waters execution, it's clear it's not."
Private blinked softly, flippers going blindly back to his own shoulders. Rico tensed. "What did you see Skipper?" Private asked, actually managing the gentleness Kowalski had been trying to channel just before.
Skipper sighed, once again a flipper going to the top of his head and smoothing downwards to rest against the back of his neck. "I saw a man shot by someone. I don't know if he died, but he was hit for sure."
Private nodded slowly, clearly trying to slowly digest the information. "And that forest fire, that was the memory you had while you we're awake right? The one you had when Hans was here."
Kowalski saw Skippers flipper tighten around his neck, the feathers around it spiking upwards along his shoulder blade. "Right on the money young Private." He was clearly trying to sound chipper, but his words didn't match his tone.
"Speaking of Hans, I know it means nothing to our investigation, but if he's been through what we have, logic dictates that we might be connected to him." Kowalski said, and while part of him wanted to step forward, bring himself closer to the other members of his team he forced himself to stay put. He needed distance. "We might not be good people." He swallowed thickly. "Or at least, I might not be."
Skipper span around to face him, and Kowalski didn't miss the flipper that went up, a physical shield between him and the rest of the team. Skippers eyes were hard and dark, something swimming there he couldn't trace. The same shadow from the lab. "Out with it." He demanded. "No cryptic nonsense solider, I need you to tell me what you're hiding."
Private looked aghast, and Kowalski could understand why. "Skipper! Hold on!"
He blinked, eyebrows rising sharply. That.. wasn't what he was expecting.
Skipper didn't falter, refusing to budge. "What did you do." Skipper bit out accusingly.
Once again, Kowalski was missing something, but it was clear for once he wasn't alone. Private hand both flippers on Skippers outstretched one, ready to force it back to his side, peering around at him like he had suddenly sprouted a second head. Rico was frowning at Skipper, a resigned but somehow familiar dislike blatant on his face.
That was also odd, and it threw Kowalski for a loop. Rico was number one in the Skipper fan club, but the distaste spelled out in the downward curl of his beak looked practiced. He couldn't recall a single time Rico had been even slightly against anything Skipper had said or done, even when demanding he stand down from blowing something sky high, so where had this come from?
"Kowalski!" Skipper barked.
"That fire." Kowalski jolted. "I started it, and while I don't know exactly why I…" He had to look away, unwilling to see the look on his team-mates faces. "There was a door. I'd locked It shut, rigged gasoline under exterior windows and I started the fire there. I wanted whatever was in there burned completely to ash." The phantom hand around his neck tightened its grip, and his next words fell out hoarse. It was the same conclusion he was drawn himself in his lab staring at that childlike drawing of the fire he'd done. "You don't go to all that trouble to burn something that won't try and escape. I think I hurt someone, and I did it intentionally."
And like that it was over. There was a toxic curl of relief swimming in his insides. At least it was out there now, let the chips fall where they may. It was nearly snuffed out in the anxiety and apprehension anyway. What kind of person would do that? It was cruel and he knew it. He deserved whatever came next.
"Is that it?"
His head shot up. Skipper had dropped his flipper, but Privates remained hovering. He'd done it of his own accord. There was a tired flat look on his face. "Kowalski, seriously, I thought I told you to cool it with the theatrics." He sighed.
"Skipper!" Private admonished sharply. He went to continue, but seemed to catch himself when he caught sight of Kowalski, flippers coming up to clasp in front of his chest instead. "Not that it's not bad or anything, but Kowalski, you must have had a reason for it." He said softly.
"I don't know if I did." Kowalski croaked out. This… this wasn't what he had been expecting. He had been ready for angry screaming, vile insults and vitriolic hatred. Not this misguided comfort Private was throwing his way.
Private smiled, a wan gentle little curve of his beak, head lilting to the side. "Well I know you would have, you're a good person Kowalski. Besides! You said it yourself, you think you hurt someone! There's probably another explanation."
Skipper rolled his eyes, waving a flipper in Private's vague direction. "Exactly. If you're this worked up about a fire it says more than you setting it in the first place."
Kowalski felt a hysteria growing yet again in his chest, the branches of it hooking around and under his ribs, tugging them out of shape and pressing inwards on his organs and outwards under his tight skin. "You can't know that! I might have killed someone!"
"Yes, might have. Private was almost a victim of a group of people trying to murder children. I saw a man shot. Genevieve waters was executed in cold blood. We've seen plenty of bad things, and this doesn't compare, sorry to say." Skipper shrugged. "You got attached to a block of lime jello that's only thought was to get bigger and actually ate you Kowalski, you're not a stone cold killer."
It was one thing to make excuses in his own head to try and wriggle out of his own darkness. It was quite another to hear those same excuses thrown back at him so assuredly by the people he had upheld in his mind as pillars of morality. Even as his relief was growing he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for his worst expectations to come back and bite him. "I might have been, I have no idea who I was."
Skipper sighed, and for the first time Kowalski saw his own relief mirrored back at him. "Ok, sure. Let's say you were a crazy mass-murdering arsonist. You're not now." Skipper propped a flipper up on his hip and waved a flipper. "We have bigger problems right now, namely, not being shot to death. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, ok? For now we operate under the much more logical assumption you are who we all believe you to be. That fly with you egg-head?"
"Skippers right." Private chimed in. "I know how much you like logic Kowalski, this makes sense doesn't it?"
The worst part was that it did. There had been no joy in what he had done, no thrill or dark rush of satisfaction. Only righteousness and relief.
But still. He turned his head once more, fixing his sights on Rico nearly desperately. It couldn't be this easy. The chance he had murdered someone was still not zero.
Rico's expression somehow only left him more lost than ever. There was a mocking sympathy there, eyes glimmering with a unknowable sadness and that same bright unnamed emotion from before, now mixed with a respect Kowalski couldn't fathom even if given years. "Know you." He said, voice cracking as he spoke, flippers unfolding as he raised them in a gesture that spoke more than words. What are you going to do about it? "Good person. Promise."
Kowalski wanted to believe them, but he couldn't and the genial acceptance left him reeling instead.
"Right!" Skipper announced. "Now that Kowalski's self-hatred is out of the way-" He spluttered frantically, trying to wrap his head around Skipper had pinned him that closely but also sidestepped the fact he might have hurt someone. Might have, his relief reiterated. There were no facts yet. "- its time to get back on track. We need the location of this room and we needed it three weeks ago." Skippers face settled grimly. "Time is not our friend boys, if we want to avoid what happened to Genevieve happening to us, we need to get to do it now."
Private's face fell accordingly, the fear that had been put to the side returning with a vengeance. "So what do we do?" He asked gingerly. "We just take some of that medication and try to think about that white room?"
"If I'm picking up what Kowalski's putting down." Skipper agreed, turning once again towards him. "Is that right?"
Kowalski could only nod numbly. "Yes, that's the idea. If we can push our memories in that direction we stand a good chance."
The flurry of movement was too rushed to keep track of. Rico swept up the remaining cards as Private darted back and forth between the bank of cabinets containing their sink, ferrying the marked tumblers as he found them. At some point Skipper said something to him, and he found himself fumbling with the EKG machine again, untangling the spooled wires and placing it back on the table.
He couldn't think. He didn't know what to think. After all of that darkness and fear it was over just like that, no bang, no whimper, just gentle reassurances and harsh optimism. It made no sense to him. There was nothing left for his own lurking fears to stick too and it left him floundering. If someone had told them they might have committed a murder he would never have brushed it aside that easily, would he?
Skipper was speaking, Private interrupting as he did, the pair trying to relay the exact details of the white room for both his and Rico's benefit, going back and forth in a sporadic rally of words as they detailed the size and layout of it from what little they could both remember. He had a cup in his flipper, the liquid from the replaced pitcher already filling it to the masking tape line along the side. He was swilling the liquid around on auto pilot.
The notion was ridiculous. Rico maybe, sure, but even then as unhinged as he was there was a tangled and worn notion of morality somewhere in there, and Kowalski seriously doubted he could ever actually hurt anyone intentionally beyond an ill intentioned broken bone or two. Private was right out of the discussion, he was made of nothing short of spun sugar and sunlight. Even Skipper, while he had wailed on Julien enough for simply being annoying, had never caused any intentional damage that wouldn't heal on its own in a few days and a bruised ego.
He raised his cup when prompted, clinking it against the other three robotically before throwing back the gritty, bitter liquid.
No, he would never have believed that one of them had hurt someone intentionally. Not without just cause. And while most of him could understand that, a large stubborn part of himself refused to play along. This wasn't about them, it was about him, and he couldn't let it go.
There was guilt there as well, even as he lay in his bunk, the lights off and electrodes stuck firmly in place, long wires spilling off the side and tracing an arced path down to the EKG machine still blinking in the corner. He shouldn't be thinking about this, that wasn't the point. As far as his team was concerned it was a non-issue, and as Skipper had so eloquently put it, his biggest concern should be trying to make sure they didn't die.
He should have been thinking about the white room, trying to imagine the rectangular room, door flush on one end with only a small head Height panel of glass inlaid into the glossy surface. Wide tile floor and six evenly spaced inset round light bulbs on the painted plasterboard rood, benches along both walls coated in the same hard white vinyl as the walls.
But he couldn't. His brain kept coming back to that door, the lock picking tools broken inside the exterior lock, homemade glue wedging the door shut. Gasoline under the windows, a fuse by his feet waiting for the first lick of the flames to ignite it and engulf the windows in a fireball. He'd done that, and he'd done it all on purpose. To hurt someone. The motive almost didn't matter at all in the face of that fact.
Skipper had been right calling it self-hatred. He could forgive almost anyone else in the same imaginary scenario, but not himself.
There had been too much tonight. The yelling, the tears, the forgiveness the fear. All of it was swimming heavy and foggy in his head and if he had thought he was exhausted this morning when he had fallen into a pleasant nap, it was nothing compared to the dull feeling in his bones now.
He wasn't even sure when he fell asleep, but it certainly wasn't too slick, sterile, white walls.
He woke up to blue light, the colour too bright even against his shut eyelids, and he rolled over with a groan, throwing a flipper across his forehead to try and bury himself in his pillow and away from the intrusive light. The concrete below him scraped against his feathers, something tugging uncomfortably against his skin as he moved, trying to keep him flat on his back.
Those portholes were stupid, and they should have put curtains over them a long time ago. Although the light had never been this bad before, had it?
Just below him, he could hear wet shuddery gasps and short broken whines, the sound too loud and grating against his earholes. He grunted irritably, pressing himself further into the pillow under his head. Making this much noise in the morning should have been illegal, He was still trying to sleep here for Curies sake!
Even with his flipper cast across his face he still knew the exact moment the light cut off, and darkness returned. Good. He huffed out a breath, trying to bury his head further into his pillow.
His cognitive functions were coming back, blinking online in slow lazy pulses as he breathed. The wire connected to his chest was digging uncomfortably into his skin, pinned awkwardly against his body by the flipper tangled around it and now flopped uselessly against his face.
Wire? Kowalski fluttered his eyes open slowly, still shielded from the outside world. He could see precious little in the darkness, barely able to even distinguish where his flipper ended and the wall of his bunk began, even as he blinked away the sleep still blurring his vision.
Somewhere, the breathing he could hear was starting to even out, the rough gasps lessening in their intensity and severity.
The electrode on his chest itched, but he didn't move to scratch it. That light hadn't been coming from the portholes at all, and it certainly wasn't coming from his bunk. If it had he would have been the one gasping awake in pain, fighting against the electrodes still stuck to the bald patches in his feathers as they provided a stinging electrical wake up call.
It was coming back to him in pieces, the white room, the plan, all of it fitting neatly back into the narrative of his lived experience.
A memory!
He jolted up right, then immediately back down again, aborting the move halfway through to avoid slamming his skull into the roof of his bunk this early in the morning. If it even was the morning yet. Thankfully his head only hit back down into his pillow, and while it was far from luxurious plush cushioning, it was enough to provide a crash pad for his skull, leaving him with only a twinging ache instead of an outright blast of pain.
The breathing had stopped, but before Kowalski could worry there was a voice, rasping out a harsh whisper. "Kowalski?"
He sighed, re thinking his plan and squirming out of his bunk instead of trying to throw himself beak first into the stone above him. "I'm awake." He grunted, pausing to yank the electrodes free of his skin. "What is it Private? Did you recover a memory?"
He had only managed to get his legs out when Private bobbed into view, eyes bright and a wide grin on his face. "I saw something!" He blurted out, words so fast it took Kowalski a second to split them apart again. "It was a building, a big one, lots of windows and I think only one entrance? At least from where I could see it!"
"Slow down!" He hissed, bending his spine to try and get his head out of the narrow slit of his bunk, leaving him perched lightly on the edge of it. Private either didn't notice the irritation in his voice, or didn't care, his flippers curling up over the ridge of his concrete bed. Kowalski was betting it was the former, as Private continuing to speak at the same break-neck pace.
"There wasn't much else around it, just huge empty fields. The building wasn't super tall, maybe 10 stories at most, but it was really wide. I could only see the front of it though so I don't know how far it went back, but it was probably a ways." He paused to take a rapid breath, clearly having forgotten how to breathe and speak at the same time.
If Kowalski was going to deal with this he needed coffee. Insomnia be damned. He grunted once to throw a bone in Private's direction, and dropped from his bunk.
Rico was passed out at the table, head pillowed on his flippers, but as Kowalski moved past him he jolted awake with a muffled sound, muttering something so muffled by how his beak was smushed into his flippers as to make it even more incomprehensible than usual. Clearly it wasn't important though, and Rico only burrowed himself back down into his makeshift pillow, eyes closing again as Kowalski patted him gently on the back.
It was hard to see it in the pre-dawn darkness of the base, even as the portholes glowed faintly from the dull light, but when he pulled his flipper back up to his face he could see a faint layer of white dust now sticking to his feathers. He squinted tiredly at it, trying to figure out just what on earth it was.
He glanced back down as Private continued to barrel through his disjointed explanation. "What do you think? It has to be the building with the white room right? I was thinking really hard about it before I fell asleep so that has to be it Right?" He pressed.
Whatever the white dust was, Rico was covered in it, but it seemed to be centred mostly on his flippers, and now, thanks to his chosen sleeping position, all over his face as well. Kowalski could clearly see the markings on his upturned cheek from where it had been resting on them. Although, now he was looking closer, he could see a myriad of colours, a pale blue among them, alongside a pastel yellow and a faint baby pink. "Rico? What is this?"
"Kowalski!" Private whined. "This is important, could you bloody well wake up already?"
The white room. The clue. Kowalski shook his head in a desperate attempt to clear some of his mental fog. He was awake. He was here. And this was important. He turned around, rolling his eyes up into the back of his head to try and fully rouse himself. "Sorry Private, could you repeat that?"
Private sighed, slumping in on himself.
Kowalski barely saw it, freezing in place. He was awake. For sure now.
"I said I saw a large building, maybe ten stories tall? It had lots of windows and one large obvious entrance with a concrete awning. There weren't any others around it, and I didn't see any trees either, it was in the middle of some large fields. Do you think that's where the white room is?"
There were words, but Kowalski didn't even bother to try, instead lifting a shakily flipper to point at the wall behind Private's head. The shorter penguin frowned, eyes narrowing before he too span around and stopped short.
"Is that it?" Kowalski croaked.
The drawing took up most of the wall, even overlapping with the door to his lab. He didn't want to know what kind of effort went into trying to get the chalk to adhere to it, but the colours of it were bright against the dark concrete and dull metal. The building was huge, the windows sketched in in a baby blue tiny in compared to the scale. Building was almost the wrong word, compound might have been more accurate. The concrete awning was there, dead centre of the bottom level, and if Kowalski counted he was certain he would count at least ten layers of windows on the way up, though now he was counting he figured the total might be closer to twelve or thirteen.
"I didn't do this." Private stammered. "I- that's it though. That's the building."
Kowalski knew he hadn't, but it was obvious who had. Rico was sitting up with a quiet groan, slowly pushing himself up onto his flippers. A small, empty cardboard box fell off the edge of the table, previously hidden by Rico's folded flippers. He couldn't read, but the gritty cartoon doodles adorning the bright yellow cardboard and empty window in the centre told him exactly what it was.
Rico craned his neck back, eyes tired and heavy, but bright with a manic glint. His beak curled in a grin. His voice was hoarser than usual, but when he spoke it wasn't gibberish that came out.
"Remembered."
I feel like I'm showing up late with starbucks, except its not starbucks, it's Kowalski having multiple almost breakdowns. God I'm excited to get away from these conversations and into the parts where theres too much happening for him to think, this penguin cannot shut up.
Anyway I know this is super late and also super long, but I couldn't find the right place to break it into two, and after last weeks chapter I wanted to take the extra days and make sure I was at least somewhat happy with this one before I posted it. I'm not really, I started in the middle and then had to backtrack to fill in the beginning and to me at least, it shows. Anyway! I can say with certainty we are over the hill of boring exposition, and I'm excited to get into some full on action!
the TL:DR for this chapter is: Kowalski learns (read, forces himself) to trust after almost breaking Rico's brain, Skipper learns the value of honesty (he didn't) and Private gets to put on his big boy pants and finally contribute! (But not really because Rico beats him to the punch.) Also everyone is officially on board with the whole 'oh no we were human and also at risk of being shot to death' thing. Good for them.
I'm officially out of things to fill my day with, so expect me to hit my upload dates on time from here on out!
See you all in... (Checks calendar) Four days!
~Peace