Author's note:Brief discussion of suicide at the beginning, very non-graphic discussion of torture at the end of the chapter.

Silence reigned for the some time before Magenta, feeling much better now that he was fed, warm, and on stable ground, quietly asked.

"Would you have really done it? Killed yourself?"

Both Turner and the cat sharply looked at Magenta for a long time. Turner, at least, let his posture relax. The cat was still skeptical.

"There weren't many other options for escape, and towards the end it seemed the only viable option," Turner said very gently, "If the Mysteron's control had slipped for even a moment when I had a gun in my hand, or any other means, then yes I would have killed myself."

"Or you could have contacted Spectrum for help," Colonel White crisply stated.

Man and cat's heads swiveled to focus on the Colonel.

"For all the good that would have done," Turner chuckled harshly, the cat hissing, "I gave up on that daydream during the Culver Atomic incident."

"Explain," the Colonel frowned.

"Did Spectrum once try to communicate with me when I was cornered in there? I don't seem to recall it, Colonel," he made a show of trying to remember, his tone turned biting, "what I recall is begging the Mysterons on my knees in my own head to accept an escape plan that kept Symphony Angel alive. I had to..." he stopped, looking queasy, and pushed his bowl away still more than half full, "I'm done. I want a drink."

Turner rose from the table. The Colonel noticed for the first time that the rest of the clowder of cats had not followed Turner into the kitchen but had waited patiently at the doorway. Now they followed him away.

Colonel White also rose to follow, not willing to let former Spectrum agent disappear; Magenta sighed looking at his unfinished meal.

"Damn."

And followed the Colonel.


The living room was eclectically furnished. As if someone had started out with the basic idea of how a living room should be furnished in a house such as this, and then personality had started to creep in slowly.

Turner was pouring out a glass of bourbon; he paused listening to the movement behind him.

"Would you care for a drink, Colonel?"

"No thank you," White said primly.

"I wouldn't mind a..." Magenta started.

"No, you have a concussion!"

White and Turner froze.

They could not have been more in unison if they tried.

"How?"

"He doesn't appear to have any external injuries, other than a nasty bruise on the side of his face. If you thought it was worse, or even very bad concussion, you would have never gone snooping," Conrad raised his hands and shrugged. A bitter hurt look crossed his face, "I was Spectrum's top agent, if you could be bothered to remember that."

He settled himself on a settee, and the cats leapt to join him. They snuggled close and the air vibrated with their purring. Turner smiled softly at them and gave each a scritch between the ears, except for the little one, still on his shoulder, who was still glaring murder at White and Magenta.

"What are their names?" Magenta asked, trying for a neutral topic.

As one the cats turned their heads to look at him.

"This one," Conrad pointed to his passenger, "is F-14. The two black ones are Malloy and Malone, Malone has a white paw. The orange tabby is Ned. The gray tabby is Maggie. Rex is the Persian. The Siamese is Glorianna, and the giant fluffy one is Gigantor."

"F-14? Oh wait," Magenta grinned, "he's a Tomcat."

That brought up a genuinely pleased look, Conrad did give F-14 a scritch.

"Yes, he's named after a stuffed toy I had as child," it was an entirely different type of sadness in his voice now, more wistful, "he looks almost exactly like it," the little cat stopped glaring death for a moment and bumped its head affectionately against Conrad's.

'The only toy I have that I know came from my parents,' White heard echoing in his memory. White had that plush packed away in storage, with the rest of Turner's belonging. Charles Gray had not felt ready to deal with the emotions that would come up with sorting through them, and honestly never thought he would be. But now...

Now the man was in front of him, not looking the healthiest, but not the living corpse he had been during the War of Nerves.

"May I?" Magenta asked, as he knelt next to settee.

"Ned is the friendliest," Conrad said, "not certain if his elevator goes all the way to top."

"Always the orange ones," Magenta laughed, as he cautiously rubbed the orange's tabby ears. The increase in volume of Ned's purrs made some of the other cats curious and most of them came to get their ears rubbed too, stepping all over Conrad.

"You use to kick us out of Koala Base, so you could cook something edible, didn't you?"

"Why none of you ever learned to cook for yourselves was not my problem," Conrad replied, surprised, "but I wasn't going to suffer through your attempts any more than I had to."

"Why did we have to cook for ourselves? I know there was a staff, and none of the new recruits training there now have to."

"That's a mistake," a sharp look at Colonel White, "I made you all cook because you it's a basic survival skill and the better you are at it the more pleasant it is when you have to use in the field. Survival rations will only take you so far. I'd hope you would learn that."

"You could have just taught us," Magenta got up, he had Ned in his arms.

"A mistake," Conrad sighed, "one of many."

"It's a bit warm in here," Magenta glanced at the lively fire in the fireplace, and at Conrad in his layers. (White had to marvel that Magenta had yet to say anything about the color clash of Conrad's topmost sweater; he was proud of Magenta's restraint,) "are you okay, I mean, as okay as," he would have gestured, but his arms were full of cat.

"I have a hard time keeping warm. Artura thinks when I'm back to a healthier weight it will be easier. It's an unfortunate legacy of the Mysterons' and humanity's less than kind aspects."

Artura, Colonel White tucked the information away.

"We've also theorized, that it's also possible some of chemical cocktails I got shot up under interrogation messed up my body's ability to thermoregulate. Not an issue when the Mysterons had me, but on my own it's a problem."

"We never use chemicals in any of our interrogations," White's brow furrowed, "it's strictly forbidden by international law."

"I never said Spectrum used them," Turner rolled his eyes, "but Spectrum wasn't the only entity to question me the few times the Mysterons let me get caught. They let me keep the scars from, ha," he chortled humorlessly, "the physical interactions to remind me not to be so careless."

"Spectrum would never tolerate..." White trailed off.

Conrad had his arms crossed across his chest, giving him an acrimonious look, and Magenta was biting his lip and looking everywhere but Colonel White.

"Sir," Magenta hesitated, his attention ostensibly focused on Ned, "Spectrum never would, but as Captain Black said, we weren't the only ones to question him," he looked apologetically at Turner, "and I'm pretty certain other World military organizations, even just law enforcement organizations, took Spectrum's stance as a wink and nod – 'Of course, we would never condone torture...if it leaves blatantly visible or recognizable marks,' and did as they pleased," he looked miserable, "god knows that's why it took me so long to really trust Rick. He really is one of the good ones."

White looked aghast as he turned to Conrad again, who just gave him a grim nod. The Colonel was speechless for a few minutes, before managing:

"I think I would like that drink now."

Conrad silently rose, scattering the cats, poured a glass of bourbon, and handed it to him.

"If I had known..."

Conrad cut White off sharply.

"You wouldn't have been able to do a damn thing about it; they were under orders from the World President, Colonel. You've always seen people as being fundamentally good, Colonel. They are not."

Conrad watched, with a touch of schadenfreude, as the protest and indignation bled out of Colonel White, leaving only disillusionment and grief. He relented with a sigh:

"But they're not fundamentally bad either. They're fundamentally people, Admiral, just people. And when people see a threat, they react to ensure they survive. Doesn't mean that their reaction was the right thing to do," he shook his head wryly, "I know that better than most."

Turning what Conrad said over in his mind, it took White a moment to register what Conrad had called him, and he wanted to seize on that, but a small aquaphibian entered the room and told them all to freeze.