**************************************************************
A/N: Ah! This is harder to write than I thought it would be... The recent real world tragedies have dampened my spirits for the moment. I seem to be suffering a bit of writer's block. I'll keep plugging away at this, though, never fear. It WILL get finished... just not as fast as I'd like it too... Kalico Kat - that's definitely one of the most amusing reviews I've ever read. Hope the psychiatrist let's you come back to the computer! :) Lady Zera - Oh, yes! You seem to have a good intuition. Dwayne's robot parts maybe very well come into play. (I'd say more, but I don't want to give anything away!) Thanks for all the great reviews! Hope you like the next chapter! Oh yeah... I was spelling Dr. Slate's first name wrong... It's Ericka, not Erica.
Chapter 6: Stranger by the Day
"Feeling better?" Garth asked as he escorted Dwayne out of the emergency room.
Gingerly touching the bandage on the back of his neck, Dwayne gave him a wry smile, "Aside from the throbbing headache? Peachy." He then stumbled.
Garth caught his arm, preventing him falling to the floor, "Peachy, huh?"
"Well... Maybe I'm a little dizzy..." Dwayne conceded.
"All the more reason for us to get you back to the hotel," his friend said.
Garth left Dwayne at his door, promising to keep him informed if anything happened. Dwayne crawled into bed still fully dressed. The painkillers he had taken were beginning to work, in more ways than one. Exhaustion mingled with a fuzzy feeling from the medication, making it impossible to focus. All he wanted at the moment was sleep.
A knock on his door elicited a groan from the weary Lieutenant, "Who can that be...?" Rolling back to his feet, Dwayne trudged over to the door, "Yeah, yeah... I'm coming..." He yanked the door open and glared at the visitor.
Dr. Slate stood with her hand poised to knock again. Startled by the abrupt opening of the door, she only blinked.
Dwayne stared for a moment, utterly surprised, "Uh... Doc... What're you doing here?"
"Well..." she began slowly, "I just wanted to make sure you're okay. I was heading home and since the hotel was in that direction anyway..."
"Oh... uh... Do you want to come in?" he asked for lack of anything better to say.
Ericka considered his offer for an instant before shaking her head, "No... You look like you need to rest. I'll... see you tomorrow..." She gave him a faint smile and turned away, heading down the hall.
"Sure..." Dwayne leaned against the door frame, watching her till she was out of view, "Damn..." He sighed, rubbing his eyes with a thumb and index finger as he shut the door. //Why do I always sound like an idiot when I talk to her...?//
Wandering back to the bed, Dwayne lay down again. He winced a bit as he put his head on the pillow, but the stab of pain was brief. Though he really wanted to mull over his feelings for Dr. Slate, he decided that sleep was a priority. It didn't take him long to drift off into slumber.
***************************************************************
Dwayne found himself standing in General Thorton's office surrounded by a crowd of people. Things more than a few feet away from him were blurred and indistinct. Though he tried hard to make out the faces, he wasn't quite sure who all was present. To make things worse, he couldn't remember WHY he was there in the first place, "Uh... What's going on?"
"You KNOW what's going on," someone accused. The voice sounded familiar, but Dwayne couldn't place it.
"Yeah, Lieutenant," another said. Turning around, he found himself confronted by Jo.
"Huh? I don't understand..." he began.
Waving her hand to cut him off, she laughed harshly, "Sure you don't. Why should we expect you to? After all, you're not like us..."
Dwayne frowned, "What do you mean?"
"Look at 'im. Acting all innocent," she leaned backwards slightly, speaking to someone next to her, "I told you we couldn't trust someone like him. He's not even really human!"
"What?!" shocked, Dwayne could only stare at his freckled friend, "How can you say that?!"
"Well, you're not! You're just as much machine as you are human. Why should we trust someone with robot parts?" she demanded. Horrified at her accusation, Dwayne took a step back.
"She's got a point," Garth put in as he stepped forward, coming in to focus, "You've spent the last ten years fighting monsters and robots... You're always on alert. There's never been any time to rest, not for you. I always knew it was just a matter of time before you cracked."
"Cracked? I haven't cracked!" he shouted back, "I can still do my job... better than any of you! You've all told me so!"
"Now, now, Lieutenant. There's no need to take that tone," Dwayne turned his head to look at General Thorton who was now standing up behind his desk, "I'm afraid the others are right. You've turned into a security risk. We can't have American citizens being defended by a faulty piece of equipment, now can we?"
"Faulty..." Dwayne repeated, bewildered. He then turned to Mack who had been silent, "You don't agree, do you? Tell them I can do this!"
The elderly mechanic merely shook his head and turned his back to Dwayne, "Poor kid..."
"I don't believe this!" Dwayne yelled, outraged at the betrayal of his friends, "Why are you doing this?!"
\\Don't trust them...// Startled at hearing the voice that wasn't his own, he glanced around, but found no one else had spoken.
"Yes... I'm afraid he's become dangerous..." Thorton said resignedly to the others, "There's only one thing to do with a risk of this factor... I'm afraid we'll have to terminate his program."
"My what?!" Dwayne backed away as several armed soldiers began to advance, "What are you doing? Stop!" \\Run.// When the men ignored his plea, he took the advice of the unknown speaker, spinning on his heel and running. After a few moments, Dwayne found himself in the hallways of Quark Tower. It only briefly occurred to him that this was an impossible feat. Ericka stepped out into the hall, a clipboard in hand. She was too busy studying it to notice the Lieutenant running towards her.
"Doc! Dr. Slate" he cried as he slid to a halt, his shoes slipping on the highly polished floor, "Please, I need your help..."
She looked up at him, smiling, "Yes? Oh..." Her hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide in shock.
Dwayne blinked in surprise, "What...? What's wrong?" He reached out to touch her, but the doctor moved away.
"Don't touch me!" she warned, "What are you...?!"
Shaking his head, Dwayne held out his hand again, "I don't under..." Something glinting in the light caught his eye as he reached for her, drawing his eyes to his arm. With a frown, the Lieutenant pulled back his sleeve to inspect it, "What the hell...?"
Silver filaments, much like those on a circuit board, traced an intricate pattern across his skin. The delicate pieces of metal ran the length of his arm, disappearing into the flesh of the top of his hand. Dwayne reacted with utter horror at the sight, "No... NO! This... this... can't be... It's not real!" He looked up at Dr. Slate who had retreated back against the opposite wall, "It's not real..."
\\What if it is REAL?//
Pain then lanced through his head like a sharp knife, bringing him to his knees. He held his head in his hands as he continued to tell himself that what he saw wasn't the truth.
Groaning, Dwayne rolled over on the bed and nearly onto the floor. He caught himself first and only ended up jarring his still aching head, "Ooooww..." The clock told him it was all ready 9:23 AM of the next day. //I slept that long...?// Slowly sitting up, he tentatively rolled back his sleeve to look at his arm. //Nothing... Just another dream...//
Oddly relieved, he stood and wandered into the bathroom and over to the sink. Downing several more tablets of painkillers, he sighed and looked at his own haggard reflection in the mirror. //At least its a DIFFERENT nightmare...// Heading back out to the main room, Dwayne sat down in the plush chair. He had found that the less he moved, the less his head hurt. The chair seemed to be a good place to stay for a while.
He still felt groggy. The medication mingled with having abruptly woken up left him with a fuzzy feeling and a rather sour taste in his mouth. Dwayne contemplated getting a glass of water, but the sink suddenly seemed to be a long way across the room.
The ringing telephone sent another stab of pain through his head, "Ooohh... Geez... Why does everything have to be so loud..." he grumbled as he reached for the handset. "Feel like I've got a hangover... Hello?"
"Lieutenant, how are you feeling?" Dr. Slate's voice came over the phone.
Dwayne instantly sat up a little straighter, a faint smile curling his lips, "Oh, hey, Doc. Not too bad. Still got a headache, though."
"I'm sorry to bother you so soon, but I think I found something unusual about the robot from yesterday."
"Really," he said dryly, "And we were expecting it to be totally normal, right? What a shock."
Dr. Slate was silent for a moment as she considered how to respond, "Are you always this sarcastic this early in the morning?"
"Wouldn't you like to find out?," Dwayne retorted, then cringed. //Did I say that? How's she gonna take it...?//
Another long pause passed, "Uh... Anyway, I've contacted Dr. Poindexter and General Thorton... I figured you might like to see this too..."
"Yeah... Yes, I would. I'll be right over," Dwayne told her.
"Please, don't work yourself up too much. There's no hurry. This thing isn't going anywhere."
**************************************************************
"So, what do you think, Dr. Poindexter?" Dr. Slate asked.
"Disturbing..." he murmured in response as he turned the small metal box over in his hands, "It looks too much like what I designed to be a coincidence..."
Ericka nodded, "That's what I thought."
"But how can that be?" Thorton demanded, "We destroyed all of the Legion robots!"
"I seem to remember Number 7 telling us that he had made SEVERAL copies of himself..." Poindexter reminded him.
The General shook his head, "We went through every last piece of equipment in the bunker. There was NOTHING."
"We don't really know WHERE Number 7 might have left those copies..." Dr. Slate bent down next to the disassembled robot on her laboratory floor, "But it is hard to believe that it could have found a way to construct something like this without someone discovering it."
"Perhaps this was constructed before?" Poindexter offered.
"But where would they hide something like that?" gesturing at the pieces of machinery, General Thorton scowled.
Dwayne shrugged, "You've got a point there... It's not exactly easy ..."
"I don't know if we'll ever find out," Dr. Slate admitted, "I've run through all of its processors, memory, anything that might give us a clue... But it's all been wiped clean. There's no trace of even the most basic programming."
Rubbing his jaw, Dwayne eyed the robot, "Do you think it happened when Rusty toasted the power supply?"
Shaking her head, Ericka rose to her feet again, "That shouldn't have happened. It had a back-up power supply." She pointed to the object in Dr. Poindexter's hand, "It was only extremely limited and contained some kind of reserve program... But that's gone too. Stranger still, the battery wasn't enough power for it to even operate it's primary systems..."
"So... Nobody knows why the thing attacked me," Dwayne said flatly.
"Well... No..." she conceded, "It might have been anything that triggered the back-up systems... You might have just been in the wrong place and the wrong time."
He sighed resignedly, "Right. So, what happens now?"
"We need to find out where this thing came from," Thorton insisted, "We can't just assume that this was a one time event. I'm not willing to risk people's lives on an assumption."
"I guess we can see if we can track its progress across the city," Dwayne suggested, "If nothing else, maybe we can figure out where it came IN."
"Good idea, Lieutenant," the General nodded, "But you should probably sit this one out. You're too dangerous to send out in the field."
Dwayne spun around and stared, "What did you just say?!"
General Thorton blinked, "I said your injuries still haven't had time to heal..." He frowned and looked at the other man suspiciously, "Why? What did you think I said?"
"Uh... nothing... I just... misheard you..." shaking his head, Dwayne massaged his forehead. //Must be the medication...//
************************************************************
