XV
The two guards glanced at each other and backed up, and Nida gave them a cursory nod. Approaching Lialla, he crossed his arms.
"Get into the infirmary," he said. One of the Desert Roses behind him grumbled at his ordering their leader around like that, but Lialla simply nodded and headed into the room.
Nida followed her, and she glanced at him. "He's in bad shape," she said.
"Second room," Nida snapped. Lialla turned, stepping into the second room and lying Squall on the bed.
"Those bullets were flanged and poisoned. He'll need something to stop the bleeding, and something to stop the poison. ...and something to counteract the sedative I hit him with to bring him here."
"Don't miss a trick, do you guys?" Nida asked bitterly. "You had everything planned out."
"He wasn't supposed to be the one that lived," Lialla said softly.
"I can tell."
Lialla turned away, glancing around the room and locating the supplies she would need. Moving around the room and collecting the necessary items, she allowed Nida enough time to sneak backwards, hitting a small button on the wall.
"What are you doing?"
Nida froze, fingers still brushing the panel as Lialla turned around. "...locking the door," he said. "Your Roses aren't going to be able to keep the SeeDs away for long, and we can't afford distractions."
Lialla watched him for a moment as if she didn't believe him, then nodded. "If you're thinking of pulling something, the Roses will kill you," she said. "Probably literally. We're all vindictive bitches."
"Yeah, I know. I won't try anything."
Lialla seemed to believe him. Turning back to the supplies, she left Nida to finish his work. As an afterthought, he locked the door--just in case she checked.
There, Squall, he thought. I've done all I could. I wish I had knifed Nemo when I had the chance... I wish I had taken the time to listen to you and report Nemo to someone. But I didn't, and now I have to see about putting you back together.
"Hey!" Lialla glanced at Nida. "How long can it take to lock a door? This guy needs attention. Help me out here."
"Coming," Nida said.
--- - - - ---
ValHalla raised the wineglass to her lips, staring out at the snow-covered island. She had decided not to go the the Festival--mostly on the fact that she had managed to alienate most of the senior staff, and she would rather not destroy their Festival as well. So she was left here, staring out at Balamb Town and waiting for the pair of lights that would signal the Tribunal Inspector's car coming towards Garden. She was drifting rather far into her thoughts, not anticipating any interruption, so it came as a bit of a surprise when the intercom crackled to life behind her.
"What are you doing?"
ValHalla turned to give the intercom a quizzical look. Moving over to hit the SPEAK button, she paused as more conversation filtered through the intercom. "...locking the door. Your Roses aren't going to be able to keep the SeeDs away for long, and we can't afford distractions."
ValHalla almost jumped. That was Nida's voice. Moving her hand away from the speak button, she decided to listen for a bit more. Something was going on.
"If you're thinking of pulling something, the Roses will kill you. Probably literally. We're all vindictive bitches."
"Yeah, I know. I won't try anything."
ValHalla started in alarm. This didn't sound good.
"Hey! How long can it take to lock a door? This guy needs attention. Help me out here."
"Coming." A pause. "Hyne. What did your goon do to him?"
"If you call Nemo a goon again, I'll kill you. And like I said, he wasn't supposed to survive. The only reason I'm trying to help him now is that my orders said one death tonight, and one death only."
ValHalla set down the wineglass. hitting the ID button on the intercom. A mechanized voice replied Infirmary Surgical Room through a speaker, overriding some of the conversation.
"--wanted to kill the Commander of Garden?"
"He thought is was a good idea at the time."
"A good idea? To sneak into Garden, frame his suicide, and then murder him in front of every other SeeD here?" Nida's voice was clearly angry, and the voice that responded to him was equally so.
"It wasn't my idea. It was his plan! And it would have worked, if your goddamn Commander hadn't hit him in a weak spot!"
"And this is somehow less fair than your using flanged bullets and poison?"
"Damn you to hell, Nida. Get me a scalpel and a pair of tweezers." There were the faint sounds of someone moving, and then more speech. "You might not believe this, but Nemo's meant a lot to the Roses. He couldn't ever join, but he was always there for us. That's why we tried to help him so much. It's not going to go over well that he got killed by a SeeD."
Nida's voice dripped so much sarcasm that ValHalla could imagine it pooling on the floor. "Oh, yeah. And you know, if you managed to kill one of ours we would all rejoice and hand you a commendation."
There was the sound of something metallic being lifted. "I lost a guy tonight," the woman's voice said. "You might not. Who seems luckier?"
"Not Squall, that's for sure," Nida growled. "Or Nemo. But Nemo could have saved his sorry life just by not coming here. What were we supposed to do? We had no choice!"
"That's the way with mercenaries, Nida. Our targets don't have choices. You're guilty of that as much as I am."
There was silence, giving ValHalla time to try and absorb the information. Something bad was happening on the first floor, she could tell that much, at least.
"Look, do you have any idea what's happening here? With the Festival, I mean?" Nida's voice was suddenly very, very weary.
"It looked like Christmas when I came," the second voice said.
"Exactly. Christmas. Look what you've done--on Christmas, too. We might both be mercenaries, but I--and SeeD--would never stoop to doing something like this. It's in the SeeD code. No matter what we're ordered to do, we at least have respect. You... you walked in and tried to kill him right in the middle of what should have been a time of joy."
"Don't talk like that, Nida. I can tell when you're buelshitting your way through a conversation. You don't even know what Christmas is, anyway. You're just playing at it for the sake of a party."
"We might not know, but what are we going to think now? Lialla, if you're going to hold us at fault for not really knowing what Christmas means, you had better think back on what you've shown us. You came in, stayed with us for who knows long--long enough to learn the Festival schedule, at least--then held an entire room captive as Nemo tried to kill Squall. Yeah, you guys celebrate the holiday. It that respect, I guess you'd know more about it than I would. But... if this is how you celebrate it, I can't say you have much of an edge."
ValHalla nodded. The name Lialla rang a bell--after a moment, she recalled it from Nida's dossier. A member of a rival mercenary group, she recalled--the two had fought against each other in a misunderstanding in Timber that had ultimately resulted in their both being taken prisoner and having to work together to escape. When Lialla had planned to take Nida captive so that her mercenary group would be able to ransom him back to Garden, Nida had foiled her plan--unfortunately, the way in which he had foiled it had ended in the failure of both their missions. It had been a comedy of errors that embarrassed Garden in the eyes of the other mercenary companies, and resulted in major setbacks to the Timber Liberation Front.
If Lialla's company had suffered similarly, it was no surprise that they would try to assassinate a top-ranking member of Garden's staff. There were still bits and pieces of the conversation that didn't make sense, but ValHalla was beginning to get an idea of what was going on two levels below her. Squall would have been in the ballroom--along with most of the rest of Garden. The mercenaries had come in, managing to hold the unarmed SeeDs at bay as someone had attacked Squall. How he had defended himself was unsure, but somehow he had survived and for whatever reason was now being treated in the Infirmary--by one of the people sent to kill him.
From the sound of it, Nida and Lialla were alone in the infirmary--which meant that the rest of the mercenaries had to be somewhere on the ring, in the Quad, or outside. And there had to be more mercenaries--there was no way to hold an entire roomful of SeeDs, armed or not, at bay with merely one or two people. Thinking for a moment, ValHalla decided that the most logical course would be to withdraw from the Quad into the main ring, fortifying the entrance to the Quad in a way that they could pick off SeeDs coming down the natural bottleneck formed by the adjoining hallway.
Meaning that Garden had--in effect--been taken hostage.
There was more conversation audible over the intercom, but she ignored it. Moving to the massive computer in the corner of the room, she punched in her ID and passcode. A screen came up, and she navigated into the Paramagical Reserve link. Hitting the WITHDRAW option, she glanced at the menu it brought up.
==GUARDIAN FORCES==
=DISPLAY BY=
-ASSESSED LEVEL
-ELEMENT
-ATTACK TYPE
Selecting attack type, she scrolled through the menu until she found a long-range multi-target Fire GF named Lammasu that seemed as if it might have a fair compatability to her. Placing her hand on the paramagic padd next to the terminal, she felt the almost electric jolt as the GF junctioned itself to her. Turning, she pulled her trenchcoat off the wall and put it on on top of her SeeD dress jacket.
Time to do some negotiation with the leader, she thought, stepping into the elevator and hitting the button that would take her to the first floor.