Chapter 12: Strung Out
The world around Adrian shifted and swayed with uncertainty, like a row boat rocked by the sea. A sharp sense of nausea had settled over him and was aggravated by what he perceived as perpetual motion. So he withdrew further into the recesses of his mind in a feeble attempt to ignore his growing discomfort. Not yet fully aware of where he was of why he was there, he sought out the relief that unconsciousness would offer. But when oblivion didn't come after several long minutes, he tentatively began to consider his surroundings. Curiosity leaked into him and he expelled an exasperated sigh.
He didn't want to be in this wretched body; he wanted to drift off again until he could return to life as the healthy, virile man he knew. Still, human nature betrayed him. Wonder heated and turned to a fire until he didn't just want to know where he was, he had to know.
Slowly, he cracked open his eyes. A blurry onslaught of light assailed him and he blinked back dizziness and confusion until his surroundings shifted eerily into focus.
The room he was in was stark: metal and concrete.
Aside from the bed he was lying on, there was no other furniture except for a set of tall cabinets up against one of the walls, all of which were locked. They were painted forest green, the only real color against the whitewashed walls. It wasn't so much an uncomfortable room as it was unfriendly and clinical. And hot, Adrian realized. He was sweating.
Adrian squinted, wondering what he was doing here. As he lifted his head and became more aware, the nausea began to fade. And as the feeling left him, memories began to come back, flitting across his mind. He remembered the mission, the monster, and being attacked. He'd been injured, so Quistis and Seifer must have taken him somewhere to get him patched up.
A doctor. Yes, he remembered seeing a doctor lingering over him at some point.
As if on cue, the door to the room eased open and a man strode in. He looked at Adrian and smiled so that his upper lip peeled back from his white teeth.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
"A little, I think," Adrian replied, his voice raspy. Speaking had a bad effect on him, and for a moment he feared that he might throw up. But it passed quickly.
The man fished a set of keys out of his pocket and opened one of the cabinets. He pulled out three bottles filled with clear liquid, a small paper chart on a clipboard, and something Adrian couldn't make out. Though, as he approached Adrian's bed, he saw the glint of a needle.
"What's that?" Adrian choked out.
The man didn't reply, but drew a carefully measured amount of liquid from each of the three bottles, mixing the drugs all in one syringe.
Adrian began to panic. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing. Quiet down," the man said.
The injection, prepared and ready with a viscous little drop shining on the end of the needle, loomed over Adrian. He wanted to get up and run, but energy failed him. All he could muster was a slight groan and to roll over onto his side, which brought back the irritation of his stomach full force. A quick, sharp pain in the back of his arm as the needle went in brought an agonized cry from his throat.
"You'll feel better in a second," the man announced and disposed of the used syringe in a small hazardous waste container inside the cabinet.
Adrian watched him as he locked up then left the room. He felt heavy again. And his mind wobbled, a new sweat breaking out across his forehead. Within moments, he'd slipped back into oblivion.
0 0 0
Seifer knew that he and Quistis were in trouble. All through breakfast, Abra stuck to them like a cocklebur, sitting beside them in the still functional military mess hall and trailing along whenever either of them got up, whether to refill a glass or get a spoon. More and more, it was becoming obvious that they weren't guests. At best, they were tolerated intruders. At worst, prisoners. No one else talked to them. And there were no families sitting down to eat. No old people either, Seifer noticed. The entire island seemed to be populated by a twenty five to forty five demographic — mostly men at about a five to one ratio.
The food was bland, not the sugar and carb packed breakfast Garden hosted. Quistis had oatmeal that looked more like gruel and a hard boiled egg, Seifer a mixture of potato chunks and vegetables.
Once they were done eating, Seifer thought they might be able to shake their chaperone, but Abra stood up and said, "You should go get dressed. I will take you with me."
"Where?" Seifer asked.
"Work."
It sounded like an excuse to keep an eye on them, but there was no polite way to say no. Abra walked with them back to their room. Then he waited outside, propped against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, while they went in and closed the door behind them.
As soon as the door shut, Quistis leaned close. "We need to talk," she said quietly.
"I know."
She picked her backpack up and set it down on the bed to rifle through it for a change of clothes. "We've got to do something," she continued quietly. "What do you think?"
Seifer pulled his shirt off over his head, then leaned in close. "I think we need to get back to our ship."
"How are we going to do that?" She sat down on the edge of the bed to take off her shoes and socks, then untied the bow at the waist of her pants.
"Ask," Seifer replied with a shrug. "They can't possibly come up with a good reason not to let us go back to the ship so long as they're keeping up this appearance of being our hosts."
"Or they could just shoot us," she reminded him. "Or Adrian. They don't want us talking to Garden. They're not just going to let us walk out of here."
"So? We're SeeDs. We could handle it. And at least then, we'd know exactly what we were dealing with," he said, struggling to keep his voice down. "We don't have to sit here and let them keep us prisoner like this. Or let them make Adrian sick. You know that's what they're doing. He was going to be fine yesterday, and now all the sudden he's taken a turn for the worse? It's got to be something they're doing to him so that they can keep us here until they decide what to do with us. I say, let's kick some ass."
She stood up, her face suddenly very close to his. "We can't do that yet. We've got to find out more about this monster, more about what they're up to here."
"Why?"
"Because that's our mission." She paused then and stared at him for a moment before adding, "Turn around."
"What? Why?"
Her jaw tightened. "So I can change. Please don't argue with me about it. We don't have time."
Because she was right, he turned his back.
The sight of Quistis's shirt flying onto the bed in his peripheral vision made his stomach tighten, and as he pulled his pants off, he found himself thinking about how she'd talked him back into bed with her that morning. She'd looked incredible lying there half covered by the blankets, her hair mussed and her expression soft and sexy. Hyne. Who wouldn't have gotten back in bed with her, even if it was only to sleep. Knowing she was undressing behind him right now, it became impossible to think about anything else. Was she thinking about him, too, he wondered? He hoped so. He hoped she wasn't thinking about that goddamned instructor boyfriend of hers.
Just thinking about Brecht made him angry; Quistis deserved better. But it also concerned him that he was coming to care about it so damn much. Caring about other people only made life more complicated. And it had never done him any good. Look where caring about Rinoa had gotten him.
Struggling into a clean pair of pants, he tried to clear his head.
He knew that no matter how delicate and feminine she appeared, Quistis Trepe was a SeeD through and through. She was one of the best and everyone knew it. She didn't need him to help her sort out her love life or anything else. But reminding himself that she was a soldier didn't help. Instead, he found himself thinking of the way she lashed her whip through the air and the way she wore the heat of battle with perfect composure. It was sexy in a raw, animalistic sort of way. Even when she'd beat the shit out of him on the Ragnarok, it had been a pleasure just to see her cast. Thinking of the pain of being lit up with fire from her hands and the dark pleasure of lying next to her at night did nothing to stave the surge of blood roaring through his heart.
"I want to sneak around a bit," Quistis said behind him, catching him off guard.
"Sneak around?"
"Yeah. Tonight. They're going out of their way to keep an eye on us, so there must be something in this building they don't want us to see."
Seifer pulled on a fresh shirt. "You can't do that. You'll get lost," he objected.
"No. You would, but I won't." She sighed and tapped him on the shoulder, indicating he could turn back around. When he did, he saw that she'd put on a pair of shorts and a vest, half zipped up over top of a thin, white tank top. "If you'd rather just go running into the trees and take your chances with the monster, tell me now," she said.
"I would."
Her blue eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms tightly in front of her in that closed off, taking no shit stance she'd used on him since she'd been his instructor. "Well that's too bad. I'm the leader on this mission."
Stepping a little closer to her, Seifer sneered. "Okay, leader…once we find out all this intel, what are we going to do then? The longer we wait, the more dangerous it's going to get to try and escape. You heard what that woman said. She hasn't decided what to do with us yet. It'll be a lot goddamn easier to get out of here before they all have permission to kill us."
"We won't delay long," Quistis promised.
"Maybe they're taking us out into the jungle to kill us right now," he suggested darkly.
To his utter surprise, she smiled. "The monster might be immune to magic, but they're not. And I'm junctioned up the wazoo. I can handle Abra."
Though he was amused by her bravado, and even more by her unexpected use of the word "wazoo," he didn't get the chance to respond because Abra knocked on their door with three sharp raps and yelled, "Are you ready? We need to go."
"Coming!" Quistis called back, then looked up at Seifer and quietly added, "Just give me one more night. Trust me."
One more night. Hell, that was tempting. Before he knew it, he was nodding and she was smiling up at him.
The second they emerged from their room, Abra took off down the hallway and waved one hand indicating that they were to follow him. Seifer was surprised when he led them to the main door of the compound and then outside. It was already hot and humid out. A colorful bird swooped by, slicing through a cloud of insects hovering at eye level just outside the door. Filled with suspicion that they were being taken somewhere to be disposed of, Seifer prodded his guardian force awake and checked on his magic inventory. He didn't use magic often. But he always had a few fire spells on hand. Without Hyperion, it made him feel more secure to have his magic buzzing at the ready in his brain.
They took a thin, well-beaten trail that looped around the building and then continued on into the jungle.
"What sort of work are we going to be doing?" Quistis asked.
Abra looked over his shoulder and Seifer thought he saw the man's mouth twitch with a hint of a smile. "You'll see."
The jungle quickly consumed any evidence of civilization, completely obscuring the massive building they'd come from. But as they walked, the trees suddenly thinned and then opened into a perfectly square patch of land that was overflowing with an incredible variety of vegetable plants, all heavy with their bounty.
"This is our garden," Abra explained. "We need to keep the forest out, so we need to clear all the vines. And then there's a plot over that way we're going to prepare for the next rotation. The soil here isn't very good, so we let it lay fallow and only use a garden patch once every three years."
Seifer scowled. What did these people think he was, a farmer? The heat and the bugs were intense, and within minutes of crouching down in the garden patch, Seifer was miserable. He had a difficult time telling jungle weed from desirable plant and had pulled up several handfuls of some kind of squash before Abra stopped him. He quickly discovered that both Quistis and Seifer were utterly useless at this sort of task, both of them doing more harm than help, and he moved them on to the fallow patch which needed to be tilled. This work was simple, impossible to screw up, but more back breaking. Under Abra's constant supervision, they worked up and down in rows, turning the soil and ripping up what had grown in it with primitive hand tools.
It didn't take long for Seifer to seriously begin to consider his plan of escape again. They could kill Abra, sneak back to the compound, and rescue Adrian before anyone knew what was happening. But even now, Quistis didn't seem ready to budge from her decision.
So they worked.
And in the late afternoon, when Abra finally released them and let them return to the compound to eat, Seifer was allowed to stop at Adrian's room. With some hesitation, he pushed the door open and walked in, a little afraid he might find the other man awake and talkative. This wasn't his forte. He wasn't good at interacting with people who weren't either trying to kill him or fighting beside him. But Adrian was still out cold, sweating so profusely that someone had hooked an IV into the crook of his arm. Seifer checked the bag just to make sure it was labeled as saline solution. It was. But who knew what else the doctor might had added to it.
He reached down and laid his hand on Adrian's arm.
"We're going to get you out of here," he promised under his breath. "I swear to Hyne, we'll find out what's going on here and then destroy the fucking place."
Adrian didn't stir. He just laid there while drugs dripped into his arm — he was their tender underbelly, and these people had a knife pressed right up against it. With a quiet curse, Seifer left the room, hating that he had to wait. Patience had never been one of his virtues.
0 0 0
"What now?" the woman asked when Abra walked into the room. She didn't turn around to look at him, instead keeping her eyes fixed on an open notebook in front of her.
"They're getting restless," he said.
"Doesn't matter."
"Doesn't it? I played babysitter all day. How long are we going to do this?"
"I've been thinking…" she said. "Maybe it's luck they landed here just now. We can use them in our field tests. It will be nice to have some solid field data for the next beta. Keep them occupied for now until I decide where to use them."
"All right."
"Take care of their ship. And if they manage to contact their superiors, dispatch Lucy to take care of them."
That was an order he'd look forward to fulfilling. "Consider it done."
