Double Helix

chapter six
~ deceptions ~

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end the moment the little Insurance Girl first mentioned Tober City. Instinct told him then that something wasn't right. Tober was barely worth noting before the plant accident and now it was nothing more than a ghost town. If it wasn't for the spectacular plant explosion that turned the city to rubble, most people wouldn't even know the name of Tober.

And now Meryl was being reassigned there?

It just didn't make sense. The words, 'Don't go,' bounced on the tip of his tongue, begging to be spoken, but Vash couldn't find the nerve to say them. He cared about the Insurance Girls. In spite of everything and the constant attempts at ditching them, he did enjoy their company. They were a bright spot in an oppressively dismal and lonely existence. Even when he argued with Meryl over the silliest things, he was happy.

But happiness is as fragile as it is fleeting.

Vash always tried to maintain a line in his mind regarding his relationship with the Insurance Girls that could never, ever be crossed. For their protection and for his own sake, he couldn't allow them to delve too deeply into his life and into his heart. He had to maintain distance, otherwise Knives would exploit their relationship and it would be the Insurance Girls who would suffer the most.

He couldn't, wouldn't, do that to them. It didn't matter that Vash had already grown attached to them both or that he was hurting Meryl by ignoring her infatuation with him... all that mattered was that he couldn't give Knives a reason to notice them.

He should have known better.

'I should have stopped her.'

Guilt and regret had always been constant companions since planet fall, but now it felt like his body was eating itself alive. He couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't think... All he felt was a deep, dark dread of worry that whispered his worst fear over and over again.

'Knives is somehow involved with this. Meryl is in danger... I should have stopped her..!'

As those thoughts circled around within his brain, Vash and Milly worked hard to try to figure out where Meryl had disappeared to. The last time she contacted anyone from The Society was the night before she left for November. Milly used her contacts at Bernardelli headquarters to track how Meryl used her company allowance and they were able to confirm when she arrived in November, what Inn she rented her room from and the general stores she visited to stock up on supplies and to purchase a thomas.

With this information, and after talking to a few people who remembered seeing her, they were able to figure out a rough estimate on when she left November. From Vash's calculations, Meryl left for Tober almost five days ago. Since that time, no one had heard from her and she hadn't used any of her company allowance.

By the time Vash figured out Meryl's schedule of movements (or lack thereof), Milly was in a near-state of panic. There was no doubt in the younger agent's mind that something terrible had befallen her friend, and Vash wasn't going to argue her point. He was certain of it, too. But through it all, Wolfwood didn't say a word.

Silence shadowed them as the trio made their way to Tober. Vash didn't know what he could possibly say to bring any kind of encouragement or comfort to the humans he traveled with, so he said nothing. A few iles from town, he caught sight of an unusual brown lump on the horizon just east of the road. They approached the odd shape anxiously, each hoping that whatever it was that laid dead in the desert had nothing to do with their missing friend. The corpse of the thomas was barely a day old, but Vash knew the animal had died of dehydration. The poor beast still wore its bridle and saddle with shreds of leather hanging from its mouth. Apparently it had to chew its way through its ties for freedom. A difficult task with a bit in its mouth. Wolfwood approached the dead animal without a word, his hands searching through the pockets of the saddle. Within moments he found several papers and maps, each of them marked with Meryl's distinct handwriting.

Milly clenched at the front of her shirt as her shoulders began to shake. Then her body let loose with the heartbreaking sobs that made Vash's insides churn sickly with empathy and anguish.

"We should check out the town," Wolfwood said, his voice unusually soft.

Vash looked at him out of the corners of his eyes, noting the way he hesitated for just a moment before offering Milly a reassuring touch on the shoulder. She turned toward him, eyes bright and wet with tears, then she pressed her face against his chest and cried.

"Yeah," Vash turned his face toward the ruins of the distance. "I'll... I'll go on ahead. Don't linger out here too long. I doubt we're alone."

• • •

Tober looked exactly the same as he remembered. Desolate, foreboding and most of all, dead. What value the gutted out remains of the city once had was long gone - either lost to looters or to the elements.

Vash's eyes moved over the landscape with a critical awareness that begged the question, 'Why here?'

Tober was wind-worn and decrepit. It was a terrible location to stage an ambush as there was no where to effectively hide or lay in wait. The land was flat and unremarkable. The few buildings that remained standing were long overdue for collapse. If Knives wanted to lure Vash out for a confrontation, this would be the last place that his brother would choose to do it.

There would be no risk for human casualties in a place like this, and Knives loved human casualties.

No, Tober was significant somehow. Knives never did anything with reason.

The last time Vash came to Tober was several years ago shortly after the plant disaster. He had heard the painful screams of an angel as it died, but the screams he heard from the plant angel in Tober were significantly different. The tone, pitch and weight of the screams made his skin crawl and his flesh break out into a cold sweat. For a brief moment, he feared that the humans had done something horrible to the plant, but when he inquired about it with his sisters, all they could tell him was that the Tober angel had done it to herself.

What that meant, Vash didn't know, but he knew he had to visit the city to see for himself what happened. During his journey, he frequently inquired of his sisters for details about the Tober angel, but none of them could help him. In fact, some of them purposefully ignored him. At the time, Vash had passed it off as simple mourning. The plant angels usually became more agitated and sensitive when a sister passed away. Vash didn't think anything was unusual about their unwillingness to communicate, but now that he thought about it, his sisters had been strangely quiet for a long time and he wondered at the reason why.

'Now is not the time to think about that,' Vash thought, running a hand through his hair in a frustrated gesture. When the opportunity presented itself, he would go talk to one of his relatives. In the meantime, he had to try to figure out what Meryl did in Tober. It was obvious that she had arrived in town, but where she went, what she did or whom she may have met after that was still a mystery.

Jaw clenched and hand lingering near his revolver, Vash's green eyes wandered from one burned out building to another. 'Knives wouldn't kidnap someone unless he had a use for them,' he thought as he eyed the caved in remains of what had once been a post office. 'What possible use could he have for the Insurance Girl? Bait?'

Vash frowned, quickly dismissing the thought, 'If she were going to be used as bait, Knives would have left a trail. There is no trail. If there is no trail and Knives did kidnap her, that could only mean that he didn't want to be found.'

A cold chill went down Vash's spine and he swallowed hard. Knives was deliberate to the extreme. He was a planner. Purposeful and careful. If he wanted to use the Insurance Girl to hurt Vash, he wouldn't play a game of cat and mouse about it.

Chewing on his lip, Vash studied the landscape once again. If things did not start to turn around, he would have no choice but to confront Wolfwood. His self-control was being taxed to the limits as it was already. He knew Wolfwood knew more than he was letting on. The only thing keeping Vash from confronting the priest outright was his fear of possibly compromising the situation more than it already was. Vash still wasn't certain he wanted Knives and Wolfwood to know that he knew.

Vash couldn't put his finger on the day he first realized that Wolfwood reported to Knives. It was just something he had come to know on an almost instinctual level. Wolfwood worked for Knives. That was just the reality of the situation. In spite of Wolfwood's kindness toward children and his friendly banter with the girls, he was a hired gun. Vash considered confronting Wolfwood not long after he came to the realization that he was a Gung-ho Gun, but quickly dismissed the idea.

While Wolfwood could never truly be trusted or considered a real friend, he was not a cold-blooded killer. In a way, Wolfwood was like Meryl and Milly. They were puppets. Except Wolfwood knew he was a puppet and knew who was pulling his strings. The girls honestly thought they were just doing their job.

Even with Wolfwood's divided loyalties, Vash still trusted that the man wouldn't allow any harm to befall the Insurance Girls. Now he had to wonder. If Vash found evidence that Wolfwood was in any way directly responsible for delivering Meryl to Knives he didn't know how he would react.

"Mr. Vash?"

Vash glanced over his shoulder to see Milly approaching him, a grim expression darkening her normally friendly face. Wolfwood wasn't far behind her.

"W- we found something..." she said, voice heavy. "You should probably take a look at it. We didn't move it."

He stepped toward the pair, noting the anxious looks on their faces, particularly on Milly who seemed to be on the verge of breaking down emotionally.

"What is it?" he asked.

"We'll show you," Wolfwood said as he turned around, leading them toward their find. Milly and Vash followed him without a word as they headed toward the center of town.

"We found the place where the plant must have been and we went inside to check it out," Wolfwood explained, glancing over his shoulder at Vash. "We found Meryl's guns inside. Two of them were empty."

Vash fell silent, the sense of dread he had been feeling since the little insurance agent boarded the sand-steamer multiplied ten-fold.

"They are just laying on the ground... out in plain sight. Meryl would never just drop her guns... she would never..." Milly trailed off, her voice thick. She was barely able to whisper the last part, "and there was... was blood... a lot of blood..."

They stopped in front of a building that Vash recognized from his last visit.

"In here?" Vash asked.

Milly nodded as Wolfwood put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her gently.

Vash stepped inside the building, carefully making his way through the various obstacles blocking his path to enter the area where the plant chamber used to stand. The black mark on the ground was still there, bleeding and staining any grains of sand that blew over top of it. Next to that stain laid Meryl's torn and bloodstained cloak and guns.