Chapter Seven
"The fern-flyers were simply the beginning, Nira, the vanguard," Queen Winna told her and the assemblage before her throne.
Apart from a few advisors and three other Chipmunks Nira felt she couldn't be bothered to notice at the moment, the throne room was vacant enough that this private audience could be conducted without a lot of the nobility listening in and hatching plots that might, in someway, undermine the war effort to profit themselves politically. Besides, what they didn't know couldn't hurt them, Nira figured.
She stood before her charges, mustering every ounce of diplomacy she could to bend a decision she already knew was both coming and probably immutable.
"Yes, Your Highness, but surely for them, you could dispatch a team of our High Hill Trackers to do a thorough search for young Eleanor. They're the finest born."
"All too true, and that is why they are all on missions at this moment, Nira. I sent them all to assist my Autumnal Guards in emergency seek and destroy actions. This was decreed right after I heard of poor Eleanor's capture," Winna explained, then she darkened suddenly.
"In the entire duration of the war, no enemy has ever attacked Arbomagnus and now The Splintered One...that wretched Prince, dares to visit harm to the very heart of my domain! I'll see him turned to kindling before my eyes, yet!"
All were silent. In the little time the otherworldly guests have known the queen, they haven't seen her in a foul mood, much less an inflamed one.
Graciousness and civility gave way to the stark reality one felt when in the presence of one who wielded absolute power, particularly during wartime. Any protests against Winna's decree had died in their minds, and quite frankly, no one wanted to follow them.
Winna raised a hand commandingly to The Millers, but spoke less so.
"Miller Family, come to me."
They obeyed, keeping their eyes averted for the most part, until they felt as one that they were close enough to the throne to satisfy protocol.
"See me."
They looked up to see someone who was well acquainted with great loss on and of a personal and private level. Winna softened her face with understanding, hoping that none of the them thought her heartless to abandon someone like their Eleanor.
She inwardly began to drop her regal bearing and began to look tired and very worn, from decisions that made her lose sleep at times, from the knowledge that whole villages of innocents were either driven out or eliminated totally by an enemy as natural, as ruthless, as any predator, and from a single fact, a bitter stroke of truth that haunted her like Death itself.
"I grieve for your child, your sister, as deeply and as personally as you do." she said quietly, sadly, as if she were giving them a secret she would have never divulged otherwise. "I am the last of my line. I didn't have a litter, just the one child, and my consort and she were taken from me the same way. I never forgotten them."
She straightened herself on the throne again, the monarch returning to her. "Death is the power behind my throne. Politically, with my death, a regency would have to be put in place to prevent a power vacuum during the war and the regent might not be as capable as I was in life. A true risk, to be sure. Personally, my loved ones' absence hurts and kills me a little each day."
The spirit of guilt settled quietly over the hearts of those who let those words touch them. The Sevilles and The Millers were learning more about this world than any tour could. They were learning its heart, learning its reality, its pain and its only hope. Through its queen, the full weight of the conflict could be felt, but never measured. Her loss was as crippling as theirs had been, and the work she put her whole life into doing would probably die with her. Like her people, her life, her loves and her legacy would be brutalized victims of The Splintered One, until, at long last, extinction would close its broad hand over all Chipmunks. Until even the very name Chipmunk, would have been as dust to the ages.
"Your Majesty," Jeanette said with as much deference as her emotions could allow her to say. "We understand. If we offended you or the memory of your loved ones, we're very, very sorry."
A sad smile graced the queen of Chipmunks. "Whatever for. There is nothing to forgive, little one. Nothing at all."
Winna looked out to the others with a fresh sense of determination. "As I said to you before, we fight against extinction itself. That means that everyone, everyone must assist in the war effort. Including you." Then she called to the side of the throne room. "Representatives."
Everyone began noticing the group of three Chipmunks dressed in formal ensembles of crimson, azure and emerald, coming from their place away from the audience and striding with quiet authority.
Winna gestured to them as they gathered at the side of her throne. "These are the representatives of the arms of my domain. The red one speaks for my military, the blue is my liaison to the scientific community, and the green representative is the voice of our healers and the caretakers of our natural resources to date. You will all work under one of them exclusively."
Each representative glided next to their future charge while Winna's audience watched them with misgivings concerning their immediate future.
"David Seville," Winna said. "You, your son, Alvin and Brittany have been chosen to enter service as part of The Warchanter Corps. I have heard that your skill in music is world renown where you are from and the children's' apparent spirit," she glanced to Phillip's darkened eye. "Makes it a sound decision."
David felt a none too comfortable twinge in his stomach at that. Although he had no idea what a Warchanter was, per se, anything with the word corps, especially in wartime, made him admittedly nervous. And what about the kids?
"Your Highness, I understand you need our help, but I'm not too sure about this. If I have to join, I will, but the kids are too young for whatever this Warchanter thing is," He protested anxiously.
"Not at all, Master Seville. They look to be in their middle youth, around their sixteenth year, at my reckoning, and with the losses of our warriors mounting, the young have been given the task to of helping defend the domain alongside the mature."
"Warriors? But-"
She quickly brought her hand up in a dismissive gesture, ending further discussion. She then looked to an obviously pensive Phillip. "Since you command your own army, scientists and artificers, you are in a unique position. You will still work under a representative, two, in fact, the red and blue, however your forces will still be under your command. Your two advisors will also work under you and I have hear that your army has been brought here without incident and are awaiting you orders."
"I will do my level best," Phillip said simply. Simon, Jeanette and Arthur met the queen's gaze next.
"Strength without mind cannot serve. Cannot serve me. I had the opportunity to look at some of the machines and devices that I.T.O. brought with them. They are truly miraculous, but beyond what my subjects can understand to any great extent.
My advisors have told me that you three pursue the scholarly, therefore, Simon, you, Jeanette and Arthur will work with I.T.O. to create new devices and defenses to combat The Splintered One's forces. You may also have complete access to The Pool of Connection here in Arbomagnus to help you with your work if you desire."
The three subjects of her conversation glanced and glared at one another uncomfortably. Simon and Arthur particularly were grinding their teeth over the whole affair. Bad enough to be practically conscripted to the war by the female, but to have to work...together?
"Whatever vendettas you seem to have for yourselves, you will put them to rest in the shadow of our people's plight. Is that understood?" Winna said firmly.
Both adolescent males were about to wonder exactly how she knew about their mutual animosity, when both noticed that they stood facing each other, faces scowling and fists balled.
Simon turned to the queen, bowing and composing himself as he did so.
"My apologies, Your Highness," he said. "I am confident that Jeanette and myself will endeavor to do our very best to help." He smiled inwardly, hoping the barb took effect on Arthur.
Arthur likewise bowed to Winna, saying, "Your most gracious Majesty, I can assure you that the entire technological resources of I.T.O. and myself, are at your complete and total disposal." He glanced at Simon to catch his reaction.
All of that disguised bickering was not lost on Queen Winna the Fourth, who had heard more vicious, honey-coated jabs and insults used by the members of her court against each other, than anyone else.
"Deeds, not words, gentlemunks." Then she dismissed them.
"Mistress Miller," Winna called to the eldest female. "You and young Theodore will be tasked with the duty of helping our healers in The Great Ward, our domain's largest hospice. It has been very busy as of late and we need all the hands we can to heal as many as possible." Winna then looked uncomfortable, knowing she would make a most painful mention. "I would have given the task of helping you, Mistress Miller, to your daughter, Eleanor, but..."
Worry and an ever deepening despair clouded the corners of both Theodore and Miss Miller's minds. Their very presence in this world was bad enough, with the knowledge that they walked straight into a war, and, as a result, conscription. But to lose someone they both cherished so...A gray ache blanketed their hearts from almost any consideration.
They nodded blankly and gave no word of protest. Although Winna was appreciative of the seeming cooperation, inside, she quietly suffered with them. She motioned to Nira. "Nira will be my liaison between the Domain Representatives and myself." Then she addressed the assembly directly.
"Please understand that this is all necessary. This war binds us all, high and low. Everyone who can, must contribute to the war effort in some way or none of us will survive. I wish your arrival came under brighter circumstances, I do, but I must command you all to obey my decisions and do everything in your power not to fail me. You may go, and may The Great Green Father bless you with his bounty."
There was nothing more to say from or to anyone. The decree was passed, the decision made, and their lot was cast.
To live meant to survive. To survive meant a chance to return home. In spite of whatever feelings of fear, turmoil or hopelessness her guests may have harbored, they carefully bowed their heads and turned, quietly following the Domain Representatives and Nira out of the somber throne room and into the war.
A warm, wet breeze stirred her into gradual consciousness. Despite her sore arms, Eleanor used them to sit herself upright while her brain cleared the fog that settled around it. Had she slept or simply fainted, she wasn't sure, but she did know that she couldn't remember much except the horizon spanning before her and the forested terrain speeding underneath her in a green, blue and brown blur.
She blinked open her eyes, trying to take in her surroundings, and realized that she was sitting on a wide, wooden floor in the center of a spacious chamber with a high, domed ceiling that grew darker the further she looked up.
Roots laced the walls and ceiling like veins and a strong, earthy scent hung in the still, heavy air.
To her, the place was somewhat reminiscent of Queen Winna's throne room except that it was physically dimmer, emptier, and, to her intuition's way of reasoning, sinister, unfriendly, unwelcome.
That same intuition made her stare at a noticeably dark area of the room, darker than the rest. She didn't get a good handle on her reason for it, but Eleanor could swear that there was something...someone...in those shadows, and it was watching her with quiet, feral intensity.
She slowly stood up, keeping her eyes steadily on the darkness and her ears listening for anything, everything around her.
Then something stirred in her mind that was not her own. A presence of intelligence that pushed its way into her consciousness before she could think to try to and block it out.
'I am here, Chipmunk, and I am hungry this day.'
Somehow, Eleanor knew it came from the blackness of where she was staring into, but she forced herself to concentrate on her rising adrenaline and thoughts of escape.
"Hu-Hungry?" she whispered fearfully to nothing she could identify as yet.
'Yes,' the thought came to her, scaring her even further because of the swift no-nonsense of the answer after she spoke.
Eleanor backed away, hoping to find any door that led out of this pit. Then the sound came.
A slow, heavy shuffle came from the darkness ahead of her and she stepped away, nearly breathless, at what made the sound.
It was as tall as a medium-sized Human and looked more alien to her than anything in a nightmare. Standing erect, it did so not on legs. Impossibly, it moved at a smooth speed due to a writhing mass of strong roots that flowed and pushed it along the floor with the deliberate grace of a deep sea octopus.
The upper body it supported was more humanoid, but no less strange. The head was slightly large and from the top of it going towards the back, it was shell-like and looked like a partially split seed pod. The wrinkled face had no sensory features, no eyes, nose or lips, and resembled a fresh prune in appearance, with a deep groove running down from the top of the head to where and what its chin would be.
It sported two wooden, thorny arms, sinewy with plant fiber, attached to a broad chest and midsection, also made of plant tissue and wood. On either side of its waist was an almost emaciated, bud-tipped vine, moving as if on its own accord.
In its mottled natural colors of green and brown, it nearly camouflaged with the surrounding gloom and vegetation, but Eleanor could see it well enough as it approached her, trailing dead leaves and thin branches in its shambling wake.
She risked looking back to wherever she was backing towards. From the corner of her eye, she saw the round door off to the side.
The creature didn't look very fast to Eleanor. In fact, she could now recognize that the earthy scent she had picked up when she awoke was the smell of decomposition, of mulch and dying vegetation. Whatever it was, it was very old and possibly dying in front of her in the dark.
The sudden loud sound of movement made her turn in time to see the plant-creature within an arm's length of her, she could feel the age of it close around her like a iron gauntlet.
Instinct took over for the both of them. For Eleanor, it made her try to leap away to the side, out of the lightning fast clutch of the creature, and run as fast as possible to a door she just realized might have been locked.
For the plant-creature, it allowed it to quickly snatch Eleanor, pinning her arms to her side and holding the struggling, squeaking prey like a rapacious spider. Below her, the thing's two budded vines were snaking up towards her.
In her panic, she looked down at one of them and noticed that one of the buds was opening under her muzzle, producing a fairly large, silky, dim-red flower that gave off a rich, sweet and heady fragrance.
She didn't have long to speculate its use when everything in her immediate view began to blur like a watercolor painting in the rain.
A dizziness washed over her mind, making it feel like a lead weight in her skull. As much as she wanted to escape, the thought wouldn't come to the fore.
Instead, a deep, overwhelming sense of euphoria cascaded through every part of her being with the chemical strength of a fast-acting drug, stripping her will away, nullifying her 'Fight or Flight' mechanism utterly and slowing her fight to a literal standstill, a vacant, pleased look forming on her face.
The plant-creature released her and moved back a pace, its vines still wriggling, now with more intent.
In the pleasure-fog of her mind, Eleanor heard a command that she could swear sounded like the sweetest plea she had ever heard in her life.
'Raise your arm.'
She did as she was told, watching everything that was about to transpire with all the alertness of an addict. In the sweet indifference her condition gave her, there wasn't the slightest danger.
The second bud waved and curled softly around the plump limb and then opened fully. Within its center sat a growth, a small, sharp thorn that, upon very close inspection, sported a hole in the tip that led to a hollow shaft in the thorn's body. Like a hypodermic needle. Like a fang.
The open bud, like a snake, reared up and then rammed hard against Eleanor's arm, driving the thorn-needle deep inside and clamping itself securely to it. Eleanor's expression hardly wavered.
It began to produce a barely audible sucking action where it attached and along its length, it began to get greener.
Indeed, by lengths, the plant-creature's body began to rise from its previous sag, its colors deepening with every moment of its contact to the Chipmunk. Leaves and veins gradually becoming plump with life and its wood grew thicker and glowed with a rich vibrancy. Its "face" was quickly smoothing on the surface and filling out again, now having the appearance of a freshly picked peach in contour, shape and color. Then, it disengaged from her.
The rejuvenation took all of a few minutes, but to Eleanor, time was immaterial in her paralysis. Any conscious thoughts were buried in the mental murk. Then she was barely aware of herself falling to the floor in a heap.
In the coming headache that rose to meet her, she fought to open her eyes. What little she could see in the room swam lazily in her vision. With the chemical spell wearing off, she wanted to protest, but a low groan was the only response possible. She didn't even want to move.
The creature's thoughts reentered her mind, stronger than before.
'You shall sustain me well. I have preyed upon many of your kind for many, many years, despite their efforts to destroy me, but you will have the honor of being the last.'
Although Eleanor could understand clearly, she still couldn't muster anything more coherent than a grunt
'What is your name, prey?'
"Eh..Elean...nor. Eleanor Mill...er. Eleanor Miller..."
The creature leaned over and lifted her up with little effort, holding her up in front of it.
'Your war will end, Eleanor Miller. My hand shall reach up to the stars and your people's foolish failings will cleanse this world of your kind. Here and in the other.'
She wondered what it meant by the other as she started to come around. The first feeling she wanted to hold on to was defiance. She was still too weak to speak, so she began to concentrate slowly, to the plant-thing's interest.
Words began to come together in her foggy mind in the form of a loose question. And something else.
Something that felt like a memory, moved ghost-like in Eleanor's consciousness, like a half remembered dream. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, she tried to both slow the flash of images down and clear up their meanings.
Momentary flashes of long years in space, being blown hither and yon by the solar winds and tugged along by planetary gravity wells. A strong pull of a planet, a journey over. Unexpected heat...a lessening of itself...then inevitable growth...and complete, unquestionable control of this little land. Chipmunks, a strange threat...
Snatches of previous feedings, interrogations, commands, the knowledge of a foolish Chipmunk that sought it out so long ago. Found it and incredibly...escaped! The eldritch book of Chipmunks that would tell of their escape from its program of extermination. The fear of that same book...
...And a Grand Plan...
Those weren't her memories, she knew, but the snippets of the creature's. The telepathy slightly went both ways. Communication was its main function, she could feel, but stray or surface thoughts could be made out by concentrating on the target's mind in close proximity. A definite advantage to maybe combating this horror.
Eleanor took considerable comfort and strength in that, that and the fact that this thing wasn't quite through with her yet, which gave her time. Time, perhaps to escape, maybe even to destroy that thing. Remembering her defiance, she thought to it.
'What do you fear, monster?'
The monster in question gave a shiver in the dark and something akin to a lively chuckle floated in her head.
'Fear does not touch me, prey. I am the Doublev Boskeen, The Splintered One, The Prince of Weeds, and the night that will fall on your people.'
The Prince then shambled past her and reached the door. With a glance, "he" thought to her, 'Two days more, Eleanor Miller. Two days to completely drain you and become young for another eighty years and two days to win this campaign without question.'
He opened the door and then left her alone in the darkness, with terribly sore arms and time enough to contemplate her and her people's fate.
The Hall of The Warchanters, cathedral-like and branched with many passages to other satellite chambers, rang beautifully from the clear tones of a small choir practicing during a lull in the operations of the platoon of Autumnal Guard they were attached to.
David, Alvin and Brittany nervously tugged and fidgeted with the collars and sleeves of their Warchanter uniforms, watching the choir sing their songs in perfect pitches and harmonies, as much intrigued by their purpose as they were entertained.
Just about everyone there was dressed in similar fashion to the three newcomers, a honey colored, leather jerkin with a protective skirt covering a green-striped, white shirt and matching hose for the males and an equally patterned and colored body stocking for the females, a deep green glove worn for the right hand, a white one for the left, and a pair of leather boots, also tanned in a rich honey luster.
David glanced over to his son and his girlfriend, noticing again with disdain at the modifications done to their uniforms. Aside from his red cap, Alvin wore his uniform with red accents: a red jerkin with a large, monogrammed, gold-stitched A on its center, red striped shirt and hose underneath and a red glove in place of the standard green one for the right hand.
For Brittany, she went for a similar look, with the same articles of her uniform as Alvin's colored in a soft, yet eye-catching shade of rose-pink. In addition, the legs of her body stocking were adorned with small bows sewn into the stripes that ringed her slim legs.
"There's no reason to abuse their hospitality, you two," David said disapprovingly to them. "You look like a couple of barber poles."
"Who's abusing what, Dave?" Brittany said while taking another admiring look at the cut of the garment she wore. "Besides, this was an improvement, believe you me. Good taste is more than universal, it's trans-dimensional."
"That's true," Alvin agreed. "The least we could do, Dave, is give them a sense of style to their wardrobes. They'll thank us someday."
"Well, let's see about finding this Choirmaster," David said, nonplused, leading them from the main chamber to one of the adjacent corridors that served the hall. "He could tell us what's going on, so maybe we can live long enough for you to be thanked."
The corridor, when they reached it, was a tempest of coordinated chaos. Warchanters, recruits and veterans, walked or skipped by holding alien analogs of more earthly musical instruments or sheet music.
Songwriters, with quills in their thick-tufted hair, ink stained fingers and dog-eared sheets of paper, were either scribbling last minute notations or lyrics against the walls or on the floor.
The cacophony of instruments tuning up in nearby rooms added to the disorder. A disorder that could be faintly heard past the singing in the main chamber, in the corridors across from it.
For David, Alvin and Brittany, who spent a good part of their lives in music, what they saw looked less like soldiers rushing to their assigned companies and more like backstage at a badly managed, last minute orchestra recital. As one, they squared their collective shoulders and waded into the crowd.
"Ex-Excuse me. Do you know-Excuse me. Do you know where we could find the Choirmaster?" David struggled to ask to any who didn't jostle him and stood still long enough to listen.
"Hey...Hey, pal! The Choirmaster! Have you seen him?" Alvin asked in turn.
"Do you know-Do you know where we can-" Brittany began, but couldn't get any further than that due to the incessant hustle-bustle. "Can you tell-" More motion and even less help met her.
David and Alvin sighed and were preparing to swim back out of the corridor. They and the corridor's denizens hadn't noticed an internally seething Brittany fill her lungs and then explode with an ear-ringing, "HEY!!!" All around her, friend, boyfriend and total stranger alike, turned to her, looking as though they were violently awakened from a trance.
"Choirmaster! Location! Now!" Brittany charged, her hair slightly kinked in anger. Save Alvin and David, everyone pensively pointed down the hallway to the last set of doors there.
"Thanks," said a now cheery Brittany as the crowd resumed its business and David and Alvin stared at her with shock.
"Coming, guys?" she asked.
They nodded and followed. At a respectable distance.
"It would have been worthless," Arthur told the blue Domain Representative simply, in the office of the I.T.O. mobile command center. "The Queen was right to have the work done here, with our labs, instead of with your alchemy and what-not. She expected miracles and you would have had me working with that medieval...hardware."
The Representative raised an eyebrow to that, but kept his diplomacy. "I take it that you didn't find our laboratories satisfactory? They are our most advanced in the whole domain."
Simon, who was still getting used to the MunkTech uniform he was given, said to him, "Don't mind him, sir. He tends to get cranky if he hasn't had his afternoon nap." He couldn't believe Jeanette talked him into wearing the thing so soon after she brought it up. It felt a little too tight. Arthur's doing, no doubt, he figured.
Despite the chuckle from Jeanette, clad in similar uniform, and the icy glare from Arthur shot towards Simon, the Representative missed the humor of it completely. "I see. Well, we did have dormitories as well as the laboratories, if he needed a rest. At any rate, I will take my leave of you now. I shall return in two hours to see how far you've progressed. Gentlemunks. Lady." He then stiffly turned and marched past Simon and Jeanette, out of the office.
"Is this really necessary, Arthur?" Simon asked.
"Of course," Arthur replied, leaning back in the leather chair that dominated the room. "Nothing could have been accomplished using their primitive equipment. You, of all people, should have known that."
"No," Simon tried again. "I mean is it necessary for me to wear this?" He tugged at the uniform.
Arthur looked at him with absolutely indifference. "Oh." Then he looked towards Jeanette. "Jeanette wore her uniform with pride on Science Island," he explained.
"That was before I knew the real you," she said with a slight bow his way and a cold smile. "We're only wearing these so that there'll be some peace while we concentrate on our assignment. Understand?"
"I do," Arthur said peaceably, yet, in the back of his mind, the memories haunted him again. Jeanette in her MunkTech uniform, the pleasant times before the truth split them apart...Simon.
Simon, who he noticed, was staring at him with ice in his gray eyes.
"I understand, Jeanette," Arthur quickly said again, self-consciously looking away from the two of them and to a lonely pad on the desk, anything to break the tension that caught him off-guard and get him on with the rest of the day. "It doesn't matter, anyway."
"What do you mean?" asked Simon.
"Nothing. Don't trouble yourself."
He looked to Simon, expecting him to put his two cents in, but was only rewarded with Simon standing still, deep in thought, pondering something quickly.
He took a quick glance at Arthur, then said, "Very well, Arthur. I hope your people will have some idea on how to deal with this enemy of ours, but Jeanette and I will still use the facilities here to come up with something in case you don't. Come on, Jeanette."
"Don't hold your breath, Simon. I.T.O. is more than up to the challenge. I just hope you don't slow Jeanette's work down with your bungling," Arthur replied.
Jeanette shrugged at Simon's behavior, enigmatic as it seemed, turned and followed him out of the office.
Arthur relaxed when they left, but still felt the turmoil of having the two of them in his presence, one he loved, one he loathed.
He stood with his back to the doorway and didn't turn when he heard the duet of footsteps behind him. He knew who they were.
"You sent for us?" the first Roaming Eye asked when he and his partner reached the broad, low desk.
"Yes. I will need you to assist in the search for our true weapon. Fortunately, we already know about The Splintered One from I.T.O.'s own stories of him before our ancestors left for Earth." Arthur mused.
From the armored windows, he could see the breadth and width of his father's command. Outside Arbomagnus, the whole of I.T.O.'s military and support was spread out and camped in a clearing.
His gaze covered the vast campsites that sheltered the SecuriMunks and the drivers of the hundred or so P.A.C.'s. The pre-fab research and development centers that neighbored the similarly built security building, machine shops, recreation and living center and the ThunderCannon defense stations that dotted the perimeter. Troop transports, supply trucks and shuttles weaved among the buildings on their assigned paths. The power to hold this world lay before him like a well-oiled machine, or trap, waiting to be set loose.
But not now, not right now. For now, he knew, the priority was on finding the weapon that was told in The Archive. Now that they were here, the search would be all-consuming.
"Yes, sir, that's true," said the first. "The defoliant shielding on the P.A.C.'s and the portable shielding built into our new AirArmor suits was designed to take advantage of the enemy's plant-like nature."
"We knew we'd return one day," said the second. "When the people see I.T.O. crush the armies of The Prince, they'll flock to us by the hundreds of thousands."
Arthur clapped his hands behind him. "Indeed. Their queen will be ill-equipped to counter a coup so soon after the war's end. The process of reconstruction and such should provide the perfect distraction from which to make our move. And since she doesn't know that we already have the perfect weapon against The Prince, we'll go through the motions of helping her while we track down the perfect weapon against the Humans."
"Yes, sir," The Roaming Eyes intoned.
A tone issued from the desktop and Arthur touched a lighted panel on its surface to answer. "Yes?"
"Sir, I think we may have found a lead to finding the weapon," said an anxious voice on the other end. "Could you come over to R and D Bio, sir?"
"Of course. I will be there at once. Thank you."
The message ended and Arthur turned to leave, addressing The Roaming Eyes as he walked towards them.
"Things are proceeding at a faster pace than we knew. The weapon may well be in our hands very, very soon. However, I want you to search for it, too, in case this turns out to be nothing."
The two nodded as he left the office.
Late afternoon. The door to Miss Miller's bedroom opened silently, partially illuminating her and her bed from the corridor lights outside.
Theodore stepped in and walked quietly towards the sleeping form, wishing at his hardest that he wouldn't have to do what he somehow convinced himself to do earlier.
He hated the circumstance he found himself in now, every moment of it. He was a drummer, a singer, an aspiring chef, and a soon-to-be-high school student. Danger was not what he needed, but all he could see was that he was in the middle of some negative example of cause and effect, where anything he did or said could only elicit another unwelcome situation or worse.
No, he realized. Eleanor lost forever at this world's mercy...that was worse.
It was his only walking thought in his quarters after his and Miss Miller's orientation into the world of the healing arts inside The Great Ward. The loss assaulted him, insulted him, even. He couldn't distance himself from what he considered weakness on his part.
He was there, near her, so close, he could still hear her struggles with the creature, and he still saw her being snatched away like the helpless prey she was. He ran one pattern of attack in his mind after another. He second-guessed himself as though it were second nature to him. Every scenario ended with him feeling the same. Shamed. Impotent. Defeated.
Now he was needed to help the cause. To give Eleanor up for dead and move on in a world not his own and in a war he didn't understand fully.
At that time, in his quarters, he never felt more at a loss for action. He prided himself at times for his almost unflappable optimism, but Theodore felt pretty sure that hoping for the best wouldn't bring Eleanor back.
And hoping for the best and doing anything other than looking for a way to find her was becoming increasingly painful to endure knowingly. Something had to be done, something had to happen.
It would have seemed silly to say that a bracelet told him to try anyway, but when he pulled his gift out of his pocket and looked at it, its meaning changed drastically.
It no longer became the great milestone in their lives, it became a tombstone, a grave marker, a headstone carved by the iron hands of regret. The regret of never being able to tell her how he felt about her, not now, not ever. She would pass from this world and not carry the sound or the memory of Theodore telling her, simply and directly, that he loved her.
That prompted him to meditate, mull and think deeply about his ultimate decision. The abduction...for some reason he could see it as some random hunt, was the final cause and he made the real and irrevocable choice to become the very real effect. He had to admit, in a perverse sense, that although this was the worse thing to happen from being here, the end result from it, the singular belief that he could save Eleanor, burned him with a fierce, confident and unexpected fire.
It was that resolve, however fatalistically tinged it was, that made it possible for him to pack provisions, clothes, and a map in a shoulder bag and go visit his girlfriend's mother, the only person he felt would understand, so he could speak his peace and make his vow.
He stopped when he came as close as he dared to the bed and looked in on the elder female.
"Eleanor's not dead, Miss Miller," he said shakily, but without a hint of doubt in his voice. "I don't know why I believe it, but I do and you have to, too. She's alive and waiting for us to take her from this place."
He paused when Miss Miller snored softly and turned in his direction.
"I don't care what's going on around here," he continued in a lower whisper. "Dave and the guys wouldn't understand. If I told them what I'm doing, they'd try and stop me. This way, he won't know what I've done until I'm too far away for it to matter. He'll be too busy then. They all will." He leaned over and lightly kissed Miss Miller's now furry forehead. Inside, he could feel the finality of a part of his life and, somewhere even deeper, a commencement.
"I'm gonna find your daughter, Miss Miller, and I'm going to bring her back to you, because-"
He turned quickly to the errant sound near the doorway and could see the flickers of an approaching shadow. He slipped into the deeper shadows of the bedroom and could see that it was one of the co-working nurses of that shift checking in on Miss Miller from the outside and then closing the door.
For a few minutes, he waited until he was sure that the hall would be vacant again, then he strode as confidentially as his heart would allow to the closed door, while trying to maneuver in the darkness.
The door parted again and Theodore risked taking a long look back at Miss Miller while she slept. With a hungry trepidation that was hard to bottle in, he wondered clearly if any of them would ever see each other again, if this war was a bad as claimed. He already doubted that he would. Then he departed.