Chapter 4 - A turn for the worse
The buzz of the alarm woke Shego five hours later, at approximately nine o'clock in the evening. Without realizing it, her hand shot out from beneath the covers and slapped down on the sleep button, returning the room once more to silence. She repeated this motion over four times until finally, at twenty five past nine, she raised her head from the pillow and realized what the time was.
Cursing herself for not getting enough sleep earlier, she climbed out of bed and grabbed some clothes from her bag before heading into the bathroom to take a quick shower. Minutes later she ran back out, still toweling off her hair, and threw her dirty clothes into her bag and then zipped it shut. Once she was sure that everything was packed and ready to go, she called downstairs for a taxi. She planned to keep the room, even though she would not stay in it for the next two days, just in case she ever needed it. And so, with her bag over her shoulder, she switched off the lights and closed the door to her room before heading downstairs.
The lobby was almost completely free of people - since almost everyone who was staying the night in the hotel had already checked in - when Shego stepped off the elevator and walked swiftly to the large glass doors that exited into the street outside Paddington. Once outside in the chilly March evening, she looked around for her taxi - which of course had yet to arrive - before drawing her coat tightly around her and leaning against the stone wall to wait. After ten minutes and no taxi, she returned to the front desk of the hotel and asked the employee there if he had called the taxi for her. He assured her that the call had been made, and that it was probably rush hour traffic that was holding it up. He estimated it would only be another ten minutes at the latest until her ride arrived.
But Shego couldn't wait ten minutes - she knew that the meeting closed to the outside world at ten o'clock on the dot. The warehouse in which the conference would be held was fitted with a series of timed locks; that would close the building to the outside world for forty-eight hours, at which time the discussions would be over and everyone would be more than ready to leave. It was a self contained world for the two days, with its own food, electricity and heating. Nothing was allowed in or out - be it electronic or paper or anything else - and no matter how much she pleaded, the security system could not be overridden. If she didn't make it to Slough she would miss the conference completely, something she didn't want to let happen - if she took the time to fly all the way to London she was damn well going to attend the meeting.
And so she stepped out into the street and boldly held out her flattened hand out in front of her, signaling the black taxi ahead to stop. It did, with a screeching halt before the driver poked his head out the window and began to yell profanities at Shego; reprimanding her for her stupidity. She ignored him, and instead walked up to the vehicle, opened the back door and climbed inside.
"Get me to Slough in ten minutes and I'll pay you ten thousand pounds," she promised, waving a thick billfold against the plastic partition that separated the driver's seat from the passenger section. Once he saw the scores of hundred pound notes she was holding in her hand, he transformed from a thirty-five year old taxi driver to a fledgling Paris-Dakar rally driver. His foot his the gas pedal so hard that Shego was thrown back into the seat from the resulting acceleration of the taxi, and they shot off down the busy street at speeds approaching seventy kilometers per hour. Shego quickly buckled her seat belt and hoped that the driver had done this before, since they had almost already had three head-on collisions and two fender benders, and they hadn't even reached the end of the block.
A series of quick turns put them on a motorway leaving the city, and soon she could see the lights of aircraft approaching Heathrow, a sign that they were nearing Slough. Her driver must have played a lot of video games, since they had six minutes to spare and yet were within ten kilometers of their objective. Shego's mood began to brighten, knowing now that she would make it - just barely - to the meeting. But then everything began to go terribly wrong.
Their exit was in site, and the driver was preparing to overtake one last car before swerving onto the off-ramp when the car on their left pulled out into the passing lane in front of them, going about thirty kilometers slower than the taxi. Her driver was luckily blessed with the power of quick reactions, and he slammed on the brakes while swerving the car into the left, slower moving lane. But everyone else wasn't so quick on the uptake, and the taxi was rammed from behind by a large truck carrying furniture to a store in Reading. The force of the impact knocked the steering wheel from his hands, and his foot was somehow shifted from the brake to the gas pedal. The result was the car accelerating down the motorway, half on the left lane and half on the exit lane - which ended in twenty meters.
Shego watched with horror, unable to do anything, as the car slammed into the water filled tanks meant to stop cars, and then into the concrete barrier behind these. She was thrown to the Plexiglas partition and then in shock fell to the floor of the cab. There she lay, semi-conscious, and watched her own blood begin to spread out onto the beige colored carpet that lined the interior of the taxi. She tried to raise herself upright, and try to climb out of the now wrecked vehicle, but once she moved her leg, she felt a sharp, stinging pain climb up her thigh, and looked down to see that a section of the door had fallen on her lower body, pinning her down. She then tried to reach back and push the segment of metal aside, but she didn't have the strength to do anything except move her head. And soon, as her unseen wounds drained her body of blood, she began to even lose the ability to do that. Soon thereafter she slipped into total unconsciousness, at exactly ten o'clock.
* * *
At ten thirty that same evening, Kim and Ron were just finishing their meal at a small Chinese restaurant near Harrods. As they had told Hackney and Finch, they had spent the day sightseeing - visiting both the Tower of London and the National Science Museum. There they had spent hours looking at all the exhibits - with Kim having to finally drag Ron away from the children's section on flying, where he was making toddlers cry for not letting them play too. Once Ron's stomach began growling loud enough that people in the vicinity thought someone was starting a motorcycle, Kim decided it was a good time to get some dinner. She had heard of a place in Knightsbridge that served some of the best Chinese food in the city, and had decided to go there for dinner. Finding it was a bit difficult, since its interior was about eight meters wide, and split into two levels for more seating capacity.
They were to say the least, famished, and spoke very little as they practically inhaled their meals. Finally, the plates were removed and Kim had a small cup of coffee before asking for the check. MI5 had promised to pick up the tab, and had given the pair a credit card to use for meals and anything else they felt they needed to buy. Of course, Ron had wanted to stop off at about six stores and pick himself up some new clothes, but Kim had insisted they would only use it when absolutely necessary. The waiter did not seem suspicious that a sixteen year old possessed a platinum credit card - a sign of the upscale clientele the establishment catered to - and took it without a word. Soon Kim and Ron were back on the street, with Kim trying to figure out where to catch a bus home from.
"Com'on Kim! Let's go see a movie or something," Ron said to her as he sat on a bench at the bus stop. "The night is young and I'm nowhere near tired."
"Oh yeah, then why did you almost fall into your fried rice at the table? I guess you were overcome by awakeness, huh?" she retorted.
"It was a brief lapse, I felt a little nappish," Ron said, trying to blow it off. "But it's over now, so can we go?"
"Uh. no," she said, feigning a moment of indecision.
"Aw man, why not?" he griped.
"Two reasons. Firstly, no matter what you think, you're tired. I know you're tired because I'm tired and you take a whole lot more naps then I do. Secondly, we're here on a mission and I guarantee that we'll have to get up at six tomorrow morning to look at some report or another," Kim explained.
"Oh, all right," he gave in. But can we see one tomorrow?"
"Maybe," she replied, trying to make it as ambiguous as possible in case he held her to her exact words the next day. She had learned that Ron had a very selective, but also very good memory - if she promised that they would go see a movie in a month, four weeks later he could still quote her exact words. Now, why he seemed unable to remember basic algebra equations, she had no idea. Could you help me now and find the bus home. I think we need to catch the line heading north-east."
"No, no, no. It's the one over here, the 36B," he corrected her, pointing to something Kim couldn't make out in the low light.
"Where?"
"Here," Ron took her finger and pressed it against the map where the bus stopped.
"Ron, that goes south," she replied wearily.
"Really? I though the top was south."
Kim sighed, and as she always did, asked Ron: "You want to me to try and figure it out?
"That's probably best, yeah," he replied as he always did, and sat back down on the bench.
"Okay," Kim said, mostly to herself than to her friend. "I think we have to take this one, the number eight; and then change at the next stop to a six- thirty-three. Can you remember that?"
"No."
"Thought so."
Just then Kim heard the Kimmunicator beep from her pocket, so she pulled it out and turned it on to see Wade waiting patiently.
"What up Wade?" she greeted him, "anything new on the London thing?
"Actually yes," he replied, pulling over a pad of paper he'd written something down on, "something big just happened outside the city, near the airport.
"Which one? There's five of them."
"Heathrow. On the M4 motorway about five miles from a town called Slough there was a car accident. Somehow a taxi managed to ram into a concrete barrier where the lanes split," he reported. "The driver's dead, and the passenger just barely survived with a wound to the stomach and she's been identified by her papers as Carla Mitchell. She's in a pretty much stable condition in a hospital in downtown, but they want you to come speak with her."
"Wade, I don't even know where Slough is, much less why I need to talk to some woman named Mitchell, I've never even -."
"Kim, I got one of the doctors to send me her picture; it's Shego."
"Shego!" Kim exclaimed, having expected something serious, but nothing to do with a villain - she had thought it would be a MI5 employee. "And she was in a car accident?"
"Yeah," replied Wade. "They say she'll recover from her immediate injuries in about twelve days, but then she'll have to be in a wheelchair for the next month."
"Immediate injuries?" asked Kim, unfamiliar with the term. "What are those?"
"Cuts, bruises, things that the doctors can just stitch up and be done with - but she also had longer term injuries, like broken ribs, a broken wrist, her legs are all slashed and one of them is mildly fractured. She's in a pretty bad shape," Wade summarized.
"And you want me to. what? Go over there and ask her right out why she's here?"
"Yes."
"Uhh, Wade? This is me, Kim. She hates me! She'll never talk to me, or anyone else, no matter how much pain she's in," she argued.
"That's just it; they have her on a morphine drip," he countered. "She'll probably think it's all just a dream and if you ask the right questions, we'll get the answers we need,"
"All right, Ron and I will catch a cab to the hospital," she said, but then added: "Though I'm gonna have to think about questioning Shego - I don't like the idea of taking advantage of her like that.
"If you say so, just remember how much help this it will be if we question her," Wade reminded her, though kept his own feelings about the matter to himself. She guessed that Wade viewed this as the perfect chance to get into Shego's mind, and he probably wanted Kim to get there as quick as possible to find out as much as they could before she awoke.
"I will, don't worry," Kim replied before the screen went blank. She then hailed down the next taxi and hopped in, Ron quickly following suit.
"You heard what Wade said, right?" Kim asked him once she had told the driver where to go.
"Yep," Ron replied.
"So what do you think I should do?" she asked, provoking a moment of silence as he thought about her question.
"Actually, I'm not sure," he admitted. "Either you ask her the questions and we end up knowing a lot more about why all the villains are here, or you don't and we're still at square one."
"This shouldn't be so hard," Kim observed, wondering why she was hesitating about something so important.
"I know," agreed Ron, "but for some reason I don't think we should do it."
"Me too," Kim said; glad that Ron and her were somehow on the same level. She looked out the window at the apartments and shops flying past, pondering her predicament before saying: "It just seems so underhanded."
"I would have just said it seemed wrong; and probably sick too, but that works," commented Ron, who's serious moment was over and he was back to his old self.
"So do you think I should, or shouldn't question Shego?" she asked Ron, turning from the window to look at him.
"I think it's up to you Kim," he told her, withholding judgment exactly as Wade had. "If you feel that you need to ask her the questions, you should do it. If it feels too wrong, just tell them you don't want to and who cares what anyone thinks."
"Aww, that's so sweet. Thank you Ron," Kim hugged him, touched by his compassion and friendship. The taxi driver glanced back to see them in an embrace, and wondered if they'd begin getting a little hot and heavy like some of his other fares had done.
"Hey, just doing the whole best friend thing," he replied sheepishly, slightly embarrassed at Kim's show of pleasant, platonic affection. The taxi began to slow, and Kim looked out the window to see the emergency ward entrance of the hospital approaching. The car pulled into a drop-off spot where Ron climbed out as Kim paid the fare before getting out and walking though the sliding doors into the reception area. There Finch waited next to a doctor and two members of the London Police. He turned to see them walking toward him and spoke to the policemen before they nodded in agreement and walked away.
"Ms. Possible, good to see you. Your friend was right; he could get you here very quickly," Finch commented when they reached him.
"Oh, Wade? Yeah, he's pretty much got me attached to some tracking device twenty-four seven," Kim observed sarcastically - though she knew it was probably more accurate than Wade let on. "So what do you need from me?
"Well, you already know why you're here, correct?" asked Finch.
"Yup, Wade clued me in before we caught a cab over here," replied Kim.
"Very well; myself and Dr. Chung," Finch motioned to the Oriental man in the lab coat next to him, who nodded in greeting, "the resident anesthesiologist, believe that you will be the best one to speak to Shego. We have a list of quest-."
"Mr. Finch, I'm really sorry to interrupt," Kim butted in "but I have to ask - why me?"
"Dr. Chung?" Finch passed her query onto the man next to him. Dr. Chung was a slight man, about Kim's height with deep brown eyes and thick grey hair that, unlike Finch's, covered his entire head. His voice was accent-less, with certain words enunciated like a native of the city and others pronounced in the same voice as a tourist who had just arrived from Shanghai. It was a strange mixture.
"Well Ms. Possible, you and Mr. Stoppable are the only two people we have in the area that the woman in question knows," Dr. Chung began, motioning to her and Ron while he spoke. "She will think she is asleep, in a dream perhaps, and if an unfamiliar voice begins to talk to her it will take much longer for her to begin giving out information. You however, are a familiar voice, and even though you are an enemy, the dreamlike state will be real enough that she will have no qualms about speaking with you."
"Umm, could you repeat that in English please?" Ron asked, having lost Chung on the words 'in a dream perhaps'.
"She'll talk to her worst enemy simply because she knows her voice," he replied.
"Ahhh," Ron nodded his head in realization.
"So Ms. Possible, we have a list of questions for you to ask Shego which shouldn't take more than two hours" Chung said, handing her a clipboard with a series of sheets of typed questions on them. There were at least four sides of single spaced type - a lot of questions. "The entire session will be recorded through speakers set up around the room, so you won't have to bother writing anything down. Just try and speak with her like you were best of friends, don't act nervous or angry at any time, since she will begin to become suspicious of your identity, and so probably will stop talking.
"Okay, is there anything else I should know?" she asked.
"Yes - remember that this woman just came out of surgery, and so is not only completely nude but also very badly wounded. While most of the major lacerations have been bandaged she is still pretty badly beat up; so try not to act surprised," the doctor recommended.
"No problem, I've dealt with that before," she assured him.
"If you say so. She's in room 6B and there are two armed guards in case anything happens. If you begin to feel uncomfortable, you may call them," Finch told her.
"Thanks," Kim replied before following Dr. Chung and Finch down the drab hospital hallway past the emergency rooms and into the recovery ward. She had decided that, despite the feelings of dishonesty that were swirling around in her head, the best course of action would be to go along with the questioning. She knew that Shego wouldn't hesitate for a second if she got this chance with Kim, and so it seemed strangely justified. Yet Kim still felt uncomfortable, and she had no idea why.
Shego's room was one of those kept for patients that were still very close to a critical condition and Kim could see from a distance the two burly policemen she had seen talking to Finch earlier standing by the door. After Finch nodded to them, the opened the door and allowed only Kim to enter, barring the rest from going in with their bodies.
The first thing that hit Kim about the room was its smell - it reeked of pure alcohol and what she guessed might have been formaldehyde, but she wasn't sure. It had the odor of a chemical plant, not a hospital. Lying on the bed, attached to about six different monitors, lay Shego. Though having been warned, the sight of her broken, bruised body still shocked Kim. It wasn't her nakedness that astonished Kim, but the notion that this woman was - no matter how strange and unfamiliar she looked - Shego. Her entire abdomen was covered in a wrap of bandages from her chest to her hips, and Kim could see where her lower ribs had been broken in the crash where they were covered in a large white cast. Her ankles were also swathed in bandages, probably from broken glass or other debris from the taxi. Shego's entire left leg was covered in a lighter version of the cast on her chest, for what Kim guessed was the mild fracture Wade had mentioned. The wrist injury was only minor though, since she noted that Shego's hand had only been placed in a flesh colored brace. But still, Kim could tell that Shego would have difficulty moving fast for a very long time. 'She was might have even be crippled for life', she thought to herself.
Shego was attached to a series of tubes, two running from an IV tree on which bags of clear fluid were hung, and two were attached to her abdomen, disappearing beneath her bandages around her navel. Kim noticed that her arms had been lightly strapped to the bed, possibly to keep her from picking at her wounds or more likely to keep her from waking up and trying to escape. Though escape in her condition was impossible at best, MI5 were taking no chances with someone as prominent in the criminal world as Shego. A nurse was watching all the monitors to make sure nothing untoward happened to her charge while she was on duty, and motioned for Kim to come sit in the chair beside her.
"Now love," she began, and Kim immediately took a liking to her. Sitting in the lackluster room, surrounded by cold, cheerless machines; she was a ray of joy and comfort. This was something that Kim, sitting next to a woman who was barely alive, needed more than anything else. "I'll be sitting right here, watching the monitors to make sure we don't push her too far; all right? If I need you to stop, I'll just lay my hand you your arm we can then give her a few minutes to take a break."
"No problem," Kim replied quietly, feeling uncomfortable with speaking too loud in the recovery room.
"Don't worry dear, you'll be fine," the nurse assured her, sensing Kim's anxiety.
"Thanks," she said before turning to Shego and beginning her questioning:
"Shego? Shego? It's me, Kim. Do you remember me, do you remember Kim?"
"Hiya princess," Shego replied softly, her voice sounding strangely serene and peaceful.
"Shego, do you mind if I ask you some questions?" Kim asked her, trying to make her voice sound as friendly as possible to keep Shego from becoming suspicious of her reason for being there.
"Sure," the other woman practically moaned, straining slightly against the cloth cuffs around her wrists, as if to get closer to Kim.
"Okay then. Shego, when did you leave your home yesterday?"
"Eleven thirty in the morning." Kim looked over to see Finch nod in affirmation from his position at the doorway, telling her that Shego had not suffered a severe concussion that would render the entire questioning process useless.
"All right; and when did your plane land this morning in London?"
"'Round eight."
"And why are you here?"
"A meeting?"
"What kind of meeting?"
"A big one."
"Where is it?"
"Somewhere."
"Shego, do you know where it is?"
"Yup."
"Can you tell me where it is?"
"Nope," Shego replied, sounding slightly childish as she toyed with Kim.
"Do you remember why you were going to the meeting then?"
"Yes."
"Could you tell me why?"
"Drakken said not to tell anyone. Not you, not your little friend, not anyone." she answered, giggling to her own private joke.
"What's so funny Shego?"
"I just thought of how it'd look to see me gut your friend, the one named Ron," she said, causing Kim to recoil slightly in shock. "Or maybe I could snap his neck, right before I do the same to you. Whaddaya think about that Kimmie? Or maybe I should go carpe jugulum style; and go for the throat - ever seen a person's throat cut Kim? Because I'll slit your friend's from end to end. Com'on Kim, speak up. I can't hear you Kim," Shego taunted her; visibly enjoying this by the way her body writhed slightly on the bed. "Tell me what you think about that."
"I-I." Kim froze, unable to erase the sight of this woman snapping her best friend in half. She glanced down to read the next question, but for some reason her eyes would not focus on the page in front of her. She could see her right hand shaking slightly with rage as she now envisioned pulling the life-support systems from Shego's body and watching her die slowly, her body racked with pain once the morphine wore off. She stayed absolutely motionless for a moment, watching with fascination as Shego writhed and screamed on the bed beside her, as she clawed at her wounds, trying to make the pain stop. And then the fluids already pumped into her body through the IV tubes would run low, and her stomach would become a mass of reopened wounds beneath her skin. She would drown in her own blood, and Kim would be there to watch it all.
But then she snapped out of her dream - and what later would be thought of as a nightmare -, and realized that she had just imagined murdering another human being. And that she had liked it. 'What's happening to me?' she asked herself, her body now shaking with fear. She'd never felt so strongly about killing someone until now, and it terrified her.
"I can't do this," Kim said firmly before rising out of her seat and left before the nurse could pull her back. Outside, Finch was waiting, and his eyes widened with surprise as Kim walked out of the room after only five minutes.
"What are you doing? You haven't already finished with the questions, have you?" he demanded, while keeping his voice low so as not to disturb any patients in the area, including Shego.
"I'm not going to do this," she told him, her voice flat and emotionless.
"What?" he hissed angrily, now that he realized that his one chance of finding the villains was about to be ruined.
"I'm not going to sit there and listen to that," Kim said, pointing back to Shego who was now lying silently, apparently once more unconscious. "I can't listen to her saying those kinds of things about my friends."
"Ms. Possible," Finch began, calming down slightly as he tried to reason with her. "You realize that she has no idea what she is saying - you cannot take offense at a single comment. She'll make many more before we're done; you simply have to ignore them and move on."
"Mr. Finch, I never said that I was offended by what she said," Kim explained, "but just that I cannot listen to it. I almost ripped her in half when she started talking about Ron. If I sit there much longer she'll end up dead, and I'll have been the killer."
Finch seemed to understand Kim's reasoning - she decided he had been faced with a similar situation during his lifetime - and nodded his head in agreement. He said nothing, accepting that trying to make her go on would simply hurt their chances of getting anything out of Shego, and moved out of her way. Kim walked over to where Ron sat, and slumped down beside him on the hard plastic chairs in the hallway. Though having been too far away from the conversation to have heard anything, he knew that asking her about why she had left the room was not a good idea. And Kim sat there mutely, the film of her best friend dying in front of her playing inside her mind. She tried not to look into his face, lest her expression reveal what she had heard in room 6B and luckily Ron understood that this was one of those times when words were useless.
They sat there staring off into space until Finch walked up and informed them that Shego was once again asleep. He planned to recommence the questioning when she woke up the next morning, and asked if Kim would be willing to attend the first few sessions. She was, but wanted to return to their hotel for the remainder of the night to get a decent night's sleep before what she expected to be a long day. Finch wouldn't let here though, since he wanted her by Shego's side the moment she awoke in the morning so that they could begin the questioning immediately. They couldn't give her the chance to plan her responses and therefore lie to them and Kim's presence would be enough of an unexpected occurrence to keep her of thinking of trying to fictionalize her story. He promised to find them a room for the night - the nurses had a few rooms they used for rest breaks and hopefully none were being used that evening - but told them to stay seated until he got back. They agreed to wait and as he walked away down the corridor Ron decided the time for silence was over.
"So how'd it go in there?" he asked softly, trying not to upset Kim.
"Not so good," she replied. "Shego began talking about me and you, about what she wanted to do to us."
"What'd she say?" said Ron, shifting around to keep his legs from falling asleep.
"Don't ask," Kim replied firmly, and Ron nodded in understanding. He knew her well enough to know pressing the issue would get him nowhere.
"Is that when you talked with Finch?" he asked.
"Yep; we decided it was best to wait until the morning."
"All right."
And that was the end of the conversation. Kim's eyes began to droop, since she had been up for approximately twenty hours without a bit of rest, and soon she felt her entire body slide off the seat once her muscles relaxed. Fortunately Ron caught her before her head hit the floor, and by that time she was completely asleep, so he had little trouble in laying her on the chairs next to him and placing her head in his lap. She hummed slightly at something in her dreams as Ron pulled off his sweater and placed it behind his head as a makeshift pillow. He then pulled Kim's winter coat over her body, and placed his ski-jacket over his chest to keep him warm.
Even in that cold, hard plastic chair Ron too was asleep within minutes, and had to be shaken gently to awake him once Finch returned. Ron carried Kim to her room, which regrettably had only one bed, and not a very big one at that. He decided to let Kim sleep in her clothes, since if not awkward questions would be asked the next morning, and instead lay her in the bed and covered her with the sheets. A blanket from a nearby closet was all he used to keep warm as he slumped into the large lounger beside the bed in which, like the plastic chair before it, he was soon dead to the world.
The buzz of the alarm woke Shego five hours later, at approximately nine o'clock in the evening. Without realizing it, her hand shot out from beneath the covers and slapped down on the sleep button, returning the room once more to silence. She repeated this motion over four times until finally, at twenty five past nine, she raised her head from the pillow and realized what the time was.
Cursing herself for not getting enough sleep earlier, she climbed out of bed and grabbed some clothes from her bag before heading into the bathroom to take a quick shower. Minutes later she ran back out, still toweling off her hair, and threw her dirty clothes into her bag and then zipped it shut. Once she was sure that everything was packed and ready to go, she called downstairs for a taxi. She planned to keep the room, even though she would not stay in it for the next two days, just in case she ever needed it. And so, with her bag over her shoulder, she switched off the lights and closed the door to her room before heading downstairs.
The lobby was almost completely free of people - since almost everyone who was staying the night in the hotel had already checked in - when Shego stepped off the elevator and walked swiftly to the large glass doors that exited into the street outside Paddington. Once outside in the chilly March evening, she looked around for her taxi - which of course had yet to arrive - before drawing her coat tightly around her and leaning against the stone wall to wait. After ten minutes and no taxi, she returned to the front desk of the hotel and asked the employee there if he had called the taxi for her. He assured her that the call had been made, and that it was probably rush hour traffic that was holding it up. He estimated it would only be another ten minutes at the latest until her ride arrived.
But Shego couldn't wait ten minutes - she knew that the meeting closed to the outside world at ten o'clock on the dot. The warehouse in which the conference would be held was fitted with a series of timed locks; that would close the building to the outside world for forty-eight hours, at which time the discussions would be over and everyone would be more than ready to leave. It was a self contained world for the two days, with its own food, electricity and heating. Nothing was allowed in or out - be it electronic or paper or anything else - and no matter how much she pleaded, the security system could not be overridden. If she didn't make it to Slough she would miss the conference completely, something she didn't want to let happen - if she took the time to fly all the way to London she was damn well going to attend the meeting.
And so she stepped out into the street and boldly held out her flattened hand out in front of her, signaling the black taxi ahead to stop. It did, with a screeching halt before the driver poked his head out the window and began to yell profanities at Shego; reprimanding her for her stupidity. She ignored him, and instead walked up to the vehicle, opened the back door and climbed inside.
"Get me to Slough in ten minutes and I'll pay you ten thousand pounds," she promised, waving a thick billfold against the plastic partition that separated the driver's seat from the passenger section. Once he saw the scores of hundred pound notes she was holding in her hand, he transformed from a thirty-five year old taxi driver to a fledgling Paris-Dakar rally driver. His foot his the gas pedal so hard that Shego was thrown back into the seat from the resulting acceleration of the taxi, and they shot off down the busy street at speeds approaching seventy kilometers per hour. Shego quickly buckled her seat belt and hoped that the driver had done this before, since they had almost already had three head-on collisions and two fender benders, and they hadn't even reached the end of the block.
A series of quick turns put them on a motorway leaving the city, and soon she could see the lights of aircraft approaching Heathrow, a sign that they were nearing Slough. Her driver must have played a lot of video games, since they had six minutes to spare and yet were within ten kilometers of their objective. Shego's mood began to brighten, knowing now that she would make it - just barely - to the meeting. But then everything began to go terribly wrong.
Their exit was in site, and the driver was preparing to overtake one last car before swerving onto the off-ramp when the car on their left pulled out into the passing lane in front of them, going about thirty kilometers slower than the taxi. Her driver was luckily blessed with the power of quick reactions, and he slammed on the brakes while swerving the car into the left, slower moving lane. But everyone else wasn't so quick on the uptake, and the taxi was rammed from behind by a large truck carrying furniture to a store in Reading. The force of the impact knocked the steering wheel from his hands, and his foot was somehow shifted from the brake to the gas pedal. The result was the car accelerating down the motorway, half on the left lane and half on the exit lane - which ended in twenty meters.
Shego watched with horror, unable to do anything, as the car slammed into the water filled tanks meant to stop cars, and then into the concrete barrier behind these. She was thrown to the Plexiglas partition and then in shock fell to the floor of the cab. There she lay, semi-conscious, and watched her own blood begin to spread out onto the beige colored carpet that lined the interior of the taxi. She tried to raise herself upright, and try to climb out of the now wrecked vehicle, but once she moved her leg, she felt a sharp, stinging pain climb up her thigh, and looked down to see that a section of the door had fallen on her lower body, pinning her down. She then tried to reach back and push the segment of metal aside, but she didn't have the strength to do anything except move her head. And soon, as her unseen wounds drained her body of blood, she began to even lose the ability to do that. Soon thereafter she slipped into total unconsciousness, at exactly ten o'clock.
* * *
At ten thirty that same evening, Kim and Ron were just finishing their meal at a small Chinese restaurant near Harrods. As they had told Hackney and Finch, they had spent the day sightseeing - visiting both the Tower of London and the National Science Museum. There they had spent hours looking at all the exhibits - with Kim having to finally drag Ron away from the children's section on flying, where he was making toddlers cry for not letting them play too. Once Ron's stomach began growling loud enough that people in the vicinity thought someone was starting a motorcycle, Kim decided it was a good time to get some dinner. She had heard of a place in Knightsbridge that served some of the best Chinese food in the city, and had decided to go there for dinner. Finding it was a bit difficult, since its interior was about eight meters wide, and split into two levels for more seating capacity.
They were to say the least, famished, and spoke very little as they practically inhaled their meals. Finally, the plates were removed and Kim had a small cup of coffee before asking for the check. MI5 had promised to pick up the tab, and had given the pair a credit card to use for meals and anything else they felt they needed to buy. Of course, Ron had wanted to stop off at about six stores and pick himself up some new clothes, but Kim had insisted they would only use it when absolutely necessary. The waiter did not seem suspicious that a sixteen year old possessed a platinum credit card - a sign of the upscale clientele the establishment catered to - and took it without a word. Soon Kim and Ron were back on the street, with Kim trying to figure out where to catch a bus home from.
"Com'on Kim! Let's go see a movie or something," Ron said to her as he sat on a bench at the bus stop. "The night is young and I'm nowhere near tired."
"Oh yeah, then why did you almost fall into your fried rice at the table? I guess you were overcome by awakeness, huh?" she retorted.
"It was a brief lapse, I felt a little nappish," Ron said, trying to blow it off. "But it's over now, so can we go?"
"Uh. no," she said, feigning a moment of indecision.
"Aw man, why not?" he griped.
"Two reasons. Firstly, no matter what you think, you're tired. I know you're tired because I'm tired and you take a whole lot more naps then I do. Secondly, we're here on a mission and I guarantee that we'll have to get up at six tomorrow morning to look at some report or another," Kim explained.
"Oh, all right," he gave in. But can we see one tomorrow?"
"Maybe," she replied, trying to make it as ambiguous as possible in case he held her to her exact words the next day. She had learned that Ron had a very selective, but also very good memory - if she promised that they would go see a movie in a month, four weeks later he could still quote her exact words. Now, why he seemed unable to remember basic algebra equations, she had no idea. Could you help me now and find the bus home. I think we need to catch the line heading north-east."
"No, no, no. It's the one over here, the 36B," he corrected her, pointing to something Kim couldn't make out in the low light.
"Where?"
"Here," Ron took her finger and pressed it against the map where the bus stopped.
"Ron, that goes south," she replied wearily.
"Really? I though the top was south."
Kim sighed, and as she always did, asked Ron: "You want to me to try and figure it out?
"That's probably best, yeah," he replied as he always did, and sat back down on the bench.
"Okay," Kim said, mostly to herself than to her friend. "I think we have to take this one, the number eight; and then change at the next stop to a six- thirty-three. Can you remember that?"
"No."
"Thought so."
Just then Kim heard the Kimmunicator beep from her pocket, so she pulled it out and turned it on to see Wade waiting patiently.
"What up Wade?" she greeted him, "anything new on the London thing?
"Actually yes," he replied, pulling over a pad of paper he'd written something down on, "something big just happened outside the city, near the airport.
"Which one? There's five of them."
"Heathrow. On the M4 motorway about five miles from a town called Slough there was a car accident. Somehow a taxi managed to ram into a concrete barrier where the lanes split," he reported. "The driver's dead, and the passenger just barely survived with a wound to the stomach and she's been identified by her papers as Carla Mitchell. She's in a pretty much stable condition in a hospital in downtown, but they want you to come speak with her."
"Wade, I don't even know where Slough is, much less why I need to talk to some woman named Mitchell, I've never even -."
"Kim, I got one of the doctors to send me her picture; it's Shego."
"Shego!" Kim exclaimed, having expected something serious, but nothing to do with a villain - she had thought it would be a MI5 employee. "And she was in a car accident?"
"Yeah," replied Wade. "They say she'll recover from her immediate injuries in about twelve days, but then she'll have to be in a wheelchair for the next month."
"Immediate injuries?" asked Kim, unfamiliar with the term. "What are those?"
"Cuts, bruises, things that the doctors can just stitch up and be done with - but she also had longer term injuries, like broken ribs, a broken wrist, her legs are all slashed and one of them is mildly fractured. She's in a pretty bad shape," Wade summarized.
"And you want me to. what? Go over there and ask her right out why she's here?"
"Yes."
"Uhh, Wade? This is me, Kim. She hates me! She'll never talk to me, or anyone else, no matter how much pain she's in," she argued.
"That's just it; they have her on a morphine drip," he countered. "She'll probably think it's all just a dream and if you ask the right questions, we'll get the answers we need,"
"All right, Ron and I will catch a cab to the hospital," she said, but then added: "Though I'm gonna have to think about questioning Shego - I don't like the idea of taking advantage of her like that.
"If you say so, just remember how much help this it will be if we question her," Wade reminded her, though kept his own feelings about the matter to himself. She guessed that Wade viewed this as the perfect chance to get into Shego's mind, and he probably wanted Kim to get there as quick as possible to find out as much as they could before she awoke.
"I will, don't worry," Kim replied before the screen went blank. She then hailed down the next taxi and hopped in, Ron quickly following suit.
"You heard what Wade said, right?" Kim asked him once she had told the driver where to go.
"Yep," Ron replied.
"So what do you think I should do?" she asked, provoking a moment of silence as he thought about her question.
"Actually, I'm not sure," he admitted. "Either you ask her the questions and we end up knowing a lot more about why all the villains are here, or you don't and we're still at square one."
"This shouldn't be so hard," Kim observed, wondering why she was hesitating about something so important.
"I know," agreed Ron, "but for some reason I don't think we should do it."
"Me too," Kim said; glad that Ron and her were somehow on the same level. She looked out the window at the apartments and shops flying past, pondering her predicament before saying: "It just seems so underhanded."
"I would have just said it seemed wrong; and probably sick too, but that works," commented Ron, who's serious moment was over and he was back to his old self.
"So do you think I should, or shouldn't question Shego?" she asked Ron, turning from the window to look at him.
"I think it's up to you Kim," he told her, withholding judgment exactly as Wade had. "If you feel that you need to ask her the questions, you should do it. If it feels too wrong, just tell them you don't want to and who cares what anyone thinks."
"Aww, that's so sweet. Thank you Ron," Kim hugged him, touched by his compassion and friendship. The taxi driver glanced back to see them in an embrace, and wondered if they'd begin getting a little hot and heavy like some of his other fares had done.
"Hey, just doing the whole best friend thing," he replied sheepishly, slightly embarrassed at Kim's show of pleasant, platonic affection. The taxi began to slow, and Kim looked out the window to see the emergency ward entrance of the hospital approaching. The car pulled into a drop-off spot where Ron climbed out as Kim paid the fare before getting out and walking though the sliding doors into the reception area. There Finch waited next to a doctor and two members of the London Police. He turned to see them walking toward him and spoke to the policemen before they nodded in agreement and walked away.
"Ms. Possible, good to see you. Your friend was right; he could get you here very quickly," Finch commented when they reached him.
"Oh, Wade? Yeah, he's pretty much got me attached to some tracking device twenty-four seven," Kim observed sarcastically - though she knew it was probably more accurate than Wade let on. "So what do you need from me?
"Well, you already know why you're here, correct?" asked Finch.
"Yup, Wade clued me in before we caught a cab over here," replied Kim.
"Very well; myself and Dr. Chung," Finch motioned to the Oriental man in the lab coat next to him, who nodded in greeting, "the resident anesthesiologist, believe that you will be the best one to speak to Shego. We have a list of quest-."
"Mr. Finch, I'm really sorry to interrupt," Kim butted in "but I have to ask - why me?"
"Dr. Chung?" Finch passed her query onto the man next to him. Dr. Chung was a slight man, about Kim's height with deep brown eyes and thick grey hair that, unlike Finch's, covered his entire head. His voice was accent-less, with certain words enunciated like a native of the city and others pronounced in the same voice as a tourist who had just arrived from Shanghai. It was a strange mixture.
"Well Ms. Possible, you and Mr. Stoppable are the only two people we have in the area that the woman in question knows," Dr. Chung began, motioning to her and Ron while he spoke. "She will think she is asleep, in a dream perhaps, and if an unfamiliar voice begins to talk to her it will take much longer for her to begin giving out information. You however, are a familiar voice, and even though you are an enemy, the dreamlike state will be real enough that she will have no qualms about speaking with you."
"Umm, could you repeat that in English please?" Ron asked, having lost Chung on the words 'in a dream perhaps'.
"She'll talk to her worst enemy simply because she knows her voice," he replied.
"Ahhh," Ron nodded his head in realization.
"So Ms. Possible, we have a list of questions for you to ask Shego which shouldn't take more than two hours" Chung said, handing her a clipboard with a series of sheets of typed questions on them. There were at least four sides of single spaced type - a lot of questions. "The entire session will be recorded through speakers set up around the room, so you won't have to bother writing anything down. Just try and speak with her like you were best of friends, don't act nervous or angry at any time, since she will begin to become suspicious of your identity, and so probably will stop talking.
"Okay, is there anything else I should know?" she asked.
"Yes - remember that this woman just came out of surgery, and so is not only completely nude but also very badly wounded. While most of the major lacerations have been bandaged she is still pretty badly beat up; so try not to act surprised," the doctor recommended.
"No problem, I've dealt with that before," she assured him.
"If you say so. She's in room 6B and there are two armed guards in case anything happens. If you begin to feel uncomfortable, you may call them," Finch told her.
"Thanks," Kim replied before following Dr. Chung and Finch down the drab hospital hallway past the emergency rooms and into the recovery ward. She had decided that, despite the feelings of dishonesty that were swirling around in her head, the best course of action would be to go along with the questioning. She knew that Shego wouldn't hesitate for a second if she got this chance with Kim, and so it seemed strangely justified. Yet Kim still felt uncomfortable, and she had no idea why.
Shego's room was one of those kept for patients that were still very close to a critical condition and Kim could see from a distance the two burly policemen she had seen talking to Finch earlier standing by the door. After Finch nodded to them, the opened the door and allowed only Kim to enter, barring the rest from going in with their bodies.
The first thing that hit Kim about the room was its smell - it reeked of pure alcohol and what she guessed might have been formaldehyde, but she wasn't sure. It had the odor of a chemical plant, not a hospital. Lying on the bed, attached to about six different monitors, lay Shego. Though having been warned, the sight of her broken, bruised body still shocked Kim. It wasn't her nakedness that astonished Kim, but the notion that this woman was - no matter how strange and unfamiliar she looked - Shego. Her entire abdomen was covered in a wrap of bandages from her chest to her hips, and Kim could see where her lower ribs had been broken in the crash where they were covered in a large white cast. Her ankles were also swathed in bandages, probably from broken glass or other debris from the taxi. Shego's entire left leg was covered in a lighter version of the cast on her chest, for what Kim guessed was the mild fracture Wade had mentioned. The wrist injury was only minor though, since she noted that Shego's hand had only been placed in a flesh colored brace. But still, Kim could tell that Shego would have difficulty moving fast for a very long time. 'She was might have even be crippled for life', she thought to herself.
Shego was attached to a series of tubes, two running from an IV tree on which bags of clear fluid were hung, and two were attached to her abdomen, disappearing beneath her bandages around her navel. Kim noticed that her arms had been lightly strapped to the bed, possibly to keep her from picking at her wounds or more likely to keep her from waking up and trying to escape. Though escape in her condition was impossible at best, MI5 were taking no chances with someone as prominent in the criminal world as Shego. A nurse was watching all the monitors to make sure nothing untoward happened to her charge while she was on duty, and motioned for Kim to come sit in the chair beside her.
"Now love," she began, and Kim immediately took a liking to her. Sitting in the lackluster room, surrounded by cold, cheerless machines; she was a ray of joy and comfort. This was something that Kim, sitting next to a woman who was barely alive, needed more than anything else. "I'll be sitting right here, watching the monitors to make sure we don't push her too far; all right? If I need you to stop, I'll just lay my hand you your arm we can then give her a few minutes to take a break."
"No problem," Kim replied quietly, feeling uncomfortable with speaking too loud in the recovery room.
"Don't worry dear, you'll be fine," the nurse assured her, sensing Kim's anxiety.
"Thanks," she said before turning to Shego and beginning her questioning:
"Shego? Shego? It's me, Kim. Do you remember me, do you remember Kim?"
"Hiya princess," Shego replied softly, her voice sounding strangely serene and peaceful.
"Shego, do you mind if I ask you some questions?" Kim asked her, trying to make her voice sound as friendly as possible to keep Shego from becoming suspicious of her reason for being there.
"Sure," the other woman practically moaned, straining slightly against the cloth cuffs around her wrists, as if to get closer to Kim.
"Okay then. Shego, when did you leave your home yesterday?"
"Eleven thirty in the morning." Kim looked over to see Finch nod in affirmation from his position at the doorway, telling her that Shego had not suffered a severe concussion that would render the entire questioning process useless.
"All right; and when did your plane land this morning in London?"
"'Round eight."
"And why are you here?"
"A meeting?"
"What kind of meeting?"
"A big one."
"Where is it?"
"Somewhere."
"Shego, do you know where it is?"
"Yup."
"Can you tell me where it is?"
"Nope," Shego replied, sounding slightly childish as she toyed with Kim.
"Do you remember why you were going to the meeting then?"
"Yes."
"Could you tell me why?"
"Drakken said not to tell anyone. Not you, not your little friend, not anyone." she answered, giggling to her own private joke.
"What's so funny Shego?"
"I just thought of how it'd look to see me gut your friend, the one named Ron," she said, causing Kim to recoil slightly in shock. "Or maybe I could snap his neck, right before I do the same to you. Whaddaya think about that Kimmie? Or maybe I should go carpe jugulum style; and go for the throat - ever seen a person's throat cut Kim? Because I'll slit your friend's from end to end. Com'on Kim, speak up. I can't hear you Kim," Shego taunted her; visibly enjoying this by the way her body writhed slightly on the bed. "Tell me what you think about that."
"I-I." Kim froze, unable to erase the sight of this woman snapping her best friend in half. She glanced down to read the next question, but for some reason her eyes would not focus on the page in front of her. She could see her right hand shaking slightly with rage as she now envisioned pulling the life-support systems from Shego's body and watching her die slowly, her body racked with pain once the morphine wore off. She stayed absolutely motionless for a moment, watching with fascination as Shego writhed and screamed on the bed beside her, as she clawed at her wounds, trying to make the pain stop. And then the fluids already pumped into her body through the IV tubes would run low, and her stomach would become a mass of reopened wounds beneath her skin. She would drown in her own blood, and Kim would be there to watch it all.
But then she snapped out of her dream - and what later would be thought of as a nightmare -, and realized that she had just imagined murdering another human being. And that she had liked it. 'What's happening to me?' she asked herself, her body now shaking with fear. She'd never felt so strongly about killing someone until now, and it terrified her.
"I can't do this," Kim said firmly before rising out of her seat and left before the nurse could pull her back. Outside, Finch was waiting, and his eyes widened with surprise as Kim walked out of the room after only five minutes.
"What are you doing? You haven't already finished with the questions, have you?" he demanded, while keeping his voice low so as not to disturb any patients in the area, including Shego.
"I'm not going to do this," she told him, her voice flat and emotionless.
"What?" he hissed angrily, now that he realized that his one chance of finding the villains was about to be ruined.
"I'm not going to sit there and listen to that," Kim said, pointing back to Shego who was now lying silently, apparently once more unconscious. "I can't listen to her saying those kinds of things about my friends."
"Ms. Possible," Finch began, calming down slightly as he tried to reason with her. "You realize that she has no idea what she is saying - you cannot take offense at a single comment. She'll make many more before we're done; you simply have to ignore them and move on."
"Mr. Finch, I never said that I was offended by what she said," Kim explained, "but just that I cannot listen to it. I almost ripped her in half when she started talking about Ron. If I sit there much longer she'll end up dead, and I'll have been the killer."
Finch seemed to understand Kim's reasoning - she decided he had been faced with a similar situation during his lifetime - and nodded his head in agreement. He said nothing, accepting that trying to make her go on would simply hurt their chances of getting anything out of Shego, and moved out of her way. Kim walked over to where Ron sat, and slumped down beside him on the hard plastic chairs in the hallway. Though having been too far away from the conversation to have heard anything, he knew that asking her about why she had left the room was not a good idea. And Kim sat there mutely, the film of her best friend dying in front of her playing inside her mind. She tried not to look into his face, lest her expression reveal what she had heard in room 6B and luckily Ron understood that this was one of those times when words were useless.
They sat there staring off into space until Finch walked up and informed them that Shego was once again asleep. He planned to recommence the questioning when she woke up the next morning, and asked if Kim would be willing to attend the first few sessions. She was, but wanted to return to their hotel for the remainder of the night to get a decent night's sleep before what she expected to be a long day. Finch wouldn't let here though, since he wanted her by Shego's side the moment she awoke in the morning so that they could begin the questioning immediately. They couldn't give her the chance to plan her responses and therefore lie to them and Kim's presence would be enough of an unexpected occurrence to keep her of thinking of trying to fictionalize her story. He promised to find them a room for the night - the nurses had a few rooms they used for rest breaks and hopefully none were being used that evening - but told them to stay seated until he got back. They agreed to wait and as he walked away down the corridor Ron decided the time for silence was over.
"So how'd it go in there?" he asked softly, trying not to upset Kim.
"Not so good," she replied. "Shego began talking about me and you, about what she wanted to do to us."
"What'd she say?" said Ron, shifting around to keep his legs from falling asleep.
"Don't ask," Kim replied firmly, and Ron nodded in understanding. He knew her well enough to know pressing the issue would get him nowhere.
"Is that when you talked with Finch?" he asked.
"Yep; we decided it was best to wait until the morning."
"All right."
And that was the end of the conversation. Kim's eyes began to droop, since she had been up for approximately twenty hours without a bit of rest, and soon she felt her entire body slide off the seat once her muscles relaxed. Fortunately Ron caught her before her head hit the floor, and by that time she was completely asleep, so he had little trouble in laying her on the chairs next to him and placing her head in his lap. She hummed slightly at something in her dreams as Ron pulled off his sweater and placed it behind his head as a makeshift pillow. He then pulled Kim's winter coat over her body, and placed his ski-jacket over his chest to keep him warm.
Even in that cold, hard plastic chair Ron too was asleep within minutes, and had to be shaken gently to awake him once Finch returned. Ron carried Kim to her room, which regrettably had only one bed, and not a very big one at that. He decided to let Kim sleep in her clothes, since if not awkward questions would be asked the next morning, and instead lay her in the bed and covered her with the sheets. A blanket from a nearby closet was all he used to keep warm as he slumped into the large lounger beside the bed in which, like the plastic chair before it, he was soon dead to the world.