XV. The Taken Eye
Indecision gripped her when Julia saw Annie's shop number on the comm. screen. She knew she wasn't supposed to talk to anyone, but Annie would be beside herself with worry if she hadn't heard any news. While she wrestled with whether to answer, the call went to messaging.
"Who was that?" Spike asked, his voice faint.
"Annie." The message alert beeped, and she dialed as she returned to the bedroom so Spike could hear it as well.
"Julia, honey," Annie began, her face neutral, "tell your patient there are no refunds on rent, so he'd better pull through. And if you need anything, call for a delivery. Just list what you want and I'll send a runner around to meet you at the bakery. That's all." The screen went blank.
Spike nodded. "Good. I was afraid no one would tell her."
"Me too. Mao wouldn't keep her in the dark, though." She eyed him critically; he had gone pale again, and his breathing was shallow. "How do you feel, really?"
He closed his eyes. "Thin. Exhausted. I could keep whining, but it takes too much effort."
"I prescribe another glass of water and another Percocet," she said gently. "Much as I like the company, you need to rest."
"Where did you find that stuff?" he groaned. "No real pharmacies around here?"
"Without a prescription or a trip downtown, it's the best you'll get."
"I'm not complaining. Good dreams, so far." He was fading out again, and she helped him down another pill before he lost the last of his strength.
"You'll be here?" he mumbled as she pulled the blankets higher.
"Sleep," she replied, and he had nothing more to say.
***
He drifted again, trying to get back to that pool hall, but his mind had other plans. He was standing in his father's office, sixteen, the day he received his first assignment.
"I have reservations about this," his father said, and Spike felt an ache seeing his face again, hearing him speak more clearly than he could recall in conscious thought. "I do not think you should put yourself in harm's way to prove your bravery. It is not in question."
"We're just going out to talk trash. I can take care of myself," Spike replied, all bravado.
"As I said, that is not in question." His father looked down at the school discharge papers on the blotter in front of him, and Spike braced himself, but no reprimand came. Instead, he went on, "I hope what you learned over the last four years will stay with you in the coming ones. The book lessons, and the life lessons."
Spike nodded, mute.
"Vicious is impetuous, from what I have seen, but he will not be a liability. I think you are well matched. Just don't turn your claws on one another when you have no one else to tussle with." His brown eyes sparkled. "Save that for the gym."
"I don't fight with my friends," Spike said mildly. "We got along well enough at Mao's."
His father rose and came around the desk to embrace him: a head taller, though Spike towered over every other boy his age. He wanted to say so many things now, he realized, but the time had passed and he could only think them while the memory blurred, fading into another scene.
He and Vicious stood back to back, ringed by a circle of older street toughs. The metallic ringing sound of Vicious drawing his katana distracted him for a split second, long enough for someone to cuff him in the side of the head, and he saw black spots as he fell toward the sidewalk. He tucked and rolled, clipping another attacker with his heel as he extended a leg. He underestimated his opponents, though, and came up out of the roll into the barrel of a military-issue G19.
Rough hands pulled his arms behind his back, wrenching his shoulders so he had no leverage. He saw Vicious squirm his way out of another hold, slashing with his sword, his face grim.
"Run!" he shouted, and Vicious hesitated for a split second. "NOW!"
He looked around, confused – there were at least a dozen White Tigers in the street, but none of them pursued Vicious. He was about to ask what they wanted when the butt of a gun connected with the base of his skull, and then he was spiraling down, forward through time again.
That small, conscious part of his brain rebelled with all its strength; he did not want to go where this was headed next. Voices, low, the pinch of a needle in his arm, a cold rush through his muscles as they stopped obeying his attempts to struggle... and then the harsh white glow of a medical spotlight.
"Spike Spiegel." He tried to turn, see who was speaking, but the light was too bright and his head seemed to be in a vise – no chance of movement between the drug and the restraint.
"Prodigal son of the right-hand man to Mao Yenrai. A Dragon whelp."
He let the inertia take over, willing his face to relax, trying not to respond to the identification. He'd been away four years, never been involved in Syndicate business – but to acknowledge they were correct went against everything he had been taught all his life.
"There is no point in denying your identity. Your DNA betrays you. And you will betray your own blood if you want your life."
He closed his eyes, exhaling, settling in for the wait. These men were no different than the bullies from school, thinking they could use pain to make him submit to their will. He did not have his lightning reflexes or surprising strength here, but he had years of training and a haughty disdain for any attempt to rule him by force.
"Tell me the address of the home where you eat meals with Mao Yenrai."
When he looked into the harsh light again, a metal instrument appeared in his field of vision, descending toward his right eye. He tried to flinch, but it was as though his body belonged to someone else; only the muscles of his eye worked, rolling frantically to avoid the apparatus.
"Your death is a long way off on the horizon yet, Spike Spiegel. If you are bound to get there, you will have to endure the ride." Mechanical whirring – hands in surgical gloves – blinking sent a shooting pain through his eyelids where they were pinned open.
"For what you hoped to see, we will take your spying eye."
With every ounce of strength and concentration, he willed himself to cry out; he could not go through the wrenching pain, the horrible sounds, the disorienting flashes when his optic nerve stopped receiving a signal...
And he sucked in a desperate gulp of air, snapping awake, seeing the ceiling above him with a bar of faint light that made its way through the curtains, his heart pounding until he thought he would vomit.
"Oh, god." He breathed through his nose, swallowing hard.
"Spike?" Julia stumbled in the dark of the living room, and then her blurry shadow appeared in the doorway. "What happened?"
He tried a few times before finding his voice. "Bad dream."
She came to sit beside him, turning on the bedside lamp. Even in its faintly yellow light, he looked ashen, his eyes wild, sweat beading on his forehead. He stretched his arm out and she took his hand, watching him but unsure what to say.
"No more drugs," he croaked out.
"Okay..." she moved from the chair to the edge of the bed, putting her other hand on his forehead. "Do you remember what it was about?"
"Too well."
"Do you want to tell me about it? My mother used to make me tell her my bad dreams, so I could hear how impossible they sounded aloud."
He managed a wry smile. "This one really happened, but I've been telling myself it was a dream ever since."
The look of concern on her face marred her features, and Spike sighed, wondering if she might be right.
"Hey," he said softly, "Get me a glass of water, and I'll try it your way."
When she returned, he had managed to prop himself up on his right elbow, and she helped him adjust the pillows so he could look at her without moving his head. "How long have I been out?" he asked.
"It's almost morning. A good twelve hours, at least."
"Huh. It always bothers me, how I think I started dreaming the second I went to sleep, but the time never matches up." He rubbed his eyes and winced.
"My right eye is a fake," he began.
"I figured that out just in time to keep from slugging you," she replied. He gave her a puzzled look, and she went on after a deep breath of her own. "I had to cut you out of your clothes in the bathtub, and at one point, I thought you were playing dead on me. Your eye looked right at me."
He chuckled, much to her relief. "I've heard it does that. Sorry."
"Don't let me interrupt. Your right eye is a fake." She settled back on her elbows so they lay opposite one another, and waited for him to go on.
"Vicious and I were – wait, back up." He looked at her closely. "Did Vicious ever tell you about my father?"
"No. But I know who he was. Mao told me they were partners."
"Okay, I'll skip ahead. I went to school on Jupiter from the time I was twelve until I was sixteen. When I came home, Mao partnered me with Vicious."
She raised her eyebrows. "You were sixteen? How old was he?"
"About the same, I guess. I've never asked him, but I think he's close to my age. He showed up and started running errands for Mao about a month before I came home from school.
"Anyway, I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps, so to speak, when I came back. So Mao paired me up with Vicious and, since neither of us was publicly associated with the Red Dragon yet, he had us go out to try and infiltrate the White Tiger street gang. We probably had a week in on the job, living in a rented apartment down on Alacrois street, when a White Tiger team ambushed us. Not the kids we'd been talking to, either."
Julia did her best to keep her expression neutral, though the threads of his story and Vicious' began to come together in her mind.
"They captured me, and Vicious got loose and I told him to run. But when he did, no one followed him. Next thing I knew I was in some kind of doctor's office."
He stopped, looking up at the ceiling. "Spike?" Julia prompted, shifting to sit a bit higher. "Stay with me."
"Sorry. They... they knew who I was, who my father was. They asked me questions, and I ignored them, and they took my eye. That's what I was dreaming about when I woke up."
She sat up and wrapped her elbows around her knees. "They 'took' it?"
He made a claw with his right hand and held it up, trying to smile. "Plucked it right out."
"Oh, god," she said, and brought her hand up to her mouth, feeling sick.
"Vicious went to Mao, and Mao sent a team to pick me up. But he sent Vicious along to kill me if I had talked."
She swallowed, eyeing him carefully. The parallels to Vicious' story bordered on disturbing. "You're still here."
"I didn't talk. He took me out alive himself, after he was convinced of it. And so began our life of crime." He took a deep breath, wincing and reaching for the bandages on his left side.
"Did Vicious ever tell you about his father?" Julia bit her lip.
Spike frowned. "What do you mean?"
"His father. Before he joined the Syndicate."
"No. Did he tell you my dad took him in?"
Her eyes widened. "No." She let the idea sink in. "After... your eye?"
"Yeah. I think he said, 'You have brought me back my son, so I will be your father.'" He scoffed, staring up at the ceiling again.
"You make it sound like a bad experience."
"It wasn't, at the time. But Vicious always said I owed him my life. When my father died, I realized we were even. I'd shared him, in the last months of his life, with Vicious."
"He never told me that. Neither did Mao."
Spike shrugged with his uninjured shoulder. "It was April when I got the cyber eye, and it was July when he died. Long enough for Vicious to get serious about the Syndicate, though."
"You've been partners for, what, five years? Six years?"
"Almost seven." He looked down. "But the two after Dad died, I didn't really have my head in the game. Doohan gave me the Swordfish for my sixteenth birthday."
She nodded. "Annie told me you used to race."
"I just wanted to die. Go out in a three-G tailspin." He met her eyes and stopped when he saw her expression. "It's all in the past. It's not important now."
She rubbed a hand over her face. "Of course it is."
"No matter what I did, I kept winning and not dying. Eventually, it got old. I came back, and Vicious petitioned to keep me as his partner, even though plenty of others had surpassed me in favor with the Van during that time. And then he told me he owed him again." He slumped, sighing. "I'm worn out."
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have kept you up." An awkward silence stretched out between them.
"I'm glad you did. You were right, I feel better for having talked about it. Not that it makes it any less awful."
She watched him for a moment. "You should try to go back to sleep."
"Actually, I need to try and get up." He groaned and rolled onto his right side, instantly breaking out into a sweat.
"Whatever you need, I can get it for you." She put a hand on his shoulder, but he shook his head.
"Bathroom," he replied. "Gonna have to do it myself."
She blushed, though he didn't notice. "Let me help you get in there, at least."
He tugged ineffectively at the blankets, and then looked up at her wide- eyed. "What am I wearing?"
"A towel. At least you were when I brought you in here," she replied, and felt a little guilty. "I can find you a pair of pants, but you'll probably need help getting them on."
He lay back and groaned. "I had successfully blocked the mental image of you cutting me out of my clothes until just now."
She rummaged in the dresser and finally came up with a pair of Vicious' sweats. "Here," she said, "I'm sorry. I really didn't have a choice."
He smiled back at her. "I know. It's just that none of my fantasies about you undressing me included my being unconscious at the time."
She stood staring at him.
"That was a joke." He tried to broaden the smile.
"No it wasn't." She laughed, in spite of herself. "Okay, it was funny, I'll give you that."
"Good. Now turn around." She obeyed, and after a few moments' struggle, he was still.
"All right."
She turned back to find him sitting up on the edge of the bed, pale again. "Are you sure you can do this?"
He nodded, too winded to speak, and she braced herself to carry his weight, but he managed to stand, using her shoulder only to balance. He looked down at her and smiled. "You take good care of me. I'm going to owe you."
Indecision gripped her when Julia saw Annie's shop number on the comm. screen. She knew she wasn't supposed to talk to anyone, but Annie would be beside herself with worry if she hadn't heard any news. While she wrestled with whether to answer, the call went to messaging.
"Who was that?" Spike asked, his voice faint.
"Annie." The message alert beeped, and she dialed as she returned to the bedroom so Spike could hear it as well.
"Julia, honey," Annie began, her face neutral, "tell your patient there are no refunds on rent, so he'd better pull through. And if you need anything, call for a delivery. Just list what you want and I'll send a runner around to meet you at the bakery. That's all." The screen went blank.
Spike nodded. "Good. I was afraid no one would tell her."
"Me too. Mao wouldn't keep her in the dark, though." She eyed him critically; he had gone pale again, and his breathing was shallow. "How do you feel, really?"
He closed his eyes. "Thin. Exhausted. I could keep whining, but it takes too much effort."
"I prescribe another glass of water and another Percocet," she said gently. "Much as I like the company, you need to rest."
"Where did you find that stuff?" he groaned. "No real pharmacies around here?"
"Without a prescription or a trip downtown, it's the best you'll get."
"I'm not complaining. Good dreams, so far." He was fading out again, and she helped him down another pill before he lost the last of his strength.
"You'll be here?" he mumbled as she pulled the blankets higher.
"Sleep," she replied, and he had nothing more to say.
***
He drifted again, trying to get back to that pool hall, but his mind had other plans. He was standing in his father's office, sixteen, the day he received his first assignment.
"I have reservations about this," his father said, and Spike felt an ache seeing his face again, hearing him speak more clearly than he could recall in conscious thought. "I do not think you should put yourself in harm's way to prove your bravery. It is not in question."
"We're just going out to talk trash. I can take care of myself," Spike replied, all bravado.
"As I said, that is not in question." His father looked down at the school discharge papers on the blotter in front of him, and Spike braced himself, but no reprimand came. Instead, he went on, "I hope what you learned over the last four years will stay with you in the coming ones. The book lessons, and the life lessons."
Spike nodded, mute.
"Vicious is impetuous, from what I have seen, but he will not be a liability. I think you are well matched. Just don't turn your claws on one another when you have no one else to tussle with." His brown eyes sparkled. "Save that for the gym."
"I don't fight with my friends," Spike said mildly. "We got along well enough at Mao's."
His father rose and came around the desk to embrace him: a head taller, though Spike towered over every other boy his age. He wanted to say so many things now, he realized, but the time had passed and he could only think them while the memory blurred, fading into another scene.
He and Vicious stood back to back, ringed by a circle of older street toughs. The metallic ringing sound of Vicious drawing his katana distracted him for a split second, long enough for someone to cuff him in the side of the head, and he saw black spots as he fell toward the sidewalk. He tucked and rolled, clipping another attacker with his heel as he extended a leg. He underestimated his opponents, though, and came up out of the roll into the barrel of a military-issue G19.
Rough hands pulled his arms behind his back, wrenching his shoulders so he had no leverage. He saw Vicious squirm his way out of another hold, slashing with his sword, his face grim.
"Run!" he shouted, and Vicious hesitated for a split second. "NOW!"
He looked around, confused – there were at least a dozen White Tigers in the street, but none of them pursued Vicious. He was about to ask what they wanted when the butt of a gun connected with the base of his skull, and then he was spiraling down, forward through time again.
That small, conscious part of his brain rebelled with all its strength; he did not want to go where this was headed next. Voices, low, the pinch of a needle in his arm, a cold rush through his muscles as they stopped obeying his attempts to struggle... and then the harsh white glow of a medical spotlight.
"Spike Spiegel." He tried to turn, see who was speaking, but the light was too bright and his head seemed to be in a vise – no chance of movement between the drug and the restraint.
"Prodigal son of the right-hand man to Mao Yenrai. A Dragon whelp."
He let the inertia take over, willing his face to relax, trying not to respond to the identification. He'd been away four years, never been involved in Syndicate business – but to acknowledge they were correct went against everything he had been taught all his life.
"There is no point in denying your identity. Your DNA betrays you. And you will betray your own blood if you want your life."
He closed his eyes, exhaling, settling in for the wait. These men were no different than the bullies from school, thinking they could use pain to make him submit to their will. He did not have his lightning reflexes or surprising strength here, but he had years of training and a haughty disdain for any attempt to rule him by force.
"Tell me the address of the home where you eat meals with Mao Yenrai."
When he looked into the harsh light again, a metal instrument appeared in his field of vision, descending toward his right eye. He tried to flinch, but it was as though his body belonged to someone else; only the muscles of his eye worked, rolling frantically to avoid the apparatus.
"Your death is a long way off on the horizon yet, Spike Spiegel. If you are bound to get there, you will have to endure the ride." Mechanical whirring – hands in surgical gloves – blinking sent a shooting pain through his eyelids where they were pinned open.
"For what you hoped to see, we will take your spying eye."
With every ounce of strength and concentration, he willed himself to cry out; he could not go through the wrenching pain, the horrible sounds, the disorienting flashes when his optic nerve stopped receiving a signal...
And he sucked in a desperate gulp of air, snapping awake, seeing the ceiling above him with a bar of faint light that made its way through the curtains, his heart pounding until he thought he would vomit.
"Oh, god." He breathed through his nose, swallowing hard.
"Spike?" Julia stumbled in the dark of the living room, and then her blurry shadow appeared in the doorway. "What happened?"
He tried a few times before finding his voice. "Bad dream."
She came to sit beside him, turning on the bedside lamp. Even in its faintly yellow light, he looked ashen, his eyes wild, sweat beading on his forehead. He stretched his arm out and she took his hand, watching him but unsure what to say.
"No more drugs," he croaked out.
"Okay..." she moved from the chair to the edge of the bed, putting her other hand on his forehead. "Do you remember what it was about?"
"Too well."
"Do you want to tell me about it? My mother used to make me tell her my bad dreams, so I could hear how impossible they sounded aloud."
He managed a wry smile. "This one really happened, but I've been telling myself it was a dream ever since."
The look of concern on her face marred her features, and Spike sighed, wondering if she might be right.
"Hey," he said softly, "Get me a glass of water, and I'll try it your way."
When she returned, he had managed to prop himself up on his right elbow, and she helped him adjust the pillows so he could look at her without moving his head. "How long have I been out?" he asked.
"It's almost morning. A good twelve hours, at least."
"Huh. It always bothers me, how I think I started dreaming the second I went to sleep, but the time never matches up." He rubbed his eyes and winced.
"My right eye is a fake," he began.
"I figured that out just in time to keep from slugging you," she replied. He gave her a puzzled look, and she went on after a deep breath of her own. "I had to cut you out of your clothes in the bathtub, and at one point, I thought you were playing dead on me. Your eye looked right at me."
He chuckled, much to her relief. "I've heard it does that. Sorry."
"Don't let me interrupt. Your right eye is a fake." She settled back on her elbows so they lay opposite one another, and waited for him to go on.
"Vicious and I were – wait, back up." He looked at her closely. "Did Vicious ever tell you about my father?"
"No. But I know who he was. Mao told me they were partners."
"Okay, I'll skip ahead. I went to school on Jupiter from the time I was twelve until I was sixteen. When I came home, Mao partnered me with Vicious."
She raised her eyebrows. "You were sixteen? How old was he?"
"About the same, I guess. I've never asked him, but I think he's close to my age. He showed up and started running errands for Mao about a month before I came home from school.
"Anyway, I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps, so to speak, when I came back. So Mao paired me up with Vicious and, since neither of us was publicly associated with the Red Dragon yet, he had us go out to try and infiltrate the White Tiger street gang. We probably had a week in on the job, living in a rented apartment down on Alacrois street, when a White Tiger team ambushed us. Not the kids we'd been talking to, either."
Julia did her best to keep her expression neutral, though the threads of his story and Vicious' began to come together in her mind.
"They captured me, and Vicious got loose and I told him to run. But when he did, no one followed him. Next thing I knew I was in some kind of doctor's office."
He stopped, looking up at the ceiling. "Spike?" Julia prompted, shifting to sit a bit higher. "Stay with me."
"Sorry. They... they knew who I was, who my father was. They asked me questions, and I ignored them, and they took my eye. That's what I was dreaming about when I woke up."
She sat up and wrapped her elbows around her knees. "They 'took' it?"
He made a claw with his right hand and held it up, trying to smile. "Plucked it right out."
"Oh, god," she said, and brought her hand up to her mouth, feeling sick.
"Vicious went to Mao, and Mao sent a team to pick me up. But he sent Vicious along to kill me if I had talked."
She swallowed, eyeing him carefully. The parallels to Vicious' story bordered on disturbing. "You're still here."
"I didn't talk. He took me out alive himself, after he was convinced of it. And so began our life of crime." He took a deep breath, wincing and reaching for the bandages on his left side.
"Did Vicious ever tell you about his father?" Julia bit her lip.
Spike frowned. "What do you mean?"
"His father. Before he joined the Syndicate."
"No. Did he tell you my dad took him in?"
Her eyes widened. "No." She let the idea sink in. "After... your eye?"
"Yeah. I think he said, 'You have brought me back my son, so I will be your father.'" He scoffed, staring up at the ceiling again.
"You make it sound like a bad experience."
"It wasn't, at the time. But Vicious always said I owed him my life. When my father died, I realized we were even. I'd shared him, in the last months of his life, with Vicious."
"He never told me that. Neither did Mao."
Spike shrugged with his uninjured shoulder. "It was April when I got the cyber eye, and it was July when he died. Long enough for Vicious to get serious about the Syndicate, though."
"You've been partners for, what, five years? Six years?"
"Almost seven." He looked down. "But the two after Dad died, I didn't really have my head in the game. Doohan gave me the Swordfish for my sixteenth birthday."
She nodded. "Annie told me you used to race."
"I just wanted to die. Go out in a three-G tailspin." He met her eyes and stopped when he saw her expression. "It's all in the past. It's not important now."
She rubbed a hand over her face. "Of course it is."
"No matter what I did, I kept winning and not dying. Eventually, it got old. I came back, and Vicious petitioned to keep me as his partner, even though plenty of others had surpassed me in favor with the Van during that time. And then he told me he owed him again." He slumped, sighing. "I'm worn out."
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have kept you up." An awkward silence stretched out between them.
"I'm glad you did. You were right, I feel better for having talked about it. Not that it makes it any less awful."
She watched him for a moment. "You should try to go back to sleep."
"Actually, I need to try and get up." He groaned and rolled onto his right side, instantly breaking out into a sweat.
"Whatever you need, I can get it for you." She put a hand on his shoulder, but he shook his head.
"Bathroom," he replied. "Gonna have to do it myself."
She blushed, though he didn't notice. "Let me help you get in there, at least."
He tugged ineffectively at the blankets, and then looked up at her wide- eyed. "What am I wearing?"
"A towel. At least you were when I brought you in here," she replied, and felt a little guilty. "I can find you a pair of pants, but you'll probably need help getting them on."
He lay back and groaned. "I had successfully blocked the mental image of you cutting me out of my clothes until just now."
She rummaged in the dresser and finally came up with a pair of Vicious' sweats. "Here," she said, "I'm sorry. I really didn't have a choice."
He smiled back at her. "I know. It's just that none of my fantasies about you undressing me included my being unconscious at the time."
She stood staring at him.
"That was a joke." He tried to broaden the smile.
"No it wasn't." She laughed, in spite of herself. "Okay, it was funny, I'll give you that."
"Good. Now turn around." She obeyed, and after a few moments' struggle, he was still.
"All right."
She turned back to find him sitting up on the edge of the bed, pale again. "Are you sure you can do this?"
He nodded, too winded to speak, and she braced herself to carry his weight, but he managed to stand, using her shoulder only to balance. He looked down at her and smiled. "You take good care of me. I'm going to owe you."