Chapter 14: Lost
Consciousness returned abruptly, and for the first few moments, Shalimar wished it hadn't. Her senses – feral and otherwise – had been on full alert when they had been attacked, and were now painfully stunned. There was a dull ringing in her ears and her eyes burned. Her nose and mouth felt like they were full of cotton.
Scanning the room, she found the origin of the problem. A grenade shell, a modified version of a gas dispersion canister, lay five feet away. Small plumes of smoke still emanated from the metal carcass, harmless now that the payload had been distributed.
Shalimar shook her head. Still trying to clear the fog. Brennan and Monica were lying to her left. Lisa, she already knew, was gone. It had been a trap, obviously. But why? And by whom?
When she felt her senses returning to normal, and the room stopped tilting, she crawled gingerly over to Brennan. "Brennan," she said softly, yet urgently. She shook his shoulder and heard him groan in response.
"Shal? What the hell happened?" He let Shalimar help him to his knees. He rubbed his temple as she moved to Monica's side, checking the young woman's vitals.
"A combination flash-concussion-gas grenade. She's still out cold. We should take her back to Sanctuary with us and have Jesse check her out." She stood and put her hands on her hips. "But that's not our biggest problem. Lisa wasn't affected by the gas. She walked right out. She had to have been in on it somehow."
"Maybe that's part of her…of her…p-powers," Brennan managed to say in a tight, hesitant voice.
Shalimar's brow furrowed at Brennan's strange tone of voice. Given that he was already conscious, the gas should have worn off by now. "Bren? Are you okay?" she asked, turning to face him.
She never got all the way around. Halfway, her senses detected something swinging toward her head, and she reflexively ducked. Quickly, she swiveled around and got into a defensive position to face her attacker.
"Brennan?!" She ducked a second swing at her head. "What the hell are you doing?!"
His only response was a grunt as he sent a punch low, toward her gut. Deftly she avoided the clenched fist. "Brennan! Snap out of it!"
Her words had no effect. The tall elemental continued to attack her. First with his fists, then with his feet. She managed to avoid most of the attacks, but then one of them grazed her shoulder, sending her off balance. Knowing she was vulnerable, and that she had to reset, Shalimar leapt over his head, twisting her body as she did so, neatly avoiding an electrical blast Brennan sent her way. Her peripheral vision noticed the shower of sparks and smoke coming from the computer panel he had destroyed instead. Her balance restored, she swung around and kicked out, her foot landing on the lower ribs of his left side, left unprotected by his outstretched arm. Now he was off balance, and she was on the attack, landing two punches and another kick to his midsection. He retaliated with an uppercut, followed by a roundhouse. Something was clearly wrong, she knew. Not only that he was attacking her, but also how he was doing it. Brennan was attacking and defending himself wildly, his arms flailing, sending electrical blasts into the air haphazardly, blasts she could easily avoid. He was usually a much more controlled fighter, which told her that, somehow, he wasn't in control of his own body.
They exchanged a few more attacks, Brennan still wild, flailing, not caring where his lightening-like bursts of electricity landed. Shalimar was pulling her punches, trying to disable rather than kill, which was what Brennan seemed intent on doing. Complicating the fight even more was the fact that she had to protect the still unconscious Monica. She wasn't able to use the terrain to her advantage; she had to lead the fight to the unoccupied part of the safehouse, running through the hallway, knocking a bookshelf over in hopes of slowing him. The move protected Monica, but limited Shalimar's options. "Brennan! Knock it off! Wake up, you jackass!"
Still, her words had no effect. He managed to corner her against a wall and sent a harsh punch straight toward her head. She ducked in the nick of time, and crawled out through his legs, taking advantage of her smaller frame. He whirled, furious. She backed away, squaring and resetting herself. She saw him growl, and then, using his powers for propulsion, charge towards her in a flying roundhouse kick. Recognizing his attack as one he had practiced countless times in the dojo, Shalimar glided one step to her left. Reaching out, she used every ounce of her coordination during the half second widow of opportunity to clamp down on and tightly grip Brennan's outstretched foot. In that same fluid movement, she added her strength to his own momentum and tossed him across the room. He landed hard against a couch, knocking it over, finally coming to a stop on the hard floor, where he lay still.
Shalimar waited. He didn't move. She approached cautiously. Brennan still didn't move. Rather, the only movement was his breathing. Reaching his side, she knelt down slowly and reached a hand out hoping that whatever had controlled him had worn off and that he would be back to his normal outlandish self.
It hadn't. As soon as her hand made contact with his shoulder, he spun around and sent a blast right at her chest. Instinct took over, and she moved to avoid the charge, but she wasn't fast enough. His attack landed square on her shoulder, sending her spinning and flying across the room. Her body slammed hard against the far wall, bouncing off and falling to the ground. And for the second time that day, she fell into the depths of unconsciousness.
"Hey, Lex. Any luck?" Jesse asked as he strode into the computer lab.
She glanced over her shoulder. "Hi, Jesse. Where're David and Katie?"
"They're in the kitchen, scrounging up some lunch." He dropped a kiss on her head and began massaging her tense shoulders with his strong hands. "Did that lead of yours ever pan out?"
Lexa didn't quite hear the question. Jesse's fingers were magical. She hadn't realized how tense she had been. And the Jesse's relaxing presence didn't hurt either. "Hmm?"
Jesse gave a low laugh, and, with her back against his chest, she could feel it reverberating through her own body. It sent warmth and shivers sailing through her body. "Are you that easily distracted, love?" he said, noticing her reaction. "Next time we get in an argument, just remind me to give you a massage."
Inwardly, Lexa was pleased with such a suggestion, but she knew she couldn't let him get away with such a taunt. Reluctantly, she pulled herself away and turned around to slap his arm.
He laughed again, and allowed her to pull away. Though they had been together for several months, she was still a bit skittish when it came to displays of affection outside the bedroom. He sat down beside her at the counter. "Have you found anything?"
Lexa brought up a new window on the screen. "Nope, just more questions. Look at this. There's almost nothing on Lisa Osman in the database. Name, age, mutant category. That's about it. There's nothing about what her powers are, if she's got any family, why her structure was altered in the first place. Nothing."
"That's strange. Have you tried the research team journals? Private records?"
"Yes and yes." She flung herself back in her seat, frustrated. "I've hit a brick wall with this."
"Well, we could try searching the entire dominion database for her name."
"Are you kidding? That thing is huge! It'd take weeks. We don't have that kind of time."
"Not if we restrict the parameters. Focus on the structured feedback systems and remove the confirmation cycles. Then we run the search sequence a few times and hopefully we'll filter out something."
Lexa turned to face him and smiled. "You just think you're so smart," she said sarcastically.
"I don't think, I know," he countered, running the fingers of his left hand through her hair, a smile gracing his own features. He dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose.
"Well if you're so smart, how come it took you four days to realize I replaced your shampoo with flea dip?"
"Hey, hey. That was below the belt. You know I was busy working on refitting that old RTS-385 to make the new Helix. I was too tired to notice. Now, why was it you did that again?" His hand curled around her waist.
"You're the one who started it. You dumped bleach in to my load of dark laundry."
"I happen to think you look good in blue. But no matter how many times we asked, you just wouldn't get rid of all those black clothes. I had to take action," he said dramatically, striking a pose. "Besides, I paid you back. I took you shopping."
She poked him in the stomach and he smiled again. "So we're even now," he said.
"Sure, unless you decide to start something again."
"Oh, I'm gonna start something." He bent his head and kissed her. Eagerly, she kissed him back, running her hands along his shoulders and back, for once ignoring the fact that they were in an open room where someone could walk in on them any minute. She felt him respond, as well as the countertop digging into her hip as he pushed against her.
They were so involved with each other they almost didn't hear the incessant beeping of the communicator. Reluctantly, Jesse pulled away. "I don't know if that was good timing or bad timing," he said as he checked the monitor. His full attention was drawn immediately. "It's from the New York safehouse. Audio only. The transmission's pretty bad. Let me see if I can clear it up." His fingers flew over the keys for a moment. "Monica? Shalimar? What's wrong?"
"Jesse? Thank goodness, I've been trying to get through for almost five minutes."
Lexa frowned at the poor quality of the transmission. "Monica. What's wrong with the video uplink?"
"Someone attacked us with a flash concussion grenade. When I woke up, the communications panel was fried pretty good. I managed to patch the radio together and I wasn't even sure I'd done it right until I got through to you."
"Where are Brennan and Shalimar? Is Lisa safe?"
"Jesse, I'm sorry, I don't know what happened. When I woke up, Brennan and Lisa were gone."
"What about Shalimar?" Jesse couldn't stop his voice from rising with concern for the woman he considered a sister.
Monica said nothing.
"Damn it, Monica. What about Shalimar?"
There was no response. The fuzzy static was gone and the connection was dead.
