a/n: Well, apparently my monitor decided to get into the spirit of things and blew up three days ago. My office smells like ozone, and the cats are giving it a wide berth, but a replacement has finally been obtained and shows no signs of exploding, so perhaps I'll be able to write a bit more. As always, my thanks to readers and reviewers. Your suggestions and critiques are most appreciated.
Chapter 5.
There is a fine line between genius and insanity.
---
This is too much. You're taking over too much of my mind. You have to stop.
But I don't want to. Relax. It's better this way. Words rippled and flowed over her mind, into her lungs, around her tongue and between her teeth. Sounds issued forth without her permission.
You have to STOP! I am still in charge of my life! NOT YOU! Let go and let me out of this! A hint of laughter permeated the whisper in her mind. For a moment, it sounded almost like Kurz.
You've got to learn to relax. Give up. You're seriously outclassed here. Sensations like falling into color, drifting on a sea of math tossed her away from the surface of thought.
I'm going to drown! Panic. I WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN but she was lost, and knew it and just as the certainty that she'd never find her way back to herself entered the swirl of her identity, the voice stopped. Words stopped. Sweet breath like spearmint gum. Soft lips drawing breath and voice away from her. She saw the backs of her eyelids, and felt the crush of arms around her, the steady thump of a heart held next to her own. Yoshi...
He held her and looked at her, and she realized it had been worse this time. Sweat beaded her forehead, and her arms and legs felt shaky and unstable.
"Sit down. That's enough. You're pushing yourself too hard." He eased her onto the one good chair in the lab, and handed her a half-empty bottle of water, while fanning her with a sheaf of papers. She tried to give him a reassuring smile, but could feel her hands shaking on the bottle. She gave up, took a sip, choked, took a second sip and closed her eyes enjoying the feel of real plastic between her hands and genuine imitation leather beneath her rump.
"I'm okay."
"Like hell." He looked uncharacteristically angry.
"I have to do this."
"For him?"
She wanted to deny it, to say it was for them both, but at that moment, she simply wasn't sure. "I don't know. How far are we from completing this?" It was his turn to look nervous. He sat on the edge of the bench and glared at the project they were calling K-2.0.
"One session. One more session and one last test, and I'm calling it finished no matter what. You can't go on like this, and I can't go on watching you."
"Me?" she laughed, "What about you, mister hasn't-been-to-bed-in-a-week-and-probably-hasn't-eaten-in-two-days?"
"Three," he smirked, and they smiled at each other. "At this rate it will be a toss up of what's going to happen first; you going crazy or me dropping dead of neglect."
"Enough then. Time to go get food, and when we're done, we're both going home and sleeping and not coming back into this lab until after lunch tomorrow. And that's an order!"
"Too bad I'm not a soldier," he quickly covered it with a smile, "but I'll take your commands just this once."
-pilotintegritydirectlyproportionaltolambdadriverefficiencyindirectlyproportionaltomoleculardensityattheterminus.lambdacontainmentstronglyadvised-
---
The plan was not to attempt actual retrieval until such time as Sgt. Maj. Mao alerted him via radio. Even so, there was no excuse for wasting the time until that signal was given. Sousuke began by simply walking to the nurses station and inquiring after Kaname. He'd been politely informed that visiting hours were over for the day, but that Kaname would be allowed to meet with friends the following afternoon.
"May I leave flowers for her at this time?" His face was a strange mixture of seriousness and scrutiny, at which the duty nurse could only smile.
"Well, I don't suppose there would be any harm in it. She won't be able to read the card until tomorrow..."
"She's unable to read?"
"Oh, no, nothing like that. It's just that they had to take her off the medications for tonight so that her scan would be clear tomorrow, so she's been put in restraints." Seeing the look on the young man's face, the nurse hastened to reassure him. "It's nothing really. They just wrap these bracelets around her wrists to make sure she won't fall out of bed and hurt herself. The nurses are taking very good care of her."
"I see." Restraints could add to the amount of time it would take to liberate her. Even so, he was reasonably sure he had lock-picks or, if necessary, knives up to the task of freeing the patient. "Can you provide directions to the nearest florist?"
"Oh there's one down on the second floor, near the main desk. Lots of people buy flowers for their loved ones. They have some fairly nice arrangements." The nurse smiled in encouragement. Sousuke turned on his heel and proceeded to the florist... and twenty minutes later had a short-range video transmitter neatly arranged by Kaname's bedside in a basket of lavender chrysanthemums. That task accomplished, he'd retreated to the roof to await the signal, while monitoring his former friend's room.
The first sight through the monitor had been surprisingly disturbing. Kaname was lying on a hospital bed with raised sides. Her wrists were indeed wrapped in padded cuffs, buckled tightly in leather bracers and secured by nylon straps to the sides of the bed, but further restraints – namely a strap securing her waist to the bed and one across her chest, just beneath the shoulders – were also in evidence. She was dressed in blue pajamas and covered by a cream-coloured blanket. Her long, blue hair had been bound in a thick braid and was currently arranged on one side of her face while a medical technician dabbed blood off the head wound on the other. Electrodes were placed in several locations on her head and chest. The technician seemed to be talking, but Kaname showed no sign of hearing him. Sousuke watched in appalled fascination as the technician finished up, then reached beneath the bed to produce a familiar stuffed doll. He placed it beside the young woman in the bed before walking out of camera range.
Part of Sousuke's mind was fully aware of the necessity of restraints when dealing with potentially violent individuals. He was even relatively certain that the arrangement in which Kaname found herself would not be uncomfortable. Even so, something in him wanted nothing more than to run down to the room and free her. Kaname hated not being in control, and the fact that she had not been actively protesting her confinement affirmed more than any previous information, the reality that she was not well.
An hour drifted past as he watched and waited. Kaname seemed to doze for a while, and Sousuke performed a complete check of his ropes simply to remain awake. The sun was ambling towards the western horizon; not actively setting as yet, but on its way. A number of pigeons settled in to roost along the ledge. The young sergeant's mind wandered, and for lack of anything better to do, he retrieved the Mediterranean chart from his pocket to peruse again. The rest of the backpack was currently stowed securely in the carry compartment that had been mounted to his M-9 for this assignment. That addition was a relatively recent one, developed to allow A-S pilots greater maneuverability when performing rescue operations. He remembered vividly the time in Khanka when he'd had to carry both Kurz and Kaname and had wound up flinging the young woman sky high in order to deal with a threat. Having a module designed for holding a passenger was a vast improvement.
The chart was cause for concern. The positions had been charted on average once every other day. Looking more closely, there were several points which included small arrows. The arrows were directed not along the submarine's route, but generally southward in the direction of northern Africa. Deployments? Had she shared this information with anyone? Had anyone helped her to obtain it? He knew these would be among the questions she would have to answer upon being safely removed to the custody of MITHRIL.
At 18:47, Kaname abruptly began thrashing against her restraints. Her mouth opened in yells which he could faintly hear. Almost immediately, a nurse entered the room and moved to check the monitors. Whatever he saw must have reassured him, since his posture relaxed and he walked beyond the frame for several minutes. When he returned, he fastened some sort of mask over her eyes. It looked rather like a sleeping pillow, but with earphones, and it quieted Kaname instantly. Sousuke vaguely remembered reading an article concerning mind-control via color and sound therapy and wondered whether this might be something similar. Kaname's lips moved soundlessly on the screen, but she seemed merely to be speaking. The nurse occasionally spoke as well, and something about his posture began to bother Sousuke. When the man began undoing Kaname's restraints, the suspicion became too great to ignore. He took stock of the deepening twilight. It was not yet dark enough to shield his movements as much as he'd like, and he'd yet to receive word from Mao, still...
---
Survivability radius within the psi field is limited to the 80 effective radius of the lambda driver. Beyond this radius, integrity cannot be maintained due to deliberate lack of cohesion of the chosen string. The miniaturization of the lambda driver reduced its effective range to skin-only, string radius approximately fifty centimeters...
...but if the driver were enlarged...
...current mecha structural strength insufficient to support full-sized lambda driver weight; notable attempts to support structural weight with lambda energy, while revolutionary, are flawed by certain obvious drawbacks. Alteration of Saya to incorporate transsteel within the structural components will compensate for the additional weight. This alloy will require the following elements...
NO! I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU ANYMORE! I WILL NOT WORK ON SAYA AGAIN! I'm a normal girl. I was never meant to be a scientist. I cannot do this. I'm going to forget this. "I'M GOING TO FORGET THIS! I'M GOING TO FORGET YOU AND I'M GOING TO FORGET HIM!" She choked as alloy mix-ratios hammered her brain, and yelled simply to alleviate the feeling of suffocating. She had to find the surface. She had to escape this nightmare, and yet, the compulsion to concentrate was so strong, so seductive. All she had to do was listen, and everything would be better. If only she would surrender herself to it, she would never have to face reality or the past again. She thrashed against the soothing oblivion her mind was promising. She felt bound, trapped, tied, unable to free herself and the voice in her mind whispered its soothing horrors with something akin to smugness. If only she could break its hold, find a distraction. In her mind, she hurled herself against a charred wall, tears streaming down her face, fingers smeared with blood from an artery which would never feel a pulse again. NOOOOOO!
/Remote access initiated. Please state your authorization./ The contact was as much mental as auditory. Familiar feelings of connection cut through her memories, shaking the hold of the Whispers and drawing her, if not back to reality, at least closer to it.
"Saya?"
/Authorization incorrect. Please state your authorization./
"K-1.0-I-don't-speak-otaku."
/Authorization accepted. Welcome Kaname. How may I be of assistance?/
"Saya? Is that really you?"
/Affirmative. Identifier code K-2.0. Current system status, booting. Circuit integrity check under way./
"Who accessed the boot? And could you please utilize Yoshi's non-otaku subroutine?"
/Sure thing, Kaname. Joel-san is here with me, with one other humanoid thermal reading, most likely a person. Should I tell him you're on line?/
"No. I don't want to bother him."
/What operations would you like to access today? Current lack of pilot restricts operations to data transmission and playback./
"Umm, could you show me the lab and Joel-san and his guest?"
/Negative. The lens caps are on. Sorry./
"How about playback, then. Umm, two weeks ago, the trial run we did out to that beach in the Andemans?"
/Sure thing, Kaname. Playback beginning./ The scene before her eyes switched and she found herself looking at the white expanse of a pristine beach off the coast of India. She felt a curious sense of deja vu, gazing around her at the azure waters, breeze-ruffled palms and baked sand. The playback continued, and she walked along the shore. The sound of Yoshi's voice over the long-range comm unit came as a shock, but she listened, achingly, as he spoke to her younger self. They talked about the test data. They worried over the batteries. They speculated on what sort of a vacation they could take to this island, later, when they had spare time. She'd reached the point of playback where she'd found the sand-dollar, when the transmission cut and was replaced with Saya's usual blue interface window.
/Kaname, I'm being attacked. I can't maintain the playback for you./ Kaname felt a sinking dread hit her in the stomach. Instinctively, she tried to sit up, and found she could. Somewhere, very distant, a man's voice was saying something about advanced capabilities. What? Then Saya was speaking again. /Kaname, multiple weapons detected. They're firing. I cannot adequately record the footage./ They're going to destroy Yoshi's project. Maybe I should just let her go.
"Don't worry about the footage, Saya."
/Pilot in jeopardy./ The voice was as unemotional as ever, but in Kaname's mind, it took on an almost pleading quality. Already, whispers were calculating material stress tolerances and armor resistance. Data streamed into Kaname's awareness of exactly how much (or little) it would take to kill Saya's pilot. What if it were Joel?
"Saya, who is your pilot?" Suddenly, Kaname felt awake, aware and terrified. Adrenaline patched up her differences with her second self, and somewhere, she felt herself crawling out of bed.
/Sorry, reverting to standard communications subroutine. Current pilot: Sergeant Major Melissa Mao./
"Mao?!" When had MITHRIL gotten involved? "Listen, Saya, try to inform her of your capabilities. Tell her that the interface is very similar to the M-9, but that she has no weapons. Running is her best option. The armor you've got will save her from most regular pistol fire, but anything larger could kill her. Oh, and remind her to watch out for hits to those coolant tubes. Can you get her to remove one of the lens caps so I can see what's going on?"
/Affirmative./ There was a moment of disorientation and suddenly, half of her vision contained a view of the roof of the physics building. This in turn was partially obscured by the figure of an M-9 bearing down on Saya, monomolecular cutter in hand. Kaname's foot touched the floor as her mind reeled. Melissa is going to die! Kaname felt her crouch and roll away from a swipe of the giant knife. For one instant, she saw a large helicopter in the air above them, just out of range of the M-9. Just a little too far. Whose helicopter was it?
"Saya, is that helicopter friendly?" There was a pause as the machine put the query to its pilot, and the pilot performed another acrobatic escape. Somewhere in the wash of terror at experiencing, vicariously, David's battle with Goliath, Kaname wondered idly why the M-9 hadn't resorted to guns yet.
/Affirmative. That is the pilot's directional objective./ It was possible. Mao was at least passingly familiar with lambda drivers, and it didn't take much to believe in your own existence strongly enough to continue existing. Kaname wished there were a way she could communicate directly with the pilot. Unfortunately, this wasn't a comm unit; just the remote access headset to K-2.0's A.I., Saya. The world view in the screen spun, and damage reports began to appear in the blue interface window. Something about the letters and numbers of the reports threatened to drag Kaname back under the possessive tide of the Whispers. She could almost feel the pain as the M-9 gripped Saya's left calf with crushing force.
"Saya, please release advanced capabilities. For Kaname Chidori and Sergeant Major Melissa Mao, the distance is not a problem." The view lurched as the M-9 began to drag Saya toward the side of the building.
/Please repeat authorization./
"Please release advanced capabilities. For Kaname Chidori and Sergeant Major Melissa Mao, the distance is not a problem. Activate lambda driver, initiate psi field generation, and upon completion, line-of-sight to the helicopter. Please explain your actions to Sergeant Major Melissa Mao before the jump. Survive, escape, evade."
/Affirmative. Terminating remote access./ The screens went dark, and Kaname found herself effectively blind-folded, standing beside her hospital bed. Memories and realities roiled together in the afterimage of stress. I'm going to forget this...
"Thank you, Miss Chidori. Now if you will just follow me?" Someone tugged the headset from her eyes and ears. She saw a gun pointed in her direction, and an unfamiliar face above the collar of a nurse's lab coat. She'd been betrayed. The man smiled, and gestured with the gun toward the door. Her heart pounded in her chest as vicarious danger became all too real, when suddenly, the window behind them burst inward. In the moment's confusion, Kaname dodged past the man and ran out the door.
---
Sousuke received Kurz's news of the ambush as he was repacking the chart and his gear. Kurz himself had retrieved his M-9 and was in the process of chasing the stolen A-S up the side of the physics building. He'd been unable to reach Melissa since her initial transmission.
"She said for you to get you-know-who as far from here as possible, ASAP. I don't know if she meant the airstrip or not, but one way or another, get her out of there and we'll re-connect whenever we can."
"Affirmative. Are you certain I should not meet with you there? Your odds of success would improve greatly." He wound his rappelling line through the figure eight and prepared to go over the side.
"Shit! They've got a helicopter. I've got to go. Just get her out of here or the Captain's going to be royally pissed."
"Understood. Over and out," and he stepped backwards over the side. Three bounces saw him level with Kaname's window. He had an instant to size up the man holding a gun on the now free-standing young woman, before his heels slammed through the glass and he dropped into the room. He caught a glimpse of Kaname running through the door into the clinic corridor, even as he leveled his gun at the assailant. The "nurse" fired first, and Sousuke dove behind the bed, putting the bulk of it between them. Hitting the floor, he shot for the man's legs. Two bullets thudded harmlessly into the floor, before the third impacted the man's left foot.
The man let out a cry, but pulled the bedside table over and ducked behind it, shooting down, through the mattress in Sousuke's direction. Foam and bits of bedding flew. Sousuke rolled sideways, away from the fire, then pulled himself out from under the bed, perpendicular to it. Emerging behind the side table, his eyes met the "nurse's" for an instant before he dispatched the surprised man with a shot to the head. He heard yelling in the hallway, but paused momentarily to grab the strange headset from where the man had dropped it, and the chart from the end of Kaname's bed. He shoved both into the pack on his back before running in pursuit of his true quarry.
In the hallway, there was pandemonium. Patients were screaming in confusion and the nurses were trying to keep everyone in their rooms while attempting to get a hold of security. Guessing Kaname would run via the most direct route, Sousuke ran straight down the hall, past the nurses station and out the clinic's front door. He dismissed the elevators in favor of the stairs automatically, and two minutes later emerged onto the quiet street in front of the complex. There was no sign of Kaname. Might she still be in the building, hoping to hide rather than run? Such a strategy seemed more passive than was her nature. He tried to remember the most direct route to the subway from this clinic. It seemed reasonable she would try to use public transportation to put distance between herself and the threat. The quickest way lead back through the garden behind the facility, so he turned and ran back, through a breezeway to the small park in the center of the four building complex.
It was difficult to distinguish colors in the growing darkness, but he thought he spied a flash of blue on the far side of the park. He'd forgotten how fast Kaname could run when she felt like it. Keeping watch to either side for possible further attackers, Sousuke ran in the direction of the sighting. Police sirens could be heard in the distance, possibly responding to the incident at the clinic, but possibly not. It was a large city, after all. Within the park, sounds had a strangely muted quality, and the feeling of tranquil nature seemed decidedly incongruous against the charged emotions of the chase. He took a direct path through the trees at the center of the park, and was surprised, upon emerging to find Kaname crouched behind a shrub, her back to him, assessing the breezeway through the far building toward the street. It seemed unusually cautious for her.
How best to approach? She was breathing heavily and did not appear to have heard his approach. He briefly considered simply knocking her over from behind and hand-cuffing her, but something in his conscience wouldn't condone that idea. She was scared, injured, and most importantly, his friend. Switching the gun to his left hand, he cautiously approached her, stretched out his right hand, and grasped her right shoulder.
"Ka--" was as far as he got. With an agility he'd never suspected, she whirled counterclockwise and up, driving her left elbow into his side and following it with her right knee as both her hands grabbed his gun arm and twisted the weapon from his grasp. In the space of an instant, he found himself on the ground, Kaname's knees on either side of his chest and his own weapon pointed at his head. Her eyes, as she looked at him held no trace of recognition, but rather a curious emptiness. Her finger tightened on the trigger and he felt a burning pain in his ear as a bullet grazed him on the way to the ground. In that instant, he rolled beneath her and shoved himself away, preparing to disarm and subdue her, when suddenly her eyes widened and she stared at the gun in her hand.
"Glock...18?" She looked at him in confusion and a tear ran unnoticed down her right cheek. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted.
---
Kurz dug through the wreckage of the (once again) demolished physics lab. A few tries on his comm unit had pinpointed Mao's location (or at least her comm unit's) under a collapsed support column. He had to get her out of here before the cops swarmed in and MITHRIL's cover was blown. For all that they'd had negotiations with higher school officials, the detection of MITHRIL soldiers or technology in the aftermath of a battle was a big no no. And if Kurz concentrated really hard on that thought, the dreadful guilt of having lost the damn project and failed to rescue his team leader could almost be sidelined a little. How the hell was he going to explain it? He'd had that sucker right in his hand. It was right there, then it was gone. There was no way that thing could have broken his grip, so how? He tugged at a slightly larger chunk of concrete and heard a moan.
"Is that you, Melissa?" He quickened his pace, pulling pieces of concrete and plaster from the area and brushing dust from the sergeant major's emerging form.
"Weber, if you don't stop pawing me, you're gonna lose that hand." Mao's face was covered in blood and dust, one eye swollen shut. More blood was matted in her hair and her breathing sounded terrible, but she was unmistakably alive. "God, I could use a beer or five. Did you stop them?"
"They got away. Helicopter on the roof." His jaw was set in a grim line as he finished freeing up her legs and helped her to sit.
"Shit," she winced, whether in pain or disappointment, he couldn't tell. "And you didn't shoot them down because of the risk of civilian casualties, right?"
"Yeah. How bad did I screw up?"
"Pretty bad. Not that I can say much." She looked around the room. "Those assholes got the lab assistant, too, and all I could do was sit here under a bunch of concrete." A fit of coughing overtook her as she choked on the dust. When she finally finished, she turned back to Kurz. "Well, there's nothing more to do here. You wanna help me up?" He obliged and half helped, half carried her out of the building into the evening air.
"We should probably get you to a hospital. You look like hell." The autumn moonlight was less than kind to the Sergeant Major, and while Kurz was well aware of how tough she was, there were limits.
"Screw that. There's less paperwork to fill out on the de Danaan. I can make it there just fine," she coughed, spit, and then glared at him in challenge.
"Don't be an idiot. Could we at least hit the ER and get you patched up before we go?" He put on his most charming smile.
"Whatever." She allowed him to help her into the car she'd driven earlier that day, before pulling out her comm unit. "Urzu-7, this is Urzu-2, do you copy?"
"Urzu-7 here."
"Status report. Did you get the asset?" she managed before snarling at Kurz as he spun them somewhat faster than necessary around the parking garage ramps.
"Affirmative." Something in his voice sounded wrong.
"How is she?" Part of Mao wondered if she even wanted to know, given how this evening was progressing thus far.
"Unconscious." Well, it could have been worse.
"Is she one some sort of medication?"
"Negative. I believe her medications were all stopped this afternoon." Still that slight hesitation in his voice, as though there was something he was omitting.
"So what happened? Give us the rundown."
Sousuke gave a brief but detailed report of the events of the evening, but hesitated as he described the incident in the park. Finally, he simply said it: "at which point, she attempted to shoot me."
Kurz chuckled, "I've heard of some bad reunions with ex-girlfriends, but that's got to take the cake. So what, did you clock her?"
"Negative. She attempted to shoot me, was overwhelmed and fainted. I've placed her in the carry compartment and we are currently en route to the air field."
"Are you injured, Sergeant?" Mao shot Kurz a look to silence him.
"Negative. She missed. I do not believe she truly intended to kill me."
"I've got to teach that girl how to shoot," murmured Kurz, seconds before Mao's fist struck him squarely in the shoulder.
