Schuldich's fingers were knotted in his brilliant orange hair, a look of intense concentration on his sharp features. He looked almost pained, and when Sabbath stepped out of her room and into the living room, he gave her a look that would have frozen a pigeon in midair.
She glanced up and hiked a brow at him, obviously not understanding, and his teeth ground together as he growled, "If you're going to think kinky thoughts about our resident psychopath while fucking him senseless, would you MIND being quieter about it?"
She turned dark, tomato red and that improved Schuldich's mood just a bit as she at least had the decency to look incredibly sheepish. "Gomen," she murmured, moving skittishly toward the kitchen.
He sneered and waved a hand at her. "Oh, don't worry about it. I've seen him in much more compromising positions…" He smirked at her slightly, but she merely shrugged.
"You've also had him longer. Give us time."
He laughed and stood, slipping up behind her as she opened the refrigerator. The cooling unit had nothing to do with the shiver that made its way up her spine as he leaned in, hair brushing her cheek, and took a deep breath.
"You smell warm," he said smoothly. "And afraid. Don't tell me you've finally gotten some sense knocked into you… or fucked into you, as it were."
She eyed him dryly. "I'm not afraid of you," she told him with an exasperated sigh,
"Of course you aren't. But you're afraid of him, now. Isn't it sad? You're just fractured up here." Long-fingered hands caressed her hair. "But he's shattered, a broken mirror, none of the fragments in the right places. You can understand him on a certain level, but his insanity goes even deeper than you're willing to go… and you're finally beginning to realize that."
She'd stiffened and he listened as she took his words, examined them, and considered them.
"This isn't your place either, is it? You don't even belong here, where everybody else is as crazy as you are."
"You just never give up, do you?" she wondered with a sigh as she extracted a single-serving bottle of milk and twisted the top off, turning away from the refrigerator and facing Schu directly. She was much smaller than him, and thus was staring at his chest. "Move."
He braced both hands against the fridge and leaned down, getting in her face, invading her comfort zone. "I don't think so. So you finally realized what a psycho he is. What do you do now? Try to run and he'll kill you… he kills everything he loves, sooner or later."
"He doesn't love," Sabbath told him with a shrug. "So I suppose, in all technicality, I shouldn't even have to worry."
"Technicalities are a dangerous thing to play with. This is Farf we're talking about."
"Farf and me," Sabbath reminded him. "Or are you just jealous because it isn't Farf and you?"
She couldn't have stopped the blow if she'd known it was coming. He was too fast. His hand smacked into her cheek, HARD, and his braced arm was the only thing that kept her from tumbling to the floor. The blow made her ears ring and her face numb and she realized as the dizziness left her that she would have one HELL of a bruise tomorrow.
"We're going to talk, princess," that nasal voice said into her ear. "Just you and me, right here, and right now. And you're going to tell me what I want to hear or you're not going to last the day. We can destroy The One on our own, don't you think? We don't need you."
"Then kill me and be done with it. I don't play games."
"No, you don't, do you? Everything you do is genuine. Which makes me wonder. Just how deeply ARE you in love with him, anyway?" He smirked slightly. "I feel your thoughts. I know your mind. You love him but you're starting to be terrified of him. Hm, what's this?" He pulled a memory from her thoughts and examined it with amusement. "Mmm, no, Farfie doesn't like to take 'no' for an answer, does he? What do you think, Sabbath? Can you fight him off when you need to do that? Can you restrain him when it comes to that? You're strong of mind but the mind isn't his playground. The body is. You're too weak where it counts."
"So I'm discovering," she told him bluntly. "But you're hardly the confidante I'd be looking for, so why even bother? You don't care if I live or die."
"No," he mused. "I don't. But…."
"But you care about Farf and you don't want me to hurt him?"
Schuldich scowled. "Not precisely the way I would put it."
She snorted. "Of course not. Believe me, Schuldich, if anybody hurts anybody here, it'll be one of y'all hurting me. Because I'm not an Eszet agent….
Yet
…. And I can't stop you. I am too weak, and that's my fault, but since I don't have the time or the inclination to rectify that at the moment, just leave me alone and let me do what I'm supposed to be doing. I wasn't trying to use him, but sex with Farfarello served a purpose and got us closer to our goal, so even YOU are going to have to accept it."
His eyes were narrowed. "Yet? What does that mean, 'yet'?"
She looked confused.
"Your thoughts said you weren't an Eszet agent YET. Planning on switching sides on us, liebchen?"
"I didn't mean literally," she told him, her tone scathing. "I meant that I'm not like you. But given how you seem to be rubbing off on me, that might not be the case for long."
"Liar," he accused evenly, straightening and releasing her, a thoughtful look in his eyes.
She shrugged. "None of your business anyway." She pushed off the fridge and slipped past him, but he wasn't trying to stop her. He was thinking, and thinking hard.
After a long moment, he turned and headed for the door behind which he could find one Bradley Crawford.
X-X-X
"And here I thought you didn't dare to step out of the house on your own."
Sabbath turned to meet the owner of that smooth, chill voice, smiling gratefully as Ice slid a Dr. Pepper across the worn and battered table to her. Around them, lights strobed and bodies writhed to a heavy base throb, but they had this table, this corner, to themselves. The tall, muscled Cryokinetic slid into the seat across from her, folding his hands and resting his elbows on the table. Light blue tattoos graced his shoulders and upper chest, and she could see them when he didn't bother to wear a shirt, like now. Like most of the time, in fact.
"I don't like the mess you've gotten yourself into, Sab," he said matter-of-factly, cutting straight to the point, for which she was grateful. "And I don't trust your friends."
She nodded. "I don't trust them either. But what choice do we have?"
"If that's all you're going to tell me, why call this meeting? Something on your mind?" He leaned back in his chair, sipping his ice water through a straw and propping his sandaled feet on the chair next to him.
She played with her own straw. The first swallow burned her throat. "You know me too well. I'm in trouble, Irilisan. And the hole gets deeper every time I turn around."
"Stop digging, then," he said dryly, tracing a finger through the beads of condensation on his glass.
"The deeper I dig, the more ground the rest of you have to stand on," she told him.
He snorted. "Ever the martyr. You disgust me sometimes, Sab, you really do. Do you EVER think about yourself or do you really believe you're so worthless that you don't deserve to have things turn out in your favor?"
She simply shrugged, and his eyes narrowed. An uncaring response was an indicator to him of just how deep she was in. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one," she told him. "You know as well as I do. There's no other choice. We don't have the numbers needed to punch through to the heart of The One. Schwarz will be the wild card we need."
"And after they've so generously killed our enemy for us?" Those unnaturally colored blue eyes bore into Sabbath, but she didn't squirm. She was used to Ice's gaze. "What then?"
"Then the Inconnu go to ground," she said quietly. "And disappear. And Eszet searches futilely, without a single lead to go on."
"We've made plans for that," he told her. "What happens to YOU?"
"You won't see me again."
He hiked a brow and watched her impassive face for a moment, before shrugging and running his finger around the lip of his glass. "Well. Then I suppose I shouldn't tell you any of our plans, hmm? Bridges burned, is that it? You need to be an island?" She started to answer, but he abruptly slammed a fist down on the table as the water froze solid and shattered the glass, his eyes frigid. "You idiot. Do you think I want to let go of you that easily? Do you think I'll allow it?"
"You don't have a choice," she told him, leaning back and away from his powerful presence. "None of us have a choice. It's how things have to be, Ice. I can't change them. That's not what I wanted to talk to you about."
He considered that for a moment, glaring daggers at her, before slowly sitting back down and lacing his fingers together. "All right," he said coldly. "What is it you want, then?"
Her nostrils flared. "I just wanted you to be a FRIEND," she muttered bitterly, moving to leave. "Obviously, that's too much to ask."
His hand closed around her wrist. "Sit…. DOWN."
She jerked her hand away. "NO. I don't need this from you, Ice. I need you to be there so I'm not alone because I can't be an island yet. But if all you're going to do is berate me for trying to do right by the rest of you, then you can go fuck yourself." She whirled and disappeared into the wildly strobing lights.
Irilisan, given the street name 'Ice' by those in awe of his power, rested his chin on his interlaced fingers and mused over her behavior. He was no telepath. He wished he was one. But all he could do was manipulate an element…. A very powerful element, but a rather paltry power. He eyed the frozen cylinder of ice in front of him and quietly began to shave bits off with his thumbnail, etching it, sculpting it. Art was one of his great loves, second to the water that he reveled in.
Sabbath Summer. Such a piece of work. If her sacrifice was necessary to accomplish the double-goal of getting rid of The One and thwarting Eszet, then she should sacrifice herself. He would not have done the same, but he was selfish.
He just knew that, as usual, no one would know the truth of her sacrifice or care. It was the way with martyrs, that no one else saw how much they were giving up, how much they kept bottled away to keep others around them happy.
But her plans, apparently, were still in motion. He needed to rework his own, expand them to include a distinct possibility, should the situation arise…
…the destruction of Schwarz.
X-X-X
"You shouldn't go out alone."
Sabbath didn't move, her chin propped on her curled fingers, her arms propped on her knees, staring at the water as though it held the answers to her dilemma. Nagi stopped a few steps behind her, watching her tensely, not entirely certain how she would react to his intrusion. He'd volunteered to go and find her, partially because of worry and partially because of a desire to escape the confines of their apartment. Farfarello was in one of his cutting moods and Schuldich was moping for whatever reason, which left Crawford in a less-than-pleasant frame of mind. And now here was Sabbath, very obviously depressed, sitting in an isolated area by herself and risking her life and their entire mission by doing so.
"We need you, you know. You're sort of the lynch-pin in this entire operation." He circled to the side of her, large cerulean eyes fixed on the pale curve of her cheek.
"You'd have an easy enough time destroying The One without me," she told him evenly. "I'm just… a figurehead. I'm not as important to you as I've made you believe I am."
Nagi smiled wryly. "But that's how you have to survive, isn't it? By making people think you're valuable to them?"
"Sometimes," she allowed, shifting slightly and letting out a slow breath. "But the definition of value changes so drastically from person to person… it's hard to cover all your bases and have anything of yourself left. I think I've lost sight of the people who are supposed to matter most to me."
"Your friends," he said, finally convinced that she wouldn't lash out at him and coming to sit beside her on the bench. "The other Inconnu. You haven't seen them in a while."
"Correction – I saw one of them tonight. One of my better friends. We go way back, but… but there's this distance now. I know I ought to listen to him. He's smart. But for some reason, I've got this feeling, like he's outside events and he can't see them like I see them."
Nagi considered that for a long moment. When he spoke, it was quietly and haltingly, as if he was unsure of his right to give advice. "Sometimes Schuldich tells us that a certain person needs to die. He says 'kill him', and either Crawford or Farfarello ends that person's life. Sometimes I think he might do that just because he likes to kill, but you have to admit, Schuldich sees things that the rest of us can't see. He sees the thoughts behind peoples' smiles, and he knows what's really going on in their heads. He knows if someone bows and scrapes and plots against us at the same time. We can't know that because we're not telepaths, so we just have to trust him, sometimes. You know things that your friend doesn't know about this situation, because you're inside it. Maybe he just needs to trust you."
"He doesn't trust easily," Sabbath murmured, looking almost pouty as she stared at the languid waves. "There's a lot about this situation that he doesn't trust."
"Can he trust you this time?"
"Oh, he trusts me. He trusts my motives, at very least. But he knows I'm not omnipotent. You could all be manipulating me to the detriment of the Inconnu and there's no law that says that just because I'm tight with a deity, I'd notice it."
He offered her a weak smile. "I'm sorry. But you should come back now. It's not safe out here."
"I know," she said quietly, and then, after a moment's silence, she rose to her feet. "Okay. Let's get going." She shoved her hands into her pockets, shivering in the cool breeze that blew in off the water, boots scraping softly on the sidewalk.
Nagi followed along, watching her walk, the way her shoulders hunched in a slightly protective manner. She huddled against something that wasn't the cold, and swayed in her walk a little more than she normally did. Some of her confidence seemed gone.
He hoped it wouldn't interfere with their work. But then again, Sabbath was a civilian, not Eszet. She was far more prone to weakness at inopportune times than any of Schwarz, and if she fell, well… there was nothing any of them could do.
X-X-X
"They encountered the arm here," Sabbath said evenly, drawing a small circle on a map of the Five Burroughs with a yellow highlighter. "And there have been other skirmishes here, here, here, here…." She continued to mark points, this time with a green highlighter. Clustered around the table, watching each other with blatant distrust that left the air thick and tingling with tension, were Crawford and Farfarello, Ice and Catria, Jake and his second-in-command, Lupe, Rel, who'd come alone and seemed the most at-ease of them all, and Ariadne with one of her cell, a tall, composed-looking young man with black hair and dark blue eyes whom she'd introduced as Nathan.
"We encountered them here," Nathan said quietly, placing a finger on a spot on the map near the yellow dot. "They took Ron and Thomas."
"We've been fighting them off in Brooklyn," Jake put in, one tanned finger tracing down the line of a street. "No losses so far this month, but Ash nearly got his throat ripped out. We haven't seen anything like whatever took out Griss and Jordan."
"But that doesn't mean it's not there," Rel said, sounding cheerful as usual. "They've got big guns and they only brought them out when you invaded their territory." She tapped the yellow dot. "So we should focus our search efforts here and try to find The Core." She glanced up at the people around her and smiled wryly. "And I just stated the obvious."
"Not necessarily," Sabbath said dryly. "We lost two psions to their biokinetic… war machine. I'm not sure we can afford to lose more. Griss and Jordan were fighters. I was counting on them to help lead our assault."
"Give me Fell," Ice said easily. "And I'll go."
The outburst was instantaneous. "Two is far too few to take into that kind of war zone," Jake snapped, while Ariadne muttered, "you're suicidally insane," and Crawford made a disapproving noise deep in his throat.
"Well, I'll go with them," Rel said with exasperation in her tone. "Three…." She glanced at Crawford and quickly changed her mind. "Three of us, with our Gifts, should be able to spy in and make it out alive."
"And if The One attacks you, what are you going to do? Any sort of disturbance will draw police attention," Catria pointed out, arms folded over the soft curves of her chest, violet eyes hard. "Which is the original problem we've had with this 'frontal assault' idea."
"But if we take the sewers," Rel suggested, grinning widely and sounding entirely TOO happy about that prospect, "we can raise as much hell as we like and keep it down below the streets."
"The sewers are their territory," Jake murmured. "They'll have tactical home advantage. Not to mention that you could just plain get lost – the sewers under the Bronx are like a maze. The City Office doesn't even bother with any of the layers below the first anymore, and even for that, they take lead lines."
"I'm not concerned," Ice said quietly. "Water always flows downhill. I'll be able to trace it back to its source."
"And if it comes down to it, I can always make us a way out," Rel said easily.
"And once we find The Core?" Lupe wondered, her hardened voice cutting through their thoughts. "What then? If it's obvious we've found it, they'll just move it, to protect it." She tucked a strand of chocolate-brown hair, only slightly darker than her skin, behind her ear. "We have to find it without them knowing we've found it, or the entire project is useless."
Jake nodded his assent. "But we can't find them without them knowing we've found them. We're stuck, ladies and gentlemen."
Most of the gathering let out a collective sigh and settled back on their heels to consider this. Crawford adjusted his glasses and flicked a strand of dark hair back from his face, his calculating blue eyes assessing the gathering coolly. As they scanned the slightly wan faces of those assembled, each one drawn in stress and lack of sleep, they settled on the one vivacious set of eyes to be found, those of Rel, who grinned at him. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she inquired.
He smirked slightly. "That we strike first and last, or strike not at all," he suggested. She nodded, offering him a matter-of-fact little half-shrug.
Sabbath hiked an eyebrow. "Combine our scouting and our attack? That's extremely risky. We have to find The Core and by that time, they'll know we're coming and they'll be able to mobilize against us. We'll end up fighting an all-out war before we even know where our special strike team needs to go."
"Then we combine our telepaths," Jake said simply, gold nose ring catching the light as he bent over the map. "We know they're concentrated below this four-block area. We know that Fell, Griss, and Jordan were headed in this direction following the trail. We know that Auspex Cell's telepaths were taking these blocks and following the trail this way before all hell broke loose, so we can narrow our search area down to this and all we need to focus on is going deeper underground."
"Easier said than done," Sabbath pointed out, tracing a finger along the map. "Sewers are like… like dungeons. Easy to trap, easy to spring ambushes from. And The One has showed some talent at coordination in the past. It'd be like stepping into the Borg hive and trying to find their transwarp engine. And we don't even have a map."
"I could obtain one," Crawford offered.
"Oh, look, Eszet proves helpful," Ice said dryly.
Crawford looked mildly irritated.
"More helpful than you've been," Sabbath said coldly. "Let's hear your great tactical expertise make some sense of the situation, Irilisan."
He eyed her for a moment and she glared back, dark eyes flashing with muted anger and catty daring. "Or I could walk out and let you deal with this on your own," he said dryly, folding his arms across his chest. "If you're going to be a bitch about it."
"Go, then," she said crisply, motioning toward the door of Schwarz's apartment. "You'll be the only ones left to deal with the fall-out when we fail. You're not a fucking island, no matter how much you want to be."
His eyes narrowed. "Do not," he said with deadly quiet, "test me, Sabbath. I will not play games with you."
"Then don't you test me," she returned, just as quietly, her voice thick with venom. "Because I will not back down just because you're Ice and you're a bad-ass. I could care less who you think you are."
"I thought I was your friend," he returned. "Am I not?"
"If you want to be a friend, ACT like a friend," she snapped. "Support me. Help me. Quit being such an arrogant son of a bitch and make some sort of investment."
He hiked an eyebrow at her. "I might be able to take out quite a few of The Collective at once," he said frankly. "It all depends."
"On what?" Jake inquired, looking slightly less tense now that Ice had apparently decided to throw his lot in with them.
Ice turned a glittering smile on Ariadne. "On how much water I have to work with."
She blinked. "You… want…"
"Tell Dylan to do whatever he needs to do to make it rain. Not just rain, POUR. I want a monsoon. I want water over the curb in the streets and cars unable to navigate. I want a storm like nothing New York has seen in centuries."
She looked quietly appalled. "That…"
"Will give me just the hammer I'll need to break their defense and soften them up a little before we go in ourselves."
"We'll be bottlenecking ourselves anyway," Rel pointed out, "in the confines of a sewer system. How are we going to spread our forces?"
"We wait for a map," Sabbath said tiredly, eyeing Crawford, who simply nodded and straightened his tie. "How fast can you have it?"
"Within an hour," he said evenly, pulling out his cell phone and flicking it open.
She nodded. "Then when we have our map, we start our plans."
"And until then," Rel said brightly, "we wait!"
X-X-X