Chapter 11

Where Angels Fear to Tread…

Knives gripped Vash desperately as his brother trembled and shook in his arms, soft whimpers escaping his throat as his body was wracked with spasms of torment. His hands, almost claw like, came up to tear at his chest and shirt.

'Vash,' begged Knives. 'Don't! Stop!'

But Vash ignored him, he just continued to rip and shred his shirt, as if trying to tear it from his body.

Perhaps it was telepathy, perhaps it was instinct or intellect, or maybe it was sheer desperation, but Knives suddenly had a strange insight.

He aided Vash in removing his shirt, carelessly throwing the torn garment aside. Then he allowed Vash to fall onto his stomach and held him down as he bucked and writhed with spasms of pain.

Knives examined Vash's back and saw there, amongst the numerous feathers and scars, two large bumps. They shifted and pulsed under his flesh, seeming to grow and stretch before Knives' own eyes. Then, before he could even think of doing anything, Vash's back exploded.

Vash, who was usually rather stolid about pain, (or, at least, pain in large amounts. It never ceased to amaze Knives how Vash would wail over a paper cut but bare the pain of a bullet wound without so much as a whimper,) screamed in agony.

His tormented howl echoed through the corridors, reverberating in the very bones of the ship. And with good reason for, at that moment, two skeletal wings tore outwards from his back, removing skin and spraying blood.

The gore splattered Knives, who was forced to abandon his brother, to leap back so as to avoid being impaled by the massive wings. It also coated the walls around them, decorating the corridor with splatters of red.

Vash's shrieks of agony faded a little as the wings reached their full capacity, stretching out behind him like the rotting remnants of a dead bird.

He gave a soft sigh and keeled over, lying in the quickly expanding pool of his own blood.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

'Millie!' yelled Meryl, running to sit besides her fallen partner. 'Millie!'

She fiddled desperately with her friend's coat. She couldn't see any blood but maybe they used some different sort of weapon.

'Millie!' she shrieked again, her head in turmoil, her hand shaking. This couldn't be happening, Millie couldn't be dead, she couldn't…

'Ugh… Ma'am… it hurts…'

Meryl could have danced for joy at those few, simple words. 'Millie,' she said, 'are you alright?'

'I… I think so,' replied Millie, sounding as surprised about this as Meryl. 'I'm bruised but I don't feel like I've been shot.'

Frowning Meryl leaned forward to inspect Millie's injury. Sure enough, whilst the skin looked very bruised, there was no sign of any gaping wound.

An idea occurred to her, searching about she finally found one of the bullets the machines had been firing. Examining it the allowed herself a dizzy laugh of relief.

'Look,' she said, showing Millie, 'rubber bullets! They were firing rubber bullets!'

'Oooh,' said Millie, 'that's why it didn't hurt so much! Do you think I could still get some paid sick-leave though, Ma'am?'

'Not a chance,' chuckled the short insurance girl, for once glad to hear Millie talking like this. It was good to simply have here there alive and well.

Her joy and relief was cut short, however, as another tall figure emerged from around a corner. It was Knives and, in his arms, he held the still and bloody form of Vash.

Having stayed with the man for over a fortnight, Meryl had seen him in many states and emotions. He'd seen him grumpy, smug, fearful, angry, pleased, even loving but never had she been treated to the sight of Million Knives Bluesummers absolutely terrified.

He stood there, his skin a greyish hue, his blue eyes wide as saucers. Blood was splattered across both his face and hair. It covered much of his powder blue coat, making it similar to Vash's old crimson garb. It dripped lazily from the equally pale form of Vash, lying limp in his brother's arms, two strange wings blossoming out from his back.

As Meryl watched, feathers started to sprout from the skeletal structure, so brilliant white they almost seemed transparent, almost appeared entirely made up of light.

There was no time for awe though, no time for shock, only for quick, decisive action before Vash bled to death in front of her.

'He… he used his angel arm to get rid of the security robots.' Stuttered Knives, sounding oddly weak and child-like, almost shell shocked from events. 'He used his Plant abilities and… and it increased the process… he… the wings… he's bleeding and…'

It felt as if she'd been split into several different parts. Some of her was shocked, just staring in awe and horror at the scene before her. Some of her was screaming, panicking and some of her, the part of her she allowed to take over, was very quietly and calmly telling her what to do.

'Knives,' she said, 'we need to get Vash somewhere safe and near by, somewhere with medical supplies. Do you know anywhere fitting?'

'Um… there's the Med Lab... but that's too far and it's probably guarded… wait, I know somewhere!'

'Excellent,' responded Meryl, 'take us there!'

Knives nodded and led the way. Part of Meryl wanted to laugh at the situation, the sheer fact that she was able to order the ridged Plant around like this, but she was too busy worrying about Vash to dwell upon it.

'Do you want me to carry him, Mr Knives?' asked Millie politely, stretching out her arms to receive the injured gunman.

'No,' said Knives roughly, seeming to clutch the still form of his brother even tighter to his chest, 'he's not heavy.'

As Meryl followed him, still attempting to remain calm and act fittingly, she couldn't help but think that, complete bastard as he was, at least Knives was loyal to his brother.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

Half an hour later Knives had taken them to his destination. It was near Rem Saverem's room, indeed it appeared to be one of the crew's quarters.

Vash had stopped bleeding somewhat, though is back still oozed a little. The two wings that were now gracefully curled around his shoulders were growing more feathers as she watched. They almost covered the entire bony structure now, white and delicate. He would have seemed almost angelic if it were not for his bloody wounds and the feathers that coated almost all his body. Even his golden hair, drooping down from its usual style, looked oddly feathered. He seemed more like some poor, broken bird than a messenger from heaven.

The room they entered was not one Millie or Meryl had explored before. All the other quarters were dominated by a single bed, yet this had two.

Brightly coloured pictures lined the walls, all drawn in crayon showing various people and things. A few toys were strewn about, there was a small computer console, a little table and, hidden away in a corner, a medical kit.

There was no need to ask who this room had once belonged to.

Knives went straight for the medical kit, only pausing briefly to gently place Vash on one of the beds, which was only just long enough to accommodate his lanky frame. He seemed to have recovered his wits somewhat, returning to his old, arrogant, insufferable self, though he was still pale with shock and suppressed fear.

Millie moved forward to tend to the wounded Vash, mopping up blood and, when Knives returned with the Med-Kit, aiding him in bandaging the wounds.

Numbly, not knowing quite how to apply herself, Meryl gazed around the room blankly. It was strange, she'd knew that she was in the ship Vash had grown up on, but for the first time that fact was thrust in her face. Her eyes fell upon the childish drawings covering the walls.

Most depicted the dark haired woman she knew as Rem, still more showed Vash or Knives themselves, often together. A few had images of the other crew members on them, or had scrawled images of butterflies and trees.

She picked one up off the floor at random, it was quite an advanced drawing, though it was unfinished. Perhaps it had been the last drawn in this room.

It was a strange style, the two figures in the foreground (easily recognisable as the twins,) were depicted rather well. Certainly it was a style one would expect of a teenager, not a two year old. The background, however, was filled only with row upon row of trees, all of which were drawn very simply, just large oblongs of brown crayon with a green blob on top. Then, as she looked closer, she noticed that there was something behind the trunks of the trees.

She rubbed at the waxy crayon with one finger and she began to see a picture behind the picture emerge. Five figures, each carefully sketched in black crayon, men and women standing in a row behind the twins. The SEEDS crew, she knew right away, all happily lined up behind Vash and Knives in Eden. Until they'd been hastily erased, covered over by pictures of crude trees.

'Are you going to stand there all day looking at pictures or are you actually going to help?' demanded Knives rudely. Meryl was so off put she actually dropped the picture and rushed to help him.

'His wings seem to be fully out,' explained Knives roughly, 'but he's still in a lot of pain, and he's coming round. So I'm going to give him some morpheme. You keep him calm whilst I inject it.'

'Why would he panic?' asked Meryl, carefully smoothing back Vash's hair as he tossed fretfully, his soft moans signifying that he was, indeed, awakening.

'Vash hates needles,' explained Knives simply, filling up the syringe with a clear liquid.

'M-Meryl?' Vash mumbled her name, his voice was slow and slurred.

'I'm here Vash,' said Meryl, turning her attention wholly onto him. She placed a hand on his real arm, 'I'm here. Just hold still, Knives is going to give you something to take the pain away.'

'No,' muttered Vash, shaking his head, trying to awaken more. 'No, I don't want it.'

'Come on,' said Meryl, a more business like tone in her voice. 'Don't be a baby.'

'NO!' shrieked Vash, just as Knives was poised to inject the drug. His arm flailed desperately, knocking the syringe and its contents from Knives hand and, before anyone could intervene, it fell upon the floor and smashed.

'Idiot!' choked Knives. 'Look what you've done! Now I'm going to have to prepare some more…'

'Don't bother,' Vash sighed, relaxing back once again upon the pillows, his face almost as white as the linen he lay upon. 'There's no reason to waste that stuff on me.'

'What do you mean Mr Vash?' squeaked Millie.

'Look at me,' groaned Vash, gesturing weakly to his feather covered form. 'It's almost over now. There's not much to save and soon enough there'll be nothing at all. Better you concentrate on getting yourselves out of here, leave me to my fate… It won't be so bad… perhaps I'll see Rem again… I'd like that.'

Meryl found herself shaking her head desperately. This couldn't be happening, she had prayed nothing like this would ever happen again… she couldn't be loosing him like this, not again.

Millie started to whimper, tears collecting beneath her eyes. But it was Knives who took the most active response.

He leaned forward and grasped Vash by his shoulders, ignoring the wince of pain this elicited from his brother. 'Don't you dare, you hypocritical bastard!' he spat. 'Don't you dare give up on me! Don't you dare despair! I won't let you give up because…' He paused and it almost seemed that his voice was breaking, 'because… because I spent a century trying to brake your damned will to survive and I won't let some filthy piece of human trash succeed where I failed!'

Vash smiled up at him serenely. 'You know,' he replied, his voice no more than the gentlest of murmurs, 'in some ways I don't think you'll never change, Knives. I'm glad for that, and I love you for it.'

Knives hissed in rage and let his brother fall back onto the pillows, before gathering up his bloodstained blue coat and sweeping out of the room.

Vash's smile, whether real or merely a mask to hide his pain, did not falter.

'I… I'm going out,' stuttered Millie, before making haste to follow Knives. She might as well of exploded into a shower of gold, Meryl wouldn't have much noticed or cared. All her attention was upon Vash, lying so peacefully in his bed, the blood from his newly bandaged back staining the sheets.

'Are you going to leave too?' he asked eventually.

'Of course not,' responded Meryl, a little quicker than she meant to. 'That would be… unprofessional.'

Vash chuckled softly, 'I'm glad. Even though I know I'm going to die now, I don't want to do it alone.'

'But you might not die!' protested Meryl. 'We don't know that you'll die when you become a Plant and… and besides, we've made progress!'

'Progress?' echoed Vash incredulously.

'Yes,' stuttered Meryl, digging in the pockets of her dress and bringing out the locket she and Millie had found earlier. She'd quite forgotten about it until now.

'See!' she said, 'we found this in… well, we found it. It has a picture of Alexander Adams's inside it and a lock of his hair. We have some of his DNA! So if we can just find out how to reverse this then we can turn you back to normal!'

Vash's gentle smile did not change. 'That's nice Meryl,' he murmured, 'but I don't think there's time. The process has increased, I don't even think I have that many hours left now, let alone days. By the time you've found out how to reverse this it'll probably be too late.'

'You don't know that!' protested Meryl desperately. 'The technology that did this is probably on this very ship! There's still a chance Vash, you can't give up hope! You promised you'd continue! You promised you'd fight to survive!'

'I suppose,' sighed the gunman, his aqua marine eyes gazing at the ceiling. 'I suppose… will you stay with me, Meryl?'

'I always have,' she responded, 'but will you stay with me?'

Vash did not reply, so she simply put her hand, the hand with the silver ring, in his and held on tight, as if the very strength of her willpower could stop him fading away, could keep him there with her.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

Milly found Knives trying to beat a wall into submission which, she supposed, was actually rather mean to the wall. It hadn't done much to him after all.

Eventually Knives stopped hitting the poor wall and leaned against it instead. She stood there very quiet and still as she saw his shoulders begin to shake. She could only watch as small drops liquid fell from his bowed head onto the floor. He was crying. Millions Knives Bluesummers was crying.

It was more than a little disconcerting to see such a strong, proud, almost angry man cry. It was even worse than seeing Meryl cry. She couldn't remember herself feeling so awkward since she'd seen Wolfwood openly sob in front of her.

The memory of her lost love made her heart contract painfully and, acting on sheer instinct, she did what she thought was best.

'What are you doing?' hissed Knives as her arms wrapped around his waist.

'I'm giving you a hug,' explained Millie simply. 'My big brother said that, when someone is sad, a hug almost always helps. It always makes me feel better, anyway. You looked sad so I'm hugging you.'

A harsh bark of laughter escaped Knives throat. 'You're a strange creature, you know that? Get off me, I don't want anyone to see me like this, I will not be weak in front of an insect.'

'I'm not an insect, so don't be mean. Anyway, I don't think you're being weak,' protested Millie, stepping away from him. 'I think that everyone needs to cry sometimes, even people like you and Meryl. Look at Mr Vash, he cries all the time and he's probably the strongest person I know.'

'I'm a little different to Vash, in case you hadn't noticed.'

'Yes well… sometimes it takes more strength to cry and show emotion than it does to keep it all hidden and bottled up.'

Another harsh, bitter chuckle, one lacking any real humour, 'I suppose one of your older siblings told you that one too, yes?'

'Um… actually no,' replied Millie. 'I just made that one up myself. But I still think it's true!'

Knives sighed and shook his head, as if in disbelief. A smile stole its way across his gaunt face, he ran a gloved hand through his hair. At the sight of that smile Mille couldn't help but gasp in delight and clap her hands together.

'What is it?' asked Knives quickly, his voice almost hostile. 'What did I do? What did you find so amusing?'

'Your smile,' Millie hastily explained. 'Just then, when you smiled. It was like I was saying before, you don't often show what you really feel. You hardly ever smile, not really smile. You're very much like Mr Vash like that, only you don't even give fake smiles. You're just miserable, evil or cynical all the time. But just then you did smile, really smile! I'm glad… I was wondering if you could… you should do it more often. You've got quite a nice smile really.'

'Well,' grunted Knives, sounding a little uneasy with her casual observation, 'soon I'll have even less reason to smile, if Vash dies…'

'He won't die,' said Millie. 'He can't, not if we keep on trying. We've got to keep on trying, Mr Knives, even if he's given up.'

'But we don't have much time,' said Knives softly. 'and I don't know that we can do anything anymore. I don't know that I can do anything… God knows I'm useless enough at the moment. Damn, I hate this hell hole!'

He slammed his fist against the wall again and it occurred to Millie that, maybe, the wall had done something to him after all.

'You really don't like this place, do you?' she commented breezily. 'Why not? Mr Vash always said that he had a happy childhood, I though he liked his time here.'

Knives sighed and snorted bitterly. 'It wasn't all bad,' he admitted. 'There were good times, but there were bad times too. This place… shaped me. It shaped me for one hundred years and I'm still trying to get out of its shadow. Coming back here, to the place where it all started, to where I made all my mistakes… it doesn't help much. I think… I'm afraid my past has come back to haunt me, girl.'

'Does that mean you know who's doing this, Mr Knives?'

Knives shrugged, 'perhaps,' he admitted. 'Though it seems impossible. The people most likely to have the know-how, the expertise, even the motive are those that lived here, if it is at all possible that one could have survived. They might have used the cold sleep chambers but how they survived the crash…' he paused for a moment and sighed. 'I don't know. Rowan and Mary were blasted out into space, Captain Joey's corpse is still in the control room that just leaves… but I can't believe she would ever do this… so it must be… it must be…'

A shadow of something, something strange and dreadful passed before Knives' eyes and for a second the tall man looked fearful and haunted.

'Mr Knives?' Millie prompted, trying to snap him out of whatever worrying memory or meditation he had been plunged into.

'Huh? Oh… yes. Well… I suppose the next course of action is to go to engineering. Whatever did this to Vash might be located there, plus I can probably turn off all the security systems from there too. Anyway, there are a couple of places there I want to check on the way.'

'I'll come!' Millie volunteered happily, glad to see Knives regain some drive, even if his eyes remained troubled.

'Very well,' he said carelessly. 'But the short insurance girl should remain here, to look after Vash.'

'I don't think that you could take her with you if you tried,' said Millie, truthfully.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

Meryl looked up as the Millie and Knives re-entered. Vash had fallen into a fitful sleep, still refusing to take any painkillers.

'Well?' she said, a little harsher than she'd meant, 'what is our course of action?'

'We're going to engineering,' said Millie, 'but you should stay here Ma'am, to look after Vash.'

Meryl nodded, not that she usually took orders from Millie but in this case they made sense. After all, right now her place was besides Vash.

'Will you take care of her?' the question was directed at Knives.

'I will,' the human/Plant affirmed. 'I trust you will take care of him? The changes are increasing… he's getting worse.'

'I know,' said Meryl, tenderly stroking Vash's limp hand.

Knives paused over his brother's sleeping body then, moving away, he picked up something from the corner of the room. It was a large toy, a black plush cat which he tenderly laid by Vash.

'An old teddy bear?' asked Meryl incredulously. It was more than a little strange to think of Knives cuddling up to any sort of toy, even as a child.

'Something like that,' Knives snorted.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

FLASHBACK, 131 YEARS:

It had been perhaps the first real argument the twins had engaged in. It didn't become violent, of course, but a lot of sulking and some yelling and crying had been involved.

One day Rem had come into their room to find them both glaring at each other, a soft, toy cat, their favourite play thing, between them.

It was evidently not a happy sight.

'Vash, Knives,' said Rem, 'what ever is wrong?'

'Knives won't let me hug the cat tonight,' whined Vash, looking up at Rem with adoring eyes. 'He says I'll dribble all over it and make it all nasty. He just wants to put it on a shelf but it'll get lonely if it's just left there! What's the point of having a toy if you can't play with it!'

'He'll destroy it Rem!' implored Knives, also turning his eyes to her. 'I don't want to see it fall to pieces or become all mouldy! If it's on the shelf then it'll be safe.'

'Mmmm,' murmured Rem, 'that's a difficult dilemma. We want to keep the things we love close to us, but sometimes we love them so much that we hurt them with that love. Part of love is about understanding when to let go, after all, and when to hold on… I know!' She clapped her hands together in glee. 'Vash, tonight you can have the toy, but tomorrow night you must put it on the shelf for a while, and then you can take it down again the night after. Also, if you bring it to me to look over every week, I promise to fix it if any problems come up. Is that alright with you Knives?'

'I suppose so,' admitted Knives, a little gruffly. 'But I'm still worried that it'll get damaged.'

Rem laughed, 'silly Knives,' she chuckled, playfully ruffling his long blond hair. 'Another part of loving someone, or something, is the risks that come with it. The risk that you might be hurt, or even that they might be hurt. It's a dreadful risk to take, but its well worth it, you'll see!'

……………………………………………………………………………………..

'Look after him,' Knives instructed once more as he and Millie left. Meryl nodded though, in truth, she wasn't entirely sure who he had been speaking to, her or the toy cat.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

'It appears she is more intelligent than I gave her credit for,' admitted Knives, as he and Millie walked down the corridors of the SEEDS ship.

Millie had just been explaining a little of what they'd found, which is to say she'd told him about the locket, that they had found it in Rem Saverem's room and not much else. She was less than eager to tell him the resting place of his foster mother.

Knives sensed that she was keeping something back but, for now, was content to let it lie. He was sure he would squeeze it out of here sooner or later any how. Meanwhile, he couldn't help but relish the surge of hope that had flowed through him when he heard about the locket and the DNA sample they now had. This was defiantly a step in the right direction. He couldn't help but marvel at their luck.

'Oh, Meryl's very smart!' chirped Millie happily. 'Much smarter than I am. You should see her write reports, she can spell really long and complicated words!'

Knives held back a smile at this, he wasn't sure Millie was right about Meryl being the smarter. At first he had thought so too, but ever since the scene with that male human, just before they'd left Vash's home town, when she had shown extraordinary powers of manipulation, he had wondered… Meryl was certainly the most intellectual but Millie seemed to possess a strange, perceptive wisdom which, in Knives assessment, outdid Meryl's intelligence by far.

'Well,' he said, 'at least we know where our adversary obtained Dr Adam's DNA from.'

'True,' said Millie thoughtfully, 'but if he got it from the same place, why did he put it back?'

Knives merely shrugged, though she had a point. It was strange.

So far their trip to engineering had been fairly quiet. It seemed that they had destroyed most of the security robots and, when the odd one showed up, Millie took it down with her Sun Gun, as it had re-usable bullets. Knives was conserving his ammunition, he had only six shots left and he was determined to use them wisely.

Suddenly he paused, the door they were approaching looked oddly familiar… yes… he knew this place.

'Hey,' he said, 'let's check in here.'

He tapped the control key that would open the door and it slid open revealing a very different sight to the one Knives had expected.

When he thought about it, it was only reasonable that it should have changed. After all the entire place had been without life support for as much as a century but still… it was a sad sight.

'What is this place?' asked Millie, stepping into the barren room behind Knives.

'The recreation area,' he explained.

The once lush grass had disappeared entirely, replaced by dark, cracked soil. Part hologram, part real plant life brought in from Earth, the recreation room was now a barren wasteland. The holographic-emitters(1) had shattered under the dreadful cold of space, so that the corners of the room were lost to darkness. The bushes were merely brittle skeletons, the tree which he and Vash had once played and eaten under was now just a barren carcass, black and twisted.

The entire place was utterly dead.

And he, Knives knew, had been the one responsible for it.

'It doesn't look like a very nice place,' commented Millie airily.

Knives only shrugged, 'come on,' he said, eager to be away.

He turned his back and led the way out, his foot was just through the door to the hallway when a dreadful, terrified scream pierced his ears. Millie's scream.

He spun around quickly, his hand going automatically to his gun, muscles ready to fight whatever terror faced him.

Millie was standing, wailing in terror, her hands desperately pulling at her hair.

'Get if off! Get it off me!' she shrieked, tears brimming in her large, pail blue eyes.

Moving quickly forward Knives took a closer look at the situation. Caught in the long, sandy locks of her brown hair was the desiccated skeleton of a spider.

He reached forward and, with smooth accuracy, snatched up the tiny corpse. 'You're afraid of this?' he asked incredulously, holding the dead insect with this thumb and fore-finger, his nose wrinkled up in disgust.

He threw it over his shoulder, getting rid of the gruesome thing, 'it was only a dead insect.'

Millie stopped screaming, her lower lip wobbled a little, more tears brimmed in her eyes and, before Knives could so much as blink, she flung herself at him, sobbing.

'I hate spiders!' she wailed.

Entirely taken aback by the situation, Knives struggled to think about what to do next.

'Um… there, there?' he said hopefully, gently patting her on the shoulder. The entire scene was so surreal he hardy minded the fact she was touching his person. He could hardly comprehend that she would be so horror stricken by such a tiny, insignificant insect and a dead one at that.

At last her bawling cries died away, transforming into soft, sniffling sobs.

'Thank you Mr Knives,' she whimpered. 'I'm alright now, but let's go please!'

'Alright,' responded Knives, leading the way out. Indeed, Millie Thompson was a very strange individual.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

'Meryl?'

Meryl practically jumped out of her skin upon hearing Vash's soft voice. He'd been dipping in and out of consciousness ever since Knives and Millie had left. Last time he'd been awake he'd asked Meryl to remove his artificial arm for him, complaining that it felt uncomfortable.

Now it lay at his side and he looked more like some wounded bird than ever, bandaged, feather covered, tattered wings spread out behind him and with one arm gruesomely absent.

'Yes?' she said, hanging onto his every word. He hadn't opened his eyes and his voice was soft and low.

'I'm scared.'

Those two words did more to worry Meryl than anything else. She was used to Vash the coward of course, used to Vash the bumbling wanderer, but this was different. This was real fear, fear mixed with dreadful despair.

'Why are you scared?' she asked , trying to keep how own fear out of her voice.

'I think I'm losing my mind Meryl,' he replied softly and opened his eyes.

Now Meryl really did have to stifle a scream. His eyes were the same colour they were before, but they were just that colour. Whites, pupils, it had all been obliterated, lost in a sea of solid,

'I don't understand…' she stuttered, wondering what he saw with those new, strange eyes of his. Or even if he'd noticed that they'd changed.

'I can hear them,' he explained quietly. 'My telepathy… I can hear the Plants… my sisters. They're singing to me, Meryl… they're singing so beautifully. I can hardly hear anything else any more.'

'Vash,' said Meryl, trying to sound commanding, realizing almost instinctively the peril. 'Listen to me. Not them, to me! You can't loose yourself in this! You can't! Stay with me, Vash!'

'But Meryl… the singing… it's so lovely…' as he spoke a soft smile, a real smile, stole its way across his feathered features.

'Stay with me Vash! Don't go! Don't go! Listen to me, not them! To me!'

'Shhh… don't talk… I can't hear the singing as much if you talk. I wanna hear the singing…'

'VASH!' she was screaming now, but she didn't care, didn't care about anything except keeping Vash by her side, 'VASH! DON'T GO! DON'T GO!'

If Vash heard her he gave no sign of it, he was lost to the singing of his sisters. Meryl screamed desperately for some hours until, at last, she gave up hope and allowed her head to fall into her arms, despair sweeping over her. She cried for a long time until, eyes burning from tears and throat sore from shouting, she fell asleep.

'This place sure is big, Mr Knives, we must have been walking for ages now!'

'It is,' replied Knives smoothly. 'Eight point three miles long, to be exact. Much of it is just holding area for the stasis pods, where hundreds of humans lay in cold sleep. We're going to see a section of it now, in fact.'

'But I thought we were going to engineering?'

'We are, but there's something I want to check out first.'

Millie frowned but followed her guide. The section of the ship they were in seemed to have been badly effected by the crash. Bulkheads had buckled, rubble littered the floor and occasionally they had to carefully bypass sparking electronics. The light was dim and flickering, the air was cold too, her breath turned into mist before her face.

'Here we are,' said Knives eventually, stopping before a pair of doors. He punched the opening control but the portal did not respond.

'Damn,' he swore and started to pry the door open, a process which was much hastened when Millie came over to help. The door gave way under their combined strength revealing a massive chamber.

Millie shivered as she looked around the dark room, both because she was cold and because the entire place was very spooky. Along the walls, for as far as the eye could see, were cold sleep chambers. They were similar to the one that had contained the body of Rem Saverem, except she couldn't make out any details of the occupants as the glass surfaces were all frosted up.

The place had a horrible feeling about it, like a tomb or a graveyard.

'They're all dead, aren't they?' Millie stated more than asked.

'Yes,' replied Knives, who seemed a little perturbed himself. 'The power loss will have taken out the life support of the sleep chambers also. They wouldn't have had time to even awaken, most probably.'

'That's dreadful!'

'Really?' Knives turned his ice blue eyes towards her. 'I think it's better that way, merciful even. Better they die in their sleep, peaceful, not knowing any pain.'

'But they didn't even have a chance to survive!' protested Millie, 'they didn't have any idea! It's horrible.'

Knives shrugged, 'if you say so. Come on, it's just a little way down here…'

Millie followed him as he led the way through the endless corridor of corpses. She found herself shivering from fear and cold, longing to be out of this dreadful morgue.

Eventually Knives stopped at an apparently random sleep chamber.

'This is it,' he murmured to himself, reaching out with one gloved hand, 'this is his…'

'His what?' asked Millie. 'Who's is that, Mr Knives? Is it someone you knew?'

'In a sense,' replied Knives. 'If I am correct and I do believe I am, this is the sleep chamber of Steve, one of the crew of the SEEDS ship. He was accused of raping another member of the crew and was placed in stasis until he could be tried on new Eden, wherever that was…'

He paused, taking a deep breath, it seemed to Millie as if he was steadying himself. 'Mr Knives?' she prompted, 'why are you looking then? He's probably dead like everyone else here.'

'Yes,' said Knives quietly, 'probably… I know that Rowan fiddled with the controls so that… and even if he hadn't then… but what if..? I have to know if he's gone… if he's really dead… I need to know…'

He brought up his hand once more to the frosted over glass of the sleep chamber and, almost reverently, began to wipe away the obscuring ice…

……………………………………………………………………………………..

Meryl muttered and slowly began to awaken. Her head ached, her eyes felt rheumy, her mouth tasted slimy and disgusting. Something had awakened her, though she didn't know what.

She looked towards Vash, wondering if it could have been him, but he was still lying on his back, his eyes closed, lost to the world.

That thought sent a pang of aching pain into Meryl's chest and she tried to put if from her mind. There was still some hope, Vash wasn't finished yet. If they could find a way to reverse the changes…

A soft sound, the sound of someone stepping on a crumpled sheet of paper, caught her ear. She span round, thinking perhaps Millie or Knives had returned.

She was wrong.

A figure, dressed in a space suit, their head and face covered by a large space helmet, was standing almost directly behind her, a broken, steel bar clutched in their gloved hands.

Meryl hardly had chance to scream before the mysterious figure brought the bar down hard upon her head and she fell into darkness.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

(1) Yep, stolen from Star Trek, but can you think of a better name?

Next Time: It's a frantic chase through the corridors of the ship, and our nemesis is revealed!

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