Star padded out into the silent corridor, looking around him with frank curiosity. His restraint sleeves hung free, simply untwisted from their cross-pattern- the straitjacket hadn't been invented yet that could hold Star if he decided that he didn't want it to.
"Kitty?" he called, after a moment. He looked both ways again, careful as a boy scout poised on the edge of a busy road, then picked his way across the rubble in front of Otto's empty cell and headed towards the stairs.
"Kiiiiiiiiittyyyyyyyyy?" He leaned over the stairwell, his shaggy blond hair falling curtainlike across his eyes. He huffed at it and looked down through the centre of the winding stairs, moving his head back and forth so that the multi-layered glimpses of steps and handrails in his field of vision shifted dizzyingly. There was no telling how long he might have remained there, playing with this interesting viewpoint, if he hadn't been interrupted.
A door banged, a couple of floors below. Four shadows, fluttering racing shapes against the sharp angles of the stairs, started to clatter up towards him. Large shadows, heavy footsteps.
In one quicksilver movement Star grabbed the handrail and swung one-handed across the void, catching a foot on the opposite wall to propel himself into the recess of the eighth flight. He slipped into the narrow space like a batter sliding home, and lay still.
Four men ran into view beneath, moving in a close, practised formation. They weren't wearing white, but they did have guns.
Star's eyes narrowed. He remembered guns. Stealers and guns often went hand-in-hand.
"Move out." said one man, dropping onto one knee to hold the door open for the others, who filed past and fanned out into the seventh-floor corridor. The first then turned slowly, covering the stairwell with his weapon, then backed through the doorway. It closed behind him, and the stairwell was empty again.
Star waited a moment, drawing a wonky line through the thick drifts of dust bunnies that filled the recess with one idle finger. If stealers like that are running around loose, he reasoned, Kitty can't be here. But it's her job to be here, so there has to be a really really really good reason why she isn't.
Still thinking hard, Star wiggled out of his hiding place and landed, catlike, on the steps. There was a decided breeze coming from somewhere above, shifting and freshening the stale antiseptic air, and he followed the feel of it on his face up to the eighth-floor hallway, around several bends, and through the battered doorway into 816(b). Hopscotching nimbly across the sparkling floor, his sock-clad feet somehow missing every single shard of glass, he crossed the deserted equipment room and leaned precariously out of the shattered window, peering hopefully out into the night.
Outside, the mist hadn't abated. If anything, it had grown thicker, shrouding even the nearest buildings. For Star, the dense pallor of it was too close to the memory of his cell for comfort. He wanted, needed to see the night sky, but he couldn't even see two metres in front of his face.
He drew back and looked towards the door, shaking his head a repetitive, worried motion. The simple fact was that he knew nothing of the Sporlock Institute's layout, having never seen anything in it except the six walls of his cell. It was all entirely new to him, and so far it was striking him as definitely not fun. He was just as lost in this strange building, with its unpleasant sterile air and mysterious armed men, as he would be out there in that clammy mist. It seemed an impossible choice, and as he tried to make it his expression got more and more hopelessly anxious, like that of a child left alone in a supermarket.
Whole minutes ticked by. Star stood in the watery light from the window, thinking harder than he had had cause to for a very long time. It had been easy for experts', from a cursory examination, to label his fragmented thought processes simple or dulled, but in fact this couldn't be farther from the truth. Star's head contained a world as bright and flaring as a Fourth of July sky.
Kitty was out there somewhere, and maybe she was in trouble. Maybe, even, she needed his help. And there was something else, too
No matter what, he knew that beyond the stairs and the walls and the fog, out of sight but still there, was the sky. And them.
Star smiled. Now the look on his face was rather more like that of a child left alone in a supermarket in control of a hefty, easily-accelerated trolley. He edged up to the very brink of the shattered windowsill, craned up to touch the top of the frame with both hands, then twisted his body so he was leaning backwards out over the drop, wrists crossed to take his weight. Tilting his head, he squinted up through the swirling vapour and saw something in the brick, only a couple of handspans above the frame.
A crater, clawed out of the brick, surrounded by detailed patterns of cracks that clearly showed the strength of the thing that had made it. Another similar shape was just about visible, several feet above that.
Three-pointed stars.
Star uncrossed his wrists, reached outside until his fingers found the crater, and started to climb.
"I'm not lost!"
"I never said you were."
"You're thinking it, though!"
"Escher," said Otto, with considerable restraint for someone who had spent the last hour clambering across a succession of mist-shrouded rooftops while carrying a lot of uneven weight, "I'm trying to climb vertical surfaces with three actuators, which is pretty much the equivalent of having one arm tied behind my back. I'm thinking about not sending us all plummeting to our deaths. I'm wondering, however, why every time I ask you which way we're supposed to be going, you go tense, look worried, then point in what I can't help thinking is a random direction."
"I'm sorry!" said the girl, leaning out over Otto's grip as she tried to pick out something familiar through the mist. "I just don't usually have to find my apartment from the sky-there! Right there! See, the roof with the satellite dish with the Roswell sticker on it!"
In the fog, everything sounded muffled; Otto's feet barely made a sound as he touched down on the rooftop of Escher's moderately high apartment building. He set Escher down carefully, while behind him the actuator that had been acting as a carrier dropped Chet and Mereii, flexing its claw stiffly.
Kat, sliding off the doctor's broad back, saw the stiffness of the movement and likened it to the slightly fixed quality she'd noticed in Otto's expression. He had carried them all and moved as fast and as well as she remembered he could, and it was only now that she realised how much effort and energy this must have taken. In typical Otto fashion, he was wearing himself out, overtaxing muscles and machinery that had been barely alive for almost a year, and she was glad for his sake that Escher had managed to deliver. It was strange- in thirty-three minutes and fifty-six seconds, Kat's life had dropped into the level of running and hiding from people again, and though there was a certain amount of awesome excitement and adrenaline involved, it kind of got on one's nerves a lot, especially when one had more classes to go to and probably shouldn't have been missing them like she had started doing. It was so out of the question with Mereii and Chet and Otto here.
"Otto!" Escher said from the doctor's arms. "Take me to the ground and I'll open the window. It's on the east wall."
Otto nodded and scaled the wall downward, eventually reappearing Escher-less. Collecting the others, he climbed down to the window, and after a few minutes, the assembled group outside saw the door open and Escher do an Olympic-class job of hurdling over her random junk and opening the pane. The rest of them climbed in as Kat let go of Otto's back to take the laptop from the counter that Escher had set it on. She let it rest there as the actuator released Chet and John, though Chet landed on his feet and Mereii fell to the ground with a thwump.
"What do we do about John?" Kat asked to the rest, looking down at the unconscious figure.
"Make sure he doesn't get away," Otto replied darkly.
"Yeah, how?"
"I'll go see if I have some rope or something," volunteered the other girl, as she dashed out again.
Chet slinked out behind her, leaning in the doorframe. "Check the pile in the back left corner of the room, on the very bottom," he suggested, pointing for reference.
Escher moved a pile of stuff and basically disappeared under another pile of stuff, ruffling things. "Oh!" Her voice was muffled by the supplies. "There's a mattress down here too!"
"You have a mattress?" was Otto's slightly incredulous response. "What do you do with all this stuff?"
"Artsy things?" Kat guessed as a frizz of purple hair appeared from the depths of the room, pulling itself up to reveal the rest of Escher Griffin. Said Griffin was currently struggling to get what was apparently a mattress out from the mountain of stuff.
She was greatly facilitated by three actuators, who almost pulled her off the ground with the mattress.
"Where do you want this?"
Escher took a moment to regain her balance (or what balance she had) and looked around, "Um, in that clear space over there. It can be Chet's bed, I guess."
"Thank you, Escher." Chet said, already standing near in area Escher had indicated. Otto dropped the mattress, and almost immediately the precog fell on it, yawning.
"What time is it?"
"Too late for my good," said Kat darkly. "Like midnight. I am going to bed. Escher, got any idea where I can sleep?"
"Is the couch okay?"
"At this point in time, I don't really care." She trudged over to the couch, kicked off her heels, undid her hair, and flopped onto it.
"Night," she mumbled vaguely and buried herself in the couch.
Otto and Escher blinked at each other. Escher was holding something which might have once been part of a sculpture, an involved curl of steel with a length of chainlinks hanging from one end. She jumped slightly when a claw curled around her shoulder and took it out of her hands.
"Sorry" she said, automatically. "Itit's been a while. You know"
"Since the last time I showed up and turned your life upside down," said Otto, pausing in the act of dragging Mereii across the living room floor by a claw around one ankle. "I know, and actually, I should be the one apologizing to you. I think I gave you the wrong impression when Icut contact, Escher. It wasn't because of anything you did." He made a vague gesture, which metaphorically indicated events beyond his control and also prompted a couple of claws to wrench the links of the chain apart. Extemporising upon his intent, one claw looped the chain securely around a water pipe that led down to the skirting board in the corner of the room. The other re-bent the end of the chain around Mereii's left wrist, then picked him up and tossed him into the corner as if he was a bag of laundry.
That done, Otto continued. "There were thingswell, let's just say I had to, to make sure you stayed out of danger." He smiled, tiredly. "You may have noticed, I'm not exactly the safest person to know."
Her sleeve was slowly being folded over on itself between her antsy fingers. Soon, it was going to be shorter than her elbow. "I just didn't want you to think I forgot...I mean, you saved my-"
"Ah, but you didn't forget. You came back, you helped me. It's been six years, Escher, and you're so differentbut I could never have imagined you'd be so much the same."
Escher looked up, sharply. Then, on impulse, she stepped forwards and hugged him. He responded instinctively, her slight body against his chest sending the years falling away as - for a second between heartbeats - he could nearly see the bright red-and-gold blur of that theatre, that night, almost hear the hushed tide of voices in the huge, echoing space.
He let her go. In his head, the voices stirred anxiously.
Otto? What is wrong?
Nothing. A vivid memory, that's all.
That is understandablethere is still a high level of re-association activity throughout your frontal lobes. It should settle down to normal, quite shortly.
"Are you okay?" Escher was asking him, clearly worried by the vacancy in his eyes. He blinked and refocused on her, appreciating the contact, her concern.
"I'm fine." He stood back, stretching his shoulders, yawning. "I think I just need some fresh air. It's been a long night."
She grinned at him, as easy to convince as he remembered. "Sure. Just don't let the window shut, or you're gonna end up sleeping on the roof."
Otto laughed. Escher didn't need to know that he wasn't planning on coming back that night. There were a few things he had to do first
"Goodnight, Escher."
Dawn came, blazingly sunny, bursting through the fog of the previous night and promising a blistering morning. The cavernous main room of the top-floor apartment belonging to Escher Griffin, however, remained resolutely dark as the sun rose, long blackout blinds uncharacteristically drawn (the result of a lot of wobblingly risky work with a chair and a hooked pole the night before.)
At around six, however, a single sunbeam broke triumphantly into the room, slanting through a small hole in one of the blinds, a scorched little aperture that looked suspiciously as if someone had once trained a magnifying glass on it. The golden, strengthening glow crept across the floor, picking out various details of furniture, ornaments, books, and sleeping bodies, before it finally reached its destination and struck Katarina Morrigan full in the face.
On its own, the beam would have hardly been enough to pull her out of such a deep sleep - she had, after all, managed to get through at least sixteen types of alarm clock during the last year alone - but on this particular occasion she was already halfway awake. This was because, for the last three and a half minutes, someone had been poking her in the head.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. Dazzled by the sun, she squeezed them shut again and turned her head on the sofa cushion, then tried again. This time, the result was a very close-range view of a pair of bright blue eyes, half-masked beneath a drenched blond fringe.
She screamed.
The eyes and the fringe dropped momentarily from view as their owner shot backwards, nearly disappearing below the arm of the sofa. Kat sat up, her initial fright dissolving into stunned recognition.
"Star?"
Apparently, the fact that her first reaction had been to scream at him didn't worry or offend Star in the slightest. As soon as she said his name, he snapped out of his defensive recoil, hooked his elbows over the arm of the sofa, rested his head on them, and grinned at her.
"Hi, Kitty!"
They looked at each other for a moment. Then Kat half-turned away, put her own head in her hands and hissed a few choice stress-relieving phrases under her breath. Star cocked his head, curiously.
"Kitty?"
"Star, how the hell did you get here?"
Beaming, Star held up a hand, his eye-wateringly double-jointed fingers outspread in an odd configuration. The thumb was on its own, but the index and middle were wrapped together in a pair, as were the ring and pinky. "I followed the three-pointers, silly. All the way over."
Kat blinked. "You followed theright across the city? You climbed up here?"
"Friend of yours, Kat?" said a dry voice. Kat spun to see Chet, sitting up on the mattress that Escher had found for him the night before, watching Star carefully. Star returned the stare, adding a friendly smile by way of interest.
"Uhm," said Kat. "Chet, this is-"
"Michael Jare-Toren, I know. I saw him being brought inabout three years ago, it would have been. It was quite an event."
Vaulting over the arm of the sofa, Star landed crosslegged on the cushion next to Kat. "My name's Star," he insisted, though without rancour. Whatever it was that had made him go nuts at Escher, Kat guessed, Chet didn't have it. The precog nodded, harbouring a growing smirk.
"And Star has a remarkable natural resistance to most sedatives, don't you? I couldn't see much of what happened through the window, but from what I did see I'd say it took him maybe five seconds to get his arms free, then four orderlies a good half hour to get him off Mereii and into the cell."
Star looked up sharply at the name. "He's a stealer," he said, darkly.
"Yes, and the next time he graced my cell with his presence he was a very foul-tempered stealer indeed. With one arm in a sling and an interesting collection of what looked suspiciously like bite marks."
"What's going on?"
All three turned this time. The individual standing in the doorway across the room was either Escher Griffin or Sonic's cousin. She felt their stares and forced the purple haystack atop her head into a slightly saner shape with her fingers.
"I slept funny." she said, defensively. And then, finally registering Star, "Oh, my God."
Kat decided it was time to take control of the situation. She got a hand on Star's shoulder as he started to rise and pushed him back onto the couch. "Remember what I said, Star? She's okay-" She stopped, then slowly removed her hand. "-And you'resoaked."
"I'll, uh, get some clothes," said Escher, hurriedly, and, skirting the room with some speed, vanished into the kitchen and the storage room beyond.
"Star," said Kat, urgently, "listen to me. This is important. Did anyone follow our tracks?"
Star considered for a moment, wiggling a finger in his left ear, presumably to get the water out of it. He was drenched, and now she had a chance to see properly she noticed that both the elbows and the knees of his bedraggled white clothes were badly worn. He hadn't been kidding. Kat tried to imagine for a moment the kind of single-minded physical ingenuity and effort it must have taken to clamber, sans actuators, across half of the New York City skyline.
"Yup!" he said. finally.
A horrified look started to gel on Kat's face. "What? Butwho? Did you see who it was?"
"Yup!" repeated Star, happily. "Me!"
Kat opened and shut her mouth a few times, but to no avail. Behind her, Chet laughed quietly and padded away across the room in the direction of one of the windows.
"Can't argue with that, Katarina."
At that moment Escher re-appeared, her upper body hidden behind the combined bulk of two stuffed black bags. She paused in the doorway, teetered for a moment, then dropped the bags on the threshold.
"I knew I still had this stuff somewhere," she said, off their stares. "Couple of years ago my friend Faye came up with the idea of starting up her own second-hand clothing store. She collected a ton of clothes, and then I think she kind of lost interest in the whole thing." Escher pulled a face. "When people see all the space I have here they generally end up asking to dump stuff in it. That's half the reason I don't have people around much."
"And the other half?" said Chet, still gazing tranquilly out of the window. Escher flushed and started to concentrate on the knots in the second bag.
"Uh, here, StarI thought this might fit you," she said after a moment, pulling out a folded red t-shirt and holding it out. Star, who had been perched on the back of the sofa throughout, looked at it suspiciously, then leaned across and took it with a rapid motion that was only a shade over from a snatch. He unfolded it, stared for a second, then slid off the back of the sofa and left the room.
Kat watched him go, then turned to Escher, who looked crestfallen. "What was that about?"
Escher sighed. "Oh, I don't know. I just thought he'd like it. I really don't understand why he hates me so mu-uuuffff!"
The sentence ended in a winded gasp, a direct result of the blaze of white and red that had just bounded back through the kitchen doorway and tackled her around the midriff. Escher had been leaning up against the sofa-back before Star cannoned into her, and his weight carried the two of them clean over it, landing the startled girl flat on her back on the cushions on the far side. Kat started forwards anxiously, but she stopped when she got her first good look at the shirt that Star was now wearing. It was bright scarlet, and there was a big printed gold star emblazoned across the front.
"Thankyouthankyouthankyou, Stripy! You're the best best thingy besides Kitty and them!" Star said in one breath, from a distance of maybe two inches above Escher's face. Then he bounced off the sofa and started to poke at a precarious stack of books on the table in front of it.
Escher picked herself up and stared imploringly at Kat, who shook her head and laughed. "Don't look at me. I'm willing to bet no stealer' ever gave Star a shirt with a star on before. My best guess is that you just included yourself out of that category. Plus got yourself a fan club for life."
"Well, it's good to know I did something right." said Escher, smiling and feeling her ribs gingerly. "Though next time, remind me to wear protective padding-"
A sharp intake of breath from the direction of the window made them all turn. Chet was stock-still, eyes screwed shut. The hand that was pressed against the windowpane faltered and came back to touch his forehead in a way that reminded Kat of his trance of the previous night. When he eventually spoke, the words were distant, considered. Almost as if, Kat thought, he was taking dictation
"where the hell am I?"
No sooner did he speak, than a rustle of movement from the far corner turned all three heads to track it. Mereii was stirring, the hand that wasn't forcibly restrained clamped to the back of his skull as if trying to hold it together, eyes pained slits as he sat up against the wall.
"" he croaked, eyes widening slowly, taking in the floor, the wall, the pipe, and -finally- the chain, his wrist and the connection thereof. There was a busy sort of pause, then his head snapped up, staring out across the room, aghast incomprehension stamping across his face.
"Where the hell am I?"
A beat, and then Kat got up.
"That'sclassified, John."
For someone who had been knocked unconscious not eight hours before, Mereii was commendably quick on the uptake. His gaze flicked past her to Chet and Star (who were both watching him, now, with the avidity of a pair of razor-antlered deer who have just spotted the hunter's shoelaces are tied together) and he swallowed.
"Katarina, what in Christ's name do you think you're doing? What-" The makeshift cuff clattered against the pipe, and he stared at it in disbelief. "What the hell is this?"
Kat folded her arms, raising a wry eyebrow. "Let's just say this is the reason why working late is bad for you."
Mereii glared at her, then gave the cuff a couple of violent yanks that only served to prove that the human body was not designed to go one-on-one with tempered steel. "Let me go!" he half-screamed.
"Well, I don't know" Kat turned to the two ex-patients at her side. "What do you think, guys?"
"He's a stealer!"
"Thank you, Star. Chet?"
The precog shrugged, casually. "I think there's a perfectly good river not far off. Good for dealing with dangerous refuse."
"Hmm" said Kat, thoughtfully. To tell the truth, she was seriously enjoying playing along. As she had told Escher, she was not, as a rule, vindictive, butwell, every good rule had exceptions. "He'd float."
"Not a problem." said Chet, looking around. He wandered over to something large, curly, and leaden that was propped up against the bookshelf, and hefted it, considering. "We could tie him to this."
"Are you crazy?" yelped Escher, hopping up off the sofa as if someone had just passed a current through it. "You can't do that!"
"Yes! Listen to her!" Mereii was watching them, head snapping from one to the next like a tennis-match-spectator who has spotted that the ball is a live grenade.
The girl reached Chet and snatched the metal thing off him, cradling it protectively. "This," she snapped, "is my final project piece for this semester. Find something else!"
Kat stifled a snigger. Mereii, she thought, looked very much like a property developer who had just been told that the five hundred acres of prime real estate he'd staked his business on was in fact ten feet below sea level. Escher had given him no reason to suspect her of being anything other than dead on his side, so the opposite turning out to be true was probably a heck of a culture shock for him. And if Kat had learnt anything about close-minded people through her relationship with Otto, it was that they did not deal well with culture shocks. Throughout her training, she had never felt happy with the idea that people could be quantified and predicted by solid psychological archetypes, but she had to admit that, right now, her boss was following the pattern exactly. It was known as the Fraser-Munbach model of reduced authority; subject used to control removed from said control and placed in hostile surroundings, subject becomes aware of the situation, subject passes rapidly through stages of shock and anger into rationalization and then-
"HELP! HELP! IN HERE! SOMEBODY HELP ME!"
-subject starts yelling their head off.
"Shut UP, Mereii." she yelled back, as he paused for breath. Escher, however, looked remarkably unfazed.
"Let him." she said, propping the statue-thing carefully up against the sofa. "The worst that could happen is that the guy downstairs turns his TV up a bit more. He's seventy-three and he's got a hearing aid the size of a tennis ball."
"A soundproof prison," murmured Chet, who was still watching the suddenly-silent Mereii with great interest. "Doesn't that sound familiar?
"Ah, geez, it's only six-forty," Escher rubbed the skin under one eye and yawned. "Kat, d'you think that chain's gonna hold till Otto gets back?"
"If Otto made it, it'll hold." said Kat, with finality. "Trust me. The only way this asshole's going anywhere is if he takes the wall with him."
"Okay, then" The younger girl yawned. "Uh, Chet, if you want to change as well, just look through the bags. I'm gonna try get some more sleep."
"Good idea." said Kat. She watched Escher pick her way back across the floor and shut her bedroom door, then swung round on Mereii as she heard him take another deep breath.
"Oh, and, John? Deaf guy or no deaf guy, if you start making that goddamn racket again I will personally gag you with uhwith this, just to get some peace. Okay?"
Her erstwhile employer looked at the rag that Kat had just swiped from a nearby litter of brushes. It appeared to be about thirty per cent cloth, the other seventy per cent a crusted mixture of oil paint and turpentine. His expression was all the answer she needed.
"Great."
Kat was woken at around lunchtime by the sound of a number of heavy books crashing to the floor by her ear. She groaned, rolled over, and fell off the sofa.
"Whaa!"
"Sorry! Are you okay?" Escher, her hair a damp purplish-treacle colour, arrived in her view, looking concerned. And dripping. "I didn't mean to wake you, but I have class in twenty minutes, I really have to go this time, my attendance is bad enough as it is, what with everything and stuff. There's things in the fridge - can you move? You're kind of lying on my books."
"Whuh." agreed Kat, and moved. After a few minutes of watching Escher tear around the room, trying to be quiet, she had woken up sufficiently to add, "Is Otto back yet?"
Escher paused, midway through lacing up one boot. The other was, as yet, undiscovered. "Nope." She waved a vague hand in the direction of the kitchen and the window they had used the night before. "Window's still open. Don't worry, though, I'm sure he's okay."
"When're you gonna get back?" Kat blinked, and stood up.
"Five, maybe." Escher finished stuffing things into her bag, and glanced up at her. She looked worried. "Do you think you'll be all right on your own?"
"Escher, I'm trained to deal with dangerous people. I'll be fine."
"I was talking about him." said the artist, flicking a nervous orange-spotted thumb in the direction of the far corner. Kat laughed, shortly.
"So was I."
After Escher had gone, a silence descended on the apartment. Kat made herself some toast, thanking her lucky stars that the kitchen wasn't anywhere near as untidy as the main room, then went and sat back down on the sofa to eat it. There was no sign of Escher's cat, though this probably had something to do with the number of strange people that had suddenly invaded the apartment. Star and Chet were fast asleep. Mereii was also asleep, sitting up against the wall with his head to one side. He was going to have an almighty stiff neck when he woke up, Kat guessed.
She hung over the arm of the couch and browsed through some of the books that had been piled there. However, this particular stack were all in Latin or German (when selecting volumes for her library, Escher seemed to go by interesting visual contents/layouts, rather than whether she was going to be able to actually read the things) so she soon gave up. By the time fifteen more minutes had elapsed, having arrived at the conclusion that being on the run wasn't anywhere near as exciting as she remembered.
Then, she slowly became aware of a new, distracting sound. It sounded like someone running a stick along a set of railings, except it was a lot more irritating. She sat up, registered that the noise was coming from the corner where Mereii was tied, and looked warily over.
"Katarina. Kat." The links around Mereii's list were not quite long enough to allow him to get to his feet, but he was making up for it by rattling the makeshift metal restraint up and down the pipe, trying to get her attention. "Come on. I just want to talk."
Kat sighed, and got up, picking her way across the room. She perched herself on the edge of a table, shifting a stack of half-finished sketches out of the way, and folded her arms. "All right. Talk."
Mereii blinked irritably at her. His free hand was kneading gingerly at the side of his neck, fulfilling her prediction of an hour ago. "You're not doing yourself any favours, Katarina." he said. "Abducting people is a serious crime."
Kat's eyebrows lifted. "You're talking to me about serious crimes?"
Perhaps aware that he had gotten off to a bad start, Mereii shook his head, changed tack. "Be reasonable, Katarina. Try to think like a psychologist, for once." He shot her a shrewd look. "We're not telemarketers. There's no magic rulebook for our job. I did whatever I thought was justifiable to help my patients achieve progress."
"What I saw you do to Otto was a long way off justifiable," snapped Kat, more than a bit nettled by the for once.'
The psychologist spread his palms. "Sometimes, everything's justifiable."
This somewhat sweeping statement elicited a not-entirely-surprised snort from the girl. "John, whoever it was that thought it was a good idea to give you authority over vulnerable people like that in the first place, they were really, I'd say spectacularly, wrong. It's practically my duty to make damn sure you don't get a chance like that ever again."
"Look, I'm not denying that, if viewed in a negative light, some of my methods might seem a little extreme. But believe me, in the long run, I had nothing but their best interests-"
"Their best interests? spluttered Kat. She would have added, Don't make me laugh, but before she could, she did. A lot. When she could speak again, she continued. "The best interests of your accountant, maybe. God, John, we were taught about people like you in our first year. You really never think about anyone besides yourself, do you? How the hell did you ever end up a psychologist? No, actually, let me guess. You were great in the exams, right?"
"I-understand-people." Luckily, this was an easy sentence to say through clenched teeth. After a moment, he recovered, and forced a smile. "And I know that you're under a lot of stress, Katarina. I'm sure if you just stop and think about this you'll realise. You're on the wrong side." He waved his free hand, indicating the rest of the room. "This isn't going to work, is it? Sooner or later the police are going to catch up with you, and when they do, I'll be the victim, not your, ah, friends.' Think about it. Karos, Toren, they're both just as crazy as he is."
"And Escher?"
Mereii snorted. "Stockholm syndrome, Kat. Clear as day, and hardly surprising after what she's supposed to have been through. No, you and me, we're the only ones capable of being logical here."
"You and me? You and me, John, do not even belong in the same sentence. If you're logical', I'd choose crazy' anyday."
"You know, this is exactly the sort of ungrateful attitude I've come to expect from graduate employees!" snapped Mereii, his wheedling tone evaporating. "How many degree students do you think just walk into jobs in prestigious institutions like you did?"
"John," said Kat, sweetly, "Sporlock is not a prestigious institution. Sporlock is Arkham on a shoestring."
From the poisonous glare that this comment provoked, it seemed that she'd hit a nerve. When he finally continued, however, his voice had a low, carefully contained, and above all persuasive quality.
"Please, Katarina, think about it. We can do each other some good. Just help me, and I swear no-one will ever know you had anything to do with this. Help me get out of here, help me get these dangerous lunatics back where they belong."
Kat stared at him, then turned and looked over to where two-thirds of the dangerous lunatics' in question were still fast asleep. Star was curled up on the other sofa, his skin pale against his new red shirt, his shaggy hair a bright halo around his young features. Chet wasn't far off, a tense-looking charcoal sprawl of long limbs and frizzy hair. It appeared that he had decided to take Escher up on her offer, and the nearly-new black longsleeve and scuffed black jeans that he'd found made him look even paler and lankier as he lay flat out on a spare mattress, as still as a waxwork.
"We can do each other some good?" she repeated, slowly. At her sides, her hands were unconsciously increasing their grip on the edge of the table.
Mereii nodded, eagerly, and gave her a conspiratorial, calculating smile. "And who knows? I might even let you keep your job."
"AAUGH! Ahghh, you bitch!"
Chet snapped awake, senses buzzing. He sat up, head automatically turning to follow the yell that had woken him, and saw Mereii scrambling back up against the wall, screaming a rather muffled string of insults through his hands, which were clamped across his left eye and nose.
"Kat?" said Chet, as the girl stormed past him. He didn't need his special perception to see the blood on her knuckles, or the fire in her eyes. "What happened?"
"I just handed in my notice." she snarled, and stomped out.
