Chapter notes in my profile. Enjoy.
---34:26:05---
How long had they all been paralyzed just like that? Ed sat slumped against her tomato with Ein's head drooping on her lap. Jet had stumbled down to the couch with a hand over his mouth and his brown eyes glazed with darkness. As for Faye, she sat still with her pale porcelain face fixed at the screen as if waiting for some sign that everything had been joke, a hoax, or a lie. Spike Spiegel remained stunned for while. His eyes dwindled from corner to corner, and face to face. Everything had suddenly turned surreal, like a bad TV show, or old twentieth century drama. His senses had dulled so drastically that he thought the silence meant that he had gone deaf. He began to register again that no one's mouth was moving, but he couldn't comprehend why he couldn't hear the fan above him. He glanced up, and realized the fan had stopped moving too. The damn thing had probably broken a while ago.
Bombs. Not bomb. His mind reminded him. His senses kept still.
He couldn't stay immobile anymore like he had gone back to his coma. A finger moved, and then the whole hand. It slowly reached into his pocket, and pulled out the little box of relief he had forgotten he had. Carefully, he plucked out one of the last two cigarettes, and placed it on his mouth. His other hand moved too, and dug into the jacket pocket.
Clack!
The silence trembled and broke. The click of a Zippo lighter pinged off the metal walls to every ear, and finally as Spike lit his cigarette, he realized he wasn't deaf after all.
Faye whipped her head around the second the scent of tar and nicotine spread out from Spike's mouth. Her eyes glowed heavy with green, lighting up the room obscenely.
"What the fuck are you doing?" She yelled and used her pale arm to propel herself from her seat. There was a momentary flinch, when the green went dark, and she stopped herself from lunging at Spike. She held onto the chair for dear life, because whatever she had to say was worth the pain she inflicted on her own body. That was Faye Valentine for you.
"Faye, sit down." Jet immediately stood up with arms slightly outstretched ready to catch her the moment her balance wavered out of control. Faye waved her arm at him with her eyes never losing focus of Spike.
Spike stared past her, mainly preoccupied with his cigarette, because the truth was everything had shut down. His emotions, his logic, and his entire nervous system had taken the brunt of the napalm accident inside him caused by panic and desperation joining arms with shock in a coup d'etat that he had definitely foreseen. Spiegel had been blown to cinders and at ground zero was the empty shell of someone that once used to be, or never was—no one was sure anymore and least of all him.
All he could think at that moment was that sometime somewhere he had experienced this before.
"What the hell's behind me?" She turned her head to peek from the corner of her eye, and then whipped back to him. "Julia again?" Her sarcasm was more evident than her anger. Spike now stared at her, simply because that name somehow brought him closer to that moment he kept trying to remember. "Well, Julia's dead Spike. And soon the whole damn city will be too." Spike wasn't really listening like he ought to, but he just had to remember. God, what was it? It was nagging and tugging at him. Faye scoffed between clenched teeth. "But no, look at you. Mister nonchalance-and-I could careless. Do you think that you're the only one who's suffered? I've been treated like shit ever since I woke up. Like I don't matter. I'm just this stupid girl woken up in the wrong millennium. Who the hell do you think you are? I don't need this. I thought I needed you back," She pointed with stern index finger at the 'you.' "For everything to return to normal," a rueful pause, "and every time I let you get to me."
Her eyes glared harder at him, and he responded with deep stare under furrowed eyebrows which sent her wild with realization, as if suddenly she understood him, the situation, Alyssa, everything. "But I don't need you." She finally added. "I don't want anything to do with you." Her eyes, once emerald, became opaque and unreadable. Her rage subsided, and she stood inert taking in the shock of her numbness. She had implied that he could understand everything she uttered frantically, but he couldn't. He didn't understand why he was alive, why he had fallen in love with her. Truthfully, he was slowly starting to forget it all. He had begun to forget pieces of himself, and pieces of the people in his life. He had forgotten the emotions that only moments ago abated inside his body, and racked his mind ruthlessly until his instincts had no choice but to deaden completely.
But as he absorbed Faye's numb stare, her eyes became a mirror reflecting that which he was forgetting within himself. Somewhere deep within Spike an emotion stirred followed quickly by another one.
"So is this what you wanted?" She soughed, addressing the damp air, or maybe herself.
Soon enough his emotions responded to her numbness, and they wriggled their way from the heat of the explosion still crackling against his chest.
"Faye, stop it, you're scaring the kid." Jet spoke softly and wearily.
"Is this why you came back?" He glanced at her realizing that she had come so close to him that he could feel her warm breath damping his face and the trigger inside her palpitating against his body.
It hit him then. The last time everything had exploded within him was when Julia died. He had lost everything within him completely, and he only wished to finish everything that had begun it all—Vicious, his syndicate, the red, the black, and those ruthless dragon teeth. But this wasn't the case this time. Faye still lived, and as long as she lived he couldn't let himself become that again. He didn't want to be that hollow skin of a human being again.
"Faye," He called to her but she kept spinning. The red on the bandages on her side had spread at an alarming rate. "Stop it, you're hurting yourself."
She halted, her body slumping forward then back as if she had been hit by a momentary flux of inertia. She turned around with full-on fury to face Spike.
"I refuse to pay for what you did. Find someone else to die for you Spike, because I won't." She punched his chest, and he gripped her forcefully by the arm. She glanced at him with gut-wrenching eyes, desperate and spiteful.
"Let me go." She demanded in a sunken tone. "I can't look at you anymore." Her eyes darted away from him. The frigidity of her voice had soaked him and the cold dug into him one prickling ice needle at a time. He plucked his fingers off her arm one by one until finally his arm fell to his side. Her back receded from his view slowly, then up the stairs, and finally it disappeared entirely into the hall. The steps echoed through the stiff silence she left behind her, until the door to her quarters slid shut.
Spike's eyes had photographed that disillusioned numb look lodged in her eye, and his eardrums had recorded every pounding decibel of her frigid voice. They would remain in constant replay for a long time.
Ed suddenly made a squealing noise, which rescued Spike from his thoughts.
"Ed?" Jet had a mixture of confusion, weariness, and anxiousness all bundled up under his eyes.
"The bounty has just been increased to 300 million just like for spooky-ooky Vincent!" She waved her arms around in ghost-like manner.
Jet shook his head, and sat back down. "Thanks Ed."
The recording of Faye's voice screeched to a halt. "Wait. Ed, what did you say?"
"The bounty's increased to 300 million." Jet restated somewhat annoyed that Spike was interested in money right then.
"No, the second part." Spike waved his hand dismissively. "Vincent." He muttered to himself. The moment of shut down Spike had granted his body sparked something useful in him. As his mind, blood cells, and adrenaline began restarting, a new path he hadn't considered before stretched before him. He dug through his memories and found something that he almost wanted to scold himself for having forgotten.
Spike turned around towards Ed.
"Ed, I need you to make a copy of the specs of this thing. Everything." Spike instructed and Jet glared at him.
"Yessir," Ed saluted with smile, an excitement on her face and a sense of assurance that all efforts had not been exhausted.
"What is it?" Jet asked immediately.
"Do you remember Vincent?" Jet's mouth parted slightly at Spike's question.
"What does that have to do with anything?" His eyes furrowed with annoyance.
"Remember how we spread the anti-nano machine cure to everyone. We should all have it, especially Faye." Spike decided to explain himself for once. It would kill time while Ed got him what he needed.
"Yeah, he gave her the cure himself." Jet had told him about it. Faye would never confess something like that to Spike.
"An antibody against nano machines. I'm going to follow a lead. I want you to keep looking for Alyssa. She'll be our last resort."
"Ready!" Ed shouted and threw Spike a transparent case with a silver disc inside.
"What about Faye?" Jet asked.
"If she becomes a problem, sedate her." Spike answered monotonously, his brown eyes dead set on Jet's. His partner simply stared back, half in awe, and the other half almost disgusted by his cold suggestion. It was all Spike could do to keep them together, and working. If he lost control like Faye, or lost his ability to stomach surprises like Jet, they'd be done for.
He had a new plan, which involved a visit to Moroccan street.
-----
A cold hush had settled on Moroccan street, softly lingering above the few people meandering around it. Only the jewelry, legume, and rug sellers remained with their small shops open and their faces fearful and weary. Spike felt like hell as he walked through the barren medina. His arms ached, and his body rolled inward into him, pushing into his chest. He rejected the tiredness, and instead focused on his brand new goal. He glanced around wondering who he could ask first. A woman in her black chador pulled on a little boy whispering 'yalla,' while a man quickly handed a couple of bills to a tomato vendor. They wouldn't talk to him today. All these dark eyes had grown suspicious and reserved. He continued walking until he reached the long stone steps at the end of the small medina. The city was a mirage, hues of purples, grays, and reds against the blue mid-afternoon background. It made him sick to look at the city.
"I hate this, don't you? This quiet." Julia's voice emerged with the whistling of the wind. She descended to a step and glanced at the city. She wore her long overcoat, the one that she had left with Annie to cover her up that day. Julia's pale hands tugged at it, pulling it closer to her. Her blonde locks fluttered with the wind, and Spike could almost swear he could smell lilacs, or some kind of flowery shampoo like that.
"I try to imagine it. The whole thing flattened, and I just can't." She added and then met eyes with Spike. "It looks so peaceful, like a still life, frozen in time."
"Allah." He heard Rashid's voice echo form behind him. Spike turned to face him, and Julia had already disappeared as if only her voice had been there. Rashid shook his head in disbelief. "Spike Spiegel." Even with few people scattered on the street, Rashid still managed to appear from nowhere. Maybe everything was part of his rather vivid imagination.
"I have a question." Spike eyes scanned the area quickly, a paranoid precaution he had grown accustomed to ever since Alyssa appeared.
"There's hardly anyone out today, so not much business. Usually, at mid-afternoon people are out and about, greeting, buying, rushing through in tumults. Even the distant sound of traffic seems so light in comparison to most days." Rashid commented glaring towards the city, and then turned to Spike. "The people of Alba are shaken. After those two explosions, the mayor has recommended people stay in their homes. And that's why you're here, isn't it?"
Spike sighed, glad that Rashid's guilt-pressing stare hid behind his dark glasses. Spike felt around his pockets for a cigarette, and soon learned he had left his precious last few on the Bebop.
"I know who's behind this, but I need your help." Spike leaned on the rail of the stairs, and dug in his pocket for the disc. "I need you to look at this." Rashid took the disc in his hand, examined it with a skeptical expression. He lifted his head to Spike again.
"I don't think I know anything that may help you." Rashid extended his hand out to give him back the disc.
"Dr. Mendelo, you owe me." Spike stated sternly and Rashid's shoulders just hunched along with a rueful frown on his lips.
The doctor nodded pulling his hand back. "Follow me."
Rashid led him past a few shops on the street, and into this small alley Spike hadn't noticed before. They entered the back door to room, which the light revealed to have dangling carpets, and vases, and a canopy bed with dozens of pillows ranging from burgundy to orange and gold. On a corner, there was a table with small computer. Rashid turned it on, and placed the disk inside. While he read the contents of the disc, he instructed Spike to look inside a chest next to the bed. He said Spike would find a wooden box with clove cigarettes in there.
Spike inhaled the clove, not his favorite kind of cigarette, but it was better than nothing. The aroma relaxed his anxiousness a bit, and he sat shifting uncomfortably in the bed while Rashid sifted through the information on the disc. He hoped to all hell that he would be able to tell him something.
"Maktub." Twenty minutes and four cigarettes later, Rashid rose from his chair and headed towards the bed.
"What?" Spike tried to recapture what he said, thinking he maybe misheard him.
"A persons' destiny is written by God," Rashid lifted his hand and placed his index finger on his forehead. "Here. It is written on the forehead—your entire life." His hand fell against his side and he glanced back at his monitor. "So in Islam we don't ponder why things went one way or another, it is destiny. It is written." Spike remained attentive for part of it, but soon grew impatient with his sooth-saying. He was worse than Jet.
"The Membranic Trace," Spike paused to glare at Rashid, who in turn stood still and attentive assuring Spike that he understood what the Mtrace was. "It's inside someone I know. I need to stop it, or she—," Spike stopped himself. He didn't want to have tell anyone else about Faye. "Do you know this technology? Why won't the anti-nano machines work against it?" Rashid shook his head.
"The nano agents have transformed in a way to imitate the tissue around them. If your data is correct, then this is a new evolution of the technology. The nano machine inserted in this woman could have been a cell engineered like a machine, with a cpu if you could think of it that way. It replicated itself and constructed a device exactly as it was instructed. It's the perfect weapon." Rashid added with a somewhat amused or ironic tone of voice. Either way it was enough to piss off Spike. Rashid must have seen the dissatisfaction in Spike's face, and frowned.
"This woman must be without a destiny to begin with, to have one carved in her heart instead." Rashid took off his glasses, and his olive green eyes focused on Spike. "A long time ago, terrorists were simply fanatics of their ideals, extremists they called them. They believed in their warped form of religion and code so fiercely that nothing could deter them from destroying millions of lives. Terrorism has always existed, and now they say that it has evolved into something else."
Spike didn't understand what Rashid planned to tell him, or not tell him for that matter, but he listened attentively anyway awaiting some answer. An answer that would explain Alyssa, his life, Faye, and everything else that no one had bothered to address.
"Now, acts of terror are committed by people seeking to be more powerful, by overly ambitious military corporations, and above all by those seeking revenge. This kind of terrorism doesn't harbor movements or followers. The person acts as a single cell, you find its sources, and cut them off and no other person will take its place." Rashid placed his sunglasses back on.
"I should find the sources." Spike agreed with him, but it wasn't that simple. This thing could not be stopped. "It might do me no good. I need to get the Mtrace off her."
"What has been written cannot be erased." Rashid answered.
"That's it then?" Spike shot up, angry to have wasted his time with him.
"This was not written by God, but by human hands and human ink, and therefore it is not perfect. Perhaps the ink came from a place called Drachma." His answer was cryptic, but methodical. Spike had no choice but to make note of the name, and try to find out as much as he could about it.
Spike began to head for the door, when Rashid's grip suddenly stopped him. He held Spike by his arm.
"God has placed the choice in your hands for a reason. Allah-hu-Akbar." He said, and then let him go.
Spike couldn't help but feeling that God hadn't anything to do with him anymore. He'd never had anything to do with him from the beginning.
----
Spike jumped out of the cockpit of the Swordfish II, stretched his legs and arms, and rolled his shoulders back. The tension knotted his muscles into a hard clump of stress. He was less flexible, his vision a bit hazy, and his mouth was dry as all hell. He needed a real cigarette badly.
He had wandered around the neighboring streets of the Moroccan medina, but found that the Russian market—a bootleg haven—was nearly empty, and little Havana may as well have curled back to an island in the sea. There were no old men playing their dominoes, few cafes were open to the public, and the street smelled stale instead of its usual warm scent of freshly baked Cuban bread.
He wasted a good half-hour doing that, but he needed to walk it off before he could return to the Bebop. He thought that perhaps Moroccan street just happened to be dead that day, but Rashid was right. The whole damn city had gone into panic mode since the last bomb exploded this morning. Schools shut down as early as yesterday, and a lot of people didn't go to work the minute they heard or felt the news of the last explosion.
Goddamn it, he had headache. He hoped to god Jet had aspirin in the first aid kit.
Spike found Jet sitting down smoking a cigarette very carefully, savoring it, definitely concentrating on it more fiercely than usual. In front of him was a plate of the bell peppers mix he tried to pass up as a meal with some left over sukiyaki. All the cables and extraneous files, papers, and other research messes had been cleared away with one swoop. They had all ended up at one end of the center table. Ed was nowhere to be found, and neither was her tomato or her dog.
"Sit down." Jet had heard him come in, but he didn't glance towards Spike or even digress at all from his cigarette. Spike abided by his request.
"Rashid told me to look up some place called Drachma, might be a company, or something." Spike muttered looking around again for Ed, or any signs of life. Did he have to fight Faye and sedate her? Something was definitely bothering the hell out of Jet.
Jet put his cigarette out on the table and then fixed his eyes straight on Spike. Spike felt his body lean backwards a bit, and his brows furrow. Jet was about to bite his head off, he could tell.
"Have you heard of Drachma?" Spike asked, and instantly regretted he had interrupted Jet before he even started.
"Shut up. It's my turn this time. I talk, you listen." He turned his mahogany eyes towards the pile of junk at one end of the table. "I have followed along with everything you said so far. I let you come back into this ship. I left you and Faye to your own business most of the time." He paused, his facial features as stern as ever. "But don't you ever fucking talk to me like that again." The Black Dog tone, that bite that never lets go, had suddenly emerged steady and fierce.
Spike wanted to ask what the hell he was talking about, but he remained quiet. Allowing Jet to think that Spike understood exactly the threat that he just made would probably ease his comrade rather than incite more anger in him. He needed Jet on his side. He had no one else at this point, and fuck, he couldn't do this alone.
"Don't you ever dare to talk about my ship, or any member of it like we're some instrument or some burden of yours. This is my ship, and don't you ever think you can order me, Spike. Things have changed since you left. I will not put up with your shit anymore." Jet added with a poignant hiss on each fricative.
Spike understood now. Jet had finally had it with him, and now he needed some sense of control back. It was slipping from him, and whenever it did, Jet would usually distract himself or convince himself that everything had meant to be okay. He had never seen Jet go all cop on him, but hell, he had never seen so many things he had experienced in the last twenty-four hours so nothing came as a surprise anymore.
"Now, I'll get Ed right on Drachma, and I'll see what I can fish up with ISSP. Faye is still in her room, and I don't think she's sleeping." The dark shadow of the Black Dog receded from Jet's eyes, and he returned to his weary old self in an instant.
Spike nodded, and read between the lines. Jet had just ordered him to go talk to her. He had no idea if could actually manage that right then.
----
After a much needed cigarette and bathroom break, Spike headed towards the shrew's door. Shrew, the word sounded weird to him now. She had become Faye, a woman, and someone that he would do anything to get her out of his head. He stopped a few steps short of her door, and glanced down at his bandaged hands. They still stung a bit, and suddenly it felt like the perfect time to inspect them. Small red scratches clung to his knuckles, and he had a greenish bruise near his wrist that he hadn't noticed before. Looking at it then, he realized it hurt a bit to move it. But what really began to bother the hell out of him was this small hangnail on his left thumb. He tried picking at it with his black splintered nails but it didn't even budged, and then he went full on with his teeth.
He almost had the little white flap between his two canines, when suddenly two hands clung to his right leg. His heart almost fumbled out his mouth in that split second, which is how long it took him to realize that those hands belonged to Ed.
"Ed, what the hell are you doing here?" He scratched the back of his unruly head.
"Watching Spike-person avoid Faye-faye." Ed let him go and tumbled backwards. "Does Faye-faye hate Spike?"
Spike's annoyance faded from his face. "Maybe." Spike answered.
"Because Ed thought Faye-faye hated Ed, and she doesn't. Ed thinks Spike loves Faye-faye, and that's why Spike-person is always sad." She added detachedly, and rather unknowingly, as if her mouth had been speaking by itself and Ed had merely been standing there listening along with him. She tumbled again, and then several times until she was out of view.
He sighed and rubbed his temples. If he was going to talk to her it was now or never. And never sounded much better with each second, but seconds was what had gotten them into this mess in the first place.
He knocked. He felt stupid just knocking like that, but instead he focused on his facial features. The last thing he needed was to be completely readable to her.
"What do you want Spike?" It was no use to even try to convince her to open the door, so he did it for her. The door slid open and pushed out a whiff of smoke towards him. Faye Valentine sat on her bed with an old soda can in one hand, and a cigarette on the other. "And your manners are primitive as always."
He didn't feel anything when he saw her. There were no urges to smell her hair, or touch her, or look at her face more closely. It was an empty room with two empty people in it.
"So spit it out. Whatever it is you came to say." Her voice sounded so brash, so high-pitched and nasally. It bugged him. It bugged him more then than it had ever done so, and her breathing too, and the vulgar way she held her cigarette. She could be so unattractive sometimes. "Fine, be creepy and just stand there watching me."
His heart started beating faster, out of control, just like that. In seconds he had swallowed an entire marching band worth of drums, and they all palpitated off his organs and echoed throughout him. And then his body rebelled, his mind was still blank, but his body moved on its own. It went straight for her, and leaned down. All he could do was watch as her cigarette slipped from her fingers and her emerald eyes rounded up in shock, and their lips touched.
It took her a few seconds to register the assault, but he pulled back before she could push him away and he grabbed her. He wrapped his arms around her. He felt like he was going to die.
"I never wanted to go near you. I knew this would happen. Everything I touch turns to shit, and I—," Jesus Christ he was confessing, like an idiot, like a coward. He blabbered on too long before he could stop himself.
"Get the hell off me." She whispered. Her body had stiffened up intuitively. He released his grip and stood up immediately. His senses returned to him again, and his body came crawling back to his domain. He noticed her lips had turned a slight red from his kiss, and instantly brought his hand to his own feeling a prickling sensation lingering in them. She smudged the cigarette with her heel that had quickly burned to ashes on the ground, and lifted her gaze to meet his. She shook her head.
"Christ, Spike, look at you. You look like hell." She pulled a violet lock of hair behind her ear. "Why do you do this? I don't get it. No wait, I do get it."
His body hadn't completely stopped pounding, instead it had all gathered up in his throat. He felt like a stupid naïve child.
"You know Spike, when Alyssa told me that you loved me I didn't even budge. I wasn't in the least bit surprised that she would be that confused, after all she doesn't know as much as she claims to know about you. Because—you—Spike Spiegel, don't love anybody. Everything in this world is about you. This is all about you. The bomb, the city, and me." She paused, and swallowed what might have been a spiteful chuckle.
"I can't believe it took me so long to figure you out. You're so simple. Did saying all that to me make you feel better?" She didn't wait for an answer, and he wasn't planning to talk. Ever. "No, of course not, because when you walked in this room you had no intention of apologizing to me. Hell, you didn't even know you were going to kiss me."
She frightened him, more than anyone had ever frightened him in his life. Her thick verdant glare just dug deeper and deeper, and singed into him. She peeled him layer by layer, until a transparent film, a two-way mirror was left. She had the side that could see into him. All he saw in her eyes was himself.
"I'm right, aren't I? Of course I am. You don't love me, Spike. You never will, because it will always be about you. And no one can compete with that. Not even Julia could." She shook her head again, and sighed. "I'm the one with the trigger, but you know why you're staying here in the pretense of helping me? It's only because you think it's about you, because Spike, if this had nothing to do with you—if this was about me and someone from my past, would you be here?" This time she paused, and the seconds, and the digital ticking from his wristwatch dragged the silence through the room.
"Would you?" She pressed on as her voice reached a higher pitch of annoyance.
Spike stood still, his stoic face a solid white expression in the midst of all the chaos. He felt naked. Every limb, every part of him had suddenly become so present and so apparent to him. Every scratch on his body and every bruise shone brightly, purposefully, taunting him with a "here I am, a million blemishes of your façade."
"Didn't think so." Faye answered for him. She slowly got up from bed and headed towards the door. She turned off the dim lights, and the door slid shut. Spike thanked the comfort of the darkness and the sanctuary it provided so he could hide his nakedness for a while.