A few hours later, Darien returns with Hobbes trailing along behind him. Unfortunately, what with Barnes and his men hanging around in the city now, Darien, Hobbes and especially MacKenna have to remain hidden inside the building until The Shop folks return to Virginia.
Monroe, Eberts and The Official had gone home around 5:30pm, so the three have the whole building to themselves for the night.
The door slides open to reveal MacKenna in the middle of some stretching exercises in the right side of the lab. The Smashing Pumpkins is blasting from a radio on the counter behind her, and Claire is nowhere to be seen.
"... Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage..."
Wearing only the sleeveless black tank top and cut-off sweat shorts that she wore the night she met Darien and the others, MacKenna hastily stops in the middle of bending over backwards when she sees who's entering the lab. She loses her balance and thumps on the floor with a muttered curse. She then ducks behind the exam chair to pull on a lab coat she'd hung there earlier as she turns off the radio.
"... What was lost can never be saved... despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a... CAGE!" snickt
"Oh, hey, don't stop because of us," Darien greets her warmly.
"Thanks," she replies uncomfortably. "But I don't much like having an audience."
Hobbes scans the room. "Where's the Keep?"
"She went out for some stuff. Should be back pretty soon," she replies as she finishes buttoning the lab coat. She walks over to Claire's computer and sits down stiffly in front of it.
Darien steps closer. "You okay? You look... kinda nervous."
She avoids looking at him. "Well, I'm not exactly in my element here, if you know what I mean."
"I think so," he replies quietly. "You've been through a lot..."
"No shit," she mutters as she unconsciously scratches at the palms of her hands.
"Anything I can do to help?" he finishes as he stops a few paces away from her.
MacKenna glances up at him. "Yeah. No offense, but, keep your distance."
He frowns, wondering if he did something to tick her off.
She notices and holds up her hands, palm out. "Zippity-zap?" she reminds him.
"Ah," he nods, and backs up to lean on the edge of the fish tank's table behind him.
Meanwhile, Hobbes has been casually surveying the layout of the lab. He leans on the partition between the two halves of the room as he asks, "So, what's she picking up?"
"Claire? Some clothes and, stuff," MacKenna replies with a little hesitation.
"'Stuff'..." he prods.
She sighs. "Soap, shampoo, deodorant... you know, stuff I can wash up with? It's been a few days since I last showered, you know," she sounds irritated with his probing.
"That's it?"
"Uh yeah. Would you like an itemized list?" she snaps.
"Cut it out Hobbes," Darien chastises his partner lightly before turning back to MacKenna. "You had any dinner?"
She nods as she shoots Hobbes a nasty glare. "Yeah. But she's picking up a pizza while she's out, too."
His stomach rumbles loudly. "Oo, what kind?"
"Onions, peppers, mushrooms... and ham, I think."
"Fawkes, we just ate about an hour ago!" Hobbes protests. "You can't be hungry again!"
Darien grins sheepishly. "Yup."
"Man, that's just weird," the shorter man grumbles. "Frickin' hollow legs."
"What can I say? I'm making up for lost time here."
MacKenna scrutinizes the lanky man thoughtfully. "I know why I'm like this, but you," she pauses as she ponders the possibilities. "I can't see why you'd be the same way..." Her eyes unfocus as she runs calculations in her mind, and she suddenly swivels her chair around to face Claire's computer. "Maybe there's something in the files..." she mutters under her breath as she begins tapping away at the keyboard. A couple of document windows open up, and she begins scrolling through them methodically.
The guys exchange puzzled glances. What the devil was she talking about?
She leans forward as she squints her eyes at the screen, and the front of her partially buttoned lab coat falls open slightly.
"You know what?" Hobbes states as Darien approaches the computer. His friend seems to have abruptly forgotten that he's there. "Think I'll run a perimeter check, make sure the building's secure. You hanging here for a while, Fawkes?"
No answer. Darien's leaning over MacKenna's shoulder, completely engrossed with whatever she's doing.
"Fawkes," Hobbes raises his voice.
"Huh? What?" Darien's head swings around. "Yeah, yeah, I'll be here," he reassures his friend offhandedly with a wave of his hand, and his attention veers right back to the vicinity of the computer screen.
"Yeah. Right." Hobbes checks his watch, grabs his Lithium bottle from the inside pocket of his jacket and pops a couple into his mouth. He dry-swallows them as he stalks to the lab door. "See you later." He shakes his head in mild disgust as he leaves the lab.
As the door's sliding shut, Darien's head dips down a little towards MacKenna's. He sniffs lightly at her loosely bound hair.
She recoils from his nearness. "What the hell're you doing!"
One corner of his mouth tugs up in a light smile. "Your hair... it smells nice."
Her head turns a little so she can look at him out of the corner of her eye. "Didn't you hear me when I said I haven't bathed in a few days?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, so I stink."
"Not really. You smell nice; kinda like roses," he replies softly. He sniffs her hair again as his hands come to rest lightly on her shoulders. Warm breath tickles as he nuzzles her ear with his nose.
"Darien, would you please knock it off?" She shrinks away in an effort to get some distance between them. He gets the hint and pulls back a little.
But only just a little.
He peers over her shoulder at the documents on the computer screen. He's so close that she can smell the last vestiges of his aftershave. A few moments pass as she tries to ignore his closeness, concentrate on finding the particular entries on increased metabolism from the research files, and ignore the escalating waves of heat rushing into the palms of her hands.
He leans on the back of her chair. "You know," he breathes thoughtfully into her ear. "You are pretty cute, for a..." he pauses as he's distracted by the glimpse of cleavage from his vantage point.
She stops scrolling down the document and once again turns her head enough to look at him askance. "What? A fat chick?" she replies wryly. "Wow, gee, thanks mister." She turns back to the computer screen and furtively glances down at her hands. The burning sensation was getting more intense, so she shakes them a little before resuming her typing on the keyboard.
He notices. "You okay?"
"Yeah, just not used to all this typing anymore," she half-lies as she tries to squelch her reaction to his seductive behavior.
His hands move as if drawn from the back of the chair, and he begins to gently massage her tense shoulders. She attempts to shrug him off and edges away, but he automatically follows her as if pulled by a string. She continues to edge away until she falls off the chair and unceremoniously plops onto the floor. He blinks in surprise, and then reaches out to catch her arm and help her stand...
She smacks his hand away in irritated alarm. "Just back off!" She scoots back until she bumps against the legs of the table behind her, and catches the edge to hoist herself up. She glares at him in near panic as she realizes that the palms of her hands are rapidly heating up the cold metal of the table under them.
"What? What's the matter?" he asks in utter puzzlement. 'Man, is this chick jumpy,' he thinks to himself.
Her eyes dart around the room as she searches for something to ground out on. Finally, her gaze settles on the giant fish tank a few feet away in the middle of the room. As Darien prepares to step towards her, she darts around him and plunges her burning hands into the water of the tank.
There's a sizzling crack-y sound, and a modest cloud of steam almost envelops the diminutive woman as it billows across the ceiling.
... Just as Claire enters the lab.
"I brought you a few changes in clothing, too. I hope I have the right sizes... What the bloody hell?" she exclaims in alarm. She almost drops the large pizza box in her hands as the duffel bag of personal effects slips off from her shoulder.
"What? What's going on here?" Hobbes barks as he rushes into the room. He bumps into Claire, causing her to finally drop everything precariously balanced in her arms. "Oh my god, Claire, I'm so sorry..." he blurts out in embarrassment, and bends down to help her pick up the scattered items.
In the middle of the room, MacKenna's legs have given way, and she's sunk down to the floor. She isn't having a seizure, but she's cradling her hands to her chest in severe pain.
Darien stands frozen in bafflement, wondering what the hell had just happened.
"What the hell just happened?" he blurts out to no one in general.
MacKenna gasps silently in an effort to control the white-hot needles of agony stabbing at the palms of her hands. She manages to grit out "Circuitry overload," before curling up around her scorched hands and rocking back and forth on her butt. "Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap..." she gasps under her breath.
Claire overhears their exchange over Hobbes' repeated murmured apologies for bumping into her. She rises, leaving him to pick up the rest of the stuff she dropped, and strides over to the fish tank. Her eyes widen in amazement as she sees that the water level's dropped at least an inch or so, with all but a couple of fish having been cooked to death. And the remaining two are looking about ready to go belly-up at any second.
"How did you..." she begins, and then notices that her patient's down on the floor on the other side of the tank. She immediately rounds the table, drops down to MacKenna's side, and tries to get a better look at the woman's hands.
"No! Don't touch me!" MacKenna grunts and shrinks away from Claire's touch on her arm. But the doctor gives her a stern look and firmly presses her to be still, and she relents once she realizes who it isn't.
Back at the door, Hobbes has noticed the condition of the fish tank. "Whoa, someone's really been craving seafood," he comments in a low tone.
Claire gently pulls MacKenna's right hand away from her chest and scrutinizes it. The fingers are curled in towards her palm, where the skin is a mottled and sickly white and already blistering. The left hand shows little difference. Without looking up, the now grim-faced doctor orders "Darien, get me the first-aid kit."
The demand jolts him into motion, and he quickly treads over to the other side of the lab, retrieves the kit, and returns to her side. He kneels down and first hands her a pair of surgical gloves, and then a medium-sized tube of burn cream. Once the gloves are on, she carefully pries MacKenna's fingers open and applies a generous dollop of the cream to the palms of her hands... while the other woman hisses through her teeth from the fresh stabbing needles of pain each little movement brings on. Darien then hands Claire a roll of thin gauze, of which she gently wraps around MacKenna's hands to protect the burns.
Claire lowers the woman's left hand down to her lap, and steadily gazes into her green eyes. "Now, what brought that on?"
MacKenna blushes deeply, and her eyes dart momentarily to Darien's face before resting on an innocuous spot on the floor between her knees. The action speaks volumes to the doctor, who turns and imperiously orders Darien out of the room.
"Darien, out."
He looks surprised. "What did I do?"
She stares at him sternly. "I don't know, but obviously something went on here while I was gone. Why don't you help Hobbes do a perimeter check while Amanda and I talk?"
"Well, actually, I was just coming back from..." Hobbes begins.
"Bobby," Claire interrupts. "It never hurts to double-check yourself, does it?" She shoots him a pleading look, and he gets her hint.
He sets the stuff he had picked up onto the table by the door, and snags a slice of pizza from the box. Amazingly, the entire pizza suffered no ill effects from being dropped onto the floor. "C'mon partner, let's take a walk. You still hungry?" He displays the still-hot slice to his friend, who realizes that he's actually starving again.
Darien's stomach rumbles loudly, and he shakes his head to clear it as he stands up. "What the hell, I could use the air," he replies sourly. He rubs at the back of his head as he walks over to the door. He snags the pizza box from the table and takes it with him out of the lab. Hobbes opens his mouth to say something, but notices the dark look on Darien's face, and instead takes a huge bite out of the slice of pizza in his hand as the door slides shut behind him.
"Now," Claire starts once the door is shut. "Want to tell me what that was all about?"
MacKenna continues staring at the floor, and Claire realizes that the woman is actually embarrassed!
"Well?"
"I'd rather not."
"Tough."
MacKenna closes her eyes for a moment as she tries to figure out how to explain. "I don't know if you noticed the scars on my wrists and palms," she begins.
Claire frowns, and nods. "I was wondering about those," she replies quietly.
MacKenna's eyes open and refocus on the doctor's face. "They're made to look like they're from carpal tunnel release surgery, but the Shop doctors did something so that I could focus a lot of... bioelectrical, energy into my hands..." she pauses a moment as her faces screws up in disgust. "God, it sounds like a line of shit even when I think it!" she exclaims.
Claire rests a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It's all right, Amanda. Believe me, I've heard more far-fetched things than this."
"Yeah, I guess you have," is the thoughtfully subdued reply.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you're a research doctor, and Darien does that... thing... y'know," she shrugs. "He's like, Arnaud."
Claire rocks back on her heels, unsure of how to respond. How much did Arnaud and Stark tell her about the gland?
MacKenna notices her hesitation. "Arnaud and I had a little, 'sharing', session during the flight from Virginia. He told me his version of what'd happened since he'd first gotten involved with, um, the... oh, what did he call it? The... Quicksilver Project?"
Claire opens her mouth to say something, but the other woman seems to sense what she's about to voice.
"Yeah, and he told me about killing Darien's brother; seemed quite proud of it, too. But, he's not one to think things through very much, is he?"
The doctor smiles wryly. "Not well enough, thank goodness."
"Well, anyway, he also said what he did to Darien; and if it weren't for his, visibility problem, I would've thought he was full of it."
"And what would you have done to help him?"
"I dunno," she sighs. "Once I'd rested a bit, he and Mr. Stark wanted me to help him steal your files on this... gland," she hesitates, uncertain about the wording. "Then we would've had more information to help me figure out which neurological interfaces were screwed up during Arnaud's implantation."
Claire doesn't say anything; she just looks questioningly at her. Under that even gaze, MacKenna begins to feel self-conscious. "Y-you're wondering if I'm still out to get those files, aren't you?"
"The thought has crossed my mind."
"Look, I won't say anything to try and set your mind at ease; truth is, I don't know what I'm gonna do anymore." A shadow crosses her face as she begins to brood on her dubious future, and she absently picks at the gauze wrapping around her right hand.
Claire gently but firmly pulls the woman's restless fingers away from the bandages. "Let's just skip that for now, and concentrate on what happened between you and Darien just now."
MacKenna's expression changes as if she's just eaten something sour. "Do we, have to?"
"Yes, we do."
She looks at the doctor thoughtfully for a moment, and then moves as if she's going to stand up. Claire rises and helps her up, and MacKenna begins to pace. She stops at the end of the tank and somberly regards the dead fish inside before glancing at the doctor out of the corner of her eye. "Sorry about your fish," she begins contritely.
She hesitates, and Claire presses her. "Never mind that, now. Go on."
She heaves a great sigh. "Like I was saying earlier: the Shop docs operated on my head and my hands quite a bit. I'm not sure if the stuff they installed was mechanical, biological, or some sort of a mix; but it allows me to focus a lot of energy into my hands so that I can, well, 'push' people to do what I want." She pauses a moment to gather her thoughts before continuing. "I only have a certain level of control over this, and I tend to lose it when I get emotional; mostly when I'm ticked off. I'm hyperactive, too; and something they did to me has increased my metabolism so that I continuously generate excess energy. And if I don't expend some of the surplus that ends up building up over a few days, I tend to unconsciously discharge." She looks directly into Claire's eyes. "One time I, set a man on fire," she speaks quietly. It's obvious that the memory is one of her least pleasant ones. She glances away and continues. "I haven't had a chance to discharge since what happened last week at that warehouse, and I didn't know how to do it without your noticing."
Claire opens her mouth to speak, but MacKenna cuts her off. "Look, I wasn't sure how much of this you'd believe; hell, after eight years I still have difficulty believing it myself!" She takes a deep breath before continuing. "Anyway, Darien and Hobbes stopped by to check on us, and we got to talking about why Darien's still so hungry all the time. Hobbes left to do a..." she hesitates as she tries to remember the words he used. "Perimeter check, and Darien stayed to see if I pulled up anything on increased metabolism from my files. He..." she trails off, looking increasingly discomfited.
Claire's brows knit in concern as she notices the other woman's blushing. "Amy, what happened?"
"Um, he... came on to me."
Claire's eyes widen in mild surprise. "How so?"
"He... smelled my hair. And... He couldn't seem to stop... touching me."
Claire's brows then come together as a thought hits her. "I'd better check those results..." she murmurs to herself as she turns to the testing equipment on the other side of the lab. She rips off a few sheets of paper from the dot matrix printer sitting beside the rack of vials on a counter and begins poring over the results.
Back by the fish tank, MacKenna takes a few deep breaths to get her emotions under control before walking up to Claire. She peers around the taller woman's shoulder at the printed results of Darien's blood work. As they read, their eyebrows slowly rise: MacKenna's in surprise and Claire's in worry.
"Am I reading this right?" MacKenna asks in concern. "Are those saying that..."
"Yes," Claire sighs. "His estrogen levels are rising... again." MacKenna shakes her head.
"'Again'? This is a continuing problem for him?"
The doctor nods and turns towards her computer. She strides over and sits in the chair MacKenna had sat in earlier, and clears the screen in order to pull up another document. "I just can't seem to isolate the catalyst behind the gland's interface with his hormonal output," she murmurs as she types.
MacKenna comes over, picks up the test results, and continues reading over them while Claire reads through some of her documentation on the gland. After a few moments, the doctor sighs and shakes her head as she pushes back from the computer. MacKenna looks up from the papers at the sound and frowns thoughtfully. "Have you done any P.E.T. scans?"
Claire tilts her head sideways at the suggestion. "No, why?"
"It might be a good idea to map which areas of his brain are acting up. I bet if you figured out which ones specifically are involved, and link that up with the results of his blood work, you'd have a better idea as to the cause."
Claire blinks in surprise. That makes sense...
MacKenna smiles slightly at the doctor's expression. "You don't have relevant scientific discussions very often, do you?"
The doctor smiles. "Not as often as I'd like," is the amused response. Her face slowly firms, and she turns back to the computer as she waves the other woman closer. "Read this and tell me what your thoughts are," she begins as she opens up a document window. She senses after a few moments that MacKenna hasn't moved, and looks up into the woman's troubled eyes. "What's the matter?"
"Do you really think I should be reading that?"
She pauses to think for a moment, and then shrugs one shoulder. "I need help with this, and there's no one else available with the necessary clearance and experience. And I think you might have a point about your contact with Darien somehow affecting him adversely. So who better to help me out with this than you?"
MacKenna shakes her head in negation. "You're placing way too much faith and trust in me."
"I don't think so. Why else would Arnaud have been so interested in you?"
"Well, not for my classic beauty, that's for sure," is the self-deprecating remark.
Claire shoots her a 'you gotta be shitting me' look as the lab door clicks and slides open. MacKenna's face braces in preparation of facing Darien again, but Hobbes just pops his head in to the room. The pizza box follows, and he sets it down on the counter next to him.
"He left you half," is the brief comment as he rolls his eyes at his friend's gluttony. "We're about halfway through; check in in about fifteen, okay?"
"Thanks Bobby," Claire replies warmly as she rises and retrieves the box. The lab door slides shut, and she beams encouragingly to the shorter woman. "Still hungry?"
MacKenna's stomach growls in response, and she shrugs and comes over to take a slice. "I hope you guys have a good expense account: 'cause I'll need to eat again in a few hours."