Chapter Seventeen – Evening Interlude

It was getting late into the evening. Too late. She didn't like it. Every bone in her body, every instinct that she relied on, was screaming at her to do something about the situation.

Just wait a few more minutes….

Penelope had willed the thought into her mind several times now, and it seemed to get less and less plausible each time. Time was up. She twice tapped the tip of her seemingly innocuous ballpoint pen hard on the table. For the fifth time in the past few hours, there was only silence as nobody the other end of the communications line picked up. Either Jeff couldn't talk, or he had lost his own communications device. Neither scenario came across to her as particularly appealing. A sudden swell of anxiety made tears prick the backs of her eyes, and she bit down on the feeling, determined not to let it control her.

Don't get emotionally involved in investigations…

Whoever came up with that rule never had the misfortune to suffer the indignity of colleagues disappearing practically under their nose. Colleagues who were also friends. More than that, perhaps the two closest friends that she had. Yes, she had plenty of friends, some of whom she had known since childhood. Friends with whom she shopped and attended parties with. They were not, however, friends that she could share secrets and tales of adventure with. They were not people with which she could be her true self. Parker and Jeff - although both were easily old enough to be her father – were people whom she felt understood her. They were not judgemental, as most people within her aristocratic social circle were. To Penelope, Parker was like a protective uncle and Jeff… Jeff was a little harder to define. She would like to say that Jeff filled the gap left by her deceased father, yet that somehow wasn't right.

Now she was sat all alone in her hotel room in New York City. First Parker, now Jeff. What had started off for Penelope as a little bit of light detective work on behalf of her friend who was looking for a woman identical to his dead wife had now escalated into something else completely. She shivered slightly and looked around her surroundings.

What if I'm next to disappear?

That thought, rather than disturbing the blonde Englishwoman, made her pull herself together. Jeff might have disappeared, but that still left plenty of options open. Options that may yet keep her a step ahead of whatever forces happened to be at work here. However, in order to get those options, she was going to have to make the call that she never really wanted to, under any circumstance. Letting out a small sigh, she sat down on the edge of the bed and opened up her powder compact.

"Scott. I have some news for you."

She was dreaming about holding the baby again, when she awoke with a start. The dream bothered her more than any other recollection had since she had come across Jeff, and found that as well as dreaming about a life that was and was not hers all at the same time, she was suddenly able to recall things during her waking moments. At least when she was awake, she could control what her brain decided to recall.

Of course, it would be better if she couldn't recall those memories at all. It would have saved her a lot of hassle, including her current predicament.

But, she had decided to keep quiet, and so she supposed that she only had herself to blame in that respect. She got out of bed and stumbled over to where there was a washbasin and mirror. Her face looked pale, contrasting sharply with her russet hair. She ran the cold water tap and splashed her face. She stood upright again in order to dry herself, and froze.

Her reflection wasn't a reflection.

It looked like her, certainly, but the person in the mirror wasn't following her movements in the same way that they should have been. She took a cautious step back. The reflection didn't move.

"I don't understand," she said.

"You should do," the reflection replied, in a voice that wasn't quite her own, either.

"You… You… Lucy? But you can't be. You're dead." She was annoyed at her stammering, and balled her hands into fists in order to try and get a grip. The reflection – Lucy – looked back at her, serenely.

"I live on in you, therefore I'm not completely gone," she replied. "You can try and suppress me, but it won't work. Every time you look in a mirror, like you are doing now, you see me. You hear me always. You see the life I lived."

"I am my own person!" Natasha snapped back. "I didn't ask to have your memories rattling around my mind. I didn't ask to have your face. I didn't ask to be here. I just want to live a life of my own."

"Well, so far you've done a really good job of that," Lucy told her, with more than a touch of sarcasm. "If you wanted a life of your own, you'd have found a way out of this mess a long time ago."

"It's not that simple," Natasha said, heatedly.

"The only person who can do anything to change your situation is you."

"Oh, please. If you hadn't met Jeff, you'd still be languishing somewhere in England, just drifting along."

"But I still had to do a lot of hard work on my own to get to where I was at your age."

"I don't need to be lectured by you, of all people," said Natasha. "As far as I'm concerned, you're dead and I'm still very much alive. You had your life, so stay the hell out of mine."

"That's not possible, and you know it," said Lucy. With an enraged noise that was somewhere between a growl and a squeal, Natasha drew back her fist and smashed it into the mirror as hard as she could, shattering it into pieces.

She awoke for real, her knuckles aching from being slammed into the wall. As she rubbed them, she looked over to the washbasin. The mirror hung above it, still perfectly intact.

"Stupid dream," she said aloud, if only to dispel the knot in her stomach. But despite the warmth of her blankets, she couldn't quite get rid of the chilling feeling of being watched from beyond the grave.

Parker meanwhile, was wide awake and studying. Doctor Blalock hadn't given him any further information about what exactly was going on, but Parker had gained his trust enough to have him moved to some more comfortable quarters and have a limited amount of freedom. It was all that he needed. A peek out of a window revealed him to be in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by lots of trees. With no further visible landmarks to guide him, he had instead fallen back on his other plan: get in touch with Mr Tracy's boys at International Rescue. In order to do this, Parker needed to somehow get hold of a transmitter. Of what kind, it didn't matter. The message would get through.

He carefully removed the receiver that he had been wearing when captured from its hiding place within a drawer. Mercifully, it had remained undetected by Blalock and his goons. It was completely possible to turn the receiver into a transmitter with a bit of jiggery-pokery, but the device was tiny and Parker lacked both the necessary tools and the skill for dealing with the advanced technology. However, that did not mean that the wily ex-con was going to give up on the item being useless. Parker knew that everything, no matter how innocuous or mundane, had a possible use when in a tight scrape.

He found himself recalling a nonsensical riddle from his childhood. You are in a room with no doors or windows, and the only piece of furniture is a chair. How do you escape? The answer was thus. You rub your hands together until they are sore. Then you use the saw to cut the chair in half. Two halves make a whole. You put the hole on the wall and shout through it until you are hoarse. Then you get on the horse and ride away.

If only things were that simple, or even possible, in real life. Still, Parker didn't doubt that 'er Ladyship and Mr Tracy were looking for him, even now. Anything that he could do to help them locate his position would be a relief for both them and himself. He placed the receiver back in its hiding place. He had work to do.

Scott terminated the open communications channel between himself and Penelope, and rubbed at his temples. The mysterious Natasha missing, Parker missing and now his father, missing. If only his father could have left well alone. If only he, Scott, hadn't twisted things so that his father would go off on this adventure. But at the time, it had only seemed like something harmless that would get Jeff out from behind his desk. Now it had turned into something serious. His father had gotten too close to something or someone. Scott sighed. There could be no more pretence. It was time to tell the truth to the remainder of the Tracy clan.