Magnetic Forces of Love and Conspiracy

Written by BansheeGirl

A/N: I am alive! Hurrah! I have no idea why I decided to write this chapter during the start of the busiest time of the university semester… But I did! And I hope you are all grateful:D

Anyway… BIG apologies for the extreme wait for this chapter. I know it has been just so long since the last instalment of this fic, and I really hope you're all still interested enough to keep going! This fic will eventually be finished, trust me!

Disclaimer: See chapter 1 or 2!

Magnetic Forces of Love and Conspiracy

Chapter 20: We Used To Be Friends

"Sir. Sir, wake up. Please!"

James groaned as he was suddenly bombarded with the sensation of consciousness. Colours danced in his eyelids as he automatically squeezed them shut to try and block out the shooting pain coming from the back of his head, and he did his best to will away the annoying prodding that seemed to keep pressing in at his side.

"Sir, wake up!"

James' entire body jolted at the ringing voice beside him, and he was aware suddenly of the cold marble floor he lay sprawled upon, aware of the bulky snow gear he was wearing, and still excruciatingly aware of the throbbing pain in his head. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and instantly regretted doing so after having to clench his teeth tightly to keep from crying out as his head spun in agony.

"Sir, are you alright? What happened?"

Forcing his eyes open, James finally looked sideways to register the young man kneeling beside him. The boy had a panicked expression plastered across his face, and James stared up at him confusedly for several moments.

"What happened?" The boy repeated nervously.

James's gaze fell back down to the floor. What did happen? The effort to suppress the pain pulsating in his head in order to actually remember seemed too much. But he tightly shut his eyes again, trying to go back…

Like a flood all memory abruptly poured back into mind; all events of the past week fell down upon James like a great, wild torrent. Jessie – crimson-haired Jessie, Team Rocket Jessie, Jessie with the temper, Paramount Corps. Jessie, Jessie-who-was-going-to-destroy-his-hometown-but-decided-not-to… he had come here with Jessie, and she had left him to go upstairs. He had waited, and waited, and when she didn't return he had gone to start up the stairs to find her… And then something… someone was suddenly behind him… His vision had shot red with pain as something hard came down against the back of his head….

And then everything had turned black.

Dread instantly seeped from the pit of James' stomach through every vein in his body, and his face morphed to mimic the younger boy's expression of panic. Ignoring his throbbing head, James pushed himself up to stand while the still-clueless boy anxiously followed suit.

James turned to the boy. "You, what's your name?" He pressed, urgently.

"Bernard! My name's Bernard. What's going-"

"-Where is Jessica Avalon's office? You need to take me there right now."

Bernard stared up at James, apparently utterly confused.

"Where is her office!" James cried impatiently, making Bernard flinch.

"This way," the boy instantly conceded, and quickly began to ascend the broad set of marble stairs beside them. James keenly followed, the adrenaline pumping through his body rapidly masking the pain in his head. The pair ran through rows upon rows of worker's cubicles, before swiftly entering an elevator where Bernard swiped an identification card over a small panel and ordered the lift upward.

James drummed his fingers with annoyance against the elevator wall as it slowly made its ascent. He looked to Bernard, who was apprehensively standing opposite him.

"What's going on?" Bernard asked quietly.

James sighed, because the answer to such a question was a convoluted one indeed. "Someone hit me over the head down there and knocked me out. I think it's the same person who tried to kill your boss."

Bernard's confused expression did not change. "...What? Miss. Avalon? What do you mean, tried to kill her? She's-"

"She's not dead. She survived the helicopter crash, and she's here in this building right now. But if I'm right about the person who hit me before – and I don't know why anyone else would try to knock me out – then Jessie is in big trouble."

Still slightly confused-looking, and with a little more terror infused into his expression, Bernard finally looked as though he understood the situation enough to at least cooperate effectively. Before anymore could be said, the elevator promptly stopped, the doors opened and the two men eagerly stepped out into the new floor. Bernard made to run along a long oak-panelled corridor that stretched out before them, but James grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

"Is her office at the end of this corridor?"

"Yes, come on!"

James firmly held Bernard back again, and the young man looked up questioningly.

"What's wrong? Let's go! I thought you said Miss. Avalon was in trouble!"

"You have to go call the Police. Get them here, quick. I'll go on ahead and help her," James ordered.

"But… I need to help her too!"

"You are helping!" James cried, "Now go!"

Bernard looked hesitant, but dashed away down a small side corridor to the right. James himself sprang forward to sprint down the main corridor before him. As he ran he felt his stomach tense sickeningly. What would he find when he arrived at Jessie's door? Perhaps she would be perfectly okay… but then what was taking her so long to come back downstairs? James pushed all imaginings out of his mind as he finally neared the end of the corridor. He could see the door to Jessie's office, and it was wide open…

Slowing, James cautiously stepped into the entranceway.

He peered into the lit room.

What he saw sent everything James knew crashing down around him.

Slumped against the wall beside Jessie's large desk was Michael – the executive assistant that had shown James to this very office on his visit here the previous week. The blonde-haired man was unmoving and bleeding from the head. But this was hardly the shock that was violently coursing through James' body. Not even the fact that Jessie was being bent over the front edge of her desk with a gun wedged down upon her neck could compare to the shock of just who was holding the said gun.

"Olivia?"

The girl snapped her head up to look at James, who still stood in the doorway. She looked stunned at his arrival, but her expression quickly transformed into annoyance and then a strange sort of forced calm.

"James," she replied in a surprisingly amiable tone.

James looked down at Jessie, who was straining her neck to look up at him. His insides turned as Olivia responded by forcefully pushing Jessie's face back down onto the desk. His years in the Police Force had led him to become painfully aware of just how easy it is to fire a gun; just how easy it is to bring an end to someone's life with a mere flick of a finger. This was a dangerously delicate situation.

"Olivia, what are you doing?" James pressed quietly.

"I'm saving our town, that's what I'm doing!"

James quickly fell silent at this unexpected eruption from Olivia, and he could hear the blood pumping in his ears as he frantically tried to size up the situation. Olivia was obviously in the position of power, and he had absolutely no idea what her reasoning was, nor how she even came to be in Saunders City in the first place. How could this be Olivia? The kind nurse from Fieldsville appeared to have evaporated and James felt himself struggling to deal with this metamorphosis. He looked down again to Jessie who lay pinned underneath the loaded gun, and his mind suddenly screamed just one thing: save her.

"Olivia, please. This isn't you. You don't have to do this. Jessie has already decided to cancel the Fieldsville project… This isn't necessary…"

"Oh, come on," Olivia cried. "You don't actually believe her, do you? She doesn't give a shit about Fieldsville. As soon as you came back home she would have just gone on with the whole thing anyway. This is the only way, James. It was never going to happen any other way."

James' head spun. "You were behind this all along?"

Olivia laughed coldly. "Of course I was! Nobody else seemed to be doing anything that was actually going to work, so I took matters into my own hands… With a little help from our power-hungry executive assistant over here, of course," Olivia said, motioning her head toward Michael's limp form. "He doesn't seem to be of much use now, though."

"What? How did you-"

"-Please, James. Don't tire me with your futile questions. I did this for Fieldsville! I did it for you – for you and me. You should be grateful…"

A menacing glimmer flickered in Olivia's eyes, and she pushed the gun down further into Jessie's neck. James' insides twisted again and he prayed that Olivia kept her finger still.

"Please, Olivia. Nothing good can come out of this. Do you think you'll be living safe back in Fieldsville if you go through with this? You'll be thrown straight into jail, and you know it," James pleaded. He wanted to scream to her, ask her how she had managed to pull off this entire deception, but he was so frightened to say anything that might enrage her enough to pull the deadly trigger.

"No I won't," Olivia knowingly smiled, "Because you're not going to tell anyone it was me. I'm doing you a favour James! Don't you understand?"

"No, I don't! You looked after Jessie back in Fieldsville… you nursed her back to health! How can you stand here now with a gun to her head?"

"I didn't even know that it was her that night, until you came back and told us. For all I knew it was one of the goons that Michael hired to carry out the helicopter crash. And then when you decided to let us all in on the fact that you and her were buddies… well, things just got a little bit more complicated than I had expected. Playing along with everything just seemed like the best thing to do..." Olivia finished her explanation with a tone that resounded utter boredom.

James' mind sped up in order to both process this almost unbelievable information, and also to attempt to conjure more conversation that would continue to stall Olivia. She seemed to be growing tired of him, and that certainly was not a good thing.

"Olivia-"

James' words were cut off abruptly as Olivia suddenly cried out in shrill pain. The raven-haired girl recoiled away from the desk, clutching her thigh tightly and consequently releasing Jessie from her power.

James took a few short moments to realise what had gone on – but there, protruding grossly from Olivia's thigh was a letter-opener. Jessie must have deftly been feeling around on her desk for some such weapon to use while Olivia was preoccupied talking to James, and taken this chance instant to make her escape. But before he could think any more Jessie grabbed his arm and yanked him out of the doorway into the corridor.

"Come on!" She screamed frantically, and James didn't have to be told again as they sprinted away down the corridor.

Shots fired: one, two, and three behind them, each bullet not hitting its target but slicing into the oak-panelled walls on either side. Jessie shrieked as two more shots were let off, and James knew that they'd be dead if they stayed in this open corridor any longer. Chancing an open archway to his right, he seized Jessie by the wrist and pulled her into what turned out to be a very large office with four or five desks inside.

"Get underneath that desk, and stay there!" James commanded Jessie.

"What? What about you!" Jessie cried in between panting breaths.

"Just do it!" James yelled back, sick of people questioning his orders tonight. He was once a special agent in the Police Force. He knew what he was doing.

For the most part.

Jessie grudgingly dove around behind one of the desks, while James picked up a tall lamp that stood on the floor beside the archway entrance. Pressing himself up against the wall beside the entrance, he listened carefully as Olivia's angry footsteps thudded nearer and nearer. This was going to be all about timing. He readied himself as he heard the attacker's heated breath approach closer.

Olivia stepped through the entranceway – too late aware of James, who swung the lamp down to connect with her shins. The girl fell forward with her own momentum, sprawling on the floor and sending her gun flying forward on the carpet in front of her.

James dove.

Olivia scrambled.

Both reached each other before they reached the gun, and they clawed and scratched at one another in order to get to the weapon first.

"Let go ofme!" Olivia screamed, and hauled herself up onto James with rampaging strength. She brought her hands down to squeeze around his neck, and dug her knee painfully down into his chest. "I didn't want to have to hurt you, James. You know I care for you, but you made me do this," she hissed.

James tried to use one hand to prise her hands away from his neck, and the other to claw around above his head to see if he could reach the gun. But his vision was beginning to blacken, and he suddenly regretted telling Jessie to stay put beneath the desk…

And then unexpectedly, Olivia made a sharp gasping noise. Her grip loosened, and as James' vision swiftly clarified he saw her look down at her shoulder to find a tiny dart sticking out. A tranquiliser. She stared at it for several seconds, as if her profound disbelief would make the little thing disappear. But her eyelids quickly began to droop, and Olivia peered back down at James beneath her. She forced herself to at least shoot him one last look of annoyed defeat.

"Fine, you win," she rasped. "But… Just so you know… I wasn't the only one from Fieldsville who betrayed you. Think about that, James…"

And on that note, she collapsed down on top of James, revealing the Policeman standing in the doorway who had arrived just in time to shoot the tranquiliser. In a blur of uniform and loud voices more Police entered the room, some whom which pulled the unconscious Olivia away and fussed over James while others appeared to be tending to Jessie. As James was sat up he saw even more rush past down the corridor toward Jessie's office, undoubtedly to deal with Michael.

"Hey, mister. Excuse me, mister? Can you tell me your name? Can you tell me what has happened here?"

James clenched his eyes shut, blocking out the Policeman trying to interrogate him. His head had begun to throb again, and he was oh-so-tired… Too much had just happened, too much for his aching head to deal with…

"Mister, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," James finally responded, if only to make the Policeman's voice stop ringing in his ear. The man peered down at James sceptically.

"I'm going to go fetch a medic," he said, and dashed off quickly. James sighed. It seemed the night was far from over.

Still sitting on the floor, he wearily looked around the office. The Police Force members seemed to be multiplying rapidly, and he searched through the sea of uniforms to find a blaze of crimson hair across the other side of the room. She was sitting down in a chair and being questioned by several Policemen and Policewomen. She looked as tired as he felt, but safe nonetheless.

As if she knew he was looking at her, Jessie averted her gaze from the nearest cop to James. They looked to one another wordlessly, expressionlessly, as if the night's events had drained them both of everything. And then Jessie gave a brief, if very weak smile, before turning back to the cop.

Yes, the night was far from over.

Sorry to bring things to a halt, folks, but I gotta end things there for the moment. This is the longest chapter yet, so I hope it ties you down for a little while! There is still more to come (you'll love, and also possibly hate what I've got in store for the next chapter… hee!), so do stay tuned! Thanks so much for sticking with me this far, I do loves you all so much! Hugs to everyone:)

Well, till next time…

BansheeGirl.