The engines seemed to hum louder at night, a steady throbbing in Rinoa's ears. She thumped her pillow and lay back down, but couldn't get comfortable. Turning over in the bed again, she thought of pulling the blankets over her head to shut out the noise. But it would be suffocating like that in this stuffy room. Her thoughts wandered, drifting over the last day yet again.
After an age of controlled chaos they'd gotten airborne, and been barely two hours into their flight towards Esthar when Irvine's garbled com-call from the Blue Gem had sent them curving back round. Squall had spent all day pacing silently up and down the carpet, pausing only to snap off a new directive or ask her again if she'd sensed anything from Ellone. She'd felt like a third arm all day.
Rinoa gave up on sleep for the moment and kicked the covers off. There'd be none for hours yet; all today's shocks had sent her thoughts spinning like a top. Instead, she swung herself off the bed, determined not to lie awake staring at the ceiling anymore. She needed something liquid, and something to tire her wandering brain; perhaps she'd try checking her fan-mail. Her feet found the floor for her in the dark, the boards pleasantly cool on her soles. As she stood, Angelo's head lifted as he sensed her getting up.
He left his basket and came padding stiffly over. His muzzle butted her leg affectionately, and she bent to scratch him beneath it, and behind his ears. He was getting old for a dog, poor thing. If Doctor Odine was right the link between them should sustain him for a few good years yet. Angelo growled a deep contented rumble in his throat, and suddenly she was down clutching the dog to her and burying her face in his thick coat.
Would she get many more years with Squall? She wished he'd ranted and smashed the furniture when he'd heard the news, she really did. Instead, all he'd done on hearing the news was say a rather chilly 'I see', and put the phone down. He never handled these things properly. He soaked all his feelings up like a sponge till they were squeezed out of him in a torrent. Oh Hyne damn the stupid stubborn…
Rinoa sniffed.
She sniffed again, and knelt back and wiped at her face; Angelo licked at it helpfully until she batted him off. She felt… released. Since the news of Ellie had come in she'd been like a muscle that when hit, bruises and stiffens. Now she was still sore, but working again. She gave Angelo a last tentative stroke, and then clambered up to find the door. Her outstretched fingers found its handle in the dark. Sliding it open she padded off down the hall with Angelo at her heels.
The kitchen was in half-light when she stepped into it. Only the downlights over the table were still light. Lionheart lay on its polished surface, broken apart into its constituent pieces. An oily cloth, discarded energy pack, and a pair of pulse crystals were scattered about it. On a straight wooden chair behind the table, with his SeeD jacket unpinned at the chest, was Squall. He was asleep, his arm dangling uncomfortably by his side, dragging his head down with it. A little drool had collected at the corner of his open mouth. He gave a small, soft, snore.
Rinoa covered her mouth to stifle an involuntary giggle. He could be so adorable when he looked stupefied. She crossed the room and shook his shoulder.
"Squall?"
"Fzwl?"
"Squall, come back to bed. You'll cramp your neck sleeping like that."
He blinked up at her sleepily.
"W's time?"
"Quarter to three," she said gently. Well, she thought it was around then.
He rubbed his face tiredly; "Sorry, I forgot to go to bed. Must've nodded off."
Rinoa squeezed his shoulder; "I'm getting a drink. You want one?"
He shook his head. She moved past to the kitchen unit and reached up for a glass.
"That's not like you, sleeping in the kitchen," she said, "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," he said, brushing the question off. He looked at her suspiciously; "Has Kadowaki been on at you about something?"
"No," she replied, filling her glass from the tap. Angelo began gnawing at the table leg until Squall pulled him away distractedly.
"Then what's eating you?" he asked her, "You never sleep when something's worrying at you."
You're going back into danger just when I thought I'd got you to stay and we have a baby on the way, she thought, but didn't say. It was selfish and it shamed her. But it was true nevertheless, she saw that now.
She took a sip of water instead of replying, then walked back to the table with her glass and seated herself down. Frowned. Looked at her hands and thought of how to put this; "It's just… I just… I woke up just now and felt a little useless. Around you. I couldn't feel Ellie at all tonight. And you were distant… I just didn't want you closing up on me, that's all."
Squall, being by nature the person he was, usually struggled to get past casual conversation in moments like this. But he tried. He pulled off a glove and slid his hand across the table, in the way steady couples will when sharing a moment.
"Hey. You're never useless to me," he paused, struggling for something, "I just get… distracted. Sometimes. When things go wrong."
She bumped foreheads with him across the table.
"Whatever," she said. But she said it smiling.
Laguna stood in the plush communication suite and watched the projection table intently. Only a handful of others were allowed in the spacious room with him; Ward, Kiros, and the spindly form of Frederyck Forsith, the chairman of the Federal Security Board, the umbrella committee for Esthar's multitude of intelligence services. A gaggle of experts, aides, agents and advisors had been banished outside for grating the Presidential nerves. On the snooker-table sized device in front of them, ethereal six-inch figures flitted about a neat three-dimensional layout of Balamb Garden's debriefing and analysis facilities. The whole scene was beamed in real-time to the Presidential Palace courtesy of the little oblong Shumi-built Podbots.
A long, floppy haired figure held its hand to its ear and glanced up at the nearest 'bot.
"Are we on?" Squall's voice crackled in Laguna's ear mike. Laguna stared down at his son's thumbnail-sized face and its pixy-sized scowl of concentration and felt the first twitch of his lips he'd had in forty-eight hours.
"Yes," he answered dryly; "We're getting perfect picture."
"Check your tactile links then," Squall called back down the line. Laguna obediently clapped his hands. The control gauntlets he was wearing made an odd leathery smacking sound as he brought them together, but on the table a tiny wheeled figure echoed his move with its metal grips. Laguna felt the sensation of cold alloy touch his palms.
He shook his head, ignoring the trailing wires, and was amused to see his second body doing the same. Uplink technology had come on a lot since his day. It was one of the reasons he loved his adopted country- its endless inventiveness. Hopefully it would lead them to Ellone.
Around him the others were also testing their link to the Mannequins that would temporarily bear their features to the people standing in Garden. Kiros had already pulled his goggles over his eyes. The remote 'bots were usually used by FSB personnel across Esthar wishing to share Garden's faculties. Esthar and SeeD operated jointly in a lot of intelligence matters, and the wheeled Mannequins saved endless back-and-fore trips and electronic traffic. Today Laguna had commandeered them to go to Garden. If he couldn't be there in person he was damn well taking the second-best option.
Movement from the table caught his eye. A trenchcoated figure was being settled into what looked like a padded dentist's chair, surrounded by a loose cluster of robed or suited Garden functionaries. Ah, Irvine's debriefing was about to begin. A woman knelt by him, her hands folded across her lap; Rinoa. Laguna hoped the floor was softer then it looked.
"Laguna," Squall's voice was impatient, "They're putting him into the trance now. Stop dawdling."
Startled out of his bird's eye musings, Laguna snapped his goggles down. The boy had a snap to his voice a Galbadian drill-sergeant would admire. Squall's annoyed face flicked into life-sized focus, suddenly right over him.
"Whoa!"
Squall gave his father a tolerant look down through the camera lenses.
"Follow me," he said, beckoning with his gloved right hand, "Watch that leg now."
Laguna ignored him with dignified silence. He concentrated on guiding his wheeled contraption after Squall as neatly as he could using the little direction pad set into his left gauntlet. He could get the hang of this…
Irvine's head rested on the cushioned headrest, his eyes shut, his breathing slow and steady. Xu turned to Rinoa.
"Okay, he's under the trance," she said softly, "I'm going to talk him through the time-dream. Will you be able to pick up his images?"
Rinoa nodded carefully. She was feeling delicate after spending the morning curled up near the toilet basin. Squall had turned up with warm face cloths and pills, and been so patient and consoling she'd practically bitten his head off. Then he'd been reasonable and understanding with her, which of course had made her even angrier. If he was going to be so stoic and bloody efficient he could do it around people who could stomach it better when he patted them.
She shut her eyes firmly, and barrelled through the slight wave of nausea. When she was ready she stretched out a hand and grasped Irvine's. Xu had waited patiently for this. Now she began the de-briefing, starting to walk Irvine's mind forward from the start of his mission. Rinoa's breathing picked up, and her face wore a tight frown, but her grip on Irvine's hand only tightened.
Psionics was the poorly understood branch of Esotericology. Magic was obviously simply a matter of manipulating the cyclical flow of energies between dimensions, to break the laws of this universe with those of others. But psionic powers seemed to be bound by the laws of local physics. There were competing theories that they somehow interacted with the electromagnetic or bioelectric fields. In fact about the only ones whose existence scientists weren't still over were any Rinoa had demonstrated to them. There was a lot of paranoia around Rinoa's extrasensory abilities. In truth her telepathy, like Xu's hypnosis skills, was only useful at certain points. Speaking to someone whose mind you knew was easy, a parlor trick. You only had to tune your blocks to their thought-patterns and project your speech at the same mental 'pitch'. Reading a person's mind was harder. Read a conscious person's mind and you could pick out their surface thoughts. Unfortunately these were a fragmented, undirected lot. People on secret missions thought about lunch or a thousand other irrelevant things. The mind gave itself a natural cover, the buzz of the subconscious and the millions of little functions the brain constantly carried out serving as a screen of interference to any telepath trying to focus. The more people around there were, the worse it got. When she closed her eyes, she let her blocks relax a little. Stray bands of thought seeped through from the room around her, like snatches of music from a half-heard radio. She focused on the one closest to her, raising her blocks back up to the rest, letting only his through. It helped that he was in a trance. Telepathy works by allowing a telepath to interpret the electrical activities in another's brain, and Irvine's were intensely focused just now. Xu's hypnotism had put him into a relaxed, single-minded state. Memory is imagination, and she read Irvine's as Xu took him back over the events of the time-dream. Without the bombardment of the senses and emotions of the present he could recall much, much more. Xu called the technique hypnotic-refreshing. And he didn't like it. He stammered his answers to Xu, his breathing labored. Irvine had never liked the time-dreams. She caught flashes of suppressed memory, people he'd watched through his sniper scope until he was ready to pull the trigger. He was re-living it all only for big sister's sake. Rinoa reached in and slid between him and memory-Ellone, damping down the feelings returned to him, like oil between gears. Detached now, they both watched the trip unfold, each scene called up in Irvine's mind as Xu grilled him on it. At last she came to her final question; "Is anything striking you as strange, anything at all that might give us the slightest clue where she is?" Irvine-and-Rinoa looked down the length of their friend and saw little white specs melting in her damp hair and on her shoulders. "Ice," they answered in unison, "She had ice in her hair."