Disclaimer / Author's Note: Agent Murphy appears courtesy of AKA, and is used with permission.
Chapter Three: Pet Projects
Six years earlier:
"I said five more minutes!" Nick yelled, throwing another piece of equipment up against the door. It was made of reinforced steel, and he'd secured it with all the heaviest equipment in the lab he knew he wouldn't need, but he knew too well who he was up against. "Come on, Sasha," he said under his breath to no one in particular. "Five more minutes in the name of science."
Ignoring the echoes of shouts and psi-blasts being traded back and forth out in the hallway, Nick made a few small adjustments to the control board in front of him before shifting his attention to the chair it was connected to.
Truman Zanotto sat in the tall, straight-backed metal chair, restrained by straps around his wrists, ankles, and forehead. His skin was pale and he'd broken out into a cold sweat, though he never so much as twitched, save for the faint, unsteady rising and falling of his chest. His light brown eyes stayed open unnaturally, not even blinking--they were tinged red and watery from the strain. An IV hooked into the crook of his right arm kept a constant cocktail of drugs flowing into his system, designed to keep him sedated and his psychic powers under control.
Nick quickly dragged one of the last pieces of equipment he hadn't thrown against the door over and placed it in front of Truman. It was relatively light-weight, comprised entirely of a thin steel frame meant to support the surgical laser and control panel hooked up near the top of it. With something akin to panicked precision, Nick ran a tangled mess of wires from the control panel back around to the computer console before lining the laser up at Truman's eye level.
"Okay..." Someone psi-blasted the door with enough force to rattle it on its hinges. Nick jumped and stepped up the pace again. "Just give me five more minutes, Sasha, and I'll have completely brainwashed our friend Truman beyond even your repair."
He was so wrapped up in making his hasty, last minute calculations that he didn't notice the small, shadowy figure drop out of an air vent overhead. It disappeared before it hit the floor with only a whisper of sound that could never have been overheard from the din outside.
Nick made a few last minute adjustments to the laser, smiling grimly. "'A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.' Isn't that what they say, Truman?" (1) Powering up the contraption, he paused to make sure the bright red laser beam was aligned exactly with Truman's open eye, then moved back towards the computer console. "Which is why you're going to get quite a lot of instruction...in five, four, three--"
At which point, much to Nick's dismay, the laser powered down with a click and a mechanical whine. "Goddammit!" He slammed his hands down on the console hard enough to rattle the solid block of steel and circuits on the bolts that held it to the floor. Outside, the battle seemed to be coming to a close--someone psi-blasted the door twice, sending a stray computer monitor flying.
"Okay, six more minutes," Nick said to the door, then dashed over to examine the laser. Truman didn't even twitch, much less acknowledge all that was going on around him.
Swearing under his breath, Nick hastily checked all the connecting wires and cables: all were in place, suggesting that something had gone wrong inside the machine itself. "No, no, not now..." Then his gaze fell on the power cord. It had been pulled taut earlier, but now it was lying slack on the floor.
"Oh, for the love of--" Muttering a few more choice curse words, he got down on his hands and knees and crawled around behind the chair, digging through a rat's nest of wires to find the end of the disconnected power cord, as well as the electrical strip it was supposed to plug into. "Stupid piece of shit--aha!"
He was just about to plug the machine back in when the bright, angry red jet of a psi-blast flashed across the room, striking him solidly from behind and sending him sprawling into the wall. "Dammit all to--who the hell--that was my ass, you moron!"
"I know," said a youthful voice. The faint outline of a small, long-limbed boy shimmered into view, starting from his feet and ending with a pair of goggles perched on the top of his head.
Nick twisted around onto his back to stare at the boy who had just appeared in his lab. Then he laughed. His voice had a sudden manic tinge, although the boy didn't seem at all worried by it. "You're just a kid," he sputtered. He scrambled to his feet--the boy tried to psi-blast him back to the ground, but Nick deflected it, sending the burst of aggression winging into a wall. "I don't believe this. I kidnap their Grand Head, and the Psychonauts send Pee-wee Jr. to stop me?"
"Hey, I--"
Nick laughed again, blond hair flying wild. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen." He reached out with his telekinesis and grabbed the boy by the throat, lifting him into the air. Surprisingly, he put up more resistance than Nick was expecting. Within seconds, the boy's mental shields had flown up, shoving Nick's telekinetic hand aside and dropping himself back to the floor with the easy grace of an acrobat.
Nick reached out again, but this time with something more like curiosity. They started circling one another around Truman's chair as Nick tried again and again to pry his way into the child's mind--only to be thrown back each time with surprising force. "Well, you're an interesting one, aren't you?" he asked, voice tinged with false sweetness. "So whose pet project are you?"
"Nobody's," the boy answered, psi-blasting him again. Nick was expecting the attack and shielded himself from it at the last second.
"Hm. You've got good aim, kid. Between that and your natural defenses, I'd say Agent Nein. You remind me of him...all control and devotion to the job, no personality." Nick circled closer, still trying to find any sort of crack in the other's defenses. He wasn't having much luck, but--oh, he thought, there're possibilities here.
The noise at the door behind them was growing more insistent and forceful; Nick was running out of time. "I'm right, aren't I? You're Nein's latest experiment."
He shook his head but didn't--to Nick's dismay--drop his concentration. "Agent Nein doesn't...well, okay, I guess you could call the Brain Tumbler 'experimenting,'" he corrected, frowning a bit. "But I'm nobody's pet."
Nick laughed. "Yeah, you just keep deluding yourself, kid. Keep on thinking they're your friends, your teachers, when all they want to do is put you in a room and poke and prod you until they can explain you." With some telekinetic help, he hefted a heavy piece of equipment and tossed it at the boy--who latched onto it at the last second and threw it out of his way, grunting under the strain.
"And if you don't believe me," Nick continued, "just ask Agent Cruller who his pet project was."
"Let me guess...you?" the boy asked, unimpressed. When Nick nodded, he laughed, green eyes gleaming in the dim light. "Yeah, and I'm the goddamned Batman."
The acrid smell of smoke and burning metal filled the room; all the equipment Nick had used to barricade the door was now scattered on the floor around them, and whoever was in the hallway outside had evidently given up and decided to melt the door down. Nick glanced hurriedly at the door, then back at the boy still standing, face twisted in concentration and defiance, not five feet away.
"You're strong," he said quietly. "I'll give you that. But come talk to me in five years--when they've picked your brain all apart and gotten sick of you. We'll see how strong you are then...Batman." Nick had found the opening in the boy's defenses he was looking for: a tiny, almost imperceptible crack, not noticeable to anyone who hadn't spent years learning how to break down the mental defenses of even the most extraordinary psychic. Grinning, he reached out with his own mind and--
--the bulky, rectangular piece of equipment he'd thrown at the boy just a few minutes ago made a sudden rebound, slamming into Nick's stomach with enough force to knock the wind out of him and send him flying into the far wall. He went limp, his muscles temporarily refusing to cooperate, and the heavy chunk of steel collapsed on top of him.
Something in his left leg made an unpleasant cracking noise. "Son of a bitch," he hissed, just as soon as he regained enough breath to speak. "Who the hell are you?"
The boy peered over the top of the machine, his smirk wide and extraordinarily confident. "I told you. I'm the goddamned Batman."
"Razputin! Sweetie, what have I told you about watching your language?"
Agent Milla Vodello stepped in through the hole she and Sasha had melted through the door, frowning at Raz in a manner that was distinctly maternal. Her long brown hair was all in tangles, which matched her torn and dirty clothes and the scratches someone had put on her right arm. All trace of exhaustion disappeared from her face, however, the moment she caught a glimpse of Truman--who hadn't so much as twitched while the confrontation had gone on around him.
She flew to his side in an instant, gently calling out his name as she eased the IV needle from his arm. "Truman? Darling, can you hear me?"
Sasha, on the other hand, although his impeccable calm had seemingly slipped a bit, showed no outward signs of exhaustion or concern as he moved the equipment away from Nick and went to restrain him. "Excellent work, Razputin," he said, nodding to Raz and ignoring Nick almost entirely. "Although running off alone on such a dangerous mission is unwise."
Raz shrugged, beaming over the faint praise. "Still all in a day's work for a Psychonaut, right?"
Present:
"What was it you said to the kid, Sasha? It was right before I passed out, see, so--oh, now I remember. That he shouldn't run off alone?" Nick paused, almost as if giving Sasha a chance to respond, although the tape had been recorded hours earlier. "You're right. And you know, it's just like kids--they never listen to you."
He stepped away, adjusting the camera so it zoomed out and an entire room appeared to open up around him. It was too dark for either Sasha or Truman to make much of anything out, no matter how hard they squinted--the room's only spotlight was focused on a plexiglas cell tall enough to almost reach the ceiling, although it was only about five feet wide and just as deep. A short series of metal platforms, all barely wide enough for the average person to stand on sideways, went up one side of the cell to a metal cap that was fitted over the top.
Both Sasha and Truman, however, were rather more concerned with the crumpled form sprawled, facedown, on the cell's concrete floor. Sasha noticed it first, gripping the seat's headrest so tightly his knuckles were surely turning white inside his gloves.
"Son of a bitch," Truman hissed through clenched teeth. "Tell me that isn't who I think it is."
Sasha only shook his head mutely in response.
"Let's see...Agent Razputin Aquato, I think his name is. Alias 'goddamned Batman'; do I have that right?" Nick asked, stepping back into the frame and blocking Razputin from view. He grinned, showing off a flash of faintly yellowed teeth. "Don't worry; he's still alive. I may hate your fetid, cowardly guts, Sasha, but I won't kill your pet project--not yet. He's still too useful."
The jet left the runway with a sickening lurch. Onscreen, Nick continued, "My old friend--Oskar Galochio; you may have met him--told me some things about Razputin's family. Cursed to die in water, huh? Well..." He motioned around in the room in a grand, sweeping gesture that neatly pantomimed the sinking feeling in Sasha's stomach. "Once our boy wonder here wakes up, that cell he's in will start filling up with water. It should be completely filled about twenty-four hours from now--so, say, 9:32AM tomorrow--and I don't think I need to tell you what happens then."
Nick chuckled, shaking his head. "Of course, he could just use his immense psychic powers to escape, but--as I'm sure you've already guessed, Sasha, and as I'm equally sure you haven't begun to contemplate, Truman--I've had him drugged with a particularly heavy dose of Psyche C. So I'm afraid that won't be an option."
For a moment, he paused, then continued with all seriousness, "I won't make any particular demands of you--yet. You have twenty-four hours to find him. To help motivate you, I'll be commandeering your satellite video channel in order to broadcast a feed of this room. And no, should you fail to find him in time, I won't spare you and turn it off." With a mock-salute, he said, "Lili, give my regards to your father, won't you?" before shutting off the camera.
The screen went blue momentarily before defaulting to the Psychonauts' private video channel--which, as Nick's hijack of the feed was still very much in place, was broadcasting a view of Razputin's cell. For now, he was still unconscious, and water had yet to start pouring in. Truman stared at the tiny monitor for only a split second before switching it off, punching the button with much greater force than was necessary.
"I swear, when I get my hands on Harper's scrawny little neck, I'm going to--" he began, then checked himself and straightened in the chair, clearing his throat. "Right. Nein, as soon as we get back to headquarters, you're in charge of the task force responsible for finding Razputin. We'll let...oh, I don't know, Marks and Armistead deal with Harper for now."
Sasha frowned, pushing his sunglasses back up his nose from where they'd slipped. "Sir, while I don't disagree that finding Razputin should be a priority, I believe my prior knowledge of Harper would--"
"Nein." Truman didn't turn to look at him, staring out the window ahead, but his voice was terse and sharp. "I said no. Harper's obviously on some sort of revenge kick--"
"In that case, we should find him before he decides to extend his revenge plans to anyone else."
Truman shook his head. "You and I both know it'll take more than twenty-four hours to find Harper, and I'm not leaving that kid in danger any longer than we already have. I won't spare your ego: you're one of our best agents, and you probably know better than any of us--well, besides me, and now Razputin--what Harper's tactics are in terms of kidnapping." He stood up and started towards the jet's cabin. "I've made my decision. Find Razputin, then you can join the manhunt."
Sasha's jaw tightened, although he didn't say anything more. He was just about to follow Truman into the cabin when Fahrenheit spoke up.
"Uh, sirs?"
"What is it now, Hamilton?" Sasha asked, sighing.
"Ah..." Fahrenheit scratched the back of his head anxiously. "I forgot to mention earlier...Mr. Zanotto, sir, you've got a bunch of messages about the kidnapping mess. There's incoming phone calls from Rio, London, San Francisco, Cedar, Moscow, and Nairobi...in that order, more or less. It got a little confusing near the end."
The communications console to his right beeped twice. "Oh," he added, glancing at it, "and now Brisbane, too."
From the cabin, there was a sound roughly akin to Truman slamming his head against the wall. "Fantastic," he muttered. "Another scandal and a bunch of hungry sharks at the branch agencies circling my job--that's just what I need. Didn't we just go through this six years ago with the Agent Oleander incident?"
"Yes, sir, we did." That was Kowalski, who seemed to have recovered most of his health since take-off.
"The question was rhetorical." Truman returned to the cockpit, waving Sasha out of his way. Sasha calmly stepped aside, although he didn't leave to take a seat in the main cabin, instead preferring to stay hovering, perhaps passive-aggressively, near Truman's shoulder. "Fahrenheit, put me through to Agent Shackley."
"Right." After a moment of fiddling with the communications console, he nodded and said, "We should have him in a minute, sir. Audio only."
The audio in question was a particularly old and outdated radio speaker, badly in need of replacement but yet somehow never on the budget committee's list of priorities. Fahrenheit had to reach over and jiggle the on/off speaker switch before any sound would even come out.
"Mr. Zanotto, sir." Shackley's deep baritone voice crackled through the speaker. Fahrenheit hit the dashboard above it once with his fist and the static dissipated. "I trust you've been apprised of the situation?"
"We have, Bolt." Truman leaned back in his chair with a long sigh. "Two questions, first of all--is my daughter safe at headquarters? And have we notified Agent Aquato's parents yet?"
"Yes and no, sir. Your daughter's here with us, but we're having difficulties tracking down the boy's family. Seems the circus is currently in transit and nobody thought to pack a cellphone." This last was said with a certain sneering edge, which Truman ignored.
"Good, and keep trying on the parents." He glanced out the window as the jet tilted to the right suddenly, beginning the circle for its final approach to headquarters. "What's the media situation down there? I know it's already leaked to our branch agencies, but what about the news media?"
Silence fell for a moment, broken by a sharp crackle of static. "Under control to my knowledge. We've been in lockdown since Harper's escape this morning. So far as the media's concerned, we've just been a little more quiet than usual."
"Keep it that way," Truman said, voice terse. "The last thing the agency needs is for the Talking Head Brigade to find out our youngest agent in history's in mortal jeopardy."
"I'll see what I can do." Another, more hesitant pause. "Ah, sir, you realize we will have to make some sort of announcement to the press about Harper eventually...considering the fact that he's an armed and dangerous criminal. And currently at large."
Truman sighed, rubbing his temples again as if fighting off a migraine. "I know. I'll...deal with it later."
"Yessir. Is there anything else?"
"No. We can discuss the rest once I'm back at headquarters."
"All right then--I'll see you soon, sir. Shackley out."
The radio fell into a crackling, hissing sort of silence until Fahrenheit reached over and shut it off. "We should be landing at headquarters in just under five minutes, Mr. Zanotto," he said, nodding to the jumble of buildings and interconnected parking lots below.
The Lucrecia Mox Academy for the Psychically Gifted, a four-storied, two-winged building not more than five minutes' walk from Psychonauts headquarters, was still under lockdown with all classes canceled when Lili Zanotto slipped into the building. Security was unusually tight, with instructors and a few agents brought over from headquarters patrolling the halls--but Lili, who'd been sneaking in and out of the place to visit her boyfriend for almost two years, knew all the building's nooks and crannies she could duck into whenever they passed nearby.
It was easy enough for her to wind her way over to the student residences' wing and up to the second floor, where Raz and his roommate's room was. She moved a little more carefully here--there weren't any conveniently located hiding places to duck into, unless she wanted to dive into the men's room. Their room was in the exact middle of the hall, the door faintly ajar and loud music thumping through it. Lili slipped inside without bothering to knock; no one would've been able to hear her over the noise anyway.
"Zeke? Zeke!"
Zeke was sitting with his knees propped up against his desk, back to her, staring down at an old ratty textbook. He didn't even seem to realize she was in the room. Sighing, Lili let the door bang shut as she picked her way through the perpetual mess on the floor--god, what is it with boys? Do they not believe in closets?--to stand over his shoulder.
He still didn't notice she was there until she made a grand show of leaning over, long auburn hair tickling his neck, to check to see what god-awful country song his laptop speakers were spewing out. "'Bubba Shot The Jukebox?'"
"Holy mother of--" Zeke nearly tumbled out of his chair but managed to catch himself at the last second. The textbook went flying; his telekinetic hand retrieved it and dropped it back in his lap. "Lili?" he asked, coloring slightly. "Where'd you--uh--how'd you get in here?"
She smirked. "It's called a door, Zeke."
"Well, I knew that," he shot back, collecting himself at last. He shut the music off--much to the approval of one of his neighbors, who'd taken to pounding on their shared wall in hopes of shutting him up--and stood up, tossing the textbook onto the floor. "So, uh, what're you doing here? Shouldn't you be...I don't know, be at headquarters or something?"
Lili fidgeted, suddenly uncomfortable, and started braiding her hair as a distraction while she talked. "I guess you heard about what happened to Raz?"
"Yeah." Zeke nodded, broad shoulders shrinking into a slouch. "I got the general idea, anyway. Nobody's bothered to tell me any specifics." He paused, then added, "You doing okay? I mean..."
"I'm fine," she answered, shaking her hair out of the loose braid she'd wound it into. It slid down to just past her shoulders, save for one short, stubborn lock that fell in front of her right eye. "But I could use your help with something...if you're not too busy." She glanced at the laptop again with a faintly amused smirk.
Zeke shrugged. "Nah, just studying for the test I flunked last week. Got nothing else better to do. What d'you need?"
"Want to go on a little road trip?"
He grinned, showing off a flash of a wide--one might say crooked--smile. "Hell yeah; let's go."
She matched his grin with one of her own and started for the door with a renewed spring in her step. "Good! Don't bother packing anything; we're not going that far."
"You sure?" he asked, grabbing his room keys and checking his hair (still short and black, and still unruly no matter how many times he combed it) on his way out the door. "I mean, if we're skipping town on everybody and running away from our problems, we might as well do it right. I'm thinking Miami. Or--how much money do we have for gas? Vegas could be cool too."
"I'm thinking you're weird, Zeke."
He flicked the lights off and closed the door, locking it behind him. "Hey! At least I'm not openly defying authority with all this standard rebellion stuff," he teased gently, reaching to ruffle her hair--she raised an eyebrow at him and he thought better of it, drawing his hand back. "I know how to be non-standard."
Lili rolled her eyes. "You mean like 'Bubba Shot The Jukebox?'"
"It's a...symbol." He dropped his voice down to a faint whisper as they started moving through the hallways. "A symbol of rebellion. Or...yeah, fine, my friends back in Montana thought they were being funny when they bought me that CD, okay?"
Lili bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at him. It wasn't until they had made it out to the parking lot and to her car--Lili's father had bought it for her three weeks after her sixteenth birthday, as an apology for being in China and forgetting to call on her actual birthday--that she spoke again.
"So, when's the last time you were at Whispering Rock?"
Zeke stopped in the middle of buckling his seatbelt. "Never went. Why; you here to drag me to remedial training like Agent Fuentes is always threatening to?"
She shook her head. "No, just wondering." Fishing her keys out of her jeans pocket, she started up the car, adding, "There's somebody there we need to meet."
"Are you sure we couldn't just go to Vegas instead?"
Bolt Shackley was a tall, dark-haired man with a build strongly resembling that of a professional wrestler. He stood waiting just outside of Truman's office, burly arms folded across his chest, fingers tapping on his forearm impatiently as he waited for the Grand Head of the Psychonauts to finish weaving his way through the crowd of agents in the hall. Half the agency seemed to have appeared as if out of thin air since the jet had landed, demanding answers, orders, and/or time off, not necessarily in that order.
Finally breaking free of the crowd, Truman turned back to them and shouted, "Everybody, back to work! I'll straighten out individual assignments later!" Without pausing to leave any sort of room for questions, he spun back around on his heel and stormed into his office, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the walls.
After a moment, once the crowd had begun to disperse, he cracked the door open again. "Bolt, my office, now."
Shackley followed him inside, a faint smirk playing off his lips. "I took the liberty of forwarding all those calls to your office phone, sir," he said, closing the door behind him.
Truman sank into his chair and buried his head in his hands. "Bolt, I swear, sometimes I think you're trying to kill me."
"I've also started writing the address to the press you're going to have to make." He paused, then added, "Unless you'd like to write it yourself, sir."
Truman sighed, sat up a little straighter, and began shuffling all the mounds of paperwork that had taken up semi-permanent residence on his desk. "No, by all means--we could probably use some nice Canadian politeness for that." He tried to stare down one particularly menacing-looking pile of paperwork before giving up, glancing around the room. "Where's Lili?"
Bolt shrugged. "Off terrorizing Agent Murphy, last I saw."
"Oh. Well, so long as she's around and staying out of trouble..." He looked down at the phone and the blinking "call waiting" button. "Tell her to stop by sometime, will you? Soon?"
"Yessir." After a moment, Bolt added, a little hesitantly, "Ah, from what I understand, sir, Agent Delgado is rather known for his temper, and you've kept both him and the other branch agencies waiting for quite some time..."
Truman waved him off with a defeated-sounding sigh. "I know. Believe me, I know." Still, he stared at the phone for a few moments before he finally hit the speakerphone and took the first call.
"Truman Zanotto speaking...what can I do for you, Bruno?"
To his surprise, however, the voice on the other end of the line was not that of the harsh, often overbearing head of their South American branch, but rather a calm, upbeat--and very familiar--woman's voice. "Oh, there you are, darling. I was starting to get worried!"
He blinked and looked up at Bolt, who merely shrugged his broad shoulders. "Agent Vodello?"
"Yes...Agent Delgado asked me to step in for him; he had to go and psi-blast something. You know how Bruno is when he's kept waiting too long."
Truman chuckled. "I guess I do. It's good to hear your voice, Milla."
"It's good to hear yours too, darling," she answered quietly. Truman thought her accent seemed to have grown a little thicker since she'd returned to Brazil. Silence fell over the line before she added, just as quietly, "I only wish it were under better circumstances."
"Yeah." Truman rubbed his temples, wincing. "Believe me when I say I've devoted as much of the agency's resources as possible to finding Razputin and getting him back safely. He's our--he's my top priority; you know that."
"I know that, but you know Bruno doesn't. He's been ranting all morning since we found out...something about 'reckless incompetency.'"
He smiled grimly. "I'm not surprised. I don't suppose you'd be willing to smooth things over a little? You know, convince Delgado we're not a lost cause up here--as a personal favor?"
"Actually--" Truman winced, even though Milla's voice stayed relatively calm-- "Bruno and I were both thinking it might be a good idea if we sent a few agents to up there to pitch in. Between rescuing Razputin and finding Nicholas, the agency must be stretched awfully thin. A helping hand or two might be just what you need."
Truman's head settled, with a small thump, on his desk. Yes, that's exactly how it starts, isn't it? he thought, lifting his head to give the phone a small glare. First they get their foot in the door, then the next thing you know they're sitting in your chair.
"Truman? Are you still there?"
He sighed. "Yeah. Look, Milla, it's nice of you to offer, but I think we've got things well enough under control here. Besides, it's a long flight..." He looked at Bolt, who disappeared for a few minutes and then returned carrying an open laptop.
His overly large fingers stumbled over the keyboard more than once as he ran a few searches. "Fastest flight's about twelve hours," he said finally.
"You see?" Truman asked, running a hand through his hair. "By the time any agents made it up here, we'd already be halfway to the deadline Nick set--" he and Bolt both flinched at his poor word choice-- "and we're planning on having Razputin back by then. So you can thank Bruno for the offer, but we'll be able to hold our own up here."
A pause. "Would it change your mind if I told you I'd already volunteered for the mission?"
"I...look, Milla, you know I respect you; you're..." Seeing Bolt trying to catch his attention out of the corner of his eye, he trailed off. "Hold on a second." He put the phone on mute. "What is it?"
Bolt nodded to the phone. "With all due respect, we could use her help, sir. She was one of our top agents...and besides, she was instrumental in finding Harper six years ago. She has valuable field experience most of our other agents are lacking. And even if we rescue Agent Aquato before she arrives, well, she can still help us find Harper." Then, indicating the laptop, "I can have her on that flight in just a few minutes and she could be here by late tonight."
Truman took a few minutes to consider his options before he took the phone off mute. "Offer accepted, Agent Vodello." He smiled faintly. "We'll be seeing you again soon."
"Fabulous!" Truman just could imagine the bright, bubbling smile that was no doubt overtaking her face, lighting up her green eyes. "I need to let Bruno know--goodbye, darling!"
The phone hung up with a faint click, followed moments later by a long dialtone. Truman looked at Bolt. "I'll leave it to you to work out all the travel arrangements."
"I assumed as much, sir." Bolt collected the laptop and slipped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
Truman, meanwhile, turned back to the phone and the still-blinking call waiting button. "Let's see...London was next, wasn't it? Or maybe it was Nairobi...dammit."
It wasn't until several hours later that Truman finally managed to escape his office and the barrage of angry phone calls demanding either an explanation or his head--or sometimes, if he was lucky, both. He made his way through relatively empty, quiet hallways, delegating authority as he went. After a quick stop into the infirmary to check on Kowalski--the doctor on duty there had just given him a clean bill of health and was ushering him out the door--before he tracked down Sasha.
He found him locked in his lab with a small, rather eclectic group of agents, including Agent Oleander, most of whom were hovering over a row of television monitors someone had dragged in. Nick's would-be ransom video was playing on all of them, although each screen had it paused, rewinding, or playing at different points.
When no one acknowledged his entrance right away, Truman cleared his throat, attracting their attention. "This the anti-kidnapping team you put together, Nein?" He surveyed the group again, taking note of particularly familiar faces and nodding every so often.
"Minus Agents Quigley, Harmon, and Arthate, who've been dispatched back to the airport, yes." Sasha glanced up briefly from the computer he'd been bending over, then returned to work.
Truman nodded. "Good team." Then, to Agent Oleander--who seemed to be ignoring him rather pointedly, "Morry...how'd Moscow treat you?"
Oleander frowned, straightening his helmet. After a moment, it slid off to one side again, much to his chagrin. "Well, if you forget about that first year in Siberia and the time I was attacked by a giant bear, and if you ignore the frostbite, fine."
"Good, good." Then, turning back to Sasha again, "Found anything?"
Sasha shook his head. "We've already searched the truck twice without results. The airport security tapes yielded little; we have the kidnapping on tape, but no ID on the kidnapper as yet." He frowned. "It wasn't Harper himself--"
"Which means he's got a power base going already," Truman finished, matching Sasha's frown. "Let me know when you get a positive ID. Anything else?"
"Not yet. We're expecting word back from Quigley's team soon as to whether or not they've found any traces of a psychic signal at the airport."
Truman nodded again. Then he motioned towards the door. "I want regular updates. And Nein, I need to talk to you for a minute. Outside."
Sasha pried himself away from his work somewhat reluctantly, following Truman out into the still-empty hallway. The door slid shut behind them with a faint hiss. "Sir, what's--"
"We're getting some outside help," he said, his jaw automatically clenching at the thought of the earlier phone calls. Sasha noted the sudden tension with a slight frown, but Truman didn't give him a chance to comment on it, continuing, "From the South American branch--Agent Vodello talked me into letting her fly up here to lend a hand."
Sasha appeared to have gone absolutely rigid, his normally calm, blank expression even more blank than usual. "Milla?" he asked, voice quiet. "Why is she--she has to realize she would arrive much too late to do anything."
"Yeah, but I couldn't talk her out of it." Truman smiled. "You know how she is with kids, especially Razputin. Did you expect her to stay put when she found out about this?"
"I expected her to stay where she'd transferred," Sasha answered. He reached in his pocket for his cigarettes, only to remember they were back in the lab. "Sir, this is absurd; my team is perfectly capable--"
Truman cut him off with a shake of his head. "If I hadn't accepted her offer, Agent Delgado would've just sent someone else, someone who doesn't have any ties of loyalty to us. This is the best solution for everyone."
Just as Sasha started saying something about his begging to differ, Truman continued, "Except you and her. Yeah, I know. But she's already on her way here, so there's nothing we can do about it now. I'll give her her own team of agents if it comes to that--but I'm hoping you'll at least think about playing nice."
Sasha had to consider this for more than a few moments, arms folded tightly across his chest and his face drawn taut and unsmiling. Finally, he nodded. "Yes, sir. There shouldn't be any problem."
"Good!" He clapped Sasha hard on the shoulder, nearly sending him sprawling into the wall. "I don't know what the hell happened between you two three years ago, but--"
"That's a private matter between myself and Agent Vodello," Sasha muttered, even as he regained his balance and dusted off his coat. "It's not something that needs to be discussed."
Truman sighed. "Yeah, that's what you both said the first time. So long as it doesn't interfere with the case, I suppose I'm willing to let it--"
Kowalski careened around the corner just then, colliding with Sasha with a screech of shoes on recently waxed tile. The two agents bounced off one another rather spectacularly, Sasha flying into the wall with a sharp thud and Kowalski ending up almost taking Truman down to the floor with him.
"Dammit, Louis--!" Sasha and Truman exchanged a glance when they realized they'd both said the same thing at the exact same time.
"Sorry, sirs!" Kowalski scrambled to his feet, nearly fell down again, and then finally regained his balance in time to try and help Sasha back off his heels. Sasha waved him aside with a stern, unforgiving frown.
Kowalski cleared his throat, looking back to Truman. "I, uh...Agent Shackley sent me to tell you, sir. Razputin's awake. We've got--" he checked his watch-- "we've got until 1:32PM tomorrow to find him."
(1) Once again, with credit due to M. Tullius Cicero, whom Nick is obviously rather fond of quoting. I'm not sure where exactly this quote comes from in all Cicero's writings and speeches and whatnot, so I can't give you the exact source...or the original Latin. Sorry.
(2) Yes, "Bubba Shot The Jukebox" is a real song. It's by Mark Chesnutt. There are some things I just can't make up, people.