Summary: The truth is finally revealed, and Lyssa must make a terrible choice.
Notes: Like I mentioned before, this is when Lyssa really began to surprise me. It's so easy to gloss over, when you're reading a book or watching a TV show-- you don't think too much about how hard the situation is for the character, because you know it's fiction anyway and everything's going to turn out fine, because after all, next week's episode would be pretty boring if it didn't. Writing it, though... it was a bit of a revelation to me. 'Cause you kind of haveĀ to understand it when you're writing it-- at least, if you're doing it right, you do.
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Chapter Eight: The Reveal
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He looked for anything as strong as death,
And wond'ringly discovered life and love.
His castles fell, as sure all castles will,
But what better rock to build foundations of?
Lyssa breathed in, breathed out, reciting any rhyme she could remember, humming every song she knew inside her head. Calm. Focus. This is all up to me.
She was rather terrified. I am the LAST person I would want all of this up to--! I wish I'd persuaded Andy to stay behind instead--
No. Medical experiments? I couldn't risk it. Who knows what they might be injecting people with? Who knows what might have happened?
The guard was still at his post. Five minutes. Isn't long at all. Plenty of time left. Doesn't mean our plan is crumbling apart into tiny little pieces in the least.
Focus, Lyssa, focus. He was standing in the bookstore, rooting through his pockets for change. It was December, and he was wearing a fuzzy green scarf he told you his little sister made for him. He had that tan coat of his, and that wild black hair, and he was somewhere between embarassment and pleading, saying it was a gift, he hadn't been able to find it anywhere, this bookstore was the only one that had it in stock because it was the best in town, and really, it was only a lousy 1.40, barely enough to buy a dust speck, and couldn't he just let it slide, just this once?
You were feeling generous that day, because you'd just aced your Accounting midterm, much better than you'd expected, and you were full of dreams and joy. Not to mention that for once, you actually HAD a few jir on you, and you wanted to fix the whole world, heal every wound in existence just like that. Before you realized just how wounded the world was.
So you stepped up and paid the cashier, and he turned and gave you the sweetest smile you'd ever seen. His eyes were gold like morning, and he thanked you, and he told you about his sister, and you told him about everything you knew. Talk turned to coffee turned to walking home turned to dinner, and you felt like you were suspended in his shaft of sunlight, like you were captured, bound, fit.
And eventually you realized that was love.
Lyssa, think about him. Think about love.
Her breathing was quick, but as even as she could reasonably hope for. The guard's radio beeped, and he hurried toward the front of the building.
Now.
Lyssa had already stripped the wires; she cut them now, and spliced whatever the hell it was the Doctor had given her in. She hesitated a moment more-- then hurried down the corridor, looking for locked doors.
The Doctor had given her some sort of electronic skeleton key, though she couldn't for the life of her imagine how it might possibly work. She didn't intend to ask, either; she planned to just open any door with a lock and see what happened.
She opened the first door with a lock. It was the janitor's closet.
Well, lovely. She hurried to the next one.
This was a bright, blindingly white room, sterile-smelling, with spare hospital cots in a neat row in the middle, and a two-way mirror on the wall.
Bad. This is bad. She shivered and ran to the next room. This one-- was a cell. White, with the same type of cots, the same kind of brilliant light that made you wonder why people considered 'light' a synonym for 'good'.
There was a skeleton on the cot.
No, not a skeleton; the wires attached to a panel on the wall clearly showed a heartbeat. But the prisoner was as thin as a skeleton, and almost as pale.
Three other pale figures in white hospital robes turned their heads to look at her, apathy warring with hope.
"This is a rescue mission," she said, hand shaking as it tightly clutched the door. "The door is open. Anyone who wants to leave this hellhole, come with me."
The bony figures glanced at each other fearfully-- or, two of them did. The third, a delicately-featured thing with deep blue eyes, stood and followed.
"It's a risk," she said, in a high, thready voice that sounded fragile enough to break. "But I would die trying rather than locked in this room. For you know we shall die. When you come to terms with that, hope the door will still be open. Chances have a way of slipping away."
Lyssa left the door open and continued down the corridor, shakily. "What did they do to you?"
"Retrovirals," she said, voice holding a trace of an accent. "Recombiant DNA. They seek to change us. They wish to design people to their specifications. They use us to find out how. People like cold soldiers, I would imagine. Geniuses as well. We become the birds. Our bodies thin, frail, become hollow like birds'. And they give us wings."
Lyssa stared at her, horrified. "They're... learning how to change DNA to do what they want. To make who they want." She shivered convulsively. "How soon?"
"It takes weeks for it to fully take effect. Usually it kills. They learn from when it almost doesn't. They splice better the next time. Woe betide the poor soul who becomes what they seek..."
"When you're brought in. When does the treatment start?"
She shook her head. "Hours."
Lyssa paled and sank against the wall. "Can it be stopped?"
"In theory? Yes. Reality? I cannot tell. Not for me, I know. Maybe for whomever it is you seek. I would wish you every luck."
Lyssa took a deep breath. "Thank you. But this has to be finished." She got to her feet and looked for the next locked door.
"Beware. Some have been driven mad. Some have been turned into animals. They may attack."
"Right." Lyssa opened the next locked door. More skeletons, though now that she knew what to look for, she could see the malformed wings under their gowns.
"I will talk to them. You unlock the doors."
Lyssa nodded, and looked for the next locked door.
This was, she figured eventually, the 'bird' wing-- though that was the worst pun ever. Every room she opened had the skeletal creatures inside, four to a cell, monitors beeping placidly. And, she realized, the prisoners looked better, more active, with every cell opened-- she was going backward from date of capture.
Which meant yesterday's captures were coming up soon. Loren or the Doctor's Rose might be among them.
The hallway was about to cross another, and she realized it was a central hub. Newest'll start out near the main hub. They'll be moved outward as-- as slots open up the other direction. They just push 'em all back.
I'll think about that later. She opened the last door, throwing it open desperately. Please, this doesn't sound as bad as the other things they're doing, please--
"Lyssa!"
She gasped as she saw that Loren was there, pale and queasy-looking on the nearest side of the cot, because wishes weren't supposed to come true and the sheer relief of it was making her head spin. "Loren--"
He was up, then, and holding her tightly, as tightly as he ever had, as strong as he'd always been. "Lyssa, how the hell--"
"Really long story," she laughed, holding his head in her hands. "For now, we'll call it a miracle. We're breaking this place open and letting everything out. Want to lend a hand?"
"Are you kidding!" He laughed and spun her around. "Yes! Where's the dynamite?"
"Called something different, but I do have a supply in my bag. Saving it for the research lab and main computers. Here's hoping they were too paranoid to back anything up..." She pulled him out of the room; his two cellmates followed after, looking appropriately vengeful. "We'll start out from the hub. Some of them might get violent; this way we'll be prepared before we see any symptoms that are too extreme. There's a girl named Rose, who came in the same time you did-- look for her. Tell her we're here with her Doctor. She should know."
Lyssa glanced around and realized she had an audience, at least twelve volunteers of varying degrees of frailness. "You aren't leaving yet?"
"I want to help," said one.
"I want to beat the living crap out of the people who did this to us," said another.
"...Yeah, okay. Me and Loren are going to find the best things to blow up. You-- here." She tossed the keys to the one who'd said he wanted to help. "Press the blue button, point it at a lock. Look for Rose, remember that. It's a debt we owe."
The man nodded and hurried to his work.
"This way is the admin, so the holding cells should be there too," she said, running down the corridor, pulling Loren behind. "Let's get Andy out of here before they do this to him too."
"Andy? How'd he get into this?"
"Long story you'll never believe."
"And what are they doing to us?"
Lyssa did her best not to skid to a stop. "You don't know?"
"No. All I know is they were injecting us with something. Oh, and I also know it's probably bad. That wasn't hard to guess."
"Yeah," she said. "It's bad."
"What is it?"
She hesitated. "That door looks nice and official--"
"Lyssa--!"
"They're screwing with people's DNA," she said bluntly. "I don't know how. I don't know if it can be reversed. But it'll be okay. I promise you, no matter who I have to kill, it'll be okay."
"...Oh."
"Yeah. Official-looking door." Lyssa opened it, carefully not thinking about the future, because that was the only way to get through the present.
"This is the lab," Loren said, staring around. "This is where they brought us."
"Do you remember from which door?"
"There." He pointed. "Those should be the holding cells."
"Great." Lyssa tried the lock, then kicked the door down. Tell me we didn't leave it too long--
"Hey, Lyssa, Loren!"
And, thank God, Andy was in the third cell down, waving and grinning. "See? I told you we were planning an escape attempt!"
"Damn, wish I'd kept the key." Lyssa examined the cells critically. "Lucky I kept the acid."
She dropped the acid on the latch. "Ought to take-- couple seconds. So Andy, who are your friends?"
"This dumbass little punk is not my friend," a burly man snapped, sulking.
Lyssa smiled at him. "Do you have any idea how easy it would be for me not to open your cell door? Sure, you'd get out eventually-- probably-- but do you really want to be antagonizing me today? Honeybunch, I have had a bad week. Don't piss me off."
She smiled cutely and spun around, kicking Andy's door down. "I'm in the mood for kicking things. Don't make no difference to me if your ass gets added to my list. You gonna be good?"
The man nodded grudgingly.
"Good. We're making progress, then. Andy, Loren, you two go find the best places to put explosives. Aim to destroy as much information as possible. Try to hurry; I don't know how long we're gonna have..."
Lyssa leaned against the cage, as a terrible thought occured to her. If we destroy the information, do we destroy the only way to figure out how to reverse this?
A terrible price to pay. Loren... Wouldn't they just figure it out again eventually anyway?
But the word of dissidents isn't going to be believed, not with the evidence we have, not if they can run this sort of operation with impunity. She wasn't foolish enough to believe for a second the government wouldn't silence them again if given half a chance.
They could just start up again. Clean the hallways, install new locks, revamp the security, and they could use this same equipment, this same room.
Healing the damage, versus making sure it's never inflicted again.
Except I can't do either, I can't do either--
There wasn't enough information, she couldn't get enough information. The only answer was in the future, and she had to make this decision now. Set this place on fire. From the humanity in you, set this place on fire. There's no other decent thing to do.
Even if it did destroy the cure but not the disease. There's no other decent thing to do.
"I think I found the main computers, and Loren's found the files," said Andy, poking his head in. "I think I know where to put it. Where's the explosive?"
She rooted around in her bags for the cans. "Be careful. They're volatile, and the only sure thing about the fuses is that the time they say is wrong. I don't even know which way, so we need to get the hell out of here as soon as we set it up."
"The hell did you get these things from?"
She smiled shakily. "Three guesses--"
"--yeah, of course, stupid question." Andy grinned back at her. "Come on, let's get this done and get the hell out of here, yeah? Burn this place and tell the world. We can practically stand a chance of living through this now. How cool is that?"
"Yeah," she lied. "Might just be okay..."
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