Chapter Eleven
The Questions to the Answer
Quistis had returned to her tiny little hotel room and collapsed on the bed. She was weary: the day's panics and the strain of keeping up her severe poker face had seeped into her bones until she could barely walk, could barely haul herself up the stairs and into the room and onto that tiny little dirty mattress. Plus Shiva had given her a good scolding for the entire fiasco - it had been very hard to even attempt to explain Siren's absence; talking to a GF in any way that made coherent sense wasn't easy in the best and most coherent-sense-making of moods, and Quistis was nowhere near that state - and she was now reeling and slightly nauseous from Shiva's mental onslaught.
Also, she figured that she'd need the rest; tonight was going to be long and dangerous, and she needed her wits.
Long, dangerous, and it's all my fault. I'm stupid, I'm a failure, I'm going about this all wrong -
She lay crooked on the bed, Quistis Trepe who was never crooked, never out of place; her limbs sprawled diagonally, one hand clutched to her breast as if to help her breathe. She breathed the dirty air of that hotel room as if it were purity itself. She heaved the air into her chest and hurled it out again. Quistis, who never broke a sweat doing anything.
Too fitful to sleep but too tired to move. She lay on the bed, simply breathing. She wanted to expel every last molecule of Elsevier from her body.
The ceiling was dirty also.
She was tired.
Failure. I should just report that I'm in over my head, have them send in some SeeDs who are qualified for this kind of thing.
Breathing.
Eventually Shiva got sick of her nervous panting and sent her into sleep, the GF equivalent of a sharp blow to the back of the head. The world around her grew cold and bitter, yet soft, like snow. Quistis sank into the darkness.
She opened her eyes slowly. The world was soft, and out-of-focus: the world she opened her eyes to every morning, before thin-metal glasses framed her poor not-perfect eyes. The almost-blind can see color only (lucky): no shapes, no definition, no lines or edges. Simply soft, blended colors, fading from sun-bright to shadow-dark. Colors only. A world built solely in light.
Her blue eyes could see a little more; shapes came to her, some edges, defining the beginnings and ends of her surroundings. She watched from the corner of her hotel room as two figures sat on the bed and spoke: one a lady, crowned in gold; one a man, dark-headed.
"But I don't know what to do," the lady spoke, and Quistis was surprised to find the voice was her own.
The corner-self squinted its eyes and - yes, those were her smooth features, that was her gleaming hair. She squinted harder at the face beside her, decided that the build resembled Headmaster Shain.
"Then think - that's what you're best at." The voice was clearly Squall's.
Corner-Quistis started; she squinted again at the man, trying to bring the softened features into focus. Her eyes didn't have the resolution required to make out the presence of the tell-tale scar - but Squall's hair was not that dark. Or that short and curly.
"There'll be someone following me," Dream-Quistis said. "They'll have sent someone to make sure that I don't do - well, don't do anything stupid, don't do anything like the thing I am exactly about to do."
"Make sure they don't see you," said Squall, from Shain's mouth. "Nobody sees you when there are other people around. Nobody ever saw me. Become lost."
Her dream-self twitched on the bed. "But how? What does that mean? Let them see me - let them see me acting normal. OK, so I leave - I go out for - for dinner. That doesn't help me."
Corner-Quistis' eyes were getting slightly better; she watched a strand of gold fall from the dream-self's tight clip, watched the dream-self tuck the hair behind her ear in a familiar gesture.
"So I find somewhere that there are a lot of people, and I lose myself in them. But then what do I do?"
"The problem with that Encounter-None deal," Irvine's drawl came very clearly, "is that sometimes it's just too strong, and things start noticing you because nobody else wants to come near ya."
The Quistis in the corner was startled at Irvine's voice, but dream-Quistis nodded slowly.
"If I had Diablo," the dream-self said, "I could maybe make it work - throw their attention elsewhere."
"These GFs," Irvine continued, his playful tone now casting from Shain's mouth - for her vision was indeed sharpening, and she was sure beyond a doubt that it was Headmaster Shain's face - "There's no way we'll ever know the full extent of what they can do when we feed them."
"But would Shiva do it?" Dream-Quistis asked herself softly.
"I'm sure she would," Irvine's voice said confidently.
"But could she?" The dream-self shifted abruptly. "How do you know?"
"Because," said Rinoa's voice clearly from Shain's mouth, "I'm a Sensor."
She was becoming increasingly alarmed at each new voice; even the Quistis on the bed was perturbed by Rinoa's light tones; from the corner she saw the dream-self's head snap up sharply.
"A Sensor cannot speak to the GF, but we can - understand each other a little more clearly," said Rinoa-Shain.
"Perhaps," said Dream-Quistis, "perhaps."
"Remind me," said Headmaster Shain, his voice his own, his caring smile his own again, and his hands his own as he reached for her - not the self beside him, but the self in the corner - "remind me to tell you -"
Quistis woke up, panting.
Her mind was whirling. She never dreamed. Never. Or if she did, not like this. She had never seen anything so clearly, anything remotely so bizarre -
She sat up slowly. Oh Hyne, what was going on? Was she hallucinating? Had Elsevier drugged her - gassed her room - was she still -
She forced herself to slow her breathing and her thoughts, and took stock of her surroundings. Still in the same dingy hotel room. Still had her duffel bag and her whip. Still breathing strongly with one hand clutched to her breast.
Calm down. Stop trying to rationalize and explain - it was a dream, and that's as rational of an explanation I'll get.
Listen to it instead.
She realized that the dream had given her an idea.
The rational brain is always looking for reasons. Maybe dreams are just the way we sort through life in our sleep.
An hour later, she was finishing dinner at a decently cheap Dolletian restaurant she'd found on the long walk she'd taken around the city. A very long, obvious walk - well, obvious to any Elsevierians who were following her.
What would a normal, bereaving, furious SeeD cadet do? Quistis had asked herself. The answer was not sit in her hotel room, type up some papers, and go to bed at 9. The answer was go for a walk to blow off some steam, get food, then go to a bar and get shitfaced.
She'd done the walk, she'd stopped for a cheap dinner, and she was now off to the bar. It was even an excuse to wear the dark ensemble she had been constructing in her head for her break-in attempt. The bar she chose was busy, crowded, dismal. She could easily get lost on the dance floor and make an un-noticed exit. Hopefully her absence would not be long enough to be notable.
If she even had a shadow - but somehow she didn't doubt it. Tiberaon did not look like the kind of man who sent one off without something to watch you.
She headed to the bar first, ordered a tall beer, looked condescendingly at the man when he asked for ID. There's no way I look younger than 18, she thought. She passed over her Balamb ID, which would not give her name, but would show she was of age to be certified SeeD. That was usually enough.
In this case it was enough as well. He brought her a tall beer - the glass was surprisingly clean. She took a long, grateful sip. Amber ale rushed into her system. She drank slowly but consciously - the cushion of alcohol would help ward off the nausea when she had to re-transfer her junctions.
She stayed at the bar for a while, trying not to attract too much attention, looking for all the world like she was drowning in her sorrows. The beer was slowly but surely drained, and replaced, along with a glass of water (which she drank much more fervently). An hour passed. An hour and a half.
Surely it was dark out there.
Quistis stood up and headed to the dance floor, looking at it with distaste. It was messy and sweaty and drunk. Improper. It raged with too many hands and too many feet and all bodies merged into one mass of writhing, heaving body. She hated it at once.
Tentatively she stepped onto the floor. She had no idea how to dance, no idea what to do; she'd never heard any music sound like this before, all pulse and bass and scream and no music. She was in pure and simple hell. Prim Quistis Trepe, the pinnacle of decency, a shining beacon of propriety's rulebook: she loathed this. She recoiled as bodiless hands grasped at her, pulling her into the pulse.
It wasn't so much a timid little woman going Oh, a mouse, and running for the nearest chair. This was a blatant Zombie Rat in the middle of her kitchen floor, carrying a chainsaw. This was against everything that had been ingrained in her (unfortunately or no) by her foster family. It was just - wrong.
This wasn't going to work - she was frozen in place.
But she found that the crowd did your dancing for you. You just had to give a little, let your feet not be so rigid, let your arms not be cemented to your sides, not immediately wrench away when someone else's body or arms touched you or slipped past you. The dance was there, a tangible thing. Slowly Quistis relaxed various parts of her body until she felt herself glide into the underlying current. Perhaps she wasn't coasting as easily as many of her comrades (at least she wasn't as bombed as some of her comrades); but she was moving.
Another half-hour passed.
Slowly but surely she slipped herself into a small corner of the dance floor, slid past a couple so tightly entwined they only took up enough space for one. She leaned against the slick wall, catching her breath; then, deliberately keeping her eyes open, she called for Shiva.
The air around her began to cool.
Shiva knew in the GF way of knowing without words. She and Quistis had practiced the trick on their walk around the city. The air temperature dropped a couple more degrees. Quistis was now standing perfectly still. If the trick worked out in the open, that was one thing; for it to work in this close, confined space was something different.
A couple careened off of the dance floor, looking for solitude; ran into her in her corner - and jumped. They hadn't noticed her at all.
That's enough for me.
Quistis carefully made her way off the dance floor, keeping every step perfectly even, not silent, just un-noticeable. Shiva moved in her mind as the full weight of the aura came into bear; something creaked, like the strap of a briefcase shifting. But the chill held.
Somehow, Quistis had known: if Diablos could cast off an Encounter-Less or an Encounter-None field, her own GF could create something much like it.
Shrouded, Quistis slipped out the back door into the alley behind the pub, an exit saved for those sick with their own ale and revelry. She stayed to the shadows, not wanting to chance her luck; but she moved quickly.
She felt more than heard Shiva's growl; dipping herself into one corner, she froze. The temperature around her dropped steadily; Quistis could feel it, not like one felt the cold winds in Trabia through the clothing, but like a breeze of ice whispering across the surface of her skin. A couple came around the corner, laughing, one stumbling. They vanished.
Weaving her way through the darkness, Quistis finally came to Elsevier's building. She froze in the safety of a long dark alleyway, scanning with GF-enhanced eyes for the guards she knew would be present. That small, detached part of her mind noted: how in the world did Shiva know what she needed? How was Shiva doing this? Yes, Shiva and Quistis had a high compatibility (calculations based on Coulter's standard method): but that was only numbers. This was something else.
The magical presence in her brain was heightening her senses, shadowing her movements, but it was also eating slowly away at her reality. She felt now that the line between her own self and Shiva's self was becoming blurred. If she stepped (mentally) one more step that way, it would almost be as if she had summoned Shiva herself...
But now there was no more time for those thoughts, for the guards had emerged. One guard was patrolling, heading for the rear of the building. The other's shift was apparently up and he headed inside.
Quistis took off lightly across the grass, her feet only flickering against the ground as she flew into a low patch of bushes close to the window where she had junctioned Siren.
What?
She was breathing lightly, she noticed, as if the stress and the strain were nothing to her. It had certainly not been her impulse that had carried them across the yard. Quistis Trepe would have watched and waited, for half an hour maybe, until she had obtained all the information she needed. It had been Shiva who had propelled their body across the yard, almost in flight, into the shadows of the bushes.
She had given herself over to Shiva, she realized, at least partially; donated her body for them to share. It had been in the moment where Quistis had asked, Can you? and Shiva had replied, Yes, and neither of them had discussed the price.
But again, it didn't matter, because now as half-Shiva she could feel Siren's pull from the window. Funny how she could immediately tell which window. It was as if she could almost see - something, some kind of haze, not a light, but something different about the material of the air.
Shiva asked, wordlessly, and this time it was Quistis who said Yes. They ran to the window, ducking beneath it for cover, huddled up against the building. She could feel Shiva and Siren talking, wordlessly, meaninglessly, a quick flick-flick-flick of bunched magic and ethereal pulsing, and then -
Siren did something, stretched her essence until it was her inside the alarm wires surrounding the window, not the ethereal pulse at all. Instantaneously she launched their body through the opening in the alarm system, flipping her body over the sill, and - she could feel for a second the prickle of Elsevier's alarm system, but maybe she couldn't feel it at all, because in the exact instant she crossed the boundary, as if on cue, Shiva and Pandemona de-Junctioned themselves and dove for cover in the recesses of her mind.
Quistis, alone, managed to land quietly if not gracefully, and lay on the floor on her back as the room spun. She was light-headed and slightly nauseous and still in wonderment of what the hell had just happened. Her head and body and movements were all her own, but they didn't feel like it; they felt slow and clammy and confused.
But she had made it. She was back in Tiberaon's office.
She kept to the floor, crawling in the darkness over to the file cabinets in the corner. She flipped on the tiny light on her wristwatch, positioning her body to block the light from the window. The drawers were not labeled, and were locked. She could pick the lock, but then they'd know someone was there. Hopefully the key was in Tiberaon's desk.
After what seemed like an eternity of searching with one tiny watch-light and making next to no noise at all, Quistis did find the key, tucked beneath a pen-holder. She slipped back into the corner and unlocked the bottom drawer.
The tabs on the folders were in some kind of code, she saw: three letters, like the kind you saw in the doctor's office: SRA, SRE, SSO. If she was looking for SeeD she was one drawer short. She tucked the bottom drawer back in and unlocked the next drawer up.
This drawer started at AEB, which was confusing; she pulled the first file, which read AEBMAN, RACHEL. Names. Names of what? AGR, ALA, ALI.
Then she saw ALM and reached for it, her heart leaping. ALMASY, SEIFER. Names of SeeD cadets. The entire drawer was SeeD.
She grabbed Seifer's folder, tucked herself into the corner where her light could not be seen, and opened it. Funny, her brain noted, they labeled Seifer SeeD, but he hadn't passed the exam. Then again, she assumed, neither had Vanesa.
The folder was just a set of records on Seifer, much like she guessed was on file at Balamb Garden. Name, age (estimated), past history (what there was of it), a list of missions he had been on. A detailed record of his exploits with Edea/Ultimecia, which she skipped. And after that, just a notated list of locations.
She skipped to the last entry. 04 March. Sighted in Argun, Budget Inn Suites. Contacted. Refusal repeated. Operation 801 initiated.
She bit her lip. This wasn't an answer. This was not the type of file you kept about your fearless leader, though, was it? What was Operation 801? Something Seifer had ordered? Something Elsevier had done to Seifer?
She decided to skip the folder labeled LYMAN, ATHAENA.
She needed harder evidence. What sort of form would require this Grey's signature? Mission orders, maybe. Operation 801. She closed the drawer and went to the next one up, hoping for the "O"s. Next drawer. Aha, this looked something like it. Operation files.
She paged through until she found one marked 801. Tucking herself back into her corner, she tentatively opened the file, a strange nervousness beginning to eat its way into her stomach.
Operation 801 detailed a holding order against one Seifer Almasy, citizen of Balamb and wanted suspect of the Sorceress' Wars. The order slated a force of six soldiers whose job was to monitor Argun's perimeter and keep Almasy from leaving the city.
Seifer's angry voice. And I can't leave because the city sentries won't let me. He hadn't been lying, she knew it.
She pawed through the document, excited, looking for the mission's objective, the operation's statement of purpose. There -
Since Mr Almasy's presence elsewhere is currently a threat to Elsevier's core mission and leadership, we will take it upon ourselves to detain him in the city under a generous form of house arrest.
Gods.
Mr Almasy's presence near Elsevier is necessary to continue the distraction ruses that keep the eye of the public away from Grey's real identity. Almasy will be contained within the city limits of Argun until he consents to join or until such a time that the ruses are abandoned.
Quistis gripped the folder blindly and angrily, shaking a bit. She felt that she could be forgiven a little bit of shaking. She'd morphed into her own GF, flown through a window, and proven Seifer's innocence. Shaking was nothing.
Seifer wasn't Grey, and there was a nice folder here that proved it. If she ever needed to have it proven. And she was sure that Tiberaon wasn't the only Elsevier employee that kept records.
She was closing the folder when she saw it in the bottom corner: a couple lines of numbers that she assumed upon first glance were filing codes. But she recognized the top set of numbers, a set that would have seemed a random collection of digits to anyone besides Quistis Trepe, probably Xu, and some enterprising secretaries.
Garden Code Certified paper was used to print out emissives of medium importance - bills, mission orders, nothing too drastic or too dull. GCC paper was identified by the Garden from which it had been submitted by the codes printed at the bottom. Quistis recognized the more 'popular' codings just from seeing them so often as an Instructor. In this case, the paper had come from Galbadia Garden.
Quistis didn't recognize any of the other codes, but that didn't mean anything. Galbadian GCC? In these files? In the operation files? Was this some kind of fluke?
She put Operation 801 back into the drawer and pulled out some other random Operation order. Again, on GCC. Again, from Galbadia. Most of the other codes were the same as well. The next file was the same thing. And the next.
You didn't just find an entire ream of GCC lying somewhere for use as scrap paper. Hell, you wouldn't print GCC codes on anything other than an official GCC document. So - why were these GCC documents? Why would Galbadia Garden certify the mission orders from Elsevier?
Funding?
Quistis's mind froze to a halt for a second. Galbadia Garden would have to certify the mission documents if they were paying for these operations. Even if they wanted to keep it a secret, they would have to file something with the bank. So they'd make up a new code and hope to pass it off as Bureaucratic Bullshit.
Or was Elsevier, again, trying to frame Galbadia? She couldn't rule that out either. They'd taken such pains to frame Seifer; they might do the same for Garden. It wouldn't last in the long run - neither ruse would - but they'd be enough to distract the medias while everything Elsevier-related ran for cover. And it would do a lot of public damage to the Gardens as well.
Deciding that the risk of standing up was worth it at this point (her adrenaline was so high, Quistis felt that she could have taken on anything), she hunted through the top two drawers, looking for anything interesting or incriminating. Billing records. I supposed a signed check from Martine isn't going to be in here.
But inside the billing records, albeit in an unmarked folder, was a set of pages marking fund transfers from Galbadian banks, also on GCC paper.
Galbadia, this does not look good.
Quistis closed the files, put back the key, and returned to the window. She doubted she could perform the same graceful flying leap which had gotten her into the building in the first place without Shiva's help; but she was no slouch. She slipped up over the windowsill and crumpled into the grass.
She extended a mental hand to both Shiva and Pandemona, feeling their strength flood through her again, feeling the strange connection as Shiva activated whatever she did to keep the Enc-None field hovering. Again Quistis could almost see a shimmer in the ethereal lines where Siren's presence lay. Quistis extended the invitation to her as well and felt the sweet song slip into her mind again, the notes soaring as Siren seemed to flow back into her mind. She felt them re-adjusting to each other's presence, re-arranging bits and pieces here and there.
Quistis let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. She'd almost expected an alarm, a guard, anything. And there in the darkness she actually chuckled, silently, at the fact that she had just ruined a perfectly blank record with one (unprovable) charge of breaking and entering.
Compared to other SeeD missions, breaking and entering was tame.
She gave Shiva the reins to coast them back into the grimy bar, where she slipped back onto the dance floor and almost immediately off again, trying to look only tired and intoxicated. She headed out of the bar directly back to her hotel. Anyone following me will only have seen me go into the bar and then leave it.
Back in her hotel room, she packed together her few things, replaced the black outfit with her mocha-tinted battle garb, and she and Shiva slipped out of the hotel to the train station. (Quistis could almost feel that the pseudo-Encounter-None aura was stronger with Siren's added strength. Plus practice made perfect, didn't it?)
By morning she was standing outside Galbadia Garden, staring up at its rings bemusedly.
What exactly was she here to do?
Could she just barge in, demand access to Martine's finance files? Try to get her hands on Galbadian GCC? Snoop around, shrouded by Shiva again, trying not to get caught? What was proper procedure for a Garden subterfuge audit?
She thought of calling up Shain and asking him; but what, exactly, could she ask? Hey Headmaster, what's the proper procedure for snooping through somebody else's entire file cabinet in the hopes of maybe finding some kind of clue? She allowed herself a little chuckle as she realized that Shain was very likely to have some sort of response to her query, real or feigned.
Maybe she could ask to get on that Plasma computer again. There had to be some kind of link to financial records. Money heading out. That's what she needed. And GCC logs. She couldn't just ask for the GCC logs, could she? You didn't just have access to things like that. If she started asking questions like that, she'd start throwing around suspicion like Trabia threw snow. Not like Galbadia needed more suspicion anyway. Blasted Garden protocols.
She pulled out the temporary G-Garden ID card and swiped it. Galbadia was somewhat unfamiliar to her, but she headed up towards Martine's office. Hopefully the Headmaster would be in, and she could just pose her questions to him.
Heading up the stairs, she collected her thoughts. Deep breaths. Her foster-mother's voice in her head: posture, poise, propriety. Quistis, what will we do with you? The posture and the poise were automatic; the propriety was suffering slightly (she was still in her battle-wear) but she could deal with that. The past couple of days had been whirlwinds.
Martine's office was closed and his secretary was out, but Era Maxus was seated at the desk.
She smiled at him in greeting, not entirely prepared for his look of shock. "Quistis?" he blurted out, followed by the speedy correction: "Instructor - er, Investigator - Agent Trepe," he finished, and allowed himself a little laugh at his fumbling words. "Wow. I'm sorry, but this is a really awkward time, and you surprised me. I've been running around like crazy for days, it seems."
The familiarity seemed forced, so Quistis merely continued to smile cooly. "Nice to see you again, Commander Maxus. Is Headmaster Martine here?"
"No, unfortunately, he's out," Maxus said, smiling a little unevenly. "As always. Can I help you with something, maybe?"
"I need to take another look at your email files," Quistis said, wondering when in the past week 'coming up with plausible stories out of thin air' had appeared on her resume. "I might have missed something."
"Anything to help," Era said cheerfully. He entered a couple clearance commands into the computer to his right, which spat out a familiar slim card. "Let's go."
He walked her to the lab, opened the door - and proceeded to come inside with her. She sat down in the chair and tapped the login to the server interface.
Eventually she turned. "Commander, can I help you?"
Era Maxus suddenly looked very nervous and self-aware.
"I'm sorry, Commander," she said in her best Mean-Instructor voice, "but I feel that this should be investigated privately."
"Yes, of course," he said, as if he hadn't been meaning to stand and watch over her shoulder the entire time. "I'll be in the office if you need anything."
She waited until he had left and breathed a sigh of relief she hadn't realized she was holding in. Turning to the computer, she sent a brief plea to Hyne that the setup was similar to Balamb's network server.
It was close enough. The program opened a series of windows comprising the Galbadian computer network. Some of the shortcuts led to the student computer network (a haven for the illegal exchange of media and executables); others led into the actual operating protocols (which of course all looked like foreign languages gone horribly wrong). What Quistis was looking for was a link from this computer into the electronic filing system of Galbadia's secretarial network.
After a little bit of trial and error, she found it. The names and operating system were slightly different, but she had helped Xu with enough electronic filing that she could at least bluster her way around a computer's innards. Hopefully the GCC files were in here and she could cross-reference the numbers she had written up and down her arm and hidden beneath her gloves: this way she could tell whether the GCC pages were real or forged.
After some more blind hunting, she found that archive as well. All Garden Code Certified documents were archived; not because Garden was anal (though it was) but because GCC actually carried some legal authority and no one wanted to make the mistake of re-using or misusing a certified code anyway. It was basically just a brief database of all the filings - little information was stored with each one - set up in a program that would easily spit out the next code to be printed.
She rolled her glove down and searched for the first number. It was a hit. The second and third codes were hits as well. The fourth was slightly blurred from sweat.
Still, it didn't bode well for Galbadia.
She opened the codes. Unmarked dispensations of funding. In these cases the GCC just basically acted as a certified receipt. No real information was required for the database entry. But with these pieces together, G-Garden was starting to look very guilty. Or someone at G-Garden.
Three pages, all entered with Martine's approval. Was that forged?
The door behind her opened and she jumped, involuntarily. Era Maxus walked in, nervous grin still on his face.
"Commander?" she queried.
"I'm sorry, but your hour is almost up," he said. "Find anything yet?"
That was fast. She turned back to the computer to log off, not wanting to leave her findings up on the screen. "Not sure," she said, wondering if she could bargain for more time.
Maxus glanced at the screen. "Looking through old funding files, eh?" he asked.
Gods. "I ended up in the wrong place," she said slowly. "Your system isn't much like they have in Balamb. Could I get some more time?"
"Yeah," Maxus said eagerly, "come upstairs to the office and I'll print you another card."
As they headed back up to the office, he asked, "So what were you looking for, then?"
"Some personnel records," she said quickly, trying to think of something plausible. "There's some stuff we have at Balamb, I was trying to see if you guys had access to it too."
"What, you looking up Almasy too?"
All of her suspicion nerves suddenly lit up. "What do you mean, too?"
"Well," Maxus said quickly, almost nervously, "all his records are in Balamb's files, right?"
"Commander," Quistis said as they reached the office, "who is looking for Almasy?"
Her nerves were still singing with alarm, and so in retrospect when whomever was behind the office door stepped out and rested the cold barrel of a pistol against the back of her head, Quistis realized she was almost expecting it.
Like any good SeeD, she froze instantly.
"You're looking for Almasy," Era Maxus said, and the switch from nervousness over to calm was so sudden that Quistis knew instantly he had been playing her from the very beginning. "You're looking a little too closely, I might say."
"Commander," she said, her voice carrying every ounce of authority she had left in her, "what is going on here?"
"You'll figure it out," Maxus said, as someone else stepped out from the other side of the door, gripped her hands behind her back, and fastened handcuffs around them. "You're a smart one, Athaena. Can't just take the bait, can you?"
He'd called her Athaena. "You're Gray," she breathed.
"Maybe," Era Maxus replied. "Maybe not. Maybe your dear friend Almasy is. I'm afraid you won't have time to find out. You're coming with us."
Ha! Cliffhanger! I don't do enough of these.
Thanks-es for sticking around, and general comments:
nynaeve77 (ha, Q throwing a tantrum was just a great mental image; I think she's quite the actress. And Shain will be back soon - I like him way too much.)
Chococat2 (is this timely enough? Now the real question is, can I get another in before holiday?)
Thugstra (thanks!! I try so hard to not be a silly romance writer (see profile) so I'm really glad you like my plot-ness)
Sarady (thank you. Glad Q is believable. The more I write her, the more I like her.)
Musical misfit (The truth is out ... :P Are we surprised? Are we pleased? )
Shortey (Bah to real life. Thank you.)
Dominus (and thank you as well :) )
Melete (I like to have fun with the FF8 "world rules", but I still like to stay realistic. Let me know if this chap went too far or not :p )
azndreamer1788 (thank you! I hope I can continue to be worthwhile )
cwolf2 (Everyone likes Shain, I'm so happy. I tried hard to make him real. Thanks!)
Noacat (I LOVE YOUR REVIEWS. You make me so happy. Actually, seeing that you were still reading prompted me to finish up this chapter today! Woohoo motivation!)
I'll be taking a brief break from this to update my FFIV parody soon (have you ever been so funny you make yourself laugh?), but I have been picturing the next chapter in my head since Sincerity Cowboy, so ...it shouldn't take too long.
(AWWWW my kitty just curled up on the pillow next to me ...)