In 26
Disclaimer: I don't own The New Avengers, nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.
Angels of Death
"Gambit, what have you done with the-?" The hasty rustling of papers and abrupt dousing of the projector's lone light caused Purdey to break-off mid-sentence. She switched on the light in the darkened office in its stead, in an effort to combat the heavy blinds drawn against the summer sun. Once she'd blinked away the shock to her vision caused from going from light to dark and back again in a matter of seconds, she was greeted by the sight of Mike Gambit sitting behind a desk, upon which rested a projector aimed at the unadorned white wall opposite. Said wall had been relieved of its few, uninspired, Ministry-approved pieces of what just about qualified as 'art' to create a makeshift screen. "Gambit," Purdey said carefully, stepping around the discarded, so-called 'art' propped against the wall near the door. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," Gambit replied, a little too quickly.
"You're very well-equipped for someone doing 'nothing'," Purdey countered sceptically, waving a hand at his set-up. "Tell me what's going on. And before you think about saying 'nothing' again, I'll remind you that I can tell when you're lying."
"Okay, there is something going on," Gambit replied casually—too casually-after considering Purdey's warning. Too casually. "But there isn't. At least, nothing important."
"That sounds like one of my answers." Purdey crossed her arms. "What does it mean?"
Gambit lit up, grin overbroad and desperately hopeful. "If it's one of your answers, you should know what it means."
"I know what I mean," Purdey countered. "But I, thankfully, am not you, Mike Gambit, so I require an explanation."
Gambit waggled his eyebrows outrageously. "I thought you could tell what I was thinking?"
Purdey bit back the urge to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the face he pulled, and felt her annoyance with him shrink in response. "I don't need to read your mind to work out that something's going on when you look like that. And the fact that you're being so readable proves that you're hiding something. And, possibly, that Kendrick forced you to take something for the bullet wound in your arm"
Gambit feigned indignation, and Purdey couldn't tell if he was more annoyed about being accused of lying or of relying on pain medication. "He didn't. And I'm not lying," he protested, sounding just a touch too defensive.
"You are." Purdey advanced, stood in front of his desk with hands on hips, looming ominously over him. "And as it's not five minutes after midnight at the discotheque, you are going to have to tell me what's going on."
Gambit cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter in his chair. "I'm watching the surveillance films from the health farm," he said officiously, pointing at the box of film reels as though a visual aid might make his words more convincing and save him from Purdey's penetrating gaze.
It did neither. "I know that." Purdey sounded decidedly unimpressed. "I was there when you volunteered."
It was Gambit's turn to look incredulous. "You mean, you were there when Steed said one of us had to watch them, and you pretended not to hear him, so I wound up having to do it by default."
Purdey, to her credit, didn't bat an eye. "That's what I said. You volunteered."
Gambit sighed wearily, knowing there was no point in trying to press the issue. "Well, I watched them. They had cameras all through the place, filming everything. Probably gathering data to hone their conditioning technique."
Purdey was tapping her foot impatiently. "Yes, yes, I know all this. Why is it important?"
"It's important because I watched the whole lot," Gambit said mysteriously, "and you'll never guess what I saw."
Purdey felt her heart stop, and for the first time she noticed that Gambit looked flushed, and his eyes were a little red, as though he'd been crying. "Gambit…" she said quietly. "What did you see?"
Gambit was biting his lip now, to keep from bursting into tears again, Purdey assumed. She'd never actually seen Gambit cry, and she couldn't imagine what sort of horrors would push him over the edge. "I saw Steed."
Purdey felt all of her worst fears rocket to the surface. What if the villains had brainwashed Steed into performing some treasonous act before they'd rescued him? Murder, disclosing state secrets, revealing the location of undercover agents—or worse? "Did he do something he shouldn't have?" she asked carefully, not equal to articulating her fears in full.
"You could say that." Gambit was having a harder and harder time holding it together. Purdey knew how he felt. "I, uh, probably shouldn't show you the footage, for Steed's sake. But you're probably going to make me." He looked knowingly at Purdey. "Aren't you?"
"After a set-up like that, I can hardly walk away, can I?" Purdey said tartly, watching with trepidation as Gambit began to set up the projector. "Should I sit down?"
"Maybe," Gambit replied cryptically, preoccupied with his work. "But close the door and turn off the lights first."
Purdey did as she was told, then quickly took a seat next to Gambit. "Ready?" Hand on the projector's switch, he looked to her for confirmation.
Purdey nodded, arms crossed tightly across her chest. "Just get on with it." The tension was definitely getting to her.
"Brace yourself," Gambit warned, and pressed the button. The projector snapped into life, and Purdey prepared herself for the worst.
The makeshift 'screen' on the wall was filled with multi-coloured flashing lights. Purdey knew from her training that some forms of brainwashing and interrogation used coloured lights as part of the process. The health farm operation must have used them to program Steed to do heaven knew what. She followed Gambit's advice and braced herself for the worst.
A woman entered the shot, swaying against the multi-coloured backdrop. Purdey recognised her as one of the so-called 'nurses' who had staffed the Briantern Health Farm, though their medical expertise had proved to be as lacking as their fighting prowess. Purdey allowed herself a small smirk as she cast her mind back to her handy defeat of a gaggle of the women-not counting the lone example that Gambit had knocked out after enjoying the show. She chanced a look at Gambit to see if he'd noticed her self-satisfaction, but he was transfixed by the screen. Purdey remembered what it was that they were watching and sobered up quickly. This was no time for self-congratulation. She was about to see Steed be put through something horrible.
The first nurse beckoned to someone off-screen, and Purdey realised for the first time that she was dressed for a night out at the disco rather than in her nurse's uniform. The nurse was followed by a handful of her colleagues, two of whom were pulling a reluctant person toward the camera. Purdey squinted and positively identified Steed's well-tailored suit jacket on the arms being clutched rather too close to the nurses' bosoms. She pressed her mouth into a thin line. Using the female of the species against Steed was even more diabolical than letting Coldstream or his doctor friend do the honours. Under the influence of a drug, Steed would prove infinitely more suggestible if women were giving the orders. Purdey bristled with outrage on her friend's behalf.
Steed was fully onscreen now, the nurses circling him in a formation that reminded Purdey uncomfortably of witches engaging in a pagan ritual as seen in some particularly eerie folk horror films. She held her breath as, as if on cue, the women began to move rhythmically around him, and Purdey assumed that the brainwashing 'ritual' had begun. She waited for Steed's face to contort in agony, discomfort, or at the very least confusion. Instead, something else happened. Something unexpected.
Steed began to dance.
And not just any dance, Purdey realised, as he began to move in time with the nurses. Disco dance. Or, given his less-than-graceful shimmying, a middle-aged approximation of the same, performed by a man who was clearly not in full control of his senses, and had likely never seen the inside of a disco in his life, let alone danced in one.
"What...?" Purdey's mouth was hanging open uncomprehendingly as the images-and Steed-danced over the wall. "What is this?"
"It's Steed being processed," Gambit explained, voice strained, as though he was barely keeping it together. "They drugged the patients, salted their drinks, and made them dance so they'd be nice and thirsty when they put them in the maze." He looked at the gawping Purdey, barely able to restrain himself from bursting out laughing. "As a dancer, I knew you'd be horrified."
"Mike Gambit!" Purdey exclaimed, cheeks heating in a mixture of irritation and embarrassment. "You gave me the fright of my life. The way you were carrying on, I thought you were going to show me Steed doing something illegal."
Gambit's shoulders were shaking with mirth. "Some of those moves probably should be."
"Gambit!" Purdey swatted his shoulder and earned an "ow!" for her troubles. She remembered. belatedly, as she caught a flash of white bandage sticking out of his sleeve, that it was the shoulder of the arm that had been shot. Given that Gambit had kept to his habit of not taking the painkillers Kendrick prescribed, he was probably in a great deal of discomfort. No wonder he was almost giddy at the sight of his boss disco-dancing the night away. All the same, Purdey thought she ought to defend Steed's honour, even if Gambit—tired, still shaking off the aftershocks of almost losing both of his colleagues, and in pain-wasn't really in the mood to appreciate it. "He'd been drugged. Under the circumstances, he kept his wits about him surprisingly well. He was even fairly lucid when I found him in the maze." Even in the scant light provided by the projector, she could tell that Gambit's eyes looked rather glassy. "Which is more than I can say for you."
"I was only shot once," Gambit squeaked between chuckles, borderline hysterical now. "You'd need to hit me a few more times before I started moving like that."
"Don't tempt me." Purdey sighed as she hooked a hand under Gambit's good shoulder and hefted him, with great difficulty, to his feet. "Come on. We're going to get Kendrick to give you something."
"He already gave me something," Gambit protested, stumbling a little in a way that suggested exhaustion, and Purdey wondered if he'd managed to get any sleep at all the night before.
"Then we're going to get him to make you take it," Purdey amended, steering him toward the door. "And then I'm going to take you home and you are going to sleep until you're sane. Or as sane as you ever are."
Gambit pointed a little unsteadily at the wall, which was still displaying the flickering evidence of Steed's humiliation. "What about the films?"
"I'll look after the films," Purdey promised, satisfied that that wording gave her plenty of leeway as to what, exactly, that might entail. Burying them, perhaps. Or burning them. She could always claim that they'd miscounted how many they'd taken from the health farm when they'd done the inventory. Cynthia Wentworth-Howe would be suspicious when they were taken down to Button-Lip for storage, but she wouldn't be able to prove anything. Purdey would make sure of that.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she steered the half-lucid Gambit straight into a very solid obstacle, which sent her partner ricocheting back into her rather alarmingly. Purdey had only just managed to regain her physical balance when her mental equilibrium was sent spinning off course as she saw what—or rather, who—Gambit had collided with.
"Steed!" she squeaked. She'd been so busy reacting to the film, she hadn't thought about how she might respond to watching the man himself after view it. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to see how Gambit was getting on with the surveillance films," Steed explained, frowning in puzzlement when Gambit snickered. "Perhaps I ought to have looked in sooner."
"He's in pain," Purdey said quickly, finding it dismayingly difficult to keep a straight face. "And hasn't slept. I'm taking him to Kendrick and then home for a rest."
Steed nodded sagely. "That sounds eminently sensible," he concurred, taking in the dark circles beneath Gambit's madly-shining eyes and strange half-smile. "Do you need any help?"
"I'll be fine. We'll be fine," Purdey assured hurriedly, pushing Gambit ahead of her and steering him off down the hall before her poker face broke down and she burst out laughing. "I'll see you later, Steed."
Steed watched her hasty departure in mild bemusement. He pondered the possible cause of Purdey's odd behaviour as he ambled into the darkened office to switch off the projector that Purdey and Gambit had left running. His finger hovered over the 'off' switch as he glanced idly at the images projected on the wall, and froze. There was his drug-induced performance, in all its glory. He watched the film for a time in silence, taking in every jerky or ill-timed move, disco ball turning the beads of sweat on his forehead into glistening jewels.
"I've always been more of a waltz man," he murmured to himself. He switched the projector off, and set out to familiarise himself with Cynthia Wentworth-Howe's policy on 'lost' records.