A/N: And we're back!
I've had to chainsaw some of these chapters in half for the sake of pacing: as some of you may notice, we've had some very research-heavy talky segments, and I can't cram them and the action too closely together without letting things get hopelessly muddled. Hopefully, the result will avoid any potential confusion... but as always, you'll have to be the judge.
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls and TSW are still not mine.
This chapter's soundtrack is Leap In The Dark by Junya Nakano.
As Dipper went about returning the notes to the depths of the safe, Mabel found herself absently drifting over to the first-floor landing, where Lorraine was still on watch.
"Find what you were looking for?" she asked.
"Um… I think so. I mean, all of this is D- is Callum's gig: he wants to find out more about the League, I'm just here to help out while I can."
"And you're not worried about being out here, away from your parents, and in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?"
"Eh, I've fought zombies before. I've been through worse."
Lorraine's brow wrinkled. "You're sure you're not one of the League members?"
"Positive. I'd have remembered all those wendigo fingers in jars."
She seemed to accept this, and promptly lapsed into an uncertain silence. Mabel was used to this, though: whenever she went over to friends' houses, the parents never seemed to know what to make of her, and often ended up nervously slinking away to make hot chocolate just so they wouldn't have to deal with Mabel's hurricane-force enthusiasm; on the rare occasions where she stayed for dinner, they would eat in silence while Mabel and whatever friend she was visiting talked non-stop, clearly having no idea how to communicate with their guest. In hindsight, that was one of the many reasons why Gravity Falls had been such a blast: most of the adults were nuttier than an entire picnic of squirrel sandwiches, so uncomfortable silences never become a problem.
But as the silence dragged on, Mabel couldn't help but wonder a bit about Lorraine. She'd been expecting someone quite different when she'd been ziplining towards the treehouse: she'd thought Lorraine would have been wide awake and prowling the walkways like guard dog, drooling, rabid, ready to fight as soon as she heard someone on approach; she'd been expecting violence, abuse, or, at the very least, behaviour that would have made Old Man McGucket look positively down-to-earth. After all, this was the same woman who'd shoved a gun under Grunkle Stan's nose, kidnapped Dipper, threatened Marianne, and done something so bad that even the Sasquatch were worried. Mabel hadn't expected Lorraine to seem so calm about all this.
She hadn't expected her to be so normal.
Right now, Lorraine looked like any other small-town mom she'd met on a visit to a friend's house. Yes, she was pale, drawn, and looked as if she hadn't gotten a full night's sleep in months, but she was so relaxed, so casually affectionate around Dipper and so polite around Mabel, that it was almost impossible to connect her with the madwoman who'd kidnapped Dipper the previous evening.
And yes, every so often she would wince and gently massage her temples, but really, Mabel had encountered that around just about every suburban mom prone to migraines (though in Lorraine's case, it was because there was a magical Bee inside her trying to tell her something, or so Dipper claimed).
"You want another soda?" Lorraine asked, finally breaking the silence. "You look a little tired."
"No thanks: I've got Mabel Juice to get me through until sunrise."
"…I'm sorry, what?"
By way of an answer, she held out her reserve flask of Mabel Juice for Lorraine's inspection. For nearly twenty seconds, Lorraine regarded the neon-red energy drug with open-mouthed bewilderment, eyes flicking from left to right in confusion as she took in the plastic dinosaurs that still bobbed in the half-full bottle. She gave the lid an experimental sniff, blinking rapidly as the legendary secret recipe scorched the inside of her nose.
"What's in this?"
"That'd be telling," said Mabel, trying and failing to keep the grin off her face. "Wanna try some?"
"Well… I am a little tired…"
Sighing, Lorraine opened the flask, took a deep breath, and helped herself to a less-than-medicine-cup-sized sip of Mabel Juice. For a second or two, she took in the taste, visibly trying to make sense of the ingredients that had been used to produce the secret recipe; then she swallowed… and in that moment, the full extent of the drink's sugar content hit her all at once.
There was an eerie silence, broken only by the muffled clack of Lorraine's pupils crashing into each other at high speed.
"Wow," she coughed. "Yep, I'm awake now. Arg."
"Good stuff, isn't it?"
"Yeah, I… oh wow, I haven't twitched like this since I gave up on the five-coffee lunches. Did you make this yourself?"
Again, Mabel couldn't quite stop herself from grinning as she nodded.
To her surprise, though, Lorraine smiled back – and not the dreamy, slightly desperate smile she wore whenever she was around Dipper, but the full-fledged grin of someone trying not to laugh. It was dorky, it was a little too wide to be photogenic, and Mabel got the distinct impression that Lorraine probably wouldn't be able to stop laughing if she lost composure… but for all that, the smile was genuine.
Again, how was it possible for someone like Lorraine to be so normal?
"You know," said Lorraine, giggling slightly, "you remind me of someone who used to live around here; she had a thing for home-made energy drinks as well."
"Really?"
"Absolutely. I remember, she used to bring around these huge bottles full of green juice and say, 'you won't need any of that awful diner coffee for now, Lorraine, you're all set for the next three months.' 'Carrie, I barely have enough space in my refrigerator for last night's bottle of wine, where am I supposed to put all this stuff?' 'It doesn't matter, dearie, it'll keep no matter where you put it!' And it actually worked better than the coffee, if you can believe it!" She smothered another burst of laughter. "God, I haven't thought about Carrie Killian in years…"
"Cool! Where is she now?"
Instantly, the smile on Lorraine's face was gone. "I really don't think your parents would want me to tell you," she said quietly.
"She's dead, isn't she? I mean, it's not exactly much of a surprise: we're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and I haven't met anyone named Carrie Killian anywhere on the island."
"No, it… it happened back in 1987, years after I left Solomon Island for the first time. She… well, you remember the Black House?"
Mabel nodded. Thankfully, Dipper had told her all about that first standoff with the men in white suits, so she knew enough to keep her cover intact.
"That was Carrie's house: she ran her own business there, too – magical healing and consultation, cheap and reasonable. Everyone liked her at first; some even loved her. For a while, I thought I might be…" Once again, Lorraine seemed to struggle with the weight of admitting something, eventually settling on "She was nice to me."
"But then someone started spreading rumours about her. I don't know who it was, but there always seemed to be Innsmouth academy students in the room whenever Carrie was being talked about. People started calling her a fraud, then a freak, even a devil-worshipper – and by then, it was the eighties and people all over America were scared of devil-worshippers. Over the next few years, her business was shut down, people stopped letting kids get anywhere near her house, and Carrie was made the black sheep of Solomon Island. By the time I left, she couldn't even take care of Callum anymore. But it wasn't until after I left that things got really bad…"
"What happened?"
"The Overlook happened." There was a note of buried anger in Lorraine's voice now, slowly burrowing its way to the surface. "In 1987, a whole bunch of guests vanished, including some crazy occultist by the name of Theodore Wicker, and everyone blamed it on Carrie. I don't know what happened next, but I don't buy the official story: Carrie didn't kill herself, and even if the rumours did wear her down that badly, she wouldn't set fire to her own house. No, it was an angry mob that set that fire and got away with it – and I'm betting it was with the help of the same people who started those rumours in the first place. Someone murdered my only friend and-"
She paused, belatedly realizing that she'd said a bit too much. "I'm sorry," she continued. "I didn't find out what had happened until 2002, but even now… it still hurts, you know?" She sighed. "Ah, you shouldn't be listening to any of this, Mabel, not at your age. You've got better things to do than waste time on my sad old stories…"
At long last, she handed the flask of Mabel Juice back, pasting a blatantly false smile on with all the ease and care of a drunken facepainter.
But Mabel was thinking of something else now: maybe Dipper was right. Maybe Lorraine wasn't really a lost cause; maybe, with a bit of effort, they could find a way to get through to her and make her understand that Dipper wasn't really her son… but perhaps it didn't have to be as complicated as uncovering a mystery. Maybe all they needed to do was ask the questions that Lorraine hadn't considered; it was worth a try, at least, and if it didn't work, at least they could learn more in the meantime.
"Speaking of the Overlook," she began, "Callum says you found him up at the motel. Where was he before then?"
Lorraine's face went blank. "I don't know," she said, her voice suddenly toneless.
"When did you lose him? Where was he in the meantime?"
"I… I don't know."
"But how did you lose him?"
A spasm of fear flitted across Lorraine's deliberately expressionless face.
"Was it something that happened at the Park?"
Again, the terrified facial twitch. "In my heart and mind, I always return to Atlantic Island Park," she said absently, as if on instinct.
"Pardon?"
"Can we talk about something else?" she whispered, her voice hoarse and on the verge of tears. "Please?"
And then, in a much lower, much harsher tone of voice, she added, "I don't want to talk about this anymore. We're not talking about this anymore."
In spite of herself, Mabel found herself changing course almost without meaning to: she'd wanted to go on the attack, to force Lorraine to acknowledge the truth and see that Dipper wasn't really her son, but something in Lorraine's desperate, miserable tone made her change plans. Perhaps it was because she'd sounded so sad… or maybe it was because there'd been a tiny note of anger in that last sentence; Mabel was well and truly onboard with Dipper's plan to snap Lorraine out of whatever had happened to her, but she drew the line at ending up on the business end of the Bee-lady's temper.
"Okay. Um, what are you planning to do now that you've found Callum again?"
Instantly, the tiny note of anger was gone, as was the sadness. "I'm going to keep him safe," she said simply, forcing a smile back on her face. "I'm going to keep him happy, I'm going to be a proper mother to him, and I'm not going to make any mistakes this time. Even if we have to stay here in this treehouse for the rest of our lives, I'm going to make this work."
She took a deep breath, and then added – seemingly without thinking – "I have to."
A few hours ago, Mabel would have taken this little speech as another sign that Lorraine was completely out of her mind; come to think of it, she would probably have worried about the bloody rampage that'd follow if and when the truth was finally revealed. Now, though, Mabel couldn't help but think that this strange, sad woman was just really, really determined to avoid things that might upset her, to ignore anything that might force her to acknowledge the real world where Callum was dead, where Dipper wasn't her son, and Lorraine was all alone.
And sure, maybe that was crazy…
…but hadn't Mabel been in the same situation before? Barely a week ago, she'd been so afraid of growing up and being separated from Dipper that she'd willingly accepted a bargain for "just a little more summer. And even after that, even after she realized that she'd been tricked into giving Bill Cipher everything he wanted, she'd accepted Mabeland wholeheartedly; she'd ignored Dipper's earliest attempts to bring her back to reality, let the Prison Bubble work its magic on the others, and embraced the idea of remaining in her paradise while the rest of reality burned. Did that make Mabel crazy? Had she lost her mind at some point in those last days of summer, or had she just been hurt and misled? Either way, it wasn't an excuse for what she'd done.
And then there was the fact that Lorraine refused to explain what had happened to Callum all those years ago; the kid was probably dead, probably as a result of something horrible that had happened in Atlantic Island Park, but Lorraine didn't seem to acknowledge that anything had happened – both in the sense that she couldn't bring herself to say anything, and in the sense that there was an entire wing of her Mindscape where the doors to her memories had all been gated off. Again, it was the sort of thing you'd call crazy…
But Mabel had done the same thing: she'd not only refused to admit that she'd made that deal with Bill, but she pretended to have forgotten the whole thing. She'd spent a good chunk of the final battle secretly dreading the possibility that Bill might reveal the secret to the world, to the point that she'd almost been relieved when Cipher had lost his temper and tried to kill them.
Mabel was aware that it would have been even crazier to compare herself to Lorraine, and yet, like Gravity Falls and Solomon Island, she just couldn't help making connections. And though she couldn't trust the woman, much less like her, she couldn't help but find Lorraine a lot more understandable than she'd ever expected.
But there was one more question that Mabel hadn't asked of her just yet – and more importantly, one that, for all his theories on the subject, Dipper hadn't thought to ask at any point.
"Lorraine," she asked, carefully, "Do you know what's really hidden under Solomon Island?"
The reaction was nothing short of astonishing: instead of going blank or getting defensive, Lorraine froze; every muscle in her body went rigid, her limbs locked into place, her mouth dropped open, and her eyes went wide with horror. This time, she couldn't even respond with anger; she could only stand there, a proverbial deer in the headlights.
And in the deathly silence that followed, there was a loud and decidedly ominous creak from the treehouse's front door, and a familiar voice whispered, "Lorraine? Are you in here?"
Instantly, the spell was broken; suddenly fully conscious again, Lorraine pushed Mabel behind her, positioning herself between the intruder and Dipper's current position as she prepared herself to fight, her machete appearing in one hand and a ball of fire materializing in the other. "Who's there?!" she roared. "Show yourself!"
There was a horror-stricken pause. Then, just as Mabel was starting to wonder if they were being set up for a surprise attack from the opposite angle, there was a series of awkward creaks from the depths of the treehouse as a bedraggled and panting Grunkle Stan stagged into view.
It took all of Mabel's willpower not to jump for joy at the sight of him – after all, she was still playing a role as a local. For the longest time, she'd secretly worried that he might not have been able to withstand the carnage of Solomon Island with only his knuckle dusters at his side, and yet here he was – his fez crooked, his suit torn, his brow glistening with sweat, and a spectacular bruise around his left eye, but for all that, still alive and kicking.
"Stan Pines?" said Lorraine, lowering her machete. "What are you doing here?"
Once again, Mabel was struck by how easily Lorraine dropped her guard; Stan had been in the same room when Lorraine had first abducted Dipper, and just as she had with Mabel, Lorraine simply hadn't acknowledged his presence at any point during the kidnapping. As far as she was concerned, this was only the second time she'd encountered Stan and they'd ended their first meeting on relatively good terms, so she had no reason to distrust him.
"I… I came here to warn you," Stan gasped. "I just barely managed to get away from them…"
"From who?"
"The men in white suits. They grabbed me about an hour after we spoke, put me in chains, stuffed me in the back of a van and tried to make me talk; they asked me all kinds of questions about you, but I told them I didn't know anything – ended up getting this for my trouble." He indicated his black eye. "I only got away from them because they picked up sticks and got on the road."
Once again, Lorraine's demeanour shifted: now she was on her guard again, overflowing with suspicions and ready to run. "The Council?!" she hissed.
"I think that's what they called 'emselves, yeah. But look, I'm here to warn you: whatever they want with you, they know where you are and they're heading this way. They've got a whole bunch of trucks and bikes and god only knows what else to the south of here, and from what I've overheard, they've got a helicopter in the air as well. And I'm not talking any dinky little spy chopper – I'm talking an Apache with missiles."
Once again, there was a horrified pause.
"He wouldn't," Lorraine muttered, more to herself than Stan. "He wouldn't be crazy enough to try that, not if he wants to keep his secrets under wraps."
"Whoever you're talking about, I'm pretty sure he doesn't care about keeping secrets, Lorraine. From everything I've heard, the Council are going to burn down this forest just so they can get their hands on you, and something tells me they don't care about collateral damage."
"You're certain of that? You actually heard those orders being given?"
"I was within twenty feet of their commander while he was calling the shots: he wants this whole forest carpet-bombed so they can flush you out into the fleet to the south; if that doesn't work, they're happy to keep bombing the place until they kill you just so they can…" Stan's brow wrinkled. "What did they say? Oh yeah, pick you up at the nearest anima well, whatever the hell that is. Does that make any sense?"
Lorraine nodded silently, now too consumed with dread to speak.
"We've gotta get out of here, Lorraine," Stan plunged onwards. "We've got maybe five minutes before they're ready to start bombing, and they're not going to stop until they force us out of this treehouse or kill us all. Right now, all the exits to the south have been pretty much blockaded by Council goons, and I think they've got the western entrance watched as well. Do you know any other way we can get outta here?"
And in that moment, Mabel realized that Stan was lying through his false teeth. By now, Grunkle Stan had told her more than enough of the many dirty tricks he'd employed in his colourful life as a confidence trickster, and by now, she knew how to recognize his tells almost on sight. Assuming he hadn't made up his encounter with the Council, he'd almost certainly given himself the black eye just to make his story seem more convincing. He was conning Lorraine, probably so he could get Dipper and Mabel back without a fight… but she couldn't quite see his plan just yet.
Meanwhile, Lorraine was thinking very deeply, anxiously pacing up and down the walkway as she did so; either she was in the habit of overthinking things, or she'd picked up the habit from Dipper during their time together, because Mabel could practically hear the gears in her head turning. "There's a small mountain pass to the east of here," she said at last. "It leads out of the forest, directly onto Solomon Road – right across from the Overlook."
"And you're sure that's safe?"
"…I think so: it's almost too small to make it onto most maps, and the Council might not know about it anyway – the pass leads right into the backyard of one of the houses along Solomon Road, so none of their scouts would have been able to see it unless they looked behind the house."
"Great. How soon can we go?"
Once again, Mabel could almost hear Lorraine's mind working overtime, furiously weighing her options and calculating the risks. Dipper (AKA Callum) was easily the most important thing in the world right now, and while she could come back from a carpet-bombing unscathed, her "son" wouldn't. Judging by those uncertain looks she kept shooting over her shoulder, she clearly wasn't sure if she could trust Stan, but once again, Dipper's safety would always come first for her.
Ten seconds later, Lorraine looked up at the safe compartment and hollered "Callum! Get your things together; we're leaving!"
"Sniper team three, this is Command. Did you get that?"
"Affirmative, Command. Now moving to cover the eastern pass as directed. ETA thirty seconds."
"Excellent. As long as Lorraine doesn't realize that Pines is wearing a wire, there should be no obstacles to your shot."
"Copy that. What of target approach vectors, sir?"
"In all likelihood, she'll be moving ahead of the other three to check the path ahead for dangers. As soon as you take the shot, make sure that Pines and the two other civilians make it out of the area alive and back to command HQ. By then, the reinforcements will have already arrived at the anima well directly north of your position, so Lorraine won't be able to obstruct your progress."
"Understood, sir. Uh, Colonel Utterson… one other question, sir."
"Go ahead."
"What if Lorraine's carrying the kid when she arrives within range, sir? We know she's done it before, sir."
"Do you have faith in your skills, operative?"
"Yes, sir, but-"
"Then take the shot. This mission is too important to be undermined by fear of collateral damage… and as interesting a specimen as this boy may be, he's ultimately expendable. Do I make myself clear?"
"…Yes, sir."
"Good. Now get ready…"
You know, Dipper thought, I really need to stop letting my guard down: things change way too quickly on this island.
Two minutes ago, he'd been stacking the last of the files away in the safe when Lorraine had called him downstairs, and he'd barely had enough time to realize that Grunkle Stan had arrived in the treehouse before Mabel had quickly put a hand over his mouth and whispered, "pretend you don't know him, we're getting out of here." The end result was total confusion: from what little he had learned in the few seconds before Lorraine had started shooing them towards the door, Stan had arrived with a warning that the Council was ready to launch an all-out attack on Black Goat Woods and the four of them had to escape as quickly as possible, but Mabel had only muddied the waters further by whispering, "Stan's conning her; I think this might be a rescue."
"But what about discovering the truth? I thought we all agreed that we should be trying to snap Lorraine out of whatever was done to her!"
"We can do that later, Dipper; we're not going to get anything done while we're stuck in this treehouse!"
The next thing he knew, he was being whisked down the treehouse ladder so quickly that his stomach was left hovering about two stories off the ground. Then they were off and running, galloping through the forest in a desperate attempt to outrun the disaster that was due to hit the treehouse, with Lorraine in the lead, Dipper clutched protectively in her arms, Mabel rolling along at the middle in the hamster ball, and Grunkle Stan bringing up the rear. Fortunately, the Ak'ab were a lot more placid during the day and few of them were patrolling the forest floor this close to sunrise; according to Lorraine, the rest of them had retreated into their underground nest, either to sleep or to perform repairs. Every now and again, Lorraine would wheel around and send a bolt of lightning arcing towards a patrolling Ak'ab that had gotten too close, but other than that, their journey towards their escape route was almost completely uneventful.
If anything, it was a little too uneventful. There was no sound of helicopters rumbling towards them, no roar of engines from the road ahead, no reassuring rattle of gunfire beyond the trees. And if Stan had been lying about the incoming Council attack, then Dipper hoped that they'd be out of dodge long before Lorraine ever learned the truth; after all, if she was prepared to threaten death and throw fireballs for the sake of "Callum's" safety, what would she do if she found out that Stan had just lured them out of safety and indirectly put "Callum" in danger?
By now, they had almost reached the edge of the forest. Up ahead, the mountain pass loomed, a narrow corridor between a huge pinnacle of rock and the main body of the Blue Mountain, and beyond it, a tumbledown picket fence bordering another one of the island's silent houses. And in the distance, Solomon Road. Hours ago, Lorraine had sprinted down this very stretch of road while fleeing the Overlook Motel; where the heck were they supposed to go now?
Come to think of it…
"Where will we go now, mom?" he asked.
"I'm not sure, Callum; I think we're going to have to try something much more dangerous. There's still a few places left on the island where the Council won't dare follow us, but… I don't know if I want to take you that close to anything that dangerous."
As Lorraine carried him over the picket fence, Dipper was dimly aware of Grunkle Stan whispering, "why the hell is he calling her 'mom'?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, Grunkle Stan."
"And why does he look so much younger now? Did you and Dipper manage to figure out what caused that?"
"We can talk about that later, okay?" Mabel hissed. "Now, what was your plan for dealing with Lorraine?"
"Give it just another couple of sec-"
A thunderclap split the air.
A millisecond later, there was a muffled, wet pop – and Dipper briefly found himself inexplicably reminded of the time he'd accidentally put his foot through a decomposing jack-o-lantern while staggering off the front porch on the morning after Halloween – as something like a hornet whizzed past him at high speed.
Grunkle Stan instinctively threw himself to the ground, hastily shoving Mabel out of sight as he fell.
Several yards behind them, a tree trunk exploded into a cloud of pulverized bark.
And as the echoes died away, Dipper realized that he was now soaking wet, stained crimson from head to toe and stinking of copper. Gloomy as it was, he didn't need a second glance to tell that he was now covered in blood: he'd seen more than enough of it in that encounter at Northwest Manor to recognize the stuff by sight. Still dazed by the sheer impact of the noise, Dipper found himself frantically checking his body for wounds, waiting in mounting dread for the inevitable pain of the almost certainly fatal injury he'd just experienced. In a blind panic, he turned to Lorraine, about to ask if she could check if he'd been shot – and then with a jolt of shock, realized who'd actually been hit.
Lorraine was now missing the top half of her skull. From her jaws upwards, her head was just gone, leaving a mass of shattered bone and ragged flesh; the rest had been splattered across Lorraine's shoulders, around the yard, and of course, all over Dipper.
For about five terrifying seconds, she stood there, swaying gently back and forth on the spot as if not sure how to respond. Her left leg twitched ever so slightly, as if Lorraine was somehow trying to move onward even with her brains scattered across the surrounding lawn. Dipper could already tell that she was dead: there was no way in hell she could have survived this, even as powerful as she was, not with her last instinctive breaths dissolving into death rattles; the reality just hadn't caught up with her just yet. Sure enough, five seconds later, she gave one last wobble and pitched sideways to the ground like a felled tree, taking Dipper with her.
They landed heavily, Dipper immediately finding himself half-pinned under Lorraine's body, the rest of him still caged in her arms. Then again, it wasn't as if Dipper was in the right frame of mind to do anything about it: shock had left him effectively paralysed, unable to think of doing anything but staring at what was left of Lorraine's skull.
Next thing he knew, two heavily armed figures in dappled grey camouflage were charging out of the darkness, and before Dipper could so much as protest, one of the two men had roughly grabbed him by the collar and dragged him bodily out from under the corpse. The other set about shooing Mabel and Grunkle Stan out of the undergrowth towards the two.
"Move, quick!" one of them barked.
"But-"
"NOW!"
"What the hell, you people?! You said you were going to wait until the kids were out of range! You could have killed him!"
"Wait, did you know this was going to happen, Grunkle Stan?"
"I knew there was going to be an attack, I didn't know this moron was going to try playing Russian Roulette with Dipper's life!"
"SHUT UP AND RUN, BOTH OF YOU!"
Dipper was dimly aware of being hoisted over the first gunman's shoulder in a fireman's lift, giving him an uninterrupted view of Mabel and Stan being shoved after him. Behind them, the other gunman paused just long enough to unpin a grenade and fling it under the mangled corpse before hurriedly joining the rest of the team.
Then they started running, and Dipper's view – already lopsided and wavering in shock – was reduced to a blur as they galloped out onto Solomon Road. Behind them, a loud, wet explosion scattered Lorraine's body to the four winds in a hail of flying mincemeat, but by then, the five of them were already yards and yards away…
…and while Dipper should have felt relieved that he was back with Grunkle Stan and no longer had to pretend to be Callum, all he could think of was the fact that he was once again being dragged away from safe company and into the maddening chaos of Solomon Island. If this was a rescue, as Grunkle Stan seemed to think it was, why did Dipper get the uncanny feeling that he'd just swapped one jailer for another?
You know, Dipper thought, I really need to stop letting my guard down: things change way too quickly on this island.
For a moment or so, Lorraine could only stare around her in confusion.
One moment she'd been walking towards Solomon Road, silently breathing a sigh of relief and wondering if there was any safehouse left on the island that hadn't already been compromised. The next, she was standing in the monochrome grey realm of the spirit world, the familiar luminous geyser of the anima well billowing up around her.
What had happened? Had someone just killed her? If so, the murder weapon must have been incredibly powerful, because she hadn't even had time to feel pain. Maybe a high-powered sniper rifle, or a rocket launcher, perhaps a landmine – probably an Orochi model if that was the case. Right now, her old body didn't seem to be responding, so she could only assume that it had been shredded beyond repair.
But if that was the case, what had happened to Callum?
With a thrill of horror, Lorraine remembered that she'd been holding him when the attack had caught her off-guard.
If it had been an explosive, then Callum would have been killed as well. And though every logical thought in her head told her that the Council wouldn't have been that callous or cruel to murder a child, she knew from experience that morality and decency were the first things to go out the window in an operation like this. Would these people hesitate to kill a child if it meant getting what they wanted? Absolutely not.
Panic-stricken, she plunged back into the depths of the Anima well, forcing a new body back into the real world with an almighty wrench of effort; one eye-searing flash of light later, colour and life returned to her as she staggered out into the land of the living, newly formed clothes steaming ever-slightly as she coalesced into physical existence once more.
No sooner had she taken her first breath, something cold and jagged wrapped itself around Lorraine's neck and dragged her screaming to the ground. Yowling in pain, she tried to lash out, to bombard the surrounding area with all the magic she could muster, but whatever had fastened around her throat was plunging needle-sharp probes beneath her flesh, nullifying the Bee's wellspring of Anima before she could draw upon it. Instinctively, she reached up to force the garotte away and rip the probes out of her flesh, but an electric shock to the back sent her hands flailing in all directions; next thing she knew, a pair of handcuffs were being fastened around her wrists.
It took several seconds for her to get a full picture of what was going on, and by then, she was surrounded. It eventually became clear that Council operative had snared her with a modified mancatcher tipped with Anima-suppressing tubules; right now, those fanged jaws were keeping her power suppressed with one of the most sophisticated pieces of thaumatechnology that Lorraine had ever seen in action. Either the Council had started borrowing from the Illuminati, or this stuff was on loan from the Hive. In any case, her captor hadn't been alone; someone was holding the cattleprod, and another had the handcuffs at the ready… and now a whole team of Council operatives were scuttling out of the darkness, ready to drag her away.
Too late, Lorraine realized she'd been tricked. She should have realized that the Council would had every approach covered; even if they didn't know about the pass, they still would have had troops on the road, ready to snipe her the moment she showed her face. And she should have run to the next Anima well, remade herself there instead… but she'd been too panicked to concentrate, and they'd known she'd panic! They'd been counting on her manifesting at this particular Anima well, had trusted her to be too worried about being separated from Callum to think straight, and now they had her!
Howling in rage, she lunged at the surrounding troops, ignoring the wrenching pain in her throat as she kicked furiously for knees and bellies and groins unlucky enough to be within reach – and was rewarded with a few satisfying crunching sounds and yelps of pain – before the cattleprod tore into her once more. In desperation, she tried to bite, to snap at the hands that were blindfolding her, even as her vision went dark.
And then a muzzle was fastened over her mouth, and all Lorraine could do was scream.
A/N: Any guesses as to what happens next? Feel free to furnish me with your theories in your lovely reviews!
For everyone else, there's the code...
Hvv gsv hszwld lu gsv Svinrg levi blfi hslfowvi, hdvvgormt?
Sv rh xolhv mld. Wlm'g nrhgzpv srn uli gsv lgsvi low nzm.
