Chapter 5: Extraneous Variables
The following morning the group all sat huddled around a library table. With Squall's journal in the centre they grabbed anything they could find that mentioned comas and sudden collapse. Some of these books Irvine had read before, but he figured it wouldn't hurt to check them again.
As they thumbed through pages of texts they whispered potential causes. Zell was little help. Anything he offered amounted to conspiracy theories but the more sane explanations didn't fit any better.
"We could try running the tests again," Rinoa suggested.
Quistis shook her head. "There wasn't anything when they tested Selphie before. There's less of a chance to find anything now."
"Could be a body-double," Zell offered. "You see it all the time in movies. People get abducted and switched out by spies meant to topple down the establishment."
"This ain't a movie," Irvine said as he rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, but homicidal Sorceresses don't try to destroy the past either. I mean, if you take Ultimecia into account anything's possible. We got nuthin' else, right?"
"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to request a simple DNA test," Quistis remarked. Irvine stared in horror that she entertained the notion. She sighed in response. "We don't have anything else. It's worth a shot if only to rule it out."
"I reserve the right to say 'I told you so' if their DNA comes back alien," the brawler added.
"And to be fair I will extend our arrangement until after we see the results," Quistis supplied. "We've made decent headway with the books, but it's going to take longer than I thought to comb through it all, even with the four of us working on it."
"We should probably take a break then." Rinoa stretched her arms above her head. "I have to feed and walk Angelo, then get something to eat myself."
The sharpshooter didn't really want to take a break but his eyes started to burn and his stomach had been neglected. He ended up with Rinoa again as she walked Angelo to the quad. Armed with plastic bags the Sorceress was silent as they threaded past the student body, most of whom gave her a wide berth and avoided even a glance. It was discrimination born from a lifelong fear of Sorceresses and it wasn't fair.
"This sucks," Rinoa huffed as they reached the base of the Quad's stairs. She raised her hand only slightly before Angelo rushed out to the brush in search of just the right spot.
Not for the first time Irvine marvelled at how well trained the collie was. Angelo was just over a year old and followed every command to the letter. She could even fight alongside them regardless of the enemy they faced. It was not just a testament to her breed, but to how good a trainer Rinoa was.
But the Sorceress wasn't complaining about her duties as a pet owner or the behaviour of the Garden dwellers. Even if she had reason for it.
"Squall didn't reckon anyone but him'd be lookin' through his journal," Irvine reasoned.
"I know... I just wish he'd left us something we could work with. He's usually so blunt when he has a lead, I'm not used to having to work out what he's trying to tell us."
Irvine arched an eyebrow. From the very start the taciturn gunblader had always pushed everyone else away and pretended not to care. Throughout it all the sharpshooter and the others had learned to see through his double-talk and in most cases they found the truth in what he had to say. Even if it took them a little while to figure it out.
Rinoa rolled her eyes. "I mean, not since the beginning of the war."
He chuckled at her expense as he turned his gaze to the sky above them.
"What if we can't figure this thing out? What if Garden can't fix this. What'll we do then?"
Irvine didn't have an answer for her. Did that mean Squall and Selphie would remain comatose the rest of their lives as the world went on around them? Until they finally died from something?
He didn't want to think about it.
Rinoa didn't either, because she called Angelo out from the plants she hid behind before he could answer. "Let's grab something to eat and get back to work."
Productivity over the next two days suffered as Quistis was unable to help out. The blonde had classes to teach on the Monday and there had been a faculty meeting she could not avoid the following day.
It was Irvine, Zell and Rinoa who combed over book after book with no end in sight. One of the library committee members agreed to keep quiet about the subject they researched, after she asked multiple times if they need help finding specific material. She became an unofficial member of the team as a result. Even though they took their food breaks in shifts, it felt like they could do nothing to maintain their optimum work rate. By the end of the day Irvine thought his eyes would bleed out of his skull.
The DNA results came back on the third day. The body-doubles theory was officially debunked but Zell refused to let it go. He insisted that aliens had somehow managed to replicate DNA to thwart such tests. Irvine made a mental note to ignore him whenever the subject came up for the sake of progress.
He braced himself for the reminder of his deal with Quistis only to be pleasantly shocked when the elder girl failed to mention it. Initially he thought she had forgotten but when time passed on with still no word, he suspected the mystery had gotten to her. She seemed just as frustrated as everyone else when they concluded the day with no breakthrough or answer.
Irvine was woken on the forth morning by loud banging on his he unlocked it, Zell stood on the other side with a solemn look. "It happened again."
Dread consumed Irvine. "Who?"
"Quistis."
Two minutes later he stood in front of the Infirmary changed from his sleepwear with Zell. Rinoa had shown up before either of them and was in a damn near panic when they'd arrived.
A juniorclassman had discovered the instructor in the hall by her classroom on the second floor. She wouldn't wake up no matter what was done and Security brought her to the Infirmary. Zell was jogging around the central hall and saw them bring her down in a stretcher before he'd gotten Rinoa and Irvine out of bed.
No one was allowed in the Infirmary. The Lieutenant-Commander had come and gone. She had grilled Irvine but the other two had stepped up in his defence to offer him an alibi. Secretly he couldn't help but wonder if he really wasn't responsible. First Squall, now Quistis, both approached by the sharpshooter days before. Had he endangered Zell and Rinoa by involving them as well?
"What if it's Ultimecia's revenge?" Zell asked when they were in the Library later. "I mean, everyone whose collapsed was on the team that fought her, right?"
Irvine wished Rinoa had joined them if only to serve as a buffer. She'd returned to the Infirmary to see if visitors were being let in yet. "Ultimecia's dead, Zell. If it was her fault, I reckon it woulda happened right after tha war ended."
"Yeah but, she wasn't exactly dumb either." It seemed Zell was more interested in this theory than his original body-double hypothesis. "I mean, she wouldn't attack us right away, she'd wait for us to drop our guard."
"She's got an ego tha size o' Esthar. She'd have wanted us ta know it was her."
"Look, just hear me out. First Selphie collapses in Timber where we first met Ultimecia, right? For no good reason? Then Squall drops when he gets too close. Another four days, Quistis is next. What did all three of them have in common? Ultimecia!"
"And tha orphanage. And they're SeeD. And they all live here."
"I meant aside from the obvious. Specifically them. Squall and Selphie have brown hair, but Quistis is blonde. Quistis and Squall have blue eyes but Selphie's are green. Selphie and Quistis are girls, Squall's a guy. Selphie and Squall graduated at the same time. Aside from being SeeD and affiliated with Garden, the only other thing they have in common is Ultimecia."
Irvine could not argue the logic. Though she had been able to meddle in their time from the future, there was still no way she could have come back after she had been killed. To argue that this was Ultimecia from before they had killed her would disrupt the idea of revenge, since they wouldn't have killed her yet.
Besides, Irvine hated thinking about it. Subjects like Time Compression made his head hurt.
"I think I found something out that could help us." Irvine watched as Rinoa joined them at the table. She had a burst of energy he hadn't seen from her in days. "Finally got into the Infirmary and I overheard something while I was there."
"Don't leave us hangin'!" Zell demanded. "Spit it out!"
Rinoa took a breath and released it quickly in her eagerness to say, "There were traces of skin particles found under Quistis's fingernails."
Zell and Irvine both exchanged glances. That was a tell-tale sign of a struggle. Quistis didn't just collapse. She was attacked.
"Xu told the doctor to test it against everything they have in Garden's database. Whoever's responsible is still here. Lock-down hasn't let anyone leave the grounds since Squall was found. When Xu left, I asked the doctor about it and admitted that I'd overheard. I told her I wanted to know who attacked her and I asked her to tell me when the test comes back."
"But that don't make a lick o' sense," Irvine argued when he got over his initial shock. "Why's Quistis got tha only signs of a struggle?"
"Quistis's been a SeeD longer than either of 'em," Zell offered. "Maybe Squall got jumped before he could respond and Selphie got attacked in Timber so..."
"No Irvine's right," Rinoa interjected. "Squall was already looking into Selphie's condition, so he would have been prepared for anything."
"Squall works out about as regularly as you do," Irvine added. "He's all muscle and weighs tha most outta everyone in the Infirmary. Plus he's almost always junctioned."
Zell's eyes lit up. "Hey yeah, you're right. So then why the hell didn't Squall fight back at all?"
"Exactly."
"Even if it brings up more questions than answers, the fact that we now have proof of an attack and a way to identify the attacker helps us out," Rinoa pointed out. "I'm gonna stake out the Infirmary for those results. But aside from that I'm not sure what else we can do."
"I was thinkin' about that too," Zell said. "I mean the research hasn't gotten us anywhere so I thought I might reach out to Matron or Sis. See if either have any ideas we haven't thought of."
"That actually sounds like a good idea," Irvine marvelled. Zell offered him a scowl at the jab. "Guessing yer gonna head out ta do that now?"
"Well I've got stuff I gotta take care of today anyway," Zell shrugged. "So yeah I was thinking I'd add that to the list. What're you gonna do Irvine?"
"I'm still convinced Squall was onta sumthan. I'll stick around here and keep lookin' through these books. Might get clearer if we can find where he left off."
"We can meet up in front of the dorms in two hours then," Rinoa suggested. "I might not have the results yet, but at least if we hear back Edea and Ellone we'll have a better idea of what to do next."
Irvine kept a strict watch on the clock as he slogged through book after book. He still couldn't make head or tail of Squall's codes and started to think that maybe handing the book over to Xu might be the best course of action. Even if she couldn't figure it out herself, she had SeeDs at her disposal who might be able to decode it. Or so he hoped. All he was doing was wasting time and energy at this point.
He left the Library to meet up with the others but found that he was the only one who showed up. He waited ten minutes before he decided to visit Zell's dorm first. If the brawler got side-tracked he was going to kill him.
When he reached the blond's room, the door slid open without the code. Zell was even worse about his privacy than Squall was and only because they had all taken turns breaking into the brunet's room. Irvine pulled Exeter out from within the folds of his trench coat and took slow, measured steps into the room.
Zell's room at the Garden was vastly different to the one at his mother's house in Balamb. A laundry basket sat in the corner filled to the brim with clothes that likely needed washing. Books, mostly comics or magazines, covered much of the floor and made it difficult to manoeuvre around. His bed was left unmade, with the comforter left to hang off the side of the mattress.
Irvine had flashbacks to his days as a cadet at G-Garden and knew Martine would flip his shit if he saw a student's room in such disarray during inspection.
When he stepped further into the room he noticed the phone was off its hook, the cord stretched into the adjacent bathroom and out of view. He followed it and found Zell sprawled out on his front on the tiled floor, the handle of the phone loosely gripped in hand. A once over revealed the brawler was still alive and unharmed, but strangely there were no signs of a struggle or an attack this time. He retrieved the handle and put it to his ear, only to hear a dial tone.
Whatever call Zell had been about to make, he hadn't been given the chance.
Irvine tried to pick him up off the ground, but gave up when he realized it was too much for him to manage alone. Rinoa hadn't shown up yet; either she was delayed and lost track of the time or she got tied up with her own task.
He hung the phone back up on the cradle then grabbed it and dialed a number.
A few minutes later the door slid open and allowed the visitor entrance. "This is starting to become a pattern," Lieutenant-Commander Xu said as she entered. "Why are you even here?"
"Zell's a friend of mine," Irvine answered. "We made plans fer tha afternoon and came ta get 'im when I realized I'd been stood up. Found him like this." He led the elder woman into the bathroom and pointed at the prone blond. "Only thang I touched was tha phone when I called ya down here."
She eyed him critically and he knew she was picking apart his words for any sign of deceit. She would find nothing: everything he told her was technically true and as long as she didn't dig for details it would stay that way.
Eventually she gave up. "Grab his arms. I'll grab his feet."
They made it out of the dorms before he saw some students idling just down the hall. Xu was curt when she ordered them to give them a hand and within minutes they reached the Infirmary.
As they passed through the sliding doors Rinoa barely looked up at them but as soon as she did her features dropped into surprise and concern. It was all he was able to discern as he helped Xu guide the brawler to another free bed but what he had seen of the Sorceress put him on edge. The girl was naturally pale but she looked almost ghostly and her gaze had been unfocused before she'd registered them.
When the brawler was situated, everyone who was considered unessential was forced out of the Infirmary. The lock as it slid into place seemed to echo as the enlisted cadets went off to do their own thing.
"What happened?" Rinoa rounded on him before he could say anything.
But the sharpshooter was more concerned with why she looked so shaken up. He tried to ask her but she cut him off and repeated her question. Reluctant to ignore her condition Irvine updated her as they stood along the railing and looked over at the pond beneath them.
When he was finished Rinoa did not look any different. Her features were grave and she remained silent as she stared into the water. "Are you okay?"
He expected to be ignored again but before he could repeat his question she shook her head. Rinoa swallowed thickly and slowly turned away from the pond to look in him in the eye as she told him, "I know who attacked Quistis."