Thanks for your reviews, everyone!

Volley: You're right about the risk, but that's Trip for you ;).

Glory1863: I love it that you spotted the cats I put in there! Stinky on my mind again, I guess.

Begoogled: I hope this chapter provides some answers to your questions...

mou: I'm happy you're along for the ride :)!

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Chapter 5

He was in a room, its walls and floor and ceiling gleaming white. There was no door, only a gaping hole where the fourth wall should have been, but he knew that he could not leave. He was afraid and angry and very much confused. Someone spoke to him, sounding urgent at first and then impatient, but Trip did not want to listen. He knew he had to find a way out of the white room, desperately running his hands over the walls to find a hidden door or exit. His fingers encountered only cold smoothness, and he brought his fist down on the wall in frustration. His outburst seemed to have triggered something, for suddenly the light grew very bright, and someone yelled at him...

"Who are you?"

Trip opened his eyes and squinted in the sudden onslaught of light. The image of the white room was fading away, and he realized that it had been a dream, except for the voice that had woken him up and was continuing to talk in a shrill and piercing tone.

"What are you doing here?"

When his eyes had finally adjusted to the light, Trip saw that the door to the room where he and Malcolm had sought shelter had been opened. On the doorstep stood a plump, elderly woman in t-shirt and sweatpants, holding a baseball bat like a club. The single lightbulb illuminated only part of her face, but what little was visible was tight with anger and fear.

"I want to know what you're doing in here! Who are you? I'm gonna call the police!"

Her voice had taken on an almost hysterical tone, driving the last remnants of Trip's dream away. Suddenly wide awake, he sat up. Next to him, Malcolm had woken up as well, and was frowning as if he wasn't really sure how he had come to be in this place.

"Stay where you are! I'll kill you!" The woman now sounded definitely hysterical, raising the baseball bat as if it were a bible and Trip an attacking vampire.

He held up his hands in a gesture he hoped to be placating. "We didn't mean any harm, ma'am," he said. "We had nowhere to spend the night, and-"

"Well, you're definitely not spending it in my house!"

"Listen..." He tried for a calm tone. "My friend here, he's sick. I'm sorry we broke into your basement, but there was no way he could've stayed out there in the cold. Please-"

"Oh, and so you simply walk in here because you don't know where else to stay!" She narrowed her eyes at him. "You get out of here this instant!"

Trip's own temper flared at being constantly cut off in mid-sentence, but he tried not to let it show in his voice.

"Look, I understand you're upset. We never meant any harm, it's just that my friend here is really sick. If he has to spend the night outside, he could die."

"And I care because?" The woman gripped her baseball bat harder. "You get out of here, now!"

"No." Trip could no longer keep the anger out of his tone, nor did he want to. "I can see that you're not gonna listen to what I'm tryin' to tell you, but there's no way we're leavin' here."

The woman seemed momentarily at a loss for words. Into the silence, Malcolm began to cough, feebly at first, but with growing vigor. Trip could see that his fever had not gone down; if anything, his temperature had risen while he had slept.

"What's wrong with him?" the woman wanted to know with a suspicious look at Malcolm. Trip ignored her, resting a hand on Malcolm's shoulder until the worst was over.

"It's okay," he said quietly. "Don't worry, we're stayin' here."

"You are not staying here!" the woman yelled. "I don't believe this! You're getting out of here right now, hear me?"

Malcolm flinched at the penetrating sound and raised fever-clouded eyes to look at Trip. "Are... are the targeting scanners online?" he asked, although Trip was not sure he had caught the words right, with the woman freaking out in the background.

"Yeah," he said, trying for a soothing voice. He wondered what a "targeting scanner" was and why Malcolm would worry about it. "Yeah, they're online, don't worry. Everything's just fine."

"Are you like totally crazy?" The woman seemed to have forgotten that she was afraid of them and took a step towards the couch. "Are you listening to me? I said I want you out of here, now!"

Trip turned back to look at her. "No. You can see that he's really sick. I'm sorry you're upset, but I'm not dragging him out into the cold in this condition."

The woman stared at him as if trying to decide whether to do a little plastic surgery on his head with her baseball bat. Trip tensed, prepared to jump up should she try to attack him. He was fairly sure he could wrestle the bat from her hands before she could do any damage.

The woman, however, backed away from the couch, approaching the door.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. Listen closely, buddy. I'm going to go upstairs now, and there I'm gonna call the police. They'll be here in about ten minutes, and I'm gonna tell them that you trespassed on my property and tried to rob me."

"We didn't-" Trip began angrily, but she cut him off.

"Ten minutes," she said. "I'm locking the basement door, in case you get any ideas. And don't even try to come after me, or I'll smash your head in." She pointed the baseball bat at him for emphasis, then left the room and slammed the door shut.

Trip stared at the closed door for a moment, then let out a sigh and looked at Malcolm, who was lying on his side with his eyes closed and his breath coming in wheezy gasps. There was no way Malcolm could go anywhere, let alone climb back out the way they had come in. Briefly, Trip considered going after the woman to try and talk to her, but remembering the homicidal glint in her eyes, he decided against it. Being clubbed to death by a madwoman with a baseball bat didn't seem like a pretty way to die.

And maybe it was just as well. The police might believe that they were burglars, but even if they did, they couldn't simply ignore the fact that Malcolm was seriously ill. At this point, spending the night in a prison ward didn't sound so bad.

Malcolm started to cough again and Trip searched his pockets for a handkerchief. He found one just in time and held in front of Malcolm's mouth, trying not to look too closely at the things Malcolm was coughing up. As he laid the handkerchief aside, there were blood stains on it. A small trickle of it was running down Malcolm's chin, and Trip reached out to wipe it off.

"It's okay," he said quietly. Malcolm opened eyes that were red-rimmed and watery from coughing.

"Are we... are we leaving?" he asked, then coughed some more. "Is it morning yet?"

"No," Trip shook his head. "We're okay. Try to get some sleep."

Obediently, Malcolm closed his eyes again and had soon dozed off. Trip sat there and stroked Malcolm's back, patting it a little now and then to ward off another coughing fit. He was tired and wished he could have gone back to sleep himself, and to hell with the woman and her threat to call the police. He knew he should probably be more worried at the prospect of getting arrested, but it didn't seem that a lot could happen to them if they were. Sure, Tom was convinced that the police solved the problem of too many arrestees and too few cells by dragging people to the basement and beating them to death, but then again, Tom also believed that the government was controlled by aliens from outer space, which he claimed to have met personally. And even if Tom's suspicions about the police were partly true, Trip knew he wouldn't leave Malcolm behind and make his getaway before they got here. He knew little about this place or himself and nothing at all about his former life, but he knew that he and Malcolm needed to stay together. It seemed as obvious to him as the fact that he was called Trip Tucker.

He wasn't sure how long he had waited when he heard voices upstairs, talking with the woman. She seemed to have calmed down somewhat, and even laughed at one point. Then, steps descended the stairs, and the door was pushed open again. He blinked as someone turned a switch and the lightbulb came to life.

There were two police officers, an elderly man and a middle-aged woman with a freckled face. The plump woman was peering over their shoulders, her baseball bat still clutched in one hand.

"See?" she said eagerly, as if she had been secretly afraid of finding nothing but an empty couch on entering the room. "They're still here."

The policewoman frowned and took a step towards the bed. "He doesn't look so good," she said, looking at Malcolm who was still half-asleep, one hand draped over his eyes as if to shield them from the light. "Is he sick?"

"That's what I've been tellin' her." Trip pointed at the plump woman, who glared at him. "He's really sick, been for a wile. We couldn't stay out there."

"Well," the policeman said, coming closer as well. "Even so, you can't just walk in here. This is private property. You've got to leave now and take your buddy to a doctor."

"He can't walk," Trip said. "He's got a fever. If you kick us out of here onto the street, he'll die."

"You're not staying here!" Baseball bat in hand, the plump woman had taken another step forward. "I don't care if he's sick or not, I want you out of my house!"

"Now wait a minute, ma'am," the policewoman reached for the baseball bat and took it from the woman's hand. "They're not going to stay here. We'll see to that. But first we need to figure out what to do about him." She nodded at Malcolm.

"Well, I suppose we could take him to the hospital," her colleague said. "He really doesn't look like he can walk there."

The woman looked decidedly unhappy at his suggestion. "And what about him?" she asked, pointing at Trip. "You let him go, he'll be back in my basement in no time. And I won't-"

"He'll come with us," the policewoman interrupted her, obviously unwilling to listen to another rant. "He can help us with him."

Trip nodded, feeling greatly relieved. Malcolm didn't seem to have caught much of the conversation, and blinked in confusion when Trip and the policeman helped him sit up.

"We should take phase pistols along, sir," he muttered, then made as if to lie back down.

"Can't stay here, buddy." The policeman caught Malcolm by the arm and pulled him back into a sitting position. "We're gonna take you to a doctor, okay? Then you'll feel all better."

Trip took Malcolm's other arm and pulled it over his shoulders, then, together with the policeman, helped him stand up. Malcolm's legs could hardly support him, and Trip and the policeman carried most of his weight as they slowly made their way to the door. The plump woman followed shortly after, seeming far less confident than she had with the baseball bat in her hands.

"What about my basement? I'm not going to sit on the couch after he's been spreading his germs all over it."

"Then don't," Trip bit back, hating the way the woman talked about Malcolm as if he were a lice-ridden stray dog.

She took a deep breath, but before she could say anything, the policewoman cut her off.

"Get a disinfectant and spray it on the cushions and the blanket, then put them out to air," she said. "Should take care of anything that's left."

Step by awkward step, they climbed the stairs until they were standing in a narrow, smelly hallway. The woman had followed them, and was now standing next to the front door on the left, hands on her hips.

"That's it? They trespassed on my property, and I'm supposed to let it go just like that?"

The policeman, his arm still wrapped around Malcolm's waist, sighed. "You can file a report if you like, ma'am, but personally I'd save myself the trouble. And if I remember right, you locked the basement door before you called us, right?"

"So what?"

There was a chuckle in his voice as he answered. "Well, it's illegal to lock up a trespasser and hold them on your property until the police arrive. You wouldn't want to get yourself in trouble, ma'am."

"What!" Her face reddened. "That's-"

"State law," the policewoman finished for her quite calmly. "If you'll excuse us, ma'am, we need to get going. If there's nothing else..."

The woman looked very much as if she would have liked to add something, but then seemed to decide not to argue with the law. Angrily, she moved away from the entrance and disappeared through another door, slamming it shut behind her.

"Nice," the policeman muttered as they left the house and walked down the few steps to the paved garden path that led to the front yard. It was still cold, and Malcolm shivered, his forehead gleaming with sweat. The last few meters to the curb seemed to take forever, and when they had finally arrived next to the police car, Malcolm sagged against Trip, quite obviously unconscious.

The policewoman quickly opened the door and helped Trip and the policeman to move Malcolm to the backseat. When Malcolm was settled in the car, half-sitting, half-leaning against Trip, she walked to the back and returned a moment later with a gray blanket in her hands.

"Here," she said. "Try to keep him warm until we're there."

"Thanks." Trip wrapped the blanket around Malcolm's shoulders, using a corner of it to wipe the sweat off the sick man's forehead. Through the grille that separated the back from the front, he could see her taking a seat next to her colleague, who started the car.

"That's okay," she replied, and then, with a look at the rearview mirror, added, "Seatbelts."

"What? Oh, right." Trip fumbled for the seatbelt, then helped Malcolm with his, thinking that these things looked just wrong. He had no idea how they were supposed to look, however, and so he let the thought go, as he had done with so many thoughts in the last few days. He leaned back and, with Malcolm's head resting on his shoulder, watched the houses outside pass by as the car gained speed.

TBC...

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