CHAPTER VI

"Then It Begins... Needles and Pins" -- The Searchers

It was Steed's voice that jolted Amon back to his senses. The latter had been standing in the ruined hallway, surveying the damage without really absorbing what he was seeing. Noin had been taken. One of their own Directors, kidnapped right out of headquarters, and they'd failed to protect her. Black was crumpled against a wall beneath a scorched and broken hole approximately the size of his body; bullet holes, scorch marks and debris littered the hallway.

"Get that bomb squad in here now!" Steed ordered. Amon jerked out of his dark reverie, watching the senior Director issue commands as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Only a crease between Steed's eyebrows and the abnormally thin line of his mouth betrayed the severity of the situation.

A moment later a group of select agents arrived, wearing insignia on metal plates tied across their foreheads. They gathered around the suspicious box on the floor. Dilandau had left them another explosive present, as he had two months before. The fire from the previous detonation had destroyed an entire wing of the building and devoured most of their manpower and resources for the past eight weeks. They couldn't take that risk again.

Steed had been directing during that travesty. Now, as then, Amon let his senior officer take control of the situation. In some ways, Amon was glad to be relieved of command. It was so much easier to simply follow orders, to be spared from bearing the weight of critical decisions. But until he had specific instructions from Steed, there was little for him to do. Amon chafed for something to occupy him, to keep his mind off of what he had let happen here. He planted his will firmly against the thought, but it kept coming back to nag at him: First Alfred, and now Noin...

The casualties, mercifully, had been light this time. Despite the damage to the building, there had been very few injuries. Only Black appeared seriously affected. Of course, there was no knowing what hurt Noin had sustained, or what would happen to her. Amon ground his teeth, feeling angry and frustrated and helpless. He stepped over to Black's crumpled form, more out of restlessness than from a real concern for Black's safety. As far as Amon's experience went, Black was nearly invincible.

Black's breathing was shallow, his eyes lightly closed as if he were just resting, but his body was motionless. Amon knelt beside him, beginning to worry that the Arcane Specialist was seriously injured, but as he reached for Black's scorched shoulder the dark-fringed eyes flicked open. Black's luminous red gaze turned to Amon, but the pale, mask-like face did not change.

"You must go after her," Black rasped, his voice low. "If you do it quickly, you can track him through the void."

Amon blinked in surprise. "I don't understand. What do you mean, track him?"

Black lifted his head a fraction. "When he phases, he creates a power trace, in the same way that the portals shed photons and leave behind a brief light trail. He can't cloak it when he's traveling with so many, and Lucrezia's track is especially strong. You may be able to isolate it through the portal system, but you must hurry. It will fade after a few minutes, and if we lose it, we'll have no idea where he's taken her."

Most of this technical detail went over Amon's head, but he groped after the idea. "You can sense this, can't you? Couldn't you follow him?"

Black's head dropped again, and his expression shifted subtly. He looked as if he were in pain, though Amon doubted that it was entirely physical. "I was careless," he said flatly. "I must recover some of my strength first. By then, it will be too late."

Amon rose slowly and scanned the room for operatives. He didn't understand everything that Black was saying -- he hadn't known that their portals left any sort of trace, much less a trail of photons -- but if there was a chance of finding Noin, they had to take it. His mind ticked furiously through the catalogue of the Society's most technology-savvy operatives. They would need someone who was not only capable of isolating Sephiroth's trail, but also altering the portal system to track it. He wheeled into the gathering crowd of personnel, catching Priss by the arm.

"I want you to find Bob and Illya and meet me at Transport as soon as possible," he told her. "I don't have time to explain," he added, in response to her blank look. "But you must hurry. There's a chance we can follow them."

Priss's eyes widened, but she nodded dutifully and dashed off in the direction of the Engineering quad. After giving Wilmer orders to collect weapons and meet him at the same destination, Amon turned back to where he'd left Black. He was certain that he'd have to help the injured operative to the portal room, but by the time he'd returned to the blasted wall, the Arcane Specialist was nowhere to be seen.

- - -

When Amon reached the Transportal room, Black was already at the control panel, instructing Bob and Illya in how to track Sephiroth. He looked a little better than he had when Amon had left him in the hallway, although his clothing was singed and dusted with bits of wallboard and there were still pronounced burn marks on his face. As Amon approached, he noticed that Black had added a strange accessory to his eclectic costume. On a ribbon around his throat hung a tiny bell, of the size and shape that someone might tie on a cat's collar. Amon shrugged at this – he'd already written Black off as brilliant but eccentric – and turned to Priss.

"How are the arrangements coming?" he asked, not wanting to interrupt Black's instruction.

Priss shrugged and gestured to the control panel. "They seem to be rerouting the system now, although I don't have a clue what any of the jargon means." They both glanced toward the door as Wilmer entered with an armload of assorted guns and ammunition, and for a few minutes Amon busied himself with selecting weapons for himself and Wilmer.

Finally, Black turned to face them. When he moved, there was a soft jingling sound. "The system is ready," Black told Amon, his voice strained. Despite the improvement in his appearance, Amon realized, he must still be feeling the effects of Sephiroth's attack. "We've lost too much of the trail to mark the complete route, but we've tracked it to his first destination. I doubt he will still be there by the time you arrive, but perhaps you can find some indication of where he is headed."

Amon checked the clip in his weapon – it still felt too light, even though it had been ages since he'd last held an Orbo gun – and stepped up to the portal. Wilmer followed him.

Priss swallowed the fear in her throat. "Good luck," she murmured. Amon nodded, and the two of them disappeared into the block of light.

Priss dragged another chair over to the control panel and dropped into it. "Bring it up on the monitor," she told Bob. "I want to see what's happening."

"You got it," Bob answered, adjusting a few controls. A moment later, a screen winked to life with a burst of colorful static. There was a faint bell-jingle beside Priss as Black leaned over Bob's shoulder to look at the monitor. The image was faint and indistinct, but after squinting for a moment, Priss could nearly make out the shapes...

"Are those frogs playing guitar?" Bob blurted in disbelief.

Priss stared at the screen a moment longer, and nodded slowly. "Yes," she replied, "I think they are. And those bears have something in their hands – maracas, I think."

Bob plugged in a headset, and after a moment began bobbing his head rhythmically. "Music's catchy," he said with a grin.

"It looks as though that cactus is wearing a sombrero," Illya added soberly. "Such an odd world. Why would anyone want to go there deliberately?"

Bob pointed at a pair of darker shapes. "There's the Third and Wilmer," he said. "I don't see anyone else, though, except for those dancing animals." He squinted and tapped at another blob on the monitor. "Hey, there's a little baby cactus behind the big one with the hat. It kind of looks like he's dancing, doesn't it?"

Black's eyes went wide, and he leaned forward suddenly. "Call them back," he ordered urgently. "That is no ordinary cactus. They must return immediately!"

Bob scrambled to send the message, but on the monitor, they could already see Wilmer approaching the little green shape. Black cringed and stood back, shaking his head slowly. The bell tinkled with the motion.

Priss eyed him curiously. "It doesn't look that threatening. Is it really so dangerous that we need to call off the search for Noin?"

Black's dark gaze flicked briefly toward her, then back to the monitor. "They will not find Lucrezia there," he said after a pause. "Even Sephiroth wouldn't stay in a place inhabited by a Cactuar. He must have expected that we would follow him."

In the hall before them, a portal opened. An instant later, the Third Director stumbled out of the square of light, doubled over in a posture of pain. Wilmer sagged at his side, supported only by Amon's grip on his collar. Bob lunged out of his chair to help them as Illya closed the portal.

"But I have to admit," Black continued, his voice pitched so low that Priss barely heard him, "he has a wicked sense of irony."

- - -

Noin opened her eyes to neutral.

The floor, against which her cheek lay, was an indistinct grey. The walls were something approximating taupe. The ceiling, she discovered when she summoned the strength to tip her head back, was a bland off-white. The plumbing fixtures on the opposite wall were a pale cream.

This must be a torture cell, she thought bitterly. There is no other reason in the universe for this combination of non-colors to exist.

She temporarily alleviated the aesthetic discomfort by closing her eyes, but she knew that she could spare only a moment. She had no idea how much time had passed since Sephiroth's goon had knocked her out, or where she had been taken afterward. She concluded that she was a prisoner, because to her recollection there was no room with quite this hideous a paint selection in the entirety of SPCFC headquarters.

She pushed her body slowly into a more upright position, rubbing her bruised temple gingerly, and forced herself to examine the room more carefully. There was not much to see; the cell was not large, perhaps twice as long as she was tall, and was almost entirely featureless. The walls were plain, save for the sink and toilet along one side, and a closed door on the other.

Noin squinted dubiously at the sanitary fixtures. Now that she looked more closely, the sink was nearly eggshell in color, while the toilet was more of a speckled ecru...

Noin nearly slapped her own cheek when she caught herself comparing shades of unwhite. To break that line of thought, she rolled unsteadily to her feet and lurched toward the door. There was really no reason to check it – she knew it would be locked – but there was always the hope, no matter how faint, that she'd been entrusted to an incompetent guard.

The door, she discovered, was very solid, and apparently well bolted in place from the outside. If she pressed her ear against it, she could just hear the patter of conversational voices on the other side...

What do you suppose this Item is, that nuestro patrón desires it so greatly?

Personally, added another voice, I'm more interested to know what's so hot about this chick we've snatched. One look at her, and he drops the whole Item plan like an empty cartridge.

It is not our place to question the master's orders, came a stern reprimand.

Now, now, there's no harm in speculating, another voice interjected. Of course we're not questioning his orders. By the way, have you been in the lounge today?

The voices moved on to discussing something else – furniture design? – and gave her no further clues. Unlike most scenarios she would have hoped for, her captors seemed to be having a passably intellectual conversation, and it didn't seem likely that someone of Sephiroth's caliber would employ complete idiots to guard his prisoners.

Noin hobbled to the opposite wall, still dizzy from the blow to the head, and hung over the almost-eggshell sink to splash water on her face and neck. She watched the water swirling down the drain – counter-clockwise, she noted absently, though it did her little good to know which hemisphere she was in when she couldn't even identify what dimension she had been dragged to – and cupped cool water in her hands to ease the throbbing bruise at her temple.

She tipped her head forward against the cold enamel, feeling tension sear the back of her neck. She ached from more than just the blow to the head, she realized. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had discovered her mysterious sixth sense, but the pain and disorientation she felt now were no different than the very first time she'd tried to use the strange power.

Noin straightened and propped one shoulder against the wall, thinking back to the day she'd met Steed. He had arrived quite literally out of thin air to pull her from the catastrophic destruction of her home world. That same day, she had learned of her latent abilities and used them to save dozens – perhaps hundreds – of people from the cataclysm. However, when Steed pressed her to use her powers again, she had collapsed.

Steed had attributed her breakdown to the intense mental strain of using her new ability, but Noin knew that it had more to do with what she later learned to call interphase space – the black void that had gnawed the only world she'd known until there was only nothing. While searching for survivors, she had reached out and touched the blackness, and it had sheared away her consciousness.

She'd awakened, hours or days later, to find herself in Steed's office, Zechs and Relena missing, her entire world gone, and the memory of the darkness still fresh and terrifying. Even now, she shied away from the memory as if the blackness might engulf her once again.

Belatedly, Noin began to wonder if it were her own fear of the void that had suppressed the mysterious ability for so long. Perhaps if she could overcome her horror of that black emptiness and reach out again, she might be able to learn where she was. Swallowing the lump of fear that lodged in her throat, she closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the wall, stretching out with her senses...

She felt nothing, except for a more acute throbbing in her bruised temple. Noin sighed in defeat, not bothering to open her eyes, and abandoned the futile effort.

In an attempt to escape the bleak neutrality of her cell, she let her mind drift back to the comforting familiarity of her own headquarters. She pictured her office: Her chair, kicked well back from the desk; the nameplate she'd demanded from Steed; the ever-present pile of paperwork; the drawer holding the crumpled photo wallet, salvaged from Relena's purse, that held the only extant picture of her long-lost partner... Zechs, she whispered to the room in her thoughts, where are you? She thought of the creased, faded photograph, and unconsciously reached out for the image she had built in her mind.

Some hidden sense gave warning just as the breath of the void touched her. Noin felt her body pulling apart as the view of interphase space opened before her. Panic overwhelmed her, and she recoiled from the blackness. The cell reappeared around her with jarring corporeality, and Noin reeled back against the wall, striking her head again. Nausea seized her and she fell against the sink, retching, until she was driven to her knees by pain and faintness. Sweat ran down her body, plastering her clothing and hair to her skin, and she shook convulsively.

She huddled against the wall, unable to stop quaking, for what seemed hours. She saw nothing, heard nothing except her own ragged breathing. The terror of the void had so incapacitated her that she did not even notice the sound of the latch as the door of her cell opened.

- - -

Amon cringed as Mireille gingerly plucked another barb from his shoulder. "Nine hundred ninety-eight," she said, dropping the needle into a tray with hundreds of others. "Nine hundred ninety-nine. Hold still, I'm almost done."

Priss was regarding him curiously across the conference table. Amon couldn't decide if she were simply concerned about their situation, or if she were resisting the urge to laugh at his impression of a pincushion.

Behind her, the door whisked open to admit Doujima and Illya, arms laden with folders and printouts. Doujima stopped so quickly in the doorway that Illya bumped into her and dropped a thick sheaf of papers. She gaped openly at the sight of the Third Director, his torso bare except for a liquid-filled amulet around his neck, skin speckled with hundreds of tiny blood-dots where needles had already been removed.

Doujima, predictably, had no compunctions about laughing at Amon's predicament. Illya muttered something unflattering in Russian and stooped to collect his fallen documents.

"What happened to you?" Doujima asked, when she had stopped sniggering long enough to speak. "Offend a porcupine? Illya told me you went after Noin."

Amon barely flinched as Mireille tugged the thousandth needle from his back. "I did," he growled through clenched teeth. "Or at least, I thought I did. Apparently following her vapor trail or whatever isn't as simple as Black would have us believe."

Illya was beginning to spread his papers over the conference table. "It's an electron trail," he mumbled absently. "Rather, a path of energy dispelled from displaced electrons returning to their proper orbits, like what happens when you quickly open the wrapper of an adhesive bandage or bite into certain kinds of candy in the dark." He tapped the picture of a rainbow-colored splotch. "His signature is easy to identify, as it somewhat resembles the spectrograph of radioactive carrot juice." Illya frowned in concentration. "I was sure I had the right one. Unless he doubled back..."

There was a pause as every operative in the room turned to stare blankly at Illya. Even Mireille stopped daubing antiseptic on Amon's back long enough to give him a confused look. After a moment of silence, the blond man glanced up.

"The Aurora Borealis," Illya said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe, and returned to his papers.

Amon digested this, then stood and moved his arms tentatively. "How is Wilmer doing?" he asked, turning his attention back to Doujima. "He was in worse shape than I was when we returned."

Doujima shrugged. "They say he'll live, as usual, though he'll likely have a few more scars to sulk about. He was hit in a couple of vital areas, so he'll probably be out of commission for a while. Mr. Steed said that he might need a specialist; I think he was going to retrieve Juubei for him." She sidestepped the brooding Illya and slumped into a chair. The day's events were starting to take their toll even on the irrepressible Doujima, Amon noted, and he forgave her a couple of degrees for laughing at him. "So, tell me," she asked, eyeing the medical kit on the table, "what exactly happened in there? Did you aggravate a raging acupuncturist?"

Amon's expression darkened even more, and he mentally withdrew his forgiveness. He reached for his shirt, avoiding her question. "Where is Black? I want to talk to him right away."

There was a long pause, punctuated only by the rustling of Illya's papers. Finally, Priss cleared her throat. "He's disappeared again," she said quietly. "Probably to recuperate. No one saw him leave, but it seems he was hurt pretty badly in the fight. I suppose he's off trying to heal the injuries from that blast."

Amon said nothing, but his fingers tightened on his shirt until the fabric was crushed in his fists. The needle wounds burned with the pressure, chastising him for his uselessness. He had failed to protect his fellow Director, allowed his operatives to be injured, and missed his only chance to catch up with their elusive target. And now, the only person with any insight into their situation had slipped back into the shadows, unable or unwilling to advise them.

Anger and frustration battered at his defenses, and he scrabbled for control of his emotions. His dark memories gnawed at him, warning him to retreat before something disastrous happened, and he felt his practiced restraint crumbling. This was too much like the last time...

Slowly and deliberately, Amon bundled his jacket and the rest of his effects under one arm. It would do no good to lose control here, in front of the others. "I need to discuss our plan of action with Steed," he improvised, stepping around Doujima's chair and making for the door.

He pushed quickly out of the room, but not before he saw Doujima's eyes turn knowingly toward the pendant on his chest.