Chapter five: settling down
Disclaimer: see previous chapters.
"What are you doing here?" Carter demanded of his least favourite psychologist.
"Delivering Dr. Marten over here to you," Beverly shrugged. "Wen will kill her otherwise."
It was really Henry's fault that Carter had focused on Wen's name rather than on Beverly proper. "Why would Wen want to kill Holly?" he asked, half-curious despite himself.
"Because she figured out that they are all trapped in a virtual world," Beverly replied matter-of-factly. "It is already stretched because Dr. Blake made one extra person, and as soon as Wen was able to get an excuse to trim the numbers, she did it."
"And you saved Holly because of goodness of your heart?" Jack sceptically asked.
"No, because it is the right thing to do," Beverly was unperturbed.
"For whom?" Jack persisted.
"I've no idea," Beverly shrugged. "I told you that I was crazy, remember?"
Jack twitched. A brief distance away Zoe was having barely more luck with Holly.
"Hi!" Holly said brightly, before her smile dimmed a bit. "I don't know you, do I?"
"No," Zoe said calmingly, "but that's okay. I just wasn't in Eureka lately."
"Of course not!" Holly said knowingly. "You weren't downloaded in the VR." She paused. "Of course, Sheriff Carter was also my friend in the VR... until he killed me. You won't kill me for real, will you?" she asked Carter.
"No," Carter said flatly. "I won't." He turned back to Beverly. "Now-"
"Jack, wait." Henry, who has been listening to the conversations with an obvious interest, turned to the older woman. "Beverly, why are you crazy?"
"When Lupo shot me with that big gun of hers," Beverly shrugged, "the feedback from the nanites went straight into my brains and caused something there. From that day on whenever I slept I dreamt of my past lives. That was unacceptable. I started to write petitions to my superiors." She paused. "Eventually, once I petitioned them enough, my superiors acquired for me certain medicine from Asia."
"Asia?" Henry looked up. "Wen got a lot of connections in Asia, actually has relatives both in Japan and Hong Kong."
"And she is my superior there," Beverly agreed. "Makes sense to me." She paused. "Anything else before I go to jail?"
"I don't know," Henry confessed. "You wouldn't know anything to get us an advantage over your former allies?"
"Actually," Beverly began in a thoughtful tone of voice, "I have-"
"Phone call! It's senator Wen – again!" Andy called out, since he was on the phone-watching duty with SARAH. "Should I do my answering machine imitation again?"
"No, I'll answer it," Jo said firmly (she has been listening to the discussion for some time now and was getting worried), and picked up the receiver.
TBC