Rose Red: Model 85001
Chapter 16
Van sat around and stewed about what Dryden said after he left. Truthfully, he didn't want to send Celena back to the Schezar family any more than he wanted to send Hitomi. He could tell that Celena was working her way into Dilandau's heart, but that didn't mean that Dilandau was willing to bypass millions of dollars to keep her for himself. If Van wanted to keep Celena out of harm's way, he'd have to do something with Hitomi, which Van simply wasn't willing to do.
That night, as Hitomi lay Van's supper in front of him she suddenly said, "I want to tell you that I overheard what you and Dryden were talking about."
"Oh?" Van said casually.
"Yeah," she said, sitting down across from him. "Thanks for saying that you'd never sell me. I was really touched."
Van sniffed. "I just keep doing things to make you fall for me. Are they working?" he asked grimly.
Hitomi was quiet for a minute, during which Van just assumed that she wouldn't answer and started eating. Finally she said, "It's not not working."
He paused relaying his casserole. "Do you mean that?"
She nodded. The motion looked painful, like she was so shy that it was killing her just to move her head a few inches.
"Well," he said, getting a bit of his sense of humour back. "If you love me that much, then I guess you could give me a little kiss."
Hitomi looked horrified.
"On the cheek," he amended.
He waited, but she didn't move, so he shrugged his shoulders and kept eating.
That night, Van was lying in bed typing out a stop order to Sleeping Beauty Inc. They weren't supposed to send him any more offers of purchase for Hitomi. He wrote that he had decided to keep her.
Then there was a tap at his door. "Come in," he called. Then he looked up to smile at darling Hitomi in her plaid night shirt.
She came across the room with angry footsteps like she was in a bit of a temper. Marching right up to him, she stooped down and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He grabbed her arm and pulled her down, so she was sitting on the bed. Looking deep into her eyes, he asked, "You did that all by yourself?"
She nodded, but still, she looked like she was suffering.
"Did you mean it?"
"U-huh," she whispered. "I'm nervous, and I'm scared that I won't be any good at this sort of thing. I mean, they have a class on this stuff at Sleeping Beauty Inc., but it really felt like it was more like, for when you really don't want to, but it's too late to say no."
Van tilted his head and asked kindly, "Do you feel like saying no?"
"No."
"Good." Van leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, muffling whatever Hitomi was about to say next. He wasn't sure how it was going until she put her free hand behind his neck and then he left all thoughts of quitting behind, and actually kissed her the way he wanted to. Kissing her, he felt all worries leave his brain. There was nothing left except how perfect this felt with her. It had never felt this perfect with someone else. He felt charged. This was heaven. This was right now.
He pushed her back on the bed.
"Van! We've got to stop." Hitomi had turned her head to the side so that her mouth was inaccessible.
"Why?" He turned her face back to him.
"Because, this doesn't feel right," she said, pushing him off her.
She got up off the bed, but Van grabbed her hand and pulled her back to him. "What do you mean, it doesn't feel right? It feels perfect to me."
"Of course it does," she whined, fighting against his hand. "I think you should sell me back to Allen."
Van was crushed, but he took the feeling in hand and pulled down on Hitomi even harder. "Why?" he yelled angrily, his eyebrows pulled together. "Do you love him? Do you want to be back with him?"
"No!" she gasped, still trying to break free from her.
"Then why?" he growled – his voice becoming far angrier than he meant it to.
"Because," she cried, "I think those guys might have infected your mom with M.T.N. on purpose."
Van let go of her and stared. "What?"
Hitomi laid out her free hand in front of her in a gesture of ignorance. "I have no idea why I think that. I just got to thinking after you and Dryden talked and after I heard Folken's name, that idea popped into my head. I wanted to tell you what I thought at dinner tonight, but I didn't have the nerve. It's just that I remember Folken. I hadn't remembered him in ages, but he worked for Allen's dad. He was practically one of the Schezar family."
Van stared. Nothing like that had ever entered into his wildest dreams. His brother did … what? He didn't believe it. He couldn't believe it. He hardly remembered his brother, but no brother of his could be capable of something like that. Think these things as hard as he might, he couldn't make his mouth say one word to defend Folken.
Instead he said, "None of that matters. The only thing that does matter is that I won't sell you to them and tomorrow – if you're willing – I think we should get married in town."
Hitomi didn't answer his marriage proposal. Instead, she matched all his anger and said, "You don't understand. If they were willing to kill your parents, they really won't have any scruple coming after you. If I go to them—"
"No," Van interrupted. "It won't make a difference. I don't have the technology. It's not here. I've looked everywhere."
"Your dad wouldn't have torched it. It's got to be here somewhere."
"Then look. I dare you," Van said, throwing her hand away and rolling over on the bed to signal the end of their conversation.
"Fine," Hitomi shouted. "I will."
Van scowled. She said that as she left the room.
What was he supposed to do now? He didn't care about the energist or the plans to make one. He just wanted to be together with Hitomi. He picked up his watch and set her perimeter to allow her to go no further than the hanger. At the very least, he wanted to sleep soundly that night.
Hitomi yawned in the kitchen at three a.m. She originally came into the kitchen with the idea of making some more orange juice, but abandoned the idea as soon as she realized she could just slice it and stuff the slices in her mouth. Mercy, she was tired.
Van had just gone to bed while she searched the house, looking for some hint about the energists. It wasn't that she didn't believe that Van couldn't find them. She believed him. She just thought that maybe his father had hidden them somewhere in the house – not anywhere visible. They had already remade this house from top to bottom. She was thinking that there might be a trap door under the floor, so she stomped everywhere looking for a hollow sound. Nothing! Then she started banging on the walls. It really was a wonder Van didn't come out and bite her head off, but he didn't budge from his bed.
Now it was three a.m. and she hadn't found a clue, but she couldn't discount the feeling she had in her heart. There was something in her head that told her that something was wrong. Once she had known what it was, but now her brain hit a wall when she tried to think of it.
Van mentioned marriage, but it was hard for her to think of it when she had this weight on her chest. She had done something wrong. Something was wrong, and she couldn't think of anything except the horror that surrounded her heart whenever it was that she stopped to think.
She ate the rest of her orange and went to bed in the spare room. She wanted to wait for daylight before she went to look in the basement of the hanger.
The next morning, Van was standing in the kitchen drinking a glass of water and looking out the window at the trees arching in the wind. Not only had Hitomi kept him up half the night with illogical banging, but looking outside, he had a sense of foreboding. Today wasn't a good day to get married. Today was the kind of day you stayed at home and waited for the storm to pass.
Yet, even with wind blowing the grass and the dirt about, a truck came and parked in front of the house.
Van knew that truck, but he couldn't have been more surprised when the owner of it got out and knocked on the door. It was Dilandau. When Van opened the door for him, his white hair was blowing so that it almost stood straight up. It was his face that surprised Van. He hadn't seen Dilandau look that young and alive in years.
Van brought him inside and shut the door hard behind him. "What brings you out here on such a day?"
Dilandau smoothed down his hair and tried to adjust his clothes. "I didn't believe it when Dryden told me, but last night – it finally happened."
"What happened?"
"I got a request from Sleeping Beauty Inc. to sell Celena back to them," he said, beaming.
"Bloody Hell," Van groaned. That explained why the old codger looked so freaking pleased with himself. "You aren't going to sell her, are you?"
Dilandau looked appalled for a second before he whacked Van up the backside of the head. "I'm not going to sell her. Dolt!" he added grouchily. "If I'd known you'd be such a moron about this, I wouldn't have bothered to drive out to tell you." He put his hands on his still country boy hips and paced.
Van quieted down and then asked sincerely, "Really? How much did they offer you?"
"More than I made all the years of my life combined, but you know, when I saw it laid out like that … it just didn't look worth it to me."
Van was stunned.
Dilandau looked around at all the renovations Van and Hitomi had done. "This is what your woman did to the place when she came?" He whistled. "Merle never would have thought of all this." He looked at Van for a second and for that second, Van thought he could read what Dilandau was thinking. It went something like, good thing you didn't take my daughter. Then the old man broke eye contact and said, "I should shove off. I just wanted you to know that I'm not going to cell Celena. I've never had the chance to do something to show a woman that I … felt something for her. I should do at least one thing right in my life. See ya."
Van felt a sting of relief as Dilandau walked out the door into that wall of wind. Van hoped the man would do well and keep to his plan.
And he had to keep to his own plan. He got his tools and went up to the tower to pull up the carpet so he could redo the tower for Hitomi. If he couldn't marry her today, he could keep another part of his promise.
When Hitomi woke up, she woke up to the sound of Van working up in the tower. It was ironic and cute. So, she rolled out of bed and dragged herself (plaid shirt and boxer shorts) up to see what he was doing. He didn't see her at the door, but one look at the ripped up room told her that wherever Van's father had hid the plans, he hadn't hid them in the tower.
She went downstairs to the kitchen and tried to eat something, but honestly, her stomach felt like retching whenever she put a piece of food to her mouth, whether it be bread or water. She had to keep looking for a hint from Van's father. There had to be one somewhere.
Putting on a pair of slip-on shoes, she went out to the hanger. On her way, she saw the cow standing on the side of the hanger that sheltered it from the wind. Seeing the cow made her feel even sicker. Its brain was unpolluted, because it was a cow and it hadn't done anything wrong.
She went inside. It took her a second to find the controls that Van used to open the hatch to the basement, but when she did find it, it was easy enough to work and the floor came open. She took hold of the rope ladder and let herself down. Then she started the stomping operation she had figured out the night before.
It was in the floor. It had to be in the floor. Allen had said that the treasure was in the basement. He couldn't have meant Escaflowne was the treasure like Hitomi thought at first. He meant something deeper.
Hitomi turned on the light and saw the room much brighter and then it was like there was a voice playing in her head. She knew the voice and she couldn't stop doing what it told her to do.
"When you turn on the light, go to your right. There's a picture frame on the wall. It has a mechanical engineering certificate in it. Take it off the wall. Under that there's a series of five black switches. They're the breakers for the electricity in the basement, but the bottom one is a fake. Flip it and step back."
Hitomi did what she was told, but she didn't step back fast enough and the floor moved out from under her and screaming she fell down. Her feet felt seared with pain as she landed on a cement floor. Her butt came down hard and it felt like she broke it.
Looking around, she was plunged into complete darkness, except for the square of electrical light that came from the hole in the ceiling.
Then the voice came again. "There should be a rope ladder for you to let yourself down on. Go down. When you're there, light up your wrist band. Take the goods and get out of there the way you came."
There was no rope ladder.
Hitomi felt like dying. She knew now that it was Folken's voice that played in her head. And she knew that she had been here before. When she had belonged to Allen, Folken had sent her here to steal the energists. Except, now she remembered exactly what was going on. She lit up her bracelet and saw the words marked on the wall. "Perfecting M.T.N. Energist technology one day at a time."
Then she threw up on the floor.
Van stood in the back of his pickup truck as he threw the scraps of old carpet into the flat bed. He looked over at the house. Was Hitomi still sleeping? Well, she had been up late. He'd let her sleep. After all, nothing terrible could happen to her. He'd set the perimeter so that she couldn't go further than the hanger. He whistled and took went back inside to get another stretch of carpet.
Author's Notes: Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing. Someone wrote me a review last time that they didn't know what to say in reviews. You know, I even like reviews that are like 'please update'. Even just that makes me happy. Really.