Author's Notes: Okay, I know that I should have had this out yesterday. Here's what happened. I was really busy and for some unearthly reason, I thought that it was Wednesday instead of Thursday. I know - this is unprecedented. Don't hate me, kay? I have a lot on my mind.

Rose Red: Model 85001

Chapter 18

Van rubbed his eyes. He had just finished putting Hitomi to bed. To say that it had been difficult to calm her down after fishing her out of his father's lab was an understatement. She was hysterical. He had to agree that the whole thing was quite creepy, but the last thing in the world he wanted was for his house to become the world headquarters of M.T.N. It wasn't that he didn't want to take her to the hospital. The truth was that he didn't need to look up that information on his pocket watch. He had already had early M.T.N. testing every time he went to the hospital to see his parents. He knew the drill and from what he heard from the nurses – it was really obvious when someone contracted it. Their saliva turned yellow almost instantly. So, Van gave Hitomi the PH test a few more times only to comfort her. He knew she didn't have it.

And now he had to go down to his father's lab and see for himself what was there. There were two biohazard suits in the back of his chopper and he put one on before going down. He wasn't sure if it was completely necessary to gird up his loins like that, but he planned to touch things and really snoop, so better safe than sorry.

He headed out to the hanger and opened up all the trap doors and hatches.

In his father's lab, he turned on his flash light and looked at the engerists all lined up in their little boxes. They looked creepy as Hell to him, but he couldn't ignore them. This was what Allen and Folken wanted.

Van ditched looking at the science fair projects and went to the computer, which was still plugged in, and booted it up. He had some trouble accessing the files, but hacking his father's brain for a password wasn't as difficult for him as he guessed it would have been for Folken. Their father was a mechanical engineer. Van punched in the serial code from his father's first chopper and gained complete access. From there he tried to use his cell phone to upload as much information as he could but there wasn't enough room. In the end, he had to use the pocket watch Sleeping Beauty Inc. had given him to upload the earlier files.

With that done, he shut everything back down and went back to the land of the living. On the way out, he changed the password to the trap door to a five digit number. There was no way he wanted Hitomi coming back here.

Back at the house, Hitomi was out of bed and sitting on the lip of the tub reading a pamphlet on M.T.N. that came with the first aid kit that they kept in the bathroom.

"For Pete's sake!" Van exclaimed when he saw her. "You still don't believe me that you're clean?"

"No. I believe you. I just can't relax and I thought that reading this would make me feel better."

Van sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. "Yeah. I'm sorry. I just-"

Hitomi tensed up and interrupted. "Those guys came here for that fake photo shoot because Sleeping Beauty Inc. told them where I'd been sold."

"I know."

She brushed off his hand. "I want you to know that I never slept with Allen."

Van was relieved that was true, but she'd still pushed him away. "No?"

"Yeah, but I was such a fool. I can't stand it and who knows, one of the energists I stole might have been the one that infected Princess Marlene."

"Even so, you probably couldn't have helped that. I mean, you managed to transport them safely. If she got infected afterwards, how is that your fault?"

"I don't know. I just feel sick."

"You should sleep," he suggested calmly.

Hitomi got up and started pacing. "No. I can't stand it. Knowing all this stuff is too hard. I can't stand to be in my own skin. All the things I did – I don't want to know about them. Can't we go and get my memory wiped again?"

Van was appalled. "No! Tough it out! If you got your memory wiped now, you'd lose all the time that we had together too. I'm not paying for that." Van felt the vein in his forehead pulsing. He needed to stop. If she wanted to forget all about him, then why did he want to marry her? He got up from the tub and stalked into the kitchen. On his way, he yelled over his shoulder, "There are some sleeping pills in the first aid kit. If you can't stand it take a few and take a break from being you."

He didn't mean to be heartless, but he thought she was acting like a baby. And what was he supposed to do, coddle her? He didn't have time. He had to get to work reading his father's documents and figure out exactly what was going on or both of them were going to get chased down by the Schezar mafia lords.

Hitomi watched Van's retreating back. What he said to her really hurt. "Tough it out!" But even though it hurt, she knew that he was right. Admitting that made the whole thing hurt just that little bit more. She felt so miserable. She thought about crying, but the tears just weren't there. In the past, she'd cried a lot. Nothing came of it except mild exhaustion.

Absently, she picked up the whole first aid kit and took it into the guest room with her. The door sounded strangely loud as she it fell shut behind her. She opened the kit and took out three more PH tests. She wasn't going to take the sleeping pills. Then she dropped the box on the floor and paced herself as she lifted the covers and dropped herself back into bed.

The shadow of night fell and hours of darkness ticked away. Since Hitomi didn't take those pills, she had to stay away and think about the things she'd forgotten. She thought about how she had felt living after Allen discarded her and actively compared it to how she felt living with Van. Sitting alone in her apartment, she was like a corpse. Home decorating? She didn't have any interest back then. Her place had white walls; one white sofa in the living room. There wasn't even a speck of dust or the length of a single hair to break the monotony. Her hair was long when she awoke at Sleeping Beauty inc. not because hair grew in cryostasis, but because she didn't cut it. After Allen turned her loose, she didn't even style it. It just hung around her shoulders limp – like her.

And life with Van wasn't like that. With Van, there was always something else that had to be done. She was important – vital. She couldn't even imagine how lonely Van's life must have been before she came. When they were alone together, he always worked so hard. He didn't ask her to do anything he wasn't willing to do himself. Actually, he worked harder and gave her the easy jobs. She enjoyed working with him and even if they were taking the day off, she enjoyed being with him. They laughed together. Food tasted better. Everything was better.

Then she understood. At that moment Hitomi clued in to why Van was angry with her when she said that she wanted her memory erased. And suddenly, she knew something else – she never wanted to leave this place … or Van.

She sat upright in bed. Why had she waited so long to realize that he was her best bet? Why had she waited so long to realize that what she felt inside for him was more than enough? It was because somewhere in her sick little calculating brain she wanted to be with Allen, because she wanted the luxurious life that came with him. It was more than wanting orange juice, especially when that juice was bought with human blood. She felt sick.

It was one-thirty in the morning, but how could she face Van now that she knew what was wrong with her?

As the night wore on, Hitomi still didn't cry. She didn't need to cry. She needed to figure out what to say to Van. She prepared something and at eight o'clock in the morning she went and knocked on his bedroom door, but he wasn't there. Searching the rest of the house, she concluded he was out in the hanger. Then she went to the kitchen and packed up a few things to take Van to eat.

In the hanger, she found Escaflowne had been brought up to the main level and Van was on top of it installing the propeller blades.

"Good morning," she said quietly. "What's going on?"

He stopped what he was doing and turned to face her. Then leaning on his elbow, he said, "I found out that I'm not as bad at mechanical design as I thought."

"Huh?"

Van dropped himself down on the floor. "I always thought that I was bad at this. I worked on building Escaflowne from a plan my dad left behind. Certain things didn't line up and I always thought building this was so slow going because I wasn't as good as my dad. Turns out – I may not be my dad, but I'm not dumb as a post. The problem with the plans was – they were incomplete. Look at this." He led Hitomi to the back of Escaflowne and showed her the back where the engine was. Hitomi saw a glass box containing an energist. "As you can see, Hitomi, Escaflowne was designed to be powered by an energist and not by fuel. Weird, eh? I put in a gas tank, because I couldn't figure out what the old man was talking about, but it turns out that it wasn't supposed to need one."

"Wow!" Hitomi sounded excited, but she didn't know what he was onto. "But I thought that Folken had the only energist that worked?"

Van smiled. "Yeah, he has the only one that works close to the way my dad hoped, but all of these failed experiments still have a little juice in them. The problem now is that if I take Escaflowne into the air and power it with only an energist, it will fall out of the sky like a stone when it runs out of power. A helicopter doesn't glide. But since I already put in a gas tank, I can use an energist until it dies and then I'm hoping to get my gas tank to take over mid-flight."

"Can you do that?" Hitomi exclaimed.

"Who knows? Maybe my overcompensation will be enough to get it working properly. We'll see. It might be a disaster, but …" He trailed off and looked over her shoulder at the things she'd brought from the house. "Did you bring me breakfast?"

"Yeah." She blushed. Hitomi went over and bought out some muffins and a bottle of water.

"Thanks," Van said, taking a huge chug of the H2O. When he finished, he put down the drink. "Are you feeling any better this morning?"

She nodded. "But it's hard," she said slowly. She felt Van's eyes on her as she peeled the wrapper off a muffin. "I keep rolling it around in my head and I don't know why you'd want to be with me. I'm a mess."

"Aw well, who isn't?"

She shook her head. "You don't have to act like that. I …"

He waited.

Which was really a pity, because she really wanted him to jump in at that moment and tell her that he still wanted her and all that, but didn't. He just waited. And she couldn't answer either because her tongue was tied in three knots and lodged in her throat.

Then abruptly, he took her hand and pulled her close to him. Hitomi jumped a little. It was a hug. His other hand was on her back and she was squeezed close to him for about five seconds. Then he let go of her and smiled.

"Thanks for bringing me breakfast. I've been up all night and I'm starving."

Hitomi's tense shoulders sagged in relief. He wasn't going to push her for an answer right that second, but he delicately let her know that the door was still open. They could have this conversation on another day.

Then he changed the topic. "Last night, when I started reading my dad's notes, the first thing I found out is that energists are made from the hearts of fetal bulls."

"What?" Hitomi was astonished.

"It looks like a heart inside the box, right?"

"U-huh."

"Well, a full sized bull heart is much much bigger. The ones they use for energists are closer to the size of an adult human's."

"Why? How is that possible? I thought experimentation on animals has been illegal for almost a hundred years."

"It has been. Even eating beef has been illegal for almost fifteen years. I don't know about you, but before this came up, I didn't even question why it is illegal to eat beef. That's been going on since I was like ten and we hardly ever ate it before then - at least, not that I recall."

"Growing up, it was a rare experience for me too. Sometimes we had hamburgers, but those were mostly made with carrot and bread crumbs," Hitomi agreed.

Van took another drink before he cleared his throat and said, "I read that a fetal bull has a chemical in its circulatory system that is highly concentrated in its heart. It's called Ql. When the M.T.N. virus is exposed to it, the Ql and the virus create kind of a symbiotic relationship, but that's not it exactly since Ql is a molecule and not a living thing. It's more like the Ql both feeds the virus, allowing it to grow and live, but at the same time kills it, so that the virus is unable to spread. It's weird. The lifecycle of the virus moves so fast that it creates energy."

Hitomi was aghast. "Really? It creates so much energy that it can power a chopper?"

"Each transparent box in my dad's lab was an experiment. All of them have the heart of a baby bull that was infected with M.T.N. inside. Some of them have succeeded and made their own ecosystem of sorts, but don't get me wrong. None of them have a perfect system and eventually they'll all run out of power. Only the one Folken took came close to working properly." Van paused. "Do you remember what you stole out of there?"

"I'm not sure. I think I took the two next best energists, but I don't know."

"Well, it doesn't matter. I'm sure Folken hasn't figured out the answer to the last problem our dad faced."

"Which was?" Hitomi asked curiously.

"What organism, or bacteria, or substance to add to the energist to make it go on forever. If he had that nailed, neither he nor Allen would have come looking for your help. And they're still coming. We have to figure out how to get them to lay-off, but before that, I really want to give this energist/gas tank thing a try. Whoowee! My dad would have been proud."

More Author's Notes: Thanks to everyone who reads and reviews. Once again - sorry about the lateness. I've been ULTRA overrun.