Chapter 11

Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™.

Even once he was put back, Rex did not calm down, but continued to angrily pace and flutter around his containment unit, chirping that he will be back. "You really do feel restless lately, don't you?" James Lester asked rhetorically, when the ARC field team had left the ARC's menagerie alone. "Sorry about your containment, then, but what can one do?"

Rex chirped some more, but Lester did not respond, thinking his own thoughts, remembering the past, for a change...

May 2, 2009

James Lester felt more turbulent than ever. On one hand, this was not the first time that Johnson had managed to get one on him, in their continuing game of one-upmanship, and it will not be the last... even if not counting the fact that Lester was going to get her back, as soon as he figured out how. No, Christine Johnson was not exactly important here, the ARC was.

The ARC... Lester realized with a start that he became genuinely fond of the Center, maybe even too fond. Then again, this was one of his longest posts outside of the ministry proper, so some rationalization wasn't amiss...yet where did it live him?

As Lester mused while opening the door, he failed to register anyone else's presence in his apartment, so the sight of Helen Cutter sitting on his sofa and looking at his family album (a single volume and a rather slim one at that) was quite a shocker.

"Get out," Lester said woodenly, aware that on his own he simply might not succeed.

"No," Helen shook her head. "Not yet. First you need to go over what information I have accumulated." She pointed to a large canvas bag lying next to James's living room table. "It's important."

"Get out, or I'll call Quinn, Becker and the others," Lester repeated while making no movement to look at Helen's information (whatever it was).

"No," Helen did not shift either. "I'm not leaving. Call whomever you want, but look over the information, if you do not want to look incompetent when the minister calls."

"Ah, you know about that?" Lester said, preparing for the next verbal assault.

"I learned," Helen replied instead, still looking through the album. "Now it's your turn to study. Start cracking."

Lester twitched. The domesticity of this scene was so absurd, that he instinctively reached into the canvas bag and pulled out the first folder, before beginning to read it. Life being what it was, it proved to be a very interesting reading material, and Lester became so engrossed in it, that he quite failed to notice the moment when Helen (hopefully) left the room to change her clothing, and the minister called on the phone, summoning him – and Dame Freisse – to the ARC shareholders' meeting.

\\\

Several hours later

"Ah, Lester, good day. Dame Freisse, nice to see you too," the minister said, his vocal tone switching from patronizing to more polite in the blink of an eye between the two sentences.

For his part, Lester was using every bit of political experience, knowledge and expertise he had ever accumulated so not to stare. It was still Helen Cutter who was standing next to him, but dressed in a business jacket and a long skirt, sensible though fashionable shoes and with make-up on her face, she looked regular, nothing like a time traveller Lester knew her to be.

Sadly, he did not have time to dwell on that, because the minister was at it again. "I declare this meeting of the ARC shareholders open. Good Dame, do you have any news?" he purposefully ignored Lester, but the civil servant was not surprised or overly worried: he has been on the out regularly with his boss before, and he was going to be in the future too.

"Actually yes, we do," the 'Dame' replied, even as Lester pulled out the folder with the processed materials that Helen gathered for him earlier. "Mr. Lester has some information that he wanted to share with you..."

And Lester did. He started with the fiasco of the late Oliver Leek – may he forever burn in Hell – who had been the latest of Johnson's protégés, and who behaved just as the rest of her protégés had: recklessly, stupidly, selfishly, etc... and he ended with today, when it became obvious that Johnson was most definitely not grateful for taking over the ARC with the minister's blessings.

It was the last bit that probably made the minister's decision. "I see," he said in his usual manner that was supposed to imply that he was angry (not that his anger was worth much): "well, Lester, congratulations. You're back in."

"You're too kind," James muttered, and... let his companion slip away from his sight, even as the minister continued to wax poetic as he always did, and that, perhaps, was Lester's biggest mistake of the day.

\\\

"And that, perhaps, was my biggest mistake of the day," Lester confessed to Rex, who was listening rather attentively to Lester's rather rumbling narrative. "I mean yes, I didn't expect her to kill Johnson, just to beat 14 varieties of crap out of her or something like that – never to kill her. Johnson... she was not worth it. But I messed up, and that was the end. Page is dead, Quinn is gone, Lewis isn't coming back, Maitland's dead... the rest... only Becker and Temple remain, and they're moving on...where to? I know not."

Rex, who probably learned by now that you should not argue with mentally disturbed, started to chirp something in agreement, but suddenly stopped.

"Mr. Lester?" a tall woman, vaguely resembling Lorraine, but younger, looked into the menagerie. "Ah, there you are! I've been looking for you all over the ARC!"

"And who are you?" Lester did a titanic effort to regain even a semblance of either coherence or sanity, and he felt that he had rather pulled it off.

"Caroline sir, Caroline Steele. I breed dogs for the ARC. You hired me at the funeral of Mr. Hart, remember?"

"Yes," Lester glared, as he felt that his attempt at keeping the past and the present separate was beginning to fail. "What do you want now?"

"Sir, we need to go for a ride," Caroline said firmly. "Get some backup, if you want, but there is someone who needs to see you – at my place. Sir, are you okay?"

"No," Lester honestly confessed. "I think that I might be a bit drunk. Burton's gone. Burton was going to be a Sir Philip, and now's he is gone. How fun is that?"

"Well, I guess I'll say hello to whatever you're drinking – it must've been very psychedelic – and take you home," Caroline said in a very matter of fact voice. "You too, you flying... lizard. Your mistress wants to see you."

Rex stiffened and chirped something. Lester too stiffened, as he realized something else:

"What are you talking about? Maitland's dead!"

"Want to bet?" Caroline smiled brightly, and Lester felt concerned for the first time ever:

"Where are we going?" he asked her again.

"Oh, you'll see," the smile of Caroline's was not so much mocking, as promising – really, really promising. "You shall so see..."

End chapter 11