The rest of what I intended as this chapter will have to wait until I relent and pass out for a couple hours. At least I'm already running long. (I'm so far behind where I want to be!) No plans for the next three days but these keys. So many have helped, and I'll catch up with my thanks next time, but I wanted to particularly thank both creamocrop and thedragonaunt for helping me break the doubts that had frozen me. Thinking of dropping rating to T until the tale gets more…biological. (Great spoiler-free word!) Opinions?
SPECIAL NOTE: Nocturnias is "to the wall" as well, once again blessing us by handling the SAMFAs. Show her efforts a little love; go vote per directions, and give her a big "thanks"! She's more than earned it!
Spyder felt naked without the heaviness of her leather wrapped around her like armor. Wiggins was right; the grey hooded sweatshirt and worn denim of her jeans faded into the shadows of the supposedly empty building far better than the dull black hide and scratched buckles would. It just felt wrong, like she was exposed, and if she wasn't careful, she'd expose the Raven. Exposure meant danger and he was already at enough risk.
Crossing the first floor to get to the defunct service elevator shaft was the problem. The intruders used the ruined brick building as a weigh station for anything better hidden. Previously she had seen massive amounts of narcotics, designer drugs, and third world knock offs of prescription medications, but trade had taken a recent upmarket swing. Electronics first, but now what could only be ammo and the weapons to use it. More guards were required, more of the unblinking cameras installed. She had even spotted and thwarted a few motion detectors, but all that was on the floors above, where a casual observer would never trip over anything alarming.
She had to be fast. Wiggins would start the fires soon. It may have been safer if they had waited, made a better plan, but Lady Fate had plans of her own. Spyder knew from bitter experience that the Raven couldn't hold out much longer. Cameras were a constant threat and the fog she had been gifted with blunted their omnipresence. More cameras would come with the flames, but her lover told her he had that under control. Stupid TV people always bought a gaudy display over deeper substance. She had the scars to prove it.
She drew images in her mind; field of vision for the few security cameras still working on the first floor. She had broken three of them on her earlier visit, and their dead eyes no longer surveyed the space. The intruders wouldn't waste time, effort or expense while the valuables were higher up.
Spyder drew her head deeper into the hood, making sure her black braid was hidden beneath the grey. She had crept halfway across the open space, staying where her mental picture said she was safe, when she suddenly heard music. The floor beneath her feet shook with it. A known piece, some memory trying to rise but strangled off. Two words made it through; Saber Dance. On sudden impulse, she held her arms aloft and finished crossing to the gaping hole in a series of flip flops. Fortunately the music stopped before she started down the maintenance ladder. No one should be on guard, but she needed her ears to tell.
She dropped the last few feet, landing in a crouch and peering through the dim light. A single bulb hung from a wire on the ceiling, sodium yellow patterns, flickering. A table strewn with empty water bottles and food wrappers entertained a few rodents. A metal doorway that hummed quietly to itself stood a few yards away. A mechanism not much larger than a pet door took up most of the bottom edge, the cup currently turned into the room beyond.
Somehow it made her think of the Monolith, and she caught herself holding her breath as she approached it. A computer tablet lying on the floor nearby showed the inside of the room to whoever was to operate the cup. The Raven was still curled, his wings tight around him, but the rocking had stopped. Not good. Sleep was the safest thing that could have claimed him, but there were others.
Spyder took a moment to review the steps she had counted on the way. Her lover would cut the electricity to the building one minute before the fires were to begin. The intruders would panic, run for their prize. It would be better if she and the Raven were at least out of the basement before the fires grew too bright. Absently, she pulled a pillowcase free from the pouch in her sweatshirt. She tipped the desiccated bones over the tablet. No one knew whose bones they had been; they had been left orphaned under a bridge. Human, male, gathering them had saddened her until she realized this person's final act would be a heroic one; misleading the wolves from their intended prey.
The overhead bulb made a very small snapping noise and the afterimage of the light danced in her vision. She drew the Monolith close like a religious relic, running her hands along the metallic surface in search of the handle. Spyder prayed she had been right and the lock was magnetic. She wouldn't have time in the dark to find and disable hydraulic lines.
The entire front swung back like the door to a refrigerator. Stumbling in, she reached desperately for the bunk. She kicked the waterless toilet hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, but then she knew to lunge in the other direction. She found his calf first, her sudden grasp making him flinch. Blindly, she skimmed her palms along; knees, hip, ribs, elbows, shoulders, then finally his head, tucked down behind his fists. Wiggins had warned her that the Raven was taller than she'd been estimating, but the true impact came home to her now. Carrying or dragging him from this cell wasn't an option; she'd have to force him to move. Her lover warned her he didn't take force well.
The Raven would move for his Lenore! Higher pitch than her own voice, tightness from the same concern she would have for her own lover under similar conditions. Lenore's words had stumbled as her passions rose. Spyder pulled the hood away from her head, freed her braid, wrapping it once loosely around her neck, the end dangling over her right shoulder as Lenore's had done.
"Sher…Sherlock?" Imitating Lenore's voice, Spyder tried pulling at his arm, but the one she could reach led to a dislocated shoulder. She pulled at his belt loops instead. "Sherlock, we have to go! I found us a way out, but we have to go now! Can you walk?"
For a moment she thought he wasn't going to respond at all and tried to think of an alternate plan. Maybe the Monolith could hold out the fire. Unseen in the dark, a hand swept over her face, then wrapped itself in the braid. She pulled at the loops again, feeling him slowly sitting up, sliding forward.
"The power's gone bu…but I think I know where we are. We need to avoid the guards, okay? Can you stand?" In response he lurched forward and she barely caught him as his legs gave out more than they held. She started pulling him toward the door.
She counted silently, noticing he was trying to pull away from her even as they neared the ladder. She fumbled for his hands, noting further damage, but putting them on the first rungs. "You have to climb." Convinced he had noted her deception; her voice was dropping back to her own tones. "I can't carry you, and I won't leave without you! Climb, damn you!"
She watched the space above her, hearing his movements in the dark. She could barely make out voices, was afraid they had taken too long, when suddenly the space above was filled with an orange glow. The fires were started and the race was on. She followed him off the ladder.
An alarm was ringing, seeming to rise from the guard's mobile phones instead of the structure itself. It would be faster to try to get him out the front of the building, but the street cameras were too close by. She grabbed his arm, pulling him tight to a structural column. They inched around it as a few flashlight beams swung wildly in the direction of the open shaft. She watched several guards start down the ladder and tried to gesture to him to run for the back of the building. Wiggins had told her listening was also a skill he lacked.
She snatched up the piece of rebar she had spotted on the way in, wedging it between the ladder and the shaft. Three strong kicks wrenched the ladder loose and it dropped to the floor below. She grabbed his arm, trying to sprint, but his legs were still not cooperating.
A beloved shadow running toward them as they reached the point on the floor the music had come from. Wiggins got up under the Raven's arm, lifting most of his weight from her. He was yelling at her to just come along, but she had waved them on.
She pulled Charlie's gift from deep in her boot, unwinding the primer cord. Charlie always knew where the least protected building sites were. Guessing the burst of music had come from the Monolith, she placed the stick where she thought her gymnastics had started. She played out the cord, kneeling to light the fuse. Charlie promised her at least two minutes to get as far as she could. It would blow a hole into the chamber below. Searchers would find a set of bones, and the intruders would have to believe their captive had died. The many deaths of a dead man, she giggled.
She ran, glad she couldn't see her lover ahead. If she couldn't see them, perhaps the intruders couldn't, either. The guards she could spot in the fog seemed more focused on unloading boxes and crates from above and into trucks, cars, and more of the abandoned spaces along this street. Authority would have a field day with whatever was left behind.
Spyder stumbled slightly on a pile of loose bricks, trying to stay close to the outside of the warehouse wall until she could get far enough away to remain unnoticed. The Giant was on her before she could draw a breath.
He had grabbed her under the arms, lifted her like a small child. Some terrible recognition in his spit grey eyes. Pure instinct drove her foot into his solar plexus. She knew it wouldn't have enough force to bruise his heart or tear his diaphragm, but it knocked the wind out of him and forced him to let go. She had knelt, reached for the switchblade sewn into her boot, screaming, impassioned for a jugular, when the dynamite finally exploded, and filled the air with sharpened dust.
Hallucinations. One of the problems with a prolonged death spiral was that it gave the mind too much time to become fanciful. Neanderthal instincts had tried to save the flesh only to damage it further. The shame of yielding to impulse, knowing his resources should have been better used. Now what little he had left was being drained playing silly buggers. There were illusions he would have at least found pleasant, a few memories worth returning to in the final moments. He could have even accepted some foolish list of things he was supposed to feel regret about, but this disjointed input was absurd. A tiny, impossibly elflike girl with insane emerald eyes and ruby streaks on her cheek smiling up at him as she moved his hand and elbow. An explosion of pain somewhere very far away closed the blackness around him.
The tapping, when it came, was so ethereal Molly almost missed it. She had left undone most of the security bolts earlier in the evening, prepared her elaborate first aid kit, kept a pot of broth warmed on the hob, water bottles lined up in the fridge and along a countertop. Not daring to hope, she opened the door without looking first.
Spyder had propped him against the door and Molly caught him as he fell into her flat. If shock hadn't stolen her breath, Molly would have screamed. She had seen him bleed, seen broken bones he fought to ignore, a memorable concussion that seemed to trigger a four hour lecture jag as he fought off sleep to finish a case. Even his "death" hadn't chilled her like this. Unprepared, she fell beneath him, angling to pad him from the tiled floor. She was catching Sherlock's ghost.
Spyder carefully bent his knees, getting his feet out of the way so she could close and bolt the door. Poor Lenore! She had tried to warn her that her Raven would be less than whole. He was trying to protect his head with his arms again and Spyder found the switch, leaving the entryway lit only by the flickering television in Lenore's lounge. "Kept in the dark." Spyder hummed quietly. "Senses played with, short circuiting."
He seemed to calm as Molly rolled from beneath him, searching out his eyes. They seemed undamaged, but they darted around the hall, focusing on nothing. She took the cue from the smaller woman, keeping her voice quiet and even. "Sherlock? Sherlock, can you hear me? You're safe now, it's okay." No discernable response. The urge to scream was so strong, lash out, panic, curl in a ball and weep. Indulgences maybe she'd have later, but right now, he couldn't afford it. "Where's Wiggins?"
A smile tugged at Spyder's lips. A proper match. "Backtracking, making sure we weren't noticed or followed. He'll be back when he's sure. We should get your Raven cleaned up. He'll be more comfortable that way."
Molly stood. Trusting this insane girl seemed impossible. She wasn't even supposed to trust his own brother, yet Spyder had brought him here. "See if you can get him sitting up. I'll want to listen to his lungs later. I'll go run a bath."
She closed the door before turning on the light, not wanting to brighten the hallway. Molly had always kept scented candles in jars for when she felt the need for a long soak. She turned on the water, adjusted the temperature cooler than she would normally use to keep from shocking him. She retrieved a couple bottles of hydrogen peroxide from under the sink and poured them in. She had never seen him so frighteningly pale. His skin would need almost as much help as a wound. The contents of a small bottle of baby wash foamed in the running water. She kept it on hand for the few occasions she'd gotten sunburned. When the tub was filled, she turned the water off; glad the door would muffle the sound of the air hammer in her hot water taps.
When her eyes adjusted to the low light of the hallway, Molly froze, watching. Spyder had obviously gotten into the first aid kit and retrieved a syringe without a needle on it. She had filled it from one of the water bottles and was using it to get small amounts past his unmoving lips, using her other thumb, rubbing from the outside, loosening them.
She seemed startled, seeing Molly stare. "He's dehydrated. Soft tissues would tear if he tried to drink now."
An icy fist settled in Molly's stomach. "Someone did this to you." It wasn't a question.
"Don't ever ask me that." the small woman's voice went eerily flat. "You can't ever ask that or I'll have to leave." A tremor started across her shoulders.
Molly remembered Spyder's words from earlier at the shelter: "His wings are broken but not as badly as mine." Another word, a word for both of them tried to push its way up in her mind, but she shoved it away, unable to bear it. "I'll get the stethoscope."
- Next chapter within forty eight hours. Pax.