A/N: Hanky time. Sorry. Don't hurt me, okay? Errm, okay--?
*****
*****
Lisa watched the knife in Leon's hand. She tried to do as she'd been told in her self-defense classes: stay balanced, minimize yourself as a target, watch the sternum, not the eyes. Eyes can mislead. But she knew her body would betray her: right now, she hadn't the agility or the speed to keep out of the blade's way.
I tried, Jackson.
Leon's eyes twinkled sympathetically. "Regrets, Lise--?"
And his hand and the S.O.G., the blade gory red, shot forward, right at her chest, and she wasn't fast enough, not nearly, as she tried to twist away--
He missed. The blade slit the lapel of her coat.
Leon shouted in pain.
Lisa froze at the raw animal shock in the sound. In the time it took her to draw another breath, what happened next was nearly halfway over.
When Lisa entered the apartment, she and Leon had closed some of the distance between themselves and Rippner. Leon had closed more of it when he took that staggering step back, the blade of the S.O.G. stuck in his torso.
Rippner had closed the rest now.
The sound that had just exploded from Leon's throat had come in response to Rippner slashing the Achilles tendon of his right foot. He had a knife, Rippner did (with numb, distant clarity, Lisa saw in her mind the two empty slots in his knife case, not one but two); now he had Leon as well. He was still on the floor, but he hauled Leon's weight backwards, savagely, onto that wounded right ankle, and Leon, shouting again in shock and pain, dropped to his knees even as he tried to defend himself, blocking with a back-swung arm.
Which was exactly what Rippner wanted. He jerked Leon's arm straight with his free hand, twisted it, shoved it upward and in, angling it across Leon's back. Leon lost the S.O.G.; he lost his balance to the twisting pain, went face-down on the floor.
She saw it, Lisa did. She saw what Rippner was about to do. She knew, in the second before it happened, two things:
This is what he is.
And I would be dead by now, if that was what he wanted.
Rippner rammed the blade of his knife, all the way to the guard, into the back of Leon's neck. Just below the base of his skull. A wet, hollow punching sound. Leon thrashed once and went still.
All in less than eight seconds.
Rippner sat twitching. He was gasping raggedly. He looked at the handle of his knife; he looked at Leon. He pushed off the floor as if fish hooks had been strung from the ceiling and barbed through his skin, as though his body were no longer his. He stood-- and then his legs buckled.
"Jackson--" Lisa caught him, grunted in her weakness as she took his weight. He looked at her as if confused. His face was grayish-white, slick with sweat. His body shook spastically against hers. She eased him to the sofa.
"Lie down," she said.
*****
She had to wonder how far the water would spread. She dragged one of the steel-frame kitchen chairs past Leon without looking at him. Nausea might come later; her mind had yet to register consciously the fact and violence of his death. Four feet from the aquarium, she stopped. The moon jellies drifted placidly in the clear dark water; the Irukandji remained invisible. Resting on the tank's blue-graveled bottom was a small black box much like the one she'd received at Rippner's.
Lisa grasped the top of the chair and swung the legs at the aquarium as hard as she could.
A whump that sent electric jolts across her shoulders. A scrunching crack in the glass. A trickle of water.
She hoisted the chair, swung it again.
The middle of the aquarium disappeared. The water, exposed, hung for a moment, suspended. Then the top of the aquarium crashed into the bottom, and all was outrush and flood. Lisa dropped the chair, nearly slipped stepping clear. The jellyfish, borne in helpless slurpings across the smooth floor, came to rest in gelatinous puddles. The box remained where it was. Lisa reached for it--
Stopped.
On the top: an Irukandji. A perfect, tiny circle of clear gelatin.
She looked about: a tool, a spatula--
Leon. She crossed to him, minding her step on the wet floor. A jelly had washed up against his cheek. Red welts were rising on his freshly dead skin. Lisa looked away as she grasped the handle of Rippner's knife. The blade grated past vertebrae as it slid free.
She returned to the ruins of the aquarium, flicked the tiny jellyfish away with the blade of the knife. Looked closely, carefully, for others, saw none.
She crossed to the serving counter, the box in one hand, Rippner's knife in the other. She set both on the countertop, shrugged out of her coat. She opened the box. Fortunately water-tight. A hypo inside, the syringe half full of pale green liquid. She had to assume the empty half was meant for her blood.
She pushed up the sleeve of her cardigan, straightened her elbow, made a fist, tapped her skin.
And couldn't find a vein. The beginnings of panic as she remembered more from what she'd been told by a kindly Red Cross nurse trying to create a friendly distraction for a young woman obviously nervous around needles: Veins were smart. Sneaky. They dove deep and hid when they saw a needle coming. Who could blame them?
Lisa paused. Took a calming breath.
Her left hand. Veins branching on the back. Bluish tubes firm beneath the skin. She guided the needle with her free hand, held it in place with her fingertips, drew the plunger back with her lips. Her blood flowed, deep, rich red, up into the syringe.
Gently she shook the hypo. Careful small circles, to minimize the amount of air trapped in the liquid. The contents of the syringe turned a warm golden color.
She was turning from the counter toward the living area when another multi-jolt of pain hit her. A private earthquake, quick tiny tremblors of agony. She caved at the waist, gasping--
She dropped the hypo.
She watched it fall.
It didn't break. It tumbled sideways to the wet wooden floor. The plunger didn't depress; the needle didn't bend or snap.
Shaking, the pain again subsiding, she picked it up. Went to Rippner.
She knelt on the plastic sheeting beside the sofa. She held the hypo by the barrel of the syringe between her lips while she used Rippner's knife to slit to his elbow the sleeves of his suit jacket and dress shirt. His skin was clammy and cold. He was watching her, but she felt he couldn't quite see her.
"Two knives, Lise," he said. His voice was soft and desperate. "Always two knives. I always carry two; he didn't check for the second one. Promise me you'll check, Lise. Always check--"
"I promise, Jackson." She found a vein in his arm, or thought she did. Near enough. It had to be. She pushed the slant-razor-tip of the needle through his skin, pressed the plunger home. Rippner didn't flinch. She could see him watching with mild, distant curiosity as the antidote entered his body.
"If you don't check, you'll-- He didn't check. I worry about you, Lise. You must know I do. I worry about--"
He stopped speaking. He closed his eyes, breathed out. Went still. Lisa stared at his closed lids.
"Jackson--?"
She set the hypo aside, pressed shaking fingertips up under his jaw, felt his throat. The soft spots to the right and left of his Adam's apple, where she'd watched his pulse, counted the beats, only yesterday or the day before, on the plane, when he tried to tell her there was something besides darkness and rain, a fantastical, horrible something, outside the window. Very, very early this morning, then, too, as they looked at one another just after, immediately after, their bodies one in warmth, still quaking with shared pleasure. An impromptu, sleepy coupling. He'd smiled down at her, playfully rubbed noses with her, kissed her lips. Nothing but affection and respect in his clear eyes: she knew he knew, given the harm that had been done her in the past, how brave she'd been in allowing him to take his first turn on top. As he re-settled himself beside her, returned with her to sleep, she'd watched his throat and thought, wonderingly, how well they matched, the beat and pace of his heart and hers.
She'd outpaced him now. One time for all time. His pulse points felt still. His skin was cooling beneath her numb fingertips.
How many minutes too late? (In all the violence and excitement, she'd lost track of the count. She wasn't a doctor. She wasn't a secret agent. She was a desk manager at a bloody hotel.) In attacking Leon, had Rippner closed the distance between himself and death that much more quickly?
She sat herself near him on the plastic-sheeted floor. The plastic was dry. She rested her head near Rippner's, on the edge of the sofa cushion. Her eyes were filled with tears, but she was too tired to cry. Between the tension and horror of the last five minutes and whatever was in her blood, she was exhausted. She had to call the police--
No: she would do that from Rippner's apartment. Not from here.
He won't mind.
Just a minute. One or two. To catch her breath, to clear her head, her blurring vision. Now that the fighting was done, the apartment was beginning to feel cooler. She shivered. She hadn't the focus to fetch her coat from the kitchen area. Across the way, Leon was lying silent and heavy. Our bodies are less gravity-defiant in death. His head was turned; he was facing away from her. His right hand was palm-up at his side in a sheen of water. She thought of Rippner behind her, the sweat evaporating from his shirt and forehead and pale cheeks, his forearm exposed where she'd slit his sleeves.
He'll be cold--
She thought she might sense him breathing. Stillness was sifting like dust from the darkness high up in the ceiling. The least breath would stir that dust, make an eddy, a current. From his lips to his lungs. He'd breathe in, out. She'd cover him with her coat, and he'd be warm--
Lisa rested her head against the sofa cushion and let the tears run down her cheeks.
*****
*****