12. Working hard
" Gott verdammt!" The male medic cried, flinging his hands in the air with frustration. Would nothing go well? " Lucy ze vire you gafe me vas ze vrong length for ze YX-20 slot, und now ve haf to revork ze whole circuit!" Another setback, usually things did not take this long! Lucy gave a disinterested shrug, and pandered off to fetch the right wire.
Lucy's conduct the entire day was worrying. Last night she'd been so gung ho about the project, giving suggestions and brilliantly speeding along the process. Now she was making the sort of mistakes someone would expect from a girl her age, a wire too long for this, a wrong screw in that. It had only cost them a few minutes here and there, but those minutes were slowly adding up into hours. She also seemed to have forgotten even the basics of quantum physics.
"Kinder" He muttered. He'd been trying to speak more english, even to himself but when he got frustrated he slipped back into his mother tongue. "kann ihnen nicht trauen".
" Excuse me, but if you could speak something I can understand that would be great." Ah, his snappy counterpart. A bit rough around the edges but she'd shared her theories of organ autoregeneration with him, and she was quite brilliant.
" Apologies fraulein, I'm frustrated."
" It's fine. I think Mariya's death's gotten to Lucy, she never would have made these sort of mistakes back home."
" Vell, she has to stop making zem here. Ve don't haf all zat much time to spare if ve vant to make our goal uf undah a veek. And vith people dying ve should delay as little as possible before sending your team home since you seem so determined I must not use zeir organs."
"Agreed." Miss Pauling strode in on the two of them.
" Fraulein Pauling." The male medic nodded. Miss Pauling was wonderful to have around, but he was a little puzzled as to what she was doing here. Inter dimensional travel wasn't exactly her area.
" Sorry to interrupt, I just thought I'd check on your progress so I could get a little sanity. "
" You're looking to us for sanity? Sorry lady, I don't think you know me very well, but I've been trying to make people grow extra fingers in my spare time." Saanvi, always counted upon for reality checks.
" I must agree vith my colleague, Fraulein."
" Yeah, I know it's bad but the scouts are driving me crazy. Just let me sit on a counter back here and troll the internet for high powered bloodstain removers." Saanvi's face was rather shocked, but she would learn that though Miss Pauling seemed something of a librarian her job was in fact quite… gruesome at times.
" Ja, go ahead. Just do not disturb us." Miss Pauling plopped onto an empty counter and pulled out her phone. The medic's turned their attention back to the teleporter.
Where the hell was Dell? He'd vanished to go find a soldering iron for the outer casing and hadn't returned. While the medic had enjoyed the relief of an unclouded mind his absence heralded, it still did not disrupt the fact that he'd been missing for over half an hour.
He did cloud up the medic's mind quite a bit. His pigeon blue eyes, that lopsided but well meaning grin, the purposefully uneloquent speech… it was all entrancing. The medic wrapped himself in riddles of biological phenomena and prided himself on his calculatedly mad air, yet here was a man with more mechanical brilliance than any other being alive and who seemed utterly normal. No sense of grandeur, or hunt for creating just to create. He, in his own words, "solved practical problems" and that was all. Utterly fascinating.
His shoulders didn't help either. The man was sculpted as if Michelangelo's David had a love child with a petite grizzly bear. The medic never tired of looking at him.
" Hey Fritz, quit daydreaming you nearly blew us all to smithereens and plugged the number 4 hose into the energy grappler." Saanvi snapped him back into reality
" Perhaps that vas my intention." He snarled. " Und my name es not Fritz."
" Yeah, yeah. Do the world a favor and ask the man on a date so you can focus."
" I don't undah stand how you can be so vell spoken in your logs and so churlish in ze real vurld." Ha, she blushed.
" Why the hell were you leafing through my logs?"
" Because I vas vundering vat you said about me. Vhy are you blushing, zere vas nothing compromising in nature."
" No.. I…" He saw her swallow. " My handwriting sucks."
" Oh, is zat all? My handwritting appears to be several spidahs a toddlah smashed onto a peice uf papah."
" Weird metaphor, but okay. And yes, I am more articulate in my logs because I have better time to formulate my words. My papers and lab reports are actually pretty well written if I do say so myself."
" I undahstand. Perhaps zere is more ve have in common zan just a love of broadvay."
" I still say Phantom of The Opera sucks." The male medic let out an indignant gasp. " I mean, it take a lot of talent to pull off the music but the story seems so full of itself and I'm not a huge fan of the characters."
" Perhaps I should blow us up." He cursed. What sort of depraved creature did not like The Phantom of the Opera?
" Well, it's not like you'd be the only one gunning for us."
A grim silence followed. There was that constant reminder than someone among them had committed murder, and was likely to do it again. If it was anything but permanent death the prospect would excite him, even fascinate him, but it was permanent and that meant anyone could soon be gone forever.
" I had bettah go und find Dell. " He said quickly, standing up from the teleporter. Saanvi nodded.
His gut twinged at the thought that the murderer could have gotten to Dell. Or possibly… that Dell was the murderer
…
Not a single soldering iron in the entire base, unbelievable! Lucy had brought one up to the medibay with her the first day with all the other tools, but now she claimed no knowledge of its whereabouts and there was not another one to be found throughout the entire base. Dell had spent the last half hour scouring closets and various containers all over, with no luck.
Lucy was worrying him. His first conversation with her had proved her to be intelligent, determined if somewhat snappish, and above all else curious. Now she acted like she couldn't care less, and her knowledge of teleporter mechanics was rudimentary at best. Shows that first impressions aren't always right.
He was making his way back to the medibay when he bumped into the medic.
" Aah, Dell I vas just coming to check on you." The medic was blushing, strange.
" Did I need checking up on?"
"Vell, no, but you know vith a murderer about und you had been gone for quite some time I vas-"
" Wondering if you could salvage anything for you experiments?" The medic's face looked hurt but Dell knew it was probably an act. The guy was more obsessed with his birds than with his teammates, he wouldn't give a damn if anything happened to any of them so long as he could use the leftovers. He was a brilliant guy, and almost a friend, but the medic worried 'cause of a murderer about? Please.
" I did not mean to insinuate zat you could not take care uf yourself." He mumbled starring at the floor.
" Don't matter. Come on, I couldn't find a soldering iron but a customized blowtorch'll do just about the same thing."
He strode ahead of the medic, but couldn't place why the guy sported such a long face.
…..
" Soldiers, atten-TION!" THe male soldier called out. He and the most-definitely-not- japanese soldier had met in the courtyard where their comrade had been buried.
" Now, there's a murderer about. Disgusting insubordination in the ranks!" He yelled, addressing the recruit. Dark times called for great leaders to make speeches, it wasn't dark out yet, and he wasn't a very good leader but nonetheless this called for a speech.
" DISGUSTING!" She shouted back, echoing him.
" DO WE LET SUCH INSURRECTION SLIDE?!"
" NO!" She technically outranked him, so she did not use the title of sir and he had to let it slide, but the male soldier would have preffered it if she used 'sir'
" WELL WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?!" An honest question, having no clue what they should do about it he was forced to confer with his comrade. Silence pervaded the scene.
" WE SET UP A PATROL!" The female soldier finally shouted.
" YES, GOOD!"
" AND WE KEEP A LOOK OUT FOR ANYONE WHO DOESN'T SEEM AMERICAN!"
" THE CULPRIT IS ABOUT SOMEWHERE!"
And so they dispatched, marching and yelling various patriotic things. Patrolling, ensuring the safety of the good american citizens surely clustered inside while paralyzed with fear, that is the duty of the soldier.
…
Medic's log,
Dr. Saanvi Ghosh
Day two after explosion, late afternoon.
Have discovered colleague is leafing through these logs without my permission, I must therefore write with the fact in mind I can no longer jot down anything too personal without fear of it being put before the public. I never did, but it was nice to have the option to write personal things in a personal log, you know? For those whose eyes are unwanted here, you are a cowardly, lazy little vain son of a bitch.
Apologies for those terms, but it's fucking true. Also, who subjects themselves to my squiggly excuse for handwriting voluntarily? I suspect insanity.
Giulia has not resurfaced, worrying. Either she is dead, functioning as her normal sneaky self, or the killer and I'm not sure which horse to put my money on. All are equally probable considering the circumstances I just cannot puzzle out a motive, if she was the killer, for the life of me. Granted, Giulia wouldn't necessarily need a motive. I've seen her torture certain insects to death out of sheer boredom.
We've repaired the last of the damage to the energy grappler, and most other wirings and safety hoses have been fixed. Lucy had been holding us back some, and I'm not sure why but I must put it down to Mariya's death. Only viable explanation. We should be able to finish repairs on schedule and begin experimentation on inter dimensional properties tomorrow.
Work would also go faster if the colleague who's most likely reading this would quit mooning over his engineer and concentrate. Yes, you, I'm talking to you. I haven't let it go that you almost blew me up today. Quit reading my log Fritz, go back to your pretentious choice in musicals. Also, the soldiers have take to roaming the halls shouting about how they're going to " bring that son of a bitch in front of a judge and shoot him as the law states" or something. Who that son of a bitch is I have no idea but the yelling is quite distracting.
No other deaths so far. Thank whatever god/s that may or may not exist for that.