Disclaimer in previous chapters. Some stepping up of the timetable ensues. There will be Author's notes at the end of the chapter.
- . -
"Come with me, please, doctor."
He reflected on the poor sentence construction, but otherwise didn't pay the guard the slightest bit of attention. The monitor that had been feeding him the energy analysis had gone completely dark about twenty minutes ago, indicating the Plant it had been monitoring had entered a state of energy conservation.
Vash had done that several times. He wasn't really sure why, but he had a hunch it had nothing to do with Vash's injuries or his missing limb. There was nothing to stop Vash from overwhelming that monitor if he wanted to. They might have forced him into manifesting like a Plant, but he was continuing to surprise them at every turn.
Maybe it had to do with the way his system was metabolizing drugs? He responded pretty normally to the usual prescriptions, simple sedatives, painkillers, and even antibiotics. Maybe the Plant inhibiting drugs changed his response to everything else? He didn't have access to the schedule Dr. Shrew was keeping Vash on, so there was no way to see if the drug exposure coincided with any of the spikes or dips. Doubtlessly the woman was bright enough to make that leap on her own.
"Doctor."
He finally spared the man a glance, rather surprised to see the guard's hand on his gun, for once. He felt his eyebrow raise of its own accord. "Or you'll shoot me, officer?" he inquired mildly. "How much use would I be then?"
"About as much as you are now," the officer retorted, and Doc actually laughed. Finally! He'd found one with a sense of humor.
"Well said, young sir. Where is it you'd like me to go?"
"Dr. Shrew has summoned you."
He shook his head slowly. "Ah, if only you had not revealed the truth. I have no desire to speak to or see that woman again, thank you."
The guard stepped fully into the room, hand still on his weapon. "I recognize your opinion, but disregard it," he replied honestly. "I will remove you from this lab by force if necessary."
What on earth –
Of course.
Doc blinked, turning to fix the young man with a penetrating stare. "And what do you think about all this, young officer?" he finally inquired. "What is your take on this situation?"
The officer wasn't so easily distracted, and approached him confidently. "I don't think. I accept orders. It's easier and I sleep a little better at night. Please come with me."
What a delightful young man! Doc chuckled as he took his feet. It was likely the last truly sincere laugh he would have in life, and he enjoyed it to the fullest. When he was done, he regretfully cast a look around the lab, watching that lightless monitor. "He's been pulled from the bulb, hasn't he."
The officer didn't respond, instead taking him by his old, wrinkled elbow. Doc allowed himself to be guided out of the room. About ten years ago he'd discovered, rather painfully, that he was no longer strong enough to resist youth. While he would have liked nothing better than a brief scuffle followed by a valiant charge through the ship with the liberated gun of the guard, he knew full well it was far outside his abilities.
Dr. Shrew would summon him out of the lab for only two reasons. One would be to show him she'd successfully installed Knives into a bulb. The second would be because her treasured patient wasn't stable enough to be brought to him.
As there was no activity on the monitor, he was fairly confident this situation would be the latter.
He was less confident in predicting his reaction to that situation.
The guard guided him down the long, familiar hallway. This ship was slightly different from his own, which had been modified to hold all the cold-sleep tubes. Clearly this ship had had a more military flavor from the start. Its cargo spaces would have held significantly larger equipment, and there was no evidence any civilians had ever been present. It was possible the man that led him down the steel, braided walkways had actually been born on Earth.
What a rude awakening. Told he would see an Eden, and trapped in a world exactly opposite from old Earth. It had been a desert of water, and now they had a desert of sand. Though he still had memories of rain aggravating his arthritis, which he'd developed at quite a young age, he would give anything for that now-alien ache.
He'd traded it for scaly dry skin, and it itched like the devil every time he lay down to sleep.
It occurred to him that it might be nice to have a little nap before Knives found the site and destroyed it. There was still the brief chance that comprehending what had been done to his brother would trigger the same response such a horrifying thing had done to him as a child, but it was not something he was going to count on. Whatever method they felt would be effective in delivering their chemicals to Knives, it would fail.
The question was not how to escape the situation. The question was not even whether he should help them try to stop Knives. All his help would equate to naught. He'd never dealt with Knives, not really. Just the bits and pieces Vash had revealed to him, and those pieces had been few and far between. He knew of their deal, he recalled how pleased the arrangement had made Vash. For a brief moment, he'd been hopeful.
He recalled that Knives was telepathic, like Vash himself. Probably telekinetic, too, while he was going through his known list of Plant psionics. He smirked to himself as he considered empathy – it was unlikely the Plant used it if he had it. And an ability to manifest Angel Arms, there was no ignoring that.
And what did all this knowledge equal? Merely the knowledge that a few soldiers with dart guns would be utterly ineffectual in the fight against Knives. Perhaps if the ship were fully functional and in the upper atmosphere of Gunsmoke it might have a shot at defending itself. As it was, buried beneath the sand, it was merely a target.
He was certain they mistakenly thought it afforded them protection. After all, some of the basements in July and Augusta had remained intact. Some of the ground floors of buildings had still been standing. In both instances, Vash had been the one releasing the energy, and he'd been releasing it at a target other than the city itself.
They thought the sand offered some protection from Knives' Angel Arm. They thought their base had at least a small, natural line of defense.
He hadn't corrected them yet. Perhaps Meryl Stryfe had failed to note those details in her reports to Bernardelli. He was now certain that was where they'd gotten a good deal of their information. Whether they had a spy in the insurance company or had been running the post for the past decade didn't matter. What mattered was the fact that if Knives found the ship, he would penetrate the hull and kill every human inside.
Which also included this lovely young officer helping the old man through the long halls.
"I was walking ships like this before you were born, even if it was almost two hundred years ago," he finally said, not unkindly. "You may release me. What can I do? Run away?"
The guard seemed to mull that over before releasing the old man's arm. "You don't really want to waste time," he finally responded, then shook his head. "Orders," he muttered, mostly to himself.
It was unfair to sentence all these people to death. He was judging them precisely the same way Knives did. And he was too old to be a hypocrite.
The rest of the trip was fairly quiet, and true to his prediction, he was taken directly to the Plant staging area. There the silence stopped. It was astonishing how well the door compassed sound, because when the young guard grasped the lever and pulled down, and the seal loosened, it was as though Doc had been cast into a frigid pool of noise, complete with undertow and him still in his clothes.
There was a lot of shouting going on. Some of it was in English. Some of it wasn't in any language at all. None of it sounded happy.
Doc steeled himself for the unpleasantness he was about to see, and he entered the room.
The staging room was usually unpleasant Installing a Plant into a bulb was a fairly straightforward business. You carried a young Angel into the bulb, you in a hazmat suit and the Plant in a natural cotton robe, you deposited it at the bottom of the bulb, you attached a few needles and lines, and you left. Entire time spent in staging room – about ten minutes. Really it was more staging of the technicians making sure their air was turned on and the Plant was still sedated.
The next time you visited the staging area was for maintenance. Maintenance included swiping a stress sensor over the bulb to detect weaknesses in the structure. Total time in the room was about thirty minutes, and if you were very lucky, the Plant might come close to the glass out of curiosity, to see what you were doing with the blinky thing.
The third time a technician entered the staging area was for cleanup, after a Last Run. It didn't matter how many suits you wore, it would take lemons or ammonia to get the particles of incinerated fatty tissue off your body. Total time, including bulb time, would exceed fifteen hours. The work included crouching at the bottom of the bulb with a sharp, flat blade, trying to scrape all the death off before the next Plant was installed.
On Earth they'd discovered that not properly cleaning a bulb between Plants led to a significantly shorter lifespan of the second Plant, and a greater chance of resistance of the Last Run. Now there were strict protocols in place in regards to cleaning the bulbs.
He'd never had to clean a bulb. He wondered how long it would take them to clean this one. Probably not too long. Vash had only been there for five days. Even congealed blood would come up off the glass pretty easily.
They'd pulled him out of the bulb. That was pretty clear. A gaggle of technicians, some in thick biosuits and others in simple cleansuits were all gathered around something, and that something was screaming.
The voice was unrecognizable as Vash's. It was significantly softer, though still masculine. It wasn't exactly childlike, though. It was as though the voice didn't know how to speak anymore. It was the cry of a newborn if that newborn had been graced with a mature throat and Adam's apple. And there was a frequency to it that he recognized from bulb recordings. It sounded polyphonic, as though there were more than once voice, and more than one pitch being produced. If it had been raised in song, it would have completed its own chord.
Instead, it expressed fright and pain. There was nothing angelic about it.
Dr. Shrew was visible in her white coat, standing off to the side consulting her machines. She probably had the right idea; it looked as though her assistants were simply trying to make the sound stop.
Doc hoped they heard it for the rest of their short lives, every time they closed their eyes. He knew he would.
One of the monitors showed a badly distorted overhead view of the Plant, and it was this one he gravitated towards. The physical changes. Inhibitors had been administered, shrinking his Angel Arm to nothing more than a slightly elongated humanoid arm, a few white feathers. His exposed skin was chalky were it wasn't streaked with dried and fresh blood, darkly oozing from the deep wells and grooves the removed metals had left in his body. Ribs showed prominently beneath that skin, rising and falling frantically between each cry. His legs were tied down but trying to curl, bent slightly at the knee but far too weak to break the nylon bonds holding them.
It was easier to stabilize a Plant in a bulb, where the environment could be completely controlled. Now that he was out, no longer sustained by his own energy, Vash was doing exactly what he'd been doing when they'd put him in the bulb.
He was dying.
But there was something quite different about him. Doc took a step closer, studying the monitor closely, trying to peer through the static snow. Some of those wells should have gone through him. Some of the surgery done on his torn body had been pins that had stretched entirely through his musculature and skeletal systems, with ends protruding from his back to his chest.
Most of those were filled. The area that had once been held together with a mesh of metal was now a shining patchwork of pale white scar tissue.
And where the bionics had been removed, or rather butchered off his body, the stump that Knives had left him had grown about four inches.
Regeneration? Could he actually regrow the limb, or heal his own injuries?
But some of the injuries weren't touched. He was wearing so many of his own fluids it looked as though they'd been painted onto his body instead of clothes. His feet were arched downward, a sure sign of seizure, but he was still screaming, in control of the release of air from his lungs. His intact arm lay limply on the metal gurney, the only part of him that wasn't trembling. It wasn't moving at all.
Doc glanced at some of the medical readouts, noting blood pressure, pulse, temperature. Vash was badly chilled, at about 95 degrees at his core, and his pulse was extremely erratic. Doc took the time to wonder that the Plant was conscious at all.
Of all the times to just pass out and accept your fate . . .
Dr. Shrew had finally noted his presence, and unlike the scrambling of her assistants, she casually walked over to join him by the monitor bay as though her patient weren't convulsing his life away not twenty feet from them. Nor did the noise seem to distress her. Of course, her equipment was as far from Vash as it could possibly be in the rather cramped room, and her expression was slightly flushed, but he attributed that to the excitement of collecting the data, not the consequence it was spelling out.
"Good afternoon, Doctor."
He didn't return the greeting, which he knew wouldn't slow her down. She barely waited the amount of time required by polite society before continuing, handing him a patient history. For once he accepted the clipboard, thumbing through the lengthy record.
"I ask for your assistance one more time. We both agree the Plant is precious, and our differing opinions are irrelevant. Do you have any advice to share on handling its current symptoms?"
He shook his head, contemplating another laugh. Vash didn't need cynicism right now. He needed to be unconscious. But given the data Doc was seeing, he could see why she was hesitant to give him any more sedatives than she already had.
She'd given him enough to knock out someone four times his weight. Vash was tall, but very athletically built. He was pretty light, all things considered. More now that he was so badly dehydrated. In fact, her attempt to knock him out was probably responsible for the heart rate and blood pressure problems.
An ordinary human would have stroked out and died. He wasn't actually sure why Vash was still alive.
He heard the Plant choke, glancing at the monitor to see a technician cramming an oxygen mask on him. The tubes connected to that mask were tiny. Even if it was one hundred percent O2, it wouldn't be a large enough volume of air.
He could let them fail. He could do nothing, and let Vash go.
It wouldn't be the first time he'd made a decision like that for a patient. It wasn't something he'd been taught in med school, but med school was as far from practical medicine on Gunsmoke as anything could get. He hadn't been too hopeful of Vash's recovery when they'd plucked him out of the desert. Back then he'd been surviving on resolve alone, and it had been enough.
Now, listening to that voice, knowing what must have happened on a physical level to enable him to produce that sound . . .
"Put him in a cold-sleep tube," he snapped, regretting every word. "You're not going to get him stable like this."
"We can't," the doctor replied calmly, reaching over his hands to flip the clipboard again. "It's still emitting energy. If we expose it to advanced electronics it'll destroy them."
She was right. He was actually emitting energies. Several kinds, in fact, all of which were the harder to produce variety. He would indeed fry anything that was put near him. It was probably the reason for the screen distortion, and the distance of the monitoring equipment. In fact, it was probably at levels high enough to warrant caution when being in the same room with him.
The thought sobered him considerably. That she would go to such a risk belied more than a professional interest in the Plant.
"If you refuse to help, you can stand in the observation room if you like," she offered, seeming to sense his thoughts. "You should be safe from the adverse effects of the energy."
She wasn't giving him the option of leaving, though. She was making it clear she was going to force him to watch the consequences of withholding assistance.
And could he? Was that what Vash would really want?
He looked back at the gaggle of people, then the snowy monitor. Vash was shaking his head weakly against the oxygen mask, unable to lift his arm to remove it. His rejection moves were classic and instinctive. He thought he was being suffocated. Every movement he produced resulted in more blood from his unclotted wounds.
His blood wasn't coagulating. That was why he hadn't had a stroke yet.
There was also the chance that new scar tissue could be no more than skin deep, and he could be bleeding internally. It could account for the wildly erratic blood pressure.
He looked away, listening to the now-choked cries. Vash wasn't aware. Not really. He was trapped now somewhere between himself and the existence of his sister Plants – confused, only basically perceptive of his surroundings. Doubtlessly there wasn't a coherent thought passing through his consciousness. He might not have really been conscious in a clinical sense at all.
There was no guarantee he'd ever regain that awareness. There was no guarantee he wouldn't remain in this state permanently. And there was no guarantee that he wouldn't revert back to his natural, humanoid form within a few hours. If he did, he would prefer to be conscious, to be aware, to at least give stopping Knives a shot.
And if nothing else, finding Vash in the same state as the other Plant in the ship might slow Knives down. He might be so concerned he'd simply kill only those necessary to extract his brother to their home. And if he were conscious enough to make that call, he would happily be used as bait, however unknowingly, if it meant saving human lives.
He sighed, shaking his head. "Get that mask off his face!" he snapped into the room, not surprised that the noisy scrambling died back significantly. He still had the commanding presence of a surgeon in a theater when he needed to, and it was rare they heard it from a male throat.
"Administer fifteen milligrams of coufarin," he muttered into the relative quiet, glancing at the monitors a moment more. "And another two hundred of arixtor."
Dr. Shrew smiled. "If I wanted an executioner, I wouldn't have bothered you."
He glanced at his watch. "Make it twenty on the coufarin, and add an extra five for ever five seconds you delay."
"Seven milligrams would kill it –"
"Your patient will bleed out before we finish this argument. That is my advice. Take it or leave it."
He chose to stare at his watch instead of the doctor, and now that the mask had been removed and Vash could get more air, his screams continued. They had less strength, and this affected volume as well as pitch. The weakening could be likened to a screaming two year old, unhappy with being put down for a nap but slowly petering off.
Another six seconds passed before the other doctor made her decision, and oddly, he watched her palm the bottle of coufarin herself, drawing the dose. She drew nearly thirty milligrams, more than three times the amount necessary to kill either a Plant or a human, and exactly the increase that her hesitance had prescribed. She nodded sharply to one of the technicians, who was in the process of measuring out the arixtor.
He watched her assistants melt out of her way, watched her expertly insert the needle into the exposed blood vessels of Vash's neck. Once she made up her mind, there was no hesitation, no shaking hands. Before her assistant had finished administering the arixtor Vash's respiration had slowed markedly. Within twenty seconds of the coufarin his screams were reduced to whispers of exhaled air, nothing more.
The sound was very human.
Now that the Plant was no longer completely surrounded by technicians and assistants, he counted on his old eyes rather than the equipment. A brief glance told him what he needed to know. Shallow breaths, no longer utilizing his middle abdomen. Infrequent. Not rhythmic. Uncoordinated twitches in his legs, small convulsions of his upper body. Another ten seconds and his shivers finally halted.
For the first time, it was utterly quiet in the room.
Then the machines started screaming.
He glanced at the monitor, noting the machine had rebooted and the graphics were now crystal clear. The energy hemorrhage had stopped.
All respiration had stopped.
Vash was still again.
The technicians glanced among themselves, but no one said a word. Dr. Shrew stood beside Vash, though her eyes were still glued to her equipment. He shook his head. Trained to trust the computers more than her own eyes.
He walked over until he stood beside her, lifting one of Vash's eyelids and peering at the tissues there. His aquamarine eyes were dull and lifeless, and his pupils didn't respond to the change in light. The inside of his eyelid was as pallid as his face.
Doc nodded to himself, closing the eye gently. Even the outer skin of his eyelid was covered in a slick, cold sweat. The changes the chemicals had forced in his body hadn't been allowed to gradually release. That was probably the reason for the pain and distress he'd so clearly been perceiving. If he'd had a few days, that could possibly have been dealt with –
"I'm sorry, Vash," he whispered. "I'm sorry."
The Plant beneath his hand took a shallow, shuddering breath.
- . -
Meryl gasped, her eyes flying open sightlessly as a giant, chilled hand squeezed down around her chest. Her reaction wasn't enough; the icy hands tightened impossibly, and she felt herself trying to gasp again, mouth stretched wide.
She couldn't breathe.
Her eyes slowly caught up to her panic, and she realized she was supine, staring at an opaque whiteness of indeterminate height and depth. There was movement beside her, on her right, and she sucked in as much air as possible for a third time as she turned towards it.
Dark eyes, dark hair. Dark clothes. Open collar. Behind that figure, there was nothing but varying shades of white.
Oh, god.
I'm dead.
Her eyes wouldn't focus, but there was something so familiar about the blurred shape –
Wolfwood?
She didn't see a cigarette, and she sucked her next breath through her nose, trying to catch the scent. Maybe he wasn't allowed to smoke. She didn't smell sulfur or anything burning, which was probably a good indication, but –
The figure smiled, she saw a flash of teeth.
"Hang in there."
She continued gasping, ever so slowly beginning to feel as though she was actually getting air. The icy hand was melting into her blood, pouring down her arms and legs and back up into her chest. She blinked a few times, still without the breath to speak.
Was this what dying felt like?
"You're fine. You're safe. Just breathe."
The varying shades of white now seemed to have a pattern above her, like they were rectangles all neatly aligned beside one another. She glanced down at herself and her laboring chest, seeing more white, but this white had a texture –
A blanket.
Meryl dropped her head back onto something soft. A pillow. A glance at her right found a dark grey uniform jacket, an unfamiliar face. The dark brown eyes were slanted and almond-shaped, and jet black eyebrows knitted together as he watched her.
Meryl gulped her next breath, swallowing with difficulty, and tried to push away from him. She found she was able; her body felt oddly stiff, as though it hadn't moved in hours.
Asleep?
No. She'd –
Meryl continued to pant as more awareness poured into her mind. The ship. The guards.
Vash.
She'd – how? She remembered being led out of the room, but everything after that was fuzzy . . . had she fainted?
She pushed herself sharply upright, and as far from the guard as she could get. He didn't make a move to stop her, though she had to yank her right arm out of his grasp. She felt a sharp sting when she did so, and glanced down at the soft hollow of her inside elbow.
A little ball of cotton was still clinging by a few fibers to a spot of blood.
Meryl stared at it a moment, then back at the guard. He held up his hands placatingly.
"Take it easy. You're okay."
She struggled to take slower, deeper breaths, realization dawning. He'd given her something to wake her up. The feeling running through her body was adrenaline. It was just – more shocking than usual.
As soon as he saw she was content to lean against the wall and glare at him, he straightened and stood from his kneeling position by the side of the low bed. She didn't see a needle in his hand. She didn't see anything in his hand, actually. A firearm was slung low on his thigh, but the leather strap that kept it securely holstered was fastened. He stepped back, to give her distance, and Meryl suddenly realized just how hard she was pressed against the wall opposite him.
"It's twenty hundred hours. You've been out for about six. I understand you were exhausted, Ms. Stryfe, and I'm sorry we had to wake you. You're needed in a briefing."
She blinked a few times, slowly getting her breathing more normalized. She still felt wool-headed, and her grainy eyes told her plainly that six hours of sleep after more than thirty awake was not what they'd had in mind. The rest of her felt ready to spring off the bed like a cat and ricochet off the walls.
"What?"
The officer glanced around himself, then leaned down and picked something up – her shoes, she realized with a start. Meryl uncoiled herself from the back wall, sitting straight-backed in the bed, and made no move to accept the offered boots.
"We wouldn't have woken you if it hadn't been necessary," he tried again, by way of apology. "Please, Ms. Stryfe."
A briefing? They wanted more information out her?
"Did Bryan order you here?"
He blinked, taken aback, then lowered the outstretched shoes to the ground beside her bed. "Please follow me, Ms. Stryfe."
She bared her teeth. "You can tell your commander he can put –"
"It was your companion that insisted on your attendance," he interrupted, a little heatedly. "I will use force if necessary."
She glared at him, but this time he didn't back away. His hands were at his sides, and his oddly slanted eyes bore no indication that he wasn't completely serious.
Part of her liked the image of forcing him to drag her, kicking and screaming, into a room to demonstrate exactly how much help they were going to get from her. They – Meryl turned away from his eyes to glare at a spot slightly to his right.
They put Vash in a bulb.
They put Vash in a bulb like he was a Plant.
And that bulb was lit, a tiny voice whispered in her mind. Because that's what he was. A Plant.
That flash of white, that curled figure – she'd seen him do that before. After LR. Every morning they'd find him curled up on his side like that, they'd had to roll him back onto his back to take care of his wounds.
When he was in a coma.
They put him in a bulb.
That was where Vash had disappeared to. These were the people that had Millie, for 'safekeeping.' These were the people that sabotaged Elizabeth's upgrades.
These were the people that had – had –
She stifled another gasp as she realized. Six hours.
It was too late. It was too late to prevent Knives from getting the letter.
It was too late to prevent Knives from finding out.
Oh, god.
She stared at the guard again, not surprised to find him returning the gaze. There seemed to be a little smirk to his expression, now, and she realized she must look as horrified as she felt.
Was that why Elizabeth had asked for her? Because she'd figured it out too?
Numbly, she pushed back the covers and slipped on her boots. She was pleased to find she was still in her uniform, though not particularly pleased to note that she still smelled as strongly as she remembered. She shoved an oily lock of hair out of her eyes and realized, as she stood, it was a long time since she'd even peed, let alone showered.
"Give me a moment," she snapped, and the guard stepped back towards one of the two doors. Probably the exit. So the other door was the bathroom.
She stalked over to it, pleased to note it was automatic as well, and peeled back into the wall to reveal the most alien-looking bathroom she'd ever seen. The toilet was recognizable but weirdly sleek-looking, and she spent a few moments sizing it up before she figured out how everything worked.
After that, it was a simple matter of determining the mechanism of the sink, and borrowing one of the two washcloths set out. She couldn't do much about her ripe clothing, but once her face, neck, and armpits were washed she felt significantly more like a human being again.
Her brain was still oddly sleep-crusted, and she shook her head vigorously as she splashed cold water on her face, rinsing off the soap.
So Knives would know something was going on. The question was what he would do about it.
How likely was he to find this ship? If Vash had revealed it existed and there was a Plant in it, he might know of the location but there'd be no reason to suspect they were there. He'd probably go to Warrens, Collins, or New Phoenix in an effort to track them down. If he found any of these 'people' there the game would be up.
She knew damn well that Knives could read minds. She knew he could move things with his mind. She'd never experienced either phenomena, but Vash had been concerned enough about it in their week stay at the little cottage that he'd barely left the bedroom where Knives had begun his recovery. If Knives got his hands on anyone that knew about this ship, he'd be no further than ten hours out.
At best, they had fifteen hours until Knives could conceivably put the pieces together.
Less, if he was lucky.
Meryl glanced at herself in the mirror, surprised at how terrible she really looked. Her face was haggard, with dark circles beneath her eyes and a grim turn to the corners of her mouth. Her hair wasn't quite as bad as she'd originally thought, and a few run-throughs tousled it enough to get away with. Her uniform was even more badly wrinkled than before, but at this point she didn't care. She doubted even freshly washed and ironed that Knives would spare her.
If Knives found Vash like that . . .
She emerged from the bathroom just a few minutes after she'd entered, and the guard was still waiting for her. She simply nodded coldly to him, and he gestured towards the door.
The walk from this new suite to the briefing room was considerably shorter than the walk to the control room had been from their holding room, and didn't give her much time to prepare herself. She wasn't sure how much cooperation to offer – in fact, she'd prefer to gather information, not give it away. By now they knew she wasn't going to cooperate with their 'project,' particularly if it meant leaving Vash like that. Or worse.
The whole thing had come crashing down around him.
The briefing room, as it turned out, was very much what it sounded like. In fact, it was quite reminiscent of the New Oregon mayor's office, which was basically a giant oval table, surrounded by chairs, and an actual desk in one corner. This one was missing the extra desk, and rather than faux wood the table was made of the same opaque white . . . stuff that everything else seemed to be made of. It was emitting a non-glaring white light, making the room bright and sterile.
She could see that the people seated at that table had been at it for quite some time. The head of the table was familiar, balding and serious. To Bryan's right sat a upright, unpleasant-looking woman with her mousy brown hair rather severely drawn back in a bun, and beside her sat a gentleman in his early sixties, completely bald apparently by choice. His sausage-sized fingers were interlocked on the table over a stack of clear plastic reports. To Bryan's left was the salt-and-pepper doctor that she recalled was showing off Vash, and to his left sat Elizabeth.
Beside her was a young man, maybe in his late twenties, scribbling away on what she now realized was a very primitive recording device – a notepad.
"My men are loyal to me," Elizabeth was saying, barely glancing at Meryl before turning back to the commander. "Their assistance would be of great service to this project."
Bryan was watching the engineer closely, and Meryl stopped in the doorway, feeling oddly unwilling to enter the room without acknowledgement.
"I'll take that into consideration," he finally amended, then turned from her to Meryl. Their eyes met; his belied no disappointment, which she found she'd rather expected. They were simply observing her.
"Meryl Stryfe," Bryan greeted her as she stepped over the threshold. "My apologies for waking you."
"You've finally figured out the mistake you've made, haven't you," she replied, keeping her voice deadly calm.
He actually smiled, and indicated the seat beside the bald gentleman. "Please, join us."
She stiffly walked to the indicated seat, glaring but accepting the hospitality as the bald man leapt with surprising agility to his feet and withdrew the chair for her. She glanced at Elizabeth, but the other woman was staring at a clear square of plastic, which bore an intimidating jumble of black text.
"Elizabeth has filled us in on the 'compromise' agreed upon between the twin Plants," he said without preamble. "She has also indicated that you have a more complete knowledge of Knives' history than you included in any report."
The bald man reached into the center of the table, picking up a clear pitcher of water and a narrow glass. She watched the liquid slosh into the glass, unsurprised when the man set it before her. She watched the surface gradually still, considering her options.
Elizabeth actually wanted her to tell them about Knives? Well, of course. It would be in everyone's best interest to understand the threat.
And maybe it was better this way. At least there was a fairly organized army at this man's disposal, which was a much better prospect than the idea of the four of them charging in to save the day –
Of course, they'd been charging in to rescue Vash, not fight Knives.
"When do you plan on releasing Vash?"
She fixed the commander with her best negotiator's face, and she was pleased to see him lean back in his seat.
"I don't believe I need to remind you of the contract you signed."
She smiled brightly. "I will obey the letter of that contract. But I told you when I signed it that my first obligation was to Bernardelli, and that holds true. Keeping Vash in a bulb will have a significant impact on Knives' reaction to this situation. Trust me when I tell you it won't be a positive impact."
"Vash was taken out of the bulb a few hours ago," Elizabeth supplied, not looking up from the plastic she was reading. "Thanks to your negotiation of an insurance contract with their downed ship, our colleagues here were able to get in touch with Doc."
"We have it stabilized for the moment," the severe woman sniffed. "It's still under the influence of psionic buffers, so Knives should not be able to contact the twin Plant through telepathy."
"It?" She knew her voice had a dangerous lilt to it, and she didn't care. The severe woman didn't really respond to it, other than to sigh lightly. Her glasses were reflecting the opaque white that seemed to be everywhere, and it was impossible to determine her mood.
It wasn't her biggest concern. Doc? Vash's Doc? She couldn't imagine the old man agreeing to this. The concept was preposterous.
Maybe he didn't feel he had any more of a choice to cooperate than she did, Meryl reflected. If they were dead-set on using Vash to lure Knives, perhaps it was better than the man that knew the most about these Plants assisted. Maybe between all of them they might have a shot.
"Let's not get caught up in schematics," Bryan murmured. "What can you tell us about Knives?"
Meryl picked up the glass of water, taking a sip. "You misunderstood," she finally replied. "I asked you when you were planning on releasing Vash, not from the bulb, but from your custody entirely. Your best chance of avoiding genocide on Gunsmoke would be to free Vash and let him handle his brother."
And hope to god he was in good enough condition to actually fight.
"That is not an option," the severe women said smoothly. "There is not sufficient time, nor do any of us feel allowing two Plants of this type to 'handle' one another, as you so eloquently put it, is any less of a risk than attempting to capture one."
Meryl shook her head. "If you won't take my advice, why did you call me here?"
"Meryl, just tell them," Elizabeth sighed, setting down the transparency and glaring at her. "I know Vash gave you a rundown on Knives' history when the two of you were lovers, before he brought Knives back to civilization."
Meryl kept her mask with the practiced ease of a decade, but only just.
Lovers!
"Excuse me?" and Meryl inclined her head. "What history do you think Vash might have revealed to me that he would not have also revealed to Doc?"
The salt-and-pepper gentleman cleared his throat quietly. "We were hoping, young lady, to determine just that. If we could have what information you've gleaned and compare it to what the good doctor has revealed –"
Dr. Greer. That was his name.
She kept the polite smile on her face. "I see." Doc hadn't told them anything, and Elizabeth probably didn't know much. Of course, she wasn't sure what sort of relationship they had currently, considering Elizabeth had been allowed to interact with Vash for the past ten months and she –
Did Elizabeth want her to lie?
Is that why she'd made that ridiculous statement?
Or . . . was she being serious? Did she really think –
Meryl gave Elizabeth another appraising look, and the engineer returned a slightly irritated one. If there was a message masked in that look, it was too subtle for her to pick out.
"Knives caused the Great Fall." She'd give them what she'd included in the attempt to absolve Vash of his sixty billion double-dollar bounty. "He reprogrammed the computers to crash on the planet's surface. The human that raised them, named Rem Saverem, stayed on the ship to correct the course of the fleet, but was too late to save her own ship. She sent Vash and Knives to the surface in an escape pod."
The entire room was watching her, so she took another sip and continued. "That was the beginning of the conflict between Vash and Knives. Knives believes that humans are – are like a virus. Consuming resources and destroying everything they touch. Vash took Rem's teachings to heart, and believes in –" Well, love and peace, but it sounded too corny to say. "He believes in the good of the human race, and has been working to protect everyone from Knives ever since."
She turned her expression a little icier. "Knives will interpret the kidnapping of his brother and the subsequent installation into a bulb as evidence that he is correct, and act accordingly."
"Yes, we know all this," the bald man beside her suddenly spoke. "How was it able to force the manifestation of Vash's Angel Arm? You witnessed such an event, yes?"
She blinked at him. "I watched Vash put a hole in the fifth moon, yes."
He interlocked his thick fingers again. "Yet you also advocate releasing such a dangerous life form to its own devices?"
"Everyone at this table is breathing because of what Vash did –"
"Enough."
The room swiveled to look at Elizabeth. Her eyes were flashing, and she had paled slightly. "Knives is coming here," she said, very clearly looking at Meryl. "What Vash did was agree to stand by and do nothing when Knives came to slaughter everyone. So forget him. He's not going to help us."
Meryl stared at her a moment, not understanding. Why would she say such a thing . . . ? Unless she wanted to make them think Vash wouldn't do anything so they pulled security off of him?
"What –"
"If you have any information that could be used in the defense of this ship, now would be a good time," the woman snapped, interrupting her. "There's no way and no reason to move Vash at this point, so Knives will be coming here. Nothing we do now will change that. He has to be stopped here."
Meryl stared at her, waiting for some kind of indication of what Elizabeth wanted, and finding none. The woman looked . . . angry. Tired. Hurt. She was still collected, but she was certainly distressed. And nothing about her posture or her expression gave Meryl the impression she was anything less than sincere.
Vash would never just stand by –
"What are you talking about?" she finally asked. "Clearly you and Vash have shared some information I wasn't privy to."
Elizabeth ignored the barb. "The compromise, Meryl. The reason Knives agreed to let Vash try his Plant upgrade idea. You know Knives better than I do, or at least I think you do. Didn't you think it was odd he would just agree to go off into the desert and build his little Eden?"
Meryl's eyes widened. Elizabeth hadn't told them about – she couldn't have.
What the hell was she playing at?
"Excuse me?"
"Vash agreed that if the human population resisted his one attempt to free the Plants, that Knives could wipe them out. Before you even start," she added angrily, cutting off Meryl's attempted interruption, "I have that from Vash's lips."
Meryl struggled to keep her expression neutral. No one else at the table looked surprised by this information, but they were watching her reaction closely. Elizabeth had told them. Told them everything. Told them about the fight between the twins, about Knives' attempt to terraform a paradise for the freed Plants – she'd told them everything.
Why in the hell would she do that?
It dawned on her far too late.
"You . . ." She was at a loss for words. "You've been working with him, almost every day, for ten months –"
"What choice did either of us have?" she shot back. "Work with Vash or be wiped out by Knives. I don't know about you, but that choice was easy for me, even –" She bit the word off, pressing her lips together. "Do you get it? If we don't help them, if Knives collects Vash, July will happen everywhere. Every single settlement will be wiped out."
Meryl just stared at the other woman.
She'd tried to kill him. Vash had forgiven her for it a long time ago, and Meryl had trusted his judgment.
She should have learned by now not to trust his judgment.
Meryl closed her eyes. So all this time was just another attempt to get rid of him. And she'd led Elizabeth right here, the one time Vash couldn't defend himself.
And despite that, the backstabbing bitch did have a point.
Knives would be coming. And he would have to be stopped, here. There would be no stopping him once he realized what was going on. That Vash's own spider had betrayed them both. That humans had dared to put Vash in a bulb.
"He might have been assembling another set of Gung-Ho Guns," she heard her voice, steady and quiet. "Ten months isn't long enough to train them, but he might have hired some more nonetheless."
Just two of them had been enough to all but destroy Doc's ship, so even if they weren't as skilled, a group of ten or more of them could probably do significant damage.
"Ground troops," the bald man muttered, to her left. "Do you have any idea what number?"
She shrugged. "A dozen. Maybe a few more. Originally there were thirteen, I think." At one point she recalled Vash had been counting, adding their deaths to his guilt. "He'd spent at least a decade gathering the last group, so even if he has tried to create a new group of Gung-Ho Guns they shouldn't be impossible to handle."
"Is there anything else? Can Knives replicate the destructive force that Vash wields?"
She looked squarely at the commander. "I don't know," she said simply. Certainly he must have in their fight in the desert, since Vash told her they'd destroyed the oasis completely. "But he has the ability to counter Vash's attacks."
Just not Vash's bullets.
The room buzzed a little at that information, and she closed her eyes again.
Knives would have to come into the ship to rescue Vash. That meant they'd have a little notice before he melted the SEEDs ship to base metals. If she could escape the ship, Elizabeth's jeep was probably still out there. She could get back to Mei, give them fair warning.
Knives wasn't bulletproof.
But he did have the Plant sisters.
Her eyes snapped open, and she found Elizabeth was staring at her. The other woman averted her gaze after a moment, choosing to look at the man beside her.
She might have found him suddenly interesting because he was beeping.
Meryl watched with half-hearted interest as the young man pulled a small grey box off his belt. A portable computer, she realized with a start. Actually portable. He glanced at it a moment, then quietly stood up and walked over to the commander. Bryan was speaking with the bald man to her left, but he accepted the computer and glanced over it when he was finished.
His expression became slightly more grim. "Our timetable just moved up," he announced to the silent room.
Elizabeth furrowed her eyebrows, and he handed her the computer. She looked over it, then handed it across the table to the bald man, who actually chuckled.
"An RSVP. How thoughtful."
Meryl glanced over at the display, seeing large blocky text that spelled out "I accept your invitation." There were other, colored, blinking indicators that didn't make any sense to her.
"It was sent from Inepral City," he said, possibly for the benefit of the other two. "That gives us about four and a half hours."
She was still staring at it when the bald man caught her, and he held it out to her. "We use these to relay orders to our men in the field," he explained shortly. "We've launched a series of satellites that allow us to contact any of the main settlements in a matter of minutes." He frowned, then shook his head. "It seems Knives has a sense of humor."
She made a face. He did like to toy with his prey, after all. It wasn't surprising that he even knew how to send them a message via their Lost Technology – he'd probably grown up using it on the ship.
"That means . . . your men . . ."
The bald man nodded slowly, his sausage fingers drumming on the table. "That's the third team it's killed," the man growled. "It will pay dearly for those lives."
She quieted. The third team – hopefully not the team that hadn't reported in, that had taken in Millie –
Meryl froze, then modulated her voice to be calm. "So the same thing that happened to the team that tried to protect Millie Thompson, happened to these men?"
He was frowning, clicking buttons on the grey computer. "Undoubtedly." He spared her a glance. "We appreciate your cooperation," he said gruffly. "I understand this must be difficult for you."
She swallowed back a sudden lump in her throat. The same thing. Death. Death at Knives' hands.
They kidnapped Millie, and then Knives found them and killed them.
Elizabeth was trying to catch her eyes, now, but she ignored the engineer.
"Were those men sent to capture him?"
She was amazed her voice was so steady.
The bald man, she was starting to realize, was likely the man in charge of military strategy. She would have thought the commander would have ultimate decision over that, so he was like an advisor to the Mayor. He would know enough to answer her next question.
"They were sent to attempt to ascertain its location," the man replied, sliding the computer back over to the young man beside Elizabeth. "We're lucky this Plant likes to mock us," he continued in a low, angry voice. "Otherwise we'd have had no warning at all."
If they knew that they were trying to find Knives – then it stood to reason they knew what had happened, or been intended to happen, to Vash.
"Does the message from those computers get sent the moment you type it? Or can you postpone the sending, sort of like putting a delay on a gift package sent through the mail?"
He finally looked at her, really looked at her, and she waited patiently for his response. It was slow in coming, and it was clear he was trying to piece together why she'd asked the questions she had.
"I don't know," he finally admitted. "Terry."
The young man beside Elizabeth looked up from his computer.
"Can reports be typed up and sent on a schedule, rather than at the time of the completion of the report?"
The young man nodded. "Yes, they can be. Furthermore, the receiving PDA doesn't log the delay because the sending PDA doesn't transmit the amount of time the report's been saved. It's been a problem cropping up among some of the less dedicated officers . . ." He trailed off, then looked alarmed. Beside her, the bald man swore quietly.
If the men Knives had killed knew what had been intended to happen to Vash, that meant that Knives now knew it as well. She was certain that knowledge would enrage him. She'd seen him lose his temper on any number of occasions when Vash originally brought him home, and once he was angry he was even more humorless than usual.
There would be no warning for these humans. If the message truly had been sent from Inepral City, and this technology was familiar to Knives -
"He's here," she announced, and everyone at the table looked at her.
- . -
Author's Notes: The only reason this chapter got completed so quickly is because half of it was written when I posted the last one. And I felt guilty for making you guys wait a week. ; ) I guesstimate we have about six more chapters, but it could be a little longer than that. The next chapter promises to be exciting! Finally! Action!
Thank you all for sticking with me on this fic – it's grown entirely out of hand and I recognize that. I promise to go back and correct all those typos you folks pointed out – thank you much for the help! Hopefully you guys are enjoying this as much as I am. You're all going to kill me in about four chapters. ; )