Disclaimer in previous chapters. Author's Notes at the end.
- . -
Meryl took a breath, and was almost disappointed when she felt cool air enter her throat.
She heard someone groan, and despite the way she felt she was pretty sure it wasn't her. Her head was pounding, and her right gums ached. Upon touching them with her tongue, she realized her cheek was badly swollen, but she didn't taste blood.
Light flickered outside her closed eyelids, and reluctantly she opened them.
She remembered, this time, where she was. No hallucinations of that damned priest. He might have been, a quiet corner of her mind whispered, and she was immediately sorry for the thought.
Fine. No pig-headed, booze-soaked, sand-burned, pontificating hypocrite with a bad suit priest was trying to reassure her.
Oddly, the realization made her a little wistful. It would have been nice to see him again.
It might have meant this nightmare was over.
But she wasn't that lucky.
Her view of the room was a little different than she remembered. For one, she was lying on the ground. There seemed to be light coming from directly above, and her unfocused eyes picked out one of the legs of the conference room table. Which she was under.
She didn't remember ducking under it.
A shape moved off to her left, and an elephantine forearm came into view, carefully reaching under her face. Thick fingers wormed beneath her cheek, and she couldn't help but wince at the sudden, sharp pain the movement produced.
"Come on, Ms. Stryfe –"
Somehow there was another hand somewhere else on her, because she was suddenly lifted vertically as she hadn't been since she'd been six and fallen asleep on the mass transit. She then found herself floating gently horizontally until she had been extracted from beneath the table. Knees came into view, and as she was set gently upright, she relented and gathered her legs under her. Her thighs twinged warningly, but she ignored them, and the hand on her face tilted her chin up.
Thankfully, the overhead lights weren't particularly glaring, and she stared at a concerned face surrounded with the reflected halo of light that could only come from complete hairlessness.
"Are you with us?"
She blinked, a little sluggishly, but nodded, and pulled her face away from the hand. "What? Why?" Her voice was thick and slurred, and she shook her head and worked her tongue over the inside of her bruised cheek.
"Step aside, Phillip," a brusque voice commanded, and the large general was replaced by a severe, unhappy-looking face. Thin, steel fingers reached for her, and she flinched away. They followed; she expected them to be cold and metal-like, but the woman's hands were actually warm and soft. They were firm, though, and brooked no argument.
Meryl flinched as the woman tapped her right cheekbone, again surprised by the pain. It was the only thing she could feel, really, and only when it flared up like that. Her left cheekbone was tapped, and her eyes examined closely. The expression on the doctor's face never changed, never seemed to be more friendly, but her calculating eyes seemed to sharpen slightly.
"She'll live," the severe woman announced to the room. "Though I doubt you'll be too pleased about it in a few hours," she added almost as an afterthought. "Don't stand."
Abruptly the woman was gone, and Meryl obediently stayed exactly where she was. She shifted her legs to a loose Indian style and gazed around the room.
It was getting easier to concentrate on things, and other voices were cutting through what seemed to be a silent but overwhelming ringing sound.
"I guess the door wasn't big enough," the bald man quipped. He was nearest to her, having retrieved one of the pudding chairs and drawn it up to the conference room table. The table, it seemed, was quite securely anchored to the floor, and did not appear to have shifted at all. She could see the bottom, vaguely, and realized that there were dark squares now, like placemats where every chair had once been.
Only it looked to her eyes like the placemats were moving.
"Decks eleven and twelve are exposed," the young man agreed, sitting almost where he had been before the ship had rolled down a large hill, taken a leap at the base over a wide chasm, and crashed at the bottom into the sharp rocky crags.
She knew it was actually buried in the sand, so the fact that whatever Knives had done had felt like that, and shaken the ship so badly, was probably not good.
She was frankly surprised to be alive.
She was surprised they still had power.
Then again, it was a spaceship. And it was designed to absorb the impact from a giant plasma canon. Since Knives' was really only about as big as a person, maybe it couldn't do as much damage.
After all, the best Vash could do was carve a visible hole in the fifth moon.
"Report."
There was another voice in the room – it came from the table, which she was starting to realize was showing moving images much like their monitors did. How it had been clear and underlit one moment and capable of showing opaque images the next was a wonder, certainly, but what would have fascinated her just days ago now couldn't hold her interest.
"Sir, we've lost communication with the advance team," the table babbled. "There was a report of an explosion about a minute before the hull was compromised-"
"That was probably my jeep," she heard Elizabeth murmur.
Meryl just turned her head aside. She couldn't even work up the energy to be angry with the woman anymore.
It didn't matter.
Knives was there.
He killed the team that kidnapped Millie. And then he killed her. And now he would kill them.
Vash wouldn't really let him do that. He'd worm his way out of whatever prison cell they'd put him in, he'd know that impact had to have been caused by his twin, and he would try to stop him. He did it once.
When he was perfectly healed, and armed.
And not curled up helplessly at the bottom of a glass bulb.
Elizabeth was right, but for all the wrong reasons. Vash wasn't going to save them this time. They'd have to save themselves or die.
Meryl refocused on the conversation, aware that she'd missed something. She thought about asking them to repeat themselves, but speaking would take too much effort.
"We've lost vid on decks ten through twelve," the young voice came back.
"Override on my code, alpha tango alpha." It was the commander, and he didn't seem perturbed by this sudden development.
"No good," the bald man – Phillip, the woman had called him – growled. "Security on all decks is being overridden."
"That was fast," Dr. Greer observed mildly. "I think A-20034 has taken a liking to our new Angel."
"I would expect Knives to have the dominant personality," Dr. Shrew responded dryly. "It's already demonstrated a significant tendency toward efficiency."
"Dr. Greer, if you would be so kind."
There was a tapping sound on the table, and Meryl leaned a little to her right to watch his fingers on the black placemat. As she leaned, more blood flowed into her right cheek, making it ache heavily. She ran her tongue along it, rhythmically up and down, waiting for the pain to abate.
"What is that?" she heard Elizabeth ask curiously.
"A re-routing protocol I thought might be useful," came the lecturing voice of Dr. Greer. "Since our intruder has done us the favor of being a species other than homo sapien, we can track the Plant using its unique biosignature."
"Knives can disable that as easily as anything else in your system."
"Ah, but this power is not being provided by A-20034." Now his voice sounded pleased with itself. "This system is routed to the secondary cold generator."
"They're logically isolated . . ." Her voice was thoughtful. "But won't your ship's Plant be aware of it even if it can't control it?"
"Eventually. The end result, however, is the same. A-20034 also would have no way to gauge consumption or capacity levels. My one-winged Angel provided this power," he confirmed.
Vash.
They were using power they'd bled out of Vash.
To fight Knives.
Somehow, she thought he might approve.
"Com-commander! It's-"
The call came from the terrified table, which commenced an agonized scream. Long after the screamer should have run out of air he continued, until the sound became more urgent, then wet. At that point the commander tapped the table, which immediately fell silent.
"Location last transmission." Bryan said it as though he expected someone to answer him.
The table beeped and helpfully flashed something at the head of the table.
Meryl glanced around, noting one of the chairs – possibly hers – had flown across the room and was now pushed up against the wall to her left. Despite the doctor's warning, she pulled her legs under her and stood. Phillip gave her a concerned glance, but she shook her head and headed determinedly for the chair.
Despite her wool-headed feeling, she found she was easily able to walk. No dizziness, no weakness. She grabbed the chair, rolling it back towards the table.
She was the only one at the table that didn't know what was going on, but even if she couldn't help, watching screens upside-down was making her slightly nauseous.
She sat at the table, noting she had her very own black placemat. It was actually slightly rectangular, wider than it was tall, and currently it was spouting any number of messages. The upper right corner seemed to be a constantly rotating, three-dimensional representation of the ship, and she could see a large patch of its side blinking red.
So that was the 'door' Phillip had referred to. Knives had blasted a hole in the side of the ship. Probably the side closest to the surface.
Maybe it was dark out and he just didn't see the main entrance.
Now that's something Millie would think up, her brain noted, and Meryl clenched her teeth until her right jaw screamed.
Now was not the time to mourn. Something was bubbling out of her, a laugh or a scream or a sob, and she clamped down on it, holding her breath until the quivering in her chest stopped.
The monitor. Watch the monitor.
"The plan was always to lure him to you, wasn't it?" Elizabeth asked. Meryl glanced at her, then did a double-take.
She wasn't the only one to be injured.
Elizabeth had what appeared to be a fantastic welt on her forearm, and she was favoring the arm and wrist pretty heavily. Bryan looked none the worse for wear, as did the general, but the entire left side of Terry's face was covered in blood. He was pressing a cloth to what was apparently not a deep cut on his temple, but he kept setting it aside to type into his little grey computer. Dr. Greer looked a little pale, but whether that was due to an injury she couldn't see or the condition of his comrades she couldn't tell. The female doctor also looked fine, despite her rail-thin physique.
The commander was staring at his screen, which showed something much different from hers, with a frown. "Display all biosignatures for deck eleven, quadrant C."
Dr. Greer answered her question. "Of course. Given the gravity of the situation, we did everything in our means to engineer a non-confrontational solution. This Angel proved too difficult to find in the time we allowed. Given the capabilities of a Plant versus our military capabilities, it only seemed prudent to orchestrate any direct conflict in a time and place best suited to allow us to utilize every tool to its fullest potential."
Knives was mobile. Their ship was not. Meryl stared at the placemat in front of the commander, noting his was displaying a specific place on the ship. There were about a dozen orange dots, and a blue one.
"It looks like our Plant did enlist help," the bald man noted. "I count five? Bravo team, any visuals on the accompanying humans?"
"Negative, General," the table responded grimly. "Visuals are a no-go. Too much smoke."
As she watched, two of the orange dots blinked, then slowly vanished. It was clear the general was correct – a circle of orange dots were moving with the blue one. One was just behind the blue dot, the other four were in front of it about two inches and to the right a little bit.
"We're keeping a steady seventy percent casualty rate on engagement," Terry said in a low voice from the other end of the table, and Bryan's expression became more sober.
"Bravo Team, fall back to the grav generation," he ordered, touching his placemat and pulling up another portion of the ship. "Terry, where did you get that number?"
Terry concentrated on his little grey computer, and Bryan tapped his table. "I see," he murmured. "Then where are they?"
Meryl didn't make the leap, and she stared as the bald man glanced up at Dr. Greer. "Can you display anyone bearing one of our comm. units as a different color than the other humans? I realize it's two different systems –"
Dr. Greer was already at work. "A moment."
Phillip also pulled up another section of the ship on his monitor. "The progress is still as expected. The problem is that we have to throw our boys out there for it to see."
"If Knives takes out the grav generator we're in serious trouble," Elizabeth mused, though it sounded like she was talking mainly to herself. "Won't he follow your men directly there?"
The bald man shook his head. "We expect Knives to head for A-20034, actually. It's already initiated telepathic communication, so it's only a matter of time."
Elizabeth was staring at him. "Before . . .?"
"Before our Plant determines secondary power is being routed to essential systems" This time it was Dr. Greer that responded. "At that point, it is my belief that Knives, upon trying and failing to sense the other Plant that must be generating that power, will query A-20034."
" . . . so of course he'll head to the second cold generator, thinking Vash is still there but sedated."
Dr. Greer nodded. "Precisely."
Elizabeth was nodding as though she suddenly understood the plan, and Meryl turned her attention back to the orange dots.
Excluding the ones surrounding the blue dot, they were disappearing at an alarming rate.
"Charlie team, pull back to storage 12," Bryan ordered the table, and six of the dots started to move in the opposite direction of the blue one. "Bravo team, report."
"General –"
There was an odd sound, like heavy stiff fabric had been dragged across the microphone. This time it was a hiss of air, punctuated at the very beginning with some vocalization, maybe a grunt. Whoever it was was trying to speak, but the words couldn't be made out over the background noise. Two more of the orange dots blinked and disappeared.
"I really need a visual," Bryan said calmly, though Meryl could see the muscles of his jaw working. Apparently it wasn't lost on the bald general and Terry, as they began working feverishly. Dr. Greer, too, seemed trying to accomplish something. Elizabeth caught Meryl's eye, but Meryl immediately looked away.
Deal with Knives now. Deal with Elizabeth later.
"Here's your overlap."
All the orange dots turned green. Except one. The one dot immediately behind Knives stayed a bright orange.
The other four dots surrounding the blue dot had turned green with the rest of them.
Bryan straightened, some unreadable emotion crossing his face. Elizabeth tilted her head, wincing as she pulled at the injured shoulder. "So his people picked up the comm. units off your dead?"
"Not that it will do them much good. We send broadcast orders by team. The last orders given the three currently engaged groups was to fall back, and that's all they're going to hear."
"Until Knives goes for the secondary generator," Elizabeth finished thoughtfully. "Hopefully that will be sooner than later. He's headed for an intersection that could take him to cooling, grav generation, weapons –"
"Sir."
Terry stood quickly and almost jogged around the table to the commander, showing him the little grey computer rather than sending the information to his placemat.
"I think that's safe to assume," the commander said finally, then caught the general's eye. "It's one hundred percent losses, Basil."
The general – Phillip Basil? Basil Phillip? – looked pained for a moment. "You don't think they're some kind of internal –"
Bryan shook his head.
Meryl stared at the dots, then stared at the men. Some detached part of her brain, accustomed to taking in piles of unrelated claims and drawing correlations, started crunching.
They went from a seventy to a one hundred percent casualty rate. There were four humans with Knives that identified like soldiers. The forward team had disappeared. Alpha and Bravo teams had been comprised of six men each. Charlie team had engaged but fallen back. At least three men out of those eighteen had died, and at least two of those men had been in the Alpha or Bravo teams.
Four was thirty percent of thirteen.
There were two green dots in the room marked 'storage' on her placemat.
The four men showing as soldiers were soldiers.
And the commander was considering them casualties.
Because even if they were walking and talking – or more likely serving as human armor for Knives – they were still dead.
"Bingo," Elizabeth said softly, and they watched the blue dot remain, for the first time since entering the ship, perfectly still.
- . -
There was the unmistakable sound of bone and cartilage being crushed, and a claw-like hand fell into view. She averted her eyes as quickly as possible, but not before she caught a glimpse of the shuddering body, the scrabbling feet trying desperately to escape the vise that had settled within the skin, grating flesh and blood and bone with an impossible grip.
It was like he had an invisible hand, and he could make it go wherever he wanted. And he wanted it to go into their bodies, he wanted to squeeze out their life with it and feel their corpuscles forced between its clenched fingers.
He wanted them to feel what it was like to have the life squeezed out of you.
He was doing to them what humans did to his sisters.
And he was doing it just as casually.
And it made her just as sick.
She stared at the small of his back, the only safe place to look, trying not to listen to the whimpers of the men. She didn't know why he'd picked them, or even how he was making them do what they were doing. But she knew they were aware of it, unlike those men that had forced her and Meryl up onto that cliff face, that horrible, horrible day –
She flinched back, suddenly realizing he had stopped.
Millie held her breath, hoping her hitched sobs hadn't been the thing to attract his attention. With every step into this ship Knives had been growing more and more agitated, taking more pleasure in the agony he was causing every human that was foolish enough not to flee. Luckily, it seemed like they'd only encountered armed men in grey uniforms.
And these men were not trying to shoot weapons out of his hands, or graze his arms. They were shooting to kill.
They just didn't have a chance.
And Knives hadn't branched out into any of the side rooms. If there were civilians here, just innocent people trying to find a safe place to live, he at least wasn't seeking them out.
He was seeking out his brother. And now that the corridor seemed to end in a major intersection, he appeared to be deciding which way to proceed.
The short hairs on the back of her neck started to stand up, and Millie fearfully looked at Knives.
All she could see was his back, but of course his drawn bodysuit brazenly revealed his flawless physique, taut muscles that seemed to grow tighter even as she watched. A tiny voice in her head began screaming at her to run, yet Knives remained still.
Absolutely still.
He was holding his breath, she realized. Just like she was.
The silence was broken only by the odd siren she'd heard since their entrance, and the ragged breathing of the men Knives held immured. She watched one of them raise his weapon, noting his arm trembling at his shoulder but the barrel was held perfectly steady –
"No! Please, no! Nnn!"
The muzzle flash seemed almost to come after the shocking sound of the shot, and the man beside him toppled like a house blown down sideways. Millie squeezed her eyes shut and turned away as the gun rang out twice more.
The man had ceased begging and was crying out intelligibly. It sounded like he had something in –
Another shot, more muffled, and another body dropped.
Millie was unable to completely silence her sobs, but Knives was paying her no attention. He was already almost ten full yards away, having chosen the immediate right corridor, and gone was his languid pace. His stride was long and hurried.
Hurried. He'd only hurry this extermination for one reason –
He was going to keep killing them until he found Mr. Vash. Mr. Vash could convince him to spare them. And if he wasn't conscious enough to do that, maybe Mr. Knives would be worried enough to just want to get him out of there, back to the truck –
Once they found Mr. Vash, this would stop.
It had to stop.
Tears streamed down her face as she skittered around the bodies, forcing herself not to look at the men. But no matter how she didn't look, she could see that three of them had died – mercifully. He'd killed them the simplest way, the quickest way; a bullet to the head. The forth man, the one that had been forced to fire on his fellows, had fallen with the gun still trailing down his lower lip.
She had promised him she would help him find Mr. Vash. They would find him, and then they would leave, and Mr. Vash would reassure Mr. Knives, and it would be okay.
No, it won't. Meryl's voice was as clear in her head as if she'd been jogging beside her. Nothing about this was okay. Nothing would ever make this okay.
"Oh, sempai," she whispered, horrified to see that Mr. Knives had drawn his gun again. "What should I do?"
His Colt was still odd-looking; with the pin and barrel missing she was sure it wouldn't fire. He seemed to come to the same conclusion; even as he walked he pulled out the odd cylinder and dropped the gun back into its holster. The canister he simply held in his right hand.
And before her eyes, his arm grew feathers.
It wasn't the same as the Angel Arm she'd seen before. This was more like an actual wing, the feathers sliding between each other smoothly as he flexed it. It whipped out suddenly, large in the hallway, and though she heard a heavy impact she wasn't sure what had happened until she remembered the kind voice.
Knives.
That was where the knives came from.
As soon as she saw blood she turned away, this time sparing herself from another memory of someone she couldn't help. Again, his wing twitched, and again, she heard something heavy being flung. She also heard a ping of metal on metal.
Please, just run. Run away from him.
Something was wrong. Something was wrong with Mr. Vash.
And Knives knew it. She could tell by the set of his shoulders that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. Wrong enough that he couldn't play anymore. Wrong enough that he was arming himself for something much bigger.
He actually sped up his pace, breaking into a jog, and began taking turns off the main corridor. She had to almost run to keep up with him, the guns still clenched in her pumping hands, every bullet still in the clip.
She'd never gotten a chance to disarm even one. Knives killed them before she could do anything to warn them away.
He abruptly took a left, gracefully leaping off into a black space. As she caught up, she saw it was a rather steep stairway. He'd landed, barely flexing his knees to absorb the impact, and was already off. A faint, flat thud told her he'd just repeated the maneuver with another flight of stairs.
She raced down them as fast as she could, finally tucking the guns into her shirt so that she could use the banisters that seemed designed for just such a thing. If she fell, she could grab them in the middle and just swing down. She was still several flights behind him when she no longer heard the tell-tale sign of his feet hitting the metal grating, and when she'd counted the appropriate number she stopped, gasping for breath, and looked right and left.
There.
She found herself sprinting to catch up, fishing the loose guns out of her shirt and chasing him through a huge, open room. It reminded her a little of Vash's Doc's ship, where all the cold-sleep tubes had been. But this was empty, and echoing, and it seemed their footsteps were huge and rumbling and deafening but ultimately nothing more than noise. She was tall, and had long legs like he did, but even as strong and fit as she was, getting ground on the Plant was difficult.
Nothing would make Knives run.
And she knew that he could move faster than that if he wanted. Much, much faster. Was he waiting for her?
Or was that his way of hesitating?
What were they going to find?
She put on a fresh burst of speed as Knives cleared the doorway on the far side of the room, and reached him in time to see him walking towards a door. It slid open at his approach, and began to close as soon as he had passed through. She gasped in a breath, sucked in her stomach as far as she could, and skittered sideways. The closing doors caught her left cuff and she heard the button snap, lost in the doorframe.
Knives hadn't noticed. He was staring at the room they'd entered.
She followed suit.
It was obviously a lab of some kind, or had been made into one. Gleaming, glowing counters stretched all around, bearing all kinds of machinery and clear plates filled with neat rows of tiny dents, like miniature wells. The place was well-lit, and white coats lay scattered on the various stools and seats. Monitors were imbedded in the walls, currently showing numbers and graphs that reminded her a little bit of the time they'd stood in the control room as Elizabeth had switched the very first plant to solar power.
Knives bound up four stairs on the left as though they were nothing, and another door slid open at his approach. Just like every one on the ship previously, she hurried after him, and again just managed to slip through behind him.
But this time that was because he stopped in the doorway.
Millie crowded him but didn't touch him, feeling the door sliding across her bottom as there was just enough room for her to hover behind him.
"No." It was quiet, and it was absolute refusal.
He seemed to reel, taking another step into the room despite himself, and Millie realized she had been right.
They were standing in a Plant control room.
Only the bulb out the window was dark and empty.
Knives continued into the room gracelessly, but Millie remained by the door, staring. There was a hideous – thing, the inside seemed like a chair but it was metal and encased in both a ball and surrounded by a square structure for a track, as though it could be rotated any way you could want. Monitors were embedded in the ceiling in this room as well at as the ones in the walls, and the control panel looked exactly the same as the one Millie remembered, only cleaner and newer-looking.
Most of the equipment was off, but some of the monitors showed what looked like storage and auxiliary information.
"No."
Millie dragged her eyes back to Mr. Knives. He seemed oblivious to the equipment or the monitors. He was staring at an underlit bench at the far end of the room, looking for all the world like the benches they'd passed in the room outside.
"No."
The word echoed weirdly. It sounded as though his voice was shaking.
"Mr. Knives?" she tried tentatively. She realized she should be more concerned about the fact that they were cornered in this room, but his body language was screaming at her that something was wrong. If she didn't know better she would have thought he'd been terribly injured.
He didn't answer her. He staggered to a stop, about five feet from the wall.
Millie's eyes burned, aching from her crying, and she blinked them in irritation, hesitantly approaching him.
". . . no . . ." It was a whisper, but it reverberated around deafeningly, like their footsteps in the huge chamber.
She swallowed around a stinging in her throat, and took a step to the left, to look around him.
The bench wasn't empty. Much like the ones outside, it contained a series of clear plates. These plates, however, rather than holding tiny volumes of liquid in tiny little cylinders, held large pieces of metal. Metal rods, metal pins, even a large mesh, like –
Shaking, she took another step to the left.
Directly in front of Knives, far too large to have put on a plate, an arm was stretched out. Its fingers were laid out straight and neat, the hand arranged palm down. It was complete, elbow bent at about a forty-five degree angle to ensure the long, thin limb would fit easily on the bench. It ended in a rough series of needles, wires, and worse, and there were dark drops, splotches and smears on the bench top, showing it had not been moved since it had been removed. It was no longer covered in the leather armor that usually housed it, but she knew immediately who that arm belonged to.
There was only one person she knew that had a mechanical arm.
Knives was staring at it unblinkingly, but his eyes looked dilated and unfocused. The light, coming from an angle beneath his jaw, only served to accentuate the expression of horror on his face.
Millie stared at him, blinking a growing film out of her eyes. She'd seen that look before. It was worse than horror, worse than antipathy. For once, Knives looked exactly like Vash.
"Mr. Knives?" Her voice sounded tiny to her, tiny and quiet and trapped –
She blinked again, fighting for focus, and her brain sluggishly clicked.
"Mr. Knives!" Heedless of the danger, she reached out and grabbed his arm. And then she realized.
It was just like a normal arm.
No feathers.
It wasn't quite where it looked like it ought to be, either, and Knives reeled, stumbling to the side. He didn't tear his eyes away from the bionic arm.
"The drug! The drug you gave me!" she tried again, this time stumbling so that she was between him and Mr. Vash's arm. She didn't want to think what it meant just now. In a very few moments, she was going to fall down, down in that darkness again, and that meant that he would too. And whatever had happened to Mr. Vash was going to happen to him.
His eyes didn't see her. His expression hadn't changed. Knives was shaking from head to foot; this close to him she realized it wasn't just her focus slipping in and out. He looked as though he was going to collapse.
"Mr. Knives! You have to get out of here!" He was the only one that could make the doors open, she had to get him out –
He didn't respond.
Frantically, Millie reached out to grab his face. She missed, striking him almost squarely just beneath his right eye with the extended tips of her fingers.
As her hand fell back, finally, his eyes saw her.
He lunged at her, she fell back and didn't stop until she hit the wall, pressed against the very bench that held Vash's arm – and all the rest of the pieces of metal that had held his scarred and damaged body together. He blinked sluggishly, but his grip was strong. She tried to push his hands away and he clumsily grabbed her jaw.
However uncoordinated his movements, they did not lack strength. He was hurting her-
No! Not again. She fought to keep his face in focus, this time looking past him at the horrible chair. She would not let him do that again! It wasn't as though she had known this place was in this ship! It wasn't like she'd hidden it from him!
"S-stop! Please!"
Pain exploded behind her sinuses, but this time the pale blue that bored so deeply into her own eyes was almost bearable. The edges of her vision were getting fuzzy, because of his attempts to see her mind or the drug –
Her eyes stung. Her throat stung. They were breathing the drug.
Millie held her breath, easy to do with the pressure Knives was exerting on her jaw and neck. It didn't help. His face was twisted, now, no longer anything like Vash. He looked as though he were trying to concentrate every drop of rage and viciousness into her. If she let him in, if she gave up, it would hurt so badly –
Stop fighting me!
His voice wasn't echoey, it was right and immediate and authoritative. Staring at his face, she realized his lips were pressed together in an intense effort –
It was in her head.
Millie gasped as the pain intensified, and this time she felt the effects of that one breath. Knives was pressing into her harder, as though he needed her to help him stay upright, and her jaw was creaking dangerously under the pressure.
Oh, it hurt so much, it was so much worse than last time –
It will stop hurting if you stop fighting!
She took another breath, involuntarily, and felt her knees give. She was right; she had been his support and as she slid down the wall he slid with her.
She heard a growl, one she knew must have been in her mind, and as he swam back into focus for a brief second she saw something in his eyes that jolted her fading brain.
She'd heard it in his mental 'voice.'
Desperation.
He wouldn't be desperate to kill her. He could have done it anytime he wanted, he still had the strength to do it now. He wouldn't be desperate for her to give in, he wouldn't accept defeat like that. It would be too close to begging.
It was too close to begging.
Millie tried to stare at him, feeling the pressure in her head fading slightly. He wasn't powerful enough to force her this time. Because the drug was designed to inhibit Plants like him, it was just because he was more human that it affected her.
She held her breath.
You're hesitating, Millie. You promised.
She stared at his eyes, already so glazed, and she stopped fighting.
And he was right.
It stopped hurting.
- . -
"How soon until we get a visual?"
Dr. Greer glanced at Terry, then frowned. "I'm afraid you know as well as I that we didn't get a tremendous amount of power from the Plant due to its hibernation periods. With the auxiliary systems we . . ." He trailed off. "The lab, and the control room. Nothing before."
"Our men are in the clear," the general announced. "Henry team cleared out in time."
"He's picked up the pace," Elizabeth said thoughtfully. "Is it possible he can sense the fact that the battery is storing power from Vash?"
Dr. Shrew looked up from her placemat, suddenly interested in the conversation. "I don't think that's possible –"
"Neither do I, but I never thought about it before," Dr. Greer added. "My guess would be the Plant's agitation has to do with the fact that it's trying to communicate and nothing is responding."
Meryl watched the blue dot, now racing through the halls, twisting through the ship as though he'd known it all his life. He'd grown up in a ship like this. While she had taken the elevator, he took the stairs, and the orange dot was left hopelessly behind. It gave a good show of catching up to him as he tore through the large equipment chamber, and barely squeezed in behind him as A-20034 obligingly opened and then closed the door.
"Visuals," Terry announced, and the center of the table lit up.
She recognized the room instantly – it was the lab just outside the control room where she'd seen Vash - Meryl stopped the thought before it could continue, watching in grim fascination as a too-familiar form strode into view.
Knives.
She hadn't seen him in almost a year, but there was no mistaking him. No mistaking him for Vash. His close-cropped hair seemed a bit paler than usual, perhaps he'd gotten more of a tan hanging out in his Eden with his sister Plants. He was in another version of the red and white bodysuit she'd had to cut off his bleeding body when Vash had dropped him off, a little apologetically, on the guest bed. The only difference was the fact he was still carrying his gun, not in his hand –
His arm was covered in feathers.
The orange dot stumbled into view, being revealed as Knives immediately headed towards the control room door. It was a tall woman, dressed in a very familiar pair of trousers, suspenders a little twisted over a dirtied white button-up shirt and an impeccable, large collar –
Despite the fact she was carrying twin pistols that looked like the standard weapons of the guards, Meryl would have sworn it was Millie. She blinked, then checked again.
Millie cast a quick look around, then scurried after Knives.
"A woman?" the bald general murmured.
"That's Millie Thompson!" Elizabeth exclaimed, suddenly standing. "What –"
"It makes sense, given their relationship . . ." Terry trailed off, changing the view to the control room.
"The letters. Of course." Elizabeth stared straight at Meryl, but the other girl ignored it. Mixed emotions were flooding through her. Of course, Knives probably recognized her instantly and knew that keeping her near him would give him a hostage at worst, and possibly a lead into finding Vash. Then he controlled her telepathically, just as he'd done with the guards not five minutes ago.
Millie was alive.
Meryl found herself on her feet, staring at the commander. "Now that you've lured him in there, what are you going to do?" she demanded. Suddenly it mattered.
The wall behind the head chair was also a monitor, and it displayed the same thing the center of the table was, only larger. She watched Knives freeze in the doorway, eyes fixed on the back side of the room. After a moment, he seemed to walk forward in a daze, and behind him, he could see that Millie had been successful in following him in.
He was distracted, and she was armed. If she would just snap out of it!
Bryan just nodded, and Dr. Greer tapped the table.
And nothing happened.
Knives continued to move as if in a dream across the room, finally stopping just in front of a bench on the far end of the room. She hadn't really noticed it on her first trip; she'd been so shocked, and possibly purposefully distracted by both the commander and Dr. Greer. The angle didn't show what he was looking at, but it was now apparently attracting Millie's interest as well.
"We placed an aerosol delivery system to administer the redesigned Plant inhibiting drug into the ventilation system of the control room, laboratory, and staging areas," Dr. Greer finally said, apparently in answer to her question. "It's silent, so even a Plant's enhanced hearing shouldn't detect it. With any luck, it'll remain distracted until it's too late."
"Oh my god," Elizabeth said softly, and Meryl sharpened her gaze.
The feathers on Knives' arm were slowly disappearing. He didn't seem to notice.
"What will that do to Millie?" she heard herself demand, but she never looked away. Stay away from him, Millie . . . for god's sake, just stay on the other end of the room –
But Millie wasn't. She was approaching, coming ever closer to him. Finally, even she realized she was too close, close enough for him to reach out and grab her. Instead of taking steps closer, she simply stepped to the side, to see around him –
"What are they looking at?" The question had come from Elizabeth, though it was on Meryl's lips. What the hell would cause Knives to suddenly . . . act so un-Knives-like? Surely when they said they'd taken Vash out of the bulb they hadn't just left him lying there –
Oh god.
The view changed, showing them now from the door across the room, and while Knives' and Millie's head blocked a direct viewing, she saw what looked like a variety of oddly-shaped, dark objects. And something else that –
"Oh my god," she whispered aloud.
It looked like an arm.
Millie grabbed at Knives, almost knocking him over. It was especially clumsy of her, but Knives didn't seem to notice.
Of course not, Meryl, you idiot! He's looking at his brother's arm!
Of course, he'd shot the original one off, so it shouldn't be so shocking –
Millie stepped in front of Knives, mouth open as though she were yelling at him. He didn't really respond, and Meryl looked back at Dr. Shrew.
"I said, what is that going to do to her?" she repeated, in her coldest voice.
The doctor responded swiftly, eyes up and suddenly alert. "It will incapacitate her," the woman said after a second's thought. "It's going to have far more effect on a human physiology than previous Plant-type drugs, because of course these two Plants are much closer to humans than others. I imagine it will cause her to lose consciousness, and possible paralysis not to exceed a few hours afterwards. A single exposure shouldn't have any permanent ill effects."
"What will it do to him?" Elizabeth asked.
"Immediate inhibiting of its mental abilities, unconsciousness, paralysis," the doctor responded instantly. "It's very effective. I doubt it has even yet realized that its manifestation has faded."
She was referring to his Angel Arm.
Meryl blinked, staring at the screen in shock as Millie struck Knives on the face.
She got a reaction. Meryl flinched as the Plant grabbed Millie instantly, forcing her back to the wall where his brother's arm lay creepily on the light bench, and pinning her against the wall there. She struggled against him and he put a hand across her chin, forcing back her head.
He's going to kill her.
Meryl didn't dare tear her eyes away from the images, but it didn't stop her mouth. "Get someone in there! He's going to kill her!"
Her demand was met by silence, and after a split second of watching Millie struggling against Knives, she glared at the commander.
He was watching with almost an impassive face.
"Henry team –"
"No." Bryan's voice was soft but his tone was final.
She glanced between the startled bald man and his commander. "What?"
Dr. Greer was wringing his hands, obviously distressed. "The Plant will be unconscious in mere moments –"
"She doesn't have moments!" Meryl was practically screaming. She had the schematics, she'd watched them revolving around. She knew how to get to the lift from this room, and –
Meryl whipped around and started for the door, but she was caught instantly by an enormous hand. "Where-"
"Let go of me!" She struggled, tugging sharply on her arm, but she might as well have been fighting Knives herself. The bald man didn't even budge. "He's going to kill her!"
"I hope not," Bryan murmured. "But we can't send anyone else in there."
"Please, Ms. Stryfe," Phillip tried, "the room is sealed to allow the gas to work. Our men would be incapacitated just like your friend and the Plant-"
She stared at the monitor, watching Knives bear Millie to the floor. She was struggling less, now, he was probably choking the life out of her.
Meryl redoubled her efforts, and without quite knowing how his arms were suddenly bands of steel around her, pinning her arms to her sides. He turned her away from the monitor, but she craned her neck towards the table.
"Let me go! He's killing her -"
"You can't leave this room," the general said regretfully. "I'm sorry."
It was harder to see the image on the conference room table, it was flat instead of projected on the wall. But Meryl could still make out the exact moment when Millie started to convulse. Knives still had her pinned, and red blood began flooding from her nose.
"NO!"
Meryl stared in shock as Millie's convulsions grew worse, and her eyes rolled back in her head. She'd dropped the guns long ago. Still Knives held her, pressing himself upright with the arm that was killing her. Meryl forgot to struggling, just watching as the seconds ticked by, and the form of Knives finally toppled. Even in unconsciousness he didn't release Millie, and her limp form collapsed beneath the weight of his.
Her legs twitched twice more, and then she was as still as he was.
Elizabeth was gripping the edge of the table with one hand, the other covering her mouth. Neither Dr. Greer nor Terry would meet Meryl's gaze, but the severe woman actually sought out her eyes.
"I will do my best," she said shortly, then turned towards the commander. "It's safe to send in the teams."
"Clear the air and get someone in there," he responded quietly.
- . -
Author's Notes: So see, the stupid humans in the SEEDs ship had a plan all along! Who needs a pesky Vash to save them. You might notice that the bald man is a general and Bryan, who is clearly in charge, is a commander. There's a reason for that normally odd combination, seeing as a general is higher-ranking than a commander. It will get covered.
You might also note that this insinuates that there was indeed, at one point, a Tessla. That is the single image I've stolen from the manga (which I have ordered and am waiting for impatiently! The two books, and vols 1-8. But that's not the END! I'll have to wait until the end of the year to find out how it ENDS!) and yes, I know it's cheating, but it was too perfect not to steal.
This chapter was also quickly-written, and I caught what I could on a read-through. I apologize if there are mistakes in this chapter.