Disclaimer in previous chapter. Please see Author's Notes at the end.
-x-
Something had changed. Irrevocably. Something incredibly precious was gone.
The spaces were no longer safe.
Maybe she had known. Maybe she had quieted him, all that time ago, because she had known what it was that was there, in the space. Now he could not ask her. She was missing. The light of her was there, in the spaces, but it was overshadowed by a vapor, nearly tangible, nearly translucent.
He could almost tell that it was there with him, even as he moved from space to space, and sometimes to the voids between. It was there.
It was in all places. It was so near him it was nearly within him. Nearly within his chest, shining with fresh stars. Nearly in his mind. Nearly speaking.
The vapor had a voice, and he knew he did not want to hear it.
So he did as she had instructed. He did not speak. He made not a sound as he moved, ever moving, from space to space. His skin was silent, his feet bare and stepping without a hiss. Long gone was the blood that had clothed them, longer still the brown skin with its stitches and metal bindings. He could be silent. Needed to be silent. Needed to make less noise than the vapor.
So that it would not find him.
Perhaps she had been found. Perhaps that explained her absence. He was quite certain she was not alone, wherever she was. On the fringes it seemed as if there were other smiles, other locks of hair. It was difficult to tell them apart from the vapor, and sometimes there was a breath of air, the result of a disappointed sigh. The vapor would not be disappointed.
The vapor would be furious.
He hoped she was safe. He hoped she had found a place to hide.
And, selfishly, he wished he had gone with her, rather than turning away from her. His hand sought the pearls in his chest, her gift, and he curled his fingers tight against him. He wasn't even sure how well he'd done, if she would be pleased, but there was nothing more to be done. That light was gone now. No matter how he stared, the stars would not glow. It was her smile that had warmed him, but now the vapor cooled. It drew heat from the space as evaporating water might, leaving dry cold and filmy fog.
The same dry cold that lay within him, beneath his ribs and above that curious round dent that was neither hole nor wound. The cold had been growing, ever since the light within him went out. She had so much of it that it remained, even now visible to him despite the nearly mist, and that made him happy. Surely she must be safe.
He did not want her light to go out, as his had. It was wrong. He had done something wrong, and he no longer had the power to make it better. Even if she did, she was gone.
A breath stirred, and he looked despite himself. Looking was dangerous; he could see across all the space, both big and little, and the vapor was nothing when it was right before him, but stretched out across all that void it condensed, and coalesced, and it was visible, he could see it and that made it real and if it was real, oh if it was real it could-
"-ash, stop!"
The vapor was him.
It had his voice. Lower than hers, harsher. Angry, it was angry, he had known it would be angry and it was not angry that she was gone, but that he was there.
But there was nowhere else to go.
He stumbled backwards, but he had looked, he had seen, and it was too late. The cold spread beneath his ribs – fear, its label was fear – and the red cloth that she had banished crept from the vapor to cover his skin. It brought no warmth.
The vapor stepped forward, it caught hold of him with a movement swift and deliberate, and he realized why he had cast off the red duster, why she had as well. It was simply another binding. He struggled because it seemed that he ought to, that it might make the other him less angry. Blue eyes bored into his, and with his other hand – the vapor him had two – the other pulled him close.
Breath on his face. Not like hers, but warm. He stared in surprise.
"Vash!" It was not only anger in the vapor's voice, there was something else, like wonder but scary. "Idiot, can't you hear me?"
He did not speak. She had told him to be silent. If he was quiet, would the vapor let him go?
The vapor shook him within his crimson binding, eyes searching for a response. Clearly, he was doing something wrong. He tried to move backwards again, and the vapor frowned.
"Vash?"
Vash. Vash the Stampede.
How could he have forgotten?
Now he felt it, the straps against his skin, the cold armor that had burned him so many frigid nights. The boots were back on his feet, his toes were curled hard into them as he tried to brace against nothing. His mechanical arm reached out, completely without permission, and wrapped itself around his brother's wrist.
His brother.
His brother was-
Fear – and it was fear, such that he had not felt for more than a hundred years – welled up the back of his throat. It was Knives.
Knives was here.
Knives was here.
And if Knives was here, then –
Then-
He planted both his feet against his brother's chest and shoved, hard. He won his freedom; startled blue eyes and light blond hair and then there was space, he moved across vast expanses of it. The coat was a handle, he cast it off. The boots were too loud – his bare feet would be quiet enough. He had to get out of here.
"VASH!"
He had to get away from him.
He had to get away.
He had to-
There was a breath of air against his cheek, and unthinkingly, he turned. The vapor was there, but not quite translucent, not dark enough to be visible. Her light still shone, and he thought he heard a sigh, as if she was disappointed with him.
There was a biting dry cold in his chest, just beneath his ribs, and he wrapped his arm around the dim stars and kept moving.
-x-
The Plant frowned deeply, eyes turned inward now not in concentration but in contemplation, and Doc felt it was safe to sit up.
Safe was, of course, relative. His recently acquired semi-mobile rib was cuddling up to his lungs, which didn't necessarily mean it was now free-floating, but did mean he was long overdue for another dose of anti-inflammatory and should keep movement to a bare minimum. The arm was tingling, tickling, and crawling, but beneath those surface sensations was an incredible pain he associated with dying nerve endings. His chemical buffer, carefully cultivated over the past two days, had been sorely tested.
Whatever drugs they had introduced into his system, the end result was certainly not positive. He grimaced a little as he coaxed his abdominal muscles to haul him up, but there was no tell-tale screaming of lactic acid buildup. Whatever had been done to him, it was not the same as what had been administered to the others.
He had not experienced seizures during his unconsciousness.
Knives ignored him utterly, possibly unaware, and Doc took a moment to get the lay of the lab. It was basically what he had expected; a treasure trove of Lost Technology. He had the same set of diagnostic equipment as Doc himself had, with at least a partial second set that had been repurposed for some type of cellular research. In a room off the main lab he could see a very large tube, tri-sectioned but in total three by eight, currently empty of liquid but more than sufficient to fully submerge an adult human. Doubtlessly that technology had been required to rebuild Knives' ruined body after July.
Through another doorway he could see countless computer monitors and terminals he normally associated with bulb monitoring and control, but of course Knives would have repurposed those as well. The screens were dead, so it was impossible to tell, but terraforming control came immediately to mind as a possibility.
Then again, Knives couldn't possibly be successful at terraforming without at least some Plant energy. Energy he had to either be providing himself, or taking from the Plants that had been 'freed' in his solar energy project. And clearly he was enjoying some success.
There were several examination tables, one of which was quite large, large enough to hold a fully grown, traditional Plant. The closest one had no live occupant and had been reduced to a common table. Upon it sat all of the equipment they had pilfered from the New Kennedy, including his bag.
The only other examination table in the room had a more prestigious inhabitant. Vash was laid out under a white sheet, inserted into a half tube to his chest, and he was the sole vessel of his brother's attention. Knives sat umoving at Vash's head, bare fingers resting lightly against his brother's face and temples. Besides the Plants, there was no other visible living thing in the lab.
Doc took a breath to speak, but found himself coughing instead. It was quite a bit more painful than it had been yesterday, but it saved him the trouble of finding the right words to interrupt; Knives was now fully present, looking directly at him.
"And how is our patient?" Doc managed, in what he had hoped would be a serene manner. A rasp echoed back to his ears. Goodness, he sounded ancient.
Knives made no move to stand, even when Doc swung his legs over the side of one of the cots they had brought with them. Nice of Knives to put him on that, at least, instead of the floor. Perhaps it had been the work of Knives' security detail.
"You already know the answer to that, old man."
Indeed. "To what do I owe this honor?" As there was no sign of Carter, Boulaise, Stryfe, and more worryingly, Thompson, he had been singled out as the only human brought to the laboratory. Clearly Knives had not been treating him. He could have left him with the others until he regained consciousness and sent for him then, rather than keeping him in the lab.
Knives did not reply, merely observed as Doc got to his feet, somewhat stiffly, and made his way to his bag. The drug cocktails he'd designed for himself were still there, as well as the means of administering them, and he was midway through drawing the increased dose when he realized why Knives had not responded to his second question.
It was like Knives had said. He already knew the answer.
"Our agreement included a safe passage clause, as I recall." He returned to the cot, seating himself before crossing his right ankle over his left knee and rolling up his pant leg, and it occurred to him that he had no urge to urinate. Perhaps he hadn't been out as long as he imagined.
"What of it?" Knives' voice was relatively mild. "Did you not find it appropriate to chemically incapacitate me for the 'safety and comfort' of everyone?"
Of course. Knives had said he preferred the drugs. He knew full well what was waiting for them here. There was no doubt the beings – they weren't Plants, at least he didn't think so - that had attacked them had conveyed some type of chemical or hormone through touch. Knives agreeing to be drugged had virtually guaranteed that he intended to use the same technique against them. As the realization set in, the Plant smiled. "Are you saying that that was a violation of your promise not to harm me?"
Doc couldn't help a self-deprecating grunt, and he used the lull to locate a good blood vessel along his calf, wipe it down with a treated pad, and inject the contents of the syringe. "Indeed not. However, you agreed we would be safe and secure in your care. Ms. Thompson would not have survived the treatment you administered to the others without significant injury. If you caused physical or emotional stress to that young lady our agreement is nullified."
Knives leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms and pinning him with a glacial eye. He looked very much at home in his lab, despite the fact he was dressed head to toe in body armor. "And what would you do, old man?"
Doc blew out his cheeks in a sigh. That was a very good question. "Hmm. I suppose I'd die, knowing you were no better than a common human thug."
Knives' eye narrowed, and some of the false pleasantry left his tone. "Speak to me in that manner again and the fate of your companions will be pleasurable compared to your own."
Doc gave a short laugh. "My dear Knives, as you have repeatedly observed, my age is advanced. My health is frail. Just how much torture do you really think you could inflict before I simply died?" Then he let his face grow serious. "As for you, you'd be killing the person necessary to decrypt your brother's medical files."
There were only two things missing from his bag. The inhibitors, which he had handed over the moment Knives had regained consciousness, and the disk with the medical files he'd taken from the New Kennedy. That was the reason he was here in the laboratory rather than with the others.
But why hadn't Knives simply taken the information from his mind . . .? Was he giving him the chance to cooperate?
Or was Knives simply ensuring that he had the opportunity to 'interfere.'
An ugly smirk flickered across Knives' face. "Ah, yes. The encryption code. You could have given it to me immediately, yet you withheld it, knowing full well that any delay in Vash's treatment would result in further damage to him."
That was stretching it, and Doc allowed himself to express his annoyance. "I have neither the time nor the inclination to spar with you, young man. I cannot save Vash on my own, and I dare say neither can you. There is no love lost between us, but our goal is the same. For the present, we require one another's cooperation, and to some extent, trust. We must work together."
Knives turned more fully, rotating forty-five degrees on the swiveling chair. "Do not issue ultimatums to me, old man."
It was hard to tell how angry Knives really was. Doc had carefully timed his sedation with the landscape, had ensured that the master of this domain had arrived looking strong, powerful. It was important that it appear to whoever had been waiting that Knives had been successful. Humiliation hadn't seemed to have even occurred to Knives just yet, but it was impossible to see any thoughts behind that light topaz.
Knives could be furious. Or, he could be paying only the slimmest attention to their conversation. There was probably a lot on his mind, and Doc was now quite certain that Knives did not yet remember – or possibly never would – what occurred while Millie Thompson was borrowing his brain. If he did, he would have mentioned it by now.
Which didn't buy them much, but it was something. The fact that Knives was detailing him to death probably meant that the others, wherever they were, were still alive. For the moment, there was still a tenuous truce.
Doc sighed, and tried for a conciliatory expression. "Our promises to you are intact. We were not armed. The inhibitors were exactly where I showed you. We have kept our end of this bargain. If you will not do it for us, you will do it for Vash, won't you?"
The humanoid Plant gave him a long, level look. "The code, old man."
-x-
There wasn't much of the sweet tobacco aroma she'd grown up associating with cigarettes. Really just more burned paper and essence of lousy bourbon. He bought the cheapest he could find, and treated them worse. Left crumpled in his coat pockets, unwrapped and dried up in a few hours.
Humidors. Her father had taught her that. If you wanted tobacco – real leaf tobacco – to be good to you, you had to be good to it. The way that cigarette smoke smelled, it had to have tasted like nothing but ash.
That and the priest always managed to smell slightly like subpar whiskey. The thought of what his mouth must taste like made her tongue twist.
He must have caught her expression, because she heard him sigh, then almost immediately felt a waft of air.
She didn't open her eyes; she didn't want to. She didn't want to move, either. Something told her that scorpions had found her in the night and cuddled up for warmth, and the faintest motion would rouse them in all their stinging fury.
Something was very wrong. And very bad. She needed to be still, and not move from her position.
Nor open her mouth and ask that lousy, good for nothing dead priest to get off his fucking ass and help her. Now that she'd made a face, though, she could taste something sour and bitter in her own mouth, too thin to be blood. Like she'd forgotten to brush her teeth two nights in a row.
A faint tap, then the grind of leather on concrete. Another burst of burnt paper in her nostrils.
Wolfwood was the worst. Angel. Ever. What in the world had she done to get stuck with him as her protecto-
What had she done?
What had they done?
Her eyes flew open.
Her first thought was to realize that she was not back on the ship. She wasn't sure why she expected to be, but there was an unending feeling of dread that shot ice through her lungs. There was – was Knives, there was the truck and the talk and green grass and then Elizabeth screamed-
The white she initially saw had faded a little to a dull ivory, the color she associated with government buildings and the well to do. It was a type of concrete. Her eyes followed the seam of the wall and the ceiling, she didn't dare turn her head. Nothing adorned the walls, nor the ceiling, not even a light. Something dark lay to her right, but she couldn't quite bring herself to shift her head.
Yet despite that ice, nothing happened.
She waited a beat, then another, counting the seconds as her cheekbone ached to her pulse, watching with trepidation as the world itself dimmed and brightened to the same beat. There was no other sound; her worthless angel was gone, though the dark thing beside her remained. No matter how she strained, she could make out no other detail, and after an agonizing collection of breaths, she finally summoned the courage to turned her head.
Not far. Just as far as one click of the vertebrae in her neck. No sting. No rattle. No sound at all, not even the flutter of an insect's wings.
Someone sighed again, and there was air against her cheek. On her right.
Meryl continued to turn her head, every other muscle paralyzed, until she was able to make out contour. The dark blob was as long as a human, shaped a bit like a figure eight lying on its side.
Elizabeth.
She continued to turn her head, painfully slowly, and recognized the pain was not just her anxiety. Her neck hurt. She had moved no other limb but she was sure they would, as well. This was the pain of muscle strain. She had used those neck muscles recently, and hard.
Elizabeth was awake, her green eyes open and white-ringed. Her lips were pale beneath the red stain, and though she was lying in what seemed a comfortable position, Meryl could see that she too was as tense and still as a statue.
So it wasn't just her. Elizabeth could feel it too. That unshakeable certainly that there was something terribly, terribly wrong. That they were in terrible danger.
And she didn't doubt that instinct for a moment. Knives had stood, Elizabeth had screamed, and then she recalled nothing.
These white walls – this was Knives' house. This room, this building around them – it was in Eden.
She was in Eden. A place she was never meant to see.
And there wasn't much to see. The floors, like the walls and ceiling, were made of the same cement. Everything was smooth to prevent the buildup of dust and sand, and the floor, at least what she could see of it, seemed clean swept and unmarked.
Maybe Knives had had it made for them. Maybe no one had ever even stepped upon it.
Elizabeth saw that she was awake, but made no move to speak. She looked too frightened to even blink, and it did nothing to calm Meryl.
But there were no scorpions lying beside the statuesque brunette. There were no ropes around her arms, no wire around her wrists. Her hair looked a bit tangled, and a bit dusty, but it wasn't crawling with snakes. Their absence spooked Meryl more than she wanted to admit.
Something in this room was terribly dangerous, and she couldn't see it.
They lay there, staring alternately at each other and at the ivory walls, for what seemed like hours. And Meryl would have happily remained that way if movement at the doorless frame hadn't attracted her attention. A shadow on the wall, a whisper of leather on cement.
This . . . this wasn't . . .
But it was not a rumpled suit that came into view – it was a grey uniform. Terry Asourd's blood-soaked face swam into her field of vision, his hand at his side and hidden from her-
Meryl stifled a gasp, it was too late to play sleeping, but suddenly the face was blockier, more familiar. No blood, that was just a shadow.
Still, her gut dropped. His expression told her more clearly than any words that Aaron Carter was no more at ease than they were.
He was, however, moving. He stepped into their room quickly, scanning it completely before coming to kneel between them. His first attention went to Elizabeth, and Meryl didn't begrudge him it. He tilted her face towards the ceiling, studying her eyes, and gave her a reassuring nod. Though he seemed to be moving a little stiffly, he was moving. No bloodstains. He looked wary but okay.
And that was the first encouraging thing that had happened since they'd let Knives wake.
He had taken them down, but he had let them live.
Elizabeth hissed as her face was moved, and Carter gave her a cursory pat-down. "You had a seizure," he breathed. "You'll be sore." His hands became more delicate as he touched the wrapping around her wrist, and she flinched, tugging it back further into her uniform sleeve.
Once he had apparently assured himself that she was more or less in one piece, his piercing eyes turned and gave Meryl the same once-over. As he made no mention of scorpions, Meryl finally dared to move, turning back to the ceiling and unwrapping her arms from around her chest.
She hadn't known she was hugging herself, and she had certainly pulled some muscles. It felt as if she'd spent the night in the middle of a toma stampede. Her back and her knees were particularly unhappy.
"Aaron-"
"Shh," he cautioned, though the engineer had spoken no more loudly than he. "Someone's nearby."
Someone. That was comforting. At least he hadn't said something. Emboldened by the lack of anything fatal occurring, Meryl dared to pull herself into a sitting position. Every muscle group hurt. So she could expect that she'd gone through the same general ordeal as they had.
Seizures. Just like Millie.
She dared to brush her fingers along her abdomen, but she felt no tears in the fabric. No bulletholes, either. She would have sworn she had been stabbed, repeatedly, but even prying up the uniform showed –
Meryl paused, then pulled the uniform top forward, peering down inside. Her chest was more or less intact, but there was something . . . Meryl dropped the collar and yanked the fabric out of the waist of her trousers. There was a mark on her stomach, four spots that looked a bit like a rash. Each was no bigger than a fingerprint, and there were no blisters or sores, just red. As if someone had brushed their fingers against a scarlet typewriter ribbon and then touched her. It wasn't even as dark as blood.
She nearly yelped when Carter grabbed the wrist that was holding her shirt up, and she fought him a second before he put a finger to his lips, then used the same hand to pull up her sleeve.
The rash was also present on the underside of her wrist, in only three places. Carter ran a finger over the perfectly flat marks, but they didn't feel any more sensitive than the rest of her skin. She looked at him questioningly, and he released her wrist and turned to Elizabeth.
She had not been watching idly. She too had glanced down the front of her uniform, then pulled up her own sleeve, the one on her good wrist. It bore the same flat red marks, four of them.
And then her eyes went to Aaron.
He rubbed the back of his neck, then shrugged. "Contact drugs," he murmured. It wasn't even a whisper, it hissed less than a whisper would have. She doubted she would have heard him from even a few feet away, and the room was perfectly still.
But when he'd rubbed his neck, she'd seen his wrist. There was no red mark.
Meryl sat up and jerked her chin at him, and he complied, turning his head. He had been right – four marks, in a neat row across the back of his neck. The size of fingerprints.
So whoever had touched them – that was all they had done. Whatever was on their fingertips had done the rest.
But she didn't remember being touched on the stomach. She remembered – her wrist, someone had grabbed it. It had looked like a bright flash of light, she remembered pulling away and glancing at the window, at Millie, still sleeping, and there had been nothing reflected in the glass of the window, just the tall girl unaware of what was happening-
So they had gotten Aaron from behind then. He should feel at least a little better about that.
"Where are they?" Elizabeth murmured, and Aaron gave the room another glance and shook his head.
"Where's Millie?"If he'd been able to get up and leave wherever he had been to get to them, maybe he had seen, maybe Millie was with him-
He shook his head again. "There are more rooms. Stay here."
She watched Carter straighten, a little less gracefully than she had seen him move before, but still silently. He stole from the room with hardly a sound, and she heard faint footfalls as he disappeared.
No shadow followed him. No one spoke.
Elizabeth dared to sit up as well, favoring her wrist and staring around the room for a moment.
Meryl agreed with them. It felt as if the danger was right there in the room with them, but there was literally nothing. No furniture. No power outlets. No lights, no switches on the walls. There was a window large enough to crawl through in the center of the wall facing Eden, and there was cement. Nothing else.
Not even sand in the corners of the room. What was the word Knives had used? Cells?
A guilty stab pushed through her anxiety at the thought of cells. Doc! How could she have forgotten about Doc?
But there was no sound, not even a cough. The minutes ticked by, and finally Meryl could no longer just wait. She slowly pulled her legs beneath her, wincing as she stretched complaining muscles, and as quietly as she could, she stood.
At least, that was the idea. Her knees gave almost immediately and dropped her to the floor with a bitten off exclamation. Her knees hurt, as if they had been struck with a pole. She hurriedly slipped to her hip and straightened them, but flexing them wasn't painful. It was just when she tried to put weight on them-
Meryl was in the process of rolling up her pant leg when Carter reappeared in the doorway. She gave him an apologetic look even as Elizabeth hissed, and she turned back quickly to get a good look at herself.
Her knees were a mess of bruises, cut in several places. This was no rash. It looked like she'd fallen on them, pretty hard, and onto rocks. They hadn't bled through the uniform trousers, which probably meant it happened when she had lost consciousness.
A little ashamed to have responded so loudly to what was essentially a grown-up version of skinned knees, Meryl grimaced and rolled her pant leg back down. It had been a while since she'd last shaved, she noticed, and then it occurred to her that she wasn't terribly hungry or thirsty.
So how much time . . . ?
"Did you find the others?" Carter was helping Elizabeth to her feet, and she eventually straightened, still favoring the wrist. Meryl massaged her aching knees and tried not to show her disappointment when he simply shook his head.
She did notice something else, though. Right where the front of his collar met his neck. She pointed, to get his attention, and he glanced at the front of his uniform blankly. It was a little sandy but otherwise unmarred.
But Elizabeth had seen it too. She quietly released the snap, and there, just below his collarbone, was another mark. The engineer paused a moment, then undid the next snap. And the next, and then the next, faster than before. He grabbed her hands, stopping her, and she released his uniform jacket to cover her mouth with her hand. It gave Meryl a view of his upper chest.
The rash there was not limited to three or four fingerprints. They had used the whole hand on him, five fingers and a palm. It looked like a normal human handprint. And it looked like there was more than one of them.
Carter stared at his chest a moment before peering inside the jacket. He said nothing, his expression never changed, and he began systematically re-snapping the jacket. It was hard to tell what he thought about that, his jaw had been clenched since he'd first entered their room, but Meryl found she was not surprised.
They were women, together they weighed half what Carter did. If this was a drug that was administered by contact, they would need to administer more of it to him. Maybe they had to put it over his heart to get it into his blood stream more quickly.
But the marks weren't just over his heart.
"The house looks empty." Carter didn't raise his voice even slightly. "The other rooms are like this one."
"How many?"
He held up four fingers. "Every one has a window, but no door to outside."
Meryl turned, noticing for the first time that there didn't seem to be glass, just a square hole. Despite the fact that the house didn't appear to be sealed from the elements, it wasn't uncomfortably hot. Maybe the valley was more temperate . . . ? The air did have a strange fragrance to it, something she couldn't put her finger on. Though she might have considered it pleasant in other circumstances, something about it unnerved her. Like a whiff of cologne when you knew you should be alone in the room.
More bravely than she felt, she forced herself to her feet, forced her knees to hold her weight. It was only a few steps to the window, and she paused in front of it, waiting.
No breath of wind.
Meryl pulled her marked wrist into the cuff of her jacket, then reached out with the corner of the fabric, intent on brushing the glass she knew, she knew had to be there. There was no way it could be this temperate outside and not have a breeze, there was no way they were in Eden and it was this quiet –
And the nonexistent glass rippled like water in a tub.
Meryl flinched back, but it hadn't hurt. Something told her not to touch it with her skin, even when it appeared the fabric on the uniform was not scorched. She turned back to the room, and it was clear Carter and Elizabeth had seen.
"Energy field," Elizabeth supplied. "That's normal Lost tech." Her voice was slightly louder, but just. "It doesn't explain this . . . this feeling."
And Meryl had to agree. "It's like something is . . . is right here." Like Knives was standing right behind her.
It wasn't normal.
Carter was frowning. "I've checked every room. We're alone."
"The drugs," Elizabeth guessed, her voice slightly more confident. "We drugged Knives, remember? He even . . . asked us to . . . "
Meryl closed her eyes, and the spectre of Knives filled the space behind her eyelids, mockingly. "I would prefer the drugs to further discourse with you."
"He knew," she said immediately, and she knew she was right. "He planned this from the start."
No wonder he had discounted them. No wonder he had closed his eyes and let them sedate him. She wondered idly if he would let his . . . his new Gung Ho Guns do whatever they had done if he hadn't had such a neat out.
If it was okay for them to sedate him, it was reciprocally part of his agreement not to 'hurt them.'
"I didn't see them. Did you?"
Meryl opened her eyes, and was more relieved than she could say when Carter nodded.
"Some kind of holographic tech, I think. Something was bending the light around them."
"So . . it was . .. was people, right?"
He glanced at Meryl. "I don't think it was the Plants, if that's what you're asking."
"It's not." They were all gaining confidence, Elizabeth's voice was now nearly conversational. "The Gung-Ho Guns . . . not all of them were exactly human, were they."
Unbidden, Legato sneered at her mind's eye, and Meryl swallowed. ". . . not exactly, no."
And if they could bend light, and this house was nothing more than ivory walls –
Then they might very well not be alone after all.
"Well, at least Doc's not here," the engineer observed, staring thoughtfully at what appeared to be an open window. Meryl stared at her a moment before catching on.
Doc was definitely not invisible, and Millie wasn't, either. Knives appeared to be keeping to their bargain, at least as far as keeping them alive was concerned, so it stood to reason that Doc and Millie might be in the same place.
Please.
"So I guess we play by the rules, then?"
Aaron Carter gave the room another once-over, and Elizabeth wrapped her arms around herself. Even knowing the fear might be caused by the drugs, Meryl didn't feel any less of it.
"Until we hear otherwise," the engineer agreed. "Aaron, out of curiosity, did you find a washroom?"
-x-
Author's Notes: Goodness. I have no excuse. Been trying to write this chapter for ages, then wrote some other stuff, then came back – I'm so sorry guys. Not even sure any of you are still out there, but I DO intend to finish this fic. And it has several chapters to go. For those of you wanting badassery, I can tell you that you will eventually get to see some! You know how Knives likes to be efficient . . . if only some of that would rub off on me . . .
So thank you for your patience! I hope the next chapter won't take a year. =)