Usual disclaimers.
Beep.
Beep.
"—but transparency issues surely come into play."
"Exactly Martha. Somewhere in this nation's history, big business got it into their heads that they are above accountability. Just look at the bailouts, the housing bubble. WGT is going to hide behind their lawyers for the duration of this scandal, and I'm willing to bet my syndication they have the Feds in their pocket. Theirs is a long and intertwined history, we know the DOD had contracts with them, so we'll probably never know what really happened at that New Jersey plant."
"That was ACN analyst Mac Harper weighing in on the ramifications of the tragedy in New Jersey. For those just tuning in, we've had twenty-seven confirmed deaths today and another forty-eight injured. No word as of yet as to the cause of the building's collapse. The investigation continues, after we take a break."
Anna's lids fluttered open.
Heavy.
Dizzy.
Water, rushing over her. Bottom-of-the-Hoover-Dam kind of pressure. Head-in-a-vice pressure.
She poked her tongue out to wet her lips, catching a flake of dry, chapped skin on the tip. Her mouth and breath tasted like worn socks after a cross-country run. Pain pulsed from her abdomen in subdued, revolting waves; her ankle throbbed dully. Everything was doubled, paired, copied… two fuzzy television sets, hovering on a wall mount across the way with talking heads spewing nonsense on an all-news channel; quadruple monitors, with little blue and yellow lights and blurry numbers; two doors, both closed, clear plastic bins attached to the back with several clipboards sticking out of them; curtains, more than she could count, closing her off from the rest of the room; and two women, both blonde, both haggard and worn, curled up in two vomit-colored chairs on her left-side, attention on the television.
Anna concentrated, and the double vision coalesced into singles. She shifted, or tried, then stilled when she went lightheaded from the pain.
"Errrghhh—"
"Anna?" a far-off voice asked.
"Huh?"
"Anna, are you awake?"
The muscles in her neck weren't cooperating; she let her head droop, and hoped the action constituted a nod.
"Anna? Anna… blink if you can hear me."
Anna blinked, but her eyelids inexplicably had a set of dumbbells attached to them.
"When they ask you your name, say Kate. You were mugged while we were out jogging. Some kid pulled a gun and took our I.D.s and car keys, okay?"
"Wuh—"
"Kate, your name is Kate. Just run this like a job, okay? You are Kate."
"K—"
"Blink if you understand me."
Kate. Sure.
Anna slid her lids shut then pried them open once more.
"Good. Nurse—nurse! She's awake."
Anna moved. No, the room was moving? No, the bed, the mechanical hum of the bed arching higher, so that she sat fully upright. The room looped-the-loop, and her body… sensations felt diluted. Like she was feeling pressure but not touch. Like Jane must have felt—
"J-J-Jane?" she sputtered.
"Middle name," Jane grumbled to a man at her side. "Yes, Kate, are you alright?"
"Wutz—wha—ack!"
"My name is David. I'm going to put this straw in your mouth, but I want you to take little sips, okay?"
Anna felt a tickle at her lip and gummed dumbly at the straw. She slurped, unaware until this moment of how dry her throat felt. She tried to lift her hand to scratch her neck, to get at her parched, cement-scratched throat, but gentle pressure guided the appendage back down.
"We need to scale back the morphine if we want her lucid enough for the police to take a statement."
"Won't that hurt her?"
"She'll experience some pain, but it'll be manageable. Wean her off of it overnight, go to a large dose of an easier prescription tomorrow. Nothing's going to be comfortable for anyone out of surgery with a bullet hole, even if it's just a flesh wound. You need to accept that she's going to hurt a little."
"No, I… I understand."
"Let me just check a few things."
Light in Anna's eyes. So bright it burned, disoriented her further. Poking on her feet that she tried to shake off. A needle at the inside of her elbow. Then her fingers were dancing, tapping her thumb in sequence. Her mouth still tasted like chalk.
"Hello, miss?"
"Huh?"
"What's your name?"
"A—Ah."
"Your name?"
"A…Ate."
"Ate?"
"She's trying to say 'Kate'."
"You've got to let her tell me, so we can rule out head injury."
"It wasn't head injury! The other hospital already performed the general assessment."
"Do I have to call someone to escort you from the room?"
…
…
"My apologies."
More questions. Manageable answers. But when the nurse got to 'where are you from', Anna couldn't do it anymore.
"My body aches all over," Anna rasped. "And the ceiling won't stay still."
"I think that's enough for now," David said to her. "The police have already taken your sister's statement. I'm going to call them and let them know you're awake, so be ready to answer more questions when they get here. I'll page the doctor so he can come by and give you a full report."
Anna watched as David left the room, and Jane returned to the chair at her side.
"Cops?" Anna whispered, focus righting with significant effort expended.
"To take your statement. About the mugging, remember?" Jane led.
"Sure," Anna inhaled. She tried for a yawn, a deep breath, but there was a millstone pressing against her chest, perpetual heartburn that squeezed her organs with every over-indulgent breath. "Tell me what I remember."
"Two people," Jane began. "It was twilight, we were on a run in Liberty State Park, they pop out, tell us to hand over everything. You lost a FitBit, and your keys. They took my water bottle, it's blue, and my cross trainers, which were brand new. My feet were injured from the… incident. We got transferred into the city when they started bringing in all the people from the WGT plant collapse."
"What? Jane… what happened?"
Was it the morphine, or was Jane scowling at her?
"Hans shot you."
"And—" Anna hacked dryly. "Then…"
"I'll tell you after the cops leave. You're going to be here for a while."
"Alright," Anna acquiesced, unwilling and unable to disagree. "I'm just going to shut my eyes until they come."
"Okay."
"You won't leave me, will you?"
"Just close your eyes, Anna."
"Say it," Anna commanded weakly, and flopped her left hand out on the hospital bed. "Say you won't leave."
Anna closed her eyes when Jane took her hand, tactile sensations diminished. Jane's fingers weren't smooth anymore. It was like… like Jane had gloves on.
"Anna—"
"I love you."
Seven hours, one interview, two naps, and three lime jello cups later, Anna sat up fiddling with one of the IVs running out of the top of her wrist. Jane was curled up in the poor excuse for a chair, elbows crossed over her knees and head resting dejectedly atop them.
"We can now confirm the thirty-first death in the WGT plant collapse, sixty-three year old Miguel Rivera. Rivera left Puerto Rico in 1974 and attended medical school in Minneapolis. Rivera was listed as research staff and had worked for WGT for over twenty-five years. He is survived by four children and nine grandchildren."
"Turn it off," Anna croaked, glaring daggers at the television.
"No."
"You're only torturing yourself."
And me. You're torturing me, too.
"I want to see if they find Hans."
Oh.
Oh.
"You mean, you didn't—"
"I didn't do the body count myself. I was rather preoccupied with staunching your blood flow."
"But… Weselton?"
"Dead."
"Oh, uhm… okay."
Jane took a sip from a water bottle, redirected her gaze toward the set.
"Do you want a jello cup?" Anna asked. "I could buzz for another one."
"I don't want a jello cup."
"But you were worse than me. You haven't really eaten in weeks, Jane."
"I'm not hungry."
"Okay."
"Okay."
…
…
…
"Are we gonna talk about it?" Anna asked.
"When they lower your morphine dose," Jane said. Her grip tightened on the plastic bottle. It crunched. "I'm very angry, Anna."
"I—" she started to protest, couldn't finish. "I… I know."
"Tomorrow."
"But you'll stay with me tonight? You're not leaving, are you?"
"If that's what you want."
"What do you want?"
"I want to erase everything," Jane answered, grave. "The transfer from New Jersey was shoddy at best, I need to make sure I've covered all of our tracks. Start work on deleting files from WGT backups around the world. This was only the headquarters for the Subject Alpha and Project Frost division; not that whole Special Projects affair, if I'm reading the information on the USB drive correctly. I want to make sure we're untraceable, and that Hans is dead. Or at the very least, incapacitated and in immense pain," Jane sighed heavily. "There's much to do."
Anna looked toward the sinking sun, a shuddering, carrot-orange twilight against the Manhattan skyline. Black buildings, juxtaposed so crisply with the fiery atmosphere; it looked like a Halloween festival come early.
"Can't it wait?"
"No. It cannot," Jane muttered.
"But—"
"You won't be awake and I need Olaf. My computers too, if I'm going to do this properly. WGT is the only institution that holds our records, Anna, and I'm taking those back."
"I… yeah, you need to do that. I understand," Anna whispered.
Jane took another sip of water, and it made Anna realize how thirsty she was. Anna attempted to reach the tray, whimpering at the pain in her gut.
"More water?" Jane asked.
Anna looked skyward instead of meeting her gaze. "Yes. Please."
Fucking invalid.
Jane stood and reached over for the plastic cup on the tray, bent the straw with clinical precision, raised it to Anna's mouth. Anna drank, slowly this time. She had practically inhaled her first jello cup and the goo had lodged itself in her windpipe. She succumbed to a coughing fit, which devolved into pressing the 'increase' button on her morphine drip, her abdomen unable to take the drumming strain.
Anna was learning, so very slowly, about actions and consequences.
"Did you have any questions about what you looked at?" Anna asked, not wanting to sleep again. The morphine made her groggy and dizzy. But drugs or not, Anna knew Jane had not been herself since WGT. Or perhaps Jane had, Ice Queen all over again.
The hospital kept the thermostat super low in the summer heat; maybe Jane was just slowly freezing.
"A few, about the timeline… but I don't want to talk about it yet. Rest for now."
"No, I'll tell you. Whatever you want to know, I'm more aware than you think."
"Tomorrow."
"Please," Anna said, and she felt herself start to tear up. Her stomach hurt and her heart felt like it had been sliced from ventricle to vena cava. Jane was beautifully mussed and distant and everything was crumbling. "Tell me what you want me to say."
…
…
…
"How long? How long did you know about…" Jane motioned indirectly between the pair of them.
Anna didn't ask for clarification. Even doped up with enough painkillers to take down a bull moose, she knew exactly what Jane was asking. The question she feared most of all. Because everything else she felt she could justify, but this— withholding knowledge of their relation—indefensible.
"Will you get my personal effects bag?" she asked.
"Anna—"
"Please, I know what you're asking, just… please."
Jane chugged the final fifth of her water bottle and tossed it into the trash beside Anna's bed. She crossed the floor of the ICU and retrieved a clear plastic bag.
Hard to believe that less than twenty-four hours ago, Anna had been walking unescorted through the halls of WGT, sitting behind the observation window of Jane's prison-like room. Hard to believe she had Hans wrapped so securely around her finger.
Though, who knows with him.
Hard to believe Jane had once been hers.
"Here."
Anna readjusted when Jane lay the bag gingerly at her left side, and pillaged her addled mind for a reason, any reason at all, as to why Jane might smell like cheap vodka and lemon-lime carbonation.
Hospital smells. Stinging, sterile. Side effects of the morphine, probably.
The gunshot wound on the right side of her body thumped with every shift of her torso. It was painful still, reaching across and digging through the unsanitary bag.
But maybe Anna deserved a little pain.
She dove into the back pocket of her jeans, extracted the ring. Anna fisted her palm, concealing the trinket within.
"Your question?" Anna whispered, dropping her head to the left side of the ratty pillow. "I found out our last night in Vegas," Anna replied quietly, giving Jane her precious, damning truth.
Jane's mouth twitched into a grimace. Her eyes slanted, and she choked on a sharp inhale. But no explosion. No verbal attack.
Anna regarded her warily.
"I… I bought the ring before I knew," Anna said, uncurling her fingers from her fisted palm. The white-gold band lay there, benign and irreproachable.
"But I don't think I really knew for sure," Anna explained. "Not until they came for us. I… I didn't want to know, and it was easy…" she gulped a huge breath, brain not quite up to defending her actions and declaring her love above all while the rest of her body found relief through intravenous pain meds. "…easy to deny without confirmation. Eavesdropping has gone about 50/50 on reliability for me in the past."
Anna reached blindly and sought Jane's glove-covered fingers, the morphine churning acid in her stomach, turning everything hazy once again.
Jane stared down at her offending left hand and looked as if she wanted to chop it off. She extended her arm robotically, and the fatalism of her gesture made Anna want to cry out and shred her clothes, throw herself at Jane's feet and beg, and beg, and beg.
Or maybe it's just the morphine.
Anna clutched her; braided her fingers through that reluctant hand and prayed for Jane to come back to her, to understand, to not leave her.
"This is yours," Anna said, and wrapped Jane's fingers around the ring she had recovered. "The USB was more important, for you to know what I was working on, why I had to act the way I did—"
"Anna, stop—"
"But this is important, too. So important Jane. It took a while to find it, but I did," she pushed through the stifling drugs and offered a half-grin. "This was my promise to you. The promise I made before… before I knew we were sisters. The promise I—I—I'm still making, right now, knowing everything. You don't have to wear it, but it's yours."
"Anna, I don't—"
"Just take it!" Anna yelped, and jolted in the bed. The heart monitor picked up and her abdomen seized; the pain was so intense she nearly blacked out.
"Anna…"
"Don't leave me, Jane," Anna said, slowly fading.
"We'll talk tomorrow. You need to rest now."
The words with her last conscious breath:
"Don't… don't you dare leave me."
"Aladdin was like me," Anna explained the following afternoon.
They had moved her from ICU into a private room after everything ran smooth as silk during the night. And the room was nice, as private hospital affairs go. A bigger window, machines less noisy, a bed perhaps a hair more comfortable than the one in ICU. A liter of bottle water rested beside Jane's coffee mug at Anna's bedside. She was perpetually thirsty, which the doctors insisted was a side-effect of the medication. The pain remained, but at least the morphine was a bygone memory. She had successfully made three trips to the restroom without aid, so Anna was going to count that as a win in her column.
She still felt groggy, with the weight of the solar system pressing in around her. But that's what she had signed up for, if Anna was the sun in this preposterous tale. She would flare and recover and rise, strong and sure.
Right?
Only if I have the moon to balance me.
Then again, when we come together, everything implodes: the universe, buildings... us.
"How do you mean?" Jane asked.
"Hans and his brothers, you know they operate on an international network, right? They have their… converts? Scouts? I don't even know what you'd call them. People they trained, to work for them, with them. Like me. I didn't really know his older brothers, just Kurt. We'd occasionally pull jobs with Ulrich, too, because they were the youngest. Al was really good friends with Ulrich, until he botched a job completely. But Al said enough, about you, about your powers, and Hans wouldn't let it go. He became fixated, started poking his nose into your history.
"Hans is good at what he does, or did, or… whatever. Said there were a series of electric-related arson accidents with no cause determined in Chicago, a month or so after Al told him about… his summer with you."
Jane's grip tightened on the armrest. "I was… it was a really bad time, I couldn't control it."
"I'm not blaming you for anything."
Jane shook her head, stared at the coffee mug with hidden contents resting on the bedside table. "Go on."
Anna gathered her piece-meal thoughts, attempted coherency: "He reached out to every contact, every person he knew in the middle U.S. Followed every lead. Unexplained lightning storms in the Missouri River Valley. Incident reports going back a whole decade, about exploded transformers at Little Rock substations. There was no substantial trail, and by then, he knew something was up."
"How do you know all of this?" Jane asked.
"I cross-referenced date and time stamped information at WGT with the answers to some very specific questions. It… took a fair bit of talking for them to let me into the files. But I told them, the more I knew about you, the better I could..." Anna trailed off, shook her head. "Anyway, they let me look into what they had on you. And then Hans...I had to be smart about what I asked him, how I asked him. Had to let on I knew more than I did, bluff my way through and let them… let them do that stuff to you. I had to pretend like I wanted to use you... that I didn't care that they were..."
Push through. It's over now, she's safe. Just spit it out.
"In the end, Hans told me everything I needed to know, and everything you wanted to know. I needed time to compile it all and copy it without them knowing."
Jane's mouth set in a firm line. And Anna knew what Jane was thinking, where the thief's insecurities always trekked, toward the feelings of not good enough and abnormal.
Come on, Jane. Just ask the damn follow-up!
"And so what happened next?" Jane asked.
"I didn't sleep with him."
…
…
…
"I never said you did."
"You were thinking it," Anna murmured. "I see you. I know you."
"I never thought you would—"
"Bullshit," Anna sighed the word half-heartedly. "I didn't sleep with him. I've made it this far, getting information in my morally reprehensible ways, but I'd never do that to you."
Jane's jaw tightened. Slack-line tight. Fingers-in-a-lover tight. Bone-crushing-corset tight.
"Please continue," Jane said.
"Are we not going to talk about it... us, Jane?"
"Not now. I will not do this with you in a hospital bed."
"Then what are we doing?"
"Your favorite thing," Jane answered, eyeing her coffee mug again. "You're telling me a story."
"I'm telling you the truth."
"Okay."
"Don't patronize me!"
"I'm not," Jane said, losing the fight. She reached for the mug on the bedside table, took a hearty swallow. "I'm not trying to," she corrected.
"Can I have some of that?" Anna asked pointedly. "Coffee?"
"Tea," Jane balked, and Anna hated the lie resting on Jane's lip.
"I'll take it."
"No caffeine," Jane continued. "Doctors don't want you hyped on the morphine drip."
Bull-fucking-shit.
"They took me off last night, remember?"
"Keep going, Anna. I just want to understand," Jane softened, perfecting the misdirection.
Perhaps I taught her a little too well.
"After everything... don't I deserve that?" Jane asked brokenly.
Guilt trip, too. She'll be better than me at this rate.
"He didn't find you," Anna said, easing back into her story. Tales of the past were indefinitely preferable to her present. "After giving his P.I.s a bunch of information on electric accidents and teenagers, he zeroed in on James instead."
"James?"
"Operation Frost. Hans was moving in on him just as WGT was set to acquire him."
"Operation Frost, I read some of the file. He had a sister, too," Jane said.
Too.
As in, in addition to me having a sister, the past project did as well. She read the file. She knows how it turned out. No happy endings, anywhere for anyone.
"Yes, the sister, she... She was killed when WGT moved in on the pair of them."
"James did it," Jane said.
"Yes, he, uhm, lashed out, and when he realized... there wasn't a lot of fight left in him after that. They kept him contained, for several years actually."
"What ended up killing him?" Jane asked.
"The sedation drugs, over time. As I said, he didn't have much reason to fight, not after... But you were more powerful than he was, according to the readings. The drug would only hold you for so long. But for the first two years with James, WGT couldn't get a reading. Not a one. Every single time the monitors would go snowy, like bad TV—"
"Frost. Operation Frost."
"Exactly. Back then, this whole thing was just a subdivision of WGT special projects. But when Hans closed in on James, helped bring him in, he got buddy-buddy with Weselton real quick. Said he had information on another one, on you."
"He didn't have anything. Not really," Jane intoned.
"Hans was used to lying through his teeth," Anna supplied. "Gave a perfect physical description of you, your powers, because of all the bragging... because of everything Al told him. Said he'd narrowed down your location to Chicago, and the rest was history. And once they found out all about Hans's connections, WGT gave him everything they had on you. They're a corporation with enough resources and investigators to find every person gone missing in the last hundred years. What they said on the news?" Anna started, motioning toward the muted set across the room. "All true. Contracts with the DOD; undisclosed, government funded projects. So much money tied into this experiment alone, it's a trip thinking about what else the company has in the works. So with all the connectivity, all those resources, honing in on the special people, the other people like you? Finding them wasn't a problem… unless the special people covered their tracks."
"Is that why it took them so long to find me?"
"They… needed me first, to get to you," Anna admitted, taking interest in the curtain at her bedside.
"Anna?"
"Hans… they couldn't find you, they couldn't track you down. You were a ghost, and they still had James. At that point, they couldn't hold the both of you, even if they did find you. It was better if they could somehow just keep tabs on you. Keep you, heh, on ice until they were ready."
Jane didn't even twitch.
"So they sent Hans for me," Anna continued. "It's easier to track a kid who's got a record, a juvie stint, westward trajectory. And they would've needed me for transferable experimentation eventually."
"As you said, keeping tabs," Jane nodded her understanding. "But I don't see how he did any of this. Hans couldn't have even been twenty at the time—"
"You make your name early in the Westergaurd clan or you don't survive. You were his white whale, and I was the harpoon."
Anna kept going, though the conversation sat leaden in her gut, just like the damn bullet that put her there in the first place.
"He found me. He trained me. He had me stick around the longest of any other recruit, took me to Europe with him, but he wanted you. He thought I knew where you were, but wasn't giving it up because I knew about your… your powers and stuff. He never asked outright, or maybe he did, I can't remember. I was hardly a teenager at the time… and he was good to me, seemed interested in me. I just… happened to have a knack for what he showed me. And I was desperate to please, desperate for someone to take time with me and turn me into something better. Back then, I'm sure I would've turned you over to him if I had known. I was, admittedly, swept up in all he could offer me. But he cut me loose when he decided I knew nothing about you. Created a damn monster, but whatever, at least it kept me off the streets—"
"You're not a monster."
Anna paused, gawped at Jane's quivering chin. They had the news channel on again, on mute, at Anna's behest. Memorial service times for the deceased of WGT jogged along the screen in the scrolling news ticker. Anna watched Jane read every one. Knew Jane felt every one like bullets in her own body.
"Neither are you," Anna insisted.
Jane dropped her head, and a tear leaked out the crease of her left eye. Shimmered as it fell. She sipped from her mug and wouldn't meet Anna's gaze.
"Please," Anna said, and glowered at the mug in Jane's hands. "Please, don't."
"Anna, I need— I…" Jane gulped, rose from the chair, then disappeared into the bathroom. Whether to drink the rest all in one go or dump it down the drain, Anna didn't know. She heard the rush of water at the tap's turn, regarded Jane with cautious eyes when she trudged back into the room.
"Better?" Jane asked, referencing the empty cup.
"Yeah."
Guess I'll have to trust you.
And didn't that just take the fucking cake.
"Hans always kept in contact with me," Anna soldiered on.
Because if they weren't talking WGT implosion right now they certainly weren't talking relapse, either.
"Had me pull three or so jobs a year, even after he… I don't know, released me? He had that connection, knew I could never go looking for information on myself, because WGT had it all. Had everything on both of us, that's why he never found anything in the first place. Why you never found anything. By the time you started looking, after… after…"
"After I got drunk and killed that man in Chicago?" Jane answered, cutting.
"After the accident, there was nothing to find, on me, nor on you. Only my aliases that I'd made for myself. Interpol and the FBI and CIA and all these other agencies, looking for someone with no background. And they had nothing on you. No pictures, cause you'd mess with the cameras. Security alarms disabled with a nick in the wiring. Seismic sensors and lasers that just shut down with every jewel you stole. Hans tipped WGT off about it, all of the robberies with faulty electronics. They didn't care about the thieves that left traces behind. They cared about the one who didn't. They weren't hunting a person, but a specter, and Hans was good at making the connection between what was and, more importantly, what wasn't there.
"By that time, WGT had infiltrated your systems, using residual power from James to run some software… the guys in IT told me that part, and I didn't really understand it all, only that James was powering the code breaking, they were only facilitating. That if I could get you to shoot off enough energy, they could be the most powerful technological firm in the world."
"You talked to people in IT? And Bates, what about him?" Jane questioned.
"I talked to everyone. I… played it very cool, very cross there. Became the woman I would've become if I had stayed with Hans. Greedy. Unscrupulous. So they told me everything. They were afraid of Hans, and afraid of you, and afraid of me in turn. I 'sold you out' to Weselton, had to tell them your secrets to get them to trust me. Hans was the hardest… I had to tell him…"
"You told him about us? How we were…"
"Together? Bits and pieces. Enough half-truths to keep him on the line," Anna didn't like this line of inquiry, so redirected back to her original story. "IT told me they were imbedding messages in emails they were sending out, certain you would pick up on it someway or another. That's where the Caribbean invite came into play. Hans knew you'd take it, that you'd started doing jobs for hire, to fund your orphanages. A jewel goes missing, an orphanage crops up. Those orphanage paper trails had to be legit, and legit paper trails, diamond heists, electronic manipulation—"
"The perfect storm," Jane nodded, everything clicking into place. "Maybe I was asking to be found."
"But you wouldn't have been," Anna continued quietly. "None of this would have happened if you hadn't stayed with me. I made you easier to track. Stupid oversight, going back to Louisiana. The house was off the books, but they had bugged all of Kristoff's accounts, phone, email, whatever… traced it back because, like an idiot, I kept calling him about our trip to Norway—"
"You're right. None of this would have happened if not for you."
Ouch.
"But even… I… thank you, I suppose. The ends don't justify the means, but you saved my life. I'm supposed to thank you," but Jane didn't sound very grateful.
"You're… welcome?"
"No. I'm not that. Anywhere I've ever been, I'm certainly not that."
"Jane… or, do you prefer Elsa now?"
"I… I don't know, I… this is a lot to process, and I've got a lot to do."
She (Jane, Elsa, whoever she was) stood, wiped shaky hands on black pants.
"Where are you going?" Anna sat straighter in bed, pulling her leads with her.
"… cafeteria."
"Liar."
Jane ignored the challenge, stalked across the room to her duffel bag. "I have to go somewhere that I can use my computer. They don't let you in the rooms."
And this was classic Jane: running when she had what she needed, getting out before security swarmed and everything went to shit.
"Do you really expect me to believe that?" Anna asked, tone bordering on sharpness.
"Don't, Anna."
"No. We have to talk about this. We'll never get past this if we don't talk about it."
Jane crossed her arms and stared out the window.
"When do you want to do this, then?"
"Now. Get me out of here," Anna instructed.
"You can't move well enough yet," Jane said superiorly. "You need to… recover."
"Come on, I love hospitals just about as much as you do."
"For once, could you just—"
"No!" Anna said, hours of tension and uncertainty released in her protest. Her chest felt like lead, her lungs drowning in heavy liquid, pulmonary oil or syrup. She was battered, her stomach upended, her heart— shredded into pulpy bits and stringy chordae. "We're doing this now," she repeated.
"Do you want to go to the roof?" Jane asked, resigned. She ran a tired (gloved) hand over her pale face. "There's a service elevator that-"
"Why would I want to go there?"
"So I can yell and sob without worrying that a nurse is going to sedate me again," Jane seethed.
Anger. I can work with that.
"Fine. Roof it is."
Does this count as a cliffhanger? Doesn't really feel like one, but hey, I do sorta know what comes next. All my thanks for all your support, and critique is always appreciated.