Chapter ten – Darkened corridors

Afternoon in Boise. Joe and Samantha Carter went from store to store with little Jennifer Hailey in tow. Impulse and anger were all very well, but once you had decided to take care of an eighteen-year-old runaway, you had to take care of her. And even though Jennifer herself did not ask for much, it took Sam and Joe hours more time and money than they had imagined to buy Jennifer the necessities – toiletries, underwear, two modest changes of clothing – that they could have taken from the girl's house the previous day, if they had not just stalked away from it in a rage and without thinking.

Boise was a pretty town, thought Sam, comfortably spread out in the shadow of America's mighty mountainous backbone, full of polite people; she wished she had the time to stay. For a week she had rambled on her bike with no particular goal and no hurry; now she had important business on both of the nation's coasts, thousands of miles to travel, and not enough time. She had to go to Washington DC first, and present Jennifer Hailey to her father; and meanwhile the clock was ticking in Los Angeles, with her sister detained for a reason that Sam just could not get herself to understand. Buffy, a mental breakdown? Detained as a danger to herself and others? Sam felt like her world had been turned upside down and inside out; she felt as if Santa Claus had just turned out to be a serial killer. Worse, because she did not know Santa Claus, but she knew Buffy. She felt distracted and hag-ridden, less in control than she had ever been.

Not that anyone who did not know her could have told. She went efficiently from shop to shop, ticking off necessities to be bought and finding suitable items every time. She did not realize it, but Jennifer was swiftly developing a real case of heroine-worship, looking at this woman who had taken her under her wing for no reason except that she needed it – and who was so impressively tall (Jen's height was one of her many insecurities), beautiful, neatly turned out, competent, poised, thoughtful, and quick. Not to mention generous. Jennifer certainly had not expected to have everything she needed bought and paid for by Joe and by a woman she had known for less than twenty-four hours.

By mid-afternoon, they had everything Jen needed. Joe said goodbye and wished them well, and went off to buy his arts materials, while Sam headed for the city airport with Jen behind her. There she rang, first her aunt, then her father.

Before she rang Aunt Joyce, Sam sent Jen off to buy tickets for Washington DC. This was just as well, because the call with Joyce was even more dramatic than Sam had imagined. Hank was preparing to move to Spain with Rosario, and the whole thing was connected with Buffy in a way that Joyce could not explain on the phone. Sam felt bewildered, and wondered if by any chance her aunt was reacting to disaster by imagining conspiracies. But if there was one, then what could she, as a military woman with SHIELD connections, do about it? Or would her involvement make matters worse? What was certain is that she needed to be in California as soon as possible. She wished she had known of this mess before she had made her commitment to Jen and her father.

At that point, before she could make her call to her father, Jen came back with a shame-faced expression. She had not managed to get the tickets, and eventually admitted that she had never flown in a plane before. A candidate for the Air Force Academy! As Sam hurried over to straighten matters out, she told Jen not to mention that to her father when they met. At least, the ticketing and check-in went OK after that, and the talk with her father was undramatic and routine, except for her informing him that she had sighted the Hulk just before she rode into Jen's town. He told him to inform the Idaho National Guard HQ and gave her the contact details.

Before the call to her flight, Sam still had the time to settle a couple of matters. She decided the repair to the computer was now a side issue, and had it fed-exed to Bird City, where she could take care of it when she had time. She rang up Idaho National Guard HQ as her father had instructed her, identified herself, and briefly described the sighting of the Hulk. She bought a few notebooks and a box of pencils and erasers, to take the computer's place in the meanwhile, recording her ideas and working them out as she always did. And she found a motorbike transportation company, with whom she arranged to have her Harley taken to Los Angeles airport, to wait for her as she went to meet Aunt Joyce.

She was worried about the state of her finances. As she walked to the plane with Jennifer (wide-eyed and looking all around herself to take everything in), she made a quick mental accounting, and decided that she must be near the limit of her savings. She would either have to spend the rest of her break with Dad or Aunt Joyce, which was absolutely not what she intended, or break it off and go back to Bird City with its heart-rending memories of Jack O'Neill. A violent pang told her that she was definitely not over him.

Then she turned and looked at Jennifer. She had let the girl take the window seat, so that she might get a better experience of flight, and was pleased to see that the young woman, unaware of being watched, did not look scared or nervous, only single-mindedly excited.

Samantha Carter's mind was relentlessly, continuously analytical. That included her own self, her feelings, her behaviour. She was always trying to understand, to explain, to see inside things. And now she was looking at herself, and at the way she had taken this small creature, blonde like her, under her protection in the most practical way possible, getting in the way of guns and fists for her, without even stopping to think about it. Much of it was a natural impulse to protect the weak, and a natural sympathy with women threatened by men (and, she thought sourly, by other women), but it was more than that. She wondered whether it was the same as that feeling she had felt when she had first held her tiny new-born sister, a love that took the shape of fear and a need to protect, an intense feeling for the helpless, defenceless, minute creature in her arms. Mutatis mutandis, was there not something of the same feeling about this other small creature, whose life history Sam did not want to think about? Sam had never forgotten that night under the stars in California, on Buffy's third birthday, when it had become clear and solid to her that she had a choice between science and a normal family life; and she had chosen science. But now it seemed to her that there was a maternal instinct in her after all, more powerful and dominant than she imagined. It had taken her to dangerous fights against thugs with knives and guns, and to spending hundreds of dollars to outfit a girl she had only known for a few hours, and to call her own father to give her a future. She had to be careful about where it would lead her. She certainly wanted to see a happy and successful Jen Hailey, and for that matter a happy and successful Buffy – and her guts twisted briefly at the thought of her sister in a psychiatric hospital – but she did not want Buffy, and even less Jen, to be in some way dependent on her or to develop a pseudo-mother-daughter relationship.

Now the average man or woman, even in such circumstances, would not be thinking that way. They would not be measuring possible futures and trying to develop patterns of behaviour towards those they loved. But the average man or woman was not Samantha Carter.

…...

Night was falling across the plains of middle America as Samantha and Jen flew towards the nation's capital; but it was still sunlit evening in California, as Rupert Giles was crossing the passport controls in Los Angeles airport on an anonymous hired car. He had things to do and little time to do them in.

…...

Doctor Donald had been home for a while. He wondered about the enigmatic call from Charles about an English visitor and the need to take him seriously. He certainly knew enough to take Charles seriously. Charles was the man who knew everyone, and if he did not know where all the bodies were buried, he was generally able to make a good guess. So, when he warned a friend to take someone seriously, you listened.

Suddenly the phone rang.

"Hello.

"Yes, that's me. This is my private line.

" , you say? You wouldn't happen to be English?

"Ha ha, no, , not that. You wouldn't happen to know a New York State man called Charles?

"Yes, him. He said you might be calling.

"May I ask what it is about?

"I see. I think we had better talk face to face. My first free period is... let's see... I can see you tomorrow at lunch. One o'clock.

"As you wish, . But if you pick the venue, you pay the bill.

"Heh heh! Indeed. Well, I'll see you tomorrow."

Buffy Carter Summers. Buffy fucking Carter Summers. He should have guessed. She had been nothing but trouble for a week. He wished he'd never heard of the little bitch.

…...

Four days earlier, Buffy had begun to take matters in her own hands. For this she had the most practical and pressing of all reasons. She might be bewildered and lonely in her closed room; she might be desperately in need of someone to talk with, to ask for advice, someone who'd have an idea what to do without making matters worse; she might even be haunted by the suspicion that she was really not well in the head. But hunger was something else. Hunger was real, it left her no doubt. And she had never in her whole life been so hungry.

It's not that they were deliberately starving her. It's rather that they knew nothing about her. She was being fed the normal amount of food for a girl her age and size... about half as much as she needed. Her family had long since got used to what they called her unusual metabolism. But these people knew nothing about her; and the only thing she knew about them is that they were not her friends.

Buffy was barely fifteen. She had grown up fast, but there were many things before which she was helpless, and manipulative, hostile people were one. She knew from recent experience that they were very good at turning everything she said inside out, to make her sound bad and wrong, to make her incriminate herself. She took refuge in silence; but that meant that she had not managed to convince anyone that she needed to eat more. She had not established any relationship even with nurses or low-grade kitchen personnel, and as a result, the few times she spoke, she was ignored.

By the second night she had spent in the institution, she was starving. Hunger had become the overwhelming, overmastering feeling. Buffy had never been hungry for days at a time, without respite, without relief. She had never imagined she should, and had never learned to cope. Hunger ate at her every moment of her day and did not allow her to sleep at night. It overrode every instinct and every other fear she had. By the time a day and a night and another day had gone by, it had driven every other consideration and every prudence from her mind.

It was deep night in the corridors, and only the security lights were on. Buffy broke the lock on her door with her bare hands, and stepped out, silent and barefoot.

Her sharp hearing picked a distant alarm, and she knew that they knew that she had left her room.

Even with her insides howling with hunger, and even with the small amount of training she had been able to receive from Merrick, catching a Slayer was still something for which the clinic's security were not prepared. Dodging and weaving, hiding in the shadows and sometimes even on top of high wardrobes, always hearing nurses and security men before they could hear her, Buffy made her was across the building. She did not know where the place she was looking for – the kitchens – was, and it took her more than an hour to find it. Then she had to search it for food she could eat – frozen uncooked meat or raw spaghetti did not suit her, even in her state. Eventually she placed two whole pizzas in a big oven and ate a block of cheese while waiting. And then she made her way back to her room, wanting – for some reason – to eat the pizzas there. It was only then that they found her. And since there was nothing else for it, they just left her in her room, broken lock and all. A couple of huge security men were left to watch it, just in case.

At an emergency meeting the next morning, the personnel involved gave their own account of the night's events. and his closest cooperators listened in silence, before dismissing the lower ranks with a kindly statement that they did not see that anyone had anything to be blamed for. They just had run into something they had not expected.

…...

To: Timothy Ailes Ross, VP for Development, Talbot Entertainment

From: Franz-Joseph Schwinkle

VERY CONFIDENTIAL – please destroy after reading

Hello, Dirty Tim,

I wonder whether you knew what a bundle of trouble you landed us with. I don't think so; if you knew, I doubt you'd have turned the matter of the Summers girl over to us.

Last night, the girl decided that she wasn't eating enough. So she broke the lock on her door – a lock meant to survive the attentions of heavyweight boxers or pro linebackers undergoing severe breaks – and went in search of the kitchens. For more than an hour, she dodged our patrols and security services, which should not have been possible. She made her way to the kitchens and made herself at home there, eventually leaving in the company of two large pizzas. Two eight-portion pizzas, Tim. Kitchen workers coming in the morning reported that, apart from other traces of her presence, a one-pound block of cheese had evaporated. The only thing she would tell us is that she was hungry. Later some attendants confirmed that she had been complaining about being hungry and not getting enough to eat.

Think of it, Tim. This tiny five-foot elf breaks a reinforced security lock and dodges security patrols down darkened corridors for an hour like it was a game. She gets into the kitchens and eats a pound of cheese while she calmly waits for two big eight-person pizzas to cook. Then she takes them back to her room, and then, and only then, when she is good and ready, do we find her. And she eats every bit of the two pizzas. And the only thing she tells us is that she was hungry. A number of employees have since confirmed that she had frequently complained of being hungry and not getting enough. My dear Tim, whatever we may have to do to our inmates, we don't istarve/i them!

There is no other explanation: the girl is a superhero. And this makes her treatment very difficult, because not much is know about the psychology and neurology of superheroes. Scholarly literature on superhero psychology is scarce and often outdated. It certainly makes her harder to approach, more unpredictable in her reaction to medicines and chemicals, and that is quite apart from the security risk to our people and our inmates.

I don't think we are the right people to deal with this issue, and frankly I would be grateful if you could point to a way out

Yours ever,

DON

…...

Nothing had happened since that letter four days earlier. Tim Ross had fallen into a silence which to , who had known him since Yale days, smelled like panic. And now there was this man Giles, on top of the pressure being made by the girl's family. (He wondered whether they realized what they had in their midst. On the whole, he thought not; their reaction was at all points that of parents with a small and vulnerable child in alien hands and in danger, not that of people who knew that their child had a terrifying secret and might be more dangerous for those who held her than they might be to her.)

He had not shared his conclusions with his employees, but he did not hire idiots. His employees had come to their own conclusions, and Dr Schwinkle was facing a kind of creeping mutiny. Nobody wanted to be assigned to Buffy Summers duty any more. Only a junior doctor from Wales, Gwynneth Price, seemed willing to interact with her.

And when he reached the clinic in the morning, it was to find the news that Buffy Carter Summers had escaped. Damn it, he really wished he'd never heard of the little bitch.