by Stevie Barry
Safe. It was a concept Katje had all but forgotten the meaning of, in the last few months. She hoped she'd have a chance to get used to it again.
----
Geezer appreciated the beer even more than the shower and clean clothes. Julifer seemed like a kid after his own heart -- she had him sent a big salami sandwich and a six-pack, and he'd see if he could beg a pack of cigarettes later. It was good to feel like a person again, not some kind of fucked-up POW.
When he emerged from his room, clean and full and relaxed in a way only alcohol could provide, he found Hansen waiting for him. The kid looked…dazed, honestly, like he hadn't properly taken everything in yet. His hair was damp, his face scrubbed clean, and someone had given him new glasses. "I'm having a hard time believing this is real," he said.
"Believe it," Geezer returned. "This place is what all of us are gonna need." Whenever war hit them, these people were the only ones who would be on their side.
A woman in black fatigues appeared and led them to another conference room, where they found Katje already waiting. Julifer had provided her with makeup, as well as a pair of very tight jeans and a low-cut red tank top. Geezer shook his head. He didn't care if the kid was twenty-three, she still looked way too young to sport that kind of getup. Or maybe he was just too old.
Beside him, Hansen paused, visibly tongue-tied. He at least appreciated her clothing -- which was, Geezer thought, probably why she'd picked it. At least if she snared Hansen, she'd probably give up her so-called profession.
They sat beside her, and Geezer grew ever more curious as more people filed in. An odder assortment he couldn't remember seeing -- soldiers, an Indian woman in a beautiful sari. A lot of people in various levels of civilian clothing, a priest with a white collar, three Buddhist monks, a man in a Sikh turban, and two old hippies.
Once they were all seated, Miranda called them to attention. "These three just escaped that bastard of a doctor we've been trying to off for so long. They say he's got a lot more people up north, and we've got to figure out how to get them out. I don't suppose you guys have any actual coordinates on that place, do you?"
Geezer shook his head. "Nope. And I'd advise you don't send a military strike. Last people who tried that all wound up dead."
The whole assemblage stared at him. "You gotta understand how dangerous Von Ratched is," he said, wishing like hell he had a cigarette. "Now that we've escaped, he's gonna expect us to come after him. Dunno how far that telepathy of his reaches, but unless we hit hard and fast, he'll know we're coming.
"Now, he doesn't have any aircraft left, but I dunno how many weapons he's got stashed outside the building we destroyed. He's not dumb enough to keep all his eggs in one basket -- I'm betting he has reserves. We took out a lotta his other supplies, too, so he's bound to be pissed.
"We gotta get in there soon, though. Weather's gonna go sour in a month if we're lucky, and then everybody'll be stuck up there for the winter. And they might not survive."
"How the hell did you manage that?" one of the other soldiers demanded.
Geezer sighed. "We had a fifth person," he said. "She's got the same curse as him, and she wrecked damn near everything around her. She got shot, and when she's hurt or afraid, her telekinesis tends to go outta control."
"Telekinesis?" Miranda asked sharply. "We didn't know he had that. No wonder we've never been able to kill him."
Katje looked at Geezer, confused. "I still do not know how you know Lorna survive," she said.
"Trust me," he said grimly. "She's alive, but once she's recovered enough, a lotta other people might not be. Von Ratched's got a…thing for her," he added to the assemblage at large. "Or thinks he does, anyway. He pushes her too far, she won't be able to help herself. And then we might not have anyone to rescue."
A somewhat awful silence followed that, until Julifer raised a hand. "Weather won't be an issue," she said, and pointed to the Indian woman. "Shivshankari there's a weather-manipulator, and she's not the only one. Father Anthony is an electropath, but that won't do much good against most weapons. He could knock out any tracking systems they've got, though."
"Anamaria there is a pyrokinetic," Miranda added, pointing at one of the hippies. "We light everything on fire, the weapons won't do any good."
Geezer shook his head. "Not that easy," he said. "Von Ratched's got ways of knocking people out at a distance. Only chance we've got is to draw him outta the Institute, and I'm damned if I know how to do it."
"If Lorna escape, he would follow," Katje said. "And you know she will try."
"Woman got shot, kid," he reminded her. "Even a minor wound's gonna keep her in traction a while, since she's so small. And you know as well as I do that bastard'll keep her doped to the gills for a while."
"True," she conceded, frowning.
"'Sides, even if she did escape, there's no way we'd know it. There's gotta be some other way to drag Von Ratched out of his den. I just dunno what it is yet."
"Drag him out and kill him," Miranda said. "Might be the only chance we've got. Otherwise he'll just disappear again."
"Good luck," Hansen muttered. "A lot of us aren't sure he's even human."
"Oh, he is human," Katje said. "He bleed, yes? We saw him." She glanced around the table. "All of you, what is it you do here?"
"We're liaisons," the priest said. "We deal with the outside world. There are people all of us have to warn out there. And people we can work with. Not all the normal population is against us."
"Do what you have to do, guys. We'll meet back here in two days. I'll see about finding that place by satellite."
She stood, and beckoned Geezer, Katje, and Hansen. "I want you to draw me a layout of that place, as best you can. Write down everything you know, no matter how insignificant it might seem. The more info we've got, the better."
They nodded. "Tell me when our guy in the hospital wakes up," Geezer said. "You're gonna need help dealing with him. Trust me."
----
The next day, Lorna forced herself to stay awake long enough to plot. Gunshot wounds or not, she couldn’t let herself go soft.
She stared at the ceiling, letting her babysitter believe she was too drugged to think. That wasn't far off the mark, either; her head was so fuzzy everything took twice as long to compute as it should.
There was no conceivable way she was getting out of here before winter hit. It was a fact she simply had to accept -- she wasn't going anywhere until she could walk again, and she didn't know how long that would take. Leaving just wasn't going to happen yet, and that left only one option.
Kill Von Ratched.
She'd promised the Lady and Geezer she wouldn't, but that was before this happened. Normally Lorna was a stickler about promises, but there was simply no way she would put up with that bastard until spring. She didn't trust him, and didn't want to know what he'd try to do with her if he was around her too long. She could guess well enough, and she'd be damned if she'd let that happen. So he had to die.
The thought was, even now, kind of horrifying. Too many people had died by her hand already, a fact that had yet to properly sink in. The two chopper pilots she was sure of, but she was certain some of the mercenaries had died, too. And whatever they might have been in life, however terrible, they had been living, breathing, thinking human beings. And Lorna had ended that.
I’m tired, she thought, and she was tired -- in more ways than one. Chronically fighting Von Ratched at every turn was wearying in a way like nothing she’d ever known. There was no respite from it, even when she was asleep, and in her darkest moments she wished she’d never left Ireland. There had been good reason to -- her family would have been in danger if she hadn’t, given that she’d had no control at all over her curse -- but still. All this fighting, all this striving for revenge...she wondered how long she could maintain it. What would it take, to make her give in, give up, and just...off herself? Her anger and her hatred acted like a life preserver, and kept the sheer enormity of her
predicament from crushing her. Without them -- without them, hanging herself might seem like a legitimately appealing option.
She shut her eyes, wondering if she could get some incense. This whole place smelled like Von Ratched, and she could do without it constantly reminding her where she was. It was a strange scent, because it was underlain with something like ozone -- the smell of a coming thunderstorm. It was unnerving, and she couldn't afford that right now. No human being should smell like that, and in her woozier moments she wondered if he was really human after all. Sometimes in her nightmares he was the Grim Reaper -- but then, sometimes she was, too. Last night she'd dreamt she'd killed the entire world.
Lorna rolled over, facing away from the nurse. At least the hospital bed was comfortable, far more so than the rest of the various prison bunks she'd occupied here, but in a weird way, that troubled her. She didn't know how to deal with anything Von Ratched did that wasn't horrible. No doubt he expected some reaction of her, and since she didn't know what it was, she didn't know what to do to disappoint him. The last thing she wanted to do was inadvertently make him happy.
Those thoughts still troubled her when he came back, dismissing the nurse. By now he expected hostility from her, so she thought she'd try another tactic: bluntness.
"What exactly are you hoping to accomplish, keeping me in here?" she asked, struggling to sit up as he brought her more soup. He looked tired, she noticed, and mildly annoyed. Good. "Do you honestly think you'll hit me with Stockholm Syndrome or something?" Her tone was curious, not accusatory, and she could tell it had caught him off-guard.
"Not the term I would have chosen, but broadly, yes," he said, and that startled her. "And you believe it will not work."
"I think the Americanism is 'duh'," Lorna said. "Come on, you're too smart to think something so bloody stupid. All this is going to do is irritate you, and I think you know it."
Von Ratched put aside his fork, and she assessed him as detachedly as she could. From what little she really knew of him, he didn't seem the type to hopelessly delude himself, but it looked like that was exactly what he was doing, and why? It was a question she just couldn't answer. Even whatever potential he thought he saw in her couldn't be that big of a draw. "How long are you going to keep questioning me about this?"
"As long as it takes to get a real answer," she said evenly. "What're you going to do when I can move again? Keep me locked in here until I go barking mental? Unless you knock me out every night, you've no way to be sure I won't kill you in your sleep. How d'you know I won't try to poison everything in your fridge? To say nothing'v the fact that you haven't got anyone left to threaten me with -- I've no reason at all to cooperate anymore. Only reason I'm still here is this blasted leg." You might as well just give up now hung unspoken in the air.
He reached for her hand, and when she tried to kick him, pain exploded through that twice-damned leg. Kicking was pure reflex when it came to him, but oh God did it hurt like a bastard now.
"You are unusually garrulous tonight," he noted, arching an eyebrow. "I am surprised you are willing to speak to me at all."
That’s the point, arsehole, she thought. "Not like I'm going anywhere yet. I need to know, going forward, how delusional you really are." Still, there was nothing hostile in her tone. She was going for conversational, and mostly succeeding.
He sighed. "Right now, going forward, you need to rest, heal, and eat your dinner before it gets cold."
Eat up like a good little pet, she thought. "You really want to get in my good graces, you let me watch the evening news," she said, and he went very still. "Compromise goes both ways, Doctor. If you want me to cooperate at all, you'd best give me something in return." He wouldn't, she was sure, be able to do it. Von Ratched was a man who only knew how to take, not give.
"Maybe," he said. “But there is something I would like to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” she asked, wary.
He leaned back, hands folded. “The thing that lives behind your eyes,” he said. “I’ve seen it before, but rarely. What do you know of it?”
That actually threw her. “You’ve seen someone else with...that?” she asked, trying to work out if he was bullshitting her or not.
“I have,” he said. “Their minds and yours all go completely blank. There is no higher thought, no calculation -- merely rage.”
She debated the wisdom of saying anything, but curiosity compelled her to. “I always called it the blank,” she said. “That’s all I know.” And it was entirely true: she’d never known nor heard of anyone else who had quite this issue. Her da had had the worst temper she’d ever seen in her life, but even he didn't go blank. He lost his temper, but he didn't lose his mind.
“And has this afflicted you your entire life?” Von Ratched pressed.
Again, she wondered if she should just keep her mouth shut -- but if he was talking like a normal person, he wasn’t doing anything, well, weird. “Yeah,” she said. “As far back as I can remember.” But she could control it now...sort of. There were times she’d felt it rise, and she’d forced it back. In a strange, twisted way, she owed him for that. If he hadn’t given her a reason to hate so very much, she never would have gained that control. Forgive me if I don't thank him for it, she thought sourly.
“Interesting,” he said, rising and taking his half-eaten meal away.
Lorna sighed, slurping more of her soup and really, really wishing she had a beer. She frowned, though, when Von Ratched returned with that damn hairbrush. "If you really ever want to get in my good graces, you'll stop doing that," she said. "Repeating something you know I hate'll get you nowhere."
Of course that didn't stop him, and it was all she could do not to fling the rest of her soup at him. The thing was, if he'd been anyone else, this might have been pleasant. She'd love to have Ratiri brush her hair, but Von Ratched was so relentlessly creepy about it. It was like a borderline fetish with him, and it quite effectively killed her appetite.
His fingers brushed her collarbone, and that had to be deliberate. Her hand shot out on instinct and seized his wrist, sending a jag of pain through her left shoulder. "Watch yourself, mate," she growled. "Try that again and I don't care of I've only got one good arm -- I'll break every bone in your bloody wrist."
To her surprise, he smiled. "I was wondering what it would take to make you angry," he said. "There is the Lorna I know."
A mingling of dread and bewilderment overtook her. He liked her temper? Oh, Christ, that was a problem. She had a hard enough time keeping it when he wasn't deliberately provoking her. If he was going to sit there and try to make her mad, what the hell was she to do? Controlling her anger was something she'd rarely bothered trying, and these were definitely not ideal circumstances to learn how.
"You've a death wish, don't you?" she asked, releasing his wrist. "You've seen what I do when I'm right pissed off -- why would you want to make me mad?"
"That is my own business," he said. "You will learn, in time."
I just bet I will. What game was he playing with her now? Surely he had rules, but Lorna was too drugged to work them out. Either he really did like her temper, or he was only saying so to train her out of using it. Why did he have to be so damn…well, Von Ratched about everything?
Well, sod him. She'd have to stagger her fits of temper, if she could, so that he'd never know what would set her off and what wouldn't. The thought was…tiring. And it wasn't the only thing making her weary. "What'd you put in my soup?" she demanded.
"Nothing. I will never drug you in secret, Lorna. If I give you anything, you will know if it."
It was probably, she thought sleepily, his way of being polite. That was a tidbit she filed away for later, to be examined when she was coherent.
Chapter Sixteen
Von Ratched watched Lorna fall asleep, mildly amused. He didn't need to be able to read her mind to see the wheels turning, to watch her try to take apart his every sentence. It would be some time yet before she stopped se
cond-guessing his motives, but let her. She would see, in time, that he meant what he said. Because he genuinely believed that he did.
He took her bowl to the sink and tidied up the kitchen, wondering how much of a mess she would make when she was up and about. She didn't strike him as the kind who would be very neat about her personal things, but she would learn. When the dishes were put away he put on a pot of coffee, knowing already he wouldn't sleep tonight. That was just fine, considering how much he had to do.
When he went to his office he discovered it was snowing -- heavy, wet flakes that were already piling up. That was going to make construction difficult if it kept up, assuming the weather didn't go too sour to even have anything delivered. He had plenty of supplies in reserve in other places, but not enough to see them through the winter. Damn.
He put on his overcoat and went to inspect his ruined hangar. At least there wasn't any wind, but the snowflakes stung where they touched his face, whirling in a bewildering almost-pattern that made land and sky indistinguishable at a distance.
Most of the wreckage, he found, had been cleared away. Staff and mercenaries had salvaged what supplies they could, but too much had been destroyed. Even now the smell of smoke lingered, mixing with the sharp tin scent of snow. Yes, Lorna had done quite a number on the place, but in spite of the trouble it caused, Von Ratched was oddly proud of her. However aggravating it might be at times, he loved that strength of hers, misapplied though it was. If anyone could come close to being his equal, it was her. She just had to learn how to use it, to harness it and direct it at worthy goals.
Ice and debris crunched under his boots as he walked the tarmac. The place was still littered with broken glass and bits of shrapnel, but that was of little matter. He didn't plan on staying here another year.
Too many people knew where the Institute was. There was no guarantee that the government wouldn't send another strike against him, and if the four escapees found help, they'd find their way back sooner or later. Come spring he would relocate, possibly to the wilds in Russia. God knew there was plenty of space, and then no one would find him.
