Too bad, he mused he couldn’t just bring all of the files. Also too bad, that they weren’t on a computer which he could just grab and take. Ben closed the drawer and leaned against the wall in disappointed disgust. Then he remembered the first little gadget Tina had shown him. He fumbled through the different pockets on the dark uniform until he found it.
Ben extended the two antennas on the cube and dropped it from his palm. Just before it hit the floor the cube floated to its stabilizing height. Then Ben attached the metallic cording to the alligator clips.
“Red to red to send ahead,” Ben mumbled as he attached the red sides of the two clasps. With the snap of the connector the air within the loop shimmered and then became the reflective semi-liquid surface. Ben was as much in awe of it this time as when Tina had shown him. He stood there playing with it for a while before remembering he was there with a purpose.
Ben began pulling the file cabinet drawers out and placing them gingerly through the loop. It took a while. By the time he’d finished the job his shoulders and arms ached from the effort. That plus the headache he was getting from the abrasive telepathic background noise had him almost ready to pull the emergency transporter then and there. Instead Ben methodically disassembled the loop and replaced it in the pocket it came from.
Ben set off down the hall listening for the soothing mental presence of Miranda. He passed two men wearing uniforms a shade lighter than his own. He wasn’t sure whether eye contact was allowed or not, either way Ben kept his eyes on his feet, just in the effort to keep them moving down the hall. After a while Ben finally dazedly managed to brush against the fringes of Miranda’s shields. That set his course.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Miranda’s search wasn’t anywhere near as easy. She passed an entire squadron of men in uniforms just a shade darker than Ben’s. Even though their habit should keep their eyes from rising any higher than their boots there was still the chance one of them would lift his eyes high enough to notice she didn’t have the tattoo, which would lead to worse. Curiosity over the lack of tattoo might lead to an examination of her face and that would lead to recognition. Then they would sound the alarm and... She was past the squadron before any of her what ifs bore fruit.
Next she came upon a door just as it opened into the hall. A man came out and nearly ran into her. At first she braced herself to handle the situation as a Djheen would. Then came mutual recognition. It was Dichen.
“My, my, my what are you doing back here,” Dichen asked coolly covering his surprise and the rest of his emotions with smooth deception.
“I thought I’d take a walk,” Miranda answered trying to reflect his own cover back at him.
“I should call a squad of Djheens here to detain you.”
“You won’t get that far,” Miranda growled reaching for the zipper nearest her hand.
“What are you going to do to stop me?” Dichen raised his fingers to his lips and kissed them. Then he gestured outward with that hand, simultaneously lowering all the fingers except for a single digit, which conveyed meaning by itself. Miranda frowned at Dichen and looked into his eyes. They were dark and blank reflecting back her memories of his irredeemable behavior. With just a twitch she could...
Over Dichen's shoulder, Miranda saw a thin weed of a woman. The woman smiled at Miranda then looked at Dichen and shook her head. “Don't” Miranda heard the silent plea in her mind. Miranda drew a stun capsule from a pocket of her jacket and jabbed its pointy side into the back of Dichen's offensive hand. She let him fall to the ground. Looking up from his inert form Miranda searched for the strange woman, but she had disappeared.
Miranda shook it off and drug Dichen back into the room, which turned out to be some sort of office. Inside she took the time to bind him securely and slapped a muzzle-gag in his mouth. She checked and made sure he was still breathing then she started overturning the room looking for anything that might turn out to be helpful.
Miranda found the dark equivalent to a pop-pad tucked into a secret compartment in one of the drawers. She tried to activate it but it wouldn't work. She found the thumbprint lock on the back and pressed each of Dichen's thumbs into it in turn. After the second, the screen on the device lit up. Miranda pocketed the device and took quick thumb impressions and DNA samples from Dichen. Then she ducked out of the room heading towards the high security area.
Miranda had almost reached the junction with the isolation hall when she heard tight throated whispers coming through the barred window on a cell door, “Miranda, Miranda.” She turned her head to locate them. “Miranda, what are you doing on that side of the cell door? Please don't tell me that they managed to break you!”
Miranda slunk over to the door and looked inside, her mouth fell open and her eyebrows leapt up at who she found chained firmly inside. In that single bruised face, Miranda recognized the errand boy, Nick, and one of the men that brought her food after the sensory deprivation tank. “Nick, what are you doing in there?”
Nick stared at Miranda before answering. Then he shrugged, a gesture which brought to light a particularly swollen bruise the shadowed room had partially hidden. “I picked the wrong role model. I would have to kill myself if I found out they turned her after all I've been through.”
“Wrong role model, who?” Miranda asked densely, then seeing Nick’s intent eyes she knew, “Me?”
He managed a painful grimace of a grin, “Yeah, I had to admire you considering everything you did. I mean all that time on the most wanted list. Then only getting captured as an act of self sacrifice in trying to free prisoners and succeeding in freeing an entire world. They treated you like the lowest specimen of treachery against the dark one, but there you were helping people. Then I saw your eyes, that day they put you in the tank. My telepathy had just come in and I couldn't keep from... You were radiating so many things I'd never felt around here.” Nick fell silent, resting into the support of his chains.
Miranda backed away from the door ready to flee from what her intellect called an obvious trap. Her heart held her in pause. She broke through her hesitation and turned to leave.
“I'm sorry for everything I've ever done to you, Miranda,” Nick thought to her, sending along a resigned understanding of why she would and should leave him there.
Miranda almost couldn't help herself as she unlocked the cell door and retrieved a laser knife from her Djheen uniform. She entered the cell and slid the beam of the knife into the precise points on the locks to cut the mechanisms. Deftly she caught the falling locks and loosened Nick's wrists ankles and neck, “Do you have family I can take you to? So they can look after your wounds.”
He shook his head in a painful negative. “My name is Nicholas D'Fauli, my mother was a briaunti Djheen. She was executed after I was born and the dark one discovered she had taken a human prisoner as a lover. That's when it came out that she had assisted in his escape rather than having killed him as she reported,” Nick elaborated as he rubbed his wrists. He would have continued, but Miranda held her hand lightly against his mouth and gestured with a finger to her lips. He nodded.
Miranda sized him up and realized he probably hadn't metamorphosed all that long ago. She wanted to ask him what it was like, and all about his decision to follow her example, but fast approaching footfalls drew her back to their immediate danger. Cautiously Miranda ducked back out of the cell closing it behind her.
Miranda turned to search out the interloper. Adrenaline whipped her up into near panic, but she didn't let it leak out around the edges of her thoughts. She forced herself to lean arrogantly against the wall, in a posture more representative of her assumed position. Relief drained off all of her nervous energy when Ben finally stuck his head around the corner. Immediately she turned and reopened the cell door. Nick stumbled out, grunting with pain.
Ben saw him and eyed Miranda, “Miranda, what's up? I thought we weren't going to turn this into a fiasco.”
Miranda helped Nick to
his feet, “I know him.”
Ben reached to support Nick's other side, “Do you trust this guy?”
“Like I said, I know him,” Miranda answered, unsure of any more certain answer.
Ben looked at Miranda and back at Nick then shrugged. “So, did you find the girl we were looking for?”
“No, and all I did find indicates that they aren't holding her here. She might be in the isolation wing, but I'm not going to try for her there right now,” Miranda answered.
“Why the hell not? Is it because of him?” Ben turned his head to indicate Nick.
“No, because I ran into someone else I know. Someone who will most likely report my visit as soon as he recovers from the stun capsule I used on him, and I don't know how much longer that'll be.”
“Fine! let’s get back then. I don’t know that I had any better luck and this place is giving me a migraine.” Ben wrapped his arm firmly around Nick’s waist and tapped his emergency transporter, which activated Miranda’s by remote.
The supposedly instantaneous trip felt like a marathon through Jell-O to Miranda, or at least an echo of one. By the time they arrived in Sanctuary, Miranda realized that she had been feeling overflow from Nick. Her curiosity at that was compounded by the location of their arrival, an infinitely white space, furnished with three exam tables and a desk.
“What the hell! Oh, don’t worry Miranda. I’ve been here before, so have you for that matter. They like to check out refugees here before letting them loose in Sanctuary. It’s supposedly a quarantine thing,” Ben supplied, “That seem like a long, rough trip to you?”
“Yeah.” Miranda answered as Daniel, Angela and three tough-looking men entered through a door. Daniel’s face held a simulation of relaxed indolence, but Miranda easily detected the tension he was trying to hide.
“Who is this man, and why is he here?” Angela’s agitation was plain, in her voice and posture.
Nick groaned and stirred against Ben’s support, trying to collect himself enough to explain himself to Angela. Miranda felt every twinge of his pain as he tried to stand erect and display what he saw as the proper respect for Angela’s obvious position. Miranda knew his background and new he’d bust his own spleen if that was what it took to do so. Miranda laid a hand gently on Nick’s bruised cheek, and knocked him out with her mind. Leaving Ben to lower Nick to the floor, Miranda turned on Angela.
“His name is Nick, and they beat the crap out of him because he was trying to take after me,” Miranda growled, “And if you don’t want him staining your pretty white room with blood you’ll get Gene in here to tend to him.”
Angela nodded and one of her tuffs retreated to summon Gene. “Explain why he set off every alarm in our filtration system.”
“The filters?” Ben blurted the question while gently lowering Nick’s head.
“Yes, the filters,” Angela answered.
“Oh, the filters,” Miranda crooned, then glared, “What filters?”
With what Miranda sensed to be smug delight, Ben leapt to the answer, “Sanctuary has a complex system of filters, which keep unwanted biological elements out, like diseases, parasites, and anything polarized by the dark ones.” He finished, and Miranda felt a twinge of the child who has finally rebelliously gotten beyond the role of student in his manner.
“Then the answer is that he was a dark one.” Miranda answered plainly, and was greeted by shocked and awkward silence. The right hands of the two remaining tough guys twitched reflexively a few millimeters towards their waists; gestures which revealed concealed weapons to Miranda’s sharp eyes. She was rather pleased to sense Ben taking note as well.
Miranda was impressed when Angela swiftly recovered her voice, “And he is here why?”
“Like I said, they beat the crap out of him for trying to take after me,” Miranda put her hands on her hips and openly glared at Angela.
“How do you know that wasn’t a trick?” One of the tough guys bellowed in the deep voice Miranda expected from his brawn.
“Because, I know!” Miranda managed to glare down her nose at the guy despite the rather impressive fact that he towered nearly a foot over her standing height, “He can’t lie to me.”
“The darkones are trained in deception,” Angela pointed out eyeing Nick with somewhat lessened distrust.
“Yes they are, and might I add that I received every bit of that training in its fullest form. I know the tricks. I know the man, and I know my psi-rating. He can’t lie to me,” Miranda directed her growl at the muscle-bound duo.
“Angie, he did come through the filters. I don’t think that would happen if he were still dark,” Daniel offered in just the perfect tone to take the last doubt from Angela’s face.
“He stays, but I don’t want him anywhere near my office,” Angela grumbled, Miranda could sense that the gruffness was just for show.
The third tough guy returned with an obviously hesitant Gene in tow. Miranda felt the ghostly whispers of the doctor's rumor produced anxiety. “Gene, he isn’t one of the darkones anymore.” She attempted to reassure.
Gene avoided Miranda with his eyes and knelt to examine Nick. After a few passes with his instruments and a few quick blasts of wound sealant, Gene spoke, “It is mostly superficial. He’ll be fine. They worked him up pretty thoroughly though, and the bruises will take a while to heal even for a briaunti.”
Miranda detected a faint hesitant flutter in Gene’s voice and the ghost echoes of his thoughts. Miranda also detected the ease with which Angela dismissed the situation after Gene’s diagnosis. Something in Gene’s manner tickled at the back of Miranda’s mind like a cough. “What else Gene?”
Gene’s eyes flicked up to meet hers in surprise and defiance. Then turned to Angela; who intrigued by Miranda’s prod nodded at Gene to continue. “According to my scans,” Gene paused and Miranda watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall in a swallow, “This boy, or rather this man is my son.”
“He's what?” Angela, Daniel and Ben all barked in unison.
“My son,” Gene managed to answer in a calm and level tone. Miranda smiled at his composure, inwardly she knew he was as surprised as everyone else.
“Nobody ever tells me anything!” Angela growled and abruptly teleported away. Daniel shrugged and followed her.
Ben sighed, “So much for avoiding a fiasco.”
“Hey, I tried,” Miranda groaned.
“So did I. Look, I got some records. She’ll probably get even crankier if she doesn’t get a go at them as soon as possible, so I think I’ll hunt her down and give them to her,” Ben began.
Miranda interrupted him, “I got something too.” She pulled out the dark pop-pad and the impressions and sample she had taken. “I don’t know if there’s anything important in it, but there might be. Could you take it to her for me.”
Ben accepted the items from her, “Gee why didn’t I think of finding something nice and light like this. I had to go and empty ten filing cabinets to get my files.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Angela materialized in her sitting room, her eyes wandered out the window to her favorite tree. Daniel evidently followed her, a thing she realized when his strong arms wrapped around her from behind. He was always there for her, especially when she needed him. She leaned back into his embrace and nuzzled his arms with her chin.
“Why are you so cranky with them,” Daniel thought to her, “They went, and they found someone who needed our help and they helped him. Isn’t that why you started this place?”
Angela nodded butting her head back against him on the up stroke. “I feel old.”
Daniel chuckled softly at her and released her from his hug, “I hate to say it Love, but you are old.”
“No I'm not!” Angela spun to stare him down in vehement denial.
Daniel smiled at her and began counting on his fingers, “We were married when you were twenty. We had the first set of twins two years after that. Evelyn was twenty when she decided to t
ake Colony independent, and it's been a good twenty,” He paused and at a look in her eyes revised, “maybe sixteen years since then. Twenty, two, twenty, and sixteen is almost sixty. Love, you're old enough to be a grandmother, or even a great-grandmother.”
Angela sighed, he was right. “Well, then so are you old man! You're five years older than I am.”
“Sorry Love, no matter how old I get I'll never be old enough to be a grandmother.”
She elbowed him, “You turd! You know what I mean!”
Daniel laughed heartily at her, she loved his laugh, “Of course I do Angie.”
The door bell jingled out part of their song and Daniel went to answer it. “Ben, what can I do for you?”
“I wanted to give Angela the files we found. They’re supposed to be prisoner records, I think. You may have to have Miranda decipher them I don’t necessarily recognize the language.” Ben answered entering the room. He pulled a stasis loop from his pocket, and placed it in Angela’s hands. “I emptied ten filing cabinets into here. Even if girl 22 isn’t in there, there should at least be something. Oh and Miranda got this.”
Ben pulled a dark pop-pad out of another pocket along with a set of thumb impressions and a DNA sampling vial. “I’m sorry we didn’t find her there, but you did say this was a recon mission. There’s your information.” Ben turned back to leave. Angela held the two devices, and the flood of grateful tears that threatened to flow.
“Thank you Ben, and thank Miranda for me, and apologize to her too.”
Ben nodded and left.
The flood broke loose and Angela felt the tears flow down her cheeks. Even if there weren’t any dark secrets in all the data. The prisoner information could hold a big clue to the overall dark plans and pattern. With it they just might be able to get ahead of those plans and save some lives and grief for a lot of people.
“I’ll get those to data processing. You go lay down and get some rest,” Daniel said
“I’m not tired. And I don’t feel quite so old right now,” Angela answered thinking thoughts of perhaps a fourth set of twins.
Eyes Love & Water Page 32
