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Part Five/Unruhe
Doctor Rondeau's office in the medical section of Centre Neptune was reasonably comfortable, if a bit nondescript. None of the furniture really matched; it had definitely been chosen for comfort over style.
Mark and Jason occupied one couch, Keyop and Tiny the other. Doctor Rondeau sat in his office chair; Princess in an armchair.
She was pale, her skin too white in the fluorescent light, and she chewed nervously on a strand of her hair. Her hands were clenched on the ends of the armrests. She'd given Mark a quick message as they'd walked in to the room, holding him back a moment to talk to him. "If this gets too much for Keyop, get him out of the room, all right?"
He'd been able to agree to that, but was still reluctant to allow the session to go ahead.
"It's not your choice," she'd answered fiercely. "I remembered some of what happened with that stupid stunt of mine yesterday morning, but there's more. And we need to know what it is."
"Yes, but yesterday morning..."
"That's why we're doing this here. Rondeau can bring me out of it at the end; you're all here to remember whatever I say, because I may not; my mind isn't cooperating just now." She'd looked away, and Mark had known how hard it was for her to say that. Princess had always depended on her wits, her brains to survive. More than her formidable fighting skill, intellect was her main weapon.
"You don't have to do this today, if you're not ready..."
She'd cut across him again. "I do have to. And now. I've just got my courage up to face it, and if I don't..." She shook her head. "It's now or not at all, I think. I may not be able to face this again, so once it starts, Rondeau is the only one who stops it. No matter how bad this gets, let me do it. Don't interrupt. Promise me, Mark."
He'd promised.
"All right, I think we're about ready to start," Rondeau said. "Princess?"
She took a deep breath, exhaled. "Ready."
Rondeau began; they sat and watched silently as her eyes closed, her body turned lax. She was a good subject for hypnosis and slipped under easily.
"Princess, can you hear me?" Rondeau asked.
"...yes..." Her voice was a slurred whisper.
"Do you know why you're here?"
"...to remember..."
"That's right." He told her to go back to that night, taking her back to it a step at a time; one day back, two days, a week, a month. Then back to that night.
"...nightclub...with m' friends..."
"Yes, that's right. You're inside the nightclub. You've become separated from your friends. What happens now?"
She made an indistinct negative sound. "...earlier..."
"Something important happened earlier?"
"...an argument. I broke it up. Two guys...hitting on a girl, wouldn't leave her alone."
"You intervened?"
"...yes... think they saw it..."
"And that's why they picked you."
"...maybe...don't know..."
"All right. We're going to move forward now. Princess, I want you to remember the moment when you realised something was wrong, when you first felt threatened. When you see this moment, remember that you're just watching this. You're safe here, and you can stop this any time you want to. Do you understand that? You can stop any time you want to."
She nodded slowly.
"All right. Tell us about it."
A slow, deep breath, then she started. "...I'm dancing... someone grabs me by the arm and drags me off the floor... I look down, there's a needle against my skin. He says not to fight..."
"Did you think he was Spectran?"
"...no... criminal.... Outside, back door..." Her voice grew softer, dreamlike. "...more outside... four more..." She gasped, flinched; her left hand twitched. "...needle..."
"He stuck you with the needle?" Rondeau asked.
"...yesss... stings..." Expressions fleeting across her face; distaste, fear. "...speaks... telling me to take off my watch... any other jewelry... drop it on the ground..."
"Do you?"
"...hold it for a minute... scramble, signal..."
Jason caught Mark's eye. He handsigned. //Five to one, could handle that.//
Mark shrugged; it was a good question, and one he couldn't answer. A fight she could have handled herself; why had she signaled so urgently?
Rondeau was nowhere near as fluent in handsign as the G Force members, but he caught the gist of the question. "Why do you signal? Why not take them on?"
"...needle... don't know what..."
Mark nodded; there could have been anything in that hypodermic. She'd done right to signal. Even if their augments allowed them a certain immunity from some drugs, it might have been disease rather than drug, or something their augments couldn't handle.
"I understand. What then?"
"...one of them behind me... speaks... hallua ye'laber, diobre..."
Mark translated silently. Spectran for 'we're wasting time, hurry.'
"...hits me... head, back of my head..."
Princess spoke on. She'd awoken, she said, in that small room. She wasn't the first there; there had been five women kidnapped already by then. Two more had joined them over the next twenty-four hours.
Her voice stayed slurred and dreamy as she described hell. While she talked in that emotionless, robot-like voice, tears rolled down her cheeks.
Once they'd all been put in the cell, they'd been interrogated, their captors demanding information; names, addresses, lives. Once of the women, Emma had apparently tried to escape around that time. Emotionlessly Princess described the consequences of that act; they'd all been beaten for it, and Emma had died from her injuries. But not immediately; they'd left her dying there for hours before returning to finish the job. Then they'd picked another woman at random, told them that if anyone else tried to run, she'd be next. They left Emma's body in the cell for twenty-four hours, Princess estimated.
Then had come the drugs; injections for all the surviving captives, a double dose for Princess when the Spectrans realised that she wasn't as thoroughly affected as the others.
Whatever the drugs were, they caused hallucinations; whatever she'd seen or experienced, Princess couldn't or wouldn't explain. She did remember, however, that the Spectrans must have misjudged the doses; two women had died of overdoses, their bodies too weakened by violence and malnourished to handle the drug dosage. The violence towards them had continued without letup.
Mark had been watching his teammates during Princess' recitation; Tiny was pale; Jason's expression told Mark that his second's fondest wish at that moment was to meet Zoltar. Or any Spectran soldier. Keyop... tears streaked his face; he looked sick and had burrowed closer to Tiny, looking for comfort. He handsigned to Keyop, asking if he wanted to leave; Keyop shook his head in denial. Mark knew he was close to the end of his own endurance; he wanted to stop this.
Princess' answers had been getting shorter and shorter, less coherent since she'd started talking about the drugs; Mark guessed she'd been mentally confused, and he signaled. Rondeau asked a question; was there anything more she could remember that would help?
She frowned, as though struggling to speak; her hands shook. At last she gasped out a word. "Blue..."
"Blue?" Rondeau asked. "What's blue?"
"...eyes, has eyes..."
Blue eyes? What did that mean?
"...wall... it talks to me...all of us..."
Blue eyes and a talking wall. Hallucinations, possibly.
"All right, Princess. We're almost done. Just one more thing, I'm going to ask you a question now. If your answer is yes, I want you to lift a finger to signal that. Which finger means yes?"
Slowly, her left index finger rose. Rondeau touched that finger. "This means yes?"
She nodded.
"And which means no?" Right index finger.
"That's good. Now, do you want to remember this when you wake up?"
"...yes..." she slurred, but her right index finger rose. Yes and no.
"Okay. We'll do it like this then. I'm going to count back from ten to one. At each number you'll become more alert until, when I say 'one,' you'll be awake and fully alert. You'll feel refreshed and relaxed, and you'll remember only what you want to remember until you're ready to deal with the rest of it. Do you understand that?"
"...yes..." Left index finger.
"Good. I'm going to start counting now."
When Rondeau finished the count, Princess opened her eyes. Even from across the room, Mark could see her trembling, and she wouldn't meet anyone's eyes. Then Keyop leapt off the couch and hurled himself at her, hugging her fiercely. He was crying, and that seemed to trigger the same emotional release in Princess as well.
He didn't know about anyone else's emotional state, but Mark felt shattered by what he'd heard; for an hour, Princess had given a detailed description of ongoing physical abuse that still seemed to hold no purpose.
Jason was the next to move, taking Princess' hand and leaning in to kiss her on the forehead. He whispered something to her; Mark didn't catch it, but it brought a momentary half-smile to her face; she inclined her head towards him.
Then Tiny. Wordless, reaching arms around Keyop and Princess to encompass them both.
It took a few minutes for Mark to pick himself up from the couch and move to Princess; he rested a hand on her shoulder, feeling her hair brush his hand.
****
When he left Doctor Rondeau's office he walked slowly, troubled. He'd sent the other four back to Princess and Keyop's place, and stayed behind to talk to the psychiatrist about the team's reactions to Princess' story, especially Keyop's.
Down the hall, on the way to the exit, there was a row of chairs in the corridor, randomly placed between office doors. Jason and Princess occupied two of them. Jason had his arm around her - supporting her, Mark realised - and Princess had her hands in her lap, head down. Staring at her communicator again, Mark realised. He'd caught her doing that on and off; it puzzled him, although he'd never asked her about it.
"I thought you were heading back home," he said lightly. He'd spent half an hour with Rondeau.
Jason nodded towards Princess. "Wanted to wait for you, so I'm babysitting." He had a wry smile on his face as he said it.
His voice brought Princess out of her brown study; she hadn't noticed him walking along the hallway, evidently. "Keyop and Tiny have headed back already. They'll unlock the place, get some lunch started." She looked down again.
Jason stood, dragging Princess up with him. "Let's go."
*****
The small apartment over the Snack J was filled with noise by the time they returned; Tiny and Keyop had raided the - fairly extensive - music collection. "Jill's gonna bitch about the racket," Jason warned as they walked in.
Keyop gave him a wide grin. "Bree--ip already has." He dodged into the kitchen.
"We turned it down to a dull roar, she's happy," Tiny explained, carrying plates in from the kitchen.
Mark dialed the music down further, ignoring Keyop's howl of protest. "Now she'll be even happier."
"Keyop, bring the rest of that in, would you?" Tiny called. They'd evidently been busy cooking. Princess suspected it was something to think about other than her recollections; she knew that she wanted to put it out of her own mind for the time being.
She and Keyop didn't have a dining table as such; instead, plates were placed on the big coffee table in the centre of the living room, people served themselves and disposed themselves on chairs around the room. Princess picked little food, but curled up next to Mark, with Keyop settling himself beside her.
Try as she might, she couldn't keep herself in the present; her eyes kept returning to her communicator, and the last words she'd spoken in the session were bothering her. While they'd been waiting for Mark, Jason had given her their interpretation; blue eyes and a talking wall. He'd said he was pretty much ready to write it off as a hallucination. She didn't think that was right.
Blue. Eyes on the wall. Talking to her. She'd said it but she didn't understand it.
And her bracelet... she'd worn it for years, never worrying about it, treating it as the tool it was, once she'd gotten used to its constant presence. Why now did the sight of it disturb her so much?
Not blue eyes, she knew that. Something blue with eyes. On a wall.
"Hey." Mark nudged her with his elbow, speaking sotto voce. "You need to eat something."
Princess realised she'd just been pushing the food around her plate and managed a wan smile. "I'm not really that hungry," she replied softly. "I seem to have lost my appetite. Can you stay for a while tonight, when everyone else has cleared out?"
He nodded. "We've got to go out for a while this afternoon - they're doing some work on the Phoenix, and Tiny and I want to oversee, but I'll be back after dinner, okay? Want me to take Keyop along, give you some time on your own?"
"That would be good." It was about time to get back into training, she thought idly. Not with the others just yet - she'd been out of action for weeks, and it was so easy to drop off peak performance. If she went into the gym and tried sparring with them now, they'd kick her all over the room. She needed to build back up to it on her own for a while. A week of doing katas on her own to find her sense of balance again, then she'd move over to the gym to do some workouts on her own; after that, she could get back into it. Three weeks tops, and she could be back in uniform.
Why did that thought make her go cold?
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