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Jenny realized when she got up that morning that she felt safer and more like she was in a good place than she had felt in a long time. She had been encouraged by The Council to continue her training with the other Guardians, while Burt and Bob continued to search out the elusive Sam. She had no texts or phone calls waiting when she got home. It was clear that Sam knew that she knew. This made Jenny so sad, but she also felt more than a little angry that Sam had fooled her so very thoroughly.
All those years in college, hanging out, whining about being overburdened with homework, helping one another prepare for exams and pop quizzes professors were so fond of, and she had never had a single clue that Sam wasn't exactly what she thought she was.
"Don't let it make you cynical," Bob had advised her. "That's one thing about your aunt. She knew about the world and how not everything or everyone were like they seemed, but when it came down to it, she still found optimism, somehow, to treat every person she met as if they were as honorable, kind and caring as she was. We can all learn a lot from that."
She shrugged into her workout clothes and texted Bob that she was ready and to meet her in the workout room. She had made a point the night before to give him a quick walkthrough of the facilities. She had also given him her spare key to the house and shed. If she was going to need to trust him, she was going to trust him all the way.
To her surprise, he was already there, doing his warmups. She remembered she had keyed the gate office to him and had given him permissions that included the workout room and the Alliance gateway. She and Tarafau joined him.
First mental workout, then quarterstaff. The graceful, coordinated moves of the body and staff in the workout routine was much like a dance. It was a soothing way to get started on her day. As she moved through her paces, she allowed her mind to wander over the last few days. She realized that it was the best she had felt in a long time.
They took turns pairing off with the quarterstaff. They cheered one another on, occasionally making wry remarks about a particularly poorly executed move, without being critical. At the end, they were all sweating happily.
They took out time for showers and joined one another on the patio for a green drink. Tidbit dabbled happily at the koi as he lay at the edge of the pond. Jenny imagined he might have been too tired, after their workout, to chase butterflies.
They had only been chatting for a few moments when Burt showed up, coming through the garden gate.
"I've found her," he said without pausing for greetings. "She is holed up in a cabin near Arrowhead. There are a number of somewhat shifty types coming in and out. She does have wi-fi, however, and she is using her cell phone. I put a tag on it and now we can track her when she decides to come out for any reason. She is having groceries and other things delivered. I may be able to find a way in by taking advantage of that little loophole."
Jenny gritted her teeth. She knew the little cabin well. She and the other girls in their hiking club had stayed there more than once, looking forward to a good hike and chatting and laughing together. Such good times...now tainted with Sam's betrayal.
"So, what do we do next?" Tidbit sent.
Bob started in surprise and then grinned and pointed at each of them. "You two have been talking behind my back all this time, haven't you?"
"Indeed," Tidbit sent, with a mental feeling of a wicked grin. "Such interesting conversations about all of your foibles."
"Foibles?!" Bob sent back. "You're a cat. You chase butterflies and annoy the koi, not to mention terrorizing Cinder. You've got no room for comparison, Kitty. Foibles...huh!"
Jenny couldn't help but laugh and Burt guffawed. "Mindspeech can be a convenient thing," he added with a conspiratorial wink.
Tidbit repeated implacably, "So, what do we do next?"
Burt sobered up quickly. "We stalk her carefully. Now that I have Bob to help, I think we can pull off a bit of subterfuge. I think the way in is through the delivery, like I said. I think between the two of us we can create a ruse that will work to get us into the cabin. Then I will show you how we extract information without damaging a person and without letting them know we were ever there. Let's leave these two to their breakfast and fish watching and you and I can work out the details."
They sauntered out through the back gate, evidently to have their conversation at Bob's place. Jenny picked up their empty glasses and headed into the kitchen, leaving Tidbit to his fascinating occupation.
She found it incredible that the big, strong, intelligent man could find such enjoyment in something so simple as fish or butterflies. Evidently neither existed in his home dimension. She often wondered about his long-lived species and what his life must have been like before he became a Guide for the Alliance. Up until now she hadn't had the courage to ask him about it. She made up her mind to have that conversation soon. By now she realized that there was nothing she couldn't discuss with Tarafau.
She cleaned up the glasses and put them away, then went into the living room with the idea she might take a break with that book she'd been trying to get to.
But as she sat down in her reading chair, book in hand, she heard a soft but emphatic mind-send from Tidbit. "Jenny..."
What he had been about to say, she never found out.
She dropped her book on the table and ran out to the garden. Tarafau lay at the edge of the pool as before, except he wasn't looking at the koi. He lay there as if taking a nap, the tip of his tail trailing in the water, a fish swimming up to it curiously. She ran up to him and looking down on him realized his eyes were indeed closed. She bent to rouse him and then saw stars, felt a sharp pain in the back of her neck at the same time. Then she saw nothing at all.
She awoke in darkness, not a speck of light. She tried to stand, but then realized she was tied to something, she thought it was a hard-backed wooden chair by the feel of it. Her wrists were painfully tied behind her and each ankle was tied to a chair leg. She felt dizzy, even sitting there, and her head hurt like blue blazes, as her dad would say. Her mouth was not bound, so she attempted to call out. "Hello? Hello!!! Is anybody there?"
Suddenly she realized that calling out might not be the best idea. Her captor or captors (she had a strong suspicion who that might be.) did not seem to be in evidence. Perhaps she could find a way to wriggle out of her bonds.
But a door opened before her, letting in a painfully bright ray of light. "Ah," purred Sam's voice, a note of satisfaction and smugness in it. "So, you're awake. Good. Looks like your bully boys fell for my ruse. I gave them what they were looking for, a mysterious hideout, suspicious types going in and out, groceries being delivered, my cell phone sending signals off and on. I was never there. It's an empty box, they're watching.
I may have injured your cat, I'm afraid. Perhaps fatally. I couldn't let him spoil my surprise."
She held her hands up in mock enthusiasm. "SURPRISE!"
Her shout sent spike-like pains through Jenny's sore head.
Jenny shook her head gently, not attempting to hide the disappointment and disdain from her face.
"Ah, I see you don't like my surprise. It's OK, I'll bear up under the grief."
She flipped the light switch and closed the door.
Jenny felt a shiver run down her back when she realized that Sam looked very different and not in a good way. Her auburn hair had been dyed black, or was that her natural color? She had a piercing on her lip and she was wearing something that looked like a black sorcerer's robe, belted with a chain of black metal. Sam's eyes were made up with black eyeliner and dark grey eyeshadow which made her eyes look sunken and dark. Even the irises of her eyes, which should have been green, were black. Her skin had a blue-grey tint to it.
"You're not from around here, are you?" Jenny asked, hoping her tone sounded flippant and didn't reflect the terror rising in her heart.
"Got it in one," Sam leered. "You always were pretty quick on the uptake. I'm sure you've figured out that we can't be besties anymore. My boss wouldn't like it much."
"You mean the executive producer at the station?" Jenny snapped back.
Sam shook her head. "Well, my real boss is more of an executer than an executive, but I don't think you really want to know about that, now, do you?"
Jenny clamped her mouth shut, refusing to be drawn into the taunt.
"Well, we shall see, what we shall see. I'm on a bit of a timetable and I don't have any time to waste with pleasantries." Abruptly she slapped Jenny's face so hard it made her already sore head ring like a gong. "That's for bringing in the troops," she said with a scowl. "I had this all worked out. I was going to worm my way into taking you to the airport on a regular basis and then just carry you off. But your new buddies put a kibosh to that.
So, I lured your A-team out to my cabin and here we are. You can be a really high-maintenance friend, you know?"
Jenny sat there in stony silence. She was sure, if anger expressed itself in lasers coming out of your eyes, Sam would have been fried where she stood. And then she realized, Sam was wrong. The A-Team wasn't at Sam's cabin. They were across the street at Bob's house.
"So, let's begin. You should know by now that I am not a very patient person. So, this is how this will go down. I ask questions. You answer questions. If I have to wait for an answer, I have an incentivizer." She pulled a small taser out of a pocket in her robe. "If you still refuse to answer, I have another incentivizer." She drew out a poniard from a sheath hanging from her chain belt.
"Are we clear?"
Jenny just sat there, praying she could be strong, knowing it was going to be a very long day, if she survived it.
"Hmmm, obviously not. Here's a taster." She applied the taser to Jenny's right leg, just inside her thigh.
Every nerve in her body hummed in pain. Her brain felt like it would explode. When Sam finally lifted the taser away from her skin, Jenny just sat there shaking and panting. A cold sweat had broken out on her skin and she felt like someone had grilled her eyeballs.
"OK, let's try it again. Are we clear?"
Jenny clamped her mouth shut. She knew this was a simple question that she could afford to answer, but she had heard that interrogators usually started with non-essential questions to get their captives used to answering. She was not going to fall into that trap.
"Well, who woulda thunk?" Sam said, her eyes wide in mock surprise. The whites around the black irises made her look like a cartoon villain. "Little Jenny has a backbone after all. But, tut, tut, we cannot allow this. Perhaps we should try something else."
She cradled the hilt of the poniard almost tenderly in her hand and pricked one finger, holding it out so Jenny could see it bleeding. She let the blood from the tiny prick drip onto Jenny's face. She grinned and licked the blood from her finger. "I've always wondered why you never got a tattoo when I went to get my sweet spider. I admit, I'm not much of an artist, but perhaps a butterfly?"
She bent over Jenny's exposed forearm. "I'd suggest you hold still. I'd hate to mess it up. It might hurt, just a little. Let's start with the antennae."
She held the poniard like a paint brush, cutting a fine line about an inch long on her arm.
Jenny didn't even care that tears were sliding down her face. She remembered her breathing exercises. In 2,3,4,5; Out 2,3,4,5,6; In 2,3,4,5,6,7...and as she breathed her patterns, she loosened each muscle in her body one at a time starting at her toes. She began to slide into that state outside of her conscious mind. The pain was still there, but it somehow felt far away.
"And another," said Sam, relishing the pain she was causing. Her voice was almost a caress. "Every butterfly needs two antennae."
Blood was now dripping from her arm onto the floor. Sam ignored it. "You have plenty of canvas for me to draw on. This is kinda fun. I almost hope you hold out for a long time."
She continued describing her bloody art. "Now the head, and the head needs two eyes. A nice long body to support some large wings." She paused as she drew and described each part of the butterfly until she finished that part and then continued through the wings, the design on the wings and each tiny leg. It seemed to go on for hours, but within the vortex of her breathing and focusing on each miniscule muscle, one at a time, she could almost ignore it.
By the time Sam finished and stepped back to admire her handy work the blood was falling with an audible plop, plop, plop as it hit the floor.
Jenny started to hope that maybe she would bleed to death before Sam could get more artistic.
"So, are we feeling more cooperative?"
Flinching Jenny shook her head and then realized, to her chagrin, that this was an answer.
Sam smiled as if she had done something amazing.
"Very good. That wasn't so hard, was it?"
Jenny held her neck rigid, so her body wouldn't betray her. She only ground her teeth in an effort to keep her mouth closed and then returned to her breathing, now focusing on her jaw and cheek and neck muscles.
"Still haven't learned our lesson? What a shame. Let's see, what shall I draw next? Maybe a..." Sam began, but she never finished that sentence. Into the room burst Burt and Bob, quarterstaffs whirling.
Sam spun to face them and slipped in the puddle of blood at her feet. Burt hit her in the gut with the end of his staff and Bob followed it up with a sharp rap on the back of her head. Sam collapsed in a heap on the blood-slicked floor.
Burt quickly snapped handcuffs on Sam's wrists while Bob cut the bonds from Jenny's wrists and ankles with the same poniard that Sam had dropped when she collapsed.
Neither said a word. Burt threw Sam over his shoulder with a grunt and Bob slung Jenny on his shoulders like a backpack, her arms as straps. He held onto her, his hands gripping the bleeding cuts like a tourniquet. They rushed her outside to Bob's waiting car, throwing Sam into the trunk with a dull thud. Bob put Jenny gently into the backseat and sat next to her, while Burt drove. Bob pulled a first aid kit out of his MDP and proceeded to clean the wounds and put pressure on it with a large pad of gauze. "They're superficial cuts, even though they are bleeding freely. They may leave scars, though. Do you want us to take you to the emergency room?"
Jenny shook her head. "We need to get Sam to The Council, right now. The healers there can take a look at it."
Burt looked over his shoulder. "We found Tidbit and were able to rouse him. I think he'll be ok. The cell phone was a red herring. But what she didn't know is that I had placed a little beacon on her car. When we went back to the house to tell you our plan, you were gone, the cat was knocked out and the beacon was going off. We stopped to revive Tidbit and left him in your office in his comfy bed. We'll retrieve him on the way to the gate and take him to see the healer's as well."
"Can you try not to kill my car while you're at it?" Bob said querulously. "The paint job is new, and this is a classic."
Burt grinned. "Worry not, old guy. I've got this."
Bob moaned. "That's what I'm afraid of."
Suddenly Jenny realized they were putting on a show for her benefit, trying to keep her mind off of what had just happened, and she realized she loved them for it.
After zooming along back roads for what seemed like hours, they finally pulled into her driveway.
"I can walk," insisted Jenny, but as she tried to rise from her seat onto the driveway, she nearly passed out.
"I've got you," said Bob and Burt simultaneously. So, she looped her arms into each extended elbow and they walked her into the house, installed her on a dining room chair, closest to the door in the hall. They both rushed back out and came back in, carrying a still unconscious Sam between them.
"Let's do this," Burt said, grunting as Bob passed Sam to him.
Bob grabbed Jenny's arm and helped her up. "I've sent ahead," Burt said, huffing slightly with Sam's gangly weight. "They'll be waiting for us at the gate with re-enforcements. You won't have to walk."
As they passed through the office door, she saw Tidbit curled up in his comfy cat bed, his eyes shut. "Tidbit?" she sent, tentatively. He didn't stir. She saw he was breathing, his belly rising and falling, but he was obviously unconscious.
Bob hung the sleeping cat gently over his shoulders, his front paws hanging on one side of his neck and his back paws hanging on the other. The usually expressive tail hung limply.
"Heavens above," Bob exclaimed. "He's heavy! No more kitty treats for you, my boy."
Just as Burt had said, as they stepped through the gate, several guards were waiting with a larger version of the hover car. But when they started through the scanner a loud alarm went off.
"Oops," said Bob sheepishly and held out Sam's knife. "I brought it as evidence."
The guard took it gingerly in a gloved hand. "I'll process it, thanks." One of the other guards had pushed a button on his belt and the wailing of the alarm cut off.
Her ears still ringing, Jenny was escorted to a seat in the hover-car and slumped in the seat, feeling bad that she was getting blood on the pristine interior of the car.
They went down the hill to the city, but instead of parking in front of the huge double doors, they pulled past into what was apparently a parking garage, but instead of parking, they drove the vehicle into an even larger elevator than the one in the lobby.
"We have instructions," said one of the guards briskly. "We're not to make a public scene of this. Violence is rare in this city and we don't want to start a panic."
"We're taking you into the guard station where we will incarcerate your friend here," he said pointing with a thumb over his shoulder, "and where you will be transferred to the healer's center. After that, you will be taken to the Council room, where the Councilors will be waiting for you."
The elevator door slid open into a sterile looking space. A guard looked into the large room through a window that Jenny imagined, from watching cop shows as a kid, was bullet proof glass.
A wheelchair was waiting for her. She protested, but was installed into it anyway. "You go," said Burt to Bob and the guards, "we've got this." He placed Tidbit on her lap. Wait...Tidbit? What?
"Why didn't he change?" She had been too worried and dazed to realize that Tidbit had not transformed when they went through the gate.
"I don't think he can do it when he's unconscious," Burt replied, concern etched on his face. "I hope the old guy survives this. He owes me forty bucks." Jenny recognized it as a joke, if a weak one.
"I'll take Jenny, to the healer's infirmary," Burt instructed Bob. "Please stay here to answer questions. I'll be back as soon as I can."
Bob nodded, all business, and Burt pushed the chair out into the hallway.
The corridors seemed to fly by, Burt's long legs moving them along nearly at a run. Jenny clutched at Tidbit, feeling his steady breathing, but not even a slit of white peeked out from his eyelids. "Please don't leave me," she pleaded mentally, focusing the sending directly to the cat and only him.
The bandage on her arm was soaked through, but she could no longer feel the pain. Her only thought, her only concern was the cat seemingly sleeping peacefully on her lap.
Onto and elevator and then within what seemed like something just short of eternity, the doors slid open. "Infirmary," said the disembodied voice.
There were healers waiting for them as they were wheeled off of the elevator.
Two of them whisked Tidbit out of her arms and two more wheeled her briskly into a curtained area. It appeared to Jenny to be a typical emergency room, a bed in the center of the curtained off space, some machinery that looked similar to machines she had seen in Earth hospital rooms and everything was white and sterile.
Jenny sighed.
"It's ok," said one of the healers. "You're safe. We'll take care of you and Tarafau."
Safe, thought Jenny, wistfully. It probably wasn't true, but it would do for now.
