(no subject)

[vervaceous]

Title: Vector
Fandom: Harsh Realm
Rating: NC-17 for language, violence, and explicit adult situations
Wordcount: 60,155
Summary: Three years after his entry into the Realm, Tom Hobbes finds his stagnant day-to-day existence disrupted by the worst threat he's ever faced--and the entire Realm faces it as well.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.



-8-

“Follow Hitchins,” Mike says, pausing in the lobby, and Tom glances back at him, questioning. “He'll take you down to containment.”

“But what're you--”

Mike waves a hand at him. “If I don't eat something I'm going to fucking collapse. I'm just going to the cafeteria. I'll meet up with you in ten.” He smiles, crooked and still a little uncertain. “I'll bring you something.”

Tom watches him for another second or two and then turns back to Hitchins, feeling his stomach sink. And yes, he's hungry. But he'd just wanted a moment to take a breath. He looks at Hitchins, and Hitchins is blushing again and trying to look anywhere but at Tom.

It's strange. Yes, there had been Escalante, but he'd been hardened, toned by the Guard. Hitchins isn't either. He might be a good soldier... but he doesn't really feel like a soldier at all.

Then again, he's also not currently pointing his gun at Tom's head.

“Containment?” Tom asks, by way of kicking things back into gear, and Hitchins nods.

“Level B4. We've got a quarantine unit set up.” He turns and starts to walk towards the elevators. “Follow me, sir. I'll escort you.”

“Wait a second.” Tom doesn't move and Hitchins turns again, looking apprehensive. “Quarantine? I thought this was a sample.” He'd been thinking vials, test tubes. You'd need a high security lab for that. You shouldn't need a quarantine.

“Sir,” Hitchins says, “we really should go. I'll explain on the way, sir. Please...” He inclines his head forward and Tom sighs, following. One of these times he'll put his foot down and go lock himself in his room. If he even can.

“Dexter!” Tom whistles and Dexter comes running around a corner, stopping by his feet and looking up at him with wide brown eyes. Hitchins gives him a doubtful look.

“Sir, I'm really not sure they'll allow you to bring an animal into containment.”

“Then I'll take him back to my room.” Tom leans over and presses the up arrow, turning back to Hitchins and crossing his arms, and Hitchins bites his lip.


* * *


They make it most of the way back to Tom's room before Hitchins speaks again, slowly and hesitantly, looking straight ahead. A boot camp kind of stare, the kind you learn to adopt when there's a drill sergeant screaming abuse into your face. “Sir, I wanted to apologize for the other night. It was... inappropriate.”

Tom stops outside his door and pulls out his keycard. It's really almost funny, like there's something about this particular spot in the building. He affords Hitchins a single glance before he opens the door and lets Dexter trot in. There's a bowl of water on the kitchen floor, a piece of leftover fried chicken that he'd found in a pack in the fridge the night before. He'll be fine, Tom tells himself as he closes the door again. Just fine. Locked in a glorified hotel suite when he's used to fields and trees.

“I told you. Stop calling me 'sir'.”

“Well.” Hitchins looks away again and shuffles his boots against the carpet. “It was still... I shouldn't have done it.” He pauses and when he speaks again there's a thread of desperation in his voice. “Please, si-- Hobbes... just don't tell anyone. They could demote me. They could kick me out.”

Tom looks at him a little more closely. “And you really want to stay?”

Hitchins looks confused. “Why would you think I wouldn't want to stay?”

Tom shrugs. “I don't know. You just seem... you seem like maybe you'd be happier with another job.” He smiles faintly. “You don't strike me as the kind of guy who really gets a kick outta shooting people.”

“Well, I...” Hitchins looks down at his boots, still shuffling, hands clasped behind his back. “I have a little sister. Our parents are gone. You get in the Guard, you're set, and so's your family. If anything happens to me... I know she's taken care of.”

“Oh.” Tom goes quiet for a moment, thinking about the boys he'd known, the good boys, a long way from home and family, living through letters and photographs and phone calls. Boys working for college and a future and for people left behind, and the boys who had just wanted to fight for their country. Boys like that, not existing only in books or movies. Boys like that in every army, in every cause.

He feels a slow rage boiling up in his chest. Pale Horse, Pale Rider, and fucking Santiago. Letting all the boys like this down.

“Okay,” he says, and shakes himself slightly. “I just... wondered.” He jerks his head down the hallway. “We should get going.”

“Right.” Hitchins also seems to remember himself, and they start walking again. “And you won't...?”

“Won't say a word.”

“Thank you. Hobbes.”

Tom half smiles. “You should be careful around him, though.”

“Yes, they...” Hitchins blushes again, just at the tips of his ears, almost the same red as his beret. “They told me about that.”

Tom raises an eyebrow. “Told you about what?”

“They...” Hitchins looks at him, and he looks slightly mortified. “Well, I mean... Colonel Pinocchio... I heard he sort of... got around.”

Got around. That actually fits with what he's seen of Mike better than some other things, and he shrugs, ignoring the stab of discomfort that comes with the little he imagines before he can stop himself. “Probably did.”

The elevator ride is quiet at first, and then Hitchins speaks again. “So how long have you known him?”

“I've...” Tom's mouth twists into something that might be a smile and he lowers his head. “Three years. Maybe a little more. Since I got here.”

“You're from the Real World.”

“Yeah.”

“They say...” Hitchins's voice drops to a conspiratorial low, as if he's afraid of being overheard. “I heard you were special.”

Tom looks up again. He's so, so tired of hearing that. “I'm not special, Hitchins.”

Hitchins opens his mouth, closes it again, says nothing else. Tom almost feels bad, just for a moment. But it's better. Really, it's better. A year ago, he finally learned how dangerous it is to think like that. Mike had probably been so relieved.

The doors open, and it's a bright, white hallway just like the one two levels above it. Mike looks up as Tom steps out, and raises what looks like a ham sandwich in greeting. He's already halfway into another one. Tom takes the sandwich and looks down at it. Suddenly he doesn't feel all that hungry.

“Sir.” Hitchins nods at Mike and walks backwards a few steps. “If you'll follow me.”

“Shouldn't we get Florence?” Tom asks, glancing around them. It isn't really like the level above. There's no doors, no plaques. Everything looks spotlessly clean and absolutely featureless. Mike swallows his bite and shakes his head.

“She shouldn't be in on this.” His mouth tightens slightly. “She wouldn't... like it.”

“Oh.” More apprehension. Quarantine. Hitchins is rounding a corner and tapping in numbers on a keypad. “They said something about a quarantine.”

Mike doesn't answer immediately, and they step through and into a smaller room. The door shuts behind them, and he sighs. “Hobbes, there's something you need to know about Horse.”

But he never gets as far as what it is. The door in front of them hisses open with the sound of a vacuum seal breaking, and immediately the quiet around them dissolves into screams and yelling. Tom stares, trying to make sense of what he's seeing, even as Hitchins is pushing them both back.

The room is larger, but still not large. Tom gets the sense that it opens into somewhere bigger. Directly in front of them are three Guardsmen with guns and respirator masks, their hands gloved in blue latex. The Guardsmen are facing more Guardsmen, two of them, also masked and gloved, both holding out empty hands to the girl standing in the center of the room. She's small, young, no more than sixteen, and her dark skin stands out jarringly against her white hospital smock.

“What the hell,” Hitchins is yelling to the Guardsmen in front of them. “She was in containment! What the fuck happened?”

“She got loose. She's...” The Guardsman shakes his head helplessly, not turning around. “We can't shoot her. We liquidated everyone else, she's all that's left.”

“Miss,” one of the Guardsmen with the empty hands is saying. “Just please, calm down and cooperate. We want to help you.”

“You killed my family!” The girl shakes her head, bares her teeth and lunges at the man, who takes a hasty step back. “My whole family. You think I'm gonna cooperate with you? Motherfucker.” She shoves a rolling cabinet at the other Guardsmen, who catches it and pushes it aside.

“You're sick,” the first man says. “Listen to me. Listen! You'll be dead in a week—or you can let us try to help you.”

“I don't care.” The girl turns towards the Guardsmen with the guns and snarls. “Fucking kill me. I'd rather be dead. If it's gonna happen anyway, get it the fuck over with.”

“Hey.” Tom looks to the side, his attention momentarily caught, because Mike is pressing against Hitchins's restraining arm, a look in his eyes that he's never quite seen before. “Hey. Just... look, you got a name? Just tell me your name.”

The girl freezes, as if she's not quite sure what to do with the question. She looks around at the men surrounding her, then back at Mike, and Tom can see the fear behind the sullen anger. “My name's Kiana. That's the name my mom and dad gave me. And you killed them, you fuckers.”

“You killed them?” Mike turns to one of the Guardsmen. “That was kind of a dick move, fellas. You didn't think this might end up happening if you did that? What, did you think she'd be pleased?”

“We had our orders,” says one of the men, uncertainly. “Sir.”

“Yeah, well, fuck your orders.” He turns back to Kiana again, shaking his head. “I'm sorry. I know that sucks, and these guys are fucking assholes for doing it. But it's done. They were sick, weren't they?”

“They...” Kiana takes a step back, face twisting for a moment, and Tom sees how very young she is. How scared. “One of the guys with us. He kept coughing. He wouldn't stop.”

“Yeah.” Mike closes his eyes for a second. “Kiana? If you don't give a fuck about these shits, I get that, I do. But other people are gonna get sick. Innocent people. They're gonna die. A lot of people are gonna die. But you can help us. You can help stop that from happening.” He takes a slow step forward, pushing Hitchins's arm aside, and Hitchins lets it fall, watching Mike with a faintly stunned expression. “Please. Help us.”

For a moment Mike and Kiana stare at each other, and everyone else stares at them, and Tom isn't sure anyone is even breathing. Finally Kiana seems to sag where she stands, and one of the men steps forward and takes her arm, looking up at his companion. “Get the workup ready to go. I'll get her into the module.”

He heads away from them, out of sight around a corner, and the Guardsmen with guns follow. Mike catches one by the shoulder. “Be nice to her,” he says. “Okay? She's a fucking kid. And you killed her goddamn parents, you stupid asswipe.”

Tom expects the Guardsman to shoot back with something, maybe shove Mike back with the butt of his gun, but the man turns and walks away without another word, and there's a very slight slump to his shoulders.

Maybe it's not so hard to see how this man might have once led an army.

Mike turns back to them, rubbing a hand over his face. “Christ. Fucking amateurs.” He drops his hand and looks at Hitchins. “So that's our sample? Fantastic. This is gonna be a goddamn picnic.”

“Do we really need to be here?” Tom is already taking a step back, the claustrophobic feeling returning as a tightness in his gut, and he realizes with mild horror that he's still holding the sandwich. He's the furthest from hungry that he thinks he's ever been. “Because I really, really think I need to get drunk.”

Mike looks at him for a couple of seconds, considering, before he takes Tom by the arm, and it's one of the few times that Tom's found himself taking real comfort in Mike's touch.

“Come with me.” He reaches down, plucks the sandwich out of Tom's hand, and holds it out to Hitchins. “Here. Happy fucking birthday.”


-9-

The bar doesn't make him feel any better. It's all low lights and dark wood, Tiffany lampshades, and over the bar is a TV showing what looks like a basketball game. Tom leans forward on the stool and covers his face with his hands. Outside the fence, the easier thing had been to know that you weren't home. Every second was a reminder. You knew where you stood. You knew where you were, because you knew where you weren't. He feels jetlagged, almost dizzy.

“Here.” Mike slides a pint glass over to him and takes a hefty swallow from his own. “C'mon, when was the last time you had a decent beer?”

“I don't want a decent beer,” Tom mutters, picking up the glass and looking at the light on the bubbles as they drift up to the surface. “I want a shitty beer. I don't even want beer.” He takes a swallow, and it is good. Too good. It almost makes him gag.

Mike looks at him for a moment. “That depends on how drunk you really wanna get,” he says finally. “You finish that, we'll see about something stronger.” He smiles at Tom with the corner of his mouth. “Gotta start slow, GI.”

Tom doesn't really want to start slow, either. He wants to get drunker than he has in years, drunk enough that he can stop thinking about this, go to bed and sleep through the next day. There's a little girl in the basement and she's dying. Outside the fence, the world could be dead for all he knows.

If he's going to feel disconnected, it seems stupid to do it in half measures.

When he looks down again half the beer is gone and he's starting to think that maybe he ought to pile some food on top of it, just to give it a cushion. “Pinocchio...”

He doesn't have to say anything else. Mike waves to the bartender. “You got chicken fingers? Give us chicken fingers. Two orders. And a lotta barbecue sauce.” Chicken fingers. A week out from eating blackened rat. Tom bites back a laugh.

The chicken fingers, when they come, are thick and so greasy they almost drip, and suddenly he's eating so fast he's close to choking. Mike lays a hand on his arm. “Jesus. Settle down there, buddy, it's not gonna walk off the fucking plate.” Tom mutters something in his general direction, but he eases off slightly, sitting up a little straighter.

“You were saying something.” His head is spinning gently, and the entire room feels very warm. He closes his eyes and remembers the dead trees, opens them again and sees the soft glow of the lamps and the flickering light of the TV. Harsh Realm is two worlds, and they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. “You were saying something about Pale Horse.”

Mike wipes some sauce off his lips with the back of his hand. “When?”

“When we were going into containment.” Another swallow, and now the pint glass is almost empty. “You said there was something I needed to know.”

“Oh.” Mike clears his throat, shifting on the stool. “Right. Here's the thing. You know how when people die here, they digitize?”

Tom nods. That seems like a stupid question. He's seen it more times than he cares to remember. He sees it in his dreams.

“Pale Horse can't live outside a body for more than about an hour. It's kinda complicated, but the digitizing has something to do with it.”

Tom blinks, trying to understand this. He'd never done terribly well in high school biology, but this barely counts as biology anyway. Biology here is all zeros and ones. “What about if it's in... a blood sample, or something?”

Mike shakes his head. “You can see it, if you test for it, but it's inert. It shuts down. You can't do anything else with it. If you inject it into someone else, it wakes up again.” He taps the bar lightly, and in the dimness his eyes look distant. “That's what the original sample was. But you wanna do anything with it, scan it... you need it when it's active.”

Tom's mouth twists and he sets the glass back on the bar, maybe a little harder than he'd meant to. The bartender glances away from the TV and at them, looking a little doubtful. Tom smiles an apology, glances around. There aren't that many other people in here. A couple of guys in business suits. A couple of off-duty Guardsmen. He wonders how many of them have seen his wanted posters, how many would recognize him if they took a really good look. He wonders how many of them think he's special.

“So, Kiana,” he says dully.

“Yeah. Kiana.”

“Is she gonna die?”

Mike motions the bartender over again and speaks close to his ear; the bartender nods, reaches behind the bar and sets down a bottle of Jack Daniels and two shot glasses. Mike pours out one, then the other, and lifts his, turning it. “I hope not,” he says. “I really do.” And he knocks the shot back, eyes slipping closed in some kind of pleasure as he swallows.

“Me too,” Tom murmurs, looking down at the drink in his hand. He hasn't ever done much in the way of shots. A few times. Once, before he'd gotten the tattoo, and he remembers dizziness and a kind of roaring goodwill towards everyone he happened to stumble into. He hasn't been drunk more than twice since he got here. Mike hasn't let him. He sometimes thinks that it would bother him more that Mike so often treats him like a child, if his place didn't so often make him feel like one.


* * *


He's not sure how many shots later it is. Counting time by shots is a strange idea in itself, but no stranger than anything else. The bar has half emptied out, only a few people left, and the bartender, a middle-aged man with white hair and a red sweater, is standing off to the side polishing a glass and watching them. He's been watching them for most of the night. Tom's sure Mike knows it, and if Mike doesn't care enough to make some kind of deal out of it, he supposes that he doesn't either.

“So is this where you went? The night you... with Hitchins?”

Mike is trying to pour them another round, and he doesn't seem particularly drunk, not to Tom, but he's having a little trouble holding the bottle steady. He laughs, and that doesn't help anything. “You and fucking Hitchins. Jesus, Hobbes. I didn't even get to do anything with him.” He finally gets the glasses filled and raises his with a sardonic smile. “Thanks to you. Protecting his fucking purity.”

“Y'know, he's probably a teenager.” Tom tosses the stuff back and coughs at the burn. He feels incredibly flushed. “He's a teenager and you're... I don't even know how old you are.”

“I'm thirty seven,” Mike says, shooting Tom a look. “And yeah, he's nineteen. So? What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“It's gross,” Tom sputters, but he's laughing. Flushed, yeah, and lightheaded, and if he's sitting in a bar drinking his way past the end of the world, it's not even the weirdest thing he's done since he got here. “Fuck, Pinocchio, you're a dirty old man.”

“Never said I wasn't.” Mike grins. “Anyway, what the fuck do you know, with your goddamn virginal ass.”

“I'm not a virgin.” Tom shakes his head, all earnestness. “I'm not. Just because I'm monogamous...” The word is harder to say than he remembers it and he fumbles with it a little, eyes caught by the woodgrain in the bar top. The Tiffany lamp colors reflected in the shine. Where I come from all the colors like that are broken, Tom thinks, and he doesn't completely know what it means. When he looks up again Mike is watching him with an amused curl to his mouth.

“Didn't say you were a total virgin,” he says, a very faint slur around his words. “I was talking about your ass. Or do you got something you wanna tell me?”

Tom feels the flush rise fiercely, up and unto his neck and ears, and he turns a little away. Before, he would have known how to take that, just regular teasing, just Mike Pinocchio tugging at his pigtails. Harmless, in its way.

Now he's just not sure anymore.

“Hey,” Mike says, and he feels a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it was just a joke. Relax.”

“Don't make jokes like that.”

Mike snorts and his hand drops away. “Thought you said you didn't have a problem with it.”

“I don't. It's just...” He shakes his head again and tips back the shot. No, he really shouldn't care. He shouldn't care about anything. It's all going to shit, anyway. “Look, just forget it.”

Mike snorts another laugh but says nothing else, not quite looking at him, and through the confusion and the whiskey Tom finds himself feeling oddly bad about it. He doesn't know why a joke like that should bother him. It really shouldn't. It's just Mike. It's just how Mike is.

And Mike's felt the need to keep this from him for a long time.

“When I was back in Yugoslavia,” he says, “I... I caught two of my men. Walked in on them. Scared the hell outta them. “ He's speaking slowly, the words seeming to come on their own, like they need to be said. Whether it's a peace offering or something else, he's not sure, but he's drinking with Mike Pinocchio in a fucking sports bar in a dying world, and it feels like the time to speak of things like this. “I never said anything about it.” Couldn't do that to them. They'd been horny and lonely, probably scared out of their minds, and it had seemed like the worst reason to give someone a dishonorable discharge that he could ever have imagined.

Mike looks at him for a few seconds, eyes hooded, and Tom realizes that he's not quite breathing. But then Mike nods, once, and his mouth curves into something close to a smile.

“Good for you.” And it's not sarcastic. Tom can't detect a single note of sarcasm in it.

“So when did you know?” Because it's easier talking about this than Pale Horse, and thinking about Kiana locked away in her white room, her eyes very bright in her dark face. Mike shrugs.

“Always. 'S kinda something you just... figure out.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“You have one of those guys in your high school, Hobbes?” He's pouring out another round, but Tom's starting to feel doubtful. He'd like to be able to walk out of here on his own legs. He'd also like to not be actually sick. “You know, doesn't really fit, no girlfriends, gets called fag all the time. Maybe gets jumped after school.” He hands over the shot glass and his mouth is a little tight. “Would you have been that guy? Voluntarily?”

Tom takes the glass, shaking his head. He's feeling guilty again, feeling small and childlike. It isn't just this place. It's everything. Maybe it just took this place to make him realize it. “No.” He pauses. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. Wasn't anyone's fault.” Tip, swallow, and Mike exhales hard. “It was just one of those things.”

* * *

They've finished the bottle by the time they stumble out, and instead of paying with cash Mike holds out his arm, which the bartender scans with a small, boxy-looking thing, nodding when it beeps softly. “What was that?” Tom slurs, leaning on him as they head out the door into the night, and Mike laughs.

“Charging it to the government. The thing holds a line of credit. Told you it was on sugar daddy's dollar.” And because he's not sure when he's last been this drunk and because absolutely everything seems a little bit funny at the moment, Tom tips his head back and laughs too. And it feels good. He doesn't even feel sick. Doesn't feel worried. There's an entire section of his brain that simply isn't talking at all. Dimly he wonders if he's killed it off for good.

Probably too much to hope.

The trip back to the building is hazy. He remembers lit streets, a haze of yellow light, cars passing them, once or twice someone on the sidewalk stopping to give them a puzzled and faintly disapproving look. In their street clothes and jackets, they're not soldiers. They're no one. They could be staggering through any city, in any world, and Tom begins to be sure that he could reach out and slip his fingers under the skin of things. He could pull this world aside like a curtain and walk through into where he knows he belongs, into light and life and Sophie's arms. Mike's arm is hooked around his shoulders and he's solid and warm. He's real, even if nothing else is.

“Mike,” he murmurs, and there's soft carpet under his feet and the hum of an elevator. He stumbles and Mike catches him and he feels a rush of gratitude. Sleep. He really just needs to sleep. Maybe this is all a dream he can wake up from.

Maybe he doesn't want to.

“You're okay,” Mike is saying, and Tom thinks Yes, I'm okay. He's not sick. That's what really matters. Kiana is sick. Kiana... He closes his eyes, but he doesn't stop walking. Mike is pushing him along.

They stop, and he thinks it must be because they're at his room. He feels the wall at his back and Mike is shaking him gently. “Where's your keycard? Hey. Hobbes.” A little more shaking and Mike's laughing, or Tom thinks he is. He'd just like to stand here with his eyes closed, at least until the world stops spinning. He feels the heat of someone standing close to him, and then hands in his pockets.

“Are we gonna die?”

The hands stop. Tom manages to open his eyes and Mike is there, looking back at him, very close. There's something in his eyes that Tom's never seen before.

“Everyone dies, Hobbes.”

His fingers close on something in Tom's left pocket and he steps back and away. Tom sags slightly against the wall. This isn't right. None of this is right. He hears the door click open and Mike is slipping an arm around his shoulders, tugging him away from the wall. “C'mon, Hobbes. You puke on me, I'm kicking your ass.”

Virgin ass, Tom thinks, and almost giggles.

Dexter runs over to him, sniffing at his feet and yipping once before Mike hushes him. Tom looks across the room with bleary eyes. It looks like a long way to the bedroom, though he knows it's not. Not normally. This isn't normal. This hasn't really been normal since they got here. One foot in front of the other, and the doorway gets nearer and nearer, and then it's as though he blinks once and he's there, and Mike's helping him to sit down on the end of the bed, kneeling down to pull off his boots. Tom stares stupidly at him, wondering if there's something he should be doing to help.

“Haven't done this for anyone in ten fucking years,” Mike is muttering. “You're lucky I like you so much, dick.”

“You like me?” For some reason he's surprised to hear that. He's not sure he's ever heard Mike say anything of the kind. They've been through fifty different kinds of hell together, saved each other's ass more times than he could count, but he's never taken the time to wonder why. 'Why' hasn't even seemed like much of an issue. You do it because that's what you do. You don't leave a man behind.

Mike looks up as he unlaces the other boot, and Tom is oddly pleased to see that he looks a little surprised as well, as if he's just now considering the question. “Yeah, sure I like you.” He grins crookedly. “Haven't killed you yet, right?”

“Not yet.” Tom manages a smile.

Mike straightens up again, and suddenly Tom doesn't want him to leave. Night after night after night, hundreds of them, together, barely feet away from each other, and he doesn't want Mike to leave. Last night he'd thought it was the softness of the bed, too new and too fresh and far too luxurious. Now he's wondering if that's all it was, and he wants to sleep well tonight.

“Wait.” And he reaches out and grabs Mike's arm, tugging at him, staring up and feeling small and foolish and needy, but he can't seem to stop himself now. “Can you stay? Can you just--?”

Mike staring at him, face twisting in confusion, and he tries to pull out of Tom's grip. “Hobbes... look, I gotta go. You'll be fine.”

“No.” Tom pulls harder, not even sure how hard, because it's difficult to completely control his muscles. “C'mon, please--”

He's not entirely sure what happens next. It's a series of flashes, like still frames in a film. Mike stumbles, pitches forward, and then he's on his back on the bed with Mike on top of him. He's breathless suddenly, not entirely sure why, but when he looks up he sees how blue Mike's eyes are. He's never really realized how blue. It's been a long time since he saw a sky that blue. And in the blue are little flecks of green, so small he'd have never seen them from further away than this, and he leans up to get a better look. It's only when Mike makes a quiet, muffled sound and his eyes flutter shut that Tom realizes what he's done. He freezes. This isn't...

Oh, God.

He should move away. He should stop this. So far it isn't much, just mouth against mouth, but he isn't moving. He can't move.

And then he feels the light flick of Mike's tongue against his lips and he can't quite move fast enough.

“Shit,” Mike is hissing, shoving himself up and off the bed with a hand to his mouth like he's afraid it might try something else. “Shit, Hobbes, I'm sorry, I didn't--”

“No.” Tom's sitting up, shaking himself, staring as a strange numbness starts to steal through his muscles. “No, it's... It's my fault, don't worry about it.”

Mike is still standing there, hands hanging at his sides, clenching into fists and unclenching again. Tom's seen a lot of expressions on Mike's face in his time. He's never seen Mike look quite this mortified. At any other time it would almost be funny.

“It's really okay.” Suddenly he's just tired again, tired and entirely too sober. “You can go, Pinocchio. I'll be fine.”

“Okay.” And still Mike stays for another few seconds, jaw working very slightly, as if he might say something, before he turns, walks away, and Tom hears his door open and close again.

He drops back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. After a few minutes he licks his lips. He's not sure what he expected to taste. He doesn't taste anything.

Another few minutes and he gets up, goes to the bathroom and washes his face, comes back and undresses, slowly, as if his mind is elsewhere. He looks doubtfully at the bed, but he slides in between the sheets and once again Dexter hops up and settles down by his feet. He turns off the light.

He's not sure how much later it is, but he's still awake and still staring up at the ceiling in the dark when he hears more scuffling in the hall, though it's quieter this time, and a “Fuck, Hitchins, keep it down.” Then a door opening, closing, and very soon after a muffled groan, and another, and then the groans slip into a rhythm, a rhythm that starts to rise into soft cries.

Tom puts a pillow over his head. It doesn't exactly help.


-10-

It's not light yet when he opens his eyes, and for a moment he lies there tangled in the sheets, trying to pull his scattered thoughts together. He doesn't remember finally falling asleep. He doesn't know what's wakened him. But he listens and after a few seconds the soft rapping on the door comes again. He's become a light sleeper. It wouldn't take much more than that.

He gets up, pulls on his robe and opens the door, and he's not even all that surprised to see Florence standing there, still in the same clothes of a day before. She looks at him inquiringly, and he stands aside to let her in, but she reaches out and tugs lightly at his sleeve, inclining her head down the hall.

“Okay,” he says, rubbing at his eyes. “Okay, just gimmie a sec. Let me get something on.”

He pulls on the clothes heaped at the foot of the bed, gives Dexter a quick pat and heads back out to the hall again. Florence is still waiting, arms crossed and an unsettled look in her eyes. He reaches out and touches her arm. In the absence of words, so much of what passes between them is now in the form of touch. “What's wrong?”

She shakes her head, nods down the hall again. Later. Come on.

He would be frustrated at the current trend of people telling him things only when he makes a pest out of himself, but from her, it seems perfectly reasonable, and he follows her without another word, passing through silent halls with their feet hardly making a sound on the thick carpet. Again, it strikes him how strange it is to be free here, to be prevented only from going too far away. Again, that sense that all the rules have changed.

He remembers the warmth of Mike's mouth on his and shakes his head slightly. No. That hadn't even been a change in the rules. That had been an enormous mistake.

He's not sure how long they walk; in the pre-dawn quiet the time feels more pliable. Up a flight of stairs, through a door, and he's about to ask her how she seems so sure of where she's going when he sees where they are and he falls silent even as she's raising a finger to her lips.

They're standing in a low gallery overlooking the room in which they'd had their briefing. The front of the gallery is lined with a few seats, and Tom gets the feeling that it's reserved for guests of state, people allowed to observe but not to participate. Not far below them, seated at the round table and lit mainly by the glow of the map, are Mike and Santiago.

“--Don't know what you even wanted me here for,” Mike is saying, leaning back with his arms crossed sullenly over his chest. “I've done fuck-all so far, and you know I don't even know anything about it. You made me a supervisor. That's all.”

Tom feels another tug on his arm, looks down and sees that Florence is keeping herself very low, very still. And then he realizes: Mike doesn't know that they're there. Santiago doesn't know that they're there. This is something that maybe he isn't meant to be seeing.

But Florence wants him to see it.

“You're the only one left,” Santiago says, leaning across the table. “All the others are dead or defected.”

“So why didn't you go after the defectors?”

“Because we couldn't find them. And then you happened to drop into our laps.” Santiago smiles. “It was really very convenient, actually. But you're right. We do need more than what you can give us.”

Mike shrugs. “So.”

“So, we think we've tracked one of them down.”

“Who?”

“Elliot.”

Faintly, Tom hears Mike snort a laugh. “He defected? He had the guts? Guy was scared of his own goddamn shadow.”

Santiago folds his hands over the table. “A week after you left, he passed through the fence and we lost track of him.” He pauses, and even from where he is, Tom can see the look he gives Mike. Wary. Calculating. “We believe your departure... emboldened him.”

For a moment Mike says nothing at all, stretching out a hand and tapping his fingers lightly on the tabletop. Then, “I made it look like I was dead. I made it look very fucking convincing.”

“Not all of us were convinced.”

“Were you?”

Santiago smiles faintly. “It doesn't matter whether I was convinced or not. You're here now.”

“Yeah, and I'm gonna be gone the second we get this settled.”

“Oh, come on, Michael.” Santiago sits back again, and Tom can hear the frustration, a slight trace of scorn. “Don't think we haven't noticed you striding around the last couple of days. Giving orders. Acting like you own the place. Because you do. You think Waters has no reason to have an attitude with you? You think it's just personal dislike? This whole time, he was against me bringing you back here because he saw his job in jeopardy.” He nods once, as if to punctuate the last word, and then glances up, and although Tom knows he's hidden in shadow and outside lines of sight, for an instant he's sure he's been seen.

Mike is silent for a long time, fingers still tapping, tapping so lightly they don't make any sound. Then, “Is he right?”

“That very much depends on you.”

Mike laughs again, shaking his head, incredulous. “You don't expect me to believe there's really a place for me here.”

“There is if you want it, Michael. There always has been.” From where he is, Tom can see Santiago's face clearly, the look in his eyes, and he's seen that look before. A long time ago. The utter assuredness. So solid and convincing that it's difficult to look at it and not begin to become convinced as well.

Those people are just on the wrong side. You must be able to see that now.

You've been sent on a mission from which you can't return.

Mike shakes his head again, but this time there's a weariness about it, as if this is a conversation that he's had before now. “Omar...”

“I would have given you everything.” Santiago is leaning forward again, intent, eyes almost seeming to glow in the dimness. “Waters is nothing and he knows it. He's not half the soldier you were, not half the leader. I would have made you my son. I would have given you the keys to my kingdom. And you could have made what I've built twice as great.”

Mike raises a hand, and Santiago falls silent. Tom finds himself taking a breath, taking it as if he hasn't taken one in a long time. He's not supposed to see this, but he needs to see it.

“I don't want your fucking keys.” He drops his hand, and although Tom can't clearly see his face, he hears the thin smile in his voice. “And I never liked my father.”

Santiago sits back, face gone flat, his hands folded together over the table. “All right, then.”

Mike sighs and tilts his head back, rubbing his eyes. “C'mon, Omar, you didn't just call me down here to do a Last Temptation of Christ thing. What the fuck do you want?”

“We're sending out a team this afternoon, with the goal of apprehending Elliot. I want you on it.”

“Why?”

“He knows you. I was hoping you might convince him to come quietly.”

Mike snorts. “So you're sending me with a bunch of grunts with guns. You thought this brilliant plan all the way through?”

“He probably won't come quietly.” Santiago shrugs. “We use you, you don't work, then what exactly do we have if we don't have grunts with guns?”

“Fine.” Mike sighs again, head still tilted back. “Who else is going?”

“Your friends, Tom Hobbes and Florence. Major Waters. A few of the men directly under him.”

“Fine,” Mike says again. “How far out?”

“A day. Maybe two.”

“Where?”

Santiago pauses at that, and Tom gets the feeling that he's actually reluctant to answer. But finally he says “West.”

Mike sits up a little straighter. “Back into the badlands.”

Santiago smiles a thin little knife edge. “You of all people should know the advantages to going there, Michael.”

“I guess.” Mike's voice is tight, and Tom catches Florence's glance. The badlands? Where they'd been before, maybe, though that had been further south. Poisoned ground and water. It had been pretty bad.

Is there worse out there?

“Did he steal it?”

“We don't know.” Santiago's voice is low and flat, and for the first time Tom feels a stirring of outright doubt. They've been assuming that it's true, that there's good faith, that the Guard themselves don't have anything to do with it. They've been assuming. His first week in basic, he'd been told all about assuming. “We don't know who stole the sample.”

“Yeah, see, that's something I never really got. How could you not know? How could you not have any idea?”

Santiago stiffens a little. “We experienced a complete shut-down of the power grid for the whole area, for approximately thirty minutes. We believe the theft occurred during that time.”

“What about backup power?”

“It also went down.” And again, doubt, because Santiago sounds almost embarrassed. Mike laughs shortly.

“Your secure areas don't seem very fucking secure, Omar.”

“It doesn't matter, Michael,” Santiago says tersely. “It's done. We waste time doing detective work or we figure out how to stop it now. Get your people together.” He rises, fists against the table, and there's more than a little tension in his stance. It could be from any number of things. But Tom suspects that one thing Santiago doesn't hear very often is no.

And a rejection with absolutely no fear in it. With contempt.

“It's five o' clock in the fucking morning. They're sleeping.”

“Get them, Michael.” It's a lot more than tension. It's anger. Tom's not sure he's ever actually heard Santiago angry. Probably not many men hear it and tell about it after. “Maybe your time isn't particularly valuable to you, but mine should be.”

Mike shrugs. “Whatever.” And Florence is tugging him gently away, out through the door and into the tomb-like quiet of the hallway again. She turns to him, hand still on his arm, and he stares back at her.

“He could have gone back.”

She makes a gesture that's neither a nod or a shake of the head. Maybe. Clearly, it doesn't matter. Clearly what matters is that he said no.

“We need to get out of here, don't we? This place isn't good for him.” He pauses, peering into her face. “It isn't good for you.” She shakes her head, tugging away again, and though she looks as strong as she ever has, there's a forced quality to the strength, as if she's holding herself up with sheer will alone.

Poisoned ground and water.

“Come on.” He turns, trusting her to follow. “They'll be looking for us.”


* * *


Mike finds them before they make it back to the rooms, and he looks at the two of them with slightly narrowed eyes, not quite suspicious but not so far off from it, either. “You're both up early.”

“We couldn't sleep.”

“Right.” Mike looks at him for a little longer, and Tom fights to keep from squirming under that gaze, under all the things he sees in it. But Mike looks away again, sighing. “C'mon, we gotta talk. They're planning to move on something later today and it looks like we gotta be in on it.”

It's already in progress when they enter the room again, this time through the main doors. A row of faces turn to look at them as they take their seats at the end of the table; Waters is among them but the rest are soldiers Tom's never seen before. Hitchins isn't among them. He feels a rush of something that might be relief, or might not be at all.

Again the map screen has been replaced with a slide, now showing the face of a man with mousy brown hair and thin glasses, a narrow mouth. He looks tired.

“This is Dr. Gregory Elliot,” Santiago says without skipping a beat. “He was one of the lead scientists working on Project Pale Rider. Five years ago he disappeared. Yesterday we received reliable intelligence regarding his location.” He turns back to face the table, hands folded together behind his back.

“Elliot may know nothing about this. Or he may know a great deal. In any case, you are going to apprehend him, and you are going to deliver him here, alive.” He pauses, seeming to weigh something before speaking again. “We've also received intelligence regarding further outbreaks outside the fence. Pale Horse is spreading. So long as it stays outside the fence, you may think we have no cause for alarm. But gentlemen, there is no guarantee that it will. We stop it out there, and we stop it now.”

Further outbreaks. He's not sure why he's surprised. It wasn't going to go away on its own. But everything in him seems to stiffen, and when he glances over at Mike, Mike is looking down and away, his expression unreadable. It's so easy to lose sight of. But they've been sheltered, locked up here in comfort and safety. Anything could be going on out there.

“All right, people.” Waters is getting to his feet, looking around, and his gaze passes over the three of them as if they weren't there at all. “We hit the road at twelve hundred. Get your gear together and meet outside at ten till.”

Out in the hall the other soldiers pass by them, not speaking to them, but Tom feels the looks. At him, at Florence, but mostly at Mike. So many settlements and villages, he's been the one stared at, the one wondered at, whispered about behind people's hands, and now...

He's not the legend, here. No one here is looking to be saved from anything.

Or they weren't.

He's not jealous, he thinks. It's just different. He looks at Mike, finds his eyes wandering down to the odd shape of his mouth and he looks away again. “So.”

“Yeah,” Mike says. “We should--”

“Pinocchio!”

Mike turns, nonplussed, and Tom follows his gaze to see McDonald striding toward them, eyes wide and eager. “I came up to find you personally. I thought you'd want to see this.”

Mike blinks. “See what?”

“We're ready to do the scan. We got the sample out of her this morning.”

“We gotta...” Mike glances back at Tom and Florence, and there's something in his eyes, a kind of excitement, as though this is something he's been looking forward to. “What the hell,” he says. “C'mon. We got a few hours. This could be really fucking big.”

Florence shrugs, but she's looking down and Tom can't see her face clearly. That slump is back in her shoulders, the slump that makes him worry. Whatever else happens, maybe it's good that they're getting out. Like stepping out of a closed room and breathing the air straight from the source, and when did he become able to think of the Realm this way?

Since now, maybe.


* * *


They head back down, back through white corridors under white lights, and they're almost to the room containing OSCAR when Tom opens his mouth and speaks.

“I want to see Kiana.”

They all stop and stare at him. McDonald looks faintly nervous, Mike looks confused, but Florence is looking at him with a kind of warmth that he hasn't seen in her eyes since they'd arrived. He knows without having to ask her that she knows who Kiana is. It doesn't matter that she hadn't been with them the day Kiana had been brought in. One way or another, she knows.

McDonald shuffles one foot slightly. “Are you sure? I mean... everyone's ready, we can do the scan and then you can see her after if there's time--”

“No,” Tom says firmly. “I want to see her now.” He's not sure why it should feel so important, but it does. The feeling of waltzing along, disconnected and ignorant. But she's here, and she's scared and soon, if they can't help her, she'll be dying. So he wants to see her, before they take what they want out of her blood.

Mike looks back at McDonald and nods slightly, a what can you do expression flickering briefly over his face. “Okay,” says McDonald, swiping a hand over his face. “Okay, fine. Follow me.”

More elevator, more white, and they're entering containment again, stepping through the airlock with a faint rush. Further in, further than Tom had seen the last time he'd been here, each door they pass through equipped with an armed soldier and a scanner, and finally they enter a room with a short row of three cells, the wall facing them made up of a thick glass-like material and a door each set between them. More airlocks, Tom figures. They wouldn't just let anyone enter like any old cell.

McDonald nods shortly to the Guardsman standing against the wall, and the nod is returned. “How's she doing?”

“Coughing since last night,” says the man. He's young, though not so young as Hitchins. He looks grim. “It started coming up bloody this morning.”

“They put her on a drip?”

“Yeah. But they say it'll only be able to stay in there for a few more days...”

Tom isn't listening anymore. The central cell is the only one that isn't empty, and he steps forward, hands hanging limply at his sides. The girl is lying on a low cot, one arm over her eyes, an IV drip in her other. By the side of the cot is a bucket that he doesn't want to look too hard into.

Kiana stirs, drops her arm, meets his gaze and he feels himself freeze. Her skin is too dark to show at all pale, but there's a flat, unhealthy color to it. There's a strange, slack, expressionless quality to her face. Her eyes are bloodshot.

She coughs once, closing her eyes as though it's painful, and stares at him again. He's not sure he's ever had anyone look at him with so much hatred.

“The fuck're you staring at?” she croaks, and the sound seems to come from slightly above his head. He looks up. Speaker, set into the wall.

“Nothing,” he says numbly. “I'm sorry.”

“Fuck your sorry.” She coughs again, turning and bending with the force of it, and spits something into the bucket. “I don't need it. You come down here for kicks, or what? You get off on this?”

“She's got a nice fuckin' attitude,” observes the Guardsman dryly, and Tom glances back in time to see Mike turn on him with a look that blanches his face. Florence is turned a little away, her head bowed. Her hands are shaking just a little, as if they'd like to act on their own. To be in the presence of this kind of sickness and to be idle. Tom feels something cold settle in his gut.

“I don't get off on it. I just wanted to see you.” Because it's true. There's not a lot more to say. Kiana snorts a laugh, sits up with her white smock hanging loosely around her bony shoulders.

“Well, get a good fuckin' look, asshole.” She coughs again, a thick hacking sound. “While you can.”

“Why did you want to see this?” Mike, up close and hissing in his ear and it isn't until the hand gripping his forearm begins to become painful that Tom is aware of it. Being this close again isn't strange in the way he'd thought it would be. “What the fuck for, Hobbes? She's dying, I coulda told you that.”

“I just wanted to see,” he whispers again, and he can't explain what he's really feeling, that it would have been wrong to take another step towards a solution without bearing witness to the cost. They've been here with their soft beds and hot showers and food whenever they want it, and he's gotten drunk and Mike's fucked a goddamn teenager, and it's ridiculous. It's disgusting, when this is the truth lurking behind it. “I just wanted to see her, Pinocchio, okay?”

Mike mutters something else and steps away. Tom's vision seems to have narrowed, tunneled, until there's nothing in his line of sight but her, her flat face, the burst blood vessels in her eyes. She meets his gaze, entirely unwavering, and he sees the fear there, the fighting. The sheer will to survive. That will is going to go out like a candle in a hard wind and there's nothing he can do.

Not yet.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers, and he turns and fumbles blindly for the door until Florence takes his hands and guides him.


* * *


Mike is angry at him, or Mike would like to appear to be angry at him. It's clear, anyway, what he's trying to broadcast as his feelings, but Tom doesn't care. He can't care. After what he's just seen, whatever Mike's feelings may or may not be seem entirely inconsequential.

They head back up to OSCAR's room mostly in silence, Tom's numb, Mike's sullen, McDonald's nervous, and Florence's merely silent, as she always is. Once or twice Tom thinks Mike might be about to say something. Then the feeling passes again.

“Well,” McDonald says finally as they approach the door with the retinal scanner. He speaks with a kind of forced cheeriness that makes Tom fight to keep from cringing. “Okay, then. Here we are.” He bends to the scanner, and when the door hisses open there are already two people inside, a young man and an equally young woman, both bending over the keyboard in front of the terminal. On the table under the white sphere is a thin tube of red fluid, sealed into a clear box.

“Are we all set?”

The woman, a pretty redhead, turns and nods. “Sample's in place. Calibration looks okay. We've corrected for the presence of the tube and the containment unit and human blood. I don't know if it'll be perfect, but it should at least be pretty close.”

“All right, then.” McDonald rubs his hands together. He already seems more at ease, more focused, and even Mike seems to be perking up a little. All Tom can think about are Kiana's bloodshot eyes.

This has to be worth it. It just has to be.

“Everyone stand back,” says the young man, typing rapidly. “Ready... and we're live.”

Again, there's the swelling hum, the detaching plates and the arms, the beams of light. Tom squints as they play over the surface of the tube, seeming to feel it out, probing, and then just as suddenly they vanish again. There's a breathless pause, and then the long string of characters begins to play out across the terminal screen, multiplying and multiplying.

The entire room seems to exhale. Tom looks up at Mike, but Mike's attention is focused on the screen, rapt, and he steps forward. But McDonald and the two others are ahead of him, crowding around the terminal.

“We did it,” the man breathes. “We fucking did it.”

“It's just a step,” says McDonald, bending over the keyboard. “We still have to analyze it, pass it along to the--” He stops, staring at the screen, and Mike steps closer again.

“What? What is it?”

“That... can't be right.” There's a sound of frantic typing, and then more silence. Tom can't see the screen at all.

“What the fuck,” Mike mutters, reaching out and bodily pushing the staring man and woman aside, and finally the screen is in Tom's line of sight. And he doesn't immediately see anything wrong. The code is unspooling, line by line, neat and orderly and regular.

And then it stops. The screen blinks. And the code begins to unspool again.

“There's no way it can be doing that,” McDonald is muttering. “There's just... there's no way.”

“You're lookin' at it, genius.” Mike stands back and folds his arms, sighing. “They told us there was an issue with the mutation.”

“Yeah, well, they were really understating.”

“What is it doing?” Tom asks it quietly, almost without any hope of answer, but immediately every eye in the room is on him. Mike looks awkwardly down and to the side, but when McDonald nods slightly he unfolds his arms.

“It's recycling itself. The code is rewriting itself every twenty seconds or so. It's just a little different every time.”

Tom feels the numbness seeping back in. Kiana. It's not like he doesn't understand. Maybe he doesn't get the mechanics or the details of it, but he knows what mutation means and he gets the general idea behind Mike's words.

“It's just different enough.”

“Just enough.” The girl whispers it, looking faintly horrified, eyes locked on the tube as if she's only now understanding what's in it. Death. Death, here. It's just a matter of time now.

“No vaccine,” Mike says flatly. “No treatment. No nothing.” He pauses, rubbing the back of his neck.

“We're fucked.”