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Cordelia Lynn Holmes
Lynn leaned against the wall of the bathroom hallway, using the glass of the phone in her hand to peek around the corner. The loading docks were through this way, but the place was locked up tight with whatever excuse for a crime scene team the Promise had.
I imagine they destroy more evidence than they collect, Lynn thought bitterly, trying to count the guards running around as best she could. Lynn spotted at least five, one dutifully snapping pictures, a few others poring over details. All of them were heavily armed. Lynn hadn’t been able to hear much on the grapevine in regards to what was changing on the station, but it didn’t take a genius to piece it together. The place had been a ghost town after she’d left the hospital, and everyone she’d run into had seemed fearful.
That, she supposed, may have just been that she looked like death.
Best Lynn could tell, there was no subtle way around the area towards the cargo crates and the hangar bay. There may be something there, some kind of log or recording of what went where. If nothing else, she’d grab somebody and convection roast their groin until they told her where all the stuff for kids went.
Upstairs, Lynn remembered.
Arianna told me they had something upstairs. She pulled her phone back out of view for a moment, trying to think of a way past all this. Lynn could try a more direct approach, but she didn’t particularly like her odds. Beyond that, all of this was for nothing if the others couldn’t escape. The time crunch was particularly infuriating for her.
I need to figure out where to go and get this hail Mary on its way before the others show up here. If I make these security guys lose their shit, they’re never going to get off.Lynn glanced around the walls, looking for something. Sprinklers? She could start a fire and maybe try to disorient them somehow. She wasn’t sure what that would accomplish, fully, aside from being annoying to them. She smirked. Heh. Well, actually, now she did kinda want to do it. She glanced up at the ceiling. Hmm. Rafters. If she could -
Motherfucker.
Motherfucker.
Damnit, Denim. You were supposed to be a little slower. Lynn felt her blood boil from the injustice of it all. She had just needed a little more time, a few more minutes, a half an hour, she could’ve gotten in and out, gotten to wherever it was she needed to be. Lynn pulled back into the full cover of the bathroom hallway and angrily punched out a text to Amelia.
I promise you there is nothing to tag up there. Go meet up with the others.
If the others weren’t on their way yet, maybe Lynn could shoo her off. Amelia was for sure the best chance the others had of getting off this thing. Without her -
Lynn’s phone buzzed again. “I swear, if Amelia put my fucking number on a stall somewh - “ she frowned. It was Eli. Are you okay? Are you okay? I heard you stole a nurse’s key card. Lynn’s mind raced. How? Did Anderson snitch? Did - no, no, he wouldn’t have, Lynn thought. It was as though the minute her brain started to launch full speed, all the ropes and chains that held her anger in place seized back around it. Archie wouldn’t have done that.
He held me Lynn thought.
The only other way is, Eli - Eli went to the hospital, and asked, but - .
Lynn closed her eyes and raised the phone to her forehead, breathing for a minute. They were making this so hard. Lynn fumbled with her phone, texting back.
Fine. Are you with Keaton?
Amelia, meanwhile, had had a very close call. She had been just a slight bit off with her precision teleporting onto the rafters, and nearly tipped over to one side upon bamfing into the room. After a bit of frantic arm waving and clinging to the rafter, she stabilized and got a look around. Following years of practice, she got low down to minimize her visibility. She couldn’t help but scowl as she ran through her mental checklist of dodging the cops While she was wearing her darker clothes, it didn’t blend her into the shadows like her lucky jacket did. Plus, it was lucky. And not here.
Should have just dealt with the bloodstains. Looking over the edge, she got a look at the patrolling guards below. As focused as they were on their investigation, they were all very armed. More armed than the usual cops she practically danced around back in the old days.Amelia suddenly felt naked without a weapon, which was a new experience for her.
I really need to get myself a gun or something…and learn how to use it. Still, her practiced eyes saw that everything was as it should have been. Which meant no Lynn.
Amelia silently sighed from her perch, absently scratching her hair.
This was a bust. I must be overthinking things after last week. Not out of the- Amelia felt her phone vibrate silently, and immediately got low to the rafter on instinct. Slowly drawing it out of her pocket, she took one look at the text, and more importantly its sender, and frowned deeply.
Oooooor not! Getting soft up here Amelia? It’s not paranoia if someone really is out to get you. After taking a moment to think about it, she fired off a response.
You know, I honestly thought you weren’t here till you texted me.
Lynn looked at her phone. It was not often that Lynn’s face burned figuratively rather than literally, but this was one of the rare instances. Her pale skin immediately flushed a deep red with utter embarrassment. “Oh motherfuck me,” Lynn muttered, rubbing at her forehead before Amelia warped into reality beside her.
Amelia pocketed the phone for just a second, and took a longer look. Wherever Lynn was, she must have had a line of sight to her. Meaning that Amelia had a line of sight back to Lynn. After looking in the direction of possible hiding spots, she spotted it. A reflected light coming from the bathroom hallway.
Gotcha. Looking back away, she fired off another message to Lynn.
For the record, I told no one I thought you were here. I told no one I’m here either. Back corner. By the ladies room door. 5 seconds. Don’t set me on fire.
Amelia pocketed the phone and counted down 5 seconds. With another quick scaring in reality, she appeared behind Lynn in the hallway, out of sight, and looking quite irritated. With an annoyed tone, she whispered, “Hi Lynn. How was your recovery? No get well card? No note? Didn’t even say hello? You almost died!”
Finally getting a clear look at Lynn, Amelia’s face suddenly blanched, and her annoyed tone died in her throat. She had clearly been recovering, but it still looked bad. If Lynn hadn’t had regeneration as a power she didn’t doubt it would look much worse, and that scared the shit out of Amelia. “Jesus Christ you’re still missing the eye…”
Amelia shook her head and composed herself. This was time for business, not panic. “Why are you even here? You aren’t at 100 percent yet, and you just needed to ask me. Sneaking where I don’t belong is what I do. I made my reputation off it!”
“I didn’t - “ Lynn stopped, smoke curling up from her ears. It was an equal blend of irritation and embarrassment. She was such an idiot. This whole thing had already collapsed. Lynn turned and walked into the bathroom where she could speak a touch more loudly without drawing the security over to them. “Look, I - I’m fine, alright? When was I ever at a hundred percent? I just needed - there was just something I had to take care of. Why aren’t you with Keaton and the others?” Lynn asked, hoping she could just talk Amelia out of this. Lynn looked Amelia over. The burn. The burn on her neck. Lynn had forgotten, partially due to having only a handful of hours since she’d returned to the world of the living.
I cauterized her, Lynn remembered. The chain that had snaked down her spine and kept twisting her stomach into tighter and tighter knots ratcheted again. “Christ, your neck, you - “ Lynn paused.
She’s scarred like you now, she heard that old voice say. Her jacket was gone, too.
Amelia followed behind Lynn, still keeping low to the ground out of habit. Just in case. She gave a bit of a mischievous grin at Lynn’s first question. “Well, there are two reasons for that. The first is I had a hunch. A hunch I nearly gave up on till you texted me. Secondly, and more importantly, I have no idea where that is.”
Amelia cocked her head at Lynn’s reaction at her. Amelia wasn’t that bad. She’d made it out with just some shock treatment and some antibiotics and…”Oh. Oh! Right, that.” Amelia pulled her shirt aside a bit, and showed the scar that covered her neck. “Yeah, it isn’t pretty. I didn’t expect the skin graft to leave that bad a scar.” She grinned. “Still, could be worse. It’s pretty cool. Looks like someone tried to take my head o-”
Amelia shook her head, suddenly realizing where this was going. “Ok, hold up a minute. No. You don’t get to freak out about my injuries when you were bleeding out in my arms. And after I busted my ass to keep you alive, you don’t get to run off on a suicide mission without my say so. So I’m giving you two choices. We can go back now, and discuss what you need her so badly as a group, or we tell the others nothing and I tag along so you don’t get killed.” Amelia grinned back at Lynn and nodded her head. “If what you’re doing here is really
that important, you shouldn’t mind a little backup.”
“Look I don’t - “ Lynn started to speak, but stopped. “I - I bled out? What are you on about?” She stared at Amelia for a moment, trying to remember. She hadn’t - she hadn’t stopped to think about it much. She just remembered the kid. Burning. Melting. Screaming. There - she’d gotten shot in the eye, she knew, but it - what else had happened? And Amelia had to have gotten her out of there, yes, but… Lynn turned away for a moment, fuming.
Damn you. I was so close. All of you could have just gotten away. “Amelia, I - look. Shit’s about to get really bad, okay. This isn’t the time for fucking around. I just - I just need the rest of you guys to get somewhere not here. Keaton will know what to do.”
Amelia looked confused, trying to get to the heart of Lynn’s point. “The hell are you talking about? I know you’re reckless, but even you’re not about to go setting these random guards on fi-” Amelia realized what Lynn actually meant, and her face fell.
Oh.Oh.Ooooooooh shit.Amelia’s expression took on a face of steel. “Bitch, how ‘bout no. No shit, things are gonna get worse, but don’t you think for one second I’m running away. Not from this.” She wrung her hands nervously, biting her lip to keep her nerve. “I am
not leaving this place while people are at risk up here. All my life I’ve wanted to fight for the rights of paras. Now I have a stake in this fight, and I’m at the heart of it, and you want me to bail? Fuck. That. So even if the others run, I’m not going anywhere.”
“They’re not gonna run, Amelia,” Lynn said quietly. “They’ll put Natalie up in front of a wall while her head’s in the clouds and Archie may not be far behind. Keaton will know but she can’t stop it. Maybe Eli gets it. I don’t know.” The flickering light of her hair made the shadows over her bandage grow long. “There’s no after this. They’re just going to keep coming. The people that run this place will, or we - “ she paused for a moment. She took Amelia’s phone and her own and turned them both off. “They’re watching everything.”
There is nothing left to lose. Lynn could remember exactly all the reasons her brain had given her to not trust Amelia as far she could throw her, but something was fuzzy in her memory. Pressure on her face. A voice. Pain in her eye. “They have kids. They’re experimenting on them. The trail ended here. The docks. That’s why I was here when everything went to hell. Try to see if I could find something.” Lynn looked over at the wall, the anger making her heart pound in her skull. “You’re the only one that can actually help any of them get off this ship, Amelia. The only one. The only fucking one.” Lynn looked back at her. “Go meet up with Keaton. She’s at the picnic table about two minutes away from that coffee place.” Lynn needed so badly for one of them - just one of them - to make this a little bit easier. The feeling of the jacket pressed against her face. Anderson in the hospital bed. Eli sitting across from her in the Mexican restaurant. Keaton forcing her to go to the mall. Even Spoons in the fuckin’ candle shop. She just wanted them to have a chance. She wasn’t going to give them a chance to - no. She wasn’t going to give herself a chance to turn Che on them.
Damnit. Damnit. Amelia looked confused for a moment, mouth hanging open. “The fuck do you mean I”m the only one? How does that make any….” Realization hit her suddenly. A lot of comments Lynn had made suddenly make sense. “You...shit, I’ve never told you. I can’t teleport off anyone off this station Lynn. Not even myself!” She sighed. “I’ve tried teleporting off a moving truck to an alley once. Damn near broke my leg. Now imagine doing that from a station orbiting the planet! I’d turn us all into paste,
if I even reached the surface at all.” Amelia rubbed her forehead, frustrated beyond belief. “If I had years more training, maybe,
maybe I could get just myself down there.”
Amelia leaned in with a serious look in her eyes. “Now if what you say is true, you better fucking believe I’m helping bail those kids out. But I am not letting you throw yourself in the line of fire to do it. Back on Earth, my crew believed that no one gets left behind. And even knowing what I was, even knowing what the consequences would be,
every single one of them tried to hide me away.” Amelia had tears in her eyes now, dripping down, but her voice stayed strong. “I don’t even know where they are now. But I’m not gonna be the coward who spits on that memory by letting you go off on your own. So if what you’re doing is really that important. I’m. Coming. With you.” Amelia glared back at Lynn as she finished her statement. She would tolerate no debate on this.
Lynn stared at Amelia, watching her temper rise. In truth, she’d not thought Amelia had the power of getting the group to earth from this station. She’d been thinking far smaller term - just getting them into one of the pods, or being able to stealth them past a camera or two. Lynn was forced, for what was now becoming an annoyingly frequent occurrence, to reconsider what her opinion on someone was. She’d had Amelia pegged day one as a weasel. Now Lynn was not about to admit her initial conception of someone had been wrong, because, at maximum, Lynn was only capable of admitting to perhaps two to three days of an incorrect notion at best, but she was forced to admit somewhere in the process Amelia had found a pair. She’d said the words that struck a chord. Amelia got it, in her own way, Lynn supposed. Dying was fine, but not dying like a bitch.
But the part Lynn couldn’t understand was why the hell Amelia would want to come with her. Lynn turned for a moment, staring at the porcelain-tiled walls. She let her brain run through everything again. She had absolutely no doubts that if she tried to go it on her own, Amelia was more than capable of sabotaging her, fucking them both over, or being such a pain in the ass with her teleportation she couldn’t achieve anything. Lynn didn’t like that. For a brief, flickering moment, there was a little voice that told her she could
make Amelia do what she wanted, she could grab her before she teleported and - but it was gone. Lynn stared at the tile, blank, ordered.
“You’re such a fucking pain in the ass,” Lynn muttered. She slid out of her stupid jacket that she’d just fucking bought and tossed it to the other girl. “You look weird without one.” She rolled over the bag in her hand, inside her pants pocket. Her plan had always been a long shot (
bonefuck moronic she heard her old celly’s voice telling her) but at this point it wasn’t even worth it. Lynn rubbed at the bridge of her nose, trying to think. If Amelia was sticking to her, surely one other person would. That would just make a whole mess of things. She had wanted - she had wanted them to be insulated from all this. Walled off. None of them, maybe aside from Spoons going full Spoons before she came here, had done anything really fucked up. That was what was going to happen if they went through with this.
Lynn felt her flimsy hopes at a plan crumble away like a house of cards in a hurricane. “Alright. Fuck it. Let’s go back and meet with the others.” There was at least some chance she could talk a few of them into scurrying. If not, there might be some way she could stay a step ahead of the others. Lynn didn’t want anybody else having to pull any triggers. Her elbows rattled with the memory of the force of Salamandra’s head going into the wall. They didn’t need that.
Amelia’s first reaction was originally going to be to pass the leather jacket back. I mean, it wasn’t like she was down the lucky one forever. It just needed some cleaning. But the relief she felt as Lynn conceded swept that away. You know what? Fuck it. She wasn’t risking blowing this small victory, she was gonna keep her mouth shut. Amelia let out a long sigh of relief, the serious look on her face melting away into one of exhaustion. “Ok. Ok. Thank you. Was all I was asking.” With that, Amelia put a hand on Lynn’s shoulder and closed her eyes in concentration, running through where’d she’d have to teleport them. “Alright, brace yourself. We’re going in 5.” Counting down in her head, she smiled faintly, and warped the two of them to an alley near the meeting site.
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