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31_days2008-01-26 11:56 pm
sophiap.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-01-26 11:56 pm
[Jan. 26] [D.Gray-Man] End of Days, Part 26
Title: End of Days pt. 26
Day/Theme: Jan. 26/better three hours too soon than a minute too late
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: PG-13
This one's a long 'un.
Part 25
The first time a pair of medics passed him, Allen stood back respectfully, bowing his head and wondering whose body was under the sheet, and if he knew him or her. He did the same thing the second time a pair passed. And the third.
The fourth time a body was carried past him, he started to shake. Before the fifth could go by, Allen turned and took a back way to the infirmary, one with narrow corridors and twisty stairs that would not accommodate a stretcher.
He wasn't afraid of the dead, but each body was a reminder that he couldn't do anything. His arm and his eye were useless. There was nothing to fight.
He pelted up one set of back stairs, punching the wall as he made the hairpin turn.
This corridor would take him directly over the infirmary, if he remembered correctly, and for a moment he grinned as he thought of what Lavi's reaction might be if he simply punched his way through the ceiling.
Lavi would yell and curse, and his uncovered eye would be wide as a soup plate. There would be flecks of plaster in his hair. Allen would laugh and apologize, and then he'd offer to bring Lavi something to eat, or go see if Lenalee was well enough to come visit as well.
He painted a picture of their visit, the three of them laughing and teasing each other, gradually chipping away the memory of the strange, cold-eyed Lavi who had attacked him so viciously back in the Ark. Road had broken him in some way Allen didn't understand, but Lavi had somehow managed to put himself back together just in time. Within minutes, Lavi had been teasing him about Road, and they two of them had twitted each other about their injuries and their utter blockheadedness.
Lavi had come back to them, seemingly burning himself to ashes in the process, but he had come back, and in its own way, that seemed more miraculous than simply recovering from the disease.
That had scared Allen as much as anything else in the Ark: the idea that his friend was someone he didn't know. Road's words and the strange Lavi's confirmation of them had to be lies, but there was something about them that he could not shake from his mind.
Allen's steps slowed again as he turned down the hall that would take him to the service stairs leading back behind the infirmary. It wasn't stray thoughts or guilt or reluctance that slowed him this time. There were two people--two children--sitting in the hallway in front of him, playing cards.
Allen had discovered this place in his early days in the Order, when the novelty of being in one place for more than a few nights in a row became too much for him. Lenalee had told him that on the upper floors, outside the rooms that were reserved for the Generals when they were in residence, tall windows lined one wall of the hallway. Some were even recessed, with padded benches set beneath the windows. It was one of the few places in the Order where you could find as much daylight as you wished.
The early morning sunlight through the glass was darker than the oil lamps flanking their window seat, but Allen understood the appeal of the place all the same. The boy wasn't wearing his mask, but before Allen could say anything, the boy looked up at him, smiling in such a way that Allen couldn't help smiling back.
"Ah! You are an exorcist, too? Come, come--join us," he said, sliding over to make room on the bench. He was careful not to disturb the pile of cards sitting between him and the girl. Other than a quick, anxious glance and tensing of her shoulders, the little girl didn't seem to register Allen's arrival. She was intent on her cards, holding them only a few inches from her masked face and clutching them so tightly that they bowed. She held them in one hand; the other was bandaged tightly in much the way Allen used to bandage up his hand. In Dolores's case, though, the sliver raw, red skin that showed through a gap in the bandage was the slick, tender red of a recent burn.
Allen walked up to them, but did not sit down. The girl's shoulders relaxed slightly, as did the death grip on her cards. "I heard some new ones joined--must've been while we were away?"
"I guess," the boy said. He picked up his mask, and ostentatiously put it on, winking at Allen as he did so. "These things are probably useless, no? If we were going to get sick, we'd probably be sick already."
Allen noticed the little girl's shoulders hunch in again.
"But you know how it is, being an exorcist," the boy went on cheerfully, as if he'd been with the Order for years, not days. "If this doesn't kill us, something else will." He set his cards down, revealing three fours, two jacks, two eights, and five other unmatched cards. He held out his hand to Allen.
"I'm Misha, she's Dolores. There's another of us, Jamie, but she's not very nice."
"I--yes. I think I met her," he stammered before remembering the manners Mana had taught him. He returned Misha's handshake and nearly had his hand crushed by the boy's enthusiasm. "I'm Allen."
The grip on his hand became even tighter as Misha clasped both his hand around Allen's. "Allen? Allen Walker? Ah! I cannot believe I got a chance to meet you!"
Dolores perked up a little, looking up from Misha's cards.
Allen wondered what, exactly they'd heard about him. "Ahaha. It's, um, good to meet you both, too. Dolores, you're an exorcist, too?"
She nodded, and Allen thought he heard a faint "mmm-hmm!" through her mask.
"That's great. We can use all of the help we can get, especially now." How old was she, eight? And he could see from the way her eyes kept going to the older boy that she would follow him anywhere, that she would trust him in anything. "You--you look after Dolores, right?"
"Of course I do. Doloschka's my best friend. I have too many big sisters back home, so it's nice to have a little sister for a change. Much, much less bossy," he said, winking at the girl. Allen couldn't be sure, but he thought there was a smile behind her mask.
Allen didn't know what to say. He had a memory of Mana chatting up two ladies who'd stopped to watch their show. It was nothing more than friendly patter designed to increase the flow of coins into the hat Mana had placed on the ground, but Allen still remembered how his heart felt as if it would float right out of his chest as Mana introduced Allen as his son, with nothing like 'adopted' or 'foster' or 'not by blood' to tarnish the simple glory of those two words.
Misha finally released Allen's hand, and scooped up his cards. "It's good to be here, it really is. And Dyadya Giuseppe says we got here just in time."
Allen boggled. "Just in time? For what?"
Something didn't add up. Between their scary friend Jamie accosting him in the music room and the way these two were acting as if being locked up in a plague-infested fortress was some sort of holiday weekend, something just wasn't adding up.
Misha turned bright red over his mask. "That's all he said. What it means, I don't know. He said we'd have to wait." There was no defensiveness in his voice, and whatever had embarrassed him, he got over it quickly enough. Allen also had a feeling that if this Giuseppe person was here, he'd have a few words for Misha about keeping certain things to himself.
Allen couldn't think of why this was so, but talking with Misha, seeing how the boy simply adapted pleasantly to whatever was said made Allen think of Kanda, and what it meant that Kanda was really gone.
"I'm sorry, but I'm on my way to the infirmary to see my friends--I hope you'll get a chance to meet them later. Lenalee--she's Komui's little sister, by the way." Misha nodded in recognition, and Allen wondered if he should warn him about not being quite so enthusiastically friendly with Lenalee if Komui happened to be anywhere within earshot (or anywhere in the building, for that matter). "She's also an exorcist. So's Lavi."
Misha cocked his head, puzzled. "Who?"
"You'll like him." And Lavi and Lenalee would like the distraction of meeting these two. Dolores was awfully quiet, but Misha seemed like he could distract them for hours if he wanted. "Later!" Allen headed off at a jog, and laughed out loud at Misha's howl of mock despair as Dolores asked him if he had any fours.
Even thought something struck him as off about the two of them, maybe Misha was right: they had gotten here just in time.
* * *
The rat made her way through ductwork and through crawl spaces. The few times it had to break cover, it was easy enough to stick to shadowed corners and the bases of walls.
She felt the distant pulsing of Ark and Egg in every part of her body, and it was a struggle not to let her body fly apart into its natural form. There was a moment when black rat became black cat, but she kept moving.
Funny, how this last-minute change of plan had made things easier. Rats didn't need excuses to enter laboratories unchallenged. They didn't have to pretend to be a foolish human and talk to other foolish humans in order to make her way to the heart of the Order. The cracks and crannies riddling an old building like this were all the entrée she needed.
She was getting in well ahead of schedule; the idiots hadn't started interfering with the Ark yet, althought it was something of a problem that they hadn't removed the egg. They had been expecting the arrogant humans to take the egg and see if they could pull it apart to find its secrets, never mind that they destroyed it in the process.
Lulu Bell had no doubt they would try to do the same to her, or to her siblings, if only they had it in their power to do so.
The whispers and murmurings she heard on her way to the Ark and the precious, precious treasure inside told her why the humans hadn't interfered with the Ark since they stole it.
The rat sat up and ran its paws over its whiskers, grooming them. Gesture followed form, and it felt natural to do this as she wallowed in her relief that the humans had not managed to shut down the Ark, cutting it and the Egg off from all reality.
It's what she would have done, in their position. It would have been easy to do. Too easy, really.
Grooming finished, she continued on her way, amused at how the humans' illness had saved her so much time and trouble. Who knew? They might not even know she had been and gone until it was far too late.
* * *
Johnny handed the note over to Reever, and stood there, biting at his lip and trying not to watch too closely as Reever unfolded the note, read it, and folded again immediately.
"Thank you, Johnny."
The instant Johnny had come in with the note, Reever had known it wasn't news about Komui; Johnny had only looked miserable, not devastated. He almost asked if Komui had been told yet, but then Reever recalled that he would have to be the one to tell Leverrier that General Sokaro was dead.
"Is there anything I can do?"
Reever's first response was going to be 'no,' because it was either that or a sarcastic remark about coming up with a miracle cure in the next five minutes. Doing that to Johnny would be like going after a fly with a machete.
"Bookman was the first one to mention the idea of quarantine. That was hours before Kanda got sick, did you know that?" Reever leaned back in his chair, facing a far corner of the room and trusting that Johnny would listen.
"Um, no? I didn't?"
"Hours before. Not directly, but he was the first to think of it." Reever rubbed at his temples, but the pounding would not go way. Any other day, he would have dismissed it as too much thinking and not enough sleep, but now every fluctuation in the room temperature felt like the onset of fever, and every ache that came from sitting too long hunched over a lab bench felt like inflammation. Back in the lab, he'd swallowed some water the wrong way, and other other circumstances, the expressions on everyone's faces would have been hysterical. "It was just the 'flu, we thought. No need to do more than follow basic hygiene."
"Director Leverrier wouldn't have been happy," Johnny pointed out.
"Right. And twenty-nine people might still be alive." He stood up, forcing himself not to wince as his back and knees protested. "Damned if I can figure out what's going on with this disease. The people who are dying off are--were--all healthy as horses. Then you get people like Bookman shrugging it off like he's a cold. Yeah, he's a resilient cuss, but he's older than Moses."
Strange, but of the other victims, the oldest seemed to handle it best. Their symptoms were rarely bad enough to keep them bedridden.
Johnny thought about that, and Reever recognized the look on his face; some idea was circling in there, and he was going to chase after it and pin it down. "I'm heading back to the lab," he said with the kind of confidence he only showed when distracted by a knotty problem.
"Right. Let me know what you find out. I need to talk to LavI and see if I can wake up Krory. I've got a few questions for them about what happened on that ship." Timcanpy flicked its tail in a desultory fashion, as if to ask if Reever wanted to see that part of the recording again.
"You're done here," Reever told it, and the golem zoomed off, sending papers flying and zooming over Johnny's head and making him shriek in terror.
"Here's hoping we both find something out before it's too late."
* * *
Allen heard a pair of screams behind him, but before he could turn to see what it was, Timcanpy careened past him, then banked and returned to hover happily in front of Allen's face. Where have you been? it seemed to say, even though it had been the one who'd had to leave Allen's side.
"What is that? I've never seen a golem like that." Misha was only a few seconds behind Timcanpy. He stopped, then rapped a small stick against the wall. He held out his hand, and a river of cards came streaming from down the hall to slap into Misha's palm, one by one. Dolores was not far behind, following the cards as if they were a trail of breadcrumbs.
"This is Timcanpy," Allen said, grinning. He slapped the golem lightly on its underbelly, setting it to bobbing. "He's Cross Marian's golem, but he's okay. Tim's an old friend."
"Cross Marian?" Misha's voice was small and made him sound about five years younger. "General Cross Marian? He's here?"
Behind him, a wide-eyed Dolores made the sign of the cross.
"Yes. He's in the infirmary." Allen's teeth clenched. So did his fists. "And he's an awful patient. A horrible patient."
That shouldn't be enough to make him want to stay away from the infirmary. For all he knew, Lavi and Lenalee were wondering where he was and why he hadn't visited. He told himself that he'd risk it, and so he set off for the back stairs, full of grim purpose and coming up with ways to sweet-talk nurses who'd no doubt been told to send him in to Cross the instant he arrived at the infirmary.
He had every intention at only going down two flights of steps, but by the time he realized he'd gone down three, he figured that hey, he had Timcanpy with him, and the labs were only one more floor down. He'd just take a quick look at the ark. Maybe after that, he'd be in a better frame of mind to deal with Cross.
* * *
The nurses knew better to stop Reever when he walked into the infirmary. One did give a shrug and a shake of her head when he caught her eye: no change in Komui's condition.
He'd visit afterwards, Reever told himself. It would all depend on how the conversation with Lavi went, and whether or not they could manage to wake Krory.
When he entered the ward, Reever focused solely on one row of beds, looking for the familiar red hair, but his attention kept being drawn to the nurses and medics working the room. Here, there, somewhere else, another sheet was pulled over someone's face, and a pair of blank-faced corpsmen would come forward with a stretcher or a gurney.
He made a mental note to get Lavi and the others who were recovering out of here as soon as possible.
Lavi was sleeping, sprawling across the narrow cot with arms and legs flung wide. His mouth was open and he was snoring faintly. He'd lost about ten pounds, and he was still ghastly pale with a scattering of petechial hemorrhages marring his skin, but he looked so much healthier than he had only the night before.
A few beds over, Krory slept on, his strength building itself excruciatingly slowly in the absence of Akuma blood. He'd been that exhausted on the recordings from the ship, Reever recalled. He'd barely been able to hang on to the mast, and still he'd gone in the water after Lavi.
Lavi had been dying; he'd watched the recording over and over until he was sure that he hadn't simply misread a trick of the light.
Lavy had been dying, and Krory had been weak as a kitten. But then Krory came roaring up out of the water, full of piss and vinegar, and with a very much alive Lavi in his arms.
"No way..." Reever hunched down by Lavi's bedside and (first looking around to make sure no one else was looking, just because) pulled the collar of Lavi's top away from his neck and shoulder. They were hard to make out, but he thought he could see bite marks.
He leaned closer, just to be sure, and was knocked onto his ass as Lavi sat straight up without warning. Reever stared up, hand pressed to a rapidly swelling lip.
"No. We stopped it!" Lavi said to no one. Something was not right about his voice. Reever started to ask the boy what was going on, but Lavi turned and looked down at where Reever was still sitting dumbfounded on the floor. The cold, venomous look he gave Reever was like nothing Reever had ever seen before, and all Reever could think about was what he had learned from Rondine last night.
"Lavi?"
Lavi glared at him again, the venom was mixed with contempt this time around, and then Lavi was getting out of bed. Two nurses came running over and immediately tried to keep him from getting up. Reever waved them off.
"What the hell's going on, Bookman?" It was a long shot, but they hadn't done well by ignoring hunches up to this point.
Lavi shuddered, and the plaintive look was pure Lavi again. "I don't know, but I think we have to hurry. It's Allen. At least, that's what I keep hearing."
* * *
Allen hadn't realized he'd been followed until he heard the gasp of wonder behind him.
"Is that the Ark?" Misha brushed past Allen to look at the door hovering in the middle of the room. The glow from the gate gilded his skin and made his hazel eyes appear an unearthly green. "It's smaller than I heard it was."
"That's just the gate," Allen said, looking up at it and calculating just how much trouble he was going to get in and figuring he didn't much care. He wasn't going to take the Ark anywhere. He was just wanted to see if he could go jog a few memories loose on the piano with Tim's help.
Allen was not at all surprised when Dolores showed up a few seconds later. Whither thou goest... thought Allen.
"Wow..." Misha stood, hands in his pockets as he bounced on the balls of his feet. For a moment, Allen feared he would jump up and into the gate, but Misha just looked over his shoulder and grinned.
"If only we'd had this four years ago, they'd have been able to stop what happened in Sarajevo. We could have got there hours before it started. At least, that's what they keep saying."
"What? Stop what happened in... where?" Allen asked, incredulous. "And hold on, how did you know about the Ark anyhow. You just got here."
Misha's face went pale, and he looked genuinely terrified for a moment. But then he grinned, still looking over his shoulder, and Allen knew he was going to make some smooth and self deprecating remark to make it all better.
Before he could say a word, his face went slack. Pink, bloody saliva bubbled up from his mouth, and he toppled forwards, sliding off the long barb that had flown past Allen to pierce him through the chest.
Dolores screamed, over and over again, the sound echoing in Allen's head as the barb withdrew into the darkness behind him.
"Such naughty children, playing with toys that do not belong to them. Still, the Earl will be glad to hear that you kept his egg safe for him."
Part 27
Day/Theme: Jan. 26/better three hours too soon than a minute too late
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: PG-13
This one's a long 'un.
Part 25
The first time a pair of medics passed him, Allen stood back respectfully, bowing his head and wondering whose body was under the sheet, and if he knew him or her. He did the same thing the second time a pair passed. And the third.
The fourth time a body was carried past him, he started to shake. Before the fifth could go by, Allen turned and took a back way to the infirmary, one with narrow corridors and twisty stairs that would not accommodate a stretcher.
He wasn't afraid of the dead, but each body was a reminder that he couldn't do anything. His arm and his eye were useless. There was nothing to fight.
He pelted up one set of back stairs, punching the wall as he made the hairpin turn.
This corridor would take him directly over the infirmary, if he remembered correctly, and for a moment he grinned as he thought of what Lavi's reaction might be if he simply punched his way through the ceiling.
Lavi would yell and curse, and his uncovered eye would be wide as a soup plate. There would be flecks of plaster in his hair. Allen would laugh and apologize, and then he'd offer to bring Lavi something to eat, or go see if Lenalee was well enough to come visit as well.
He painted a picture of their visit, the three of them laughing and teasing each other, gradually chipping away the memory of the strange, cold-eyed Lavi who had attacked him so viciously back in the Ark. Road had broken him in some way Allen didn't understand, but Lavi had somehow managed to put himself back together just in time. Within minutes, Lavi had been teasing him about Road, and they two of them had twitted each other about their injuries and their utter blockheadedness.
Lavi had come back to them, seemingly burning himself to ashes in the process, but he had come back, and in its own way, that seemed more miraculous than simply recovering from the disease.
That had scared Allen as much as anything else in the Ark: the idea that his friend was someone he didn't know. Road's words and the strange Lavi's confirmation of them had to be lies, but there was something about them that he could not shake from his mind.
Allen's steps slowed again as he turned down the hall that would take him to the service stairs leading back behind the infirmary. It wasn't stray thoughts or guilt or reluctance that slowed him this time. There were two people--two children--sitting in the hallway in front of him, playing cards.
Allen had discovered this place in his early days in the Order, when the novelty of being in one place for more than a few nights in a row became too much for him. Lenalee had told him that on the upper floors, outside the rooms that were reserved for the Generals when they were in residence, tall windows lined one wall of the hallway. Some were even recessed, with padded benches set beneath the windows. It was one of the few places in the Order where you could find as much daylight as you wished.
The early morning sunlight through the glass was darker than the oil lamps flanking their window seat, but Allen understood the appeal of the place all the same. The boy wasn't wearing his mask, but before Allen could say anything, the boy looked up at him, smiling in such a way that Allen couldn't help smiling back.
"Ah! You are an exorcist, too? Come, come--join us," he said, sliding over to make room on the bench. He was careful not to disturb the pile of cards sitting between him and the girl. Other than a quick, anxious glance and tensing of her shoulders, the little girl didn't seem to register Allen's arrival. She was intent on her cards, holding them only a few inches from her masked face and clutching them so tightly that they bowed. She held them in one hand; the other was bandaged tightly in much the way Allen used to bandage up his hand. In Dolores's case, though, the sliver raw, red skin that showed through a gap in the bandage was the slick, tender red of a recent burn.
Allen walked up to them, but did not sit down. The girl's shoulders relaxed slightly, as did the death grip on her cards. "I heard some new ones joined--must've been while we were away?"
"I guess," the boy said. He picked up his mask, and ostentatiously put it on, winking at Allen as he did so. "These things are probably useless, no? If we were going to get sick, we'd probably be sick already."
Allen noticed the little girl's shoulders hunch in again.
"But you know how it is, being an exorcist," the boy went on cheerfully, as if he'd been with the Order for years, not days. "If this doesn't kill us, something else will." He set his cards down, revealing three fours, two jacks, two eights, and five other unmatched cards. He held out his hand to Allen.
"I'm Misha, she's Dolores. There's another of us, Jamie, but she's not very nice."
"I--yes. I think I met her," he stammered before remembering the manners Mana had taught him. He returned Misha's handshake and nearly had his hand crushed by the boy's enthusiasm. "I'm Allen."
The grip on his hand became even tighter as Misha clasped both his hand around Allen's. "Allen? Allen Walker? Ah! I cannot believe I got a chance to meet you!"
Dolores perked up a little, looking up from Misha's cards.
Allen wondered what, exactly they'd heard about him. "Ahaha. It's, um, good to meet you both, too. Dolores, you're an exorcist, too?"
She nodded, and Allen thought he heard a faint "mmm-hmm!" through her mask.
"That's great. We can use all of the help we can get, especially now." How old was she, eight? And he could see from the way her eyes kept going to the older boy that she would follow him anywhere, that she would trust him in anything. "You--you look after Dolores, right?"
"Of course I do. Doloschka's my best friend. I have too many big sisters back home, so it's nice to have a little sister for a change. Much, much less bossy," he said, winking at the girl. Allen couldn't be sure, but he thought there was a smile behind her mask.
Allen didn't know what to say. He had a memory of Mana chatting up two ladies who'd stopped to watch their show. It was nothing more than friendly patter designed to increase the flow of coins into the hat Mana had placed on the ground, but Allen still remembered how his heart felt as if it would float right out of his chest as Mana introduced Allen as his son, with nothing like 'adopted' or 'foster' or 'not by blood' to tarnish the simple glory of those two words.
Misha finally released Allen's hand, and scooped up his cards. "It's good to be here, it really is. And Dyadya Giuseppe says we got here just in time."
Allen boggled. "Just in time? For what?"
Something didn't add up. Between their scary friend Jamie accosting him in the music room and the way these two were acting as if being locked up in a plague-infested fortress was some sort of holiday weekend, something just wasn't adding up.
Misha turned bright red over his mask. "That's all he said. What it means, I don't know. He said we'd have to wait." There was no defensiveness in his voice, and whatever had embarrassed him, he got over it quickly enough. Allen also had a feeling that if this Giuseppe person was here, he'd have a few words for Misha about keeping certain things to himself.
Allen couldn't think of why this was so, but talking with Misha, seeing how the boy simply adapted pleasantly to whatever was said made Allen think of Kanda, and what it meant that Kanda was really gone.
"I'm sorry, but I'm on my way to the infirmary to see my friends--I hope you'll get a chance to meet them later. Lenalee--she's Komui's little sister, by the way." Misha nodded in recognition, and Allen wondered if he should warn him about not being quite so enthusiastically friendly with Lenalee if Komui happened to be anywhere within earshot (or anywhere in the building, for that matter). "She's also an exorcist. So's Lavi."
Misha cocked his head, puzzled. "Who?"
"You'll like him." And Lavi and Lenalee would like the distraction of meeting these two. Dolores was awfully quiet, but Misha seemed like he could distract them for hours if he wanted. "Later!" Allen headed off at a jog, and laughed out loud at Misha's howl of mock despair as Dolores asked him if he had any fours.
Even thought something struck him as off about the two of them, maybe Misha was right: they had gotten here just in time.
* * *
The rat made her way through ductwork and through crawl spaces. The few times it had to break cover, it was easy enough to stick to shadowed corners and the bases of walls.
She felt the distant pulsing of Ark and Egg in every part of her body, and it was a struggle not to let her body fly apart into its natural form. There was a moment when black rat became black cat, but she kept moving.
Funny, how this last-minute change of plan had made things easier. Rats didn't need excuses to enter laboratories unchallenged. They didn't have to pretend to be a foolish human and talk to other foolish humans in order to make her way to the heart of the Order. The cracks and crannies riddling an old building like this were all the entrée she needed.
She was getting in well ahead of schedule; the idiots hadn't started interfering with the Ark yet, althought it was something of a problem that they hadn't removed the egg. They had been expecting the arrogant humans to take the egg and see if they could pull it apart to find its secrets, never mind that they destroyed it in the process.
Lulu Bell had no doubt they would try to do the same to her, or to her siblings, if only they had it in their power to do so.
The whispers and murmurings she heard on her way to the Ark and the precious, precious treasure inside told her why the humans hadn't interfered with the Ark since they stole it.
The rat sat up and ran its paws over its whiskers, grooming them. Gesture followed form, and it felt natural to do this as she wallowed in her relief that the humans had not managed to shut down the Ark, cutting it and the Egg off from all reality.
It's what she would have done, in their position. It would have been easy to do. Too easy, really.
Grooming finished, she continued on her way, amused at how the humans' illness had saved her so much time and trouble. Who knew? They might not even know she had been and gone until it was far too late.
* * *
Johnny handed the note over to Reever, and stood there, biting at his lip and trying not to watch too closely as Reever unfolded the note, read it, and folded again immediately.
"Thank you, Johnny."
The instant Johnny had come in with the note, Reever had known it wasn't news about Komui; Johnny had only looked miserable, not devastated. He almost asked if Komui had been told yet, but then Reever recalled that he would have to be the one to tell Leverrier that General Sokaro was dead.
"Is there anything I can do?"
Reever's first response was going to be 'no,' because it was either that or a sarcastic remark about coming up with a miracle cure in the next five minutes. Doing that to Johnny would be like going after a fly with a machete.
"Bookman was the first one to mention the idea of quarantine. That was hours before Kanda got sick, did you know that?" Reever leaned back in his chair, facing a far corner of the room and trusting that Johnny would listen.
"Um, no? I didn't?"
"Hours before. Not directly, but he was the first to think of it." Reever rubbed at his temples, but the pounding would not go way. Any other day, he would have dismissed it as too much thinking and not enough sleep, but now every fluctuation in the room temperature felt like the onset of fever, and every ache that came from sitting too long hunched over a lab bench felt like inflammation. Back in the lab, he'd swallowed some water the wrong way, and other other circumstances, the expressions on everyone's faces would have been hysterical. "It was just the 'flu, we thought. No need to do more than follow basic hygiene."
"Director Leverrier wouldn't have been happy," Johnny pointed out.
"Right. And twenty-nine people might still be alive." He stood up, forcing himself not to wince as his back and knees protested. "Damned if I can figure out what's going on with this disease. The people who are dying off are--were--all healthy as horses. Then you get people like Bookman shrugging it off like he's a cold. Yeah, he's a resilient cuss, but he's older than Moses."
Strange, but of the other victims, the oldest seemed to handle it best. Their symptoms were rarely bad enough to keep them bedridden.
Johnny thought about that, and Reever recognized the look on his face; some idea was circling in there, and he was going to chase after it and pin it down. "I'm heading back to the lab," he said with the kind of confidence he only showed when distracted by a knotty problem.
"Right. Let me know what you find out. I need to talk to LavI and see if I can wake up Krory. I've got a few questions for them about what happened on that ship." Timcanpy flicked its tail in a desultory fashion, as if to ask if Reever wanted to see that part of the recording again.
"You're done here," Reever told it, and the golem zoomed off, sending papers flying and zooming over Johnny's head and making him shriek in terror.
"Here's hoping we both find something out before it's too late."
* * *
Allen heard a pair of screams behind him, but before he could turn to see what it was, Timcanpy careened past him, then banked and returned to hover happily in front of Allen's face. Where have you been? it seemed to say, even though it had been the one who'd had to leave Allen's side.
"What is that? I've never seen a golem like that." Misha was only a few seconds behind Timcanpy. He stopped, then rapped a small stick against the wall. He held out his hand, and a river of cards came streaming from down the hall to slap into Misha's palm, one by one. Dolores was not far behind, following the cards as if they were a trail of breadcrumbs.
"This is Timcanpy," Allen said, grinning. He slapped the golem lightly on its underbelly, setting it to bobbing. "He's Cross Marian's golem, but he's okay. Tim's an old friend."
"Cross Marian?" Misha's voice was small and made him sound about five years younger. "General Cross Marian? He's here?"
Behind him, a wide-eyed Dolores made the sign of the cross.
"Yes. He's in the infirmary." Allen's teeth clenched. So did his fists. "And he's an awful patient. A horrible patient."
That shouldn't be enough to make him want to stay away from the infirmary. For all he knew, Lavi and Lenalee were wondering where he was and why he hadn't visited. He told himself that he'd risk it, and so he set off for the back stairs, full of grim purpose and coming up with ways to sweet-talk nurses who'd no doubt been told to send him in to Cross the instant he arrived at the infirmary.
He had every intention at only going down two flights of steps, but by the time he realized he'd gone down three, he figured that hey, he had Timcanpy with him, and the labs were only one more floor down. He'd just take a quick look at the ark. Maybe after that, he'd be in a better frame of mind to deal with Cross.
* * *
The nurses knew better to stop Reever when he walked into the infirmary. One did give a shrug and a shake of her head when he caught her eye: no change in Komui's condition.
He'd visit afterwards, Reever told himself. It would all depend on how the conversation with Lavi went, and whether or not they could manage to wake Krory.
When he entered the ward, Reever focused solely on one row of beds, looking for the familiar red hair, but his attention kept being drawn to the nurses and medics working the room. Here, there, somewhere else, another sheet was pulled over someone's face, and a pair of blank-faced corpsmen would come forward with a stretcher or a gurney.
He made a mental note to get Lavi and the others who were recovering out of here as soon as possible.
Lavi was sleeping, sprawling across the narrow cot with arms and legs flung wide. His mouth was open and he was snoring faintly. He'd lost about ten pounds, and he was still ghastly pale with a scattering of petechial hemorrhages marring his skin, but he looked so much healthier than he had only the night before.
A few beds over, Krory slept on, his strength building itself excruciatingly slowly in the absence of Akuma blood. He'd been that exhausted on the recordings from the ship, Reever recalled. He'd barely been able to hang on to the mast, and still he'd gone in the water after Lavi.
Lavi had been dying; he'd watched the recording over and over until he was sure that he hadn't simply misread a trick of the light.
Lavy had been dying, and Krory had been weak as a kitten. But then Krory came roaring up out of the water, full of piss and vinegar, and with a very much alive Lavi in his arms.
"No way..." Reever hunched down by Lavi's bedside and (first looking around to make sure no one else was looking, just because) pulled the collar of Lavi's top away from his neck and shoulder. They were hard to make out, but he thought he could see bite marks.
He leaned closer, just to be sure, and was knocked onto his ass as Lavi sat straight up without warning. Reever stared up, hand pressed to a rapidly swelling lip.
"No. We stopped it!" Lavi said to no one. Something was not right about his voice. Reever started to ask the boy what was going on, but Lavi turned and looked down at where Reever was still sitting dumbfounded on the floor. The cold, venomous look he gave Reever was like nothing Reever had ever seen before, and all Reever could think about was what he had learned from Rondine last night.
"Lavi?"
Lavi glared at him again, the venom was mixed with contempt this time around, and then Lavi was getting out of bed. Two nurses came running over and immediately tried to keep him from getting up. Reever waved them off.
"What the hell's going on, Bookman?" It was a long shot, but they hadn't done well by ignoring hunches up to this point.
Lavi shuddered, and the plaintive look was pure Lavi again. "I don't know, but I think we have to hurry. It's Allen. At least, that's what I keep hearing."
* * *
Allen hadn't realized he'd been followed until he heard the gasp of wonder behind him.
"Is that the Ark?" Misha brushed past Allen to look at the door hovering in the middle of the room. The glow from the gate gilded his skin and made his hazel eyes appear an unearthly green. "It's smaller than I heard it was."
"That's just the gate," Allen said, looking up at it and calculating just how much trouble he was going to get in and figuring he didn't much care. He wasn't going to take the Ark anywhere. He was just wanted to see if he could go jog a few memories loose on the piano with Tim's help.
Allen was not at all surprised when Dolores showed up a few seconds later. Whither thou goest... thought Allen.
"Wow..." Misha stood, hands in his pockets as he bounced on the balls of his feet. For a moment, Allen feared he would jump up and into the gate, but Misha just looked over his shoulder and grinned.
"If only we'd had this four years ago, they'd have been able to stop what happened in Sarajevo. We could have got there hours before it started. At least, that's what they keep saying."
"What? Stop what happened in... where?" Allen asked, incredulous. "And hold on, how did you know about the Ark anyhow. You just got here."
Misha's face went pale, and he looked genuinely terrified for a moment. But then he grinned, still looking over his shoulder, and Allen knew he was going to make some smooth and self deprecating remark to make it all better.
Before he could say a word, his face went slack. Pink, bloody saliva bubbled up from his mouth, and he toppled forwards, sliding off the long barb that had flown past Allen to pierce him through the chest.
Dolores screamed, over and over again, the sound echoing in Allen's head as the barb withdrew into the darkness behind him.
"Such naughty children, playing with toys that do not belong to them. Still, the Earl will be glad to hear that you kept his egg safe for him."
Part 27