Clara, after offically finishing her rounds at the Twin Palms senior's hospital, quietly peeked into the rooms for each of her patients to make sure they were sound asleep. She had let in only a sliver of light in each of them as she crept down the hallways like a watchful angel, yet the expression plastered on her face was one weighed down by loss. It was awfully quiet now that Mr. Baker had been picked up by his friend. Not just quiet in the sense that there was no noise, you know, but because none of the other patients voiced what they really wanted, unlike Mr. Baker who was so, you know, honest n' direct n' stuff. At the time when other staff members were celebrating his 'passing', she had wanted to slap them all in the face, and tell them to get bent. Mr. Baker's first abduction, and though it was by a friend in the name of Independence Day, didn't even cause the other staff members to even be alarmed, and just thinking about that disgusted her. Did the other staff members have such a low opinion of the other residents as well? How shameful!
There were certainly days, though. Mr. Baker wasn't the kind of guy to mince words with the rest of the staff, and was often abrasive and rude, using all sorts of colorful words. The engagements usually ended with her left to clean the mess the other staff members only made worse, by acting rude back. What a nightmare! Yet she knew she could handle it, and remained steady in her professional apperance despite Mr. Baker's attempts to get under her skin. It was a test for her to maintain her front persona, and keep it convincing; experience informed her far more than the 'book learning' endured through nurse's college.
She vividly remembered the last day, Independence Day, when Mr. Baker had slapped down the applesauce she offered, and coyly said that it fell. Clara thought about Mr. Baker's strange friend, too. She couldn't forget the phone call when he lashed at her for no reason. When she met him, the way he moved and spoke was always a bit off, as though pressing himself through each action forward consciously and with great effort. She later found out from a colleague that he had even entered the wrong doors and got lost in the hospital wings for a while before he was guided to the main desk. Clara had been upset that such a, erm, 'unhinged' man had carted Mr. Baker off so easily for a joyride, you know? The staff should've stopped the man before he took five steps from Mr. Baker's room. The two men apologized, apparently, when they got back from their little trip, though she wasn't witness to it herself. The hospital merely accepted the form, and Mr. Baker was gone for good.
She was outside Mr. Baker's room now. Another resident was already put into that room. When she opened the door slightly just to peep in, the first thing she saw was that the window had been cranked all the way open. Her eyes darted to the old woman clenching her sheets in her sleep, tossing and turning against the gusts of night air that were sweeping in. Clara pouted, opened the door just enough for her to slide in the room, and tiptoed to the window with long forward strides. When she was at the opposite wall, she took the handle and slowly cranked the window closed. Before she closed the window fully, saw an oddly shaped 'husk' of bark, how else should she describe it other than to imagine it was shedded like an outside shell of an animal, a couple of feet from the barred window.
Clara looked out the closed window once more. What she didn't see was that there was a thin drill hole through the outside brick, slanted upward to where the crank was, and that the screen was underneath the bed. The screen was there. The metal grating was as well, but Clara didn't notice small metal solder mounds at many of its edge points.
--
"Over the past couple of days, you've been acting very unhinged, and that's saying something considering even your usual self."
"I've been going through a rough patch of sleep."
"That's not the only thing, and we both know it. Look, I'm not here to lecture you on matters that don't concern the team. I'm only here a few days to regroup to assault the front line again with Dragon. However, you're going to have to change whatever it is that is holding you back from your duty as a soldier and as a member of Freedom Five."
"Does this have to do with my relationship with Ms. Victoria Cohen?"
"Whatever John Wakefield does off time isn't my business as team leader," stated Duke firmly. "but I need assurance that Dr. Nucleus remains able to perform to the very best of his abilities when required of him."
"Was there ever cause to doubt?"
"You scream in your sleep. Twice it was reported you woke up your barracks before you volunteered to be stifled, for their sake. There are dark rings still under your eyes. Are the nightmares are still coming?"
Dr. Nucleus nodded. "I still remember that boy's face when I vivisected him in the name of science."
"It was necessary, as you said. We had to be certain the Germans had the ability to engineer superhumans."
Dr. Nucleus couldn't get the image out of his mind, of raising up the boy from Sacrifice's dirt grave from the earth with an antigravity field, as though he was a deranged necromancer. What was worse was thinking that he was on the edge of rationalizing human experimentation like the Nazis. At last he knew the gravity of Sacrifice's stone cold stare as a white bedsheet wrapped around the child's body like a ceremonial flag as it was carted to and then processed on an operating table like a slab of meat.
"I'm concerned for your safety and of those around you. Regretfully, you have left me no choice but to address it, and it has become a barrier between us. The incident in question is that you were replaced mid-operation because you can't even keep your eyes open long enough to see what you're doing. You're a man whose standard is much higher than to allow that."
"Are you challenging my integrity?"
"Something has changed you, and it is your responsibility to fix it right back. You shouldn't have accepted the procedure in the first place. You should have had the awareness and state of mind to have prevented that situation from occuring. That is where your intergrity failed. You almost stabbed your eye with a scapel to rub it for God's sake! How many hours of sleep have you had in the past week?"
Dr. Nucleus didn't reply.
"Calculate it to the nearest tenth of an hour. That's an order."
The young super scientist started to count upwards, but Duke could tell he was resetting his count constantly, second guessing his calculations.
"Now." fumed Duke.
Grimacing, Dr. Nucleus instantiated another count, this time completing it in a split-second. "10.4 hours, Sir!"
"I didn't want believe the quacks upstairs when they judged that you aren't combat able. They say that traumatic stress is impairing you. "
"Then believe me as I say that I am ready, willing and able to fight for my country."
"I don't doubt your conviction, but I can't have you perform your duties if you can't even sleep."
"I will tranquilize myself to sleep if I have to."
"I'm not a doctor, but even I know that would harm your body. You are hereby stipped of all duties and confined to quarters until further notice. You need rest."
Dr. Nucleus could see the pain in Duke's eyes as he gave that order, but he understood that a case of medical negligence was enough for a military discharge if neither were careful. Duke did what had to be done. There was no other option to retain the honor of Freedom Five, even if it wasn't his fault. There was also no other way to keep Nucleus on the team. It was a setback, but at least it was a workable one.
"Any other orders, sir?" said Nucleus.
"No, however, there is the issue with Ms. Cohen."
"I thought she had nothing to do with the discussion."
"This is off the books. As team leader, it isn't my concern. As a friend, it is."
"What concern is it of yours?"
"We're not here to make relationships; we're here to kill people. Having affection for her might've been enough to weaken your mind and make you lose focus to the cause."
"She is not the cause of my problems! She's a remarkable woman and I'm not going to let you bully me into denying how I feel about her."
"It might be difficult for you to accept, but the enemy is relentless. We're still under threat of metahumans that you have proven were engineered. Your attention to this conscripted civilian nurse hasn't gone unnoticed by the team. You don't see me going after girls. I'm saving that for when I get home. Here, you're going to have decide which of your loves is greater: the love for her, or the love for your country."
"I love both, and that's all there is to it."
"Loose talk can cost lives."
Dr. Nucleus didn't have to think twice about why Duke said it. After all, the new medics that were sent to the front were hospital staff members, not trained soldiers. They might be the ones to blab where enemy ears were located. He didn't think that of Victoria, but there could be no exception. The exception couldn't be made for him either; nobody could trust a man who naturally spoke in paragraphs given the chance on matter how smart he was, nevermind one who was criminally sleep deprived. The matter was sealed when, confined to quarters, he found out that Ms. Victoria Cohen had been transferred to another military camp later that day. The nightmares continued for another week. Dr. Nucleus was left to stew on Duke's grave warning. Loose talk can cost lives, as could a mind that lost focus of the mission. It was of dire importance to keep the sacred Commandment, no matter what.
--
Clara closed the hospital door behind her and continued to continue her rounds. When she was headed back to the front desk, that is when she heard the phone ring. She picked it up hastily.
"Hello, Twin Palms hospital, Clara speaking, how may I help you?"
The young nurse didn't have to wait two seconds before she knew this voice wasn't any she was familiar with. The call immediately felt out of place. A phone call so late at night to an elderly hospital? Most calls would wait until morning at least, or just after lunchtime.
"No, sorry the hospital is closed to visitors right now. Huh? You want to know where Mr. Baker is?"
The voice on the other end of the phone seemed agitated at her non-answer, and angrily pressed the question again.
"I don't know where Mr. Baker is. There have already two calls about him you know."
There was a pause, and then the voice asked about the phone calls.
"Another one of Mr. Baker's friends, yeah? He was alone before yesterday, and now all a sudden his old friends seem to want to come to pay him a visit. Never in all my years have I seen any friend come to visit Mr. Baker. It's not my place to judge, but I really can't understand why people would wait for something else to happen beforing visiting him. It just seems so cruel. I visit people just to catch up, you know?"
The voice insinuated from that information that he was gone.
"He's gone, yes. His first friend that visited signed the transfer forms. His name? I don't remember. I already told you, I don't know where he is."
"Yes the information is logged but I'm not at liberty to go into the record room. Oh I know you want me to make an exception but I can't. No I agree it's not fair but I can't just be telling everyone patient information, you understand, right?"
"I'm sorry that I couldn't be more help. I wish you the best of luck in finding your friend. Uh-huh. Okay. Bye."
She looked at the call director phone again. It must've been her imagination, but it looked like the phone was blinking wrong. For a second it looked like the previous call had come from an internal phone, because it had been a button appeared to be blinking green two spaces from the left on the top row; it was clearly the button to the top left, must have been, red to specify it was an outside call.
--
John Wakefield was having noticeable difficulty in making his glue colorless. The corn syrup formula he was using, with an incorrect ratio, resulted in a very noticeable amber tint. He repeated the process of boiling, sifting, and stirring with tenacity, until he got an acceptable result. He became sweaty from the steam rising from the pot and from the exercise, his arms aching from the grueling process. Time seemed to be squeezing at him like a vice also; he had an unpleasant vision of being stabbed while stirring the glue in his metal pot like a housekeeper. As new confounding factors came into mind, such as glue effectiveness, the time it would take to fully dry, and process to ensure uniform surface level application against the floor, he was tempted to curse.
He didn't curse once during the process. It was to assure himself that despite being one of the next intended victims, that he would not succumb to the trap of blaming happenstance. He had made a choice to make a stand with his teammates, to claim vengeance against Dragon's killer. He could've just stayed home a coward when he read the headline that Dragon was Dead, and waited to be killed. Nightwatch was putting his glue project to shame as he started to board up windows with plywood and nails with the power and efficiency of a well-oiled machine. John never asked questions about whatever Sacrifice was doing, but he supposed that whatever curse Sacrifice was planning to go for to be a really good one.
As he started to paint the floor with his homemade glue, John's mind jumped to the concept to what he was painting. At first this concept didn't make any sense, because the paint was colorless, and he was only applying steady, straight, and boring strokes from closest to farthest from the staircase. The algorithm was so simple, after all, that even his jumpy mind could follow it sufficiently. Despite his knees aching from systematically crawling backward on the floor, he had done it at last. He put his eye level to the ground. Small differences due to imperfect strokes were there, but as John stood and looked from above, the areas untouched by light left no sign that the floor had been tampered with.
At last the connection at the start was made. It was a painting of something invisible, covered by the dark of night. A metaphor, perhaps, of the remaining Freedom Five, shouded in the shadows of the ones that departed from them, of Dragon and Duke, invisible yet a presence not to be ignored. John couldn't help but think that now that he made the connection, despite it being so stupid. Was the glue protecting the floor, or smothering it? What does stickiness have to do with anything? It was a trap, designed to be a trap. He had a sudden want for the assassin to step on his worthless art so he could use his remaining gravitons to keep him there for the kill.
Mr. Wakefield then got to work with boarding parts of the upper floor where Nightwatch couldn't reach. Nightwatch had told him not to open any door on the main floor unless he got express permission from him directly first. When Sacrifice had returned, he was told once where the traps were located. Mr. Wakefield didn't begrudge Nightwatch for his separate treatment. It was no longer a secret that he needed additional help with remembering things; all he had to remember in Nightwatch's simple model was that if he opened a door without permission, the penalty was pain of death.
The former hero had been asked for how to keep the floor sticky, or was he asked? Either way, John didn't remember who or when. I'm glad you asked. It's quite simple really, though a bit smelly. All I have to do is apply a layer of hot water to the surface of the sticky floor. This will reverse the old bonds of the glue enough to brush a reapplication. The glue should last about 6 hours normally, if my calculations are correct.
--
Being confined to quarters presented an opportunity for Dr. Nucleus to exercise Yeng's meditation techniques. It was frightening to be alone with his own thoughts, attempting to find focus in a hurricane of thoughts. Yet he had found it again, the quiet eye of the storm.
He was different from the Nazis, and always would be. He never saw people as means to an end, to be used, to be degraded for a cause. Dr. Nucleus recalled the procedure done on the corpse of the young boy, forcing himself to recall every detail of it. Every incision made to the body had purpose, and never did he bruise out of anger, hate, or impatience. He wanted to understand the young man; the tragedy was that an operation was the only way now that the boy was dead. The Nazis had taken away his life by using him as a war-pig, letting him loose to the front lines in an attempt to break enemy formation. HIs notebook held his careful scrawls when he found inconsistencies, such as much denser and irregular nerve cluster formations along the arms, as well as plastic 'grounding areas'; the boy's cranium was like a helmet with arrayed suction cups on the insdie. The irresponsible bastards had used such a primitive means as a safety precaution to prevent an electrical overload of the brain. Similar plastic cups were found underneath his skin tissue for every other areas of his body, but this held the same potential for complications; even if the boy's muscles didn't tense up under paralysis, blood hemorrhaging hadn't been accounted for, especially brain vessels which could theoretically pop under intense electromagnetic pressures. It was later found out by Dr. Nucleus that the Nazis had employed a crude method to place the plastic in, as though an afterthought to toying with the boy's nerve 'wiring'. It was evidently all done with needles, directly injected just underneath the boy's skin layer. Each plastic spot was small, like a pinprick, but there were countless thousands of such pinpricks along the skin. It was likely a team of about six scientists got to work to cover every square inch of the boy's body, thrusting him with needles for hours in every conceivable direction; likely the boy had to remain standing and awake. There were quite a lot of puncture wounds that were thicker than a regular skin pore, consistent with needles moving around without a care after a puncture was made; quick in, quick out. The cruel process probably made the task unnecessarily harder, as trickles of bleeding would have to be mopped up by cotton to continue stabbing in a predetermined lattice of points. Working inward to confirm his initial hypothesis, the main mechanic behind the boy's electrical powers was unsurprisingly just as crude. After presumably exciting neural structures with stem cells to grow into larger trees, the Nazis phased in a metallic ion solution in the boy's blood it was even more conductive. More symptoms consistent with steady tin poisoning were found when Dr. Nucleus followed the lead of pale skin and corroded esophagus, consistent with frequent and excessive vomiting; he found concentrated tin-bile within the liver and intestines. The machines to generate the electricity were basically motors with about a 80% efficiency in generating static electricity at the base of each arm; storage was charged up nerve stems up to a point cluster at the end of the arm. At a certain threshold, the electricity spanned out from the arm; the internal plastic grounding made the path from out from the arms the easiest, in addition to the fact the boy had been wearing thick soldier's boots, whose bottom was of a thick plastic. Internal burn marks went along the edges of the plastic grounding areas where the crude injected plastic didn't cover. It didn't change the reality that on top of organs being pushed in by electromagnetic pressure, the boy had been cooking himself from the inside due to waste heat generated by the motors. The surface damage was concentrated especially at the fingertips where there was no plastic, which is why they appeared so black from the outside also. The reprehensible internal damage was even worse, as the cooking effect on organs due to heating created scabs and made the tin-poisoned intestines even more sickly in appearance. There was no saving this boy in such a state, even if he were still alive. The boy had been stripped of all his dignity, programmed with Nazi propaganda, used, then discarded to die. The Nazis didn't even plan for him to live more than two months.
When Nucleus broke from his meditative trance, he saw that the Sacrifice was standing by the door. When or how he got in without making a sound didn't matter. Sacrifice wasn't there to ask about the nightmares. Sacrifice
knew the nightmare. He loomed shrouded in his hooded black robe like Death, cold and silent.
"I buried the boy again today." said Dr. Nucleus solemnly; he could feel tears flowing down his face. "The right way this time." He knew Sacrifice would know what he meant. Dr. Nucleus had already buried the boy after the operation, as other professionals were satisfied enough with his careful writings not to keep the cadaver for further study. It was with reverence that his mind buried the memory of the boy.
Sacrifice's hood moved in the very short motion of a nod, or perhaps it was Dr. Nucleus' imagination and only air had took it. Sacrifice departed shortly after just as silently into the open world like the air of a crypt: John's crypt. The cool, fresh air filled his quarters, replacing the old. The nightmares started to fade and sleep returned to Dr. Nucleus. Soon he was back at his prime, restful and completely aware, always beyond reach from everyone else to his true emotional self.
--
John attempted to rest at the top of the staircase after the work was done, having a partial view of the hallway he coated with sticky glue, as long as he stayed low on his chest. It was close to midnight and there was no sign of the assassin. All he had to do was stand up to get a full view. All he had to do, mainly, was amplify the natural gravity from the altitude he had, imposing downward like a king of the hill. He imagined Duke starting at the base of a large hill as he did for his own training, with Dr. Nucleus's job to keep him down. Duke always managed to push through, taking the whole hill down if need be. The stakes were different now. This wasn't a training exercise.
His eyes closed once, and suddenly he was falling down through a bottomless void, until he smacked against cold black and white tile, much like that of the floor of the old home they were using to stage the trap. As he stood, however, he realized the tiles were strictly black and white, with no intermediate grout. Large pieces towering him in size rose from the ground like spectres, materializing on the squares. He was on the White side.
"What is the meaning of this?" he stated accusingly. There was uncertainty in his voice. He had felt something like this before, like the shadow of a forgotten nightmare.
"You will find out soon enough."
The voice sounded too familiar. Before John could even think of how to move the pieces, the pieces were
morphing. The familiar peices of a game that he mastered were turning into large animals. John had no concept for the game forming around him; he could no longer rely on even the heuristics of playing chess. He was out of his prime and in a completely new situation. It was unfair.
"That isn't the attitude of the Dr. Nucleus that know." stated the feminine voice. "Dr. Nucleus was an Amazon explorer in the established mythos, bravely venturing unknown parts of the world for the simple joy of discovery."
"A lot has happened to me. You won't get the fight that you want." To Mr. Wakefield's sudden horror, perhaps it was. Perhaps it was just a way to humilate him before his death. "I won't allow it!"
"The entire game has changed." pressed the voice. "Dragon is dead."
A paper booklet materialized above John and landed in front of him. John picked it up from the ground and studied it quickly, impatiently, angrily.
Jungle (board game) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The goal was basic enough; get a piece to a designated square, the Den, before your opponent, pieces captured by rank, except for traps, which negated rank for capture.
"This is a child's game." Mr. Wakefield grumbled. "What's your goal in this?"
"I cannot say."
"I will figure it out with or without your help."
"Is that so?"
He couldn't tell if the question was out of remorse or blithe mock pity. John was suddenly behind the game board, with the board and its pieces as regular size. The suddenness of the change in perspective shook him, because he was now placed at the level overseeing his living animal pieces as though he were a demigod. To his left and right were Master Yeng's dojo walls. He was now wearing an explorer's outfit, just to mess with the theme even more. He tossed off the hat in defiance.
http://i.imgur.com/shNKjOS.jpg
The person across from him first appeared as Clara, the way that she had appeared in her night dress in his nightmare when both Nightwatch and Sacrifice were sleeping at his house. The face then morphed into another, with the outfit changing into a Victorian style dress. Distinctive black gloves covered her hands as her fingers wiggled in anticipation above her own pieces. The patterns in those gloves made the connection in Mr. Wakefield's mind and he looked at the face again. It was hers; it was Victoria Cohen's. Duke was right, yet again, in a side comment he once made; nurses really were Dr. Nucleus' kryptonite.
"So you are trying to break me." said Mr. Wakefield. "You have no idea where I am now, do you?"
She didn't reply.
"It doesn't matter. You won't make the connection. Dragon isn't dead. Not here."
At once his piece of highest rank, the elephant, poly-morphed into a green dragon. Ms. Cohen poly-morphed her piece reflexively into a red one. The game started when Mr. Wakefield moved his lion piece forward.
"Duke always led." Ms. Cohen agreed.
Ms. Cohen made her move in a split second, then waited with crossed arms. Mr. Wakefield understood Ms. Cohen's style very well, and that hadn't changed. His memory, though piecemeal, could never forget the contrast of her kind personality front with the ruthlessness in how she played games. Her tactic was to be alarmingly quick in order to bully, seeking to overwhelm her opponent in a show that she accounted for all possibilities. Mr. Wakefield, even in his prime, delayed his moves in chess against her on purpose, because that was how to direct her aggression into unfocused anger.
"That won't work this time." Ms. Cohen added. "If you don't make your move in thirty seconds, you lose the game."
"Hogwash!" Mr. Wakefield desperately moved any other piece to the right, just to end his turn. The thirty second rule wasn't in the book. Ms. Cohen had made that rule up. It was unfair, yes, but it wasn't him to accept it as unfair. As she said, that wasn't his attitude.
The game developed, and Ms. Cohen was gaining overwhelming piece advantage. His animals were being butchered, though he did get some retaliatory kills from it, but he appeared desperate. Mr. Wakefield was starting to panic. His attempts to keep his favorite pieces alive was used against him.
"Did you already forget the special abilities of your animals?" Ms. Cohen taunted. "I'm really disappointed."
"It isn't over."
"It is. Your dragon is cornered by my rat. My dragon still lives."
It was true; eventually his dragon and her rat were diagonal to each other. In the original rules, rat (rank 1) beat elephant (rank 8) because it was supposed to burrow in the brain of the elephant. It could also not be killed by the elephant because it was too small to hit. If dragon moved up, rat moved right. If dragon moved left, rat moved down. Rat burrows into dragon's back. He moved his dragon left.
"So you have given up." Ms. Cohen said.
"Dragon is dead." Mr. Wakefield admitted, sadly. He watched as the dragon was torn to shreds. The red dragon advanced to his side of the board. Turns continued, but it looked like Ms. Cohen was just toying with Mr. Wakefield now, slaughtering animals with the dragon.
"Now it's over."
"No." Mr. Wakefield replied defiantly. "
My rat has been waiting in the water for its chance. In four moves, I win the game."
Ms. Cohen looked at the board again. She had been played. His panicked nature was a con. Her moves had been so swift because of that, and she had missed the obvious. Her piece that was also closest to Mr. Wakefield's Den was also four squares, but Mr. Wakefield was the first move. Her dragon couldn't block his rat. Her other pieces were too far from the rat to intercept, having killed other animals. There was no possible path to intercept the rat. She lost.
"Now get out of my mind!"
--
John woke up suddenly, his heart was beating fast as he looked at the wall clock. The match had apparently only taken about twenty minutes, because Ms. Cohen's moves were lightning quick, so the time had been all his, carefully spent to the last second. His mind remembered that there was a smile on Ms. Cohen's face when the dream had ended, which was strange. Ms. Cohen never smiled when she lost a game, not even once. Her face always remained as stone when that happened. Perhaps she got what she wanted.
He looked over the glue covered hallway, yet undisturbed. He presumed he would've heard gunshots, or died, if an assassin had entered the house when he was out. He presumed Nightwatch was in the living room, and it was better if he didn't know where Sacrifice was. It made a surprise attack by magic more potent. He took out his walkie-talkie and whispered into it.
"I think we have a problem, over."
"What is it, over." was Nightwatch's swift reply.
"It's Ms. Cohen, over."
There was a long silence. "You were just dreaming. She's dead, over."
She was dead, wasn't she? The dream felt so real that he had forgotten that plain truth. Mr. Wakefield could only remember portions of memories, the ones that were the most emotionally charged.
It had been at the end of the war Freedom Five travelled back to London in celebration. They had won! Now the Freedom Five were going about their own ways to end some unfinished business. The first thing that Mr. Wakefield did was track down Ms. Cohen. It had been easy. He didn't forget her promise to take him to her favorite spots when the war was over. Cross-referencing on the street information, he optimized travel and found her sitting on her favorite bench. They talk about their brief get together at the military camp. They hugged each other.
Cut to being in Ms. Cohen's house. Mr. Wakefield commented, 'Oh, it's that time again.' She asked what he meant. He replied, 'Tea time, of course.' He didn't expect an English person to slip up something so routine.
Cut to a chess game match later that afternoon at a sparsely populated outside park. (It was after a day excursion, maybe to a museum?) He is surprised on how lightning fast her moves are, and how the pieces clapped against the table, like mini lightning bolts. She kept giggling and making playful comments despite the force applied to the game pieces. His mind cannot escape the connection to the German tactic of blitzkreig, overwhelming the enemy to prevent retaliation. The first game he lost. The second and third game he won, using real world time by waiting on purpose to diffuse the impact of Ms. Cohen's aggression, and manipulating in game time more carefully so he never lost any through raw calculation. Ms. Cohen was forced to take Mr. Wakefield's lead; she was just as quick with her moves but there wasn't the force as before. She also sat in complete silence, her eyes fixed on the board only until the match was complete. After that, the silent spell appeared lifted. Mr. Wakefield took her by the arm, and they walked some more along the river.
Cut to after a late night stroll later in the week. Mr. Wakefield begins to discuss plans for moving back to the United States. Ms. Cohen asks if there'd be jobs there. Mr. Wakefield guarantees to support her until she inevitably found a
profession suited to her intellect. He turns to walk back to a hotel after walking her to her doorstep. She asks him if he'd like to come in for some tea. He replies, 'This late at night?' She grabs him by the hand, and shifts closer. She looks up longingly. Their eyes meet. They kiss. Fade to black.
Cut to Nightwatch, with a curt call to meet him at the predetermined rally point. He says that there are loose ends, and that there are those that would wish harm to Jewish refugees seeking to find a new life overseas; these Nazi terrorists sought to cause panic and instability back in the region. John asks what this has to do with him. Nightwatch states that, during his investigation for a lead, he had seen Ms. Cohen having a short discussion with a suspect. Dr. Nucleus resents the implication, but Nightwatch tells him to follow the evidence, like he always had.
Cut to his own apartment. He slept through more nightmares, though they appeared foreign to him. They were choatic, with no locus of control, focusing on the events around the camp where he was stationed at with Ms. Cohen. They were not his own. He woke up and checked the window. It was still night. He looked at the time again. Given the time and place the sun should be 2 degrees above horizon. The illusion shattered. The real sunlight pierced through the false image, burning it like fire through projector film. He called Nightwatch, on a hunch, saying that Ms. Cohen was likely on the move again. An hour later Nucleus was called back. During the hour he would've lost if he had trusted the time, Nightwatch had confirmed Ms. Cohen had met with two more people in a secluded alleyway, which appeared to be more co-conspirators. Nightwatch then asked something of Nucleus that he never imagined doing, for the greater good.
Cut to when there were only a few more days of the two week vacation in London before boarding a cruise ship to the United States. John can only think of betrayal as she is smiling and serving him a continental breakfast of toast, bacon, and eggs. She says it can be every day that she does this when they move. She then picks up on it. She puts a kitchen chair beside him and starts to smooth back John's hair tenderly, and she can see sweat on his brow. She asks what's wrong. He says that there are some really bad people that want to hurt the Jewish refugees that want the life they're going to share together. She agrees that's terrible. She then asks if he's worried he can't be sure they'll be safe. He says not to worry, because they are safe. She kisses his forehead. She says enemies would look anywhere; how could he be so sure? He replies that they'd be hidden in plain sight while they wait. Still dangerous, she claims. John puts a finger on his nose. 'The lions will see the wary souls through. The last shall be first and the first shall be last, when the rest of the world sleeps.' She kisses him on the cheek, then says that she has some errands to attend to, to tie up loose ends before sharing the new world together. Dr. Nucleus uses her rotary phone when she leaves and calls Nightwatch.
Cut to Mr. Wakefield boarding the boat with his luggage, alone. Nightwatch had told him that he infiltrated their base by following the initial suspect to the group meeting, and confirmed the worst. She was the leader of the terrorist movement, under a section claiming to be under control of Remnant. She had held a meeting stating that they were close to fulfilling their task; she had reported to have finally broken a high ranking military official. She ordered search routes to focus only on Trafalgar Square at night, the timeline being before main cruisers were scheduled to take people home, which was three days. The landmark spot became an area for one sided slaughter as one man took out twenty-plus men, paralleling the legendary sea Battle of Trafalgar. Mr. Wakefield's tip wasn't as helpful as Ms. Cohen had eagerly believed. Her greed overlooked the fact that Trafalgar Square spanned a very large area, she had left her men too sparsely separated, and vulnerable to covert attack. Not a single person from that terrorist cell was left alive. Nightwatch had shot Ms. Cohen through the head with a sniper rifle from a window at the Charing Cross hotel. Nightwatch had been told by Nucleus she had a subtle way of burrowing into a mind, and that the method was best unknown.
Upon further reflection, it was obvious she was a superpowered being, able to invade thoughts subconsciously through conversations, and even alter dreamscapes in order to break people. Mr. Wakefield's relationship was too good to be true, also obvious now that events had already transpired. In turn, Ms. Cohen took the verbal hint of where the refugees were located, instead of realizing that she didn't ever break the man. Her greatest blunder was the assumption that Mr. Wakefield, honest and good, was incapable of deception. In the end, she trusted him more than she should have.
Mr. Wakefield felt empty, yet strangely content. He didn't feel the sickness that he did when thinking about the corrupted, electric youth he had vivisected. The boy deserved a better life. He wouldn't bury Ms. Cohen; in his mind he placed her on cold cobblestone, and let the alley rats eat her.
--
Clara yawned, and then started thinking about her answer to the other two calls that asked where Mr. Baker was. If she could get the number of the man that took Mr. Baker first, perhaps she could get express permission from that man to allow the others to track him down, or at least inform him that others were searching, and were likely old friends as well. It was certainly worth a shot. Being a head nurse definitely had advantages. She looked through her keyring and confirmed one for the records room was still there. Clara didn't use this key very much, because the records room was a very boring place, and she didn't want to think about the times she was forced to play the role of a file clerk during her internship years ago.
She walked to the records room and opened the locked door. Clara walked to the table, and, unsurprisingly, the papers for Mr. Baker's transfer were on it. Everyone around here was too lazy to take the time to file papers. This held important information in case the hospital had to prove that the transfer was a legal one; they had to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Baker was traceable, pending any investigation over a missing person's report. It was the sloppiness that Clara begrudgingly tolerated. It was then she heard the short, distinct ruffling of feathers behind her, which made absolutely no sense. She turned around. There was nothing. She really needed sleep; these night shifts weren't for her, you know? Clara took out her personal notepad.
"John Wakefield." Her eyes scanned further down the line. "Trained Medic,
and a Ph.D. Holy cow!" Clara exclaimed. It was a great surprise to her that such an unhinged person was a doctor, but then again, profs were said to have similar eccentricity. "You gotta be kidding me: it's a house in the Edric Estates?" She made a short whistle. "Fancy. No wonder Mr. Baker was eager to go. When I retire that's a place I'd like to be." She pouted a little. "Lucky guy. That's where I wanna be when I retire."
With that she walked over to the main desk again with notepad in hand. It was getting real late. It would be rude to call the house so late at night. Maybe she'd call tomorrow.
A intruder covered in black was above Clara, suspended on the ceiling as claws lapped over the common metal and drywall ceiling profile. Black feathers made the intruder's fall light and soundless as the person nimbly slipped through the decreasing gap as the door as it was closed behind Clara. The intruder walked over to the table like Clara had, and stared at the address on the table.