Date: Tue, 23 Aug 1994 20:14:31 EDT Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "(Nancy Cleveland)" Subject: Aloha Chapter 2 (p 73-78) He had such a tiny margin of error, he could not afford to miss. He would have one chance, one and only one. He tensed his muscles, ready, praying to all his nameless dieties that she would take the next step, the one he needed to escape. She did. She moved closer, frowning, looking at her watch, her finger still pressing on his throat, the pulse throbbing in his veins. Her legs brushed his, nylon on linen, smooth against rough. He moved, jerked his knees sideways into the back of her legs, used his tiny range of motion to drive her off balance, drive her forwards, as he reached out with his still tender fingers and grabbed her shoulder, her neck, her hair, as she stumbled. He wrapped his hand around her throat, feeling her life in his hands, feeling the power of life and death, in his control. She gasped, once, then was silent, fighting to breathe, writhing in his grip, struggling to break it, to claw his hands, his face. He leaned as close to her as possible and spoke, meaning every word. "Release me, or I'll break your neck." He tightened his grip and she shuddered in his grasp, her stuggles weakening as he cut off her supply of air, tightening his grip on her throat. She nodded, and reached into her pocket, pulling out the tiny keys. He watched her put one in the manacle encircling the hand that held her, and heard the sharp metallic clink as it opened, and his wrist moved away from the metal bed frame, free.... "The other now, quickly." He still held her neck in his grip, tightly, cruelly, digging his fingers into her windpipe, threatening her, goading her to move faster. She nodded, a short jerky motion, and worked the key in the second manacle, the click and release coming a moment later. He pulled his hand loose and grabbed a bloodstained baton that the departed men had used to brutal effect, earlier. He ignored the queasy roll his stomach gave, as he picked it up, still slippery with his own blood. He swung the baton hard against the woman's temple, and let her fall to the floor, dazed. He felt a strong recluctance to kill. Another moral compass. He was starting to feel out who he was, issue by issue, situation by situation. He felt relief at this, it fit, somehow, with what he wanted to be. What he was. He had the key now, and bent to release his legs, amazed again that the kneecaps still worked, the legs stil flexed and bore his weight, amazed that the terrible damage he remembered was gone, healed, as if it had never happened. Never happened, that is, except for his memories, and the stains and tears in the fabric of his pants, where they had pounded his knees into jelly, blow by deliberate blow. His stomach lurched, as he remembered a dim shadow of the pain, just the memory leaving him covered with a cold sweat. He made himself the vow. He kneeled, and spun, searching the ceiling of the room for the telltale camera. Another shred of memory, returning. Behind him, a smoked tilted mirror hid one corner of the ceiling. He searched through the woman's pockets, looking for a weapon, a tool, a clue to his escape. He found a data disk, and suddenly more memories came crashing in on him. Raven, in the plane, with the computer. Asking him for help. Offering to give him his... blood money. He knew it was crucial, critical that he remember, that he understand...he strained....tried to rebuild the conversation...it was impossible. No yet, not ready yet. He threw the weighted baton at the glass. It shattered, and revealed the miniature camera inside that whirred and clattered, the baton damaging its rotator gear. It turned to the corner of the room and froze. He rose to his feet and moved to the still open door, opened it wider, cautiously, looked up and down the bare corridor and moved outside, closing and locking the door behind him. He knew that once he was in the public corridors he had only a few minutes to disappear from sight, to get out, before he was spotted and recaptured. He glanced at the ceiling. No cameras visible here, but that meant nothing. The corridor was blank, solid walls running to a closed door at the end. Behind him, just more solid walls. Not too many choices here. He moved quickly down the hall to the door, and pushed it open. A stairwell, going up, or down. There had been no windows in the room, all he had was his instinct and subliminal impressions to go on. Was he already above ground, or below? Which way was the fastest way out? He had to make the right choice. His time was running out. One wrong move and it was all over. One wrong choice, and his time was up. He hesitated, feeling a slight motion, a small breeze of air, coming down, from above. That decided him. Up. He started up, just as a door on the floor below opened. Voices rose behind him as he hurried up the stairs, trying to keep two flights of stair between him and the persons following. They weren't in a hurry, and he outdistanced them quickly. He paused, at the landing, the next door, and risked a glance out. Another featureless corridor. He hurried up the stairs, concerned that he was going too high, now. The people below had checked their conversation when he'd opened the first door. He could only risk one more, before they became suspicious. He gambled, and passed the next door without stopping. The third one was different. Larger, heavier. The lock was studier, reinforced.This should be it. He pushed the door open, and strode into the brilliantly lit lobby of a glass and chrome office building. Dozens of people bustled in and out, carrying breifcases, wearing suits, and identical plastic i.d. badges. He clipped the badge he'd taken from the woman onto his lapel, and walked determinedly towards the double doors. Freedom lay beyond, freedom, and life. He offered a tiny prayer that the lobby guard should be distracted for a moment, and not inquire too closely into his rumpled appearance, not stand too close and smell the odors that wafted behind him, not notice that he looked nothing like the picture on his badge, up close. It had been less than three minutes since he'd left the white room, left the woman lying in a daze. She would be up any time now, sounding the alarm, starting the chase. The skin along the back of his neck crawled, as he walked towards the sunlit doors, forcing himslef not to break into a trot, a jog, a sprint for freedom. He knew he would never be able to enter a gleaming white room again without a moment of fear, a subconscious flinching, an urge to run. It was just going to be part of his life, from now on. Assuming he lived, to have a life. He was almost there, almost out. He stepped into the pool of sunlight that slanted though the glass, felt its warmth crawl up his legs, his side, felt the glare on his face. He put his hand on the door, touching the cool grey glass just as the guard moved, came up out of his chair, his mouth open, a shout on his lips. Two more guards, uniformed military police, this time, were moving purposefully towards him, the sunlight glinting on the rank tabs on their shoulders, gleaming off the polished automatic handguns they each held in their hands. "Hold it right there! Halt!" The guards raced after him, ready to fire, scattering the civilians in their path. The crowd of well dressed executives reacted like trained combat veterans, some hitting the floor and rolling out of the line of fire, some reaching into their suits for guns, some joining the chase, starting after him, themselves. He pushed through the revolving door, whirled and grabbed a leather handbag from a woman coming in, jammed it in the doorframe and shoved the leather tight against the metal, effectively blocking that door, trapping the woman inside, half in and half out of the building. Glass shattered behind him as he ran, bullet holes pocking the door and glass walls as the guards fired through at him. He was on a plaza, a parking lot to his right, in front, a short expanse of sidewalk led to a grassy park and open city streets. He could see cars, buses, taxis driving by, barely 100 yards away, could smell the exhaust. As far as the moon, from here. A woman in a dark blue suit walked towards him, looked at the pursuit, and threw her metal edged briefcase at him, hard and flat, like a frisbee. He barely blocked it with his forearm, felt the bone crack from the impact, staggered, and kept on running. She had pulled out a gun and was bringing her hands up to fire at him in approved Academy manner, when he bowled her over, shoved her to the sidewalk, kicking her gun away as he ran. Something..some sense he'd never felt before...something that was terrifyingly familiar, and totally strange...he felt it like an itch, a burning, a buzzing in his brain. Distracted, he swerved, his original plan to run towards the park and the street disrupted, as he felt this urge to follow, to find the source of this....feeling...pulling him instead towards the parking lot. Shouts, behind him. More gunshots, short insignificant pops that meant nothing unless they hit their mark, then they meant everything. So far he'd been lucky. Only his arm, cradled to his chest, ached deep in the bone, every step jarring it and lancing agony up his wrist to his shoulder. He ignored the pain, pushed it aside and ran. The buzzing pulled at him, repelled and attracted him. Drew him. He couldn't tell where it was coming from. No one, no thing, stuck out, centered it in his consciousness. The sun glinted off the chrome in the parking lot. Hundreds, thousands of cars glittered in the light, still, silent, offering refuge, or a trap... "Mac! Over here!" A motorcycle roared across the access lane, slowing as it passed him. The helmeted figure on it reached out an arm and grasped his broken one, half pulling him onto the still moving bike. He gasped at the flash of pain that seared along his nerves, as the bones grated together, any temporary healing destroyed, the fragile bonds rebroken. He buried a sob behind his clenched teeth. He had only an instant to make his choice, to trust this unknown figure, features masked by the shiny smoked black plastic face plate, anonymous inside the helmet, or to run, alone, himself. He decided, scrambled on to the bike and held on, clinging grimly to the black leather jacket of the biker with his good arm, his other one hanging, dangling uselessly at his side. The biker gunned the machine, almost lifting the front wheel off the blacktop as it accellerated out of the parking lot, brushing two more Marine guards out of the way, forcing them to jump aside as it cut through the gate and into traffic. He heard the sound of more gunshots behind, but nothing hit, nothing came close. The bike wove in and out among the lumbering buses, fighting cabs for tiny openings and slipping in, through and past every car on the road. No one seemed to be following them. Short of a helicopter, anything but another motorcycle would have found it impossible to keep up. Still, he glanced over his shoulder frequently, feeling that if he looked fast enough , or hard enough, he would see someone, something familiar. He felt like they were being followed, but nothing, no one, showed. He kept his attention divided between the street behind, and the man in front. Both were unknown factors, both posed a potential threat. That buzzing, tingling sensation....what had drawn him to the parking lot in the first place, given him the final impetus to trust, to gamble, to plunge into the unknown , with this unknown figure...it was still there, but he found it less irritating, less distracting, as he became accustomed to its presence in his brain, to the man's presence, near him. The driver slowed, blended with the flow of traffic, and pulled onto a side street in a residential area. He drove the bike up a driveway, into an enclosed garage. He got off, pulled down the garage door, then took off his helmet and turned towards his silent passenger. His red, short cropped hair glinted like liquid copper in the pale sunlight slanting in from the side windows. He looked young, maybe 20. "Mac! How the hell are you? What happened? I got your message, tried to meet you at the airport in SanFran. I saw those goons grab you, and I followed you here... "What's going on? Why are you tangling with the government?" The youth had walked closer, gesturing excitedly as he spoke. The buzzing, which had receded a bit when the boy stepped away, got stronger as he returned. It clearly seemed to be coming from him. It seemed familiar, but not *right* somehow. It had been bothering him, all the way here. It seemed too easy. And that sense of being followed..... "Tell me what you saw." The boy paused, confused. "Saw? At the airport? You came out of the gate behind this other guy. Some government types tried to grab him, he got away. Looked like he killed one of them, too. You stepped right in the middle and got grabbed instead. "They hustled you away to some private lounge. They were swarming all over the place, trying to find this other guy. I found out they were checking flights to D.C. and figured they'd come here with you, which they did. It was pure luck I saw which plane you got on. "I bribed the refueling crew to tell me where it was from. Somebody showed me the registration papers. Dawson told me what they meant, and I've been hanging around out here, hoping you'd come out on your own steam, or ready to pick up your body if I had to." The name resonated within him. An image of an older man. Bearded. Strong emotions, conflicting emotions, surrounding him. < A friend, or a secret enemy?> Not sure. Just not sure of anything, anymore. The boy...youth, really..looked at him. Looking for praise, for thanks, he supposed. "It's what you wanted, isn't it, Mac?" The boy's open, eager face turned tohim. "Yes. Thank you. You did a good job....." He waited, waited for the boy's name to form on his tongue, in his mind. Nothing came. Nothing. What was the matter with him, why couldn't he remember anything? And what was this damned buzzing interference, coming and going, humming in his head? The boy smiled. Pride, satisfaction. He seemed like a young puppy, wriggling with delight. "So how do you like the place? I rented it yesterday, for the month. Just in case we need to lie low for a while." The boy came up to him, sudden concern crossing his face as he looked at him, eye to eye. "Are you ok, Mac? You don't look so hot, you know." The boy reached out, his hand touching, brushing lightly, on his wrist. "It's...great.....a great house." He felt a surge of dizziness, a moment's dislocation in time and space. For a second he saw himself through the boy's eyes, saw himself though another's eyes as well. He pulled back from...Richie's... touch, stepped away, stumbling a bit on the uneven garage floor. He flailed for balance, and Richie grabbed him, grabbed his broken arm, again. All his weight levered on the arm and he felt the white hot flash of bones grating on bones again, the newly healing break, broken again. He swung, wildly, punching the boy in the jaw and loosening his grip, then knelt on the floor, panting, sick with the pain, holding the broken arm cradled tightly to his body. "What the hell was that all about." Anger, and hurt, flared in Richie's eyes. His tone was surly. The boy clenched his fists, and stepped towards him. "My arm. It's broken. You've grabbed it twice. Rebroken it, each time. Just leave me alone for a few minutes, ok? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit you. It was an instinctive reaction." The boy knelt next to him, his anger forgotten. "What happened in there, Mac? What did they do to you?" "I broke it outside. Escaping. I'd rather not talk about it, just now." He gathered his resources, his strength, and stood, brushing the oily grime from his clothes. "Let's go in, shall we? I could use a shower." He carefully avoided contact with Richie's bare skin, not interested in experiencing any more of those disorienting flashes of perception. Not yet, anyhow. =========================================================================