The Return

"C'est bon, d'accord, calme-toi (All right, calm down, calm down)," Marcel intervened. "We are all friends here. And Mademoiselle (he turned to Sandy). I believe that you did not lost much after showing Volodja his righteous place amongst low lives where he actually belongs. It was a real pleasure to hear about your sensible decision. But enough of those heavenly pleasures. Time to return to Earth. I would really like to see our share of something more solid than others feelings. Lena and I share plenty of feelings and one of them is our mutual respect for good business manners. And paying for our services happens to be one of them."

Marcel looked around and waited reaction. Right reaction would be paying them decent amount of scrip and explain what they want as a return. World might be really strange and chaotic place but there is always a place for something which lasts more than anything else. Power and the money. Money and the power. And visiting Lima gives them first one. They can use scrip for gaining power after that. And power helps them gain more money again. It was a symbiosis. First you serve millions and one moment millions will start to serve you. That is the real circle of life, Marcel believed.

"It is nice to make business with realistically thinking people," replied Marcel to Atticus' proposal and said to Lena: "Hope that you would agree with me, my love. These nice people are really generous. Even Volodja was kind enough to pay me a royal fee. And all that extra entertainment, he offers. C'est unique et magnifique! I might get to used to it, you know. We prefer untraceable notes, of course, Mr. Batman. At moment we do not need any publicity. Money first, fame later. That sum should cover our loyalty for your cause as well."

Marcel did not added that loyalty to employers was something which may not last, but at moment mentioning Governor Skarr added personal touch to the mission. Marcel felt that his hooded employer who worked for Skarr double crossed him when he did not said that his target - Lady Christianna - was pregnant. Only thanks to his EGO psyche Moira who was attached to Volodja Uljanov and snitched him out, helped him to avoid killing an unborn child and maintain his principles. And meet Lena Marr, his love interest. He might be grateful to Volodja and Mademoiselle Belle for bringing them together, but he did not had any feelings for Skarr. Except the feeling that he will pay for betraying them.

Seeing pain in Sandy's blue eyes, Marcel decided to turn the blade of imaginary knife in her wound once more and added: "Where are my manners, Mademoiselle? Let me introduce myself - Marrcel Lestrange, an old acquittance of Volodja Uljanov back in Europe. Did you know that he used to be a man there? He was almost like me. Clever, classy, stylish and elegant. Not to mention his charm. But now here became into a...how do you say it in America? Mais naturellement! A pussy! Volodja has become a pussy! So you did the right thing by dumping him."

______________________

Before-mentioned pussy was still at Haele's laboratory, waiting for Sophie, his EGO psyche, back. Belle's kiss was calming and hopefully she didn't mind feeling taste of Volodja's blood from his bitten lip when she kissed him and squeezed his hand. Minutes went like hours and hours would probably go by as days, but before that Volodja heard familiar voice in his head: 

"Here I am, Volodja. What a mess. My bottega is ruined! My collection of fridge magnets is gone! And looking through your recent memories makes me really sad. I take a vacation and you turn your life upside down. But I still love you. As a friend, of course, because I don't want to add more confusion into your bleeding heart. Now I have to decide between making you a bit happier or cleaning and redecorating my bottega."

"Don't mind me, Sophie dear," replied Volodja: "Clean your place first and handle me second."

"Your wish is my command, Volodja," Sophie said with a sigh: "But..."

"No "but"-s, Sophie dear. I must fight my pain on my own. Clean your place, redecorate it and then we will see about everything else. Before you go, I have a surprise for you. Before you were gone into that dream machine, I was going to tell you about your new task - you will become a self defence instructor for holo girls. You know - Dinara, Amber and...that's it. Maybe for some human girls as well. And one more news for you - Sandy regained her corporeal body and she can have a happy life now, when I am gone. She is better without me. I was dragging her down." 

Volodja stretched himself and said: "I am ready to do my part, Belle. And thank you for not leaving me. It means so much to me." He squeezed her pale hand with his now, not sure does she want to feel his touch or not. But he needed her closeness more than anything, although he was sure that he is not worth it and feared that if he holds it more then she will disappear.

"Mademoiselle might be right, but...," said Marcel. "I doubt that we should follow her judgement, Lena-darling. You, my love, teamed up with a real man, instead of that pathetic good doer Volodja Uljanov. He is a shadow of his former self. And I teamed up with a real woman. Lena is passionate and rare exotic beauty. We are going to be glorious. But if Mademoiselle wishes to try me out, then...And I would not worry about the Governor. My experience tell me that everyone gives a chance to eliminate themselves. All we need is a right moment."

Actually he kind of missed Volodja already. They might be opposites, but when they teamed up, they were always successful completing their quests. Volodja might have been soft and too rigid about his principles and good intentions, but he had one really creative mind and he would lure that vulture  Skarr out from his nest with no time. Now they had to use their own wits, but if Marcel wanted someone dead, then then his target should have sent his funeral invitations right away to spare relatives from that trouble. At moment he glanced Sandy and slid his hand to his throwing knife with casual move. He was able to throw it from every position. Slight move with his hand and knife hits the target. Then he just grinned and removed his hand from the knife. Having a quarrel was not in their interest. He must stay neutral at moment.

Erika Widowmaker ignored the squabbling in the background as she made a hailer call to Broaderick Smythe, telling him, "Brody, this is Commander Widowmaker. I assume Belle spoke to you about Ms. Sewuel? Please make sure she is at a secure computer workstation - one that does not allow the transfer of information from the base. Please help her in accessing any information she wants, but do not leave her alone at the station, and keep a record of what she accesses - and Brody, I know you have the skills, so please do so surreptitiously. No, Belle does not need to know you are keeping a record, unless, of course, she asks you directly about it - otherwise, its between you and me, get it? Good! Erika out."

Erika noticed Atticus watching her, then he asked privately through their EGOs with humor clearly in his voice, "Commander Widowmaker?"

Erika smiled slightly and retorted via her EGO, "As a member of the Commanding Triumvirate of Fortress K'shaa, if you are a Commander, than I am a Commander. Besides, you know how pliable Brody is to a person with an authoritative title. As to the other, just because Belle trusts Iri doesn't mean either of us can afford to. We have no idea what she has been doing - or what may have been done to her - in the interim since we last saw her. The Mistress of Judgment may even have Cody like she had Vo to force Belle to do her will. Our whole family will be located in Fortress K'shaa soon, and I will not have them endangered at the last moment due to an act of charity."

As Sandy Belle polished her SMG while still glaring at Lena Marr and Marcel Lestrange, Lena bit her lower lip after hearing Taffer's comment about a dead man's switch, then replied nervously, "Well, now that you mention it, it WAS rumored that he had some type of cataclysmic bomb that could take out half of Lima linked to his heart so that it would go off if his heart ever stopped beating but that's just crazy talk. I mean, that's just impossible, isn't it? Anyway, nobody could be that crazy!"

Iri waited in the office until Belle came back. When she entered, she was followed by a security officer. Iri stood up from her seat, as Belle approached her.

"It's decided. You'll get access to the databases here at the base," Belle motioned towards the security officer behind her. "He'll keep an eye on you, just to make sure that you look for and access only what you said you were. Another stipulation is that anything you find and plan on using, any and all experimentation is to be done on Chase here. That means that you and he relocate to here, use our lab and equipment if you find anything that you think can help him."

"I agree to those terms," Iri told her. "Right now, this is an information hunt. I understand your caution, as you may be worried that the information I am trying to seek could be used for horrible things if it fell into the wrong hands. You have my word, if I do find anything that may be useful but dangerous, I will leave it alone."

The security officer escorted Iri to the lab where a holographic terminal was standing. It had been a while since she had last seen such a terminal, as it had been standard at most Votan-related bases of operation before the end of the Pale Wars. With the tapping of the holographic interface, a series of hexagon icons came up each with words in the Indogene language. With a few taps, she pulled up a browser, setting keywords to search for anything that could help with Chase's memory loss. She knew that the search would take an hour or two, depending on what was in there. But she knew that Chase would be pulling into Top-Notch soon, and discovering where she is.

------

It was at that moment that Chase remembered that he needed to go pick her up from Top-Notch after he finished his second non-alcoholic beer. The day had been pretty rough, and he was due to another quiet night at the base under the Golden Gate, which he nicknamed the DUGG, short for Down Under Golden Gate. Since Rose Sinn no longer resided in the Bay, the base sat untouched for a while. And Iri wanted a place for the both of them, and the base came to mind. Despite the lock on the main entrance, Iri remembered the code to gain access into it. Over the two months in which they resided there, most of it remained untouched as it was with only certain areas being changed, such as the bedroom which they slept, to have a bed that the both of them could share. But then he got sick, so Iri kept him in what had once been a medical lab in the base. There had been an isolation room which had been put to use for a while until he got better.

Even before and after that, Iri seemed rather exhausted from her researching and experimenting that Chase decided to keep his distance from her, so she could get whatever sleep she needed and not have him be a bother by being a daily reminder of the problem she faced. Some nights, he waited until she was fast asleep in bed, and then he would relocate to another room and sleep there. The last thing he wanted was any snoring, though he wasn’t sure if he did or not, to wake her. And when it came to an hour before she had to get up, McCoy would wake him he would carefully get into bed next to her and then fall back again before the synthetic female voice awoke him once more after she driven his roller to Top-Notch. He didn’t mind the jog to Top-Notch to pick it up after the morning had started for him. He also knew it was probably a bad idea to make love with her unless she asked to do so, as he knew that one they started, it’d take a large chunk of time that she would probably regret using for pleasure instead of accomplishing the task she set herself.

The Challenger’s engine chugged as it made the curved ramp up to the building, him not finding Iri at the end of the walkway up to the main entrance into the building where she would normally wait for him. He got out and made his way inside to find out what was holding her up, only to find that she wasn't there.

"She left a while ago, heading to Fort Kshaa," Eren explained. "Here are the coordinates. I've transmitted them to your EGO."

Chase made his way the Fort, being greeted by a security team at the gate with guns drawn. He got out of the car, placing his bag of weapons on the hood.

"I'm here to see Iri Sewuel," he told them.

After they ran his name and confirmed him, they walked him to the lab where Iri was. She was surprised by how he looked with the slightly swollen eye and the busted lip.

“What happened to you?" she asked.

“Had a bit of an accident,” he told her. “Wrecked the roller, but to get a new one.”

She approached him, and what caught him by surprise was that she got ahold of his head, prying his left eye open. Chase brought his left hand up to shoo her away, but she slapped it and caused him to draw it back.

“Just give me a minute,” she said. “I just want to make sure you don’t have a concussion. Or worse.”

He's okay, Iri, McCoy broadcasted to her. It was a simple knock, not a hard hit.

"I still have to check."

With the tone of her voice, he could see she was being serious. She looked into his eye, to which he assumed was to check his pupil. He knew she was checking to make sure he didn’t suffer any serious head injuries, not including the one he had already suffered to lose his memory. Iri finally let go of him, holding up one hand with two fingers being displayed.

“How many fingers?” she asked.

“Two,” Chase replied.

“What’s my name?”

“Iri.”

“How long have we been together?”

Chase at first not sure how to give the answer since he had no memory of how long they were together from before. But he had the perfect answer.

“Forever,” was the word that escaped his mouth.

Iri looked at him deadly serious when she responded.

“Well, as the old saying goes, ‘two out of three ain’t bad’.”

A small, amused smirk formed across her face as she pulled him into a hug. She just held him for a few moments, not saying anything further. It had been a while since either of them held one another. He began to worry that he was distracting Iri from her task.

"So, what are you doing here?" he asked her.

Down the Rabbit Hole, two turns to the right in a row, few steps forward, and left from the info booth - here we go! Wonderland! Volodja found his way into Belle's mind, opened the door and gallantly offering his arm, escorted MOM into the dream machine where Alfred sat by the fire, smoking his pipe and staring into flames. Volodja stood back and turned delicately away, giving them time to be together. 

After a miniature eternity couple by the fire was ready to proceed. Volodja didn't want to take any unnecessary risks...at least when it considered Belle and Lady. Somehow safety of others came always first and Volodja's personal one was always left to wait until danger was over or people were in safe distance from it. At moment Volodja hadn't any specific reasons to break that tradition and start a new one. 

That's why he lead Alfred towards Belle's mind first because it was safer way for everybody when he suddenly stopped and said: "Alfred. I am not your favourite person and will never be. You despise everything I represent and we never going to get along, but I must ask one thing. Are you sure that you want to enter into Belle's mind and accept all consequences which will affect your future? You can stay here, into the dream machine. I discovered some documents among pile of papers I was memorizing and some of them were about "Project Star" If you go back, then you take a risk that Belle will last only a few years and so are you. I could tricked you into her mind by saying that there is a cask of Amontillado and force you to work on finding the solution, but I can't do it. I don't know how much a man like you cares about Belle, because I wasn't the one who played with her genes without asking her, but she means a lot to me. The choice is yours - you can go back and we will try to save her life. One possible solution is to study....me. Remember one blood transfusion which saved my life? At moment I feel my usual self - guilt ridden and haunted by my low self esteem, but I don't feel any no physical mutations after having her blood in my veins. That might be her chance, because I want her to live as long as possible and be as happy as possible. 

You can either stay into this device and wait here an eternity for someone to let the genie out or you can go back and have Belle as you host and only hope to be active and alive as long as she lives. She is the only one who cares about you enough to want you as an EGO psyche no matter what. I won't twist your arms here. If you decide to stay then I will find another solution for saving her. You will be safe here. Separated from the rest of us, but at least alive and that's is almost all that matters to the true Machiavellian like you."

Volodja knew that if he opens his cards, Alfred might ask him to take a hike and stay behind into the relative safety of the dream machine. But he could not act otherwise. Even if his moral standards were low already, he just could not deceive even Alfred into a trap without giving him a chance. Even Montresor warned Fortunato, who had a bad cough, of the damp, and suggested that they go back. Fortunato insisted on continuing, claiming that he "shall not die of a cough." Maybe Alfred takes his straight warning more seriously. 



While Alfred pondered about what Volodja said to hum, our foolish knight went back to MOM and bowing to her said: "Madame. Please accept my apologies for seducing your innocent daughter. It was not her fault. She had a moment of weakness when she thought that she loves me and I took an advantage of her instead of offering her my selfless support. So if you want me to stay away from her, then I will do so. I was not good for your sister Sandy and I am most certainly not good for your daughter as well. Best of luck with the twins. Believe me, you will need it."