Chapter 18[Reality Check - Tuesday Feb. 09 2010, 1530 hours, Macross Central Hospital] "Oh boy?" asked Kay, unbelieving. "Izabelle atomises the engines, and all you can say is 'oh boy'?" "Would you prefer 'Gee willikers'?" replied Thallin in a tart voice. "I am just as unhappy about the situation as you are. More." He turned back to Izabelle's slumped form, thinking out loud. "Lang's going to hit the roof when he finds out about this." Thallin moved to the door, opened it, and stuck his head through for a moment. "Erm, excuse me, miss? Could you ask Doctor Raven to drop by and see Thallin Braywater as soon as possible? Thank you." He stepped back into the room, closing the door behind him. Leaning against the doorway, he wiped his face with his hand and looked at Kay. "Any ideas?" "About what?" "About how we're going to get her out and somewhere safe." "Getting her out isn't the problem." Kay replied. "Getting her out unnoticed is something else altogether." She paused. "Although..." Her face frowned as she thought something through. The door to the room opened and Raven stepped through, cautiously closing it behind him. "They said you wanted to see me. Your adrenalins levels giving problems again?" "Yes, but not the way you think." Thallin pointed to Izabelle, then to Kay. "I need to get her out of the hospital, preferably at the same time as her." He looked about the room and stopped at the hole he had made in its outside wall. "I also need something to calm me down." "That last one's not a problem. I came prepared." Raven dug into his coat's pockets and brought out a hypodermic serynge. The needle on it looked reinforced, definitely not standard issue. "More of your mineral supplements?" asked Kay. "Not quite." answered Raven as he sterilised Thallin's shoulder. "This is Dopylar-26." "A tranquilliser?" She took a closer look at the amount in the serynge. "There's enough there to put an entire platoon to sleep for a week!" she exclaimed in surprise. "Quite so, quite so." Raven stabbed the needle into the shoulder and injected the liquid into Thallin's body. "It should just be enough for our purpose. Thallin here is not your average RDF personnel, are you Thallin? 'Be all you can be' and all that?" He turned away grumbling. "Well you are all you can be, and got much more than you bargained in the process, didn't you?" "It was not my idea in the first place." Thallin commented. "It was an accident, remember?" "Accident? You mean the same thing that screwed up your metabolism does this to you?" asked Landers. "Jeez. Tell me, how much aspirin do you have to take when you get a headache?" she tried to joke. "I do not have headaches." declared Thallin, deadpan. "I seem to give them to other people." "And you're giving me one right now!" bellowed Raven from next to Izabelle's body. "Who the hell is she? And why is her pulse practically non-existent?" "Her name is Izabelle Fate, Thallin's girlfriend" Kay answered acridly. <What's gotten up her goat> "She's a friend in trouble. I need to find a way to get her past hospital security." "Well," continued Kay, "you could always get her out on a gurney as a corpse." Thallin wheeled around a glared at her for a second before realising she was being serious. "A gurney?" "Yeah, you know, like the one you were pushing when I first met you?" "The lady's got a point." interjected Raven. "No-one'd suspect an orderly with one more body on a gurney. God knows the aliens provide this hospital with enough dead pilots."
[Reality Check - Tuesday Feb. 09 2010, 1554 hours, Macross Central Hospital] It had only taken twenty minutes to commandeer a gurney and sign Thallin out of the Hospital. Somewhere, in an alley next to the emergency ward entrance, Thallin and Kay were helping Izabelle's lifeless body to her feet. "Alleys." grumbled Thallin. "Why does everything always have to happen in a dark alley? Why can't it happen in a nice sunny park in the middle of a warm summer day, I ask you?" "Because otherwise people like you wouldn't be able to complain about how cliche the situation is." replied Kay, trying to get a better grip around Izabelle's waist. "Shall we?" Simply nodding his assent, Thallin followed Kay out the alley, Izabelle's body hanging between them, her arms around their shoulder. She looked like she had passed out after drinking too much alcohol. Or at least, that's what Thallin hoped it would look to anyone looking in their direction. Stepping out into the artificial daylight of Macross, Kay flagged down a taxi. The vehicle pulled to the curb and the two managed to load Izabelle into the cab without looking too obtrusive. "Where you wanna go?" asked the driver over his shoulder "176 Redwood Boulevard." answered Thallin, trying desperately to keep Izabelle's elbow from poking him in the rib. The taxi left the curb and proceeded down the avenue. "So what are you going to do?" whispered Kay. "I don't know. Lang wants her dismantled, but it'd be like killing her. If I could get my hands on spare parts, I'd put them in a bag and present them to Lang, but if I tried to get parts for this, he'd know about it before I'd even step into his office. Let's face it, some of those parts are pretty specialised - they've only got a couple of practical uses." "Couldn't you get the parts from the black market?" "Not these. Like I said, they're rare. And there's bound to be only a limited supply on the Macross." He stared at Izabelle's face. "Maybe I can just wipe her memories of all of this mess." "Planning on playing God?" Kay spat sarcastically. Thallin did not reply and kept silent for the remainder of the trip.
[Reality Check - Tuesday Feb 09 2010, 1612 hours, Black Pegasus Club] "Phee-yew. That's an impressive display you got up front." Thallin stepped back and blinked, noticing the facade of the club for the first time. "Yeah. It's going to be hard to miss when the place finally opens." He fiddled with the lock for a moment, then stepped inside. "Now where's the goddamn light switch?" "It'd be in the control room, with the other switches." "Oh great, wonderful. And where is that?" "No need to snap." "I am not snapping!" The dim level of lighting suddenly dimmed even further. "What the...?" "The door. It's shutting." "Don't let it -" The door clanged shut. "- close." Thallin looked about in the darkness, trying to get his bearing. "Kay? Did you notice any doors around here?" "Two doors to your right, leading to various toilets. One door to your left behind the bar, probably leading to the kitchens. One door at the far back, leading God knows where. There's backstage. And there's a set of stairs near the far left leading up to a door on the upper floor." "And you managed to memorise all of that in the few seconds of light we had?" "Comes from being a reporter." "Remind me to watch what I say or do in front of you." A chorus of crashing noises came from Thallin's left, followed by a soft moan. The moan then quickly changed to a series of vituperation. "Kay?" "I'm all right. I just tripped on a set of chairs." "Then why is you back pocket glowing?" Kay shifted in the darkness and the glowing disappeared. A pause, another movement and the soft light reappeared. "I don't know. Seems to happen whenever I sit on this table." "What have you got in your pocket?" "My identification badge. I didn't think it'd be a good idea to wear it while moving a corpse." The glow shifted, then winked in and out a couple of time. "Hey, cute. The badge glows whenever I place it on the table." "I wonder why..." A thought struck Thallin. "The badges have a second set of codes imprinted on them using a special ink which responds to a particular frequency of ultraviolet. I don't know why, but the table is emitting UV rays close to its surface. Mmmm.... maybe if I could get my hand on a supply of the ink I could -" Kay never found out what Thallin was about to say next. The door to the club was suddenly flung open and a figure with a handgun stood in it, surrounded by the bright light of the outside. "Nobody move!" Thallin blinked, still holding Izabelle's lifeless body. "Oh boy."
Forward to Chapter 19.
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