And Then There Were Three

[Damon Frey]

Tyrena, Corellia

Damon had spent most of the day going over strategy and reminiscing on old times (http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=21334) with his friend, and occasional business partner, Ecks. All in all, their plan wasn't bad, mainly because it didn't really exist. One would be hard pressed to find two beings in the galaxy as different as these two men, which tended to make it difficult for them to agree on things, although, one could also say that fact was what made them such a good team. So the general strategy this time, as it was normally, was to 'get there and see'. The one rub in all of this, was that Damon wasn't a 'get there and see' type of guy. He could think on his feet, but that didn't mean he didn't like to have as many details as possible before going in.

The walk from the ship had been pretty quiet. They'd rented a speeder and flown it to the institution that housed their current mark. That meant they'd stopped walking, and something about vehicles made it easier for Damon to voice the nervousness that he'd been failing to hide.

"So, when you said we wait and see on what we want to do, I assumed that meant the plan was 'kick the door in and shoot guns at people'. Not really my gig, but I'm flexible. Now you're saying I need to disguise as a doctor. Well, I can do that, but, I need more than just a disguise. I need an identity. Last I checked, being a doctor didn't give you a free pass to every medical facility in the galaxy."

Ecks gave Damon just a glance as a response. Ecks was good at this. He could say an entire paragraph with a glance, if you knew how to read him. Damon could read people very well, and he knew Ecks better than he knew anyone else, which made him, if nothing else, a qualified interpreter. The glance said to him 'I hear you complaining, but I don't really get what you're so worked up about, but I know you well enough to know you're gonna keep talking, and since I don't like to talk, I'm just gonna glance at you, and you're gonna keep talking, and this works well for us'. And that was just the short and sweet version.

"All I'm saying is, you didn't seem to think this would be a complicated mission, and I wouldn't need to get super prepared for it. So now I've got to not only find a doctor THAT WORKS THERE to mimic, but I've got to know where he is so I don't just bump into him and let everyone know that they have a shapeshifer loose inside. I mean, why don't we just take a page out of your play book, blow a hole in the wall with a thermal detonator and use that as an entrance?"

[Ecks]

"This isn't an official job," rumbled Ecks. "No permits, no collateral damage." He narrowed his eye at Damon, "I know that's a foreign concept, but especially with the Guild in place I can't afford to be sloppy."

Damon bristled a bit at the idea that his way would be sloppy, and said as much, as well as several other things that Ecks didn't pay attention to. Behind the Shi'ido the door to the building they were to infiltrate opened, and a human male in a white lab coat walked out.

"Are you even listening to me? Should I go get you a beer so you can think?"

Ecks just looked at him, and then nodded his head towards the sidewalk. "Behind you."

[Damon Frey]

"Yes, we're there, I understand that. What I'm telling you is, I can't just go 'hey I'm a doctor let me in', you know it doesn't work like that..."

It was hard for a person to frustrate Damon. He knew people, he knew what drove people to do and say things, and it was usually very easy to empathize with a person and see things from their perspective, but Ecks knew how to press the buttons. As bad as it irritated him at times, in the back of his mind, Damon knew this was part of the reason they were such good friends.

Ecks however, simply kept staring at him and repeated "Behind you..."

"Yes, Ecks, I KNOW, what I'm TRYING to..." Damon kept on, even as he turned to look behind him, "say is...oh, yeah, that could work..."

He stared at the doctor for a moment.

"Wrong guy or Angry Wookiee?"

[Ecks]

His face cracked with a rare smile. "Angry Wookiee is a personal favorite of mine."

Ecks looked away while Damon changed. He'd never specified that the Falleen shouldn't watch, and in fact never seemed to care, but watching the Shi'ido shift usually turned Ecks' stomach. The door of the speeder opened, and he turned to watch the big hairy alien stomp towards the doctor on an intercept course as the human walked closer to the speeder, still blissfully unaware.

Not for long, though.

[Damon Frey]

As the doctor walked along, Damon came up to him, waving his arms and pointing in different directions, letting out short confused grunts and acting as if he were desperately trying to find something.

"I don't....I'm not...I..."

Each time the doctor spoke, Damon got louder and more frantic, until finally he was shaking the doctor by the front of his lab coat and roaring loudly. Once it looked like the man was going to soil himself, Damon let him go, giving him a few parting roars as the man hit the ground and scrambled into a full blast run.

By the time Damon was back to the speeder, he'd fully changed his appearance to match up to the frightened doctor. Ecks was already getting out as Damon finished off the last of his disguise...clipping the ID card he'd lifted during the commotion onto his front pocket. He glanced back up to Ecks with a wry grin...

"Never fails. How do you want in?"

[Ecks]

"Fire escape entrance on the second floor." He could get into the emergency stairwell, but the interior doors were trickier, and usually alarmed. Damon would have to disable the alarm from the inside before popping it, something they'd already discussed inside Razor's Edge while they had gone over possible exit strategies.

Damon nodded, and they parted ways. Ecks walked around the back of the building, thankful to whoever had designed the landscaping around the big square building. The shrubs and trees grew close to the building, and he had plenty of cover for the few minutes it would take to slice into the emergency exit door.

He leaned against the wall, shielding what he was doing from anyone who might drive by and peer into the bushes, and inserted his hax card into the keycard slot. It ticked along silently, and after a minute the door clicked and cracked open.

Ecks pulled the card free, slipping it into an inside pocket, and ducked into the doorway. The lobby floor interior door greeted him, smooth and devoid of any handle or keycard slot. The bounty hunter walked quietly up the stairs towards the second floor.

[Damon Frey]

Getting into security central had been fairly uneventful. Security was pretty light, and the night staff barely raised an eye brow toward Damon. The lone security guard who was supposed to be watching the security monitors didn't even glance backward when the door behind him opened. Damon had a simple time just silently walking up behind the man and sticking him with a tranquilizer.

Damon was now disguised as the security guard and sitting down watching the monitors. He located Ecks, who had slipped in through the fire escape and was moving toward the second floor. Damon spoke through his 'implanted' commlink as he worked.

"I'm in security control, I'll start unlocking some doors for you. Alarms won't be a problem and there aren't many guards out and about. Working on finding our mark now..."

[Ecks]

"Got it," Ecks replied, checking carefully up the stairwell as he reached the second landing. After a minute the interior door clicked and pushed in towards him, and he snagged it with his thick fingertips. Blaster in hand Ecks pried the door open, making sure the hallway beyond was clear before slipping inside.

It was quiet in the hospital, no nurses on their rounds at the moment and all the patients securely hidden away. He had a general idea of what wing the mark was supposed to be in, and made his way there, blaster set on stun in case anyone jumped out at him. The blueprints had been accurate, and the bounty hunter didn't have any trouble finding his way through the fluorescent lit halls.

A far away scream reached his ears, but it was just background noise in a place like this.

[Damon Frey]

"Looks like our mark is in isolation room three alpha ten, some security in that wing, I'll figure out a distraction."

Damon sorted through the various cells on that wing. Toward the end of the wing, there was a room with an Ithorian that was adorned with a variety of plants, presumably to make for a more soothing environment. Damon found the nearby comm and punched in the code for the 3 alpha wing.

"We have a problem in three alpha thirty two, one of the plants is blocking the security camera view, can you two make sure everything is quiet in there and move it?"

An affirmative chirped back to him and Damon watched the two security guards head back down the hall way until they reached the room. The timing was perfect, as Ecks had just reached the entrance to the wing. Damon unlocked the door to the room and the two guards went inside, one to move the plant, the other to make sure the Ithorian didn't cause trouble. Once both guards were inside, Damon shut them in and locked the door. Damon picked up the security comm again.

"I'm not sure what you two just did, but the door is malfunctioning, I'm getting maintenance down over there now, just try not to mess with anything else"

With a bit of a grin, Damon unlocked the door on room ten.

[Ecks]

Ecks knew he couldn't sneak around in the shadows, even if there had been any to hide in - he was just too big. But under the bright institutional lights he felt especially exposed.

There weren't any guards about, thanks to Damon, and he found room three alpha ten easily enough. The door was unlocked, and he opened it slowly, not wanting to spook the occupant.

The room was dark, nearly pitch black, and the light from the hallway stabbed inside, illuminating a blank grey wall. Ecks closed the door most of the way, but didn't let it latch, and located a light switch. A dim overhead light came on, carefully mounted behind shatterproof transparisteel in the ceiling.

[Llewelyn Voss]

It was empty.

e
   m

        p

 t

       y.



Except for the shadows that were at home here, in the dark, but they all looked alike and weren't of any comfort. They were too bleak and bent with sorrow to have room for empathy and they never bothered with conversation; she didn't think they even had voices to speak with. Such petty, bitter creatures - of what use would harmonics be to them? Mouths, yes, mouths they could use, and did. They lapped at the air spitefully and snatched at noises with greedy, starving fingers of black, driven mad by the inability to create that made thieves of the lot of them.

She liked to blow words at them, liked the sharp feel of consonants against her lips that softened with gentle vowels until at last they were light enough to take flight with an exhalation.

Hello.


               Seven.


                                      Oppulenc e.


                          Abso


             7

                   lute


VII


                         Do you hear me?


She was here, too. She'd been here for yearsandyearsandyears or maybe only a day. Maybe only a minute. It was hard to say.

It's hard to say, she blew the words up and away and watched them float in the space above her head until they dissolved, every last crumb eaten.

Something clicked. It creaked, it scraped, it hummed.

What's that? There was a furious rush of wind, myriads of wings beating in terrified flight; the shadows were scattering. What's that, what's that, what'sthatwhatisthat?

In the center of the room, strapped on a simple, durasteel table, the woman opened her eyes. Her skin was so pale it had taken on the bluish tint of the veins that ran beneath it, blending almost seamlessly into the stark white gown that covered her body.

She smiled. The lights were on.

"You're late," Llewelyn Voss accused the ceiling. She would have liked to look up but her head was held immobile by a thick restraint band that wrapped across her forehead. No matter; only one being would have flipped the magic switch. "What took you so long?"

[Ecks]

"Your note took a while to translate."

Ecks took a few long strides to the side of the table, and looked down at the bald woman. She was even scrawnier than before, if that was possible. He looked over the restraints and then holstered his blaster pistol, big hands reaching out and undoing the thick bands. "You look awful."

The last restraint fell away, and he scooped her up, cradling her against his chest as though she was a child.

[Damon Frey]

"Get her out of here, I'll make sure everything's unlocked and friendly."

With Ecks carrying the girl out, Damon went about the business of keeping unlocked doors in front of them, and guards well away from them. The process was a fairly simple affair, and he rounded it off with a message to the two guards still sitting in the cell with the sleeping Ithorian.

"Maintenance should be there in just a few more minutes, hold tight"

With that, Damon moved over to a nearby console and started shutting down cameras. Once the entire complex was blind, he made a quick stop to pull the security recordings for that night and made his way out. While Ecks would have to take another exit out, Damon had the luxury of being able to walk right out the front door, which left him with 'bring the speeder around' duty. As he made his way back to the front lobby, he took a second to hit the night shift receptionist with a tranquilizer dart, if nothing else, so she'd be groggy the next day when questioned about what had happened. With that taken care of, Damon walked out and started on his way back to the speeder.

[Llewelyn Voss]

"It wasn't a note. It was a map. With words."

A slight hand reached up and patted Eck's cheek, to forceful to be considered affectionate but too languid to carry much censure with it. Llewelyn pressed her face against the Falleen's chest and screwed her eyes shut. They felt naked and vulnerable in the bright corridor.

"You haven't been exfoliating," she breathed a sad little puff of air against his skin. "Your pores are lonely because you've abandoned them. Left."

Without looking up, Llewelyn lifted one of her arms and pointed with her ring finger. Someone coughed; it sounded like a gunshot and she hissed at the ringing it left in her ears. "Shhh."

[Ecks]

He frowned a little at her speech - her words seemed disjointed. What had they been doing to her? He was covered from head to toe with scales.

"We're leaving," he said as softly as he could, shifting her weight slightly in his arms before walking down the hallway. She mumbled, putting a finger to his lips, and he carefully pulled her hand away from his face, tucking it between them. An adjoining passage took him to an exterior wall with a window in it.

"This will be noisy," he rumbled, covering her exposed ear with one hand while he shot the locked window with his blaster.

[Damon Frey]

So much for unlocking the doors for him... Damon rolled his eyes a bit as he brought the speeder around. Luckily he'd disabled all the alarms, or they'd be making a hot getaway. He brought the speeder to a quick stop a few meters away and hopped over into the passenger side.

"Took you long enough."

[Llewelyn Voss]

The blaster shot, despite it's muffled reverb, made Llewelyn jerk like a ragdoll. She opened her eyes just enough to narrow them again at Ecks.

"These are new," she tugged on one earlobe. "You can't run before you walk. Walllllk. Oh, the poor little 'l'. He gets ignored, too."

Blinking sadly, Llewelyn reached a hand out to cup at the space above her, cradling an invisible entity in the palm of her hand. Her pupils dilated and constricted over and over in a violent dance that had no predictable rhythm, though the condition didn't seem to cause much discomfort if the giddy grin that slipped across the woman's face as they thundered down the fire escape were to be taken as an indication.

Llewelyn let her fingers spread, wriggling them a little. Her eyes tracked a spot through the air, following it over Ecks' shoulder.

"Goodbye," she said in a flat, solemn voice.

        l
              l
          l

The L waved and she squeezed her eyes shut tight so she wouldn't have to watch him leave.

"Took you long enough."

That was a new voice. It tickled.

"Oh, good," Llewelyn let out a relieved breath. "I was worried we were taking too long."

[Ecks]

Ecks put Llewelyn carefully in the backseat, and then sat behind the wheel. He looked at Damon. "There's something wrong with her." After a moment he amended, "Wrong-er."

Pulling away from the building he took a direct route that would take them over a bridge and straight to the spaceport. They weren't hanging around on Corellia any longer than necessary.

[Damon Frey]

Damon barely glanced over, keeping his eyes forward and his voice quiet. Ecks could see the shi'ido's brows were drawn into a hard line.

"You're right about that. Could be medication, could be isolation...probably both."

Damon's voice dripped with hardly restrained irritation. The job had come off smoothly, but something was very wrong, not just with the girl's actions, but the whole situation concerning her. He couldn't place what it was, but every cell in his body screamed at him. He broke his forward stare, glancing over to Ecks.

"We need to get off this rock...quickly."

[Llewelyn Voss]

Llewelyn sprawled gracelessly on her back across the bench seat, pressing one bare sole flat against the window while her other leg flopped into the footwell and tapped a static beat. She hummed along tunelessly, eerie windfalls of tone that hung in the air like a clammy mist.

"Sticks and stones will break their bones but words will gouge their ey-es out," she sang, fingers dancing along the back of Ecks's seat. With a grunt, the tiny woman sat up; for a moment it seemed as though she would topple over again, so violent was the hem and haw motion of her torso, but Llewelyn held fast and it settled into a gentler pendulumic movement.

"East by east by east," though she was clearly not lucid, the chosen tone was unmistakably an order. "We'll tell them we're going north." Llewelyn paused, brow creasing in an unhappy frown. "I said: we'll tell them we're going NORTH." She rolled her eyes and rested her chin on one of the Falleen's broad shoulders. "Sometimes it's confusing."

don't find us, you can't you can't. don't
                worry

                    about


                            them

everything

            is
                      fine,
                                   situation
                                             norma l

"There," Llewelyn reached over to pat the top of Damon's head . "Time. It's a gift. Use it wisely, before it runs away."

[Ecks]

"North, right." Ecks didn't take his eye off the road, but he could see Llewelyn's hand out of the corner of his eye, patting Damon's head.

"I'm beginning to agree with you," he said to the Shi'ido, whipping the speeder around a corner and onto the bridge. "Put your seat belt on, Voss."

He kept their speed at just above the legal limit, not drawing attention to them by driving too slow for traffic norms. The spaceport was coming up, and they could be airborne in less than half an hour.

[Damon Frey]

Time. The girl in the backseat wasn't losing her mind, it was already gone. Somewhere deep inside the madness though, there was some clarity. Whether it was her intention or not, the little tap on the noggin that she'd given Damon sent his mind rolling. It was hard to pinpoint while it was happening, but he realized that he was acting out of character for himself. Normally, he kept his cool, even when emotion or nervousness started chipping away at him. Working with a partner took a measure of control away from him. This introduced variables, unknowns. In focusing on those sorts of things, other details would be missed. Damon knew something was off, he could feel it, and he let that drive him, but acting off of pure instinct wasn't always the best course, and the source of some of those feelings were starting to show themselves.

They were almost to the spaceport now, and some of the usual hustle and bustle was visible. Damon glanced around to the backseat then over to Ecks...

"Did you bring clothing for her?"

[Ecks]

"Under your seat." The Falleen kept driving while Damon handed the bundle over to Voss. Hopefully she knew what to do with them - or the Shi'ido was going to have to get back there and help her.

Ecks tried to block out his passengers for the time being while he concentrated on driving, his heavy brow furrowed as traffic began to thicken around them. "Almost there," he said, turning into the spaceport's main drive, the speeder close to the ground and slowing down to an acceptable speed.

[Llewelyn Voss]

The utilitarian jumpsuit was so ugly that Llewelyn couldn't help but let out a defeated puff of air as she grasped the bundle and tugged it from Damon's grasp, her hands like scuttling crabs as they darted across the fabric and explored it's clasps and zippers.

Still, it didn't smell like small rooms and fearful sweat and malicious smiles. It was cool to the touch and carried the industrious scent of engine oil, of dark stars and far, far away.

"Magic suit," Llewelyn whispered, nuzzling the material with her cheek. Without hesitation she yanked the flimsy hospital gown that marked her as a patient over her head and flung into the front seat with no small amount of glee. Unabashed in all her brazenly nude glory, Llewelyn threaded her hollow-thin, bruised body into the outfit; it hung off her frame and, with her hauntingly large eyes and gaunt face, gave her the appearance of a woman melting, as a lit candle left for too long unattended.

"We're in disguise, aren't we, boys?" She said in a low, gravelly tone of conspiracy. "Adaptability, that's the key. Don't alert the watchtower."

[Damon Frey]

Damon couldn't help but crack a grin. Voss might have been completely off her rocker, but her situational awareness, it seemed, was still fairly sharp.

"Alright, we're almost home free, but we still need to be careful. I think we can probably pass her off as a maintenance worker, but Ecks, I'm sorry buddy, you stick out like a sore thumb."

Damon gave Voss a quick once over. Her bald frame and rail thin body with that jump suit could easily make her look like a smaller male, especially from a distance.

"Do you trust her?"

Ecks gave Damon a quick nod. No raised eyebrows, no half shrug, it was a firm affirmation that signaled to Damon that Ecks' trust for her was more than a casual thing. If Ecks could be depended on for one thing, it was his selection of friends, and Damon knew this. Feeling secure in this, Damon shifted his appearance to a male slightly larger than Voss, with the same type of jumpsuit. While he'd normally present himself a bit larger in this situation, he hoped that his choice in size would make her appear a bit larger, increasing the effectiveness of her disguise.

"Alright, here's my idea. I take her in, and hopefully we can get mixed up in a crowd, then we'll sneak onto the ship. Once we're free and clear, I'll give you the go ahead, and you come on in and get us the hell off this rock."

[Ecks]

Ecks grunted, pulling the speeder into the lot to return the rental, and turned it off. It rocked softly on its repulsors as he twisted to look at Voss, who stared back at him unblinkingly. He didn't like the idea of leaving her in Frey's care, but he'd known Damon for years.

He trusted him.

Breaking the eye contact with Llewelyn, he turned to the Shi'ido, who looked a little like her now, which was unsettling. "Fine. Keep your comm open. If anything gets weird I'll be there quick." Ecks looked over his shoulder at the woman. "Go with Damon. He'll keep you safe and get you to Razor's Edge. I will be right behind you."

[Llewelyn Voss]

Llewelyn nodded sharply. The bustling activity of the spaceport seemed to have triggered some sort of change in the woman's behavior, absorbing the manic ups and downs and easing her onto a plane of relative stability, as though it's crowded energy were enough for the both of them.

"I like him," she informed Ecks lowly. She turned to look at Damon and repeated herself, voice rising in volume. "I like you. Your words are pink and dance like glitterbugs. Such friendly little diamonds."

A smile split her sombre face, disappearing in the next instant as she glanced out at the pedwalk. "Onward, ho."

[Damon Frey]

Getting through the spaceport was a pretty easy affair. Aside from just randomly bumping into people, and Damon's own nervous mind doing wonders to his nerves, they made it to the Razor's Edge without any real impetus. Once inside, Voss went her own way while Damon made his way toward the pilot's cabin. While he went about getting the ship ready to take off, Damon grabbed his commlink, gave Ecks the all clear, then tossed it over to the side.

[Ecks]

Ecks was done returning the speeder to the rental agency when he got the call from Frey. He made his way into the spaceport proper through a side entrance, still a busy place despite the late hour. Commerce and tourism never slept, and Corellia was not exactly a quiet little hamlet in the Outer Rim.

He made it to the ship without incident, and closed up the hatch behind him. Razor's Edge was warmed up and ready to go, and Damon lifted her off the pad once he knew Ecks was aboard.

The big Falleen poked his head into the living area to find it empty, and then walked to his cabin looking for Voss.

[Llewelyn Voss]

Bed.

No, it wasn't called that here. Bunk. That was the word. Like a little lump where dreams were born. Only this one didn't have straps that could tangle them up. That was good; woven fibres couldn't differentiate between nightmares and dreams. They trapped everything and kept them too close to thin skin and vital organs. It was a health hazard.

Llewelyn lay down, arms and legs straight and stiff in a decent imitation of a board. The bunk was softer than the one she'd been tethered to.

"I suppose you need something ergonomic," she said, mere seconds before Ecks walked in. "But it's so empty. It's so empty in here. Can't you feel how empty it is? Like a river."

She sat up, fixing him with a keen stare.

"You saw her and you didn't turn away. She's grateful."

[Ecks]

Ecks looked down at her, such a scrawny little thing. But her face was familiar, if not beautiful, and he always remembered how she had looked lit up by the green lights of the console in the cockpit. Falleen-like.

Her skin was thin and stretched over her bones, and he reached out, his thick fingered hand gently touching her cheek with the back of one finger. "I will always see you. We are a team."

[Damon Frey]

Shortly after the jump to hyperspace, Damon stopped by the refresher and took a quick look in the mirror. The mission hadn't required very much in the way of shapeshifting, so he found himself carrying a bit more mass than usual. While it didn't show outwardly, Damon probably outweighed Ecks right now. His face went soft for a moment, and he shifted it to one of the few faces that he kept in memory specifically for use when he was onboard the Razor's Edge. Early on in their partnership, Damon found it was best to make himself look as familiar as possible to Ecks. The falleen didn't startle easily, but when he did the consequences were rarely pleasant.

Damon made his way out of the refresher and moved into the living area where he found Ecks and Voss in what appeared to be a moment. He cleared his throat softly to get Ecks' attention then took one more step in.

"Looks like we got out clean, although there was a lot of activity on the ground shortly after we took off. Imperial activity...the alias we used on this one is probably good and useless now..."