![[I saw three ships]](../img/2010icon.png)
Getting bitten by a client, Eliot thought, was probably a low point in his work for Nate so far.
"Hey," one of the other orderlies—Brett—exclaimed, and ran over to grab Ms. Jennings' shoulders. "I've got her, tighten the straps!"
Eliot really hated tying up people who were a) on his side and b) small enough that he felt he shouldn't have to incapacitate them. But a job was a job, and however much he hated it, he was playing the "mental hospital orderly" part and not doing his job would get people suspicious.
"Hey, hey, hey," he said as he strapped her to her chair. "No biting, okay?"
"Don't try to talk to this one," Brett said as he let go and went to pick up a syringe from the cart. "She's intractable. Hasn't cooperated at all since she's been in. Here, one sec." He avoided getting headbutted and jabbed Alice in the shoulder with the syringe of tranquilizer.
Eliot tried not to scowl at him as Alice's head slumped, and turned his attention to his wrist. She'd broken the skin, but not badly. Probably bruise, though. Brett gave him a once-over. "Let's get that swabbed," he said nonchalantly. Eliot nodded, and waited until Brett had turned to get the first aid box.
"I'm here to help you," he said to Alice.
"Fuck you," she said.
Well, Eliot figured, that was a start.
"Alice Jennings was arrested for shoplifting," Hardison laid out when they started the case. "She's diagnosed bipolar, but hasn't been taking her meds since she ran out of money for scrips. Judge involuntarily committed her to Belbridge Institutional Treatment Facility."
"And she can't get released into her cousin's custody?" Sophie asked. Alice's cousin, Cathy, had been the one to come to them in the first place.
"Naw, see, Cathy's nineteen and living in a dorm room, so she can't take custody, and Alice doesn't have any other living family. So until they release her, she's stuck."
Nate frowned thunderously. "The mental hospitals in Massachusetts are all short on beds and space, though. Why force a woman into one when she doesn't need treatment?"
"Dunno," Hardison said. "What else is hinky, though, is her treatment regimen. They've got her on massive doses of anti-psychotics and tranquilizers."
"For bipolar disorder?" Parker asked. Eliot shot her a glance. She was staring intently at the screen. "That's wrong. She should be on a combination mood stabilizer and antidepressant." She noticed that everyone was looking at her. "What?"
"Uh, your extracurricular research aside," Nate said, "That's still a lot, right?"
"Five hundred milligrams of Chlorpromazine a day?" Hardison said, "Yeah. That's a lot."
"Okay," Nate said. "Let's find out what the good people of Belbridge Institutional Treatment Facility are up to. And then let's go steal a diagnosis."
"She bit me," Eliot reported his first day back from the hospital.
"Damn," Hardison said from the dining nook. He looked up from his computer and grinned. "Feisty."
"It's not just her, it's all of the patients," Eliot said. "They tranq all of them when they show the slightest bit of energy. It's disgusting."
"Yeah," Hardison said. "Um, hey…"
Eliot glared at him. "What?"
"Did you give any more thought to, um, the thing?"
Eliot raised an eyebrow, then looked around to make sure they were alone, then looked around again to make sure they were really alone and Parker wasn't hiding somewhere, and said, "Hardison, I don't want to have a threesome with you and Parker."
Hardison just looked hurt, which was unfair, because seriously, who asks to start sleeping with a guy you have to depend on to punch people to keep them from killing you? That was just asking for serious trouble.
"Can we not talk about this during the job?" he finally said as a compromise.
"Yeah, okay," Hardison said. He unscrewed the top of his orange soda and took a swig. "Okay."
Eliot made out Nate's footsteps in the hall a moment before the door opened. "Our client," he said without preamble, "says her cousin has to be out of the hospital by this weekend."
"This week—why?" Hardison asked.
"She wouldn't say," Nate said. "Hardison, you sure you didn't find anything in her financials, her background?"
"Nate, she doesn't have any financials," Hardison said. "She's got a pile of unpaid student loans and couldn't even pay for her mood stabilizers."
"TOLD YOU!" Parker said from the couch.
Eliot gave her a look. "Okay," he said. "Alice has been red-tagged in the system. She and about ten other patients. I haven't figured out what that means yet. And some of their orderlies? Spetsnaz."
Hardison gave him a blank look. "Lemme guess, they have a very distinctive mental-patient-tranquilizing technique?"
"Yeah. And tattoos, and dog tags."
"So they're hiding something, and our client might know what," Nate said. "Okay, guys, time to research their scam. Eliot, keep your eyes open. Hardison, try to find out what connects those ten red-tagged patients. Parker, clear out the office." He smiled at them. "Sophie and I are going to see to a judge."
That night, Eliot dreamed of running.
Parker sat down across from him at breakfast, crossed her arms, and said, "You don't think Hardison's sexy because he's a geek?"
Eliot paused with his spoonful of oatmeal halfway to his mouth, thought for as long as he figured he could before Parker went for his throat or his wallet, and said, "It's not anything like that."
"Okay," she said, bobbing her head in a nod.
Before she could ask, he held out a reassuring hand and swiftly said, "It's not you, either."
"Okay," she said again.
Eliot swallowed hard, pulled his hand back. Parker was still staring at him. Very slowly, he took a bite of oatmeal.
Parker frowned a bit, then said, "Do you need medication?"
Eliot bit down on his spoon and winced. "Nff! Mm—" he swallowed. "No!"
"Because I could steal you some."
"Parker, I don't think there are any non-tranquilizer drugs in that hospital," he deflected. "Don't steal me anything."
"Okay," she agreed, then scooted off and vanished.
Eliot buried his head in his hands.
"Nothing," Hardison said that evening.
"They have nothing in common?"
"Nope," Hardison said, "Except they're all too poor or too unlucky to get out of there. They don't even share pre-hospitalization diagnoses. Half of 'em have a scattering of psych visits, the other half completely clean slates."
"Arrrrrgh," Eliot growled. He'd been edgy all day. The Spetsnaz guys had been giving him the eye, and he had enough sense not to try to start something, but his nerves were prickling. He'd taken a run at lunch, and rifled through as many files as he could to get information for Hardison, and now it'd come to nothing.
He needed to spar with someone to take the edge off. That or find someone to fuck. The last time he'd tried to source a hookup Hardison had found his Craigslist ad, though, which had led to their current awkward predicament.
"You… okay, man?"
"Fine," he said. He wasn't fine, he was horny and anxious and thinking about what Hardison looked like shirtless and the way he smelled and the way Parker's hands were so strong.
"I'm gonna go for a jog," he said, and ignored the way Hardison looked disappointed.
The next day didn't get better.
"You getting anywhere on that judge?" he snapped over the comms.
"Mmm, figuring out the source of the blackmail doesn't help if we don't know why he's being blackmailed," Sophie said. "Anything there?"
"Nothing," Eliot said. "I mean, no caches of illegal weapons, no drugs besides the tranquilizers, and we know where they're going. And no weird cleaning supplies." He looked around the storeroom again. "Except they have a couple jars of some black powder down here. Um… what's 'lunar caustic'?"
"Silver nitrate, I think?" Hardison said over the comm. "Used to be used as a sterilizer. Here, yeah, Wikipedia says—"
"Is it dangerous?" Eliot cut him off.
"Not… really, I mean, if you wanted to mess with someone the tranqs would do a better job."
"Just keep your eyes out," Nate ordered.
Eliot punched the wall, then looked around to make sure none of the other orderlies were around. He was getting careless. He was seriously thinking about starting a fight just to take his mind off things.
Which was when an alarm started going off, so that was a good distraction. "What's going on?" he asked Brett.
"Security breach," Brett said. "One of the patients trying to escape again. C'mon, follow me."
Eliot trotted at his heels and frowned. "Hardison, you getting this?" he subvocalized.
"Yeah, and I'm looking at their security footage—there's someone busting up from the basement. Hey, they must have the basement on a separate feed, I haven't been able to get into it from the other CCTV circuit. Eliot, I'm gonna need your help with that, okay?"
"Later," he said. He and Brett rounded a corner and saw the guy. Six-two and a wiry kind of muscular, with a big bushy blond beard and wild hair. He was facing them, ready to pounce, and he leapt out with fists flailing as soon as they saw him.
Brett blocked one arm, Eliot pinned the other, and in a tenth of a second the guy was on his back with Eliot's knee in his stomach. Brett yanked out one of the ubiquitous tranquilizer syringes and shot the guy up as he spit and growled at them.
It took two full syringes before the guy finally sagged to the ground. Brett stood up, wiped his forehead off, and nodded in Eliot's direction. "Nice grab."
Eliot had to suppress the sudden urge to punch him in the face. Instead he accepted the hand up, wrinkling his nose at the stench of sweat and the traces of douchebag cologne Brett was wearing. "That's the job, man."
The door to the basement opened and Dr. Roehl, the head of the facility, stepped into the hallway. He was a skinny guy, fiftyish, salt-and-pepper hair and a constantly constipated expression. He frowned at the two of them and adjusted his glasses. "Good, you caught him," he said. "Damn nuisance smashed up a ton of glassware and the console for the NMR. We're going to have to replace all of it."
Eliot attempted to look dumb and innocent. Brett scowled. Roehl nodded at the patient. "Pick him up and lock him down. And you—" he pointed at Eliot, "You know how to use the supply catalogue? We need more Chlorpromazine."
Eliot crammed down his anger and nodded, turned away from Brett lugging the unconscious man onto his shoulders, turned away from the red-hot urge to tear the both of them apart just to—
The rest of work was kind of a blur. He stormed into the apartment later that evening, walked up to Hardison, and announced, "Okay."
"I, buh—" Hardison stammered. "What about 'not on the job' and 'not with teammates' and—"
"I don't know what it is about that place, man," Eliot said, "But it is driving me insane, and as long as we're not going to get weird about it—"
"I'm not weird," Hardison said defensively.
Eliot stepped around right up next to him, right in his personal space, and just breathed in—Hardison smelled like geek, gummi frogs and orange soda and dust remover.
"Yay!" Parker said, and pounced on his back. "Okay, we need to go to your apartment. Alec's is full of junk an we can't use mine."
Eliot hitched her legs under his arms and blinked in Hardison's direction. Hardison was grinning at him. "Uh, okay," Eliot said. "Yeah. Fine. Let's go."
It was, he guessed, a cheezy plot to get him to invite them to his apartment so they could criticize his furniture. "Man, I thought you'd have a sofa or something," Hardison said, looking around the mostly-bare room. "What, no teevee, no chairs—"
"Big bed," Parker said, then flopped on it.
"I don't need more in a studio," Eliot pushed Hardison toward Parker, and the bed. "C'mon."
"Oh, you're so hot when you're pushy," Hardison said, pulling his shirt off.
"I like the growly voice," Parker said. "C'mon, do the growly voice again."
He climbed after them, and the rest of the evening dissolved into flashes of sensation—Alec's skin under his fingertips, Parker's hair brushing over his eyes, taste of sweat, fingers pressing into him, tongue licking out and tasting. Eventually he stopped trying to hold it together, just let himself let go.
"Jesus," Alec said when they were all laying there panting and sweaty. "This was a better idea than I thought. You get rowdy, don'tcha?"
"Mmmf," Eliot said. His head was slowly clearing, and he pushed himself up to a sitting position and looked around. "Where'd Parker go?"
"Oh, she does that, after—creeped me the hell out the first time, let me tell you, but that's just—hey, you okay?"
"Yeah, I think so."
It wasn't okay, not really—this wasn't him. He didn't invite people back to his apartment, even people from his team, even people he trusted. He didn't sleep with people on his team. He didn't turn his brain off for anyone.
"Uh…" Alec was looking at him sideways. "I can let myself out, if you—"
"Hey," Eliot said, clapping him on the shoulder, because if there was anything he wanted less than to keep feeling like this, it was to rip the team up because he'd made a terrible fuckup. "Thanks."
"Yeah, hey, 'scool," Alec said. "Don't worry, we won't be weird."
"Cool."
After Hardison left, Eliot flopped back on his sweaty, lube-covered sheets, closed his eyes, and fell asleep at once.
He dreamed of running—through the city, out into the suburbs, through parks, tracking squirrels and waking ducks and rolling in the grass and feeling alive and free.
Of course, waking up on a park bench naked except for a sheet—which wasn't his—wasn't worth the dream.
"The… fuck?" he said.
It was early enough that the sun wasn't quite up—and it was freezing. He was completely alone. Everything was quiet and still.
Shivering, he wrapped himself in the sheet and wondered how the hell he was supposed to get home.
He wound up making a sort of makeshift toga and walking the five miles back to his apartment. By the time he was slipping the bolt on his window and climbing back in, the sun was up and it was starting to get warm.
When he found his earpiece, Hardison was already talking. "I've checked the security feeds, and all the cameras in the area I can find, but nothing's caught her, so we're just going to have to—"
"Guys?" Eliot cut in.
"Eliot, where are you?" Nate asked.
"I think I was drugged," Eliot said. "I woke up in a park on a bench. Somehow, those guys at the hospital got to me."
"Well, where are you now?"
Eliot looked around his apartment. "Home. For now. I'm gonna have to burn this location."
"Well, get your stuff together and come by my place," Nate said. "Alice Jennings is missing."
Eliot didn't own more than would fit into a duffel bag, so he threw the contents of his life together, left a note for the landlord, and dropped the keys in the middle of the room. Parker and Hardison were all business when he got to Nate's place, at least.
"Alice and three of the other red-tagged patients busted out last night," Hardison said. "What happened to you?"
"Not sure," Eliot said. "They might have slipped me something at the hospital, or they could have followed me. I'm missing like six hours and they dumped me in public."
"Do you feel like you could go back to work today?" Nate said.
Something violent and angry inside Eliot turned over and growled satisfaction. "Oh, yeah," he said.
Nate was looking at him funny. "Because if we send you in, it'll be as bait."
"I don't think they're ready for this bait," he said. "Not if I'm ready for them."
"Okay," Nate said. "Here's the plan."
The plan, Eliot figured after thirty seconds through the door of Belbridge Institutional Treatment Facility, was not surviving contact with the enemy.
"I told you he got bitten," Brett the Spetsnaz orderly said to his boss. The other three orderlies that Eliot had tagged were hovering just at the edge of his vision, but he could hear their footsteps, could keep track of them in the cramped space of the locker room where they were having this conversation.
"I believe you're right," Dr. Roehl said. He nodded at his staff. "Sedate him and move him to the secure facility."
Eliot was moving before he finished his sentence. Elbow to the throat stopped the guy coming from his left. He ducked a couple of swift punches, headbutted goon number two. The fight became his focus—four of them, one of him, he counted seconds that each landed blow bought him and braced himself for each punch that landed. He was faster than these guys, but they hit hard.
Two of them were lying on the floor moaning and he was facing off with orderly number three when Brett threw a bucket of what looked like water over his head and suddenly his skin was on fire.
"See?" Brett said. "Toldya we should have started with the silver."
Eliot was still trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about when the sedative sent him spinning off into blackness.
"I think he's waking up."
Eliot breathed in slowly. He was in an enclosed space, or at least one packed with people. He could smell sweat and anxiety, but under that something familiar, like the smell of the field next to his house he used to lie down in on summer evenings.
Brushing away that bizarre bit of sense-memory, Eliot cracked his eyes open and looked around.
There were seven other people jammed in with him. He was lying on the only cot in the room. Three of the walls were featureless supporting walls and the fourth was a stout row of steel bars. He couldn't see out without moving, but there seemed to be a pretty decent space beyond the gate.
"Welcome back," one of the women said.
Eliot rubbed his eyes and sat up—and recognized her, vaguely. "Hey, you're a patient here." He looked around "All of you are. You're the rest of the red-tagged group?"
"Got it in one," the woman—Zola, that was her name—said. "Welcome to the club."
"What are we doing here?" He tried to get a look at the room, then checked his ear. No earbud. "We have to get out of here."
"Our thoughts exactly," someone else said. He recognized the blond guy that had unsuccessfully tried to break out earlier—who he and Brett had put down. Eliot winced, and the guy smirked at him. "No hard feelings. It's Michael, by the way."
"Michael. Zola, we've met, sort of," Eliot said. "I'm Eliot."
"So who the hell are you?" Zola asked.
Eliot pushed himself to his feet. "That's not important right now. We're here to take these guys down. The rest of my team is in the building, and those Spetsnaz guys are going to be after them."
A funny lurch happened in his stomach when he thought of Parker and Hardison getting cornered by Brett and the other orderlies. In a flash he was on his feet, pacing up and down in front of the gate, looking for weak points. Behind him, Zola cleared her throat. "Um… Eliot?"
"Eliot!" Parker said, popping up in front of the door.
He grabbed the bars next to her. "Parker!"
"This is fun!" she said, grinning and working a pick and a tension spring into the lock with a casual motion, like the way she ran her hands up Alec's leg while they were—Eliot shook his head to clear away that image. "Oh, hey, Hardison sent this."
It was a replacement comm. He popped it in his ear as Parker slid the door open. "Okay, cameras are go," Hardison was saying. "Parker?"
"Parker's with me," Eliot said.
"Eliot," Hardison said, and it was nice to hear the relief in his voice. "Good to hear from you, man. Look, Nate says—"
Eliot looked around. The other half of the room was some kind of laboratory—he remembered Roehl's comment about wrecked glassware, and there was a broken computer of some kind wheeled into a corner. There was also a pipe wrench as long as his arm leaning against a table. He picked it up and tested its weight. Perfect.
"Eliot, are you listening?"
"Keep the thugs busy, right?"
Hardison hesitated. "Yeah, but—"
Eliot swung the pipe wrench in a circle again, then sniffed. He could smell Brett's douchebag cologne, clear as day. "Just stay out of their way. I don't want to have to put your ass back together again."
Up out of the basement, the first person he saw was Brett. Brett turned around and saw him. Eliot spun the pipe wrench and grinned.
Which was when the doors busted open and armed agents poured in, yelling "Freeze! Interpol!" And Nate stepped to the head of the fray and took him by his arm and said, "Good work, agent." And Brett's look of wide-eyed terror as the Interpol agents led him away was almost as good as getting to bash his skull in. Almost.
"We need to talk," Nate said. "I think you should be sitting down."
"Turns out all my guesses were wrong," Nate said apologetically, as they sat around a table in the empty cafeteria after the Interpol agents had hauled all the Russians away and transferred the legitimate patients to other facilities. "There wasn't much of a scheme going on at all. They were just doing highly illegal testing on werewolves."
Eliot blinked a few times. "Werewolves?"
Alice Jennings was sitting next to her cousin Cathy, looking awkward, embarrassed, and much less medicated. She nodded apologetically. "Yeah… I'm sorry to get you into this."
Eliot squinted at her, turned to Sophie, since she was usually rational. "Werewolves?"
"Yeah, you know, full moon, allergic to silver," she said.
That wasn't helping. He turned to look at Hardison. "Werewolves?"
"Yeah, and hey, apparently you get the mutant healing factor, too. Useful for a tank." Hardison punched him in the shoulder, then looked worried and brushed at the spot. "Um. I mean."
Nate had brought up werewolves in the first place. Sophie and Hardison were no help. Finally, in desperation, he turned to Parker. "Werewolves?"
Parker was staring at him intently. After a moment, she said, "Do people smell different when you're a dog?"
"Wolf," Hardison corrected her.
Eliot buried his head in his hands.
"Hey, we can get you a collar!" Parker said.
"No, Parker," Hardison said. "This is not the time."
"So did you ever figure out what was up with your apartment?" Hardison asked when they got back to Nate's, after a long discussion with Alice and Cathy and a solemn promise from Eliot that he'd stay in touch. They'd given him a spool of silver wire and a vial of wolfsbane, which were supposed to help keep him from freaking out the next couple nights, and their email addresses, which would be great when he got something better than his phone for emailing on.
"I'll get a new one tomorrow," he said. "I'll just find a hotel tonight."
"Uh…" Hardison raised his hand, then looked around the apartment. Nate was still in the bar, and Sophie was thoughtfully keeping him company. "You know, you could crash at my place tonight."
"Yeeeah," Eliot hoisted the strap of his duffel onto his shoulder. "I don't think I'll be down for much 'action' until I get this thing figured out, thanks."
"No, I mean… we can help you out."
"I don't think my sex drive is the problem here."
Parker poked him in the ribs. "Don't be silly," she said. "We love you, doggie."
Eliot stared at her. She grinned, then wrested the duffel bag from him and hugged it to her chest. Hardison cleared his throat. "Uh, Parker, maybe you shouldn't—"
"C'mon," she said. "If we have to, we'll take turns staying up watching you."
"For the record," Hardison said, "'Doggie' was not my idea."
Eliot looked at Parker, then turned to look at Hardison, then couldn't help himself and started laughing at them both. At the three of them. Hell.
"Yeah, that's it," Hardison said. "C'mon, let's go."
blog comments powered by Disqus![[fin]](../img/2010banner.png){kind=small}