"Internment" chapter 6
Chapter six returns to lj with its hair combed and dialog smoothed.
Thanks methos_fan
Oh, and I have been negligent with the rating thing. Rated EP for excessive plotting.
"Internment" chapter 6
***
The Silver men:
We haven’t detected any quickenings, and all eight implants are still functioning.”
“Interesting. Our first subject must have chosen to let the new arrivals live. Perhaps the next group we procure should be interned with their swords.”
“Now that is an interesting idea.”
***
Joe Dawson slapped the polished surface of his Seacouver bar with his palm twice, and frowned at his drinking partner. “I don’t like it, Mac. Bringing the feds into this doesn’t seem like a good plan to me. What if they’re in on it?”
“It’s just Matthew McCormick I’m meeting with, not the Bureau.” MacLeod took another sip of his Scotch before continuing. “As an immortal he needs to know what’s happening. As an FBI agent he can get access to information that may help us find the immortals who’ve been taken.”
“I’ll contact Watcher Headquarters again, before I open the bar.”
“Joe, they’re not going to help.”
“They already have! If the watchers hadn’t confirmed your friends were picked up by troops we’d still be wondering what happened to them. You’ve got to understand, Mac, this is a new situation. Immortals becoming known to a government agency - this has to be handled delicately.”
“Delicately? Joe, I don’t think that’s an option. This group boldly took Robert and Gina in broad daylight, in France!”
“I know. The de Valicourts must have asked the right question, or the wrong one, depending on how you look at it.” Joe refilled their glasses.
“Aye. They must have ruffled the feathers of someone involved.” MacLeod swirled the amber whiskey in his glass, but didn’t drink. “I’m going to call Amanda, and ask her and Nick to check out the de Valicourt estate; see if they can retrieve any notes Robert and Gina left behind.”
“Amanda is really going to be pissed off when she hears about Michelle.”
MacLeod sighed. “Yeah. They should have been safe. All she and Sam were doing was making a little reconnaissance down into Oregon to look around where Methos had been kept a year ago. Last time I checked the area, the fence had been removed.”
Joe nodded. “There’s nothing there but forest now. Their watcher told me the kids were picked up by troops in a little place called Merlin.”
MacLeod continued his rant, “I really don’t understand why Walter and Claudia were taken either. All I did was ask them to keep an ear open. Do you think these agents are monitoring me?”
Joe shook his head. “I don’t know, Mac.” MacLeod was deep in a brown study, and all Joe could do to help was listen.
“Now Kira I can understand.”
Joe agreed, “Yeah, I don’t think there were six degrees of separation between her cadre and the men we want to find. More like one.”
“I should have been with her.”
“Since Methos isn’t here to say it, let me do it for him, ‘you’ve lost your mind!’ If you’d been with her, I’d be having this conversation by myself.”
MacLeod smiled weakly. “I have an even crazier idea. We’re up against an apparently well organized group with a long reach. We need someone who can find answers, but can defend herself. Someone with special abilities.”
“You crazy bastard, you’re thinking of Casandra!” MacLeod nodded. “You’re certifiable. I see how her ability to question people with her Voice would be ideal for dealing with spies and silver men, but Methos is the last person she’d be willing to help.”
“That’s why I haven’t asked for her help before. But now, it’s obviously more than about Methos. Eight immortals taken - that we know about. What sort of experiments are being performed on them? The mind boggles. Cassandra will help us.”
“If you say so, Mac.”
“You mentioned silver men, I don’t know that term.”
“Silver men are the people who appear to run the world. While behind the scenes the golden men secretly call the shots.”
“Sounds a little paranoid, Joe.”
“Yeah maybe. I guess working for a highly secret organization for thirty years has messed with my trusting nature.”
MacLeod’s laugh was brittle. “Mine too, Joe.”
A year of searching for clues that would lead to Methos’ kidnapers wore heavy on him. MacLeod was still determined, but he’d discovered that his mode as a spy was outdated. Sixty years ago he worked for British Intelligence during WWII. Back then he had the connections that would have at least supplied him with a list of players to scrutinize. But since the Fifties he’d dwelled outside those circles.
Amanda had been the wind change. Two months ago she and Nick came to visit him in Seacouver. He filled her in on his unsuccessful hunt, and she expressed her ire with him for not seeking their help. Then she staged a call-to-arms amongst their friends. Now, apparently, some of them were onto something, and it certainly would be nice if he knew what.
***
“Ouch!” Walter’s hand bled for a moment before a flash of his quickening healed the self-inflicted wound.
“You’re supposed to be peeling the log not yourself.” Robert commented with a smirk as he worked to remove bark from the other end of the log.
“It’s been centuries since I built a boat, and even then the tools weren’t as crude.” Walter replied.
“Just don’t mess up the inner bark, guys, we need all we can get.” Methos reminded them as he and Kyra carefully stripped inner bark from the last log that had already had its rough outer bark chiseled away. The strips of inner bark would be braided into rope for lashing the logs together.
Kyra muttered at Methos, “There’s no way the lashings are all going to hold when we toss this vessel over the cliff.”
“You’re probably right. We’ll have to make repairs in the sea.”
“After we drown.”
“Oh, but you swim like a fish child.”
“So do you old man. It’s the drowning at sea first that I’m aggrieved with.”
“I’m not thrilled with that part either.”
“None of us are.” Robert agreed. “An alternative is trying for the helicopter when they return. I can fly.”
“So can I.” Kyra offered.
Methos cleared his throat then said, “It may come to that if we fail to launch before our captors return.”
***
MacLeod winced as the tracking chip was injected into his arm.
“There.” McCormick grinned at him. “Now when they catch you, I’ll be able to track you down.”
“Don’t you mean if?”
McCormick just smiled.
They had met secretly at a small conference room in a public library of a Virginia suburb. While MacLeod related what he knew about the kidnaping of immortals, McCormick nodded repeatedly as though none of the facts were surprising him. And though he and McCormick were more acquaintances than friends, it was obvious that he took what MacLeod was telling him seriously. MacLeod felt confidant that enlisting the FBI agent had been a good choice.
Once they agreed on a strategy, the two immortals exchanged secretly routed email addresses and cell phone numbers. McCormick then requested, with Southern draw in evidence, “Keep me informed as best you can. I’m heading to the west coast. Please keep control of Amanda.”
MacLeod snorted. “That’s Nick’s job now. I’ll talk to them again when I arrive in Paris, but I’ll be heading for Edinburgh directly to meet with Cassandra.”
“I don’t know about this witch thing, MacLeod.”
“You’re old enough you shouldn’t have to worry about Cassandra taking advantage of you with her Voice. Once we find these 'golden men,' she can help us do something with them.”
“The silver men,” McCormick corrected. “We need to deal with the silver men. We really don’t want to know the golden men.”
MacLeod raised a eyebrow at that and smiled. “We’ll have to argue that detail later.”
Thanks methos_fan
Oh, and I have been negligent with the rating thing. Rated EP for excessive plotting.
"Internment" chapter 6
***
The Silver men:
We haven’t detected any quickenings, and all eight implants are still functioning.”
“Interesting. Our first subject must have chosen to let the new arrivals live. Perhaps the next group we procure should be interned with their swords.”
“Now that is an interesting idea.”
***
Joe Dawson slapped the polished surface of his Seacouver bar with his palm twice, and frowned at his drinking partner. “I don’t like it, Mac. Bringing the feds into this doesn’t seem like a good plan to me. What if they’re in on it?”
“It’s just Matthew McCormick I’m meeting with, not the Bureau.” MacLeod took another sip of his Scotch before continuing. “As an immortal he needs to know what’s happening. As an FBI agent he can get access to information that may help us find the immortals who’ve been taken.”
“I’ll contact Watcher Headquarters again, before I open the bar.”
“Joe, they’re not going to help.”
“They already have! If the watchers hadn’t confirmed your friends were picked up by troops we’d still be wondering what happened to them. You’ve got to understand, Mac, this is a new situation. Immortals becoming known to a government agency - this has to be handled delicately.”
“Delicately? Joe, I don’t think that’s an option. This group boldly took Robert and Gina in broad daylight, in France!”
“I know. The de Valicourts must have asked the right question, or the wrong one, depending on how you look at it.” Joe refilled their glasses.
“Aye. They must have ruffled the feathers of someone involved.” MacLeod swirled the amber whiskey in his glass, but didn’t drink. “I’m going to call Amanda, and ask her and Nick to check out the de Valicourt estate; see if they can retrieve any notes Robert and Gina left behind.”
“Amanda is really going to be pissed off when she hears about Michelle.”
MacLeod sighed. “Yeah. They should have been safe. All she and Sam were doing was making a little reconnaissance down into Oregon to look around where Methos had been kept a year ago. Last time I checked the area, the fence had been removed.”
Joe nodded. “There’s nothing there but forest now. Their watcher told me the kids were picked up by troops in a little place called Merlin.”
MacLeod continued his rant, “I really don’t understand why Walter and Claudia were taken either. All I did was ask them to keep an ear open. Do you think these agents are monitoring me?”
Joe shook his head. “I don’t know, Mac.” MacLeod was deep in a brown study, and all Joe could do to help was listen.
“Now Kira I can understand.”
Joe agreed, “Yeah, I don’t think there were six degrees of separation between her cadre and the men we want to find. More like one.”
“I should have been with her.”
“Since Methos isn’t here to say it, let me do it for him, ‘you’ve lost your mind!’ If you’d been with her, I’d be having this conversation by myself.”
MacLeod smiled weakly. “I have an even crazier idea. We’re up against an apparently well organized group with a long reach. We need someone who can find answers, but can defend herself. Someone with special abilities.”
“You crazy bastard, you’re thinking of Casandra!” MacLeod nodded. “You’re certifiable. I see how her ability to question people with her Voice would be ideal for dealing with spies and silver men, but Methos is the last person she’d be willing to help.”
“That’s why I haven’t asked for her help before. But now, it’s obviously more than about Methos. Eight immortals taken - that we know about. What sort of experiments are being performed on them? The mind boggles. Cassandra will help us.”
“If you say so, Mac.”
“You mentioned silver men, I don’t know that term.”
“Silver men are the people who appear to run the world. While behind the scenes the golden men secretly call the shots.”
“Sounds a little paranoid, Joe.”
“Yeah maybe. I guess working for a highly secret organization for thirty years has messed with my trusting nature.”
MacLeod’s laugh was brittle. “Mine too, Joe.”
A year of searching for clues that would lead to Methos’ kidnapers wore heavy on him. MacLeod was still determined, but he’d discovered that his mode as a spy was outdated. Sixty years ago he worked for British Intelligence during WWII. Back then he had the connections that would have at least supplied him with a list of players to scrutinize. But since the Fifties he’d dwelled outside those circles.
Amanda had been the wind change. Two months ago she and Nick came to visit him in Seacouver. He filled her in on his unsuccessful hunt, and she expressed her ire with him for not seeking their help. Then she staged a call-to-arms amongst their friends. Now, apparently, some of them were onto something, and it certainly would be nice if he knew what.
***
“Ouch!” Walter’s hand bled for a moment before a flash of his quickening healed the self-inflicted wound.
“You’re supposed to be peeling the log not yourself.” Robert commented with a smirk as he worked to remove bark from the other end of the log.
“It’s been centuries since I built a boat, and even then the tools weren’t as crude.” Walter replied.
“Just don’t mess up the inner bark, guys, we need all we can get.” Methos reminded them as he and Kyra carefully stripped inner bark from the last log that had already had its rough outer bark chiseled away. The strips of inner bark would be braided into rope for lashing the logs together.
Kyra muttered at Methos, “There’s no way the lashings are all going to hold when we toss this vessel over the cliff.”
“You’re probably right. We’ll have to make repairs in the sea.”
“After we drown.”
“Oh, but you swim like a fish child.”
“So do you old man. It’s the drowning at sea first that I’m aggrieved with.”
“I’m not thrilled with that part either.”
“None of us are.” Robert agreed. “An alternative is trying for the helicopter when they return. I can fly.”
“So can I.” Kyra offered.
Methos cleared his throat then said, “It may come to that if we fail to launch before our captors return.”
***
MacLeod winced as the tracking chip was injected into his arm.
“There.” McCormick grinned at him. “Now when they catch you, I’ll be able to track you down.”
“Don’t you mean if?”
McCormick just smiled.
They had met secretly at a small conference room in a public library of a Virginia suburb. While MacLeod related what he knew about the kidnaping of immortals, McCormick nodded repeatedly as though none of the facts were surprising him. And though he and McCormick were more acquaintances than friends, it was obvious that he took what MacLeod was telling him seriously. MacLeod felt confidant that enlisting the FBI agent had been a good choice.
Once they agreed on a strategy, the two immortals exchanged secretly routed email addresses and cell phone numbers. McCormick then requested, with Southern draw in evidence, “Keep me informed as best you can. I’m heading to the west coast. Please keep control of Amanda.”
MacLeod snorted. “That’s Nick’s job now. I’ll talk to them again when I arrive in Paris, but I’ll be heading for Edinburgh directly to meet with Cassandra.”
“I don’t know about this witch thing, MacLeod.”
“You’re old enough you shouldn’t have to worry about Cassandra taking advantage of you with her Voice. Once we find these 'golden men,' she can help us do something with them.”
“The silver men,” McCormick corrected. “We need to deal with the silver men. We really don’t want to know the golden men.”
MacLeod raised a eyebrow at that and smiled. “We’ll have to argue that detail later.”