The Price of Tea
Title: The Price of Tea
Author: whollyuncertain
Rating: T
Summary: And then Paris blows up. Rose/McCullen
Disclaimer: I'd like to live in your world if you actually think I do.
Author's Note: For challenge 56 of then_theres_us. G.I. Joe/Doctor Who crossover crack!fic that I totally blame on this video which was pretty much on repeat while I wrote. I wrote this fic in abouuut six hours on very little sleep, so that is my excuse, beyond the fact that the idea seemed amusing and I wanted to do Eccleston roles instead of Tennant. It was originally going to be Bilborough/Rose from Cracker but I do actually have a different WIP about that so I decided to save it and go the dumb Hollywood movie way.
+
"James McCullen," he'd said, holding out his hand in a perfectly innocent gesture that had her dropping her champagne glass, getting half a year's worth of an average person's salary all over his equally expensive shoes.
Even as she'd said, "Doctor?", in a small voice that was feeble-y echoing from the other side of a tunnel in her head, she knew it wasn't. The Doctor he so resembled wouldn't have been caught dead wearing one of those suits and had lacked enough hair to be slicked back. She wasn't even sure if people still wore cravats these days, but obviously this man was in the throes of trying to bring it back into fashion. Actually, Rose had had to admit. He was doing a pretty good job.
Then came the accent, "No, not a doctor, I'm afraid. Quite the opposite, actually." Scottish. He was Scottish. "Are you feeling all right?"
She hadn't felt all right, as a matter of fact. Her head had felt light and she'd wanted to cry, or begin exhibiting whatever extreme emotion she was allowed to for the moment, but she'd forced herself to nod and smile the way she'd been taught, politely and carefully and giving nothing away. "Sorry," she'd said, trying to ignore the sparks going up her arm at the touch of his fingers. "I ruined your shoes."
"They'll be a fine vintage, I'm sure, Miss..."
"Tyler," she'd spluttered inelegantly, all the decorum and class melting away with one sight of those eyes.
He'd blinked at her, she remembers, looking intrigued, but definitely not interested; curiosity perked but firmly refusing to deem it important enough for interest, his chin raised at such an angle to just imply superiority without making it overt. "Torchwood?" he'd identified with his brows raised.
"That's right."
She's still not sure how he managed to be so thoroughly charming for the rest of the night, but he did manage it and managed it well, encouraging a consistent intake of wine and good food through which he'd plied a little more information from her than she'd have liked, while she slowly grew more and more reassured that he was not the Doctor. He was definitely not the Doctor. The Doctor (the one with the leather jacket, the prodigious nose and matching ears, anyway) had always been doubtful of his looks, but James McCullen seemed minutely aware of his. His grin was never toothy and wide like the Doctor's, but close-lipped and smug. His walk had a definite strut, the sort she'd only see in the Doctor after a good ego-stroking, and confidence in his success and power basically oozed in every step.
It was something that was well known for translating easily into megalomania, so the fact that it took her by surprise was entirely her own fault.
---
Name: LAIRD JAMES MCCULLEN XXIV
Aliases: None
The McCullen clan, the file reads under the sharp but scant lighting of a hunched over desk lamp, is an arms dealing family with a history fill to overflowing with dubious practices in just about every country that had ever even pondered the idea of having a war. It was more of a basic assumption than a conjecture but still, the charges were rarely made to stick. Only a select few had been so incompetent as to have been caught, even fewer lacked the funds for a good enough lawyer to bail them out of jail. And in the same way James McCullen had inherited the name of twenty-three of his ancestors, he'd also apparently inherited the family's habit of playing both sides of an argument like violins. Explosive violins.
The file continues on to point out that James McCullen has been very interested in Torchwood and ostensibly had been for some time, mostly likely from around the moment that they had begun to make a name for themselves in little household inventions, though he hadn't been seen that frequently at the fundraisers (i.e. excuses to use up good wine, money and meet people who were there to be seen with other people) that Jackie had been hosting with steady frequency every few months or so. Rose knows this already. As the director of Torchwood's daughter, she's very used to being exchanged from person to person like the subject of a hectic, toadying game of pass the parcel, stripping her one layer of her interest every time the music stopped, and she's sure she would have met, or at least seen him if he'd ever attended her mother's parties before.
She chews on her thumb, tries to assess the situation, the person, and the situation again. The only other name Torchwood had created for itself was on the subject of aliens and the dealing of. Hardly that far fetched to come to the conclusion that what Torchwood was peddling was modified alien technology, and she would bet her arm that that was exactly the reason why he was so interested. Still, Torchwood didn't promote the use of their resources for weaponry, and anything in that area was strictly regulated and rarely (and if rarely, illegally) reproduced for wider use, which conflicts, she imagines, with the interests of one Laird James McCullen the Somethingth. He was probably concocting a devious plan to cheat Torchwood out of it at that very moment.
What he's doing, as it turns out, is merely quickly developing a habit of inviting her to dinner, and Rose, similarly, is quickly developing a habit of refusing, no matter how many times he grins at her like he knows she'll agree someday, no matter how many times he says her name that way over the phone, where he probably has her number on speed dial for maximum irritation. Though the accent had taken some getting used to, once she'd gotten used to it, she'd quickly discovered that his voice, though different (just different) was equally as capable of making her hands sweat as it had when it was just from the North. To make things even worse, she knows that he's completely and utterly aware of how he affects her, which would be what all the smug grins would be about.
In the end, however, she knows that she comes out on top (not the best turn of phrase while on this subject). She knows his history, his life, his sincerity and his insincerity and in return, she remains still a mystery to him. If they ever decided to start playing a spontaneous game of poker, she knows that she would probably win. A bastard he is, thoroughly, but that's nothing anyone can help. The most she can say about him in the end is that he enjoys his job. But he's an arms dealer. His goal is to sell weapons, not use them.
And then Paris blows up.
---
The MARS Industries building is thoroughly ugly, but she decides to forgive him for that; running a company gives little time to bother with architectural design. A giant MARS logo is plastered to the front just above the entrance and is about as subtle as the man who owns it.
"I'm afraid Mr. McCullen is not in at the moment," his receptionist tells her, primly skittering along on her high heels, trying to keep up with Rose's brisk pace.
Rose stops in her tracks immediately, reconsiders. "Tell him I'm going to Paris," she says. "I think he'll get the message."
She walks out.
---
They meet in Paris.
Everything about the Eiffel Tower incident stinks of MARS Industries, not helped by the confirmation that the warheads filled with the nanites that caused it were developed by MARS, the current leader in nano technology. Frankly, she doesn't care how stolen those warheads were; James McCullen is much too paranoid of having his weapons used against him or in ways he disapproves that she knows he'd have built in fail safes, probably more than one. Her instincts are screaming that he had something to do with it, possibly had everything to do with it, and Rose Tyler has some of the best instincts to be found.
Her back is aching from all the heavy lifting she's done all day for building reconstructions for the houses the Tower fell on and some that had been thoroughly damaged by the bites of nanites making it into wires and cables and the pipes. His limo is a sleek contrast to the battered irregular cracks of buildings that surround it and she doesn't even recognise it until she notices that it's coming straight for her. The back window comes to a stop beside her and she watches her reflection in the pitch black window slide down to reveal his face. "I got your message," he says like he's talking about a note someone left in his locker. "Do you want to get inside and talk about it?"
It's very tempting to say "no". She was even taught to, in school, to say "no" to suspicious people telling her to get in their car.
But she was always bad at school.
The inside of the limo is lightly heated, but compared to the billowing winds outside, it's a haven and her nose and fingers hail it as such. The slick white leather looks polished as if it was bought yesterday, and the man sitting on it looks about as pleased as punch can get without having an orgasm. "You look exhausted," he pities, reaching into the limo's drinks cabinet to pull out the finest in whiskey, along with a handful of chilled whiskey cubes. He pours a glass and drops the cubes in, offering it to her, but she only glares.
"Why'd you do it?" she demands. "Just didn't like Paris? Or are you seriously going to tell me that you're upset over something that happened hundreds of years ago?"
He sighs, purses his lips at her in weary disappointment and throws back half the glass himself. "The McCullen clan," he informs her, setting the glass carefully in a holder and looking inside the drinks cabinet again, "as you might have read when you went over my files, have been doing what they do for hundreds of years. That slight against my ancestor wasn't just a slight to him, but one to the entire McCullen name. I've got water."
This she reluctantly takes. "Is this you confessing?" she asks, unscrewing the cap.
"That was me correcting. You can't prove that I was responsible for any of this." His nonchalance pricks her nerves.
"Aren't you even going to seem sorry about it? All those people dead and you're not even blinking an eye."
He looks like he's just barely restraining an eyeroll as he takes another drink of his whiskey. "Seven billion people," he starts after a moment. "Seven billion people and counting on this planet. Every time one person dies, in an accident, murder, natural causes, two more people are born to take their place. There are so many people on this planet that some of us are just falling off. Thousands of people died today. Thousands. Barely a drop in the bucket. This was revenge against France, not attempted murdering. People being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I destroyed Paris. Fine. Thousands of people died? What's that to the price of tea in China?"
Her knuckles are white against the cap of her water bottle. "What do you want?"
"Honestly?" he asks, leaning forward and staring straight at her lips. "You."
She rolls her eyes.
"And the world," he adds as an afterthought. "I'm just shooting for the easier target." He swills the last dregs of alcohol around in his glass. "Though you could always just join me."
"Fuck you," she seethes before he can even finish.
He gives a mockingly regretful sigh. "It was worth a try."
---
He has an underwater base.
Rose thinks she might actually kill him for that. World domination is one thing, but having a secret underwater base is a whole other basket of pickles. She can't believe how cliché it is, didn't think anyone would be sad enough to make an underwater base in this day and age of more sophisticated megalomania, and yet here it was, like he'd picked it out of a catalogue of dumb evil clichés.
Sirens begin to go off wildly overhead, and a calm womanly voice begins to inform the people of the base that if they don't make it to the escape pods soon, then there would be a 100% chance of death by drowning or hypothermia. Rose recognises it as Mickey's signal. "Why do they always have a self-destruct anyway?" she wonders out loud, hurrying her way through the rather confusing maze of corridors that leads to the dock.
"Evidence," a familiar voice answers behind her. "Explosives go off and it's like I was never here. Your friend's actually doing me quite the favour."
"You're welcome." She turns around, and he's leaning on the door frame, hands in pockets and actually looking pleasantly surprised to see her. He's usually never surprised to see her at all, usually he just treats her like a game and maybe that is all she is, his amusing little game. "Shouldn't you be running now?"
He checks his watch like it measures How Many Minutes Until We Die time, but it's his base so who knows, it might. "We've got a while," he says. "Like I said, self-destruct's for the evidence, not the people. The hitmen are for the people," he adds informatively.
"You've got an underwater base," she says, deadpan.
He shrugs defensively. "I'm a very rich man, Miss Tyler," he smiles. "Why not make it underwater? I'm hardly worse than the bankers in Dubai."
"I'll slap you. Is that enough of a reason?"
He grins that smug not-grin that shovels shit in by the bucketful, the one that shows no teeth but is twice as smug as anything the Doctor could come up with (impressive, considering the size of that man's ego). "Feel free," he says, straightening himself and holding his arms apart in the universal sign of surrender. "I might like it."
She nearly hits him for just that.
"I've still got that open spot for you, if you'd like it."
"No thanks," she says wryly but firmly, a True American British Hero. "Not really into global terrorisation and all that. How about you turn yourself over to the proper authorities?"
"No thanks," he parrots, still grinning. "Not really into being in jail. How about dinner instead?"
"Maybe in hell."
"Well I am trying," he points out. He checks his watch again. "Out of curiosity, are you wearing a tracking device?"
She blinks. "Yeah. Why?"
"Because of this." He pokes something into her side and by the time she looks down to see the stun gun, he's pulled the trigger and the world shuts to black.
---
She's not sure how long it's been when she wakes up later in the ship. Mickey tells her about how he'd tracked her down with the tracking devices they'd all decided to bring along just in case and dragged her back to the bay with McCullen suspiciously absent. Or unsuspiciously she supposes, since he wasn't technically supposed to be there in the first place. She doesn't really care. Her head is swimming and she feels like she got hit by a truck so how she survived isn't the issue, really, it's why she has to continue surviving with this pounding headache. She hates stun guns.
It turns out they made it just in time, actually, as she discovers when she staggers to a window to look back at the base.
It explodes into firework of clichés behind them, the clouds of energy just brush the ends of the ship as it whirrs away in the water.
She collapses back into her chair, her head still thundering. She barely hears Mickey ask if she's all right but manages to nod anyway. She'll be fine when she gets home, she tells herself. Good night's sleep, maybe an aspirin first.
She doesn't notice the puncture wound on the base of her neck.
Author: whollyuncertain
Rating: T
Summary: And then Paris blows up. Rose/McCullen
Disclaimer: I'd like to live in your world if you actually think I do.
Author's Note: For challenge 56 of then_theres_us. G.I. Joe/Doctor Who crossover crack!fic that I totally blame on this video which was pretty much on repeat while I wrote. I wrote this fic in abouuut six hours on very little sleep, so that is my excuse, beyond the fact that the idea seemed amusing and I wanted to do Eccleston roles instead of Tennant. It was originally going to be Bilborough/Rose from Cracker but I do actually have a different WIP about that so I decided to save it and go the dumb Hollywood movie way.
+
"James McCullen," he'd said, holding out his hand in a perfectly innocent gesture that had her dropping her champagne glass, getting half a year's worth of an average person's salary all over his equally expensive shoes.
Even as she'd said, "Doctor?", in a small voice that was feeble-y echoing from the other side of a tunnel in her head, she knew it wasn't. The Doctor he so resembled wouldn't have been caught dead wearing one of those suits and had lacked enough hair to be slicked back. She wasn't even sure if people still wore cravats these days, but obviously this man was in the throes of trying to bring it back into fashion. Actually, Rose had had to admit. He was doing a pretty good job.
Then came the accent, "No, not a doctor, I'm afraid. Quite the opposite, actually." Scottish. He was Scottish. "Are you feeling all right?"
She hadn't felt all right, as a matter of fact. Her head had felt light and she'd wanted to cry, or begin exhibiting whatever extreme emotion she was allowed to for the moment, but she'd forced herself to nod and smile the way she'd been taught, politely and carefully and giving nothing away. "Sorry," she'd said, trying to ignore the sparks going up her arm at the touch of his fingers. "I ruined your shoes."
"They'll be a fine vintage, I'm sure, Miss..."
"Tyler," she'd spluttered inelegantly, all the decorum and class melting away with one sight of those eyes.
He'd blinked at her, she remembers, looking intrigued, but definitely not interested; curiosity perked but firmly refusing to deem it important enough for interest, his chin raised at such an angle to just imply superiority without making it overt. "Torchwood?" he'd identified with his brows raised.
"That's right."
She's still not sure how he managed to be so thoroughly charming for the rest of the night, but he did manage it and managed it well, encouraging a consistent intake of wine and good food through which he'd plied a little more information from her than she'd have liked, while she slowly grew more and more reassured that he was not the Doctor. He was definitely not the Doctor. The Doctor (the one with the leather jacket, the prodigious nose and matching ears, anyway) had always been doubtful of his looks, but James McCullen seemed minutely aware of his. His grin was never toothy and wide like the Doctor's, but close-lipped and smug. His walk had a definite strut, the sort she'd only see in the Doctor after a good ego-stroking, and confidence in his success and power basically oozed in every step.
It was something that was well known for translating easily into megalomania, so the fact that it took her by surprise was entirely her own fault.
---
Name: LAIRD JAMES MCCULLEN XXIV
Aliases: None
The McCullen clan, the file reads under the sharp but scant lighting of a hunched over desk lamp, is an arms dealing family with a history fill to overflowing with dubious practices in just about every country that had ever even pondered the idea of having a war. It was more of a basic assumption than a conjecture but still, the charges were rarely made to stick. Only a select few had been so incompetent as to have been caught, even fewer lacked the funds for a good enough lawyer to bail them out of jail. And in the same way James McCullen had inherited the name of twenty-three of his ancestors, he'd also apparently inherited the family's habit of playing both sides of an argument like violins. Explosive violins.
The file continues on to point out that James McCullen has been very interested in Torchwood and ostensibly had been for some time, mostly likely from around the moment that they had begun to make a name for themselves in little household inventions, though he hadn't been seen that frequently at the fundraisers (i.e. excuses to use up good wine, money and meet people who were there to be seen with other people) that Jackie had been hosting with steady frequency every few months or so. Rose knows this already. As the director of Torchwood's daughter, she's very used to being exchanged from person to person like the subject of a hectic, toadying game of pass the parcel, stripping her one layer of her interest every time the music stopped, and she's sure she would have met, or at least seen him if he'd ever attended her mother's parties before.
She chews on her thumb, tries to assess the situation, the person, and the situation again. The only other name Torchwood had created for itself was on the subject of aliens and the dealing of. Hardly that far fetched to come to the conclusion that what Torchwood was peddling was modified alien technology, and she would bet her arm that that was exactly the reason why he was so interested. Still, Torchwood didn't promote the use of their resources for weaponry, and anything in that area was strictly regulated and rarely (and if rarely, illegally) reproduced for wider use, which conflicts, she imagines, with the interests of one Laird James McCullen the Somethingth. He was probably concocting a devious plan to cheat Torchwood out of it at that very moment.
What he's doing, as it turns out, is merely quickly developing a habit of inviting her to dinner, and Rose, similarly, is quickly developing a habit of refusing, no matter how many times he grins at her like he knows she'll agree someday, no matter how many times he says her name that way over the phone, where he probably has her number on speed dial for maximum irritation. Though the accent had taken some getting used to, once she'd gotten used to it, she'd quickly discovered that his voice, though different (just different) was equally as capable of making her hands sweat as it had when it was just from the North. To make things even worse, she knows that he's completely and utterly aware of how he affects her, which would be what all the smug grins would be about.
In the end, however, she knows that she comes out on top (not the best turn of phrase while on this subject). She knows his history, his life, his sincerity and his insincerity and in return, she remains still a mystery to him. If they ever decided to start playing a spontaneous game of poker, she knows that she would probably win. A bastard he is, thoroughly, but that's nothing anyone can help. The most she can say about him in the end is that he enjoys his job. But he's an arms dealer. His goal is to sell weapons, not use them.
And then Paris blows up.
---
The MARS Industries building is thoroughly ugly, but she decides to forgive him for that; running a company gives little time to bother with architectural design. A giant MARS logo is plastered to the front just above the entrance and is about as subtle as the man who owns it.
"I'm afraid Mr. McCullen is not in at the moment," his receptionist tells her, primly skittering along on her high heels, trying to keep up with Rose's brisk pace.
Rose stops in her tracks immediately, reconsiders. "Tell him I'm going to Paris," she says. "I think he'll get the message."
She walks out.
---
They meet in Paris.
Everything about the Eiffel Tower incident stinks of MARS Industries, not helped by the confirmation that the warheads filled with the nanites that caused it were developed by MARS, the current leader in nano technology. Frankly, she doesn't care how stolen those warheads were; James McCullen is much too paranoid of having his weapons used against him or in ways he disapproves that she knows he'd have built in fail safes, probably more than one. Her instincts are screaming that he had something to do with it, possibly had everything to do with it, and Rose Tyler has some of the best instincts to be found.
Her back is aching from all the heavy lifting she's done all day for building reconstructions for the houses the Tower fell on and some that had been thoroughly damaged by the bites of nanites making it into wires and cables and the pipes. His limo is a sleek contrast to the battered irregular cracks of buildings that surround it and she doesn't even recognise it until she notices that it's coming straight for her. The back window comes to a stop beside her and she watches her reflection in the pitch black window slide down to reveal his face. "I got your message," he says like he's talking about a note someone left in his locker. "Do you want to get inside and talk about it?"
It's very tempting to say "no". She was even taught to, in school, to say "no" to suspicious people telling her to get in their car.
But she was always bad at school.
The inside of the limo is lightly heated, but compared to the billowing winds outside, it's a haven and her nose and fingers hail it as such. The slick white leather looks polished as if it was bought yesterday, and the man sitting on it looks about as pleased as punch can get without having an orgasm. "You look exhausted," he pities, reaching into the limo's drinks cabinet to pull out the finest in whiskey, along with a handful of chilled whiskey cubes. He pours a glass and drops the cubes in, offering it to her, but she only glares.
"Why'd you do it?" she demands. "Just didn't like Paris? Or are you seriously going to tell me that you're upset over something that happened hundreds of years ago?"
He sighs, purses his lips at her in weary disappointment and throws back half the glass himself. "The McCullen clan," he informs her, setting the glass carefully in a holder and looking inside the drinks cabinet again, "as you might have read when you went over my files, have been doing what they do for hundreds of years. That slight against my ancestor wasn't just a slight to him, but one to the entire McCullen name. I've got water."
This she reluctantly takes. "Is this you confessing?" she asks, unscrewing the cap.
"That was me correcting. You can't prove that I was responsible for any of this." His nonchalance pricks her nerves.
"Aren't you even going to seem sorry about it? All those people dead and you're not even blinking an eye."
He looks like he's just barely restraining an eyeroll as he takes another drink of his whiskey. "Seven billion people," he starts after a moment. "Seven billion people and counting on this planet. Every time one person dies, in an accident, murder, natural causes, two more people are born to take their place. There are so many people on this planet that some of us are just falling off. Thousands of people died today. Thousands. Barely a drop in the bucket. This was revenge against France, not attempted murdering. People being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I destroyed Paris. Fine. Thousands of people died? What's that to the price of tea in China?"
Her knuckles are white against the cap of her water bottle. "What do you want?"
"Honestly?" he asks, leaning forward and staring straight at her lips. "You."
She rolls her eyes.
"And the world," he adds as an afterthought. "I'm just shooting for the easier target." He swills the last dregs of alcohol around in his glass. "Though you could always just join me."
"Fuck you," she seethes before he can even finish.
He gives a mockingly regretful sigh. "It was worth a try."
---
He has an underwater base.
Rose thinks she might actually kill him for that. World domination is one thing, but having a secret underwater base is a whole other basket of pickles. She can't believe how cliché it is, didn't think anyone would be sad enough to make an underwater base in this day and age of more sophisticated megalomania, and yet here it was, like he'd picked it out of a catalogue of dumb evil clichés.
Sirens begin to go off wildly overhead, and a calm womanly voice begins to inform the people of the base that if they don't make it to the escape pods soon, then there would be a 100% chance of death by drowning or hypothermia. Rose recognises it as Mickey's signal. "Why do they always have a self-destruct anyway?" she wonders out loud, hurrying her way through the rather confusing maze of corridors that leads to the dock.
"Evidence," a familiar voice answers behind her. "Explosives go off and it's like I was never here. Your friend's actually doing me quite the favour."
"You're welcome." She turns around, and he's leaning on the door frame, hands in pockets and actually looking pleasantly surprised to see her. He's usually never surprised to see her at all, usually he just treats her like a game and maybe that is all she is, his amusing little game. "Shouldn't you be running now?"
He checks his watch like it measures How Many Minutes Until We Die time, but it's his base so who knows, it might. "We've got a while," he says. "Like I said, self-destruct's for the evidence, not the people. The hitmen are for the people," he adds informatively.
"You've got an underwater base," she says, deadpan.
He shrugs defensively. "I'm a very rich man, Miss Tyler," he smiles. "Why not make it underwater? I'm hardly worse than the bankers in Dubai."
"I'll slap you. Is that enough of a reason?"
He grins that smug not-grin that shovels shit in by the bucketful, the one that shows no teeth but is twice as smug as anything the Doctor could come up with (impressive, considering the size of that man's ego). "Feel free," he says, straightening himself and holding his arms apart in the universal sign of surrender. "I might like it."
She nearly hits him for just that.
"I've still got that open spot for you, if you'd like it."
"No thanks," she says wryly but firmly, a True American British Hero. "Not really into global terrorisation and all that. How about you turn yourself over to the proper authorities?"
"No thanks," he parrots, still grinning. "Not really into being in jail. How about dinner instead?"
"Maybe in hell."
"Well I am trying," he points out. He checks his watch again. "Out of curiosity, are you wearing a tracking device?"
She blinks. "Yeah. Why?"
"Because of this." He pokes something into her side and by the time she looks down to see the stun gun, he's pulled the trigger and the world shuts to black.
---
She's not sure how long it's been when she wakes up later in the ship. Mickey tells her about how he'd tracked her down with the tracking devices they'd all decided to bring along just in case and dragged her back to the bay with McCullen suspiciously absent. Or unsuspiciously she supposes, since he wasn't technically supposed to be there in the first place. She doesn't really care. Her head is swimming and she feels like she got hit by a truck so how she survived isn't the issue, really, it's why she has to continue surviving with this pounding headache. She hates stun guns.
It turns out they made it just in time, actually, as she discovers when she staggers to a window to look back at the base.
It explodes into firework of clichés behind them, the clouds of energy just brush the ends of the ship as it whirrs away in the water.
She collapses back into her chair, her head still thundering. She barely hears Mickey ask if she's all right but manages to nod anyway. She'll be fine when she gets home, she tells herself. Good night's sleep, maybe an aspirin first.
She doesn't notice the puncture wound on the base of her neck.