triumvirate - chapter five - converted thieves
Ito stands on the steps of the imposing Capitol Building. “Technically, you are here because I am giving you a tour of the city to display our security measures to reassure you that we are doing all we can to find your colleague. However, I am very distracted with an upcoming cultural summit with the Hakaan and should I forget to ensure that you are behind me in a crowded market, I cannot be held responsible for your actions or any actions taken toward you.”
Jack figures that’s about as good as a wink and a smirk he’s going to get from the man. “Yeah. We get lost, it’s not your fault. We find Carter and beat up some people who are holding her, also not your fault. Lead on.” Jack gestures for Ito to start the tour that took four days - and a threat to call up the Asgard, even if they couldn’t technically do anything - to convince War Minister Kríka was necessary. “You got a plan?” He mutters under his breath to Daniel. Hearing Sam’s name shouted very loudly inside his head, Jack winces and covers his ear. “Okay, ow. That’s a bad plan.”
“Why is that a bad plan?”
“Because shouting is obvious and I am not wandering around this city playing Marco Polo.”
“What is ‘Marco Polo’?”
“It’s a kid’s game, Teal’c,” Daniel starts, “you usually play it in a pool. One person closes their eyes, the other kids scatter and move around. Whoever’s ‘It’ shouts ‘Marco,’ the other kids shout ‘Polo.’ The goal is to tag someone else to be It and figuring out where they are based on what it sounds like. But of course the other kids have their eyes open and can tell when the person who’s It is coming toward them and move.”
Teal’c raises an eyebrow. “How is this an effective training tool?”
“It’s not,” Jack says firmly, interrupting the start of Daniel’s lecture on the actual Marco Polo.
They follow Ito in silence, listening to the Hokari’s well-intentioned explanation of the city’s security forces and what the Ministry is doing as a result of Sam’s kidnapping to investigate the obvious infiltration in their own government; they know Ito doesn’t believe a word he’s saying and that it’s just for show. Jack picks up tidbits here and there and cringes at Ito’s mention of the booming prostitution black market, willing his mind to absolutely not go there but it ignores him; Daniel’s does as well, and Teal’c’s normally-stoic expression falters for a moment. Mostly he doesn’t pay attention: he’s listening for Sam instead. The people they pass on the street expertly ignore their presence while simultaneously judging them as different, inferior. He leaves the paying attention part to Daniel and nods at Teal’c; even though they’re escorted by a government official, he senses that they could disappear just like Sam did without too much fuss.
Ito steadily guides them into shadier-looking areas of the city until even Daniel is only halfway listening to the explanation of the Hokari economic system that he asked for. He doesn’t need to be able to read the signs in the windows to he’d leave this part of town immediately if he were on Earth. He looks up at the tall buildings and their flickering neon signs and knows that if they find Sam here, it will not be good. He also knows that, given everything, this is probably their best bet for finding Sam, so he sidesteps a body sleeping in the street and kicks off a piece of paper that gets stuck to his boot and follows Ito around the corner.
Daniel nearly runs into their guide, who has stopped suddenly, apparently to listen to something no one else can hear. “Ito?”
“We may have found your colleague,” Ito says. “Come with me.”
“Uhm,” Daniel says, lengthening his stride to keep up with Ito as the other man speeds up. “May?” He senses Jack and Teal’c at his back, as anxious as he is. “Oh, God,” he nearly trips over his own feet, Sam’s voice suddenly back in his head.
She’s screaming.
Jack’s eyes widen, hearing her too. “Run,” he orders Ito and breaks into a full sprint after the Hokari, winding down back alleys Jack wouldn’t dream of visiting even on his own planet.
Sam struggles against the rope holding her to the bars, fighting Driva as best she can. DANIEL! She hopes against hope that he’s near enough to hear and a sob catches in her throat. Jack! Please, God, anyone! Driva drops his own pants to the ground and Sam spits, trying to hit him in the eye but missing by what might as well be a mile. He laughs at her. “Get away from me,” she threatens, but her voice wavers. She screams for help, hoping that someone, anyone will come.
Two shots ring out, echoed by a staff weapon blast, and Driva drops to the floor in front of her, blood dripping from the wounds in his head and chest, his back smoking with the heat of a charred flesh wound.
Sam scrambles for purchase against the floor, pushing herself back into the corner even further, as far away from the dead man as she can get while still tied to the bars of the cell.
Time slows down as the three men look at her, taking in her appearance: naked from the waist down, face and stomach covered in bruises and cuts, bleeding, a knee colored an angry shade of purple-red, eyes wide and scared.
“Jesus,” Daniel speaks first and time speeds up to its normal pace as he rushes forward, hurrying to untie her. They don’t have much time before someone comes to investigate the noise or the dead men they left in the hallway, and Daniel motions to the others that he has Sam and they should start finding a way out of here. He quickly gives up untying the knots and slides his knife under the fabric securing her right wrist and pulls. It gives instantly and no sooner has the ripped fabric fallen to the floor than Sam has her arm around Daniel, holding him close, as if checking that he’s real.
“Hang on,” he says, trying to maneuver himself around her so he doesn’t hurt her worse or make her let him go as he awkwardly cuts through the other restraint. “You’re okay,” he whispers, sheathing the knife again and wrapping his arms around her back, “you’re safe.” He can’t tell if she’s crying or in shock or both and he tries to listen to her thoughts to find out exactly what the hell happened, but all he hears is ohgodohgodohgodnononogodohgod. “Sam,” he says firmly against her cheek, “you are safe. No one will hurt you. Do you understand?” Keeping one arm around her as best he can, he shrugs out of his coat and carefully drapes it around her shoulders.
The barest of nods against. “I can’t walk,” she whispers hoarsely. “God, Daniel.” She grips his shoulders tighter, trying to melt into him, clutching him, hold onto him as an anchor. Through the roaring sound of her own mind, she hears Jack’s urgent order to get the hell out of there, and then there’s another set of arms behind her, lifting her away from Daniel. She fights to stay with him even as her energy fades.
“Major Carter,” Teal’c says gently, dropping his hands away from her, “I will carry you to the Stargate. We are going home. Is that alright?”
She pauses and then nods. Being lifted causes her stomach to roil, but she swallows and it settles. She tucks her head against Teal’c’s shoulder and clutches at the edges of Daniel’s jacket as she closes her eyes, not wishing to see the last of the place that held her for so long. Feeling safe in Teal’c’s strong arms, she allows herself to pass out.
“She is in need of a hospital,” Ito says once the four are safely inside transport pod with the doors closed.
“Shut up and drive,” Jack orders as Daniel lays a blanket on the floor of the pod and Teal’c reverently lays her on top of it. “Fuck,” he curses, taking inventory on her visible injuries. He’s relieved that the bruises on her hips and thighs and throat are only just appearing, but he knows that doesn’t necessarily mean that they got there in time. While Daniel covers her with another blanket, Jack reaches over to stroke her unmarred cheek. “Why are we slowing down?”
Ito turns from his position at the controls. “She is in need of a hospital. Do not argue. Our medical technology is far more advanced than yours. We can do more to help her here, now, than your doctors could in six months.”
Jack stands up, nearly smacking his head on a grab bar by the ceiling. “And I suppose your hospital doctors will help much like your university doctors helped.” He ignores Teal’c calling for him to perhaps calm down and see what is offered. Daniel’s thinking the exact thing Jack is, though even angrier, which Jack didn’t think possible.
Ito shakes his head. “No. My wife is a doctor. She will come to the pod. You will not be separated again.”
“Jack, she’s going into shock and I don’t know what kind of internal damage there is. I don’t think she can afford to wait.” Daniel can’t get his mind to focus on anything helpful, so he smoothes her hair away from her face and tucks the blanket tighter around her shoulders.
With a reluctant nod, Jack glares at Ito. “Fine. But one doctor, and we stay here. That’s the deal.”
Ito nods and navigates the pod to an unassuming door down a questionable-looking alley. “It is the back entrance to this sector’s hospital,” he explains. A woman dressed in blue with a white overcoat slams the door open and rushes out, a bulky bag slung across her chest. “My wife. Koro.”
“Move,” she orders and Jack sidesteps as Daniel scrambles backward. She pulls back the top blanket and hisses. “Are they dead?” She looks at the four men in the pod.
Teal’c nods once while Jack says “Most of them.”
She looks at Daniel, who has suddenly turned an impressive shade of green. “Out,” she points to the open door of the pod and pulls out a portable scanner as Daniel stumbles out of the pod to throw up loudly outside.
Jack shoots a look at Teal’c, who quickly follows after Daniel: they’ve learned their lesson.
“Whoa, whoa. What is that?” Jack frowns at a metal contraption Koro pulls out of her bag.
“Her knee is badly injured,” Koro says, snapping the device around Sam’s leg. Three tiny green lights begin to blink. “This provides medication throughout the healing process and forces stability.” She attaches a band to Sam’s arm; when it clicks into place, blue lights flash around it. “This is for the infection,” she points at an ugly cut on Sam’s shoulder, oozing something in a color that matches Daniel’s face. With expert ease, she slips an IV into Sam’s other arm. “Rehydration,” she explains.
Jack blinks. “No funky beeping thing for water?”
Koro stares up at him blankly. “Ito tells me you wish to leave as soon as possible. This is the fastest method of rehydration.” She digs through her bag and comes up with a packet of pills. “For him,” she gestures at Daniel and then, at an angle Daniel can’t see, her stomach. “This is all I can do in the time you allow me. You were wise to stop. Your friend will recover.” She drags the blanket back up over Sam. “Keep her warm and try to keep her still,” she directs the last to her husband with a meaningful look.
Jack smiles in spite of himself; wives nag husbands about driving on every planet.
Daniel catches her hand before she leaves the pod. “Thank you,” he says.
Koro nods. “You are welcome.” She pulls her arm from his grasp and steps out of the way of the pod’s automatic doors.
“General!” Jack shouts into his radio while Daniel punches in the GDO code. “You’d better have a med team meet us at the gate. And clear the room.”
“Understood. Come on home, SG-1.”
Teal’c goes through first, Sam shivering in his arms.
“Thank you,” Daniel says to Ito, knowing how much the other man risked by helping them. “Thank you.”
Ito smiles. “You are welcome. Though I wish it had not been necessary.”
“Come on, Daniel!” Jack shouts from the steps of the gate, unwilling to leave until Daniel’s gone through.
“Go to your…” Ito trails off, “friend?”
Daniel furrows his brow, and then realizes Ito can sense what Sam is to him. “Close enough.” He smiles his thanks once more before turning and running to the gate and through the wormhole.
Sam forces herself to swim to the surface of the drug-induced fog. She vaguely remembers Driva, and then Daniel and Jack and Teal’c, and then she’s pretty sure she passed out. But her brain had been concocting all sorts of dreams and hallucinations to get her through the seemingly endless nights. When a rambling wake up wake up, I hope we got there in time, no, no, don’t even go there, at least she’s alive wake up, Sam in Daniel’s voice rolls through her head, she’s even more certain it was all a hallucination. She’d been entertaining rescue scenarios for a few days; the part of her brain that’s still functioning logically assumes that this is the way her body has chosen to succumb to whatever it’s going to succumb to. It’s a good way to go, she thinks, believing that her friends have rescued her. It’s comforting. And she’s missed Daniel, even if he does sound a little more panicked than she’d like.
Jack’s voice reaches her ears, demanding information, and now she’s positive she’s hallucinating. She blinks slowly, hoping that with the auditory hallucinations comes some nice visuals and she isn’t disappointed to see a blurry Daniel on one side of her and a blurry Jack on the other. She squints at the foot of the bed and makes out a blurry Teal’c.
The lights are bright, really bright, and she half-closes her eyes against it.
The hand clasping hers is definitely, definitely Daniel’s. She’s been under the influence of a lot of alien drugs over the past seven years, but she’s never before imagined physical contact. There’s a first time for everything, though.
She’s awake. She’s awake! Jack!
Interactive hallucinations are new, but not unheard of.
“Sam. You’re not seeing things. We’re really here,” Daniel says, squeezing her hand a little tighter. “You’re really safe.”
“You’re a hallucination,” she says hoarsely, “you’re supposed to say that.”
“Carter!” Jack leans in, almost touching his nose to hers. “We are real. All of us. The infirmary, Doc Fraiser, all of it.”
Sam nods slowly as the rest of the room comes into focus. There’s something indefinably real about the way Daniel sounds in her head. “Okay,” she says. She notices Janet loitering intently in the corner of the tiny space enclosed by the curtain around her bed, obviously pushed out of the way when she awoke. She offers her friend a weak smile before looking at each of the three men surrounding her bed. “Thank you,” she says sincerely, earning three variations on you’re welcome and three very pleased smiles.
“Alright,” Janet says, “she needs her rest. Out.”
Jack pats Sam’s uninjured shoulder and Teal’c offers her hand a squeeze. Daniel waits until the other two have left before placing a kiss on her forehead and following them out.
“Hey, Janet.”
Janet brushes a lock of hair off of Sam’s forehead and purses her lips. “You know I have to do this.”
Sam nods, wincing as she bends her left leg so her foot can rest in the stirrup. She shifts her right leg out of the way as best she can and stares up at the ceiling.
“Sam,” Janet says from the foot of the bed, pulling on gloves, “is there anything I should know?”
Sam shakes her head. “No.”
Skeptical, given Sam’s injuries and the report given by the rest of SG-1, Janet places a gloved hand over Sam’s. “Sam?”
“No, Janet. Just get this over with, please.”
Sam closes her eyes and drops her head as the hot water sluices over her shoulders. Someone had wiped away most of the blood and dirt on her body while she was unconscious in the infirmary, but the courtesy hadn’t been thorough nor had it extended to shampoo; she’d waited a patient fifteen minutes for the water in the base shower to get above lukewarm before giving up and going home. Daniel had been waiting for her outside the locker room, keys in hand; he and Jack had taken her car back to her house once it was clear she was going to be the kind of fine that got her released from the infirmary a few days later but not the kind of fine that’s allowed to drive. She’d spent the trip home with her head resting against the cold window, exhausted.
She looks up at the muffled sound of her name and a soft knock on the door. “Yeah.” The door opens.
“Jack just called. He’s picking up a change of clothes and he’ll be on his way over.”
She nods and reaches for the body wash. “Okay.” She winces as the dull ache in her shoulder gets worse when she starts to soap up the washcloth. “Daniel?”
Daniel hisses when he steps into the shower and gets his first good look at how badly she was beaten. The purple bruising patterned across her ribs stands out against her pale skin, and that’s only the beginning. Don’t tell me it looks worse than it is.
Sam smiles and hands the sudsy washcloth to Daniel, awkwardly switching spots with him so he can duck under the water. “Jack’s coming over?” She turns, allowing him access to her back.
“Mmhm,” Daniel runs the washcloth over her shoulders, “that okay?” At her silence, he drapes the washcloth over the bar and settles his hands on her hips. “Sam?”
She leans backward into him and sighs. “Yeah. I just...it’s gonna be a while.”
Daniel’s brow furrows and he wishes for a noun in her sentence. “Oh,” he says, finally getting it with the assistance of a few choice images from Sam’s tired mind. He slides his arms around her waist and rests his chin on her shoulder. “That’s okay,” he assures her, lacing his fingers with hers when she brings her hands up to cover his. He holds her close for a moment before letting go so he can finish washing her back, glad to see her shoulder almost completely healed.
Sam closes her eyes and allows Daniel to direct her back underneath the water to rinse off before he starts on her hair. She opens one eye. “That’s conditioner.” When Daniel looks at her in confusion, she grins. “Goes on second.”
Jack stomps on the thick rug just inside Sam’s front door, trying to get rid of as much snow as possible so he doesn’t accidentally track it into her house. “Aren’t you cold?” He shivers just looking at Sam in her shorts and sweatshirt outfit.
She shakes her head and awkwardly makes her way to the couch on her crutches. “Not really. And this thing,” she gestures to the brace, “doesn’t exactly come off.” After a plethora of scans and examining it to figure out if it had a release mechanism, she and Janet decided that it’s designed to stay on until everything’s healed. Janet thinks it’s a genius way to ensure that unruly patients get all of the necessary medication and don’t aggravate the injury by doing something they shouldn’t. Sam finds it really annoying, even if its timing releasing the painkillers is uncannily accurate. She’s had to stick a piece of duct tape over the blinking lights, eerily bright in the darkness.
“Oh, hey Jack,” Daniel says, coming out of Sam’s bedroom, also looking freshly showered. “How is it out?”
Jack bends over to untie his boots. “White.” He gestures with his elbow to the bags he set on the floor. “I brought food.”
Daniel picks up the bags and starts setting out the boxes of takeout. “Sam? Do you have a dinner preference?”
Sam lifts her leg and sets it on the coffee table. The antibiotic cocktail Janet’s given her on top of whatever the leg brace is pumping out makes her stomach turn at the thought of anything Jack could’ve picked up. “There’s a box of saltines somewhere. Maybe some orange juice?”
“You feel that great, huh?” Jack throws her a smile as he toes off his boots. “I found something of yours,” he says quietly, padding over the carpet to the couch. He adjusts the straps of her combat bracelet and slides it off his wrist, offering it to her.
She smiles up at him and takes the bracelet. “Thank you,” she says softly, tightening it around her wrist. She’d spent a lot of time touching the spot where it should have been.
“You’re welcome,” he says and gives her shoulder a supportive squeeze before joining Daniel in the kitchen to find her box of crackers.
Getting Sam into bed is an endeavor. Whatever magical drug is inside the brace hasn’t worked any magic on her two broken and three bruised ribs; the brace itself, though lightweight and not nearly as bulky as it could be, doesn’t allow her to bend her leg at all. They try once before realizing that they haven’t pulled back the covers and she nearly topples over on the second attempt, trying to balance on her good leg which is bruised and sore like the rest of her. Jack picks her up by the waist and sets her on the bed.
“Well,” she says, finally in bed, “that was dignified.” She braces her hands behind her and scoots backward to the center, deciding that she’s the injured one and the other two can figure out how to sleep around her.
Daniel joins her first and waits for Jack to climb in and turn off the light before he reaches down and pulls up the blankets over all three of them. He’d given Sam a hard time about going for the queen sized bed when she upgraded a few years ago but like this, with her injured and the two of them moving carefully around her, they wouldn’t fit in anything less. Not without someone possibly falling off in the middle of the night.
Jack helps her flip over onto her stomach and keeps hold of her hand when she rests it on his chest. He smiles when she has to grab Daniel’s arm and tug to convince him to move closer so she can lay her head on his shoulder. They fuss for a few minutes about whose arm goes where, which results in not a little bit of giggling from Sam followed by an ow, don’t make me laugh, but they eventually sort out the tangle of limbs and settle down into silence. Jack’s fingers run into Daniel’s more than once as they trail over Sam’s back and shoulders, both of them ensuring for themselves, despite Janet’s reassurances, that Sam is here and whole and okay.
“I wasn’t raped,” she says, an answer to a question she knows neither of them would dare ask aloud but one that neither has been able to stop thinking. She hadn’t felt comfortable saying it earlier with the lights on, during dinner or while mocking the nightly news coverage of the snowstorm currently roaring outside. Through the bars of her cell, she’d seen women returned, crying or fighting or in shock or unconscious, and tossed into their own metal cages while the men who escorted them discussed testing the merchandise. She’d spent one night with her arm snaked through the bars, holding tight to the hand of a girl who couldn’t be more than eighteen and who was gone when she woke up in the morning.
She knows she’s incredibly lucky her team showed up when they did. She slams a mental cage down on the next thought - what would have happened if they’d been even two minutes later. She’s not ready to deal with that. Not yet.
“Sam,” Daniel whispers, brushing his fingers through her hair.
She shakes her head, knowing that he wants to but doesn’t quite believe her, not when she’s showing him what happened to everyone around her and so suddenly cut off a train of thought. “Daniel,” she struggles to push herself halfway up so she can look him in the eye, feeling Jack’s hand strong and warm on her back. She knows they had both been in the room when Janet had catalogued Sam’s injuries for General Hammond, but Janet hadn’t wanted to check without Sam being awake. No signs of sexual assault appears only in a report that neither one of them felt it necessary to read. “You can hear every thought in my head. Do you really think I could keep this from you? I wasn’t raped.”
This, at least, is the truth. And given how hard it is to keep them from knowing how she feels about what did happen, there’s no way she could hide from them if it had been worse.
Jack gently rubs his fingertips against the skin of her lower back, exposed when she shifted to look at Daniel. “Good,” he says quietly and presses a kiss to her shoulder.
Sam smiles softly at Jack. She rests her forehead against his, closing her eyes.
“I’m really glad you’re okay, Sam.”
Daniel’s voice pulls her back. She brushes a kiss across his lips, just enough to say so am I, and settles her head on his chest once again. She hadn’t allowed herself to sleep much at the end, wanting to be awake if so she could fight the entire way, and someone was always coming by to see her or check on vitals while she was in the infirmary. Exhausted, she closes her eyes and falls asleep, hearing Daniel’s heartbeat and feeling Jack’s.
“Major Carter,” Teal’c says, tilting his head as he comes upon her sitting on the floor outside of his quarters. He wonders how she got down there on her own with her knee still immobile. He offers her a hand to help her standing.
Sam grasps his hand and lets him pull her upwards; she grimaces, the concrete floor a little too hard for her butt’s liking and her knee hurts apparently because it can. She’d come to the base this morning with Daniel because Janet wanted to check her injuries, but hadn’t thought through the fact that she’d be stuck here until someone could drive her home. She knows Daniel or Jack would both drop everything and take her, but she doesn’t want to bother them. “Thanks,” she smiles as he opens the door and gestures for her to enter. She instantly feels herself relax in the comforting, dim light of his quarters.
Teal’c turns and lights a selection of candles. When he’s finished, he finds her standing in the exact same position by the door. He isn’t privy to all that happened to her while she was captured - he has read Doctor Fraiser’s medical report, though Major Carter’s report is still forthcoming - but he’d seen her injuries and the fear in her eyes and the decision to shoot the man standing over her had been part instinct, part rage. He’s known for some time now that their telepathy has meant that she has grown closer with Colonel O’Neill and Daniel Jackson and that they likely know far more than he ever will. But Teal’c does not mind, because Major Carter is alive and standing in front of him.
“I don’t have a way to get home,” she explains, motioning to her leg. Janet hasn’t cleared her to drive yet and even if she had, there’s no point in trying. She taught herself years ago to drive with her left foot in case something like this happened, but her current car is a stick shift and anyway, Daniel drove. “And I can’t focus in my lab. Do you mind if I stay here until Daniel’s ready to go?”
“Of course.” Teal’c pulls out a chair for her, knowing she won’t want to sit on the floor. It’s a comfortable chair, one he keeps for guests; the one that came supplied with the room is tucked into the back of the closet. His eyebrows furrow when she doesn’t immediately move to sit. “Is there something wrong, Major Carter?”
Sam shakes her head and bites her lip, unprepared for the gratitude at the simple act of bringing her a chair. It’s more than the chair, though, and she knows that. But she swallows, hard, and pushes her emotions back down; Jack and Daniel have been so sensitive to her lately that any wave of strong emotion sends them running for her, which has caused Janet no small amount of consternation whenever she pushes on something that hurts Sam and finds herself surrounded by two worried members of SG-1. She doesn’t want them breaking down the door to Teal’c’s quarters.
“Thank you,” she says quietly, lifting her gaze from the chair to his eyes, “for coming for me.” It’s ridiculous, she knows; SG-1 doesn’t thank each other for things like that. It’s a given that they will be rescued and nobody ever has to ask or be grateful for it. But she does, anyway.
Teal’c nods and steps forward, embracing her. The Tau’ri concept of hugging had caught him off-guard at first. Before becoming First Prime, he’d embraced his friends on Chulak, and certainly his wife and son, but it was either as greeting or a sign of intense love, neither of which was appropriate for the first time Major (then Captain) Carter had wrapped her arms around his waist. The villagers had simply raised the fourth wall of the first barn to be built after years of Goa’uld rule and the cheering and excitement of the village had overwhelmed her with the need to hug someone. He hadn’t known what to do then and she’d awkwardly smiled and apologized and hugged Daniel Jackson instead. Years later, he understands much better.
Sam sniffles and tucks her head under his chin, bringing her arms around his back. She remembers being terrified when arms had tried to pull her away from Daniel and instantly calmed when she heard Teal’c’s voice in her ear. She knows she’d passed out after that and Jack occasionally teases her for thinking they were all an hallucination, but Teal’c’s strong arms feel just as safe now as they did then.
“I am glad you are well,” Teal’c says softly once she pulls back from him. She has a long way to go before she is herself again, but he knows she will make it.
She smiles and grasps the edges of the chair and slowly lowers into it. Teal’c brings over the matching footstool and she links her hands underneath her leg and lifts, gently settling her leg onto the stool. She brings her other leg up to cross over it and leans back in the chair.
Teal’c settles onto a pillow on the floor for kel’no’reem, but watches her for a few moments before beginning. She produces a book from her jacket pocket and leans toward the light as she begins to read.
[navigation: forward to Chapter Six (come here when you sleepwalk) // return to index]