Memory #13

[identityformations]

Trivial Neutral - Playing tag with Miles and three different groups of soldiers afterwards (M, BiA 273)

Regained - Game #85, Mother, LARP (in which Mithos won for Amethyst by proposing a foursome I think)

Shareable - Yes, two extra uses.

So this is going to be kind of a fragmented write-up because this whole seen takes places from Miles' point of view, and he only periodically encounters Mark. I'm also going to try to keep this write-up...brief...sob...I'm seven memories behind with these things. Weight timeline places this relatively early on in his adult life. Also, I'm still blurring his name in this one, though he'll get it soon.

I am fleeing frantically through a multi-story heavy-built structure, the dam that protects London from the rising sea, stunner in hand, in an inscrutably keyed-up emotional state. (This is just after he killed someone for the first time, and that someone was the abusive fucktard who was the closest thing he had to a father, so. ALL THE FEELINGS.) I'm just trying to get away, somewhere where nobody will find me, but there are people...Barrayaran military?...looking for me everywhere.

But it's Miles who finds me. Asks me where Ivan is, and I refuse to tell him--whoever Ivan is, whatever he has to do with this--and then offers to get me out of here, but I'm suspicious he just wants to capture me or use me. He's called the police, I'm kind of freaking out about that. He presses the Ivan issue again, and I tell him that Ivan's down, back the way we came. Feel a little squirrelly about this for some reason.

We rappel back down a long shaft, me on his back. I don't think I've ever been this close to him. And I lead him to a small access hatch.

"Each pumping chamber has an access hatch, for cleaning and repairs. We put him in there."

Miles swore.

The pumping chamber was about the size of a large closet. Sealed, it would be dark, cold, slimy, stinking, and utterly silent. Until the rush of rising water, thrumming with immense force, gushed in to turn it into a death chamber. Rushed in to fill the ears, the nose, the dark-staring eyes; rushed in to fill the chamber up, up, not even one little pocket of air for a frantic mouth; rushed through to batter and twist the body ceaselessly, roiling against the thick unyielding walls until the face was puled beyond recognition, until, with the tide, the dank waters at last receded, leaving--nothing of value. A clog in the line.

"You..." breathed Miles, glaring at Mark, "lent yourself to this...?"

Mark wiped his palms together nervously, stepping back. "You're here--I brought you here," he began plaintively. "I said I would..."

"Isn't this a rather severe punishment for a man who never did you more harm than to snore and keep you awake? Agh!"

Miles fishes Ivan out, and Ivan startles when he sees him--he thinks he's me. It's Officer Boy, the one from my later memories--no wonder he didn't seem to like me. I feel kind of disgusted with myself. And flee--

--into a plasma arc. Barely misses me, burning my face and ear. Some guys with face-paint taking over one of the watchtowers, trying to kill me. I run back to Miles, panicked.

"But you can relax, Mark. They don't want to kill you."

"The hell they don't! He shouted, 'There he is, men!' and tried to blow my head off!"

Miles's lips peeled back on a dirty grin. "No, no," he caroled soothingly. "Merely a case of mistaken identity. Those people want to kill me--Admiral Naismith. It's just the ones on the other end of the tunnel who want to kill you. Of course," he added jovially, "neither of them can tell us apart."

(YES THIS IS THE WACKY TWIN CAPER BOOK.)

Miles spends some time on the comm--looks like there are Dendarii soldiers in this building too--and seems to be formulating a cunning plan. I'm pretty much panicked and hoping not to die. Miles leads the way to one of those pumping station access hatches and starts fiddling with it so the pump and the manual locks are disabled, so it isn't deadly. He needs his knife, I reluctantly hand over an ornate antique dagger--I can only guess i took it from him earlier?

And then he tells us to get into the chamber. Ivan goes dead white. I'm none too thrilled myself. "Besides, don't you think Mark ought to get the chance to share your recent experience?" is how Miles gets Ivan in there.

And there I am, stuck between them in this tiny stinky trap, listening to Miles make calls and try to arrange a good solution to the wacky three-way chase going on out there. Or four-way, if the police have gotten there. We're watching over a surveillance camera.

The lead Cetagandan darted into the line of sight of the lead Barrayaran. They both fired instantly, and dropped each other in a heap.

"Stunner reflexes," muttered Miles. "S' wonderful."

"My God," said Ivan, entranced to the point of wholly forgetting his hermetic enclosure, "it's just like the proton annihilating the anti-proton. Poof!"

The memory kind of fades out as the caper plays out outside. (I've split off a major conversation between Mark and Miles here into a separate memory.)

+ Officer Boy is Ivan, and I helped stuff him in a death trap once, go me.
+15 Miles keep saving my butt. Does he actually like me? That makes it worse.
+20 well that was confusing.