xp_logs | Skeleton Coast: The Great Not-Quite Escape

Domino seizes the first opportunity to make a break for it, only to discover that Gideon's been one step ahead of her all along.

She was being studied. It finally dawned on Domino, the third time Gideon invited her to a meal - if you could really call it an invitation, given that she was dragged to the table, left in handcuffs, and had a gun trained on her from behind at all times. But precautions aside, she was most definitely being studied. Gideon hardly ate, although the food was very good. He watched her, with an intensity she probably would have found creepy if she hadn't been wrestling with low-level terror pretty much all the time anyway. Occasionally, he offered observations, cryptic pieces of information, most of which only served to disturb her further. Although to her credit, she had stopped rising to his bait. Mostly.

She wasn't quite as sure what to make of the half-dozen other men who also seemed to inhabit this house, wherever it was. (The view from her barred window wasn't illuminating. Trees, and still African-looking, but that didn't tell her much.) Gideon's companions all seemed to be in their late twenties or early thirties, all physically fit, all very polite. Creepily so, even if they held guns on her every time they entered the room to bring her food or whatever. She wasn't used to well-mannered men. They made her twitchy.

She was allowed to move around her suite freely after the first day, and spent most of the second day looking for some way to get out of her suite. Clearly, a great deal of thought had gone into minimizing the obvious variables here. What was worse, she didn't seem to be able to push any of the less likely variables, either. It didn't feel right. She didn't feel right. The world was heavy and solid and unchangeable around her. What had Gideon done to her? Frustrated, still reeling mentally from some of the things Gideon had told her - some of the things he knew and shouldn't have - Domino prowled the confines of the suite restlessly, torn between wishing desperately for a rescue and willing Nathan and GW to stay far, far away.

Then came the morning that she looked out her window and saw Gideon outside, speaking to one of his companions for a few minutes before he got into a car and drove away, down the long, tree-lined driveway.

By the time his car was out of sight, the butterflies in her stomach had come back. The world started to feel fluid again, the way that it should. Peachy. Domino sat down on the bed, taking a deep breath, then another.

They would be bringing breakfast up to her soon.

*

"Good morning." It was the one with the shaved head and the wire-rimmed glasses, an odd combination in Domino's opinion. He had introduced himself as Marcus, the day before yesterday. "Are you going to eat today?" he asked, peering at her with every evidence of concern. "You didn't have much yesterday."

"I'm dieting." Gun in his hand, but not trained on her. Were they getting sloppy? She suspected Gideon would frown on that.

Marcus raised an eyebrow, then went to set the tray down on the table. "Not eating's not going to help the situation, you know."

"You're right," Domino said cheerfully as he leaned down - he was quite tall, really, and would have had a couple of inches on Nate - to set the tray down on the table. "Sex would, though. Up for it?"

Marcus promptly choked, apparently on air, and Domino raised an eyebrow, smiling blandly as he turned to stare at her. She did not look directly at the breakfast tray. He hadn't set it down quite squarely on the table; there were a few inches of tray protruding over the edge, and that was all that mattered. "You've got to be kidding," Marcus said, the other eyebrow going up. "You are kidding," he said, when she just kept smiling at him. "You have a very odd sense of humor."

"Captivity brings out the worst in me." Her stomach was churning, the butterflies turning into elephants running around in crazed circles. The table. The table had a wobble. There was condensation on the glass of orange juice. It would slide. It would slide. Domino's eyes fluttered, and she didn't feel her head fall back against the headboard of the bed.

Marcus frowned as the girl seemed to... wilt, suddenly, slumping back against the bed. "Hey," he said worriedly, and took a step in that direction.

Just one step. Because in the next step, the breakfast tray fell off the table and landed on his foot. It distracted him for a moment, barely more than an instant, because like most people who worked for Gideon Faraday, Marcus was fairly bright and part of him recognized right away what had just happened.

By then, Domino was off the bed in a blur and most of the way across the room to him. He started to raise the gun; she kicked it out of his hand, and then kicked him in the head.

He went down hard, and Domino looked around wildly. Gun, where had the gun gone? When she didn't see it in that split-second, she knew she couldn't wait to find what piece of furniture it was under. She had to get out, now. The door was open.

Marcus was already starting to stir. Domino dashed out into the hall, looking around. "HEY!" she heard from her left, and one of the others - Steven, Gideon had called him - was standing down at the end of the hall, staring in shock at her for all of a half-second before he got a determined look and charged.

Domino ran in the other direction. There just happened to be a window - unbarred, thankfully - at that end of the hall. Here goes nothing...

*CRASH!*

*

It was the height of irony, really, that she had managed to acquire a vehicle, complete with a map, and yet had not yet managed, twelve hours after escaping, to find someplace to make an international phone call. Should have driven into the city, not away from it, Domino raged at herself. What were you thinking?.

The few places she'd tried, roadside stops and the like, had either not offered international phone service, or the lines had been down. Bad luck. A string of bad luck, and that made no sense at all. Had Gideon done something to her with her own power? Warped the probabilities around her?

Her hands were still shaking every time she thought too hard about that. He'd been using her power consciously. Consciously! She hadn't even thought that was possible. Domino swallowed, then blinked at the lights up ahead. Another roadside stop? She was well up into the mountains now, and inhabited places were growing increasingly few and far between. Worse case scenario, she just kept driving. Although maybe she really should have headed south, not north. Bad call... bad call, you need to focus, damn it!

It was a traveler's lodge, she realized as she got close enough. Fairly empty, to judge by the fact that there were only three cars outside. That was good. She was feeling definitely twitchy about crowds just now. She'd been in a crowd in the market in Angola, and that hadn't helped.

Maybe, just maybe, she could get a call out from here. Domino left the Jeep outside the door of the lodge and headed in, startling the older woman who was dusting the furniture in the front room. "Do you have a phone?" she asked in English, her voice high and strained. The woman blinked at her, straightened. "Phone," Domino said, pantomiming. "Please? I'm in trouble, and..." She swallowed, then tried to smile.

The woman nodded, looking concerned, and then took Domino's arm, leading her gently into another room, an office from the looks of it. "Phone," she said, her English heavily accented. "Call... whom you like. Would you... food?"

The kindness in the woman's eyes made Domino's own eyes sting. "It's... I don't want to put you to any trouble..." She picked up the phone, her hands shaking as she started to dial the number of the safehouse in Tunis.

The woman shook her head. "No trouble," she said firmly, and turned to go. Domino was still dialing when she heard the woman gasp.

She was up out of the chair like a shot, whirling.

Marcus was standing in the doorway. He said something to the woman in a language Domino didn't know, and she replied, sounding relieved, and then turned to Domino with a smile.

"He... better English. Another guest," she told Domino, then started for the door again. Marcus stepped aside to let her go. "I will find you food," she promised, glancing back over her shoulder again.

Domino didn't say anything to stop her from going. Her jaw clenching, she stared at Marcus. "Another guest?"

He spread his hands wide. "Don't ask me how," he said calmly, even smiling a little, "but Gideon knew you'd be here. We didn't bother following you, after the first hour or so. He got back from town and told us to just head here." Marcus started towards her, moving slowly, almost lazily. "We checked in just before sunset. You took about the worst possible road, you realize."

"I was trying to avoid attention." Domino knew there was no point in trying to sit back down and complete the call. He wasn't going to let her. "What, does your boss see the future now?"

"Before today, I would have said no." Marcus stopped a few steps away, eyeing her closely. "Do we have to cause a scene?" he asked. "I still have a headache from yesterday."

No windows in this room. Damn. Domino lunged at him desperately, letting that be her answer. But hand-to-hand, in close quarters, with someone who had a foot of height and probably eighty pounds on her? Not such a great idea.

*

"Marcus?"

"In here," Marcus called, breathing hard as he knelt down beside the crumpled form of the girl on the floor. He needed to stop calling her that, he told himself, wincing as he rubbed at his side. She did not fight like a girl, after all, but like the professional she was. It was a damned good thing that his mutation involved increased durability, or he'd probably be the one getting carried out of here.

"I heard crashing," was Steven's dry response as he appeared at the door of the office. He gave Domino a measuring glance, and then Marcus an assessing one. "I thought maybe she'd beaten you up again."

Marcus made a face at him. "Oh, shut up. You're just pissy that you didn't get to use those big knives of yours." He checked Domino's pulse. Steady, thankfully. He had not walked in here intending to pound her into the floor like this, especially given Gideon's explicit instructions about keeping her in one piece, but she just hadn't stayed down. Hits that should have flattened her hadn't, and so he'd had to be rougher than he'd wanted.

Steven patted the hilt of the sword over his shoulder. "Her file says she's good with edged weapons. I don't know why you didn't let me do this instead of having me cover the exits. Hell, I could have found out just how good she was."

"He didn't want her hurt, remember?"

"Oh, and she looks very lively at the moment. You just wanted to be the one to take her down because you were the one who let her escape."

"Maybe just a little." Although Gideon had seemed oddly sanguine about that, Marcus reflected, checking Domino for injuries. He'd tried to be careful. Nothing seemed to be broken, but she certainly wasn't going to be moving anywhere very quickly for a day or so. "Probably just as well," he murmured to himself, then looked up at Steven. "Medical kit's in the car, right?" he asked, scooping her up in his arms. Steven nodded. "We can give her something to keep her out, and then drive down to the new site."

"Sedatives are our friends. I don't know why we weren't drugging her to start with. I'll go smooth things over with the owners and kill the phones," Steven replied, turning away. "Watch out that she doesn't wake up while you're carrying her out to the car and try to throttle you or something."

"Steven, shut up."