WHIPLASH: Chapter 7

The second day in, it started raining.

Nathan initially wanted to keep moving, but after one too many 'wet' comments from Sonya, he decided it would be better to stay put. That and he didn't want a sick Inven on his hands—or to get sick himself. The rain only got worse as the day wore on, and it ended up that they wasted most of it, holed up in a decrepit shell of a building (after, of course, they figured out there were no surprises in it).

"…It's quiet," Sonya said, straddling the empty windowsill. She stared out at the downpour. Nathan leaned against it, arms crossed against the slight chill the rain had created. It seemed as if the world was painted in nothing but shades of grey. But even with the dull roar of the rain, her words were true. It was quiet out. Silent, once you learned to tune out the rain. "I wonder… I wonder what this place was like when it was still alive. When there were still people living here. D'you think someone sat here, right here, and stared out at the rain like I am now?"

Statistically speaking, it had probably happened. Nathan exhaled and leaned down onto the bottom of the sill, and said instead, "Doesn't it make you feel better to think that you are the only person to have ever done it?"

Sonya turned to him, surprise written across her face. She relaxed into a smile, though, and soon turned back to the rain. "Yeah, I guess so. It's more fun to be unique."

"It is, but it's also sort of lonely."

"Is what why you're here with me?"

"Yeah. I guess it is."

-.-.-

When the rain didn't let up by the third afternoon, Nathan got fed up, hoped that they wouldn't get sick, and traipsed out into the rain. The lightning from the previous day had long since left, now rumbling threatening to the south. Traveling was slower than it would've been otherwise, but at least they were moving. And there were no lizards or other animals out and about to distract Sonya. She stayed close to him, clinging to his sleeve for most of the day. She was obviously nervous, and it was rubbing off on him. Or maybe it was the neural link. He wasn't sure, but it was grating on his already frayed nerves.

"Do you have to stick so close to me?" he finally asked. It came out more harshly than he'd intended. He wished he could take it back almost immediately, too, after seeing the way she flinched back away from him, hands flying away from his arm to down by her sides.

"Sorry," she mumbled, turning her face from him.

Nathan sorely wished he could go beat his head against the nearest concrete wall. "Sorry, Sonya. I didn't mean it that way. It's just—"

"We're making bad time and it's annoying you," she finished for him. She still hadn't turned back to face him.

He sighed and nodded. "Yes, that." After she didn't reply for quite some time, he decided to start herding her towards a building that was still upright and had a thoroughly non-leaking roof. She became a little more animated again as she peeled off wet clothes (though he had to stop her from taking off a little too much). There was enough dry wood in a couple of the rooms to start a fire with, so they set their wet clothes near that, finished checking all of the rooms they could access, and then settled in for the night. They still hadn't made that much progress, but it was progress nonetheless, and the rain was starting to get to them both, anyway.

He set his chin in his hand, a little amazed at what a simple lack of sunlight could do to a person's psyche. He shook out a cigarette from one of his packs, realizing that one good thing about the constant rain was the fact that he couldn't smoke while out in it. His cigarettes were lasting longer this time. Sonya watched with great interest as he lit it off of the fire, inhaled, and then exhaled out a mouthful of smoke.

"You're so cool."

He nearly choked on his breath. Recovering, he looked away and covered his mouth with his hand, feigning another drag. She had been rather quiet on the mission up until that point—no, she had been calming down in general. "What brought this up again?" he asked carefully, blowing smoke at her across the fire.

She giggled girlishly (never a good sign) and smiled at him. "I can't help it. Just seeing you like this. I mean, I know smoking is terrible for your health and everything, but you look so much like a bad boy when you do it. It's highly attractive. Nathan, have you ever had a girlfriend before?" The smile dimmed enough for him to notice.

Still, after a brief internal debate, he decided honesty was the best policy. "Of course I have. Why do you ask?" As if he couldn't guess.

"Oh… Then I guess you've already had your first kiss, huh." She didn't have to sound so disappointed about it.

"Sonya, if you were my age, would you expect anything less?"

"No, but—I guess I hadn't been expecting much, anyway." She gave up with a defeated sigh. "It's just—I haven't!"

He couldn't help but smile at the sheer outrage in her voice. "This is a problem for you?" He really shouldn't be teasing her, but he was only human. At least he was humoring her.

"Yes! Don't—Don't laugh, Nathan!"

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Y-Yes you were! You're so mean! I'm a girl, okay, and we think about these things! These things are important to us!" she snapped, her cheeks a very bright red. He held up his hands in surrender.

"I wouldn't know much about the inner workings of the female mind, so you're probably right. But my ignorant male mind has to wonder what you're getting at, Sonya."

"You're making fun of me," she replied with a pout. She pulled her knees up to her chest and glared at him over them. "Why are you being so mean to me? You're not supposed to be! Tego are supposed to be nice to their Inven."

"Oh, I'm not being that terrible," he sighed. She was forcing him to give up on the banter, though it wasn't as if he could blame her. She was just a little girl. A girl who had a crush on him. A very brash, shameless girl in the middle of puberty that he would have to spend the next several years with alone or nearly alone who had a crush on him. …Now he was just depressing himself. "Sorry. You're just too cute when you're flustered."

She went red enough to match her skirt and averted her eyes. Nathan couldn't help but smile in triumph. Maybe she wasn't so shameless after all. At any rate, that ended the discussion and she hardly spoke to him for the rest of the night.

Sonya being Sonya, though, meant that the silence didn't last long. Not even a full day passed before she was speaking to him normally again. Most of this was due to the game that started (rather accidentally). The rain had started to lighten towards midday, until it was hardly misting out. This lasted for about a half hour before turning back into a downpour. That, in turn, lasted another hour before giving way to sprinkling. The rain alternated for the rest of the afternoon, which meant that they were forced into playing tag with the weather, more or less.

Once the rain would start to lighten, they would pull their coats on and sprint out into it. They would travel as far as they could before the rain stopped them, and then they would rest in an empty building for the duration. They were covering more ground, Nathan was aware, but he also knew that this was more tiring in the long run and would likely make them both sick.

Either walk during the light bits and cover half the ground without eliminating the risk of getting sick while adding a lot of time to their mission, or take what chances they could while staying as dry as possible, add to the possibility of catching a bad cold (he didn't even want to think about pneumonia), and try to keep their mission time from spiraling away from them.

The next day, the on and off raining continued. It was as if the clouds overhead couldn't make up their mind. Nathan continued pushing them at their equally uneven pace. Sonya didn't seem to mind, instead trying to pull him back into the game aspect of it. "C'mon, it's a race! Run between the raindrops!"

"That doesn't actually work."

"It works if you think it does!"

"Just wait, Sonya. The rain hasn't let up yet." He pointed with his cigarette out the broken window. She frowned at him and crossed her arms, though she couldn't look too intimidating when she had all the ferocity of a soaking wet kitten.

"One good thing about the storm is that you can't smoke while we're traveling anymore," she remarked sourly, pursing her lips. Nathan shrugged; he was all too aware of that fact. And while it was annoying, it was just that—a minor irritation. There were more than enough breaks to smoke on, after all. "Why did you take up that annoying habit in the first place, anyway?"

"What, smoking?"

"Yeah! Why? What other annoying habits do you have?"

"I have this one, she's about this tall, two-toned hair, purple eyes—" He broke off with a laugh when she kicked him. She didn't seem too upset over it, though. Nathan chewed on the end of the cigarette in his mouth and glanced back out the window before answering. "I don't have a reason for it, not really. I partly took it up on an elaborate undercover mission we stupidly called a dare at the time."

Eyes as big as saucers, Sonya practically hung off of his shirtfront and gasped, "What? What was it?!"

"Like I said, it was a dare."

"From who? Allen?"

"No, he wasn't stupid enough to get conned into it," he deadpanned, a little bitterly. "You know how I said there were a couple of us who graduated early?" She nodded eagerly. "Well, we were a technically a year younger than we were supposed to be, but our class had a lot of older Tego anyway. Long story short, it made for a lot of the older classmates picking on us, the younger ones. We were naïve and stupid."

"So they pulled pranks on you?"

"Naturally. Until about the fourth year when we started fighting back, but that's another matter entirely," he told her matter-of-factly, trying to pry her from him. It didn't work. "Anyway, the oldest of the class, well he was a total dick about it—shit, pretend you didn't hear that—or that—"

"See! You can swear! I get two freebies now," Sonya interrupted indignantly. She let go of him and marched away from him, arms crossed triumphantly over her chest. She turned on her heel and grinned at him. "I get to swear now."

"Not if you want to hear the story," he replied, a little annoyed at his slip. He had been doing so well, too.

She seemed to weigh the options. He very much hoped she chose to forgo the cursing. She was bad enough as it was; he didn't need her swearing to boot. (Plus, judging on her personality and past actions, she would be the type to swear when least appropriate.) With a great sigh, she dropped her arms to her sides. "Fine. But next time, I'm not letting you off the hook."

He rolled his eyes, though he really was relieved. Nathan spat out the chewed butt of his cigarette, ground it into the mud with his boot, and looked once more out the window. The rain still wasn't letting up. "Hmm, now where was I before I was so rudely interrupted…"

"The old guy. He was a dick," Sonya supplied with a bright smile.

"Sonya—"

"I was using your words!"

"Sonya."

"…Fine."

"Story time now. His name is Del Mattson, for future reference, and that is what we will both refer to him from now on as. Not anything else." He eyed her to make sure she wasn't going to rebel further. Mutiny would not be tolerated. She sulkily nodded, however, so he relaxed a bit. "He's seven or eight years older than us, so when we were just turning sixteen, he was already twenty-something. Twenty-four, I think. And he used to be a soldier, which is why he joined up so late.

"Well, Mattson thought it would be a good idea to put us through what he called a 'stealth mission'. He was always telling these war stories of his, and thought we couldn't handle it. Who was it—I think it was Gallagher who first called him out on them. They got into this big fight, and it ended up that he said we couldn't handle what he went through, and dared us to go be soldiers for a week.

"Oh, it was all sorts of fun," Nathan continued, this time with no small amount of sarcasm. "He and a couple others got us all dolled up. Uniforms, helmets, guns, everything. Told us we had to smoke to pass it off convincingly. Only Gallagher and I could manage it without coughing up a lung, though. Unknown to us, Mattson had already informed a couple of his old buddies about what we were doing, otherwise we would've been discovered the first time we set foot in those barracks.

"For an entire week, we pretended to be soldiers. Nevermind the fact that we were sixteen at the time and didn't have a speck of training to our names. Those soldiers we were bunking with gave us hell, too—that is not a swear word, so it doesn't count, Sonya!—making us drill and all sorts of things. The dare very suddenly ended when Bethaway got fed up, took a cigarette Gallagher was trying to light, and attempted to put it out in someone's eye. Mattson got the blame for the entire thing and I sort of never stopped smoking after that."

"Seriously?" she asked, eyes large once more.

"No, I made the entire thing up."

"I thought you were being nice to me again," Sonya pouted. Nathan smiled wearily and shrugged. "Well, I say that was a really stupid reason to start turning your lungs black, Nathan Loar."

"You thought it was cool the other night."

"Even if it is, it's a bad habit. Allen told me so. Plus I hear you when you cough. That isn't healthy." She narrowed her eyes and approached him once more. He innocently looked away and backed up—until she had him pinned against one of the still-standing walls, standing on the tips of her toes to better glare at him. "What am I going to do if you get cancer and die?"

"You've been talking to Allen too much. Don't worry like he does."

"But—"

"Sonya, it's fine." It was bad enough he got this talk from Allen constantly, but he didn't need it from his Inven as well. They were supposed to work together for too long for her to ever start this.

Thankfully, unlike Allen, she let the matter drop. Maybe she was just parroting what he had said earlier, but it wasn't as if he was complaining. He didn't need two mother hens. That stray thought, though, only made him miss his friend again. Telling the story also made him feel a tad nostalgic, which only worsened his mood. Things had seemed hard at the time, but looking back now, Tego training had been a breeze. It had been fun. They hadn't had to worry about anything, not dying, not (serious) injuries, not Prissies or refugees or the war or the damned weather.

Definitely not the damned weather, Nathan thought as he glared out the window. The sky responded with lightning forking across it. It looked as if they would still be there for awhile; it wasn't going to return to its off-and-on pattern of before. He sighed and started humming the song that had been stuck in his head the entire time—not that he noticed.

Sonya did, though, and threw up her hands with an exasperated cry. "You're impossible, Nathan Loar!"

He watched her storm off and could only wonder what he had done that time.

-.-.-

"Nora, dear, how nice of you to see me on such short notice!" Leland Aminov proclaimed, wrapping her in a bear hug. Lenore smiled in a very strained fashion and delicately pried him off.

"I would rather you stop calling me that, doctor," she said woodenly, still smiling. Allen shuffled closer to her side, staring—not glaring, that would be rude—hard at Aminov. Though his Inven had obviously not initiated, welcomed, or wanted the embrace, it still made him feel a little put-out. "What is it you wanted to see us about?" He couldn't help but notice how she placed a very careful emphasis on the 'us' part. It wasn't enough to deter him from his stare-glaring at the doctor, however.

Aminov turned on his heel and led them down the hallway, messing with his ever-present scarf as he spoke. "I was talking with this new Inven I've recently acquired, and something he said made me have an idea. It took all night for me to mentally tinker it into any sort of logical sense, but I must look over your nivedidus again. Incidentally, how did your last mission go?"

Lenore didn't answer him. Allen didn't volunteer any information, either.

"…I see," Leland said softly.

The rest of the appointment went smoothly. Aminov and Lenore chatted about different aspects of the nivedidus and common acquaintances, and while most of it went over Allen's head, at least he was trying to pay attention. Although it was rather hard to keep up when they discussed, in depth, the advantages versus disadvantages of adding just a few square centimeters to the nivedidus' surface area could accomplish in terms of sensory capabilities.

"Nora, listen to me!" the scientist said irritably. She glared at him, though because he interrupted or because he called her that again, Allen wasn't sure. "Five millimeters. Is that too much to ask as a test?"

"Five millimeters times twenty-eight centimeters! That adds a lot of area for something this size!" Lenore replied waspishly, holding up her arm. Her sleeve was rolled up, revealing the faintly off-white coloration of her nivedidus. "I have tried expansions before, but never one that large. Nor do I plan on it, Leland."

"But think of the possibilities—!"

"The last time you said that. Need I remind you how that went?" Lenore had gone from aggravated to quietly livid. Allen took a step away from her, eyes wide at the sudden change. He hadn't ever seen her that angry; she, by nature, was a mellow woman with a placid view of everything.

The implication of her words was almost worse. He knew that Lenore had been an Inven before, that she was part of the forefront of technology and experiments concerning Inven technology, and that she had a history passed that she had only glossed over in their talks. Allen was not stupid and could guess at quite a few things, but this caught him by surprise. He was unaware of the full situation and what exactly was going on between the two of them, so he did the only thing he could do, considering the circumstances and his training—he stepped in to protect his Inven.

Literally.

Aminov only looked momentarily stunned as Allen gently pulled Lenore back a step, then stepped up into the gap and glare at him. There was enough of a height difference to make it so he had to glare up at Aminov, but after years of doing the same to Nathan, Allen had perfected the skill of doing so.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how one looked at it, the tension and mood was completely ruined when a blond boy ran into the room and affixed himself to the pant leg of the scientist. Aminov looked down at him, breaking eye contact with Allen, and exclaimed, "Emil! Is it already eleven?"

The boy didn't answer him. His head was tilted all the way back, blue eyes on Lenore, expression rapt. Allen glanced back at her; she only smiled and tilted her head a bit. "What an adorable child, Leland. You didn't tell me you had one!"

"He's not mine in the strictest sense. He's a refugee from Lanne who was brought in not two weeks ago. I was supposed to go see him at eleven, but I suppose he's come and found me. Aren't you an ambitious little tyke?" Aminov chuckled. Emil didn't respond to him that time, either, still staring at Lenore. She bent down so that she was eye-level with him, but he shied back, acting like a child clinging to his mother's skirt. Allen grimaced as she held out a hand to him and he only hid further behind Aminov. Though he was grateful that he wasn't locked in a glaring match anymore. Aggression wasn't his style.

"Is he always this shy?" Lenore asked, still trying to coax Emil toward her.

"Oh yes. Terribly timid. Though he's got a nasty streak if—"

"Bevriedera ors," Emil said with a fierce pout.

Aminov sighed. "If you happen to be from northern Lanne. And I know that you're not, but with the dark hair and eyes, you could pass for it."

"Technically I'm a quarter Lannish. On my mother's side." Lenore straightened up and smoothed out her dress, looking severely put-out. "Still, what has that have to do with anything? What did he say?" Allen had been wondering exactly the same thing.

"I'm currently teaching him more of our language. He knows the basics, and he's picking it up quickly, but these daily meetings with him are still a bit of a pet project of mine. He's the only southerner we have right now in the program, and I haven't spoken to one in years, anyway…" he trailed off wistfully.

"…He's in the Inven project?" Lenore asked brightly. Allen rolled his eyes. And just like that, child-loving Lenore was back.

"Yes. Actually, the accelerated program. Within a year, he should be out in the field on his own. I hope to use him as a key to further missions and negotiations with the southern half of Lanne," Aminov explained, patting the boy on the head. Emil flushed at the attention and ducked out of it rather hastily. He completely scooted around the scientist in an effort to further evade Lenore—though eventually she got fed up and chased after him, much to Aminov's amusement. By the time Emil figured out he was being pursued, she had caught up and had her arms around him, picked him up, and carried him rather awkwardly back towards Allen. He was reminded very strongly of a child with a puppy. Complete with pathetic whining and squirming.

"So a little Lannish Inven. Look at his hair, though…" she crooned, setting him back on the floor—though not allowing the poor boy to escape her grasp—and ran her fingers through his wavy hair. "Look, Allen. It's even paler than yours is."

"Doesn't mean I'm Lannish, though I always thought they had dark hair and eyes. Like you or Maria," Allen replied, eyeing Emil with equal parts curiosity and pity. The boy looked ready to burst into flames, judging by the redness of his face. "So, he looks new. He acts new. Who brought him in?"

"B-Be-Bevridera ors," Emil stammered, repeating the same odd phrase as before. It didn't elicit any sort of response from Lenore, however, much to his obvious confusion and irritation.

"One of the new pairs. Actually, a Tego from your graduating class, unless I'm gravely mistaken," Aminov said, chin in hand. Lenore and Allen exchanged a look. Allen, for his part, figured it was one of two people. "Loar, I believe his name was. Your age, with orange hair and brown eyes. He also had this spicy little Inven with silver and brown hair, oh, and glasses. Do you know them? I think they mentioned you…"

"Yeah, we know them," Allen replied with a sigh. Nathan had been his first guess, anyway. It wasn't as if he expected anything less. "Nathan Loar and Sonya Karahalios."

"They're good friends of ours," Lenore added, still petting Emil.

He perked up at the name, however. "Shachelle? Capelleau halon, beli oei lilietta na?" he asked, gesturing vaguely. Allen literally felt the words fly over his head once more. Thankfully, risking an embarrassed glance to the side, he found that his Inven was in the same boat; she stared down at the child in her arms blankly, as if he had just spoken another language—oh wait.

"Ah, yes, Emil," Aminov replied pleasantly.

"Yes," Emil repeated with a blink and a tilt of his head. After a moment, however, he broke out into a cheery smile and a darker blush. "Mies shachelle."

"Planning on filling us in, Leland?" Lenore prompted as she resumed her petting, much to Emil's dismay. "Also, when can I take him home with me?"

"If you agree to test the new nivedidus specifications I have—"

"No way."

"It was worth a shot."

"It really was not, actually, as I am in a sour mood again," she replied neatly. "And I am not going to test any of your specifications. End of discussion." Her words were accompanied by such a look that it really was the end of the discussion. "Now, what are the chances I really can take him home with me?"

-.-.-

"You know the worst part about this mission?" Nathan asked around his cigarette. Since it wasn't raining—at least temporarily—he was taking advantage of it. Sonya looked up at him, feet still in the water. "Because of all the rain, this water is going to be clean anyway."

"Wait, so… In other words, this mission was for nothing?"

He nodded. He had had a sneaking suspicion that that would be the case once the rain became a constant theme of the mission, but he hadn't been completely sure until stopping at the outpost and being informed that it had been raining there, too. He had purposefully kept his doubts from Sonya, knowing that if he'd told her she never would have agreed to finish the mission, but they were there now. Might as well inform her that their colds and discomfort and constant soaked bodies were for nothing.

"Stupid lake. I hate you!" There was hardly any anger in her tone, however, and Sonya only halfheartedly kicked at the water. A moment later, she sniffed, and ran her wrist under her nose. "…Active duty is stupid."

"Just because of one mission—" he began in exasperation, but it seemed as if she wasn't done.

"Not just this one! The last one, too! We go through the entire thing thinking everything's easy and okay, and then we come across Emil and his parents! Who were dead! Aren't we supposed to save the refugees? Not find dead bodies and stupid water and get stuck in rain all the time!"

Nathan sat down beside her and exhaled a mouthful of smoke. Sonya continued to scowl. "Sonya, we're going to have missions like that, like this one. Ones where we don't do anything important, or ones where we find we can't save someone," he said softly, sighing at his reflection in the water. "That's life for Tego and Inven."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it," she replied sulkily.

"No, it doesn't."

"Will our next mission be better?"

Why did she continually feel the need to place him in situations where he either had to lie to make her feel better or tell the truth and make her feel worse? "…Yeah, Sonya. It will be."

It rained all the way back, too. They were almost a week late by the time they got to the fence, sopping wet, and whatever they had caught, it was worse than a regular cold. The truck ride back was miserable, debriefing was mercifully short, and when the doctor the guard told them to see informed them that they both had very bad colds that bordered on pneumonia and they'd have to stay in bed for the next couple of days, Sonya just coughed and said, "Worst. Mission. Ever."