Equilibrium

Chapter 13 - Run like Hell

"No," Dyne said immediately. "You're a civilian."

"I know how to talk to him," Zen replied. "He'll clam up on you. I guarantee it. But, if it's me, we can talk more frankly."

"And," Cruz said. Then conspiratorially, "Yes. He's a civilian. Which means he has certain freedoms that we don't." Zen caught his meaning and smirked. "But, if I give an order, you take it," he instructed Zen. He nodded.

Zen looked back to Kevyn. They were hooked up to machines now to help them breathe, but the unhealthy blue to their skin was getting worse.

The Doctor finished fiddling with the equipment and approached them. "If you can get quick answers, I suggest you do so without delay," she said. "We're still losing ground. Blood oxygen levels are dismally low, and getting worse."

"Let's go," Cruz said decisively.

Zen looked to Kevyn's parents, and Zen's determined expression bolstered them.

~

Zen got into Cruz' personally owned vehicle - a sedan of moderate age. In the backseat - Dyne took the passenger side front seat. At least it wasn't a cop car - Zen would have been distinctly uncomfortable getting into the locked back. He felt a telltale ionization in the air. A little bit of luck as well. Zen smiled a little.

"Better let me knock," Zen said when they got rolling. "And you should hang back, out of sight. He'll have a front door camera."

Cruz' mouth thinned. "I appreciate it, but -"

"He won't open the front door for you," Zen cut in.

"Will he for you?" Cruz cut back. "Does he know about you two? If he is the culprit, he obviously doesn't think much of you."

Zen seethed, in part because he may be right. "Better chance with me," he replied. "He's prone to gloating. Maybe he thinks he played a prank on me."

The officers looked appalled. "This is his idea of a joke?" Dyne asked.

"Why would he want to do that?" Cruz asked.

"We used to be friends. I think you know that."

Dyne scoffed. 'Friends,' he intoned. "Like peas in a pod?"

"I don't speak with most of my old friends," Zen answered with dignity. "Hence the 'joke'."

"Our young Kev should have known better than get between old friends," Cruz said.

"You may be right," Zen allowed, but he didn't like the way Cruz said it, as if Zen were poison. They say a bad apple spoils the bunch. How rotten did Zen seem to them? "So, let me do what I can."

"Alright," Cruz allowed. A crack of thunder clapped in the distance and rolled off the mountains, spiking Zen's adrenaline. "But we step in on my command." Zen agreed.

~

Zen knocked firmly, but unhurried, on Mandrake's door. He had a stately home, though not as nice as the top families had. Tedy opened it, a satisfied look on his face.

"I wondered if you might show up," he said. He was a Forest elf, with brown hair and eyes, and ivy weaved through his hair and around his arms. His face was broad and shoulders wide. Taller than Zen by a couple of inches.

"Got your message," Zen replied.

Tedy waved him in. Zen stepped smoothly through the threshold and kept walking to the center of the room. Tedy made to close the door, but Cruz stopped him with a foot and hand in the gap before it shut.

"What the fuck!" Tedy exclaimed. The cops flashed their badges.

"You have a warrant?" Tedy asked. Straight from the 'don't talk to cops handbook'.

"Human law needs a warrant. Fae doesn't," Cruz said. It was true, Zen knew. "Just a reasonable suspicion. If you deny us, you'll have the Nation's law to contend with."

"Enough semantics," Zen hissed and rammed Tedy against the wall, and snarled, "Give me the fucking antidote, Tedy," Zen barked.

"There isn't one," he lied.

"Bullshit!" Zen said, and slammed him again, harder. Lightning danced along his skin. Then he leaned into Tedy's ear and said low, "If he dies, Tedy, so do you."

"You fucking traitor. Talking to the cops," he said, just as low. "This is exactly what this is about in the first place."

Zen stared him in the eye. "Who I sleep with is none of your fucking business."

"Yuki is pissed. She'll probably thank me."

"It's not her business either."

Tedy gave him a superior look like he knew better than Zen did. "Gods know why, but she never got over you."

Zen reminded Tedy to stay on subject by punching him hard in the gut. The cops had their commentary but didn't interfere. "The antidote," Zen said again. Tedy lost his air and started wheezing, trying to recover his breath.

"Maybe I'm doing you a favor, Nark fucker," Tedy said. This time, Zen gave him a left hook to the jaw. Since he was left-handed, it did a world of good.

"Easy," Cruz warned.

"That's up to Tedy," Zen said. In that moment, this gambit was worth risking prison. Just as long as Kevyn was alright, he could figure out the rest. Probably even make it to safety before they could arrest him. Tedy finally had the sense to look scared. Zen pressed the advantage and sent a small charge from the air and through Tedy's body. He cried out, startled. "They'll probably let you off easy for helping," Zen said, having no idea if that was true.

"Fine!" Tedy yelled. Then again more softly. "Fine. The antidote is in the safe behind the picture." He nodded in the direction of a painting of a boat on stormy waters."

~

The second he had the phial of tangerine-colored liquid in hand, he ran. First outside the house, then he remembered his plan and activated the Boogie Ball that he'd homed in onto the hospital entrance. The hospital only allowed such things from the entrance - there were barriers in place to prevent anyone from popping in anywhere else.

There had been a bit of a trick to opening the safe, so Zen had instructed Tedy to do it. So he weaved his hand just so and said the magic word, and had pulled back his hand with the phial. Zen left the arrest to the cops.

From the entryway, Zen sprinted, arms pumping, as he weaved through the crowd and toward the elevator. The ride seemed to take forever, and when the doors opened to the fifth floor, he took off again. A left, and a right. Through the waiting room full of Fuego's and other family of Kevyn's.

He opened the door in what Kev's parents would later call a dramatic fashion and gave it to the Doctor in the room.

She read the instruction label, performed a spell that would reveal the ingredients to make sure, and said, "We have no choice but to try." She gave it to Pillar first, who was far bluer than even Kevyn. Both were breathing more deeply than ever. Three drops on the tongue. All in the room waited with bated breath.

The Doctor looked at her vitals. "It's working!" she said. Zen tried to decipher how she could know that to no avail, then focused on Kevyn as she administered the drops on his tongue.

The warning beeps on Pillar's vitals settled down first to blessed silence, and then Kevyn's. Their color improved. Zen sat down heavily on a chair, relief rushing through him, his energy seeming to abandon him all at once.