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jeriendhalSalli met Phillip in the conference parlor once again, seating herself in one of the comfortable padded chairs. She watched for a few moments as he puttered around, arranging a second chair next to her for Ali, and one across from her for the reporter, neither of whom had arrived yet..
“All set, Milady?” he asked. “Where’s Miss Blacksailor?”
“Still dressing. I just spoke to her before I came downstairs,” Salli answered. Ali had been looking a bit twitchy and unhappy, and had asked her to go ahead while she prepared herself. Salli couldn’t blame her. It had been a long time since her last Media Relations course in finishing school, and poor Ali didn’t even have that much preparation for this.
“All right then. Hopefully this will be a loose, friendly interview. Just answer all the questions straight. These Oceanic News fellows enjoy pouncing on evasive Nobles. If you start getting uncomfortable, just give me a signal and I’ll wrap things up for you.”
“I understand,” she said.
Phillip nodded. “He’s probably going to direct a lot of questions towards Miss Blacksailor. If they get too personal I’ll deflect them, but we need to let her know that contradicting the basic facts in her criminal case probably won’t end well.”
“I don’t think that will be problem.” Given Ali’s usual stoic resignation towards her crimes, it was more likely she’d just nod in agreement with every accusation and provide even more damning details, Salli thought.
Phillip’s palm comp beeped. He gave a sharp nod as he checked it, rising to his feet. “The reporter is at the front entrance. I’ll bring him in for you.”
“Thank you, Phillip.” Salli waited as he left to get the reporter, wondering what was taking Ali.
He returned a few moments later, a familiar, gangly foxen following from behind. Oh, of course it would be him.
“Lady Darktail! A pleasure to see you again,” Nef Clawstroke greeted her cheerfully. He stuck out his paw, and Salli stood briefly to shake it, then settled back down in her chair.
“Mr. Clawstroke, what a surprise,” she admitted. “I thought you were covering the orbital beat.”
“Oh, I move up and down, depending on where the story is,” he said. “Since I’d already interviewed you both before, my editor thought it best if I did the follow up.”
That wasn’t an interview earlier, it was an ambush, she thought irritably. “I see. So, what topics would you like to discuss today?”
“Oh you and Miss Blacksailor. Particularly how you met and what seemed to spark the attraction between you, especially after you learned about her history.” He looked around the conference parlor. “Speaking of which, where is she?”
“Not here yet,” she admitted. She pulled out her palm comp to check Ali’s location. It showed she was still in her room. Which was a little annoying, but understandable. It was possible that Ali had funked out like when she had been unexpectedly introduced to her long lost brother Lu so recently. “She’s in her room. I’ll go see what is delaying her. Phillip, please stay and keep Mr. Clawstroke company.” No need to drag the reporter along for what might be an emotional moment with Ali.
As she stood up, Salli’s palm comp let out a loud emergency beep, pitched to scrape along a foxen’s auditory nerve like claws on a blackboard. Startled, she nearly dropped it before answering, “This is Salli, what’s the matter?”
“It’s Zaker, milady!” came the urgent reply, her voice shouting into Sali’s ear. In the background she could hear agonized growling and screams, which with a shock Salli recognized as coming from Ali. “I need you up in Ali’s room immediately!”
Salli was on her feet and heading towards the parlor door before she even realized what she was doing, Phillip and Clawstroke following. “Zaker! What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
“I’ve got Emergency Services on the way but I need you up here now!”
She broke into a run, the hem of her long skirt batting at her heels as she rushed down the hallway, up the stairs, heart pounding as she heard Ali’s cries of pain. The door to her room was open, the lock smoking and melted from where it had been shot out. She stumbled inside, following the sound until she found Zaker and Ali tangled together on the floor of the Necessary, Zaker straddling the smaller vixen, one paw clamped around Ali’s right wrist, trying to pin it to the ground. Ali’s other arm flailed wildly, blood pouring from what looked like multiple slashes along her left forearm, as she raked at Zaker’s chest and face.
“What have you done to her?” Salli cried.
“I heard her screaming and broke the door in. Mother Goddess, grab a towel and get some pressure on her arm before she bleeds out!” Zaker shouted, blood streaming down one cheek where Ali had slashed her.
Salli grabbed a towel off the nearby rack and dropped to her knees, skirts soon becoming soaked in the blood staining the tiled floor. Quickly she managed to catch Ali’s arm between her legs, pinning it down with the doubled over towel, pressing it down with both paws. “Ali, what happened? What happened!” she demanded.
Ali’s only answer was another agonized scream, her voice growing raw as she cried out, body kicking and flailing as she began to convulse, her mouth foaming with spittle. The white towel was soon red with blood, far too much blood, staining Salli’s paws, the floor, everywhere.
“Phillip! Ali’s equipment belt should be in her dresser!” Salli called to him, standing in the doorway as Clawstroke filmed everything with his damned camera monocle. “There’s a first aid kit in it. I think it’s the third pouch to the left of the buckle. Get it!”
“Yes, Milady!” Phillip shoved Clawstroke out of the way, good man, and went for the belt. He returned in a moment carrying a small red first aid pouch, fishing out a smart bandage from it about ten centimeters square.
“I don’t think that’s big enough,” Zaker muttered darkly, panting from the effort of trying to keep Ali pinned down.
“It’ll help,” Salli shot back. To Philip she ordered, “I’m going to lift the towel up and then you press the bandage over the wound, on the count of three. One… two.... three!” She yanked the towel back as Phillip, almost tripping over the three of them in the tight confines of the small bathroom, pressed the bandage down over the pouring wound. The gel coated inner side of the bandage spread out over Ali’s scarlet stained fur, automatically tightening to try and stem the flow of blood. Salli grabbed a fresh towel from the rack and pressed it down. Zaker had been right about the bandage not being big enough. Ali’s wound looked like she had raked her own arm from wrist nearly to the elbow, but the hopefully bandage would plug the worst of the damage.
Why would Ali do this to herself? she thought desperately. Where is the damned ambulance?
As if in answer, the loud call of an Emergency Services siren whooped outside the bedroom window. In less than a minute there was a commotion from the direction of the hallway and two EMT’s in orange jackets appeared, guiding a float stretcher into the bedroom.
“In here!” Zaker called. She and Phillip scrambled back into the bedroom to get out of their way, neither needed to hold down Ali. Her struggles were now reduced to weak twitching, her screams now merely quiet moans.
“Keep pressure on that wound,” the first EMT ordered Salli, as he surveyed the scene.
“There’s a smart bandage underneath the towel,” Salli told him.
“Good.” He stepped in around her, plastic booties covering his footpads to prevent any contact with open wounds. “All right, I’ve got her,” he said, kneeling down beside Salli. “We’ll take it from here.”
Salli nodded, rising shakily to her feet, stepping out into the bedroom with Zaker, Phillip, and Clawstroke, the reporter’s head turning back and forth as he filmed the scene.
“What happened?” she demanded of Zaker, as the second EMT joined her colleague, unslinging an equipment bag from her shoulder and opening it up.
“I heard her screaming, so I ran down the hall to her door,” Zaker said. “I called out to see what was wrong, and when she didn’t answer I shot out the lock.”
“Shot it out with what?” Salli asked. In answer, Zaker reached into her tunic and pulled out a compact plasma pistol, a smaller, concealable version of the heavier gun that Ali normally only wore when on Greenholme. “You’ve been walking around this entire time carrying that much firepower?”
“Only since the incident with your skimmer and the graffiti,” she admitted. “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”
“What incident?” Clawstroke asked, swinging his monocle towards them.
“None of your business,” Salli snarled. “Shut that thing off and kindly remove yourself from the manor if you would.”
“Interview’s done. Come on now,” Phillip told Clawstroke, stepping up to slip between Salli and the reporter.
“Here now! You can’t tell me this isn’t news!” Clawstroke protested. “What incident? Was there some kind of attack on you earlier, Lady Sallivera? Do you think it was related to the pirate assault on Greenholme?”
“Hey boyo, you ever try to eat that monocle of yours?” Zaker asked coldly, the blood staining the fur of her cheek enhancing her menacing stare nicely.
“The press has the right to freely record public incidents!” Clawstoke said indignantly. “That’s the law!”
“Not in a private home without permission, that’s also the law,” Phillip corrected. “And you do not have permission anymore. Come on.” The press office took firm hold of Clawstroke’s shoulder, turning him firmly around and guiding him out the door.
“Good man,” Salli muttered.
From the direction of the Necessary, the senior EMT said loudly, “What the hell? Quick, hook her up to the blood cleanser!”
“We can’t clean it while she’s fibrillating! Gotta give her system time to absorb the stabilizer.”
“We don’t have time. Whatever this shit is, it’s eating away her blood vessels. If it moves into her heart she’s done.”
“What?” Salli exclaimed. She started to head closer to the bathroom to listen, but stepped back as the EMT’s finished securing Ali to the float stretcher and started moving her into the hallway. A pair of tubes had been inserted into her undamaged arm, leading to and from a small pump that was sitting next to her on the stretcher, whirring rapidly as the senior EMT spoke a steady stream of information into the headset nestled in his ear, presumably to an emergency room team at the local hospital.
As Salli began to follow them, a voice called out loudly, “Sallivera! What’s going on?” She turned to see Mother coming down the opposite end of the hall from where the EMT’s were heading, a look of shock on her face.
“I’m not sure. Ali is badly injured, I don’t know how or why. I’m going to follow and see what’s going on. Please keep everyone away from Ali’s room until Civil Protection arrives.”
“Civil Protection? Again?” her mother exclaimed. “What about you? You’re covered in blood!”
“What?” Salli looked down, the front of her skirts soaked red from where she’d knelt in Ali’s pooling blood on the floor of the bathroom, her paws also red and wet from holding the towel over Ali’s wound, the blood already drying out to brown. “That’s all Ali’s. She tore her own arm open, though I doubt it was voluntary.”
“Tore her own arm open? What sort insanity has that vixen brought down on our House this time?” Mother demanded.
Salli clenched her paws together, fighting the urge to do something with them that she knew she’d regret. Controlling her fraying temper, she said, “Mother, I really don’t have time to debate this with you. I’m going to the hospital. I’ll contact you when I have something more substantial to report.”
“I’ll secure Blacksailor’s room and be along to meet you as soon as Civil Protection comes to take over,” Zaker told Salli, before her mother could say anything else.
“Thank you, Zaker. Good day, Mother.” Salli turned and fled out of earshot before her mother could work past her indignation to start shouting at her to come back. She reached the ambulance parked under the front portico just as the EMT’s were closing up its back doors. “I need to come with you,” she told them.
“Are you her next of kin?” the senior EMT asked.
Salli paused, mouth open, for a moment unable to think what the correct answer could be, or should be. Finally she said, “Miss Blacksailor is under criminal indenture. I’m her supervising officer.”
“Alright then.” He motioned her aboard and she sat down on a foldout jumpseat, the ambulance rising into the air and turning towards the hospital in the center of the city, as traffic control diverted everything out of its way for the short, near supersonic trip.
The whole time Salli kept her eyes on Ali, laying on the stretcher, unconscious, wounded, perhaps dying.
Mother Goddess, how much more must Ali suffer, before she is forgiven?
“All set, Milady?” he asked. “Where’s Miss Blacksailor?”
“Still dressing. I just spoke to her before I came downstairs,” Salli answered. Ali had been looking a bit twitchy and unhappy, and had asked her to go ahead while she prepared herself. Salli couldn’t blame her. It had been a long time since her last Media Relations course in finishing school, and poor Ali didn’t even have that much preparation for this.
“All right then. Hopefully this will be a loose, friendly interview. Just answer all the questions straight. These Oceanic News fellows enjoy pouncing on evasive Nobles. If you start getting uncomfortable, just give me a signal and I’ll wrap things up for you.”
“I understand,” she said.
Phillip nodded. “He’s probably going to direct a lot of questions towards Miss Blacksailor. If they get too personal I’ll deflect them, but we need to let her know that contradicting the basic facts in her criminal case probably won’t end well.”
“I don’t think that will be problem.” Given Ali’s usual stoic resignation towards her crimes, it was more likely she’d just nod in agreement with every accusation and provide even more damning details, Salli thought.
Phillip’s palm comp beeped. He gave a sharp nod as he checked it, rising to his feet. “The reporter is at the front entrance. I’ll bring him in for you.”
“Thank you, Phillip.” Salli waited as he left to get the reporter, wondering what was taking Ali.
He returned a few moments later, a familiar, gangly foxen following from behind. Oh, of course it would be him.
“Lady Darktail! A pleasure to see you again,” Nef Clawstroke greeted her cheerfully. He stuck out his paw, and Salli stood briefly to shake it, then settled back down in her chair.
“Mr. Clawstroke, what a surprise,” she admitted. “I thought you were covering the orbital beat.”
“Oh, I move up and down, depending on where the story is,” he said. “Since I’d already interviewed you both before, my editor thought it best if I did the follow up.”
That wasn’t an interview earlier, it was an ambush, she thought irritably. “I see. So, what topics would you like to discuss today?”
“Oh you and Miss Blacksailor. Particularly how you met and what seemed to spark the attraction between you, especially after you learned about her history.” He looked around the conference parlor. “Speaking of which, where is she?”
“Not here yet,” she admitted. She pulled out her palm comp to check Ali’s location. It showed she was still in her room. Which was a little annoying, but understandable. It was possible that Ali had funked out like when she had been unexpectedly introduced to her long lost brother Lu so recently. “She’s in her room. I’ll go see what is delaying her. Phillip, please stay and keep Mr. Clawstroke company.” No need to drag the reporter along for what might be an emotional moment with Ali.
As she stood up, Salli’s palm comp let out a loud emergency beep, pitched to scrape along a foxen’s auditory nerve like claws on a blackboard. Startled, she nearly dropped it before answering, “This is Salli, what’s the matter?”
“It’s Zaker, milady!” came the urgent reply, her voice shouting into Sali’s ear. In the background she could hear agonized growling and screams, which with a shock Salli recognized as coming from Ali. “I need you up in Ali’s room immediately!”
Salli was on her feet and heading towards the parlor door before she even realized what she was doing, Phillip and Clawstroke following. “Zaker! What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
“I’ve got Emergency Services on the way but I need you up here now!”
She broke into a run, the hem of her long skirt batting at her heels as she rushed down the hallway, up the stairs, heart pounding as she heard Ali’s cries of pain. The door to her room was open, the lock smoking and melted from where it had been shot out. She stumbled inside, following the sound until she found Zaker and Ali tangled together on the floor of the Necessary, Zaker straddling the smaller vixen, one paw clamped around Ali’s right wrist, trying to pin it to the ground. Ali’s other arm flailed wildly, blood pouring from what looked like multiple slashes along her left forearm, as she raked at Zaker’s chest and face.
“What have you done to her?” Salli cried.
“I heard her screaming and broke the door in. Mother Goddess, grab a towel and get some pressure on her arm before she bleeds out!” Zaker shouted, blood streaming down one cheek where Ali had slashed her.
Salli grabbed a towel off the nearby rack and dropped to her knees, skirts soon becoming soaked in the blood staining the tiled floor. Quickly she managed to catch Ali’s arm between her legs, pinning it down with the doubled over towel, pressing it down with both paws. “Ali, what happened? What happened!” she demanded.
Ali’s only answer was another agonized scream, her voice growing raw as she cried out, body kicking and flailing as she began to convulse, her mouth foaming with spittle. The white towel was soon red with blood, far too much blood, staining Salli’s paws, the floor, everywhere.
“Phillip! Ali’s equipment belt should be in her dresser!” Salli called to him, standing in the doorway as Clawstroke filmed everything with his damned camera monocle. “There’s a first aid kit in it. I think it’s the third pouch to the left of the buckle. Get it!”
“Yes, Milady!” Phillip shoved Clawstroke out of the way, good man, and went for the belt. He returned in a moment carrying a small red first aid pouch, fishing out a smart bandage from it about ten centimeters square.
“I don’t think that’s big enough,” Zaker muttered darkly, panting from the effort of trying to keep Ali pinned down.
“It’ll help,” Salli shot back. To Philip she ordered, “I’m going to lift the towel up and then you press the bandage over the wound, on the count of three. One… two.... three!” She yanked the towel back as Phillip, almost tripping over the three of them in the tight confines of the small bathroom, pressed the bandage down over the pouring wound. The gel coated inner side of the bandage spread out over Ali’s scarlet stained fur, automatically tightening to try and stem the flow of blood. Salli grabbed a fresh towel from the rack and pressed it down. Zaker had been right about the bandage not being big enough. Ali’s wound looked like she had raked her own arm from wrist nearly to the elbow, but the hopefully bandage would plug the worst of the damage.
Why would Ali do this to herself? she thought desperately. Where is the damned ambulance?
As if in answer, the loud call of an Emergency Services siren whooped outside the bedroom window. In less than a minute there was a commotion from the direction of the hallway and two EMT’s in orange jackets appeared, guiding a float stretcher into the bedroom.
“In here!” Zaker called. She and Phillip scrambled back into the bedroom to get out of their way, neither needed to hold down Ali. Her struggles were now reduced to weak twitching, her screams now merely quiet moans.
“Keep pressure on that wound,” the first EMT ordered Salli, as he surveyed the scene.
“There’s a smart bandage underneath the towel,” Salli told him.
“Good.” He stepped in around her, plastic booties covering his footpads to prevent any contact with open wounds. “All right, I’ve got her,” he said, kneeling down beside Salli. “We’ll take it from here.”
Salli nodded, rising shakily to her feet, stepping out into the bedroom with Zaker, Phillip, and Clawstroke, the reporter’s head turning back and forth as he filmed the scene.
“What happened?” she demanded of Zaker, as the second EMT joined her colleague, unslinging an equipment bag from her shoulder and opening it up.
“I heard her screaming, so I ran down the hall to her door,” Zaker said. “I called out to see what was wrong, and when she didn’t answer I shot out the lock.”
“Shot it out with what?” Salli asked. In answer, Zaker reached into her tunic and pulled out a compact plasma pistol, a smaller, concealable version of the heavier gun that Ali normally only wore when on Greenholme. “You’ve been walking around this entire time carrying that much firepower?”
“Only since the incident with your skimmer and the graffiti,” she admitted. “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”
“What incident?” Clawstroke asked, swinging his monocle towards them.
“None of your business,” Salli snarled. “Shut that thing off and kindly remove yourself from the manor if you would.”
“Interview’s done. Come on now,” Phillip told Clawstroke, stepping up to slip between Salli and the reporter.
“Here now! You can’t tell me this isn’t news!” Clawstroke protested. “What incident? Was there some kind of attack on you earlier, Lady Sallivera? Do you think it was related to the pirate assault on Greenholme?”
“Hey boyo, you ever try to eat that monocle of yours?” Zaker asked coldly, the blood staining the fur of her cheek enhancing her menacing stare nicely.
“The press has the right to freely record public incidents!” Clawstoke said indignantly. “That’s the law!”
“Not in a private home without permission, that’s also the law,” Phillip corrected. “And you do not have permission anymore. Come on.” The press office took firm hold of Clawstroke’s shoulder, turning him firmly around and guiding him out the door.
“Good man,” Salli muttered.
From the direction of the Necessary, the senior EMT said loudly, “What the hell? Quick, hook her up to the blood cleanser!”
“We can’t clean it while she’s fibrillating! Gotta give her system time to absorb the stabilizer.”
“We don’t have time. Whatever this shit is, it’s eating away her blood vessels. If it moves into her heart she’s done.”
“What?” Salli exclaimed. She started to head closer to the bathroom to listen, but stepped back as the EMT’s finished securing Ali to the float stretcher and started moving her into the hallway. A pair of tubes had been inserted into her undamaged arm, leading to and from a small pump that was sitting next to her on the stretcher, whirring rapidly as the senior EMT spoke a steady stream of information into the headset nestled in his ear, presumably to an emergency room team at the local hospital.
As Salli began to follow them, a voice called out loudly, “Sallivera! What’s going on?” She turned to see Mother coming down the opposite end of the hall from where the EMT’s were heading, a look of shock on her face.
“I’m not sure. Ali is badly injured, I don’t know how or why. I’m going to follow and see what’s going on. Please keep everyone away from Ali’s room until Civil Protection arrives.”
“Civil Protection? Again?” her mother exclaimed. “What about you? You’re covered in blood!”
“What?” Salli looked down, the front of her skirts soaked red from where she’d knelt in Ali’s pooling blood on the floor of the bathroom, her paws also red and wet from holding the towel over Ali’s wound, the blood already drying out to brown. “That’s all Ali’s. She tore her own arm open, though I doubt it was voluntary.”
“Tore her own arm open? What sort insanity has that vixen brought down on our House this time?” Mother demanded.
Salli clenched her paws together, fighting the urge to do something with them that she knew she’d regret. Controlling her fraying temper, she said, “Mother, I really don’t have time to debate this with you. I’m going to the hospital. I’ll contact you when I have something more substantial to report.”
“I’ll secure Blacksailor’s room and be along to meet you as soon as Civil Protection comes to take over,” Zaker told Salli, before her mother could say anything else.
“Thank you, Zaker. Good day, Mother.” Salli turned and fled out of earshot before her mother could work past her indignation to start shouting at her to come back. She reached the ambulance parked under the front portico just as the EMT’s were closing up its back doors. “I need to come with you,” she told them.
“Are you her next of kin?” the senior EMT asked.
Salli paused, mouth open, for a moment unable to think what the correct answer could be, or should be. Finally she said, “Miss Blacksailor is under criminal indenture. I’m her supervising officer.”
“Alright then.” He motioned her aboard and she sat down on a foldout jumpseat, the ambulance rising into the air and turning towards the hospital in the center of the city, as traffic control diverted everything out of its way for the short, near supersonic trip.
The whole time Salli kept her eyes on Ali, laying on the stretcher, unconscious, wounded, perhaps dying.
Mother Goddess, how much more must Ali suffer, before she is forgiven?
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-07 02:45 am (UTC)"but the hopefully bandage would"
I'm assuming you wanted 'hopefully the bandage', instead.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-07 07:48 am (UTC)