The nighttime breeze rustled the leaves of the trees in a sibilant hissing. Crickets chirped raucously, uncaring of the fact that they were disturbing some of the residents of the area who preferred to sleep during the night. The other denizens of the night quietly went about their routine, scuttling through the grass or flitting through the air.

The usual nighttime sounds were interrupted by the sound of staggering, uneven footsteps. Pained, rasping breathing accompanied a dark shape that was swaying unsteadily through the blackness of the small forest tract. Animals and insects fell silent as the shape passed them, some of the animals immediately fleeing the area in fear of the unknown. The figure paused at the edge of the trees, staring towards a small house where yellow lights burned cheerily in the windows, beckoning. The figure started walking towards the house and tripped, landing heavily on its hands and knees. After several tries, the dark shape regained its feet, and continued to totter towards the house.

Inside the house, a tall young man with red hair and greenish-brown eyes decided to call it a night. Tossing the thick hardcover book he'd been paging through into a nearby chair, he turned off the CD player, and carried a coffee mug into the kitchen. He unceremoniously chucked it into the kitchen sink, adding to the pile of mugs that was slowly growing. He flicked off the kitchen lights and padded back out to the living room, where he started turning off the room lights.

Velvety darkness filled the house, dimly lit by the lights filtering in from outside. As he prepared to go upstairs, he heard a feeble knocking coming from the back door of the house, next to the kitchen. Glancing at the illuminated clock on the wall, he frowned; it was 11:35 PM. Who the hell could it be at this hour? He shrugged, and went to the back door, grabbing a baseball bat from a hallway closet as he went. Placing the bat within easy reach, he unlocked and opened the back door.

With a low, exhausted moan, a figure fell forward heavily into the room. He caught the toppling figure before it could hit the floor, grunting briefly as the dead weight of the strange visitor hit his arms. Panting with exertion, he draped the slack form over one shoulder as he awkwardly closed the kitchen door, and re-locked it. Gasping, he carried the limp body into his living room, and gently placed it on the couch. He ducked back out to the kitchen, and took a quick look around again, grabbing the discarded bat and stuffing it back into its closet. Walking around the room, he whipped all the curtains closed, then walked over to the couch and flipped on a light so he could see his nocturnal visitor.

The light revealed an attractive young woman, about five-foot-ten, with shoulder length dark brown hair. She was slender, but with a full, well-rounded figure. She looked like she'd been through a war; her clothing was torn and ripped, covered in dirt, almost like she'd crawled a few miles to get there. She was wearing a long, dark coat over what looked like a bodysuit of some kind, and blood was soaking the coat at her right shoulder. Her face was scratched and covered with dirt. Her eyes fluttered open as he watched, and he found himself staring into wide golden-brown eyes. With a start, he recognized her.

"Sylvie?!" Bert asked incredulously. "Is that you?!"

Sylvie woke slowly, the sounds of morning activities gradually percolating through her awareness. Where was she? She vaguely remembered trying desperately to reach somewhere safe, and staggering through the darkness. She frowned to herself, forcing herself to remember. She'd made it to a house, and then couldn't remember anything after that.

As she sat up in the bed she was in to try and get her mental bearings, she realized she must have been successful; she was in what was obviously a guest room in someone's house. The bed was a single bed, with white sheets and navy blue blankets. A dresser and mirror were against the far wall, and a padded easy chair was in another corner with a reading lamp. It was obviously a guest room, because it didn't have the distinctive touch that rooms occupied by someone full time gradually acquire.

As she looked at herself, she realized she really must have been unconscious for a long time; she was now wrapped up in an old bathrobe, and some clean clothes had been left piled on the nearby chair. The clock on the dresser read 12:45 PM. Somewhere along the line, she'd been cleaned up and her injuries treated; her right shoulder was now bandaged up, and the pains from it were no more than a minor annoyance now. She also felt refreshed and rested, which made for a pleasant change from her more recent state.

Flipping the blankets off, she got up and got dressed, being careful of her shoulder. The clothes that had been left for her fitted perfectly, although the red and blue motorcycle racing suit was maybe a bit snug across the chest and shoulders. Opening the door, she wandered out and through the house until she found her way downstairs.

"Hi there!" Bert greeted her with grin as she entered, and she smiled wordlessly in reply. He plopped a plateful of bacon and eggs down at her end of the table with some toast and a steaming mug of coffee. She started the coffee first, taking the first few swallows with an air of deep appreciation. With a sigh, she lowered the mug, and started on the food, suddenly aware of just how hungry she actually was.

Bert sat down across from her with a mug of tea and his own, larger plate of food; he'd figured she wouldn't be getting up early, and had postponed his own breakfast until she got up. The net result was he felt like he was starving. He dug into his breakfast, rapidly downing it.

As they ate, he appraised her. Sylvie looked a lot better than when she'd collapsed in his kitchen, but there was a kind of wary nervousness to her that hadn't been there the very first time he'd met her. She hadn't said anything so far, but he was fairly patient. After a few minutes they finished their food, and he refilled her coffee cup, placing the cream and sugar within easy reach.

"Feeling better?" he asked quietly as she settled back with her cup. She looked at him, and could see the unspoken questions in his eyes. She nodded.

"Yes, much better, thanks," she replied. "I guess I owe you an explanation." Her voice was light, soft-sounding and melodious with a somehow alluring quality to it.

"I'd appreciate it," he confirmed. "Last night wasn't exactly the way I'd pictured meeting you again." She sighed, turning pensive.

"I need your help," she told him. An eyebrow twitched upwards in surprise.

"I'll help if I can, but first I think you'd better tell me what the problem is."

"Someone's trying to kill or capture me," she told him. He frowned, taking a swig of his tea.

"I think you'd better start at the beginning," he suggested. "Tell me what's happened, and when it started, and we'll take it from there." She nodded, taking a sip from her mug.

"It started about a week or two ago," she told him. "At first I thought I was being paranoid, because I kept seeing this black car around. I couldn't think of why anyone would be following me, so I ignored it. Then, about four days ago, a woman who looks like me was grabbed right off the street I was living on by these men in a black car, one like the car I'd seen. She turned up in a hospital two days ago, but her memory of what happened is gone, completely. It was when I noticed from the picture in the paper that she looked a lot like me that I began to get uneasy. Last night, I got home to find the apartment smashed up and overturned, and someone took a shot at me. That was how my shoulder got hurt, although the bullet went through without causing major harm. I got away, and I tried to get here. I guess I made it."

"You made it," he confirmed wryly. "Although the condition you were in, you wouldn't have gotten much farther." He decided not to mention to her that he wasn't always staying out in the suburbs; she didn't need to know that luck had played a large part in her actually finding someone in the house. He was silent a moment longer, ruminating, then he looked her straight in the eye.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but why me?" he queried.

"You're the only knight-in-shining-armour I know," she deadpanned, and Bert rolled his eyes. She'd picked up on that little joke of Priss', and liked to use it fairly often. "Besides," she continued, "you were also the closest person I knew. And I can't go to the police, for obvious reasons."

"True," he conceded. If the cops somehow found out she was a 33-S sexaroid (God how he hated that term; she was a person, not a thing!), then they'd probably be trying to kill her in the next instant. The 33-S series were all supposed to have been destroyed. His head suddenly snapped up.

"You said the apartment was trashed; where was Anri?"

"I don't know. I think she's already been taken," she replied levelly, although he could see the effort it was taking her to remain calm. Sylvie and Anri were almost inseparable, a closeness born out of their common origin and experiences, and having to rely on each other to survive when they'd first arrived in MegaTokyo. He leaned across the table and squeezed her arm reassuringly.

"Don't worry. We'll find her." He suddenly grinned crookedly, a sly twinkle appearing in his eyes. "Remember, rescuing distressed damsels is my specialty." Sylvie laughed then, shedding a portion of her worry as she did so. He grinned again at her as she quieted down.

"Well, you've certainly helped this damsel often enough," she quipped. "Thanks for the clean clothes and such."

"No problem," he replied, flushing bright red. Sylvie looked at him, a sudden sly smile appearing; she knew exactly why he was blushing. He was shy around women, and having to clean her up last night when she was unconscious must have been really uncomfortable for him. He was a nice enough guy, she reflected briefly, he just had a rather stiff and somewhat old-fashioned sense of propriety.

"Does Nene know you're spending your nights with other women?" she teased him impishly. He turned even redder, and didn't reply. She quit prodding him, and returned to a less sensitive subject.

"Where'd you get the clothes, anyway?" she asked.

"Priss borrows the house from time to time when she wants 'to get away from it all', and she left some clothes here. You two are a pretty close match in height and weight, so I figured they'd fit." Silence fell for a few moments.

"So what do we do now?" she asked.

"We go and see Sylia," he replied. "She's got contacts I can only dream of; she should be able to find out what's going on. I've already phoned her and told her we're coming over."

"Thanks. I appreciate the help."

"No true knight would do less," he replied, straight-faced, making her roll her eyes. They both stood up, and Bert dropped the dishes into the dishwasher. Quickly stuffing the other dishes in, he started the washer up. Sylvie followed him out to the front of the house, where he grabbed a baseball cap and beat-up jean jacket from off of a suit of armour in the hallway, and put them on.

"Hang on a sec," he told her. "I'll tell Sylia we're leaving now."

"Do you always check in like this?" she asked curiously.

"I do now," he remarked wryly. "It's a long story." He picked up the receiver and tucked it under his chin as he dialed. He was halfway through the number as he realized there was no dial tone. The line was dead.

"Uh-oh," he muttered, suspicion flaring into life. He dropped the phone, and whipped over to a front window, scanning the outside scenery through a gap in the curtain. Sylvie began to get worried.

"What is it?" she asked anxiously, coming over to him.

"I think they've followed you," he replied tensely. "There's some guys sneaking around to the back in the bushes, and there's the tail end of a black car beyond the trees there. Damn! This complicates things a bit."

"What do you mean by 'complicates'?" she asked, heart beginning to pound uneasily. He didn't reply. Running over to the brick fireplace at the end of the living room, he opened a concealed panel, and flipped a couple of switches, and then sealed the panel shut again. Sylvie couldn't even see where to open it. A muffled thud reverberated throughout the house.

"I just sealed off my workshop," he told her. "If they do get in and search the place, they won't find anything."

"What are you going to do?"

"We're leaving," he told her. He went over to the hall closet, and pulled something tubular out of a jacket pocket, and stuffed it inside his coat. "How fast can you run twenty feet?"

"Pretty fast. Why?"

"We've got to sprint to my truck," he told her, taking another quick look at the back door. Still no one in immediate sight. "You run for the passenger side."

"We're not going to be able to outrun them in that thing," she objected flatly.

"Priss hasn't told you about my truck, has she? That's not a normal pickup truck anymore, trust me on that."

"How do you know they haven't fooled with it?"

"Because none of the alarms have gone off."

"Oh."

"Okay, when I say 'run' you run like hell for the truck and don't worry about me, okay?" She nodded, and he got set to open the front door. He pulled another small pair of gadgets from another pocket.

"Smoke bombs," he explained tersely. "They'll give us a few seconds of cover." There were another few moments of nerve-wracking waiting.

"RUN!" he barked, jerking open the door. Sylvie shot through and pounded towards the truck as a couple of soft 'whooomp' noises behind her sent thick sooty clouds of smoke billowing into the air. Bert was right behind her an instant later, almost passing her. She dodged around the truck, wrenching open the door and diving in just as he piled in behind the wheel. About ten men in dark outfits waving guns of some kind came running around from the back of the house.

"Get your seatbelt on and lock the door," Bert directed her as the engine snarled into life. Cranking the truck into gear, he floored the accelerator and wrenched the wheel sideways. The truck spun in a very tight circle, wheels sending rocks from the gravel laneway flying through the air. As he floored the gas pedal, the charging men started firing. The red truck leaped forward, engine roaring defiantly, away from them. Sylvie flinched as a couple of bullets whined off the back window, then looked at the glass. There wasn't a mark anywhere.

"I told you this wasn't a normal truck anymore," he reminded her, as they shot past the black car that tried to block them in. Bert squealed the truck onto the street, and began racing away, trying to get to the main highways of MegaTokyo.

"What else can it do?" she asked, glancing behind them again. A second black car had joined the first one, and they were preparing to follow. Bert grinned tightly.

"Watch," he replied. He tabbed a dashboard switch. Immediately, the dials in the dashboard flipped around to reveal LED displays and readouts. A small radar screen hopped out of what Sylvie had taken for the ashtray. A row of buttons in a panel labeled "Nifty Tricks" dropped out of the bottom of the dashboard next to the steering wheel, and a computer display screen of some kind popped out of the glove compartment. The screen lit up, displaying an image of the pursuing cars. Statistics on their pursuers scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

"I'm impressed," she told him. "Is that it?"

"Not quite." The black cars were very rapidly catching up. Bert flipped a switch marked 'Turbo', and immediately the truck engine began to sound like an enraged animal of some kind. With a roar just short of deafening, the truck seemed to blast forward like a shot from a gun. Sylvie was almost positive they actually left the ground for a few seconds. The truck left the black cars in its wake as it shot onto the on-ramp for the cross-city highway.

"They're still back there!" Sylvie reported in stunned disbelief. The black cars had indeed kept pace, and were gaining. Irritation flickered across Bert's face; he hadn't thought there were other vehicles around that could match his. He'd have to fix that, later. Multiple blurs flashed past the sides of his vision as he began weaving in and out of the main traffic flows.

"Let's see how they like this, then," he remarked. He hit a button on the 'Nifty Tricks' panel, and a launch tube of some kind popped up from the floor in the back box of the truck. Sylvie watched as targeting crosshair appeared on the lead car in the computer screen. With a dull thud, the launcher spat what looked like a pop can at the car; the can burst, covering the car's windshield with a bright red coat of paint. The car promptly lost control as the driver lost his vision, and smashed into the retaining wall, spinning around and rolling over several times. It came to a halt in a mangled heap. Luckily, the other drivers on the road avoided the wreck. The remaining black car continued to pursue.

"One down," he observed, weaving and darting among the slower vehicles. Sylvie was gripping the door handle and her seatbelt with a white-knuckled grasp; the speedometer readout said 275 Km/hour, and she certainly believed it. They were shooting past the other cars like they were standing still. The black car was keeping pace.

"These guys are serious," Bert commented. "Not many people have cars that souped-up."

"I think we already knew they were serious," Sylvie retorted tartly. "If they weren't, they wouldn't have shot at us."

"Sorry," he apologized. He tabbed the launch switch again, and another projectile arced through the air. This time however, someone leaned out the window and blasted the paint grenade with a handgun before it could hit the car. It splattered in the air harmlessly, missing the car as the gunman pulled his arm back inside. Bert whistled to himself; these guys were good.

He shifted the gears higher, into top gear and began to pull away. As he did so, what looked like a fifty-caliber minigun hopped out of the front hood of the pursuing car.

"Oh SHIT!" Bert and Sylvie exclaimed together at exactly the same time. Bert wrenched the truck sideways as a burst of fire from the car tore through the air. His truck was bulletproofed, yes, but not against that size of ammunition!

"Another thing on my list of 'things to do'," he muttered to himself, flicking a glance at the status readouts on the dashboard.

"Pardon me?!"

"Nevermind."

"I don't know why we're driving around here," Daley complained as Leon pulled over into the passing lane. "Nothing ever happens on the highways anymore. Why do you bother? Come on , Leon, surely we can find something better to do?!"

"I like driving around," Leon replied shortly. "As for nothing happening, I.....what the hell?!?!" The ADP car rocked violently in the backwash of a flying red pickup truck that flashed past. Leon stared, stunned, at the radar readout. That truck had been doing 325! It also bore a vague resemblance to a red pickup truck that periodically outran the Highway Patrol cars. Just as he started to pursue the speeder, a black car howled past, almost at the same speed. The black car had what looked like a cannon mounted on the hood.

"Nothing ever happens anymore, huh?" Leon remarked sarcastically. He floored the accelerator, and pushed the buttons for the car's pursuit mode. Instantly, airscoops opened on the hood, and airfoils on the back and sides of the car snapped into place. Sirens blaring, Leon threw the ADP pursuit car after the two road racers, trying to catch up. As they drew nearer, Daley called in the occurrence, requesting some backup; vehicles this modified weren't going to be easy to catch. The speedometer gradually crept up, and Leon finally maxed the car out at 310 Km/hr, which was just enough to stay even with the black car. Just as the police car pulled even, the muzzle of a VERY big rifle of some kind stuck out the rear window.

"Oh SHIT!!!!" Leon swore, wrenching the car sideways, away from the armed car. The gun bellowed, tearing a hole through the side of the hood of the squad car. Leon fought valiantly to keep the car under control, as the engine died and the car lost all power. Smoke and flames poured briefly out of the hole in the hood.

Stomping hard on the brakes, Leon swerved around, desperately trying to avoid hitting other innocent motorists. Tires squealed tormentedly, and the world spun around crazily. Crash balloons burst open as they slammed into the highway retaining wall and came to a bone-jarring halt, the front end of the car being smashed into crumpled tinfoil. Silence fell for a few moments, broken only by the hiss of air escaping from the crash bags, and the background rumble of unconcerned motorists as they continued to drive by. Leon looked over at Daley, who was pulling himself out of the dashboard crash balloon.

"Oh yeah," he remarked again disgustedly. "Nothing ever happens around here."

"What a bloody cold-blooded bunch of bastards," Bert remarked, clenching his teeth in helpless anger as he watched their pursuers calmly shoot an ADP car off the road. His truck was at its top speed at the moment, and the black car was still keeping pace.

"I think we've got problems," Sylvie said. "I think we're going to run out of main highway before long." She'd caught a quick glimpse of a sign as they'd rushed past. Bert nodded.

"I'm going to try something," he warned her. "Brace yourself." They were getting closer to an off-ramp to somewhere. As they got nearer, he hit another switch; instantly, a dense smoke cloud billowed out from behind the truck. Within seconds, the entire highway behind them was wreathed in black smoke. The instant the black car was lost to sight, Bert whipped over to the off-ramp, tromping hard on the brake pedal; antilocking brakes kicked in, almost standing the truck on its front bumper. Sylvie gave a strangled gasp as the seatbelt tried to hang her when she lurched forward from the steep deceleration. Bert hung on grimly, watching the mirrors and display screens. As he watched, the black car shot past, continuing on down the highway. Like he'd hoped, they had missed his maneuver in the smoke, and were too far gone to correct their path now. Getting off the main highway, the red truck quickly vanished into the maze of downtown buildings.

"Thanks," Sylvie said, accepting a large mug of coffee from Sylia as she sat down. Her hands were trembling slightly as she drank. Bert appeared to be taking everything calmly in stride; his hands were steady as he slurped at his drink. Sylia sat down, thoughtfully regarding them. She was cool and beautiful looking, as usual, with her black hair perfectly in place and wearing a crisp white blouse and dark skirt. She was about to start speaking, when Priss burst through the door. Priss was dressed, as was normal for her, in her red motorcycle racing outfit, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her eyes lit up when she saw who was in the room.

"Sylvie!" she exclaimed delightedly, flinging her motorcycle helmet into a chair. Sylvie's face lit up with an equally pleased smile. Dropping her mug onto the table, she and Priss hugged briefly, before sitting back down. Priss dropped into a chair next to her.

"So what's going on?" Priss asked, red-brown eyes curious. "Sylia called and said I should get over here right away."

"It's a long story," Bert remarked from the couch. There was a faint grin on his face, as he looked at them both.

"We've got time," Sylia told him. "Why don't you start from the beginning?"

"Yes Ma'am," he replied, mock-saluting. He and Sylvie spent the next few minutes relating everything that had happened recently, occasionally pointing out some small point the other had missed. When it was all over, Priss had a kind of stunned look on her face; what she'd just heard sounded more like part of a spy movie than real. Sylia suddenly smirked, looking at Sylvie.

"You have my sympathies," she told her. "I'd wondered why your hands were shaking, but if you got to experience him driving, then I understand perfectly." Priss burst out laughing, almost falling out of the chair as Bert looked irate.

"I like that," he said indignantly. "I risk my life and truck getting her to safety, and all I get is insults!"

"And I do appreciate your efforts," Sylvie told him wryly. "But next time, couldn't we take the bus? I think I aged ten years during that ride."

"It could have been worse," Priss informed her. "If he'd offered to use 'The WarHorse', then you could really start worrying."

"The WarHorse? What's that?"

"It's a flying machine he whipped up," Priss told her. "It goes with his hardsuit. Basically it's a jet engine with wings." She shuddered; she liked speed, but not that much that she wanted to be speeding at a few hundred feet off the ground. She gave Sylvie a quick synopsis of the first time she'd gone for a ride with him on the jetcycle. Sylvie looked faintly green when she was finished the description of his aerial maneuvering. Bert muttered something irritably to himself, and glared briefly at Priss, but didn't say anything out loud. Contemplative silence fell for a few moments.

"Well," Sylia said finally. "I'll make some discreet inquiries and see what I can find out, about Anri and about your pursuers. The question now is, where are you going to stay? You'd better lay low, too," she added, looking at Bert. "Whoever these people are, they'll be looking for you, too." He nodded distractedly, mind obviously elsewhere. Sylvie shoved him in the ribs, and he jerked slightly.

"Hm? What were you saying, Sylia?" She sighed.

"Pay attention," she told him irritably. "I said you'd better lay low, too."

"Mmhm," he mumbled in reply, eyes turning distant again.

"Earth to SkyKnight," Sylia snapped, really annoyed now. "What the hell is the matter with you?" He seemed to shake himself, and his gaze cleared as he looked at her.

"I was just thinking about those cars that chased us," he said. "Those kinds of modified vehicles don't come cheap, or legally for that matter. There's very few places that can handle that kind of work, so I thought I'd look into that end of things a bit."

"They may have done the work themselves," she pointed out. "These people seem to be very well-armed and equipped, so it's not beyond the realm of probability."

"True, I suppose," he admitted reluctantly.

"I'm so glad you agree," she said sarcastically. "However, you are staying under cover. Do you hear me? They're sure to be looking for you now in addition to Sylvie, so you and your truck are staying hidden. End of discussion."

"There is another possible course of action," he pointed out quietly.

"And that is?"

"We could let them catch me," he replied. "You could follow along, and then we'd be able to find out where they are and just what they're up to."

"No. It's too risky, and you're not cut out for undercover work. You'll just have to wait and see what happens."

"Excuse me, but do I get a say in any of this?" Sylvie asked, somewhat testily. As if on cue, Priss, Sylia and Bert all looked at her.

"NO!" they chorused, grinning.

Bert led the way down to his basement apartment, Priss and Sylvie in tow. It had been decided that Sylvie was bunking in the basement level with him; there was less of a chance that someone might see her than if she stayed upstairs. It looked like he was going to be on the couch again for a while.

He sighed to himself. He wasn't overly comfortable with the idea of her staying at his place, but he wasn't about to say anything. His unease wasn't from any dislike of her, but more from the fact that she always unsettled him; Sylvie was extremely attractive, and moved with an unconscious, almost sensuous grace all the time that prompted the occasional less-than-pure thought to crop up. It wasn't intentional on her part, but it was disconcerting.

As they walked along, the two women were discussing recent events and comparing notes on what they'd been up to, but he wasn't really paying attention. His own mind was out in orbit somewhere, trying to make sense of everything that had happened that morning, and come up with a plausible reason for it. Sylia hadn't offered any opinions on the events, which was standard procedure for her; she wasn't as prone to speculation as he was. He sighed disgustedly, and gave up trying to figure out what was going on. There were just too many unknowns at the moment. Somebody elbowing him in the ribs jerked his attention back to the present.

"Pay attention, will you?" Priss told him irritably. "Not getting enough sleep lately, or something?"

"Sorry. What did you want?"

"I said, what are you doing for dinner tonight?"

"Not a hell of a lot," he sighed. "If we're laying low, we can't exactly eat out. I'll pull some stuff from the freezer and thaw it out."

"Mind if I join you?"

"Not at all. You should know by now that you don't need to ask that."

"Well I wouldn't want to interrupt any deep, intimate conversations you two might want to have."

"Pardon?!?!" Bert looked at Priss, stunned, and saw lurking gleams of amusement in the backs of her eyes. Sylvie was trying to hide a smile, without much success.

"Well, you two did spend last night together, right?" Priss asked. "I thought maybe you'd want to pick up where you left off." Bert turned bright, flaming red.

"I ... what... you... Nothing happened!" he spluttered. "We didn't leave off anywhere!! What did you tell her?!?!" he demanded of Sylvie, who was now grinning hugely. Priss burst out laughing.

"The look on your face," she chortled, shaking her head. "What's the matter? Guilty conscience?"

"None of your damn business," he muttered, flushing again. Priss became slightly more serious, reaching over and nudging him in the ribs.

"Relax, will you? I'm only teasing," she told him.

"I don't like to joke about things like that," he said stiffly. She sighed, swapping an exasperated glance with Sylvie.

"You can be such a stuck-up, stick-in-the-mud at times," Priss told him. "Just because you feel attracted to Sylvie, or anyone else for that matter, doesn't mean you're being unfaithful to Nene, or something." Bert didn't reply; he didn't want to stick his foot in his mouth with an incautious remark. Besides, this particular line of conversation was not something he liked to discuss openly. He was normally shy around women, and their candor on this subject was extremely unsettling.

"I'm right, aren't I?" Priss prodded, grinning. "You do find her attractive, right?"

"I'd have to be blind not to," he replied shortly. "For that matter, the both of you are very good-looking women."

"Why, thank you. I didn't think you'd noticed," Priss said blandly. "I thought you only looked at hardsuits most of the time."

"Damn it, go take a bloody flying leap somewhere," he shot back, agitated. "Leave me alone."

"You don't have to worry about anything happening," Sylvie tried reassuring him. "I like you, but not that much." She suddenly looked contrite. "Oh, I'm sorry! That didn't come out right! I meant ..."

"Let's just drop the subject, okay?" he suggested in a pained tone.

A week passed, relatively uneventfully. Bert divided his time between some projects he had on the go in the tech shop, and keeping Sylvie company. She wasn't technically inclined, and watching him build or test things had become boring to her very quickly. He hadn't really noticed her restiveness, until she threatened to brain him with a pipewrench if he didn't at least talk to her occasionally; he still wasn't very good at picking up on the subtleties of other people's behaviour, especially women. He'd apologized profusely, and started keeping her company more often, even going so far as to show her a few basics about archery to pass the time.

Priss dropped by fairly often, sometimes with Linna, which helped somewhat in keeping Sylvie occupied. Nene even showed up a few times, although her work schedule lately hadn't allowed much time for anything else. Bert usually managed to find an excuse to get out of the room whenever the women started giggling together; he knew it was only a matter of time before they started teasing him about having Sylvie in his apartment. To his undying disgust, even Nene had gotten in on the act, which made things even worse, of course.

Damn it, why can't they just let it drop?, he thought irritably as he slapped a wrench down on the workbench next to him. They all knew he was not comfortable discussing his feelings, especially deeper-seated ones that were private as far as he was concerned. Despite that, they persisted in bugging him about it, almost like they were hoping he'd snap. He yanked his mind off the subject before he could start fuming about the situation.

Snatching a portable diagnostic scanner from the workbench, he ran a last scan on his hardsuit, which was standing upright in the center of the shop. According to the readout, everything was fine. He hadn't modified anything or added new systems this time, but had given the suit the equivalent of a tune-up. With all the strange goings-on lately, he didn't want to be modifying something and then get caught without a suit. As he shut down the scanner, the phone rang. Walking over to a nearby table, he pulled the phone out from under the blueprint pile on top of it and picked up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Quit playing down there, you twit," Sylia's voice told him irritably. "You're late for the weekly meeting, again."

"Sorry," he apologized. "I guess I lost track of the time."

"What else is new? Just get up here, now."

"Yes, O most lovely and forgiving of bosses," he replied extravagantly, smirking to himself. Sylia hung up without replying. "Some people have no sense of humour," he remarked to his suit as he left. The SkyKnight suit stood quietly, light reflecting from its polished surfaces as the door closed.

"I wish I had better news to report," Sylia sighed. "Unfortunately, I don't. Whoever these people are, they're very clever. I wasn't able to find out anything at all about who they might be, where they are, that sort of thing." She sat down in her chair, looking across at Sylvie sympathetically. "I couldn't find anything out about Anri's whereabouts, either. I'm sorry."

Sylvie nodded, biting her lip, as traces of tears gathered in her eyes; she'd lasted most of the week by clinging to the hope that Sylia could find out something, anything at all about Anri. Bert wordlessly passed her a clean handkerchief, and she swabbed at her eyes with it, as Priss put an arm around her shoulders to offer some comfort. Gloomy silence sank over everything for a few moments. Bert looked over at Sylia.

"I know you weren't thrilled at my idea of a week ago," he said, "but don't you think it might be worth a try now?"

"It's too dangerous," she told him flatly. "They might just opt to kill you rather than waste the time it might take in forcing answers out of you. I'm not willing to take that risk."

"What about if I go out into the open again?" Sylvie suddenly asked. "I'm the one they're really after, after all."

"It's your decision," Sylia said reluctantly. "But personally, I'd rather wait a bit longer and see if we can't turn up something."

"I can't wait anymore!" Sylvie protested in an anguished tone. "I've got to do something!! Anri's in trouble and I've got to help her!!" Sylia sat quietly for a few moments, thinking, then she looked at Sylvie and sighed again.

"All right," she conceded. "We'll have to think up some way of tracking you, though, and work up some kind of plan to approach this. I ...."

"I'm going with her," Bert announced quietly. Everyone's gaze swung to stare at him.

"Didn't we just finish this conversation a minute ago?" Sylia asked crossly. "You're not cut out for covert work, so just forget it!"

"We can't let her go out by herself," he replied calmly. "Besides, I'm the one who helped her escape the last time, so they'll probably expect to find us together."

"This is another one of those 'noble knight to the rescue' responses, isn't it?" Nene asked resignedly. A sheepish grin appeared on his face.

"Partly," he admitted. "It's also partly that Sylvie's a friend, and I don't like the idea of her going out there by herself."

"She can take care of herself a lot better than you can," Linna told him. It was a true enough statement; Sylvie was stronger and more agile than the average human, and she had a couple of other unique abilities as well. Stubbornness suddenly reared its ugly head.

"Look," he said flatly, "I'm concerned about her, and I want to go along. Topping that off, those bastards shot at my truck, and I'd like to find out for myself just what's so important that they'd try armed and armoured cars on the highways."

"Hey, if anyone should be going with her, I should be," Priss stated.

"No good," Bert replied, shaking his head. "If an unknown third person were to show up, they might smell the trap and just open fire."

"There's a pretty good chance of that happening now," Priss retorted hotly. Sylia held up a hand to forestall any replies; Bert and Priss could start arguing about something at the drop of a hat, and she really didn't want the hassle right now.

"I'll let you know my decision later," she announced. "Right now, I think I need a few minutes alone with our 'noble knight' here." Bert sat impassively, not responding to her remark as everyone left. Nene shot him a worried glance. He flashed her a quick, reassuring smile then turned his attention to Sylia as the door to the room closed. She looked back at him for a few minutes as the silence in the room seemed to become oppressive.

"Just what do you think you're trying to prove here?" she asked him finally.

"Nothing at all," he replied quietly. "I told you the truth: I'm concerned about Sylvie and I don't like sending her off without backup."

"The term 'backup' implies that you'll be together in whatever situation arises. That might not be the case; they might decide to just kill you and take Sylvie."

"That's a possibility," he conceded. "I don't think they will, though."

"You're risking your life on a theory."

"We do that all the time with the hardsuits."

"This is just a little different, damn it!" she snapped. "At least with the hardsuits, you've got the armour between you and any screwups. You won't have that luxury if you push ahead with this; this is deadly serious business."

"I am aware of that," he retorted irritably. "I'm not as blind as you all seem to think I am."

"You do realize that, if they do capture you, they'll probably question you? I trust I don't have to draw you any pictures of what that could entail." He nodded, but didn't reply. "Doesn't that scare you at all?" she queried. "I know it scares the hell out of me, and I'm not the one thinking of going along on this."

"It scares me a lot, too," he admitted quietly. He didn't need descriptions of what interrogation techniques might be used; he'd heard enough about some of them to know he never wanted to have to go through them. He wasn't sure just what his tolerance for something like that would be, either. "But this is something I have to follow through on. I'm already involved; just from the fact that Sylvie came to my place, they've probably got my house staked out right now. If I want them off my back, then I've got to go through with this." He looked at Sylia seriously; greenish-brown eyes met brown ones for a long moment. In her eyes, he could see the worry and concern over him she was hiding. In his eyes, she could see the fact that he was indeed scared of what might happen. She could also see the stubborn determination to go through with it anyway. She briefly wondered if that made him brave, or merely foolhardy.

"All right," she sighed. "You're going with her, then. We'll think up a plan later tonight. I'd tell you to be careful, but in this case I'd be wasting my breath."

"As much as I can, I will be careful," he promised her.

"I suppose that's something, anyway," she replied tiredly. "Go on, get out of here for now. I'll call you later on." He nodded, and quietly left.

When he got downstairs, he found his apartment was deserted except for Nene; everyone else was mysteriously absent. Dressed in her trim ADP uniform, she was pacing the floor like she was trying to wear a groove in the carpeting. Her long red hair was slightly awry, and her emerald-green eyes were wild with worry. She flew into his arms the instant he stepped through the door.

"Please don't do this!" she pleaded, grabbing his arms by the elbows. "It's too dangerous!! You don't have to prove anything!"

"I wish people would quit telling me that," he remarked sourly. "I know it's dangerous, and I'm not trying to prove anything. It's just something I have to do."

"Why?!" she demanded. "Why do you have to do it?! Is it to prove what a noble, heroic person you are?!"

"Nothing like that," he replied patiently. "I'm just helping out a friend."

"Helping out a friend doesn't mean you have to risk being killed!"

"I'll be fine. Don't worry so much."

"I can't help it!!" she cried, eyes suddenly brimming. "I love you, you stupid jerk!! I don't want to lose you because you had to go charging off to the rescue, trying to live up to your stupid chivalric ideals!!" She burst into tears, and he hugged her to his chest while she cried. After a while, she stopped, sniffling slightly. He dug out another clean handkerchief and handed it to her. He looked down at her fondly for a moment, his own eyes a trifle moist-looking.

"And I love you, too," he told her, bending over and kissing her lightly on the lips. "I don't want to lose you either, but I can't just sidestep this; my conscience won't allow it. Sylvie and Anri need help, and I've got to follow through on what I've already done. Believe me, I'm not as calm as I look about the prospect of doing it; in fact, it's scaring the hell out of me."

"Well then why go through with it?" she asked plaintively.

"Because I have to," he repeated. "I know it's a lousy answer, but it's just one of those things, I guess. I'll be careful, I promise."

"You'd better come back okay," she told him tearfully. "What am I going to do if you don't?" He didn't answer that thorny question; instead he gathered her up in a passionate embrace and gave her a long kiss. They stood like that for a while, each holding the other, drawing some measure of comfort and strength from one another.

The red pickup truck moved easily down the highway, keeping up with the flow of nighttime traffic. After several minutes of cross-city travel, the truck took the off-ramp leading to the outskirts and suburbs of MegaTokyo.

"You don't have to do this, you know," Sylvie told him as they drove through the darkened streets. She was dressed in a form-fitting white, blue, and yellow motorcycle suit identical to the one she'd been wearing before, the first time he'd met her. The fact that she looked stunning was helping to keep his mind off of worrying about how dangerous things were going to get.

"If someone else says that to me just once more, I'm going to scream," Bert told her flatly. All of the other Knight Sabers, from Sylia on down, had tried to talk him out of accompanying Sylvie, and each one had said almost exactly the same thing. It was Nene's impassioned pleas that had actually disturbed him the most, waking him up to the fact of what he really stood to lose if something went wrong. The thought had been in the back of his mind, but she'd managed to bring it vividly to the forefront. He wasn't sure he'd needed the extra concerns, though; he was already jumpy enough about what might happen. Nevertheless, he was going through with it.

"You're a friend," he told her. "I always help out my friends. Period. End of discussion."

"Sorry," she apologized. "I just don't ..."

"Don't want me to get hurt because of you. Right."

"I'm serious!" she protested.

"So am I," he replied. "Please, stop worrying about my welfare. I've already got enough people doing that for me," he remarked dryly. He flicked a quick glance at his rearview mirrors; nothing was back there that shouldn't be there. He shifted to a lower gear, slowing down to the proper speed limits for a residential area.

As they moved further out, the houses began to get more and more spaced out, with the dark shapes of trees filling the gaps. This particular suburb of MegaTokyo was not a cheap place to live; with the crowding of the main city, land was at a premium, especially land that was near a wilderness area. This particular residential district had been developed with an eye towards keeping it reasonably natural-looking, which was one of the reasons he'd invested in a few acres here. The quietness of the area was very relaxing. It probably wasn't going to stay quiet much longer though, at least, not tonight.

"I envy you, actually," Sylvie told him quietly. "You're being very calm about this."

"It's all an act, believe me," he replied wryly. "Right now I'm so scared, that I've got enough nervous energy to power the city." Sylvie giggled a little at his comparison.

"I'm scared too," she replied absently, looking out the window at the darkness. "Mostly I'm scared of losing my freedom. Whoever these people are, they obviously intend to take that away." He flicked a quick glance at her; her expression was tight and stiff.

"Don't worry," he tried assuring her. "We're not about to let that happen." The entrance to the laneway to his home come into view. "Okay," he breathed. "Here goes nothing."

Bert switched off the headlights as he turned into the driveway. The truck carefully crept up the driveway, the engine purring quietly, gravel scrunching under the tires. In the gloomy semi-darkness, everything looked quiet and normal. Appearances could be deceiving, however.

Sylia had decided the best option for flushing out their pursuers would be to go back to his house; they were bound to be watching it. Arriving quietly under the cover of darkness would make it look like they were attempting to sneak in to get something out of the house before leaving, and would undoubtedly draw out the enemy.

The next step was in allowing himself and Sylvie to be captured; if everything went according to plan, the remainder of the Knight Sabers would covertly trail them to wherever their enemies' base of operations was. With luck, they could then stage a rescue and find out what was going on. The only problem was that there were a great many unknowns that could throw a wrench into the plans.

"Can you see all right?" Sylvie suddenly asked. Her vision was much better than the average person's, where his sight was limited to the normal human visual range.

"I'm fine," he assured her. He could see enough to get by, and he knew exactly how the layout of the property ran; he could have driven around the area blindfolded. He stopped the truck short of the front steps, and turned off the engine. Thick silence seemed to settle over everything as the last rumbles from under the hood died.

They got out of the truck warily, closing the doors softly, and cautiously sneaking up to the front door. A cursory glance didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary, and he opened it. Hinges squealed slightly as it swung inwards, and they stepped through, closing the door behind them.

"Doesn't look like anyone's been here since we left," Sylvie whispered to him. The silence around was so absolute; even her whispering sounded loud.

"I'm afraid they're out there, though," he whispered back. "Listen." Sylvie listened, but couldn't hear a thing. It was completely still outside.

"I don't hear anything."

"Precisely; we should be able to hear the crickets outside, at least. That means somebody's hiding in the bushes."

"Well, it's not like we didn't expect it."

"Right," he agreed. "Well, time to get on with the show."

"Be careful."

"You too." He gave her arm a quick, reassuring squeeze, and drifted quietly down the hallway to the stairs leading up, as she glided off to check some of the other downstairs rooms. He was positive his heartbeat was echoing off the walls; he was so nervous, it was pounding like a runaway racehorse.

He moved cautiously up the stairs, avoiding the ones he knew creaked under his weight. At the top he paused again, listening. It was utterly, eerily silent, and it was really giving him the creeps. Drawing a careful breath, he moved towards his bedroom. Still nothing happened.

Entering the room, he scooped a duffel bag out of the closet, moving on feel, and his memory of where everything was located. He was stuffing a few clothes in the bag, making it look like he was getting ready to leave for a while, when there was an outcry of some kind from downstairs, followed by a muffled thud. His pulse immediately jackhammered higher, as he crept back towards the stairs.

As he approached the stairs, there was a rustle behind him, like cloth rubbing on cloth. Bracing himself for the inevitable, he started to turn around. Something crashed into him, and white lights flared agonizingly in his sight, before fading to a blackness even deeper than the night's darkness.

Several stealthy shapes quietly flitted down the back steps of the house, carrying what looked like two bodies. They were dressed completely in black, and difficult to see in the dim lighting. After carrying the two still forms through the small forested tract of land behind the house, the shapes unloaded their burdens into the back of a dark, nondescript van. Some of the disguised figures climbed into the back with them, while the rest turned and vanished into the trees. The truck engine silently revved into life, and the van moved slowly away.

After the van pulled away, another stealthy figure rose from the bushes on the outskirts of the trees nearby where it had been concealed. Light flashed briefly off of blue-painted armour as Priss launched into the air on silenced thruster jets.

Thunderous crashing noises accompanied by sheets of blinding pain assailed Bert as he slowly regained consciousness. As his hazy senses became more aware of his surroundings, he realized the pain and noises were side-effects of the massive headache he had now. His head throbbed evilly as he lay there, trying to regain some measure of strength. Good God, what the hell had they hit him with?! The back of his skull felt extremely sore, like they'd slugged him with a club or something. The magnitude of the headache that was a result was enough to turn his mouth dry and make him feel like he was going to throw up, and he really didn't want to try moving.

Other elements of his situation began to gradually intrude on his awareness. He was laying face-down on something. There was a cool, slick-feeling surface underneath him. Trying to open his eyes intensified the pain waves, but he persevered. Through his slitted eyes he could see metal flooring. The vibrations coming from the floor meant that they were in a vehicle of some kind, a van probably.

As he tried shifting imperceptibly, he became aware that his hands were tied tightly behind his back, and apparently his feet were also bound. This is not good, he noted to himself. He'd been hoping they wouldn't bother tying him up, but obviously, whoever his captors were, they were taking no chances. He gritted his teeth, and tried to roll over to see what was going on. As he rolled over, a booted foot slammed numbingly into his stomach.

"Just lie still and maybe we won't hurt you," a cold voice told him, as he lay there gasping and retching, trying to get his breath back. Through waves of nausea, he could see four, black-clad figures seated on benches along the van wall; all of them had guns of some kind. Across from him on the floor, he could see Sylvie. She looked unharmed, but was still unconscious. She was also bound hand and foot. She was also blindfolded, which struck him as strange, until he remembered what she could do with her eyes if she felt like it. That thought made him tighten up inside; if they knew enough to blindfold her, then it meant that they knew exactly what she was. The man who had kicked him drew back his foot again, when one of the others stopped him.

"Just leave him be, for now," he told the other one. "Our orders are to get them unharmed, and that includes roughing them up. There'll be time for that later if they don't cooperate."

What have I gotten myself into?, Bert asked himself, lying back and trying to will his headache into submission. He closed his eyes and worked at controlling the vague beginnings of panic that were beginning to form, as the van continued on towards its destination.

"They're entering the warehouse district now," Nene's voice reported over Sylia's helmet communicator. "Still no problems with the beacon." Sylia acknowledged her report, and the channel cut off.

Glancing at the display screen in front of her, Sylia sighed to herself, adjusting the flight controls slightly. So far, everything was going the way they'd planned; Bert and Sylvie had been grabbed, and Priss had followed them as far as she was able to. According to Priss' report, they had appeared to be unharmed at the time. Sylia, Linna, and Nene in the KnightWing had picked up where Priss left off pursuing the van when it had exceeded her flight system range; The sensors in the KnightWing could track the vehicle from very long distances, making it highly unlikely that the ship would be spotted by the van's occupants. They couldn't see the van themselves, but Priss had managed to get a radio beacon transmitter stuck to the inside of the rear bumper of the van earlier, and the KnightWing was following the signal.

They flew along quietly for a few more minutes. The silence was a combination of tense nerves, and worry over the events occurring. Sylia was quietly praying that nothing would happen, but at the same time she was getting a very uneasy feeling.

"Uh, Sylia?" Nene's voice came over the channel, sounding very uncertain. Sylia's stomach dropped; it couldn't be good news, not when she sounded like that.

"Yes? What is it, Nene?"

"We have a problem: something's starting to block the signal." Sylia's stomach sank even lower; she hated when she was right about things like this.

"Blocking it how?"

"Interference from something, maybe a power source down there. Whatever it is, the signal's getting weaker and I'm losing it." Nene sounded like she was trying desperately to keep from panicking; keys could be heard clattering furiously in the background as Nene tried re-configuring the computers to screen out the interference and keep a lock on the signal. Sylia waited, a kind of despairing dread gnawing at her guts. The key clattering stopped.

"I've lost them!!" Nene wailed. "I can't get any signal at all now!!" The dread turned to shards of icy fear that stabbed at her innards. For a few moments, Sylia's mind was blank as she tried to come up with some kind of a plan.

"Can't we fly around until we pick up the signal again?" Linna's voice inquired.

"Only for a little while longer," Sylia replied wearily. "We don't have the fuel for a prolonged flight, and besides, we don't have much night left. We're going to become visible in another couple of hours, and they'd notice a strange airplane circling around."

"So what are we going to do?" Nene quavered. Sylia couldn't blame her for being worried; her own feelings right now were less than pleasant, and she was keeping them contained by sheer force of willpower right now.

"For now, we're going to have to do a general sweep of the area," she replied. "Tomorrow night, we'll be able to narrow the area down and look for them in a smaller area."

"Tomorrow night?!" Nene protested. "But anything could happen between now and then! They could be killed! They could be ...."

"I know that," Sylia cut her off quietly, but firmly. "And they knew that something might happen that could screw things up, but they chose to accept that possibility. I'm sorry, but that's all we can do for now. I don't like it either, but that's the way it has to be. Getting hysterical won't help them, either." The line was silent for a few moments.

"Yes, Sylia," Nene replied quietly. "I'll get back to trying to locate the signal."

The KnightWing flew onwards into the brightening sky, searching.

Bert couldn't really see much as he was dragged feetfirst out of the back of the van. Inky darkness masked the entire area they were in. From some of the echoes he could hear, he guessed they might be in a large warehouse or abandoned factory of some kind. His captors half-carried, half-dragged him across the open floor to a side door, opened it, and pulled him through into what looked like a storeroom. Behind him, he could hear them doing the same thing to Sylvie. He was more than a little concerned about her now, because she hadn't yet regained consciousness.

He was dumped into a straight-backed chair, and had to fight to keep from falling off of it onto the floor; with his hands and feet tied, his balance wasn't the greatest. A dull, heavy thud from the corner announced that they'd just dropped Sylvie onto the floor. He gritted his teeth at their treatment of her, but there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. He was just going to have to get used to that fact, for now. He flexed his hands experimentally; the ropes were tight enough that his hands were turning numb, and he was getting a little worried. He wasn't going to be able to get loose anytime soon, that much was for damn sure.

Footsteps approaching from the doorway drew his attention, slow and purposeful. Whoever was coming walked like they owned the place, so it was a pretty good bet that he was about to meet whoever was in charge. Lights flashed on, forcing him to shut his eyes momentarily as they tried to adjust to the new lighting levels. Eyes watering, he squinted in the direction of the doorway.

There were two people, actually. The first man was fairly tall, blond, with a muscular-looking build, in a grey suit and tie. His steely blue eyes flicked over Bert, and the recumbent Sylvie, evaluating them, although his gaze seemed to linger on Sylvie the longest. The second man was BIG. He stood about six-foot-six, and was extremely broad-shouldered. He had black hair, and was wearing sunglasses with a dark suit; the guy had 'bodyguard' written all over him, and his size coupled with the sunglasses meant he was probably a C-55 boomer. Marvelous. The blond man's gaze swung back to meet Bert's.

"We're so glad you could join us," the man remarked. He had a cool, suave voice that seemed to be utterly devoid of feeling.

"It was a little difficult turning down your gracious invitation," Bert replied dryly, looking around the room. It was a bare-walled, slightly dusty storeroom, with no furniture other than the chair he was in, and one other one. A grimy fluorescent lightbulb in the ceiling was providing the light. A faint smile twitched at the man's mouth, then disappeared.

"I can see we're going to have some interesting conversations," he observed.

"Are we?"

"I think so. Oh, you probably won't want to talk for the first little while, but that won't be a problem for too long, I should think." Bert suppressed the shudder that tried to shake him; he knew what this suited creep meant, all right. The jerk in the suit turned towards the small group of black-clad men who were standing at attention by the far wall.

"Take the sexaroid down to the lab; the doctor will want a look at it." He flashed an appraising glance at Bert. "I don't think I'll need anything else just yet." They saluted, and picked up Sylvie's body, dragging her out the door, and away. The grey suited man pulled up another chair, and sat down in it about five feet away from Bert, well out of reach of anything he might try. The boomer bodyguard moved to flank his location. Blue eyes stared at him intently for a few moments.

"I'm surprised, actually," the man remarked. "I figured you'd be another boomer, after helping the 33-S to escape from us the first time. Most normal people know better than to get involved with them."

"Her name is Sylvie."

" 'Her'? Try 'it'; it may look female, but it isn't. Sexaroids are a boomer with somewhat limited uses."

"That why you wanted her? Not having any luck with human women?" The man's face turned absolutely vicious for a moment, then became a calm mask again.

"I wouldn't get too smart-mouthed if I were you. I think you know what uses I'm referring to; I don't think you could be this involved and not know what they're capable of."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Sylvie's a friend, and just a friend. She needed help, and I provided it."

"How can anyone be friends with a programmed automaton? It's only a machine."

"She's got a hell of a lot more humanity than some people I could name."

"All right, I think we've pretty well covered that subject," the man said glacially. "I want to know who you work for."

"Pardon me?"

"You obviously work for some kind of secret organization; that truck you escaped in is not your standard, run-of-the mill vehicle. That means you have some impressive, and rich, backing. I'm not going to ask again: Who are you working for?"

"None of your goddamn business." A resigned look covered the face of the blond-haired man, and he stood up from his chair. He stepped to the door, and muttered something to a guard standing outside the door. The guard left, and the grey-suited man turned back towards Bert.

"I'd hoped you'd be willing to be reasonable, and spare us the extra trouble of having to persuade you that it's really in your best interests to talk. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case." The door behind him opened, and another black-clad man appeared, carrying some more rope.

"Make sure he's secured," the suit told the new arrival. "We don't want him falling off the chair." The man nodded, and quickly tied Bert tightly to the chair with the coil of rope. Bert's stomach started crawling around in his guts uneasily; it was one thing to say you weren't worried about possible torture, but quite another to be actually facing it.

As he watched, a second man, brown-haired and wearing a white lab coat shoved a small cart through the doorway. On the cart was what looked like a stereo amplifier unit, and it was attached to two batteries of some kind. Wires ending in adhesive tape stick-on electrodes hung from the front of the unit, and it was with a sick, sinking sense of certainty that he realized what they were going to do. The blond-haired suit watched him with a self-satisfied smirk as the cart was wheeled over to someplace behind him.

"Feel like talking yet?" he inquired politely, as the technician in the lab coat stuck an electrode on each of his temples. Bert glared at him.

"Go screw yourself, asshole," he retorted. The suit shrugged, and gave a signal. The room disappeared in a white haze of searing agony.

Somebody screaming in pain jerked Sylvie awake. Her confused mind floundered for a moment as she fought to organize her thoughts. It was when she tried sitting up to take a look at her surroundings that she realized that they had been captured after all, and that she was in serious trouble. She was strapped down on a table, arms at her sides, tightly enough that she couldn't even squirm too much; her body was held down at the ankles, waist, wrists and shoulders by what felt like metal straps.

Her panicking mind noted that she was also blindfolded. Not being able to see was more demoralizing than anything else she could think of; she was already powerless to prevent whatever her captors, whoever they were, were going to do, but not even being able to see what was going to happen was even more upsetting. Her imagination wasn't helping her stay calm, either; it was inventing all kinds of possibilities that were making her skin crawl.

Another hoarse, agonized yell from somewhere in the building made her start, although the way she was secured turned it into more of a twitch. After a moment, she recognized the voice; it was Bert, and it sounded like they were really working him over. She clenched her teeth in sudden, helpless fury, and strained at her bonds again. It was a futile effort; they wouldn't budge. There was a rustle of cloth from off to her left.

"Ah, it's awake," a cold, clinical voice noted. She had an instant mental image of a wizened old man in a lab coat.

"All right, let's start the examination then," a second voice ordered. It was younger sounding, but no less cold and detached. As she wondered what they were talking about, a hand pushed down on her blindfold, keeping it in place, as another pair of hands slid under it, and placed what felt like sticky tape on each of her temples. Electrodes, she realized, as she felt wires being attached to them. The pressing hand on her blindfold withdrew.

"Where do the other ones go?" the younger man queried.

"Where else?" the older voice replied. Sylvie felt hands suddenly unzipping her bike suit, and opening the front, exposing her chest. She tried pulling free again, vainly. When she tried opening her mouth to yell, to scream, to just protest somehow, a wad of foul-tasting cloth was rammed roughly into her mouth. Tears began to soak into the blindfold as she lay there, gagged and completely helpless while the scientists examined her body, poking and prodding her, and stuck electrodes on her chest and stomach.

"Pretty good emotional emulation program," the young voice noted. "Even looks like she's crying."

"Who gives a damn about that? We're not here to evaluate their programming. Just start scanning. And quit drooling over the view; it's a machine, you perverted jackass."

Sylvie continued to cry quietly as what sounded like computers began to hum in the background, not quite drowning out the sounds of someone in pain down the hall.

"Who are you working for?"

"Go... hang... yourself .... you rat-faced .... AAARRRRRGGH!!" Bert convulsed again as the technician behind him hit the switch on the controller/amplifier once more, searing him with electricity. The chair creaked slightly as his straining muscles pulled at the ropes, and spots danced in his tortured vision. The current shut off, and he sagged limply in the chair, twitching, and sucking air into his lungs in gasping sobs. Red flashes still flickered in his sight.

He wasn't sure how long the interrogation had been going on, but it felt like forever. The only constant in the world right now was pain. The crashing headache he had now made his earlier one feel like a minor annoyance; it was a wild, roaring storm of hammering pulsebeats that stabbed agony at every interval. Every single muscle was sore, shooting fiery pains into him from the stretching and straining they'd received under the electrical attack. His heart pounded loudly in his ears, and he thought it was acting erratically at times, but wasn't sure he wasn't just hallucinating. He felt utterly lousy; even if he wasn't tied up, he didn't think he'd be able to crawl, let alone walk, ten feet at the moment.

"All right, that's enough for now," the grey-suited leader directed disgustedly. "We don't want to kill him yet. Untie him and dump him in a cell; we'll continue this later. Oh, make sure he's got water. We wouldn't want him dying of dehydration on us, now would we?"

"You useless shitheaded ratbag," Bert spat weakly. "You're real brave, torturing someone when they can't defend themselves." He was ignored; the leader turned and left, followed by his hulking bodyguard.

Two black-clad guards cut him loose from the chair, yanked off the electrodes, and dragged him out of the room. Bert kept his eyes squeezed closed, teeth clenched against the stabbing pains pounding incessantly at his temples as they dragged him several metres down from the storeroom to another door. He was dimly aware of being carted through a corridor to another small room. The guards stood him in the doorway to the room, and cut loose his hands and feet. When they shoved him forward, he collapsed bonelessly on the floor as the door shut. A click and some snapping noises announced that the door had been locked.

After a few moments, he gathered what little strength remained to him, and crawled awkwardly over to the cot in the corner of the room. Getting onto it drained his last few reserves, and he passed out, flopping limply forward onto the bare mattress.

Sylia walked into the data control room to find Nene still there. The slender, red-haired computer expert was poring over a computerized map of the industrial area where they'd lost track of the signal from the van. Her hair was a disheveled mess, and her emerald-green eyes were slightly bloodshot-looking, with dark circles under them; she looked like she hadn't slept in days, even though it had been only several hours. Sylia suddenly realized that Nene hadn't gone home after they'd gotten back the night before, but had spent the entire time since then at the computer.

"Nene, what on earth are you doing?" she asked, walking over to the computer. Nene started guiltily, looking over at Sylia.

"I'm trying to figure out where they might have gone, based on where I lost the signal," she replied, sounding worn and tired. Sylia leaned over, and gently took the light pen she was using to mark the map away from her. Setting it over to the side, she shut off the monitor.

"You need sleep," she told the red-haired girl. "Passing out at the computer isn't going to help them."

"I've got to figure it out! It's my fault we lost them!"

"Oh no, not another one!" Sylia sighed, slapping a hand to her forehead. "You're starting to sound like Bert," she told Nene. "He's usually blaming himself if something doesn't work right. It's not your fault, Nene. These things happen; technology isn't foolproof."

"But I've got to do something!!" she cried. "I can't just sit and do nothing!!" She burst into tears, and Sylia gently embraced her until she stopped. She straightened up, pulling Nene up out of her chair. She brushed her red hair back out of her face, smiling at her.

"I'm worried, too," she told Nene, "but we can't let it rule what we do. Now come upstairs, have a cup of tea, and then get some sleep for a few hours. We're going searching again tonight."

Sylia steered the tired girl out the door, flicking off the lights as they left the room.

"So how did the interrogation go?" The speaker was a middle-aged man in dark blue fatigues, with grey-black hair in a crew cut.

"Wonderful," the blond, grey-suited man snorted. "I think I've learned a few new swear words from it all. Whoever he is, he's got quite a vocabulary."

"Wouldn't talk, eh?" an older man in a white lab coat guessed. Pale blue eyes regarded the other men, as he stuck a pipe into his mouth, and slowly stoked it into life. The older man had iron-grey hair in a shaggy haircut, and was fairly gaunt-looking.

"Nope. Stubborn bastard, that one is."

"It won't last. This method of persuasion is very effective," the middle-aged man shrugged.

"Do we have the time to spare?" the white-coated scientist asked. "I'm almost done examining the sexaroids, and we can start fairly soon on the modifications, but time is of the essence here. We've got to be out of here and back at the main base before our activity becomes noticeable." He sat back, puffing on his pipe. A bluish-grey haze began to wreath the area where he was seated.

"I don't think we'll have to wait much longer," the grey-suited man replied, shifting away from the dense smoke cloud that was forming. "He's putting on a 'tough guy' act, but I don't think it'll last much longer. Speaking of him, what did the search teams find at his place?"

"Nothing," the crew-cut man replied. "Absolutely zip. The house looks like it might have a basement area, but we can't find it. There wasn't anything else out of the ordinary, either."

"What about that device?" the scientist asked. "Any ideas?"

"Device?" the blond man asked. The crew-cut man gestured impatiently.

"We found some kind of weird cylindrical thing in a toolbox at his house, but there's no switches or anything. We got power readings from it, so there's a battery in there somewhere, but we can't figure out what it's for." He jerked a thumb at the pipe-smoking scientist. "We gave it to Doc to play with."

"Speaking of playing, what about the sexaroids?" the grey-suited man asked.

"Watch your mouth, Hollister," the fatigue-clad man warned. Doc chuckled.

"Relax, Hiro," he soothed. "My colleague is the one who's drooling on the floor right now; seeing naked machines doesn't turn my crank."

"I always said Yamada was weird."

"If we can get back to my question?" Hollister asked irritably. Doc grinned around his pipestem.

"To answer your question, the brown-haired one already seems to have the parts necessary to linking with our systems; the green-haired one doesn't. It won't be a great hardship to install them, though." Doc frowned suddenly. "The funny thing is, they've both been modified so that they're no longer dependent on human plasma. Their internal blood supply is now completely self-regulating and regenerating. Whoever dreamed up how to fix the usual 33-S blood problem is a genius." Hollister whistled in surprise.

"That's a serious compliment, coming from you," he noted. "Can you undo it, though? We need them dependent on an outside source to keep them under control."

"Quit trying to tell me the obvious," Doc grunted, sucking on his pipe. "It shouldn't be too hard to do." His tone was hesitant, however. Hiro looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

"But?"

"There's a slim possibility that reversing the process might kill them. Have you got a ready supply of 33-S sexaroids if it does?"

He awoke slowly, stiffly. His headache had subsided to a dull pounding, and his muscles were now only stiff instead of on fire. He carefully sat up, and immediately regretted it. He felt light-headed, and the room swam around in his vision sickeningly. Bert sat there on the edge of the cot for a moment, holding his head in his hands, gathering his thoughts from wherever they'd fled to. God, he felt awful. He'd never had a hangover before, but he was willing to bet what he had right now was a close second; his head felt like it was twice its normal size, and his stomach was lurching around uneasily.

He stared around at the small room; it was small, about ten feet by ten feet, with the cot, and a small table. Both were bolted to the floor, and there was nothing else in the room that could be converted to a weapon of some kind. The only other object in the room was a bucket in a corner, and the faint reek coming from it made it obvious what it was meant for.

He checked the room visually again, carefully this time, looking for a possible escape route. The examination didn't take long, and he gave up in disgust. There was no air vent panel in the room, so there was no chance of getting out of there through a ventilation shaft. The only door to the room was metal-clad, impervious to anything he could try. He was stuck, at least until someone opened the door.

He stood up, testing just how lousy he felt. The room swam a bit more, but his head was clearing, and he could actually move around a bit now. He noticed that there was what looked like a jar of water and a sandwich on the table. Despite his immediate suspicion of the food, his snarling stomach forced him over to have a look at it. It smelled normal; at least, nothing had been added that he could detect by smell. His stomach roared again, and he quickly devoured the food. The sandwich was on the stale side, and the water was lukewarm, but it tasted better than anything else he could think of at the moment. The brief meal also improved how he felt overall, although he was willing to bet a great deal of it was psychological only.

Bert sat back down on the cot, trying to fight off the fear that was beginning to hover at the edges of his mind. He was in very serious trouble here, and it could only get worse. It would probably be only a matter of time before they came to interrogate him again, and he definitely didn't want to go through another session. The vague flashes he remembered of the last time made him break out in a cold sweat and shudder uncontrollably. It was without a doubt the worst ordeal he'd ever had to endure, and he wasn't sure he'd last another one. He had to escape, somehow, get Sylvie, and get out.

He found himself wishing for his hardsuit with an intensity that was alarming; he'd never realized before just how much he relied on his suit, partly for the hardware, and also partly for the psychological boost it provided. To a certain extent, his personality did change slightly whenever he donned the armour, mostly because he had a large degree of confidence in the defenses it provided. In the armour, he became SkyKnight in total, a silver-clad heroic knight. Outside of the armour, he was a more normal person, with normal abilities. Not having the suit, especially now, made him feel helpless and exposed; he was down to relying on his own skills, strengths, and abilities. Oh yeah, he was in deep trouble.

He sat there, waiting, trying to come up with some kind of plan.

"Out of the question," Doc retorted testily. "I'll need at least another ten to twelve hours before I can start on modifying the sexaroids."

"What's the hold up?" Hiro asked, equally irritably, sparks flickering in his blue-grey eyes. "I though you said it was easy to install and modify the parts."

"You're forgetting that sexaroids have much more biological equipment than other boomers; this isn't just some old computer system where we can swap circuit boards. We have to finish fully scanning and mapping their systems before we try anything. If we don't, there is a very good chance they'll shut down and die." Doc sat back, sticking his pipe between his teeth, moodily puffing it into life again. Hiro ran a hand through his hair disgustedly, and sighed.

"All right, fine," he grumbled. "I'll give you twelve hours."

"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you," Doc said acidly. "I don't want to rub it in, but you didn't really have a choice in the matter, remember?" Hiro didn't reply; their orders stated that Doc had final authority in anything relating to the boomers, but that didn't mean he had to like it. A heavy, disgruntled silence fell over the room briefly. At length, Hollister sighed, and sat up from where he'd been slouched over in a chair.

"What do we do with our uncooperative guest?" he inquired.

"Work him over some more," Hiro directed. "If he won't talk...." he shrugged carelessly.

"If he won't talk, I don't want him summarily executed," Doc put in. The other men in the room looked at him.

"I know I'm going to hate the answer, but why not?" Hollister queried. "Alive, he's a liability."

"We can use him as a test subject for some of our projects. We don't exactly have volunteers lining up at the door, you know."

The door to the small room swung open. Two black-clothed guards, wearing light helmets of some kind, stepped into the room. After a quick glance around, they stepped over to the cot next to the far wall, each of them grabbing an arm on the limp, red-haired form sprawled on it. They dragged the slack form out the door, down the hall, and out into the central area of the building. Carrying their burden, they walked down the outside wall several metres to another door and opened it, dragging the limp body they were carrying through it into the small storeroom beyond.

Just as they shut the door to the room, the supposedly unconscious body they'd been carrying became violently alive. Bert yanked his right arm free of the grasp of the startled guard holding it, and smashed a fist into the throat of the guard on the left; the guard collapsed choking and gagging, immediately and completely out of the fight. The remaining guard quickly realized what was happening, and attacked with his own punches, attempting to subdue him before he could get the upper hand. The red-haired figure ducked two swings, then slammed the chair he'd grabbed onto the guard's head in an overhand swing that cracked the man's helmet; the guard dropped without a sound into a crumpled heap. Bert set the chair down, and quickly checked the pulses of the comatose men, sighing in relief when he found one. Straightening up, he turned towards the door.

The door burst open as he turned towards it, and a dark moving blur flashed through. Bert was grabbed by the neck and hoisted easily off his feet before he could even blink. As he pulled vainly at the iron grip around his neck that was slowly strangling him, he could see the impassive face of the blond man's bodyguard at the other end of the massive arm holding him. There was a faint red glow visible behind the lenses of the guard's sunglasses, revealing the fact that the guard was actually a boomer. Damn it, Bert snarled mentally, pulling again at the choking grip, it figures that they'd have a boomer around! After everything that he'd survived as one of the Knight Sabers, he was going to get strangled by a boomer. Kind of ironic, actually. As he hung there suspended from the boomer's arm, slowly strangling, the grey-suited man walked in through the door, a smug smile on his face.

"I suppose I'd have been disappointed if you hadn't tried to escape at least once," he remarked. He gestured, and the boomer threw Bert into the nearby chair, the force of the throw knocking the chair over backwards, sending him crashing to the ground. Lights burst in his brain as his head smacked into the concrete floor, and he rolled groggily over, trying to get up. The boomer picked him up again, and slammed him back into the chair with enough force to rattle his teeth.

It held him on the chair, one hand painfully clamped onto his shoulder, as two more guards came in, carried out the unconscious ones, and came back in with a couple of lengths of rope. Bert's mouth turned dry, and he began to sweat as they began re-tying him to the chair. The grey-suited man watched, smirking the whole time. If I get the chance asshole, Bert promised him silently, I'm going to wipe that smirk off of your face. At the moment, though, the chances of that happening were looking exceedingly small.

The boomer released its clenched grip on his shoulder, and walked back over to stand by the door. Bert tugged lightly at the ropes as the guards stepped back; they were tight, but he felt there might be enough slack to get a hand free eventually, although what to do then was the next problem. The guards saluted the grey-suited man.

"The prisoner is secure, Mr. Hollister," the one reported. Hollister nodded impatiently, and the black-clad men left. As they left, the brown-haired technician in the white lab coat who'd been zapping him before came in, wheeling the small cart carrying the electrical controller in front of him. Oh God, please, a voice in the back of his mind whimpered, not that again!! He pulled again at the ropes, trying not to look like he was squirming. Hollister was regarding him with an amused expression.

"We don't have to do this, you know," Hollister told him. "All you have to do is tell me who you are, who you're working for, and just why you were helping out the sexaroid."

"I told you," Bert replied, trying to keep his voice steady, "Sylvie's a friend. As for the rest, that's on a need-to-know basis, and you don't need to know." He was not going to expose the Knight Sabers, no matter what happened. Besides, he was sure they were going to fry him anyway, so he figured he might as well make a smart remark while he was still able. His heart began pounding harder as he felt the technician behind him stick the electrodes onto his temples again.

"This is your last chance, buddy," Hollister warned, his voice becoming glacial. "Either you talk now, or you're in for a lot of pain."

"You're no buddy of mine, you sick bastard. Go hang yourself."

"Have it your way, then," Hollister shot back, flicking a hand signal to the white-coated technician.

Once more, the room dissolved into a white-hot fog of screaming agony.

"They're at it again," the younger-sounding voice remarked, as the voice of somebody howling in pain cut through the air.

"Naturally," the older voice responded. "We've got to find out what, if anything, the guy knows, and this is the only way we have available right now." The voices fell silent, the only noise in the room becoming the background hum of lab equipment, and the clatter of someone inputting data on a keyboard.

Oh my God, what are they doing to him?! Sylvie thought despairingly, as she heard Bert screaming again. She was still blindfolded, and still strapped to the table. She had no idea how long they'd been prisoners, but it felt like days. She was becoming stiff and sore from being held in one position for a long time, and not being able to move to alleviate the stiffness was maddening. The gag was also still in place; they'd taped it in, preventing her from spitting it out. The taste of the thing was awful, but she didn't dare allow herself to throw up, or she'd choke.

"Had any luck with that gizmo they found at his place?"

"Nope," the older scientist replied. "It's giving off energy of some kind, but I can't figure out anything else; we don't have the right equipment for fully analyzing it here. It'll just have to wait, I guess."

"What about the sexaroids?"

"We're supposed to install the linkage parts in the other one later tonight."

Other one? They must mean Anri! Sylvie felt a momentary flash of relief to know that Anri was all right, for the moment at least. What had the scientists meant about 'linkage parts', though?

"It's strange that this one already has the parts for superweapon synchronization," the younger voice remarked. Sylvie suddenly realized with horror what they intended to do: they were going to stick the necessary parts for linking to weapons systems in Anri, and turn her into some kind of monster under their control. Her already dry mouth turned dryer, and her stomach seemed to shrink, as she realized the same fate was also in store for her. She began to squirm desperately, trying to get loose. She didn't want to lose her freedom, and the thought of being enslaved in such a way was worse than her current situation.

"It's not so strange, really. Before the sexaroids were mostly destroyed, many of them had the synchronization parts already. It's not beyond the realm of probability that some of them escaped the initial crackdown."

"True, I guess," the younger voice conceded. "What are we going to do about their blood supply?"

"We're going to try and reverse the regenerative processes at the same time as we implant the linkage parts. Then we modify the brown-haired one's blood supply."

In the back of her mind, Sylvie began screaming.

"This is the area of the warehouse district we're going to concentrate on," Sylia said, pointing to a circled area on the map of MegaTokyo. "Nene did some calculations, and this is the most likely area for them to have taken Sylvie and Bert." Sylia took a quick glance at Nene; she was still dozing in an armchair.

"How are we going to do it?" Priss asked, frowning at the map. That was a lot of area to cover in one night.

"You and Linna will be covering the ground on your motoroids, and Nene and I will be scanning from the KnightWing. Nene came up with a filter program that should eliminate the background emissions that drowned out our locator beacon the last time, and the motoroids will have it in their sensor packages as well. I don't like splitting the team up like this, but it will increase our chances of finding them."

"Is there any chance Bert or Sylvie could signal us?" Linna asked. Sylia shrugged helplessly.

"That would be the perfect way to find them," she replied. "The only problem is that they'd need access to a radio or something, and I doubt the kidnappers are going to give them one." Gloomy silence sank over the room for a moment, as everyone present was momentarily lost in their own worries. At length, Sylia stood up, and looked around at them.

"Well, we're not going to get anywhere sitting here, so let's roll," she said. She gently nudged Nene awake, and the Knight Sabers left to begin searching again.

"That's enough for now," Hollister directed. The technician nodded, and turned off the power. The red-haired figure tied to the chair slumped forward, breathing in shuddering gasps. Bert raised his head from where it had flopped forward to when they'd shut off the power, and fixed the blond-haired man with a murderous, if bloodshot, glare. Hollister appeared unaffected.

"Leave him here," he directed. "We'll work him over again in a couple of hours; we don't have the time to wait any longer." The technician nodded silently and left, followed by the guards. Hollister was the last to leave, casting a last glance at Bert.

"You'd better re-consider not telling us what we want to know," he advised him. "You're not going to last much longer." He left, followed by his bodyguard, and the door slammed shut.

"I'm going to last a hell of a lot longer than you are, bastard," Bert muttered thickly to himself. He felt worse than ever, which wasn't really surprising, given the circumstances. However, despite that, he had to escape, and he had to do it fast; Hollister was right about him not being able to take much more. He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths, and began working at pulling his hands loose. Sweat broke out again on his forehead, partly from the effort, and partly from trying to withstand the blasts of pain stabbing inside his head as he struggled. The ropes had loosened slightly while they'd been interrogating him, and there was the slim chance that he'd be able to get free.

After several more minutes of heartbreaking struggle, he finally succeeded in pulling his right hand free; the left followed shortly afterwards. He shrugged off the ropes holding his upper body to the chair, and bent over to untie his feet. It was difficult concentrating on the task at hand, but he persevered. As he worked the last ropes loose, he realized his hands were covered in blood; in pulling his hands loose, he'd really rubbed the skin raw, and it was bleeding now. He'd worry about that later, he told himself; right now, getting away with the rest of his skin intact was the larger concern.

Bert took another deep breath, and stood up, very promptly falling over to land in a heap on the floor. Swearing at his body under his breath, he lay there for a moment, praying nobody outside had heard anything that might bring in guards to have a look. It took several more minutes of trying, but he finally was able to get to his feet, and walk towards the door. His motion wasn't perfect, however; he was swaying like a sailor just after shore leave as he lurched in the direction of the exit. He gritted his teeth, as his stomach suddenly flipped, and managed to keep from throwing up. He had to pull himself together; he could feel time slipping away from him like sand through his fingers, and it wouldn't be much longer before Hollister and the others came back.

He leaned against the wall next to the door, trying to breathe quietly, listening; it didn't sound like there was anyone outside the door. He eased the door carefully open a crack, peering cautiously through the crack. He was in luck for a change, since no one had been left outside the door to watch their 'guest'. They probably figured he wouldn't be a problem, and they were pretty close to being right on that score.

Easing the door open further, he slipped outside and closed the door carefully again. The cavernous room he was in now was barely lit by a few lightbulbs hanging high above. He had the impression of vehicles at the far end. He was momentarily tempted to check them out, but scrapped the idea. He couldn't just leave yet; he had to find Sylvie. He wasn't about to just abandon her here to the pack of slimy bastards that had captured them; they probably were doing worse to her than what they'd done to him. He suppressed the flare of rage that the thoughts produced; he couldn't afford to lose his temper right now. Anger was a luxury he didn't have the time to indulge in.

He moved carefully down the wall, in the direction he vaguely remembered being carried before. He passed the first door he came to; he was pretty sure it led to the room they'd been keeping him in. As he moved further on, he came to a corridor leading deeper into the building. After a moment's hesitation, he moved down it.

As he quietly walked along, he briefly wondered where the guards were. If this was such an under-the-table operation, it would have made sense if they'd posted sentries all over the place. The fact that they hadn't was puzzling; it implied lack of manpower, or else complete confidence in their own invincibility. From his own standpoint, he wasn't about to complain about lax security however.

A door banged open somewhere up ahead, and Bert froze, dread shooting icy fingers through his guts. He couldn't get caught, not again! Anything but that!! He shot a frantic glance around, then tried sprinting quietly for the next door down the hall. As luck would have it, it was unlocked. He eased the door open, silently praying his good luck would hold out, slipped inside, and closed the door. As the door closed, smothering darkness enfolded him, dimly lit by the very small amount of light coming in under the door.

He carefully moved backwards, away from the door as footsteps came closer, and ducked behind a stack of boxes. Evidently he'd picked a storeroom to hide in; there were worse places. As the footsteps came even closer, he realized he was sweating profusely and his hands were shaking, badly. He had to fight to keep his breathing slow and even. A voice in the back of his mind was yammering in fear at the prospect of being caught and interrogated again; he never, ever wanted to have to go through that kind of pain again. He crouched down and waited. The footsteps passed the door, and continued on, dwindling into the distance.

Bert relaxed with a relieved sigh, letting his head drop back against a box behind him. Unfortunately, nudging the box toppled a small object that had been sitting on top, and it rolled off, hitting him square in the face. Stifling the pained exclamation that came to mind, he managed to grab the object before it hit the floor. For a moment he sat there, holding the cylindrical device, and rubbing his cheek where the thing had hit him, swearing mentally at how his luck ran sometimes.

He peered closer at the gizmo he was holding, and realized it was a small flashlight. After listening closely for a moment more, he flicked it on. Dim yellow light sprang into being; the batteries weren't the best anymore. He carefully played the light around the room, hoping nobody would come by and see the light under the door. There wasn't anything really useful in the room; it appeared to be mostly janitorial supplies, and a few other things like broom handles and such. Damn; he'd been hoping he'd found the spare weapons, but apparently there were limits to just how fortunate he could get.

He flicked the light around the room once more, then shut it off, pocketing the flashlight. He sat back down on the floor, trying to figure out what he could do next. He needed some kind of a weapon, so he could hopefully force or bluff his way to where they were keeping Sylvie. A closet full of bleach and detergents wasn't going to help him at ......wait a minute! He yanked out the flashlight, and played the light beam over the boxes again. Drain cleaner.... liquid bleach .... turpentine, and all kinds of other corrosive and dangerous chemicals. There was even a large bottle of hydrochloric acid. A twisted grin appeared; he'd been sitting on a gold mine, and hadn't realized it. He resisted the urge to start laughing maniacally.

He rummaged around in the boxes he felt he'd need, gradually assembling a small array of containers. He even located an old rucksack of some kind that he could carry them with, and quickly packed them in, padding the bottles with some scrap packing from one of the boxes to keep them from clanking.

Okay, he was armed now, after a fashion; now what? He had to find some way of moving around without getting caught. One option was to slug a guard and swap clothes with him. Unfortunately, none of the guards traveled alone; from what he'd seen, they all traveled in pairs. In his current shaky physical condition, even one guard would be difficult to subdue. Two of them would wrap him up without a problem. He sighed, and looked at the ceiling for inspiration of some kind, and he found it. Directly over him was a grille for a ventilation shaft, about three feet square, held on by a couple of screws.

After a few moments of work with a can lid, he unscrewed the grille, and it swung down into the room on its hinges. Carefully, he shoved the bag of chemicals up around the edge of the ventilation shaft, and then began the laborious process of hauling himself up there as well. It wasn't easy; he was weak and shaky from a combination of the abuse he'd suffered so far, and hunger. Just the thought of food made his stomach snarl, and he quickly shoved those particular thoughts to the back of his mind.

Eventually, he made it, and lay inside the shaft, gasping for a moment. Once he'd regained his breath, he pulled the grille back up and wedged it into place. It would pass only a very cursory inspection; if anyone looked too closely, they'd know someone had opened it. Taking a deep breath, he began carefully crawling through the ventilation shafts, shoving the bag of chemical bottles ahead of him.

"What makes you so sure he knows anything? You've been trying for hours now to get him to crack, with no results. Maybe he's telling the truth."

"Like hell he is!!" Hollister snapped, glaring at the blue fatigue-clad man across the table from him. "The bastard's hiding something!! He's got to be working for some covert group, or else he wouldn't have had the resources to put together a truck like that one he was driving. The goddamn thing beat our best pursuit vehicles easily, and that's not exactly something to sneer at! Add to that the fact that he was helping that sexaroid to escape, and you've got somebody who's hiding something!" Hiro shrugged.

"So he's a technical or mechanical wizard. Big deal. That's still no justification for taking more time to grill the guy. As for helping the sexaroid, maybe they were in bed together. I don't know, but I don't really give a shit. Why don't you just turn him over to Doc, and let the scientists have their fun? At least he'll be out of the way, and out of your hair."

"I'm going to break him," Hollister growled, eyes flashing. "Sooner or later."

"Make it sooner, then," Hiro advised. "We can't wait much longer; Doc will be modifying the 33-S's in a couple of hours, and once that's done we go back to HQ."

Leave it to me to get lost trying to escape, Bert thought to himself disgustedly. He'd been crawling quietly now for what felt like hours, and he hadn't found where they were keeping Sylvie. Hell, he hadn't found anything except empty rooms, and a couple more storage rooms. He sighed miserably, resting his forehead on the cool metal of the ventilation ducting. For a moment, despair threatened to overwhelm him; he'd made all kinds of grand claims of being able to help out Sylvie, but here he was stuck God knows where with no idea of where she was, and he was feeling sicker by the minute himself.

The faint echo of voices carrying through the ducting brought him back from the edge of giving up completely. He carefully controlled the faint flash of hope he felt, and began crawling again, trying to get to the source of the voices. As he crawled, he carefully pushed the bag of chemical bottles ahead of him; he didn't want them breaking in here.

After an interminable period of time, he edged cautiously up to a vent cover in the wall and peered through. He found himself looking down on a high-tech lab of some kind. Massive computer banks lined the far wall, with large clusters of cables joining them to what looked like moveable diagnostic units. There were workbenches covered with scanners, oscilloscopes, parts and tools. What looked like a small portable computer was sitting on a side table, attached to some strange looking cylindrical device that it appeared to be analyzing. In the middle of the room were what looked like two operating tables, and they were occupied by two feminine forms.

It was all Bert could do to keep himself from diving through the vent when he recognized Sylvie as one of the women on the tables; she was strapped down, blindfolded and gagged, and the bastards had opened the front of her bike suit, leaving her half naked, and wired her to one of the diagnostic units with a tangle of wires and electrodes. The other woman was in the same condition, and Bert guessed that Anri was the person on the second table. Anri looked to be in rough shape; bruises were visible where her clothes were torn, and she wasn't moving. Sylvie, on the other hand, could be seen trying to squirm loose every so often, and didn't look as beaten up.

There was a young scientist standing at one of the computers with his back to the women, and to the vent grating on the wall. All Bert could see was black hair and a white lab coat. As he watched, another older scientist with shaggy white hair walked into the room.

"All right, Yamada," he called to the younger man. "Get the sexaroids prepped for surgery. I'll be back in a few minutes." Surgery?!? What the hell were they thinking of doing?!?

"Sure thing, Doc. Shouldn't take longer than a few minutes," Yamada replied. As Bert watched from his vantage point, the older man left. Sylvie's squirming seemed to become more agonized; she was terrified of whatever was going to happen, and he couldn't blame her one bit.

Bert eased back into the ventilation shaft, opened the bag of chemicals and carefully sorted through them. Now that he'd found his friends, he had the vague beginnings of a plan to get them out. It all depended now on timing, and no small amount of luck.

As he sorted, he kept glancing out of the corner of his eye at the room. Evidently Anri was the first one on the list, because Yamada began tearing off her blouse and exposing all of her upper body. That did it; the cold, utterly impersonal way they were treating Sylvie and Anri, like they were mere machines, ignited a cold fury in him. He shoved his rucksack to the side of the ventilation shaft, and got ready; the shaft was only about ten feet from the ground, and he figured that even in his shaky condition, he should be able to manage that distance.

As he got ready to kick loose the grille, Yamada turned and vanished into a side room. Perfect! Bert quickly dislodged the vent screen, and let it swing open. He hung the bag of chemicals on the edge of the cover frame, and then carefully slid out of the duct shaft, keeping a white-knuckled grip on the edges to prevent a slip, and a noisy fall. After a short drop, and a staggering landing, he was inside the lab. He pulled loose the packsack from where he'd hung it, and tucked it underneath a table; he didn't need it right now.

Quietly drifting over to the door that Yamada had vanished into, he pressed his back against the wall and waited, a cold rage still burning inside him. The door opened, and the young black-haired scientist emerged, flipping through some notes on a small clipboard. As he came through the door, his peripheral vision evidently noticed Bert lurking by the door, because he spun around, with the beginnings of a startled exclamation forming. He never got the chance to finish his shout though; fueled by anger and desperation, the punch Bert slugged the man with knocked him over backwards. As Yamada fell, the back of his head glanced off of a table; he was out cold before he hit the floor.

Bert relaxed slightly, rubbing his right hand to make sure everything was still intact; the bastard had a hard head. He wouldn't stay out for long, though, so Bert had to think of some way to secure him.

He started rummaging through the messy workbenches, hoping to find some twine or wiring or something. His eyes lit up when he found a couple of rolls of duct tape. Two minutes later, Yamada was very securely stuck to a nearby chair, with a piece of tape stuck over his mouth. Bert tossed the remainder of the tape onto the counter with a grin, then turned his attention towards his friends.

He cast a quick glance towards the main entrance to the lab, and then sprinted over to the table securing Sylvie. She'd evidently heard the sounds of his brief scuffle; there was an air of tense waiting about her.

"Just hang on a second, Sylvie," he reassured her in a low voice, taking another quick glance at the door. "I'll have you loose in a second." Sylvie made some kind of a muffled noise that sounded relieved.

His first action was to pull off the electrodes they'd stuck to her stomach, chest and head, his second was to zip up the front of her bike suit. Searching around, he found the button to release the straps holding her, and pushed it; the straps retracted with metallic snaps. He helped Sylvie to a sitting position, then reached out and gently pulled loose the tape holding her gag in place, and pulled off the blindfold. Sylvie coughed and spat for a moment as she stretched, eyes squinted shut against the glare. After a moment her golden-brown eyes opened fully to look at him. Her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears, and he found himself engulfed in a crushing hug.

"Oh thank God you're okay!" she cried. "I thought they were killing you!!" She burst out crying as he awkwardly held her, not quite sure what to do. After a moment, he banished his conflicting feelings. She was a friend, and that was all there was to it. He returned the hug, arms tightening around her, trying to comfort her somehow. After a couple of moments, Sylvie regained her composure, wiping her face on her sleeve and stepping back from him slightly, looking him over finally.

"Oh my God!!" she exclaimed, face whitening, "you look like shit!!"

"Thanks a lot," he replied dryly. "It's nice to see you, too. Forget me for the moment, how are you?"

"I'm fine, I guess. They didn't ... they didn't... have time to .... modify me," she replied. She was trembling like a leaf, although he couldn't tell if it was fear at almost losing her freedom completely, or anger at her captors. He gave her another quick hug.

"Can you manage for now?" he queried as he pulled back. She nodded wordlessly.

"Then you'd better take care of Anri," he said quietly, glancing over at the next table. "She may not remember me." Anri hadn't even twitched yet, which was alarming.

"Anri!! Oh no!! What have they done to you?!" Sylvie jumped off the table she was on, and rushed over to the next table, obviously fighting back tears. She began to release Anri, as Bert turned his attention to the entrance to the lab.

He pulled the bag of cleaning chemicals out from under the table, and lined the bottles up in a row. Hunting around, he found some empty stoppered beakers, and a bucket. He poured the hydrochloric acid into the bucket, and set it aside. Next he began mixing some of the solvents and drain cleaners together in some of the flasks, sealing the stoppers down with duct tape while holding his breath; the stuff absolutely reeked, and the fumes were toxic to breathe. He didn't have a hell of a lot of choice, though. If they wanted to get out, they were going to have to risk using garage-type chemistry. The mixtures in the bottles began to foam as he worked, and he hoped they wouldn't blow up before he was ready.

Approaching footsteps from the main hallway echoed in the room, causing Sylvie to freeze in panic, and Bert to whip around hunting for somewhere to hide. Sylvie dropped to the ground, out of the line of sight, when he motioned for her to do so. He quickly sprinted over to beside the main door, grabbing the now empty bag he'd been carrying the chemicals in, and plastered himself flat on the wall with his back to it.

The door swung open, and the white-haired scientist he'd heard called 'Doc' earlier started to walk in. As the man's gaze fell on the one empty table, and the bound Yamada, he started to spin around to shout for help; he never made it.

Leaping forward, Bert jammed the bag over the man's head, and yanked him backwards off of his feet, slamming his head to the floor with brutal force. Doc went limp immediately, and soon he too was taped to a chair. As he was securing the man, Sylvie went back to freeing Anri.

Casting a quick glance down the hallway from the lab, Bert whipped back over to his chemical concoctions, and set them up in the hallway just outside the door to the lab, all except for one flask; the last flask he carefully set down on the countertop, well away from the edges where it might get knocked over. He was all set now, except for tying up some loose ends.

Bert walked quickly over to where Sylvie had freed Anri. She'd wrapped Anri in a spare lab coat, and was worriedly examining her. Anri looked terrible; her eyes were vacant, glazed with horror of some kind, and she was bruised and battered looking. She looked like she'd been really mauled before being captured.

"How is she?" he inquired, as he came up to them. Sylvie shot him a quick, worried glance.

"I don't know, she won't respond to me," she replied, on the verge of crying again. Bert frowned to himself. He hadn't thought that being kidnapped would unbalance someone so much that they'd become semi-catatonic. His eyes widened suddenly as an idea struck him. He motioned Sylvie a little apart.

"I think part of the problem is the fact that they've had her as a captive for a week or so," Bert told her in a low voice. "I'd be willing to bet they've kept her strapped to that table the whole time." Sylvie's eyes widened in shock, and no small amount of outrage.

"But that's ... that's ...." She trailed off as words failed her.

"Inhuman," Bert finished quietly, casting a quick glance at Anri. "I don't think she could handle being so tightly restrained that she couldn't even move for so long, coupled with the rough way they were treating you, and it may have..." Bert hesitated; he wasn't a psychiatrist, and he didn't know for sure that Anri had gone off the deep end from her imprisonment and treatment.

"You think she may have lost her mind," Sylvie half-asked, eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

"It's a possibility," Bert reluctantly conceded. "But there's no way to know for sure right now. Let me try to talk to her."

Sylvie moved aside, and he stepped forward, reached out and took one of Anri's hands. Her response to his touch was not what he'd expected. Her eyes widened in stark terror, and she screamed, a shrill, agonized wail that blasted his eardrums. Bert jerked back, releasing her as quickly as if he'd touched hot iron, as Sylvie grabbed Anri in a hug, and tried to calm her down.

"Anri, please! It's okay, he's a friend!! Please calm down!!" she pleaded. It wasn't having an effect though; Anri continued wailing. Worse, her screams had attracted attention. Bert could hear running footsteps approaching.

"Aw shit!!" he snarled, running toward the noise, snatching up his last flask as he ran. He reached the door, jerked it open, and pitched the flask into the hall. There was a loud bang, closely accompanied by glass shattering, and a misty greenish-white cloud began filling the hallway outside. Bert slammed the doors, and yanked a table over to in front of them as a barricade. In the hallway, surprised shouts turned into strangled gagging and choking noises. Some of the vapour began to drift in around the cracks in the doors, but not enough to be dangerous yet.

"What was that stuff?" Sylvie asked. She was holding Anri tightly to her chest, and Anri's screams had died off into racking sobs. Sylvie looked like she wanted to cry herself.

"Some cleaning chemicals I found," he replied tersely, casting another glance at the door. "At the moment they're breathing hydrogen chloride gas, and a few other nasty things. It won't hold them off for long; we've got to get out of here."

"But that was the only way out!"

"Then we improvise!" he snapped, glancing hurriedly around the lab. There had to be something in here he could use as a weapon. His searching gaze passed over everything. Wiring, bottles, computer parts, small tools, a portable computer wired to something cylindrical, but nothing he could ... wait a second! His gaze swung back to the portable computer. Bert stared incredulously for a moment, then walked over to it. He tore loose the wires attached to the cylinder, and examined it. A grim smile crossed his face as he recognized it, and he pocketed the cylinder. He looked back at Sylvie.

"Can Anri be moved?" he inquired. "You'll have to carry her, I think."

"Yes, I can carry her."

"Good. I don't know what they could have done to her that could provoke that scale of response, but she's going to need help getting out of here." Sylvie nodded, and started to reply, when she was interrupted by a faint, barely audible whisper from Anri.

"He...he touched me," was all she said. She repeated it twice more, before collapsing again, weeping. Bert and Sylvie stared at her blankly, then looked at each other. Sudden comprehension flashed like a lightbulb in Bert's mind.

"She didn't mean me, I think," he said slowly. "I think she meant...." He trailed off, and they both turned to look at the two tied scientists. They were awake, and had been for some time, evidently. The older one was glaring at the younger one. Bert walked over to the two men, and ripped the tape off their mouths.

"You molested her, didn't you?" he inquired in a quiet, deadly tone. Yamada flushed slightly, and Doc looked at him disgustedly, but didn't say anything.

"You sickening bastard!!" Bert snapped, fury igniting like a furnace blast. "Is that how you get your kicks?! Molesting helpless women?!"

"What women?!" Yamada snapped. "It's a machine, a goddamn sexaroid for ...urghk!!" Bert had the captive scientist by the throat before he completed the sentence, his face distorting in fury.

"She's a human being with feelings, not some playtoy, you shithead!!" he snarled at the purpling scientist, his grip tightening. "So she's physiologically a little different, so what?!?! That makes it okay to... to... to use her to satisfy your sick desires?! I oughta kill you right now, you lowlife filth-ridden slime-sucking ....asshole!!!!" Words failed him in his towering rage and disgust at the scientist. His grip clenched further, and Yamada's eyes began to bulge as his face darkened. After a moment, though, Bert released his stranglehold, and let the man slump forward, gasping for air.

"You're not worth it," he told the gagging man. "I'm not going to dirty my hands on a piece of shit like you."

"Nice speech, son," the older scientist remarked, then shut up at the murderous glare Bert gave him. He turned back to Sylvie, who was hugging Anri even tighter, and staring at Yamada with mingled horror and rage of her own. Bert took a quick glance at the doorway.

"We've got to leave, now," he told them. "That gas cloud is breaking up."

"But we can't get out that way!" Sylvie protested. She stared in confusion at Bert as a huge grin spread across his face.

"We don't need that door," he said cryptically. "We'll make our own."

"Pardon?! What's that supposed to mean?!"

"You'll see. Trust me."

"Oh hell," Sylvie sighed. "We're in trouble!"

"What the hell do you mean we don't have gas masks?!" Hollister bellowed, throwing a frustrated glance at the white-green vapour cloud shifting in the hallway ahead of him. The guard he'd yelled at flinched.

"We weren't given them, sir!!" he protested defensively.

"Shit!! Have we got breathing apparatus of any kind?!"

"No sir! It wasn't necessary at the time; we never expected to encounter gas attacks!"

"Goddamn it!" Hollister swore, furiously pacing back and forth. After a moment, he stopped pacing, spinning around to look at his boomer guard.

"Get in there," he directed the biomechanoid. "Kill that red-haired bastard, and take the sexaroids alive." A grim smile spread across his face as the hulking boomer walked steadily forwards, vanishing into the gas cloud.

"Is that everything?" Bert asked, casting a last glance around the lab. Sylvie nodded, and patted the now-bulging rucksack sitting on the table.

"That's everything," she confirmed. "All the notes and data disks on what they were trying to do."

"Good," he grunted in reply. "One last thing, and then we're out of here." He turned, and walked over to the scientists again.

"One last time," he told them flatly. "Which direction is the fastest way out of here?"

"You're wasting your breath," Doc replied calmly. "We're not telling you anything. What are you going to do with us if we don't? Torture us? From what I've seen, you haven't got the guts to do something like that."

"It's a question of morals, not guts," Bert replied tightly. The white-haired scientist was right, damn him; he couldn't torture someone in cold blood, even after what they'd done to him.

"Well I haven't got that holding me back," Sylvie interjected from behind him, her voice utterly cold and alien sounding. He looked at her in shock; her face had gone flat and hard, and merciless-looking. He realized with a queasy feeling that she was quite capable of carrying out her threat. She started to move towards the men, and he stepped between them.

"Get out of my way," she told him, a cold look in her eyes. He shook his head.

"I understand how you feel, believe me," he told her, meeting her furious gaze with an entreating one of his own. "But I can't let you do it. Do you really want to lower yourself to their level?" He waited nervously; if she decided to go ahead, there wasn't much he could do. Sylvie was physically stronger than him, even when he was in perfect shape. As he watched, the fury faded from her face.

"Damn you," she said bitterly, turning away to go back to Anri. Bert sighed in relief, turning back to the scientists, pulling out the cylinder he'd pocketed earlier.

"Last chance, guys," he warned. "Either talk, or you'll be singing soprano for the rest of your lives." It was a tremendous bluff, but all he had left to try. Yamada turned white, but Doc snorted.

"You'd need a knife, first," he observed dryly. "A metal cylinder isn't going to help you."

Bert grinned evilly. He held up the metal cylinder, and pressed in three locations on its side. The areas he was pressing sank in, and something in the cylinder clicked. Instantly, a row of three flat buttons popped up from the other side of the device, where they'd been recessed. At the same time, an irised opening in the one end of the device opened up. Bert pointed the open end of the device at the now white-faced scientists.

"You were saying?" he inquired politely. Doc swallowed nervously; he didn't know what the device was, but it was obviously a weapon of some sort. Just as he opened his mouth to reply, heavy footsteps stomped up to the mist shrouded door. A huge silhouette appeared in the windows of the doors, and the doors began to bulge inwards, shoving the barricading table back. Doc smiled as the doors were flung open to reveal Hollister's boomer bodyguard.

Red eyes flared behind the dark sunglasses the boomer was still wearing. It stomped forward into the room, trailing some of the toxic gases from the hallway, and began walking towards Bert.

"Looks like you're staying," Doc remarked, looking at the boomer. "Permanently," he added a moment later, as claws tore through the synthetic skin on the boomer's hands. A moment later, the rest of the boomer's skin, and clothing, burst apart in a sickening manner as the biomechanoid's body expanded to its full armoured height. It stalked towards Bert, claws upraised. There was no hurry to its movements; the puny human it was to kill had nowhere to go.

"Bert!! Run!!" Sylvie screamed as the blue killer stalked closer to him. "Why are you standing there?!?!?"

Bert watched as the boomer clanked closer. Six feet away....five....four...three....now!!! As the boomer's claws started to swing down, Bert ducked, swinging his right arm in a sideways arc. As he swung, a loud, hissing, electrical snap crackled in the room, and a penetrating hum pulsed through the air. A blazing blade of energy three feet long slashed through the air, twice. The boomer's right arm crashed to the floor on the first slash, and the second slash carved the boomer's chest in half. The boomer dropped twitching to the floor, gushing orange-brown fluids, as Sylvie and the tied scientists stared in slack-jawed amazement. Bert straightened up, and they could all see the cylinder was emitting the brilliant blue-white blade of energy that had bisected the boomer. He grinned crookedly down at the dead boomer, and then grinned at Sylvie, tipping her a quick wink.

"What the hell is that?!" Sylvie asked, still stunned.

"Call it a beam saber, or a lightsaber," he replied. "I can explain later." His grin vanished, and he turned towards the two dazed scientists.

"Now then," he said ominously. "I believe we were discussing changing the status of your pathetic social lives." Yamada was white-faced and sweating, and Doc was only slightly less upset, but no one answered. Yamada shrieked as the humming blade passed about an inch in front of his nose in a whistling swipe. A moment later, Bert caught the stench of urine from his direction, and Yamada passed out completely.

"You milksop pantywaist little chickenshit," Bert muttered contemptuously. He turned his attention back to the older man, hefting his humming weapon suggestively. Doc swallowed, but remained silent. With a disgusted sigh, Bert closed down the saber, and turned to Sylvie.

"Pick a direction," he told her. "We're going to have to wing it."

"What about them?" she asked, pointing to the bound forms behind him.

"I'm not about to murder them," he replied. "They're not worth it, besides the fact that my conscience won't allow it."

"You're being too easy on them," she told him flatly. "They were torturing you, and they had worse in store for us."

"I know," he replied evenly. "But repaying evil with evil doesn't do you any good. All we have to do is just knock them out, okay?"

"Fine. Leave that to me," she replied. She walked over to the two men; Yamada had regained consciousness. They stared uneasily at her as she walked closer. Sylvie smiled suddenly, and it was an alluring smile. Bert felt the sudden sizzle of attraction from her. What the hell was she doing?! Yamada and Doc appeared stunned, staring at her wide-eyed.

"I still think he's being too easy on you," she told the two men, "unfortunately, he's right: you're not worth it, so I guess I'll have to settle for doing...this!" Her eyes suddenly flared brilliant red. Bert wrenched his gaze away from her quickly, while Doc and Yamada stiffened, eyes glazing before they slumped forward, unconscious.

Sylvie's eyes returned to normal as she turned around, looking at Bert, who was sweating from the effort it had taken to resist the desire to look at her during her brief display. He didn't know how she did it, but it was certainly effective. A faint, hurt look appeared in Sylvie's eyes as she looked at him, evidently guessing some of his confused thoughts at the moment.

"So you do think of me as a boomer, then," she noted sadly. Bert stuffed his lightsaber hilt into his hip pocket and walked over to her.

"No, I don't," he told her quietly. "You are a very good friend of mine, and a very attractive young woman as far as I'm concerned." He reached out, and gathered her up in a hug. Her arms tightened around him gratefully for a moment.

"Thank you," she said, wiping at her suddenly streaming eyes. He smiled, and gently pushed her towards where Anri was still sitting lifelessly.

"Come on, get Anri. We're leaving." As Sylvie went to get Anri, Bert took a quick look around the room, and shrugged mentally. He walked to the north wall and examined it; it appeared to be drywall material, and not concrete like he'd feared. Concrete could take too long to get through for what he had in mind. He sprinted back to the table, slapped on a pair of safety glasses, grabbed the bag full of research data, and ran back to the north wall.

He pulled his lightsaber from his pocket, and examined the wall, noting the location of electrical outlets. The blade hissed into crackling life, and he slashed at the wall in four sweeping strokes, carving a rough rectangle through the wall in an exploding storm of dust and debris. Behind him, Sylvie coughed and spluttered in the dust cloud.

"What the hell are you doing?!" she wheezed. She was half-carrying Anri, with one of her arms held across her shoulders; Anri was walking automatically, not really paying attention to anything at all.

Bert didn't reply, but kicked the rectangle in the middle; it fell into the next room with a crash. He bowed to Sylvie, making a sweeping gesture towards the improvised door.

"Ladies first," he told her, grinning. Sylvie sighed and carried Anri forward.

"I think I'm getting a faint signal, Sylia," Nene reported over the cockpit radio. "It's distorted, but I think it's not too far away. I'm working on figuring out its origin."

"Okay, Nene," Sylia responded. "Keep scanning and let me know what happens."

"Nothing noticeable down here," Linna reported, the engine rumble from her motoroid audible over the channel. "This entire area looks dead."

"Keep looking," Sylia sighed. "They've got to be down there somewhere."

Bert ducked back behind the doorframe as streams of hot lead poured through the opening. He quickly slammed the door, throwing the bolt, and turned around to face Sylvie as a bullet hailstorm hammered the door. She was sweating from the effort of dragging Anri along in their escape effort, but had flatly refused to allow him to help, telling him he was already shaky as it was, and that trying to help carry her would finish him off. He'd reluctantly conceded she was right.

"We can't get out that way," he told her, stating the obvious. "So I guess we'll have to backtrack, and hope we hit an outer wall, or something."

"Okay," she agreed. "How are you holding up?"

"Fine, no problems," he lied. He was sweating himself, and not just because they'd been running. He felt sick, and it was getting worse. He felt light-headed, and every so often his vision blurred and he had to grab at something to keep from falling over. The only thing keeping his hands steady was sheer willpower. That, and the fear of mishandling his lightsaber; if he slipped up while using it, it was going to b