Domino

10 Meld

"I assume he's having his license pulled then?" Ariana muttered as she hurried to keep up with Lannister's pace towards the recovery room.

"Hart will put the frighteners on him, probably fine him heavily too but, if he's proven to be reliable apart from the odd teeny transgression such as this, it's best to keep him on the supply run. You never know what you'll get next. Anyway, that was followed by an impromptu meeting with one of Sarah's ex-colleagues," Lannister explained as he paused outside the door to the recovery room, his hand by the control pad. He faced Ariana squarely and she saw his face was full of concern. "To try and summarise, he told me that people like him and Sarah are shadows moving through our societies and they carry out the whims of some unknown group, who are apparently everywhere and know everything. He happily reeled off things about me which I tend not to advertise widely, but it's in my service records. Somehow he must have had access to them. Point is, the explosion was confirmed as a means for them to do away with a wayward agent, and that means that we can close down on that route of inquiry, but as of now," he paused to take a breath, pondering how he should phrase his next edict, "we need to review our security procedures, monitor things a little more closely than we have been doing and more imminently, find out from our young friend in there just what we're up against here."

"You think we're under threat?" Ariana quickly replied before Lannister had time to open the door, stalling his action by placing her hand on his raising arm.

"We're always under threat," he remarked, "but yes, there's something else going on both out there between the stars, and down here on the ground too. We just need to be mindful of it and try to have the information to hand to help us protect ourselves from it."

His motion continued as her hand slipped away and Ariana turned so her back was to the wall, exhaling deeply as she fell backwards slightly to lean up against the wall.

"Oh goody. How the hell do we protect against an enemy we can't see until it's way too late?" She muttered in exasperation.

Lannister nodded in agreement with her sentiment, then turned and proceeded through the opening doorway, his gaze scanning the room beyond before he began to speak.

"So you're who I am without all the mush in my head?" The Digital Sarah remarked as she regarded her other self, her gaze up and down the figure she saw accompanied by a disapproving scowl. "Can't say I'm overly impressed at the whole simpering thing, but physically I guess all those years of training and torture finally paid off for me. I could really go for someone like me," she added with a chuckle.

Sarah snorted. 

"Simpering?" She almost spat out. "You mean not a caustic cynic like you?"

"Oh, get those claws back in girl," Digital Sarah mocked. "In any case, it doesn't matter what you think really does it? I mean, you're just the holding pattern before I get my body back which is why we're here isn't it?"

"What?" Sarah exclaimed, suddenly feeling on her guard more than she had been before and scrutinising her other self closely. There was no hint of subversion, but only genuine belief in what she was saying. "We're here for me to see the memories you hold, that are unavailable to me because of this damned amnesia. The Doc said that if I saw the memories, it would possibly cause me to remember them myself and therefore my memories would return."

"Someone's been telling little porkies then," Digital Sarah snarled, and glanced upwards towards the sky they could see above them through the foliage overhead. "You out there? Are you watching this and having a good old laugh?"

Sarah pondered on whether it was her that Horatio, Alyssa and Praia had connived into this situation, but everything she recalled seemed to be completely genuine with no hint of ulterior motive, but then again with her apparent naivety, they could have been pulling a fast one, couldn't they?