CODENAME: LANCÆLOT
by silverluna
Chapter Eight
~*~
Splintered images rushed into his mind. A young woman without a face, blood covering her hands. Ribbons of blood. The urge to fall down and vomit until his stomach was empty teased Lance, who was lost within these images. These haunting images. His black eyes stared ahead, his irises motionless. Piercing needles headed for those eyes. A white horse. Someone riding it in a secret garden. Hands covered in blood.
Little Flower stroked his spikes, whispering something in his ears. "Think I should take up smoking. Maybe even cigars. Think I should be leaving now—I don't know who you are. Have I a reason?" She smiled delightfully, running her tongue over her parted lips. "Am I a liar? Am I poison? Am I alive?"
Saliva trembled in bubbles over Lance's bottom lip.
Little Flower pulled back, searching for her knife. She held it out in front of his black, unseeing eyes.
A young woman. Dark hair on top of her head. Clasped hands. She had once been smiling. She had once been happy. Those days were long over. A tear unknowingly traveled down from Lance's eye. Why should he cry for this girl? Why?
The black eyes were trapped in the blade. "Well, there, there, don't cry, and I feel fine. Choke and dissolve like a child. I don't mind."
Lance blinked once, feeling the entire world crumbling in red layers onto his head....
He opened his green eyes. I want to get out of here, he thought desperately. I don't like this window they've opened up in me. Make it stop make these images stop. His eyelids tilted forward, and his head went too, resting on his chest.
Little Flower studied him. She threw up her hands. "Fainted," she muttered. "What the hell good will that do?"
The door swung open. Emotionless, Alexander called Little Flower.
"What is it?" she asked, exiting the room and closing the door behind her.
"Those friends of his, I think they're going to be trouble." He handed her some pictures.
Frowning, she looked through them. "It seems they don't realize they're endangering his safety."
~*~
It was completely useless. It had been three days. Johnny finally talked to the police. There were police all over, asking questions.
"You say he went missing almost four days ago?"
"Yes," Johnny answered tiredly.
The cop raised an eyebrow. "So he's a kid that's wandered off before?"
Johnny's face went pale. "N-no, no actually." He took a few breaths, trying to keep his speech from shaking. "No. I—I guess I was just hoping—But—"
"He didn't call to protect us," Justin interjected, stepping in. "He thought unwanted media publicity would endanger Lance's safety."
The older cop with the slopping eyebrows looked Justin over. Justin looked exhausted but had his "I'm-so-innocent" face on.
"Justin, c'mon," JC said. They'd been sitting on the couch in their suite, watching the police interview Johnny. They were waiting for the other police officers to take their statements. JC pulled Justin by the arm, giving Johnny a "I'm-sorry-he-interupted" look. Johnny actually looked relieved.
"Celebrities or not," the younger cop began, "if you're in trouble you shoulda called."
Officer Riley, the older cop, held up his hand. "No scolding, Sands," he interrupted, addressing the younger officer. "Besides," he whispered, "they're the ones that have to deal with the lost time on their consciences."
Sands pulled his mouth into a tight line.
Johnny tried to explain again. "We waited because"—he shot a look at the remaining members of Nsync—"I waited because I hoped that Lance would turn up, that it would be some kind of cruel joke."
"But these young men have described Mr. Bass as a kidnap victim."
"Yes. But I thought—" Johnny sighed, dropping his voice. "I thought that if the kidnappers called with demands, that it would be much safer and much less public to get Lance back if we—"
"If ya'll handled it yourselves," Sands finished.
Johnny nodded, sweat beads forming over his face.
Before the police had left, they had taken statements from everyone—the guys, Johnny, the bodyguards, the bus driver. They were given some pictures of Lance so they would know what he looked like. They left, promising to contact them at the first sign of something that could be something.
"Geez, we were only here a few days ago, doing a concert," Justin muttered through his teeth. Then something clicked in his mind. He remembered back to the night when Lance was kidnapped, when the three of them had been on the bus. He remembered JC's odd behavior—his dark, husky voice saying something about Rose. Who the hell was that? And then there was Lance's book— Justin jumped off the couch.
JC, Chris, and Joey glanced at him in surprise.
"The book!" Justin cried.
Chris raised his eyebrows. "Book?"
Justin ran to the door.
"Hey, hold up there, cowboy," Joey began. Justin turned. JC was on his feet, a disapproving look shadowing his eyes.
"I'll be right back, okay?" Justin said excitedly, pulling the door open.
JC, Joey, and Chris tried to reach for him, but time was too quick, and they lost track....
When Justin returned, they were all standing there. He furrowed his brow. They looked like they were trying to walk underwater. "I'm back," he announced, hoping to snap them out of it.
JC turned his head. "Where did you run off to?" He didn't sound too happy.
Justin rolled his eyes. I went to Mars, just for you, JC. "Geez, JC. I wasn't alone. I took Lonnie."
"Where's this place?" Chris asked. "The arcade?"
"No!" Justin stomped his foot. "The bus."
"The—bus?" Joey repeated. He saw that Justin was holding something.
"Look guys," Justin began, sinking down in a chair, hoping they would all sit too. "We've been through everything we think we remember, right?"
Sitting, they all nodded. They were quizzical.
" Remember this book"—he held out the book Lance had been so fascinated with—"that Lance was reading to us? Maybe it can help." When they all looked uncertain, Justin reinforced, "Lance is in trouble. We can't just wait for the po-lice to find out what's going on. We've gotta do it ourselves."
~*~
"This whole thing is twisted. It's interlocking. We don't know the parallels until we start to move unrelated connections which later bind into related connections...." JC tried not to babble and he tried desperately to make sense. Yet, Justin, Joey, and Chris were giving him very confused looks.
"What's your deal, man?" Chris asked tiredly.
JC persisted, trying to get them to understand. It was difficult, because he didn't even understand. When they had been combing through the book, JC had located something that was making him remember...something. The others had not known what to make of it. "Come on. This dream's gotta mean something.... "
"Look, C, we all want to make sense of this. We all want Lance back," Joey started, insisting that the excited, alive look spanning JC's eyeballs leave. Joey's own eyeballs were dull beyond belief. Hushed by disaster, his brown irises had nearly sunk into his pupils. He hadn't looked in a mirror in days, afraid that he would appear as a stranger. A stranger with black eyes.... "But really, it was probably one of those 'I-ate-too-much-weird-stuff-before-I-fell-asleep' dreams."
JC shook his head. Justin was trying to get his attention. JC had been hopping around the living room area for an hour now, trying to explain his dream. His constant movement was putting Justin on edge. But mere gestures, such as pointing to JC and then to a chair failed to actually reach JC. Chris nodded in understanding and Joey shrugged. "JC, why don't you sit for a while. Your pacing is making me nervous."
JC looked anxiously at Justin, Justin who had been so eager to cause a rift in time to get a book just a few hours earlier. He dropped into a chair to accommodate his friends' wishes. But sitting still didn't help either. He gripped the arms of the chair, and then began fidgeting with his feet. Chris remained unnaturally still, watching JC's strange movements. Finally, JC sprang to his feet. "I woke up, and I tried to write it all down. Maybe if I just show you what I wrote, you could maybe, I don't know—" But he was already dashing to his room to find his notebook.
"Well. That was interesting," Chris voiced.
"Is he high?" Joey asked nontchantly.
Justin raised an eyebrow. "Did you forget who you were talking about?"
Joey stared off into space. "He's acting like he's gone insane or something."
"It's JC. He's trying his best to hid the fact that he isn't okay," Justin explained knowingly. He, who had known JC the longest. He who had seen JC do this kind of thing before, in crisis situations. Still, nothing this dramatic had ever happened to them.
They had security teams. They had never felt threatened this badly. There were always the little things. It wasn't that they couldn't go out alone sometimes, that they were helpless and unable to defend themselves. But they didn't honestly think that something could happen like this—
JC reentered the room, loosely gripping a spiral notebook. He flipped to the page where he'd been scrawling the remnants of the dream. Justin took it, reading or trying to read what was now decorating the blank pages. "The first part was like some kind of song," JC began. "I feel like I've heard it before, but I don't know why it was—what it means, according to them." His words were spilling over his lips.
Justin attempted to make sense of it, but looking it over just twisted things deeper.
"Everything's interlocking. Everything's connected...." His words tumbled over time, beading like sweat on the foreheads of his three brothers, all studying what he'd written. Words drowning in his ears, he saw Joey pointing to something on the paper. Chris was nodding, appearing both shocked and amazed. Justin's blue eyes were examining it. Something deeper. Finally, JC thought. They'll understand. We can start to find out some answers—
Joey took the notebook, and turned it to face JC. "How many times did you read this over?" he asked quietly. JC shrugged. Joey struggled to make his own eyes brown again, to have some sense of humanity.
"JC, do you see what you've done?" Chris asked gently.
JC's brow furrowed, confused. Chris pointed at words, trying to illustrate.
The black words jumped off the white page, hurling themselves sharply at JC's brain. He stood very still. He heard Justin mumble something. Chris traced the words, where they had been arranged on the page. JC stared blankly. He thought that he'd only been scrawling. That it made no difference where the words ended up. Except that he most often wrote in straight lines, not in jumbled clusters. Chris continued to sketch the outer ghost. JC's lips parted, his mouth suddenly dry. It was very clear. Their whispering, their hushed glances. It was very clear. They had read the words over, but it was not the words that were holding their attention. It was where the words fell. Those words expressed something in their mere existence—their mere being.
"Do you see it, JC?" Joey repeated softly.
He did see it. The words were connected. Connected, they formed a picture. Yes, it was slightly crude. It lacked exact details; it lacked a proper memory to place it—from what time it had manifested. "It's a...face," JC gasped, startled when he finally realized what he was looking at. His three brothers nodded slowly, exchanging glances with each other but not with JC. JC was still staring at this ghost he'd managed to capture on paper. It was a face. The crude manifestation of a face...of a young woman. He could make out her eyes, her lips. Her hair was halfway on top of her head. Her lips were merely posed. He couldn't make out an exact _expression.
A fire began in his toes and worked its way up his body. When it reached his heart, he figured it would be singed to ash and he would be torn apart. At the seams. And everywhere, blood.
He stood motionless. It didn't grow dark. He didn't receive the urge to faint. He knew this face. He knew.....
I'm gonna make it to heaven, light up the sky like a flame. I'm gonna live forever. Baby remember my name. Remember remember remember.....
~*~
Janus studied the snapshots on his desk. "So, they called the police." He seemed very calm. "What exactly do the police have on us?"
"Nothing," Little Flower answered coldly. The room chilled, dropping a few degrees.
"Janus, sir," Alexander began.
"Mr. Alexander?"
"Sir. There has been a new development."
The older man stirred. "Oh?"
"Yes." Little Flower ice skated across the surface of it. She was aware of thin ice.
"It will require a new danger, sir."
"Oh? What is that, Mr. Alexander?"
"It's out there, sir."
"In the outside world?"
Little Flower reached across the table, her long read nails curling around a picture. She pointed at one of the figures captured within its boundaries. "This one," she said, tapping the photograph.
A dark shadow crossed Janus' usually calm features. "Is it a necessary risk?" he asked sharply, spearing disdain with his teeth.
Alexander watched Little Flower from the corner of his eye. He knew she would go for Janus' throat. He knew that she wanted blood.
"Do you want your precious information or not?" Little Flower spat through equally sharpened teeth.
Janus had learned that it was best not to argue with her. Though her impulses were dangerous, they were usually good ones. "Make it clean," he said finally, turning from her hard glare. Though he appeared immune to her sinister bitterness, he was not. Inside there was slight shaking. "Make it a clean break," Janus repeated. "Mr. Alexander, you will go."
"I will go," Alexander repeated as if hypnotized. Little Flower leaned in, whispering something in his ear. He grinned, nodding. "Sir, if there is nothing else," Alexander said, standing. Janus eyed him with a look of "is there?" but Alexander made no reply. He exited the screened cubical.
In the lamplight, Little Flower appeared vicious and carnal.
"And Mr. LancÆlot?" Janus asked quietly, at last addressing her.
The light glinted like a razor off of her lips. "He sleeps and he whispers things. He thinks no one could hear. But I am here. I am by his side." Her eyes were flecked with the illusion of fire. "And I have a knife."
Janus smiled, amused. "Yes."
And she repeated it. "Yes...."