taxonomites | [HOLO] [Sanctuary] 01: Stranger Things Happen

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[HOLO] [Sanctuary] 01: Stranger Things Happen

The phone was ringing.

The room Michael was in wasn’t the Westen house in Miami. But that didn’t make sense, because the phone was ringing and he’d gotten up to get it -- his mom and Fi were still at the table, and because Jesse wasn’t home he’d said, “I’ll get it” and he’d gotten up -- the phone was ringing, and he’d walked into the kitchen to get it. The phone was ringing somewhere around the fridge. The phone was ringing, and Michael had taken a step onto a square of kitchen tile and hit by a wave of something that stole the tile out from under him, and his feet, and the world. Everything just sort of went away.

His first thought was that thing they said that some bullets and explosions traveled so fast that they killed you before you ever heard them. Where you were dead before you knew anything was killing you. That was his first thought.

His second thought was the last far-off obnoxious ring of that goddamned phone -- the very last piece of his life to fall away, but then it was silent too and he was in this room.

It was a room. That was a start. It was kind of metallic, altogether, which you didn’t see a lot and was more corporate office or SyFy than it was practical. It was round, which put him in mind of a courtroom, and he was on some kind of -- platform? -- at the center which reminded him of a courtroom too, but the rest of the room wasn’t anything like a courtroom at all -- and he was at the center of it, which he didn’t like at all. There were steps down, he could see; and he wasn’t hurting, he had his balance, he could walk. Okay. This was all in his inventory, and these were good things.

He patted himself down briefly: empty pockets, no gun, shades, probably no IEDs strapped to him: okay, this was looking more like ‘the afterlife’ than ‘extraordinary rendition,’ but as Michael Westen did not actually feel like becoming spontaneously religious, he was electing to keep his options open. Something brushed against his hip when he checked his pocket, though -- under his suit jacket and shirtsleeve. Michael unbuttoned them and rolled them up, frowning, and found that some kind of metal -- device was seamlessly grafted into the skin of his wrist.

Maybe rendition after all.

He pulled at the skin around it with his fingers. No luck. “Damn,” he said aloud, half in appreciation for whatever technology and surgery had made this take so well: a tracking bracelet? Whatever it was, it wasn’t itching and it didn’t hurt, which spoke badly for his ability to take it off. Well, first things first.

Michael took a step onto the first stair and warily spied some kind of high-tech podium -- then another step and spun around, but there was no sound or motion but his own breathing.

“Hello?” he tried.

No answer. No cameras on the walls he could see, they were pretty smooth: “Hello?” again, louder, while he looked up -- bingo, there, something on the ceiling. It looked kind of like -- not a camera. It looked like not anything Michael had heard of, either. Like everything else here, actually, it looked manufactured at the Sharper Image. “Hello,” he tried this time speaking directly into the device with a pained smile and a wave.

Nothing. Michael took the next step down, and then the next, and then gingerly to the ground, like it might explode. It didn’t. He looked around again, like someone might appear behind him, and then headed to a wall near the high-tech podium, step by careful step.

“Is anyone here?” he called out a little louder: then, with an ache of something and on an impulse, “Mom? Fi?”

Whoever had brought him here, they were long gone. He felt for his cell phone again, but didn’t expect to find it there, and he didn’t. Before long he found a wall, leaned his head back on it and tipped his shades further back on his face. He’d been a prisoner enough times before. He was used, if nothing else, to waiting for something to happen.

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More newbies. Kept showing up day after day. And Corwin would have continued not caring about them except that this one had said one of the buzzwords that almost never failed to grab his attention. He'd never seen this one before, but given his family? That didn't precisely matter, either. Still, he hesitated before responding, not even bothering to hide a disgusted sneer that found its way across his face at seeing that room again, the one that had trapped him here.

Sooner or later, he'd learn to stop and think before he spoke, rather than letting instinct take up all that hesitating time. Soldier's reflexes and all that.

"Fi? You know Fiona?"

Michael started at the voice coming from the -- podium? Pedestal? Never mind what it was saying, he wasn't expecting a response at all at this point: but, well, Michael Westen never looked a gift response in the mouth. He made his way gingerly over to peer at the thing and then planted himself in front of it, staring, with his hands on either side of the tablet.

"Hello?" he said to verify that the voice was coming from it.

It seemed to be. He blinked at it again, like it might metamorphose into something that made sense.

"This is Michael Westen," he tried. "Who am I speaking to?"

If he'd been the type, Corwin might have waved at the screen. But then he remembered that one of the things rather high up on his list of "things I hate" was not getting his questions answered and that certainly could not be construed as an answer not matter what way he turned it over and stared at it.

"That's all well and good, but I don't care who you are and 'hello' sure as hell doesn't answer my question. But if it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, welcome to Wonderland, Mike. Name's Corwin. Now how do you know Fiona?"

O-kay then. There were a lot of things Michael could say to that, like I don't actually know what's going on and for all I know I'm your prisoner and I'm really not in the mood for your attitude right now, pal, which he wasn't, but -- none of those were productive. Or to the point. It took him a moment to think of something that was.

"Okay," he said. "Let's rewind a moment -- I don't actually know where I am. Why don't we start with that and how I got here and then maybe we can talk about Fiona -- Corwin?"

"The way I see things, pal," Corwin began, as he geared himself up for what was likely to be an arduous standoff if he was reading the situation correctly, "I've got the upper hand. See, I know how to get out of that room and into the playground of the Queen of Hearts. Not the greatest place to be, but better than staying in there forever. So let's talk about Fiona and then we can discuss here."

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