Quaranteam - Book Two (Ch. 04)

Chapter Four

December 11 ^th , 2020

Brunch had been about as tense as Andy had anticipated it would be, with many of his partners voicing concerns about bringing Melody Park into the family, but in the end, Piper laid them all quickly to rest by pointing out that if she could give the woman a second chance, then all the rest of them should be able to as well. That had pretty much settled the argument, although he could see that some of his partners were certainly going to be less trusting than others.

It certainly changed the energy around the house, which was already tempered with nervous anticipation, as towards the end of brunch a text message had come in to let them know that the plane had landed at Livermore Municipal Airport. The Air Force were there doing their initial screening, but relayed that Andy should be able to come by and both meet Mali and see his airplane by around 2.

After brunch, Andy headed up to the hidden room on the upper floor and stepped out onto the balcony to make a call. He held the phone to his ear as the General's voice leapt from the other end of the line. "So, Mister Rook, what's it going to be?"

"After talking with my entire Team, we'll accept Melody Park into our home, although we're going to have some conditions for her and we're certainly going to keep a close eye on her at first."

"We would expect no less from you, Mister Rook," she said curtly. "To be frank, I'm a little surprised you're willing to even entertain the notion, considering what you told me about her history with your fiancée, Miss Brown. Piper got a real bad beat before she ended up with you, and if she were to say she held a grudge a mile wide, well, I don't think just about anyone could blame her."

"I let Piper make the final call, but she's big on second chances and so am I. We're going to be cautious about this, naturally, but I guess somebody's gotta take some risks, and if my buddy Phil's taking Dr. DeMarco, I guess I'd never be able to live it down with him if I didn't do something equally as stupid."

"We can have Ms. Park here on base and ready for reassignment as early as this afternoon."

"We won't be ready until this evening," Andy said. "I've got to go down to Livermore and pick up my new money manager and get her imprinted to me. It's about half an hour each way, and I understand we can't go get her until your people have cleared my plane."

"It's not so much the plane, Mister Rook, as it is all the people your finance manager brought with her," the General sighed, as if the entire thing was one giant pain in her ass that she would've much rather foisted off onto someone else. "You're probably aware, but she's carrying with her one of the wildest collections of spies, soldiers, diplomats, scientists and politicians than have ever shared a single privately owned aircraft before. And she struck you quite a great deal on acquiring the plane for you permanently, if I'm meant to believe what she charged for transporting all these people to the United States."

It was true, although Andy hadn't expected the General to be fully aware of how they'd gone about it. Mali had bought him a Bombardier Global 5000, which could hold 16 passengers in addition to the pilot and co-pilot. And then, in order to aide in her immigration to the United States, a deal had been struck with the United States government. The plane had been temporarily enlisted as sort of international one-way taxi service. That meant the plane, which had been purchased used from the estate of a Saudi businessman, had made nearly a dozen stops before finally arriving in California. It had picked up, in addition to Mali, passengers from Egypt, Israel, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, India and Japan, with each person (or the nation representing them) paying a million dollars for the private relay service. All of that had basically paid for the plane itself.

The pilot for the flight was a military exchange from Saudi Arabia who was being paired up with a man in Valhalla Shores and the co-pilot was from the UK who was bound for Sacramento. Neither would likely ever set foot on Andy's plane again. Both Alexis and Niko were qualified to fly the jetliner, and several other girls in the house had been taking virtual flying classes. Team Rook had decided if it wasn't a skill they had in-house, they were going to get a handful of people within the Team to learn it, although Andy himself wasn't ever going to be allowed to fly the plane.

"Your people had a long list of folks they wanted brought to the US on the hush-hush, and with me having two internationally renowned actresses in my family, I knew I was going to need to be able to get around regularly and probably without having to constantly book flights. Seemed like getting my own plane was a win-win for everybody."

"You still charged them a pretty hefty ticket price, Mister Rook."

"I had to buy the fucking plane, General," Andy laughed. "That ain't cheap. Regardless of how much money you might think I have, let me assure you that a 16-person private jet is not what I could call 'pocket money.' It was a very sizable investment, so I appreciated Mali coming up with a plan to defray the costs."

"But your little United Nations of Spies flight still needs to be scrutinized by every security expert we have on site and a handful of others we brought in just for this occasion. That includes searching your plane practically down to the studs. You don't know any of these people that you've helped bring into this country, Mister Rook, and neither do we. Not as well as we'd like to, anyway. They'll have spent hours, maybe even days on that plane of yours as it travelled around, picking these merry pranksters up. So, we're going to take our time and make sure everyone on the plane is exactly who they say they are, and then and only then, we will turn it and Miss Merrick over to you."

"And once you do, and once she's imprinted onto me, then we'll bring her back to the house and then come onto the base and we can see about reimprinting Melody over to us."

The General paused for a second, as if an idea had just occurred to her. "Would you rather we bring Miss Merrick back to the base and you can save yourself a trip, imprint them both here?"

"We paid several million dollars for that plane, General. I'd kind of like to see it, you know?"

"I'm just saying, if you allow us to have a full day searching and examining it, it'll be better for all parties involved," the General replied. "And it'll let us give Miss Merrick a once over by people you know that you trust, like Dr. Marcos and Dr. Varma. I'm honestly trying to help you here, Mister Rook. Trying to help make both our lives a little bit easier."

"I might feel a little strange going straight from imprinting Mali to imprinting Melody."

He could hear the General laughing on the other side of the line. "I think Melody might have it coming, but you could also take a shower in between sessions here on the base. We have the facilities for it, and you're guaranteed to have medical staff if something goes wrong, which you'd have been half an hour away from if you did it at the airport."

"Why would something go wrong?" Andy asked.

"So far, you've been pretty lucky, Mister Rook. Nearly all of your imprintings have gone off without much in the way of hitches or complications."

"I think Piper and Sheridan would very much disagree with you, but okay."

"You seen a cocoon yet?"

Andy chuckled. "Yeah, Alexis had that when she showed up. Healed off all her scars, and she couldn't decide if she was angry, delighted or both."

"I can imagine. Some of us treasure our scars and don't want to see them gone. But I suspect she's missing them less and less every day," the General said. "If I'd gotten my gunshot scar through my shoulder healed up when I'd gotten imprinted, I'd probably miss it at first, but I'd be damn thankful eventually that I was back up to full strength."

"It's only been a month and change. We'll see how she feels about it this time next year. I suspect she may be nothing but thankful by then."

"Well, as fun as it is to chat with you, Mister Rook, I should probably get back to work. You want me to have Miss Merrick brought here to the base? I think it'll be much easier if you just give us a day or two to fully examine the plane. You're not in any immediate need, are you?"

"Not immediate need, no, but I suspect I'm going to need it before the end of the month. Not only do Emily and Sarah have some meetings they want to take down in Los Angeles, I think Maya needs to head there as well for some final sign off stuff to get her deal finalized. The plan was to have her working on a soundstage in Oakland, but it sounds like the location isn't quite ready yet, so their backup soundstage is going to be up in Sacramento. It'll be a bit of a drive every morning and evening, but she wants to get back to work, and I don't blame her. The studio is also pushing hard to get stuff into production, so the fact that Maya has a script everybody likes already means they don't want to waste any time they don't have to."

"Is Hollywood really in that much trouble, Mister Rook?"

Andy sighed, knowing the General couldn't see him shrugging. "It's not for me to say, but I know Emily seems to think they don't like to keep material waiting around too long, and we've been in a vacuum for basically a year now, where nobody could make new things. For theatrical films, that's not such a big issue, but for things like television? The networks are freaking the fuck out. So I suspect Em and Sarah will probably pick up a handful of television projects that'll start filming almost immediately before we get back to feature films again next year. Aren't you jonesing for new television?"

"I will admit that after my third rewatch, 'The Americans' has lost a little bit of the luster. I feel like a lot of us feel like we've finished Netflix."

"Well, you'll be delighted to know that Hollywood's spinning up again and so sooner or later, there will be loads of new things clogging our airwaves again. They're working very hard to get whatever they can finished as fast as possible. They're even looking to adapt a couple of my lesser works, just because I'm relatively easy to work with when it comes to the non-Druid Gunslinger stuff. Fine, we can come into the base and pick them both up there, and if you need a few more days to inspect the plane more thoroughly, I guess it won't hurt to let you have it for a few days."

"Great," the General said. "Come by in the early afternoon and we'll have both women prepped and ready and waiting for you. Say, around two or so?"

"Sure, I can do that. We'll be by around then."

"Thanks, Rook. See you then."

He headed back down the stairs and opened the secret book case, almost jumping out of his own skin as he found Alexis standing outside of it waiting for him. "So what's the plan for the day, Andy?" she asked him. "The General throw a spanner into the works like I expected her to?"

"She wants to take more time to search the plane, so we're going to pick up Mali from the base, and we can pick up Melody right after that."

"You know I'm not thrilled about her joining the house, right?" Alexis said. "I mean, I get that Piper's the make-or-break decision, and she's like you in that she believes in second chances."

"You make it sound like that's a bad thing. Lex."

"If it were up to me, I'd throw the bitch in a hole and take my sweet ass time filling in the dirt on top of her," Alexis grumbled. "But if Piper can suck it up and allow her in, who the hell am I to tell that girl she's in the wrong, you know? I guess I'll just be the paranoid bitch in the house, and maybe I'll get lucky and you'll show me that second chances don't always bite people in the ass."

"Let's hope, because the last thing I want is to have bodyguards squaring off," he said, sliding an arm around Alexis's neck, pulling her in for a hug even as she laughed and shoved him back moments later.

"So, you and me and who's the third going to the base?"

"We're going to take two cars, so that means you driving one and Niko driving the other. Emily wants to be there for Mali, considering she's the person Mali's spoken to the most, and there's no way we're going to take on Melody without Piper getting a chance to set down the terms beforehand," Andy said as the two of them headed down to the ground floor. "I know Melody said she'll go along with whatever Piper's going to put in front of her, but I think we want to be sure. The last thing I want is Melody being massively unhappy here."

"You're worried about her being unhappy," Alexis laughed, shaking her head as they headed out towards the back yard. "What time are we supposed to be at the base?"

"Two-ish."

"Okay, then I'll relay the plan to Niko and we'll get everything ready."

Andy had the luxury of an hour or so to himself before they gathered up to head to the base and he did something he hadn't done enough as of late - he spent it playing with his two cats. The two of them had gotten ahold of a tennis ball and were whipping it down the hallways, chasing after one another with reckless abandonment. Neither cat had gotten a firm grasp on how to move on wood floors, so the two had a tendency to slide into one another when running around corners. Andy was tormenting the two of them with a laser pointer when he saw Emily come around the corner, smiling as she tapped the watch on her wrist.

The drive over to the base was perfectly normal, what with New Eden still being on relatively high alert. Until the New Daughters of the Revolution were entirely a solved problem, there was going to be more tension and less peace on the streets. They were let onto the base and allowed to put their cars close to the building that housed the large structure where women were being given the serum before being sent out to get paired up with people.

Everything had seemed very slapdash when they'd first seen it, but now it was being done with complete precision, and trucks were arriving and leaving every hour on the hour. Emily had seemed a little bit nervous on the car ride over, and just as they were pulling into the parking lot, she told Andy why, her voice tentative and cautious, something rather unlike her.

"Andrew, there's something I need to tell you, but I don't want you to be cross with me, even though you might have rights to be," she said as they were getting out of the car.

"Good lord, Em," Andy chuckled. "What level of upset should I expect to be here?"

"Nothing too severe, I hope, my love," she said with a smile that revealed just exactly how nervous she was at that moment. "You remember how Mali said she didn't want to speak to you until she'd been imprinted?"

"I do recall that, Emily, and I said that while I thought it was odd, I would respect it, since she was still rather in her cups in grief."

"That's specifically what I needed to talk to you about before we go in there, Andrew," Emily said, holding onto his right hand with both of hers. "So, there's a theory going around right now that if the dose of the serum is... what's the word Mali used... overclocked? If they overdo the dosage somewhat of the serum, it has a good chance to activate the regeneration and restoration process, so she's going to ask them to give her a double dose of the serum."

"That sounds... a little risky."

"It will be, but not for you, or any of us, just for her. So as part of this, she would like you, and the rest of the family, never to talk to her about her previous partner who died earlier this year."

Andy squinted a little with a frown on his face. "Never talk to her about it? That seems like a very stiff cocktail for grief to sit in and take very rough hold within her mind and soul."

"That's just it, Andrew," Emily said, looking up at him with those soft blue eyes that were so kindly imploring. "If it actually works, it stands a chance of removing all memories of him from her brain, and it will be as if he never existed. She will have healed away that very dark trauma."

"Whoa there," Andy said, putting his hands up. "Didn't you ever see 'Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind'? That certainly doesn't sound at all healthy to me, simply losing such a large chunk of her memories. You said that they were childhood sweethearts, didn't you?"

"She's the one taking the risk, Andrew. All she's asking you is to respect her choice in the matter, and if she never brings up her late fiancé, none of us will either. I know how much you prefer to run guns blazing into any trouble you come across, but this is something that must be handled with delicacy and should not be taken lightly." Emily had such an earnest expression on her face that Andy knew he wasn't going to be able to say no in the end, but he wanted to be sure she understood the risks.

"Alright, Em. Alright. Since this is what she wants, I won't stand in the way of that, but if we start to see any signs of things going sideways, you must promise me that we'll get her back safely here to the base as quickly as possible so that they can try and get her to work through whatever the serum will have done to her. I think that's a fair compromise, don't you?"

"That is absolutely fair, Andrew, and thank you for not being cross with me about holding back on this for up to the last possible moment," Emily said, giving him a hug that sort of drained the nervousness out of her. "I was trying to be all British and stoic and not let it get to me, but it's been an immense amount of pressure on my conscience. I wanted her to be welcomed here with open arms, and she had been through such an unbelievable amount of tragedy. She chose this and she chose you, and I knew that you were what she wanted and I just, I suppose I feared that such a brave choice might frighten you. You're a very brave man when it comes to your own decisions, but you're still..." She looked as if she was very carefully selecting her words. "You have a tendency to still want to protect all of us, Andrew, and I know you do that with the best intentions, and I try to look at it as a noble thing, your instinct to want to protect not only the women in your life but your friends also. But this is one time where I was worried that your sense of chivalry might get the best of you, and you might confuse doing the right thing with doing the correct thing."

"The minute you're telling a woman what she can and can't do, Em, you've stopped being chivalrous and started being an asshole," Andy chuckled. "I mostly just wanted to make sure she understood the risks she was taking, and how that if it starts to crumble, it won't be something we can put back in the box again."

"Trying is all anyone can ask of you, Andrew." They headed to one of the side doors of the building rather than going through the main gate where the trucks were pulling in and out of. "Hello, love, we're here to pick up two lovely ladies, Miss Mali Merrick and Miss Melody Park," Emily said to the airwoman in fatigues behind the counter who looked practically giddy.

"Of course, Miss Stevens, we should be ready for you in just a few moments, but is it alright if I were to ask you for a selfie and an autograph? I was such a huge fan of Dahlia Hairtrigger, and she meant the world to me growing up," the airwoman whose name tag read 'Washington' asked.

"Not a problem of any sort, dear. In fact, Andrew can even take the picture for us, can't he?" Emily said as she took the phone from the airwoman's hands and handed it to Andy, who immediately started to get it lined up. Andy took a handful of pictures and then handed them back to the airwoman for her to review while Emily had taken a card from her pocket and was fishing a pen out of her purse. "What's your first name, my love?"