Under My Skin

Under My Skin - Part 78

The next day Will found Reese in the break room, munching down a stale bagel.

"Hey, Reese. I got something for you," Will chimed, holding out a pastry box.

Reese backed up against the counter, his bagel held like a Frisbee ready to throw. His eyes were wide and he had his other hand on his new belt. "Back off. For all I know that could be a confetti bomb to distract me while you steal my underwear."

"One, hell no. And two: does it smell like a bomb?"

Reese took a sniff. "No, it smells like... maple syrup? No... bacon?"

The safecracker cringed as Will opened the box, but all his hesitance and suspicion melted from his face when he saw what was inside. Over golden, maple glazed donuts, were curls of crisp glazed bacon, deep red and salty white, glistening with sticky sweetness.

"Maple bacon donuts?" whispered Reese in awe.

"Yes."

"Where did you find this miracle?"

"Not telling."

"Tell me!" cried Reese. "You owe me after what you and your partner pulled yesterday! And for... that incident."

Will eased shut the lid. "Would you rather I took them back?"

"No!" Reese stepped forward, looking like child that heard Christmas was canceled. Will relented and handed over the box of half a dozen Maple Bacon Donuts that had not been cheap. Reese cradled the box as if it was an infant and cooed in delight as he opened in the lid to get a good whiff of the sweet and salty aroma.

"Are we cool now?" asked Will.

"Yes, you're forgiven," said Reese, as if in a trance. "Now let me worship this for a bit."

"Are you going to eat all those yourself?"

Reese blinked and smiled. "No, but I know someone who will appreciate them. Join me to the Garage?"

Will nodded and followed Reese to the elevator, the redhead still opening up the box now and again to grin at the donuts inside. He wondered what effect the donuts would do to Beni's previously acidic exterior. She still hadn't talked to him, and whenever he had caught her staring she turned away

"How's Beni?" asked Will.

"Better, she's talking to me."

Will smiled. After Reese ended up flashing all of Main Tech he figured Beni would soften up. All that had been done was Massaru's advice: If you want a woman to forgive you, embarrass yourself. Reese had done that in spades.

The elevator door dinged open and the exited towards Auto Tech, commonly called the Garage. Down the hallway was the testing course and crash center while up ahead and to the right was the repair garage.

"What about what she knows about Louis and I?" asked Will in a whisper.

"Well..."

They opened the door to the repair garage and were bombarded with a Clay Aiken song on the music player. Beni was in her overalls, wrenching a bar back in place on a van while an assistant mechanic put in earplugs. The Asian driver was singing, loudly, and to completely different lyrics.

"Ohhh, if I was a cannibal!"

Then I could just fit you on a spoon

If I was a cannibal,

I would dine on you tonight..."

Will froze, his jaw slack and eyes wide. Reese patted him on the shoulder in sympathy. "I think she's okay with the idea now. Beni, we have a miracle for breakfast!"

***

Rachel took her seat in front of the video screen in her lab.

"Thank you for doing this, Doctor Kilo."

"Call me Maria, my assistants do. And you owe me a lot of banana chips. It took a few favors to arrange this. I hope it's worth it."

"I hope so too."

With a nod Doctor Maria Kilo transferred the video feed to a visitation room in the prison where Palmer was being kept.

After much pleaded and a fierce custody battle, Doctor Terrance Palmer had been granted a pass to see his wife on her deathbed, his final wish to her. Yesterday had been her funeral, and it had wrung Palmer into a huddled miserable shape on the prison chair, head bowed down. His bright orange uniform looked ready to collapse on his small frame. The jutting crook of his nose made him look like a vulture ready to flop down from the sky and join the bones of it's victims.

"Doctor Palmer," said Rachel. "Can you confirm video and audio."

After a moment Palmer responded, his voice gravely and weak. "I can hear you." He raised his head and quirked his eyebrows, remembering. "You're that doctor that tended me after I was taken from the Luvor."

Rachel nodded. "Yes, sir. My name is Doctor Rachel Sampson."

Palmer looked momentarily taken aback from the respect of "sir", but his surprise quickly dimmed. "What do you want?"

"To continue your research with Pulse Emitters."

Palmer sputtered at first, and then the cold noise coming out of his mouth turned to bitter laughter. His mouth pulled into a grimace as he covered his eyes, brushing away the dried salt of a still too fresh funeral. "Kara is dead. What use is my research now?"

"It could still help others."

"A cure? Pharmaceutical companies never want cures; they want treatments, medicine to keep people coming back and paying out the nose for a bit of chemical chalk in a gel capsule."

"I am not part of a pharmaceutical company. I'm a doctor and a scientist."

"So was I and many others, trying to build a better plague for men that would use it as a weapon."

"I'm not the military either," said Rachel. "You can spend the rest of your life in a tiny cell, blaming the whole world and making excuses to be left alone. But by doing that you let down not just the people you could help but Kara as well."

"Don't you dare talk about her!" snapped Palmer, a spark of anger in his eyes. "You don't get to talk about her. You never knew her."

"I know she put her heart and soul into her charity work so others wouldn't have to suffer alone," Rachel snapped back. If the man was going to be stubborn then she would be stubborn right back at him. "There are other people out there going through the same thing, their loved ones dying or dead. But they aren't as smart as you. They don't know how to start building something that could help them. I want you to helm me finish what Kara started."

The spark in Palmer's eyes was still there, but it was hesitant.

"Why do you care about what I do in this place? I'm a traitor, a criminal."

"Yes, you made some wrong decisions. But this is a step in the right direction," replied Rachel. "A step towards the right thing."

"You and ones you work for have a very strange definition of "the right thing"," said Palmer. He rubbed at his eyes again. "I'm done for today."

"I'll have this line open every day from seven to five if you change your mind."

The screen blinked off and Rachel sat back, defeated. Mariah blinked back on and looked at her slumped posture.

"I'm guessing it didn't go so well?"

"No, but I'm going to keep trying."

Mariah shook her head. "Good luck."