Catching Glimpses Chapter 4
Revealing Secrets
By Kiyara
"I'm wishing for once that I had Rude's linguistic skills."-Reno Lynley
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Two hours and many miles later, Reno was still complaining about Dinah’s
long hair.
"I’m gonna have freaking whip marks all over my face!"
He batted at the offending golden strands irritably. The sun was just beginning
to come up over the horizon.
Dinah whirled and spitted him with her sharp gaze for a moment before turning
back to her driving. "Would you just shut up?!? God, are you a pain in the
ass!"
Reno opened his mouth in retaliation, when suddenly, the bike’s engine
coughed, sputtered, and stopped.
Reno, glad of an excuse to stretch his cramped legs, hopped off and examined
the motor. "We’re gonna be stuck here for at least a couple of hours,"
he announced to the waiting Dinah.
"What’s the most amount of time it could take, and can you fix it?"
she answered, leaning against the immobile bike casually.
Reno straightened up from the engine and gave her his trademark smirk. "I
can fix anything, and at the most, it’ll take maybe about five hours.
For such an expensive bike, the motor’s a huge mess."
Dinah eyed the upcoming sun uneasily. "Well, Mr. Fix It, the sun’ll
be up by then."
"Duh."
"Unless you want to be found by those guys again, we ought to move into that
forest," Dinah said, nodding to the nearby woods.
Reno mimicked her pose, crossing his arms over his chest obstinately. "Not
until you tell me what those guys wanted back there."
She met his gaze steadily. "And I’ll tell you that when I’m ready,
which’ll probably be never. Why don’t you just give up and help
me push the bike?"
Reno sighed and rolled his eyes, feeling a little surprised that he had given
in so easily. "Fine."
With Reno on one side and Dinah on the other, they quickly shoved the bike
into the forest. Dinah went back to sweep away the tire tracks and footsteps,
while Reno began to try to fix the bike, with not very much success.
Loud curses and electrical shocks greeted Dinah when she walked back into
the small camp they had set up with what little they had. She laughed. "What
happened to Mr. Fix It?" she asked.
"He decided to go to sleep, which seems like a good idea," Reno returned,
mumbling around a penlight he held in his mouth.
Dinah took a seat next to him, folding her legs under herself with deceptive
ease. "How bad is it?"
"Worse than I thought at first. It’ll probably take closer to a day
than five hours, and that’s if I keep working nonstop."
"Which you will, right?"
Reno grimaced. "I don’t know if I can do this for a full day. I don’t
have a very long attention span."
Dinah chuckled. "You made yourself sound like a little kid."
Reno scowled at her, then went back to inspecting the engine.
4 hours later…
"That’s it!" Reno cried out as he caught his finger in the engine for
the umpteenth time. He yanked it out swiftly, flinging down the crude tools
he had been working with.
"C’mon, you can’t give up now," Dinah admonished him, lying on
her back and staring up at what she could see of the sky.
He looked to her angrily. "It doesn’t seem like you’re helping
much."
"I tried to help in the beginning, remember? I passed you tools and stuff,
until you got mad and told me to ‘Just fuck off.’"
Reno stopped short sheepishly, crankily rubbing at his red, sleep deprived
eyes. "Oh yeah… But I’m still not going to do it any more!"
"How d’you think we’ll get back to civilization without
transportation?" Dinah asked practically.
But Reno wasn’t in a practical mood. "We can walk for all I care," he
growled.
Dinah, seeing that he was in earnest, sat up. "You’ve gotta be kidding
me! The closest town is Costa del Sol, and we rode that bike for two hours!
Do you have any idea how long it would take to walk that far?"
"No, but I’m getting the feeling you do," Reno muttered.
"It would take hours and hours! There’s no way we could do that before
the sun came up!"
"What’s the problem with the sun? You a vampire?"
Dinah ignored his second comment. "Do you really want those guys to find
us again?"
Seeing that she was expecting an answer, Reno shook his head reluctantly.
"Well, no."
"Then we’d have to travel at night, and it would take us longer than
it is dark to walk that far."
"All right, all right! I get the point."
"Does that mean you’ll fix the bike?"
Reno grinned. "You find something that’ll make me actually want
to fix the bike, and you’ve got yourself a deal. Until then, have fun
walking."
Dinah sputtered with indignation and anger. "You want to
bargain?!"
Reno was oblivious to her rage. "Yup."
"All right. I’ll give you a reason to want to fix the bike," Dinah said
softly, her eyes glittering dangerously. She stood slowly.
Reno swallowed nervously. "Uh, not that kind of reason."
"What then?" she snarled.
"Why don’t you tell me why those guys are after you, and I’ll repair
while you talk," Reno suggested.
She immediately drew back. "No way in hell!"
"Fine then. I guess you’ll just have to walk. I don’t have anywhere
I have to be anytime soon. Work at Shinra was getting boring anyway," Reno
said airily.
Dinah cursed softly to herself. For several seconds, she obviously fought
for what to do. Then she reached a decision. "All right," she sighed, sitting
back down. "What do you want to know? But I swear, Turk, that if I find that
you’ve sold what I’m gonna tell you to the highest bidder, nowhere
on the Planet is going to be safe for you."
"I won’t tell," Reno agreed. He noticed that she was still glaring at
him. "What, d’you want me to swear on the Bible or something? Let me
tell you something, sweetheart. I’m an atheist."
"Don’t…push it, Lynley," Dinah growled. "I may be forced to put
up with you for now, until you repair the bike, but that doesn’t mean
that I’m forced to put up with your attitude."
"Okay, okay. No more ‘sweethearts’. Just get on with the story,"
Reno said dismissively.
"Not until you start working on the bike. A deal’s a deal."
Reno sighed loudly and picked up his tools again, digging through the motor.
"I’m working. Now will you tell me why those guys were after you?"
Dinah was silent for a moment, then began to speak. "I don’t know where
I’m from-"
"What? How can you not know where you’re from?" Reno interrupted.
Dinah glared icily.
"Okay, shutting up now. Go on."
Dinah cleared her throat and started again. "I don’t know where I’m
from. The only home that I’ve ever known was a laboratory in a small
town called Nibelheim."
Reno stopped where he was. "Laboratory? Nibelheim? As in Hojo’s laboratory
in Nibelheim?"
The blonde woman favored him with a curious look. "You know of it?"
"Vaguely. I was sent there with Rude to clear out all of Hojo’s crap
after Reeve became president of Shinra. There was some weird stuff in there,
and Reeve didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands." Reno glanced
at her. "Though obviously, it did."
She looked at him strangely. "Reeve? Rude?"
Reno blinked. "You don’t know who Reeve is?"
Dinah shook her head slowly. "No. Should I?"
"Probably. D’you know what Shinra is?"
She answered with a shudder.
"I’d say you do. After Meteor hit Midgar-" Reno stopped, then groaned.
"I have to explain Meteor, don’t I?"
"No, it’s alright. I heard Hojo talking about it and Sephiroth all the
time. I know what it is, and what happened. Go on."
"That’s a relief. I barely understand the whole Meteor/Sephiroth thing
myself. Anyway, after Meteor decimated Midgar, Reeve managed to fix up the
whole city within two years, and he was elected the new president of Shinra.
That was last year, and I work under him now, as does my partner Rude. Anything
else?"
Dinah nodded. "Yes. How long ago did you go to the lab?"
Reno thought for a moment. "I’d say it was about… two months
ago."
She seemed to ponder that. "They can’t be gone…" she
muttered.
"Hello? The Planet to Dinah?" Reno said.
"Huh?"
"Any more questions, or can you finish your part of the bargain now?"
Dinah shook her head. "No more questions."
"Good. You go on now." Reno went back to reaching inside the innards of the
bike.
"I don’t remember where I was from, what my name was, or anything about
myself before the laboratory. My earliest memory was when I was about six
or seven, and I was in a specimen tube in the lab.
Basically, I lived there for all of my childhood and teenage years, with
that bastard Hojo and his assistants poking me with needles and all kinds
of other nasty things. I begged him for years to let me go, or at least to
tell me what he was doing to me, but he would just laugh in his own nasty
way, and say ‘Specimen 7-L needs another tranquilizer,’ and I’d
be put unconscious. He never even bothered to give me a name. I was just
Specimen 7-L.
I lived that way even after he died in Midgar, because he had a group of
sadistic colleagues who kept up the experiment with me. I never even knew
what the damn experiment was, and I still don’t. Then, about
last year sometime, a new lab worker came along. She was young and naïve,
and thought that she was searching for a cure for cancer. Imagine her shock
when she got to the lab, and found that they were really performing twisted
and cruel experiments on living creatures. (Yeah, I wasn’t the only
one. I could see from my tube at least one other human, and a lion looking
thing.) For some reason, though, she stayed. I never knew why. Her name?
Dinah. That’s why I hesitated when giving you my name. I didn’t
have one. Dinah was so kind to me that I decided to use her name.
She was the only kind one out of the bunch, and I almost immediately latched
onto her when she brought me my food every night. They soon found that I
wouldn’t struggle if she gave me my injections and strapped me
to the table for experiments, because I was afraid of hurting her. Finally,
they grew to trust her, and to trust that I wouldn’t hurt her, so they
would leave us alone to do the experiments, since I fought even less when
there were less people around.
One day, she led me away from the lab and into the mansion, to her little
room. She gave me money and suitable clothes, then brought me back to the
lab. I didn’t understand what was going on until she told me to snap
the straps on the examining table and hit her as hard as I dared. After a
lot of convincing, I did punch her, then ran out of the lab and away from
Nibelheim. I’ve been traveling the Planet ever since, trying to get
away from those guys that you saw back in Costa del Sol. They’re the
thugs hired by Hojo’s group of colleagues, and they’re trying to
get me back. But there’s no way I’m going to become a lab rat again.
They’ll have to kill me first."
There was silence. Then Reno said, "Y’know, I’m wishing for once
that I had Rude’s linguistic skills."
Dinah looked at him strangely.
"He always says ‘…’"
Dinah cracked a weak smile.
"I can see why you didn’t want to tell me about that though. Not a pleasant
tale."
Dinah smiled again. "You’ve got that right."
"So you’re basically-dammit!-running all the time," Reno said, injecting
the curse when the engine panel slammed shut on his hand.
"Yeah. Exactly," Dinah answered.
"That bites," Reno said with characteristic understatement while fighting
to lift the panel off of his hand.
Dinah shrugged. "You could say that. Have you almost got that damn thing
fixed?"
Reno finally succeeded in freeing his reddened hand, and he wrung it in pain.
"No. If you’re so impatient, why don’t you try?"
Dinah walked over and started the motor. Nothing happened.
Reno smirked, and began to say something when she interrupted him by giving
the bike a hard kick. Then she turned the key again. To Reno’s surprise
and chagrin, it started.
"Where to?" she asked.
Reno pondered that for a moment, then his emerald eyes lit up. "Costa del
Sol. We’re taking the ferry back to Junon."
"We?" Dinah crossed her arms over her chest.
"I know of a place where you can hide out," Reno offered.
She was obviously skeptical. "Where? Your place? If you think I’m
gonna-"
Reno shook his head, cutting her off. "No. Not my place. A better one. Somewhere
where no one would even think of looking for you."
"I’m listening."
Reno grinned. "I’m not telling you!"
"And why not?"
"’Cause if I did, you’d go there and leave me behind, and I’d
miss all of the excitement."
Her lip curled in a sneer. "Your life is pretty boring, isn’t it?"
"You can say that again," Reno replied ruefully. "Now you’re stuck with
me though. Wherever you go, these guys find you, right?" At her nod, he
continued. "Well, this is the one place that they’re not gonna find
you."
Dinah sighed. "All right, all right. We go at dark."
Reno shook his head and smiled. "I’ve got a better idea."
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