Chapter Two

This, Lars decided, was a perfect example of why he preferred to work by himself. On a solo mission, there was no need to worry about having someone else trip off the alarm and his comm. unit did not suddenly ring mayday in his ear. More importantly, had he been alone he strongly doubted he'd be forced to abandon his objective – a file folder on the other side of the office door in front of him – in order to save someone else's ass.

Lars turned and moved toward Anai's ping on his unit, cloaking spell firmly in place and shades drawn over his eyes. They wouldn't get another chance to grab those papers, but some things were more important than objectives. If nothing else, Anai was his ticket off the base. He couldn't leave her behind and letting her get captured would spell out his death so clearly he swore he could see it in neon. He just wished she could have gotten in trouble a few minutes later when he would have had those documents in hand. He would be sure to tell her all about that disappointment later.

It didn't take him long to sneak past the guards, soft-soled boots making little sound on the floor, but waiting for them to vacate the hallway outside Anai's ping would have taken considerably more patience than Lars possessed. He made a token effort before knocking a lone guard on the back of the head with the pommel of his weapon, lips twitching at the rather satisfying crack of metal and bone. He caught the unfortunate man as he fell and dragged him quickly into the room before letting him drop and stepping over his body.

The room seemed obnoxiously bright, more so than the hallway if anything, and Lars pushed his dark glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose. The place itself was large and filled with the sort of technological gadgetry that he had no use for, giant machines with various buttons, keys, switches. The coup de grace, however, was in the middle of the floor hovering over a slightly raised dais. It also was not alone; Anai was slowly pushing herself onto the platform as if pulled by a magnetic thread. Lars reached up to jerk her back.

"Idiot! That's how you ruined your face in the first place."

Anai told herself he didn't mean for it to come out as harshly as it did but the sharp words still stung. "No actually, that was a bomb." She'd long grown used to the burn scar that stretched over her cheek. Still, Lars certainly had a way with words: a particularly unromantic one. As a result, she couldn't help but glare at him a little. He, of course, didn’t seem to notice.

"And I'm sure your sticking your nose where it didn't belong had absolutely nothing to do with it." Her glare gained a little more potency, but she backed away from the dais. Lars let go of her elbow.

He had to admit: he could understand what had Anai so fascinated. There was a man floating a good four feet above the dais. Beyond the fact that he was extraordinarily pale – a fact made clear by his absolute lack of clothing – Lars decided he looked utterly normal. His ears were perfectly rounded, which meant any elven influence on his heritage was slight enough to be ignored. In fact, there was no sign that he was anything other than human. So why was he here?

Lars was jerked from his consideration by the onset of clicking noises behind him. “Anai…” He turned his head toward her, shooting her an exasperated look. She'd moved away from the dais, yes, but apparently only to fidget with one of the machines near the room’s perimeter. “Anai. What are you doing?”

”Working on getting him down.” She paused, nibbling at her fingertip before pressing a few more buttons. Lars’ eyebrow arched skeptically but beyond that nothing seemed to happen.

”Ah, I see,” he said, turning to face her completely. “I must not have been paying attention. I completely missed when you learned how to work those machines.”

Anai decided: this was why she had always hated working with Lars. Everyone always said that Drow were just naturally unpleasant. Or really, everyone always said they were foul, sneaky, dishonest, thieving, murderous creatures that didn’t bathe except in the blood of their victims. Lars took showers. That was about all she could give him.

”You do realize,” he continued, “that those buttons could be doing anything from giving him electric shocks to calling the guards.” She pressed a few more buttons and turned a knob or two. “Or that he could be highly dangerous, which would explain why they’ve got him immobilized.”

Anai finally looked up at Lars from over the top of the console. “Does he look dangerous, Lars?”

“Do we?” And that was when Anai realized she had been wrong before. This was why she had always hated working with Lars. Not only was he unbearably unpleasant but he was also right far too frequently. She glared at him for a moment more and then went back to pressing buttons with a soft sound of frustration.

Her reward came about thirty seconds later in the form of an electric crackle, the faint smell of smoke, and the sound of a shocked body falling four feet to the ground.

“There. That'll teach you to doubt me.”

Lars, unfortunately, had stopped paying her much attention. Instead, he was fully focused on the man who had once been levitating but was now laying on the floor. He sighed. "Fine. So while I'm not doubting you, what would you have us do with him?”

Anai shot him a slightly nervous smile. "Well I was kind of hoping this would be where you took over." While she would later remark that Lars didn't look quite so evil when he was surprised, at the moment his shock was far more frightening than anything else he could have done. She bit her lip. "I just kind of fucked us over, didn't I?"

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