Trope ficlet: Reverse Amnesia
Aug. 28th, 2024 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tweagueRight, so this one is also Significantly Nonsensical, as it was written for another tropefic prompt for gattycat, so I don't need to pretend that it fits into any particular continuity (or characterisation.) I'm posting it primarily because I needed to demonstrate the sort of terrible way Algy and von Stalhein seem to end up treating each other every time I attempt to write them.
So! Tropefic response for trope 'Reverse Amnesia' - ie. when everyone else has lost their memories of a particular person. Contains barely sketched pseudo-science, Soviet-era-adjacent activities, and Algy and von Stalhein mostly just being horrid to each other. c.4200 words. Sort of angsty, mostly grumpy. Extremely nebulous mention of Terrible Experiments but without accompanying detail.
“Do you know who I am?”
It was, of course, the first moment he had let his guard down since the incident. He had heard the explosions, cursed the KGB man who was meant to be in charge of security over in the research building, gritted his teeth, and set to to try to mop up the worst of the mess - co-ordinating the fire-fighters, securing the perimeter, re-organising the patrols to cover the personnel losses. It all felt depressingly familiar.
And then he had come back here to his room, bone-tired and stonily furious and trying to work out what he was going to report to his superiors, sat down at his desk, and -
“Well?”
Another jab of the gun’s blunt nose into the back of his neck.
“One of the many people who feels they have to point a gun at my head in order to begin a conversation.”
An arm snaked about his throat; gripped tight. The gun barrel slid to his temple. A chin dropped almost to his shoulder; a mouth hissed close by his ear. “I am having a very difficult day. Do you know who I am?”
“Lacey,” von Stalhein choked out; and the grip relented, just a fraction. “No one else from Bigglesworth’s group would be so - lacking in subtlety.”
“Subtlety I need like a hole in the head,” the man retorted. The choke-hold was removed; the figure stepped away; and yes, it was Lacey, freckle-faced, hard-eyed, steady-handed.
“I rather suspected that we had Bigglesworth to thank for today’s little excitement,” he murmured. “I thought you would have shown us a clean pair of heels by now. Did your friends manage to leave you behind completely this time, instead of just leaving you with the plane?”
He had intended it only as a passing barb, something to sting just enough to keep Lacey annoyed and hopefully off-balance; but he saw Lacey blanch, though the gun stayed steady as ever.
Interesting.
“What the hell have you been working on here?” Lacey spat. “What is it - brain-washing techniques? Some sort of knock-out gas? Racing the Americans for ESP weapons? What?”
Von Stalhein frowned. “I do not - “
“Yes, yes, you say you don’t know anything about it, like you always do, only Biggles isn’t here this time to give you the benefit of the bloody doubt yet again, so if you tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about I will shoot you. Starting with your bad leg and working up.”
He could almost believe it. “Ever Bigglesworth’s loyal attack dog,” he said, with a sideways smile. “It’s unusual for him to let you off the leash.”
“I’m not going to stand here trading delicate little compliments with you,” Algy said shortly. “Tell me about the lab.”
Von Stalhein shrugged. “You have seen more of it today than I have in the month I have been here, I think.”
“You’re in charge of security!”
“Of the civilian base, yes,” von Stalhein explained, with elaborate patience. “Which is run by a private security firm, which has hired me as a consultant. The research facility is attached to the base, but only physically. Administratively it falls under the remit of the state, and has state security.”
Lacey rolled his eyes. “You do delight in making life difficult for yourself, don’t you?”
“I might say that others have made it difficult for me.”
“Stop, please, if you make me weep then I won’t be able to shoot straight.” The words were caustic as ever, but delivered with a certain lack of relish. Clearly Lacey had other things on his mind. “Biggles said he didn’t think you could possibly be involved with this place. Too sloppy for you, he thought, if the security around the lab was anything to go by. Are you seriously telling me you don’t know what’s been going on here?”
“It is not my job to know.”
Lacey snorted. “Still just following orders? You are the most tremendous moral coward, you know.”
He swallowed down the sharp rejoinder. What would be the point? It would just serve to show the insufferable man when a jab went home.
“So when shall I expect Bigglesworth to arrive to pick you up?” he said lightly. “I should hate to miss him. Although I suppose he is likely to be in no particular hurry - one doesn’t rush down to the Lost and Found office after every lost umbrella, unless one is expecting rain.”
The blunt nose of the revolver jerked towards the door. “Take me over to the lab.”
“Are you mad?” von Stalhein asked, brows rising. “Believe me, there is nothing that would suit me better. We’re bound to run into a patrol sooner or later - “
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be telling me about it,” Lacey pointed out. “You’d just be letting me stick my head in the noose. But you forget - I’ve been keeping tabs on your short-wave radio communications from here. I know how short-staffed you are. You’ve put most of your own men on repairing the fences, and now we’ve dealt with that swine Lomidze you’ve set his men to bolster the perimeter patrols. So no - I don’t think we will run into anyone. And if we do, then you’ll just have to convince them of my good intentions.”
“That might be difficult.”
Lacey smiled. “You’re an intelligent man, allegedly. You’ll manage.” He picked up the plain dark suit jacket which was hung, neat and orderly, on a wire hanger on a peg on the wall, and draped it carefully over the revolver; then, gestured, with the neatly swathed gun, like a waiter gesturing with his napkin-covered arm. “After you.”
Von Stalhein gritted his teeth again.
Of course, they didn’t meet anybody, as they crossed the compound. The whole of Bigglesworth’s group had the luck of the devil. It presumably rubbed off from their leader. The place was silent, still smelling faintly of cordite and woodsmoke from the buildings that had burned. Evening was falling, quiet and cold. Everyone who could be huddling indoors was doing so.
“What was it that brought you here?” von Stalhein asked, pitching his voice a little louder than was quite necessary. “I rather thought I might be free of you in such an out of the way place.”
“Less chat,” said Lacey, shortly. Then - typically, of course, Lacey never could resist putting the boot in - “You must let me know how you manage to retain that iron-clad self-importance. It’s almost impressive. We hadn’t the faintest notion of you being here, of course. We followed your pal Lomidze, and his trail of discarded body parts. He’s a rather bigger fish than you these days - or was, rather. And it was hardly a difficult trail to follow.”
Von Stalhein frowned; began to turn, a question on his tongue, when the revolver jabbed into his ribs and at the same moment a voice called out an enquiry in Russian.
He replied in the same language - No, no trouble, just a routine check - a little unimaginative, but suddenly he had other things on his mind.
The owner of the voice grunted something unimportant, and von Stalhein took the keycard from his pocket - Lomidze’s keycard, he had taken it from his body that afternoon - and let them into the research facility.
“Nicely done,” Lacey breathed. “Let’s hope you can continue to be so useful.”
“I am not sure what you expect to find here,” von Stalhein remarked. “Surely any theft of intellectual property could have been carried out at your leisure earlier? Or were you so busy blowing things up you forgot to take notes first?”
“We didn’t come here to steal anything,” Lacey said. “We came to put a stop to this rotten place and the monsters who ran it.” He smiled, very slightly. “If there’s one good thing to come out of this, it’s that when Biggles finds you really were mixed up in this wretched business, he’ll stop making excuses for you. There aren’t any excuses for this sort of place. That is - “
He broke off, abruptly, that oddly stricken expression on his face again.
“What do you mean - ‘this sort of place’?” asked von Stalhein.
Lacey fixed him with his most inscrutable look.
Then: “I suppose you had better come and find out.”
The main lab looked like a battle had been fought there. In all probability, it had been. There was smashed glass everywhere; scorch marks; the smell of gunpowder and formaldehyde.
“I might have known you’d be left out of the loop,” Lacey was grumbling. He had dropped the suit jacket, leaving his gun arm unencumbered again, as he picked his way through the debris. “You’re not the biggest fish in the pond any more, are you? Your pal Lomidze would have been able to tell me what was going on. Shame he got shot, really. On second thoughts, maybe not.”
“And was it you who shot him? Or Lissie? Not Bigglesworth, I assume. He delights in an appearance of magnanimity.”
“You’d better be grateful for his magnanimity, it’s saved your worthless neck more than once.”
“There was nothing so very important going on here,” von Stalhein insisted. “They were working on some form of low-frequency broadcast technique, I believe.”
Lacey snorted. They had come to an unremarkable doorway on the far side of the lab. If von Stalhein had ever noticed it before, he had vaguely assumed it was a storage cupboard.
Lacey gestured to it. “You’re going to love this then. Lomidze opened it for us earlier, though he took a bit of persuading. It was right before he tried to make a break for it. His card ought to get us in.”
Von Stalhein took the card from his pocket again, and swiped them through.
There were steps, leading downward. The distinctive smell of damp concrete. Formaldehyde again, sweet and unnerving. A tang of blood.
The emergency lights were on down here: he hadn’t known about this place, to add it to the repairs list, and something must have damaged the electrics. The air felt a little stale already; presumably the ventilation system had relied on electric fans.
“I need to look at any paperwork down here you can find,” said Lacey, already foraging about amongst the filing cabinets. “We set charges down here, thank God they didn’t go off…”
There were - things. In glass jars, floating in cloudy liquid. Shreds of tissue, clumps of skin, things with wires stuck through them -
“Lacey - “
“Charming, aren’t they? Your pal Lomidze’s little pets.”
“What was he working on here?”
He was a soldier. He had seen men blown apart - shrapnel wounds were terrible things - but they were - impersonal. This -
“What happened to the rest of your team?”
Lacey paused, hand deep in a file of papers, head bent over the sheets. He still had the gun in one hand, but he wasn’t paying much attention to it. “Just - just look for documentation.”
“I cannot look effectively if I do not know what I am looking for.”
Lacey swore, and banged the drawer closed viciously. “They forgot me. That’s what.”
Von Stalhein frowned. “They forgot - “
“We were setting the charges up at that end - “ Lacey waved the gun towards the other end of the long, dim room. “I was working beside something that looked like a computer bank. Something was whirring in the machinery. There was a flash - and then suddenly I was on the ground, and the others had gone.”
“That is…odd,” von Stalhein conceded. “Your team has always prided itself on its overdeveloped notion of loyalty. Even if they thought you were dead, they would still have dragged home your corpse.”
“I know that,” Lacey snarled; but under the bluster von Stalhein could detect an edge of - uncertainty? “So of course I assumed that something had happened to them - perhaps they’d been captured and I’d been missed. Maybe they’d been forced to retreat. So I scarpered PDQ. The base was still at sixes and sevens, so I didn’t have much trouble getting clear. And I headed back to our landing field. Only when I got there - “
“They had gone?”
Lacey let out a small breath of laughter. “Oh, no, they were still there - just about. Just striking camp, mission accomplished, all ready to go. They weren’t very pleased to see me, I can tell you. Ginger let off a few shots that all but gave me a new parting. I shouted at them, called them by name, let them see me - it didn’t do me a ha'porth of good. I think you would probably have got a warmer welcome - in fact, I’m sure of it.”
The muzzle of the gun had dipped downwards as Lacey spoke, just by a fraction; and von Stalhein lunged for it while he had the chance.
The shot whistled past his cheek, close enough to feel its passage.
“Try that again,” Lacey grated out, “and I won’t start with your leg. I’ll go straight for your heart, assuming you have one. I very much doubt that anyone will hear a shot down here.”
“You can hardly blame me for trying,” said von Stalhein, mildly.
“Keep looking.”
Von Stalhein began to look through a stack of foolscap on a workbench - experimental notes, a long list of frequencies and responses, though what the frequencies meant or what the responses were, he couldn’t make out. “I am not qualified for this.”
“No, but you’re the best I’ve got. So look.”
“And you believe that it was the machinery here that caused this - amnesia?”
“I don’t know if it was the machinery or the brains in jars or little green men,” said Lacey, tightly. “But I know it was here. And if it was here, then it’s down to your pals somehow. So there ought to be notes on it.”
“If you hadn’t shot so many of them,” said von Stalhein, “then perhaps we could have asked them.”
“You would have shot them too if you’d seen what we’d seen.” Lacey shot a look in his direction. “No, maybe you wouldn’t. You got quite good at ignoring this sort of thing in the last war, I suppose.”
He felt the twist, somewhere his belly; but it was an old wound, and he was used to ignoring it. “What is it you hope to discover?”
“How to reverse it, of course.”
“What makes you think it can be reversed?”
“What’s the use in making someone forget somebody else for good?”
Von Stalhein shrugged. “In espionage, I can think of many uses. But you may be right - that may not have been the intended function of the machinery at all. You can see the state of this place - I doubt that an intermittent power failure and the occasional bullet hole precisely enhanced its function.”
Lacey’s hand stilled in its rummaging. “You think it was a malfunction?”
“As you said - what’s the use in making somebody forget someone?” Von Stalhein went back to the piles of papers, though he was hardly skimming them, more than half his mind on Lacey, on that not-quite-distracted-enough attention. “Never mind, Lacey. Perhaps it will wear off on its own.”
“Your sympathy,” said Lacey, through gritted teeth, “is overwhelming.”
Von Stalhein cast a look towards the other end of the room. He tried not to look at the jars on the metal shelves. The lights flickered; perfectly on cue. “Perhaps you should go and look at the machinery in question.”
The gun jerked again. “Perhaps you should go first.”
“Willingly. Perhaps it will erase my memory of you, too. That might be a blessing.”
Lacey looked into the gloom. “You think the machinery is still operating?”
“How should I know?”
“You’re a knowing sort of person.”
“We have no reason to think it has ceased to operate.”
Lacey swore. “Well - nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose. After you.”
Von Stalhein turned towards the darkness; walked forward. He could hear Lacey behind him, see the movement in his peripheral vision.
What would it feel like, he wondered - to have something creep into your mind and tear away a chunk of your memory? To take out a particular event, an action, a person? Would you notice? Would it hurt?
There were things in his memory that -
“Stop. Wait.”
He stopped. Lacey sounded - jumpy. That was never encouraging in a man who had a gun trained on the small of your back.
“Do you still remember who I am?”
“Getting nervous, Lacey?”
“You’re my miner’s canary, Erich,” came the answer behind him. “Start singing.”
The faint, brief touch of the gun between his shoulders. By way of encouragement, presumably.
“You are Inspector Algernon Montgomery Lacey of the Special Air Police,” he said, stepping forward again. “Late of 266 squadron. Late of 666 squadron. Late flight commander. You reside at Flat 4, Audley Mansions, Mount Street, West One, the property of your cousin, James Bigglesworth - shall I go on?”
“I don’t need you to tell me my life history,” Lacey ground out. “Move.”
He moved forward. The lights flickered again.
“If the ventilation system fails completely, this could become an unhealthy place - “
“Who am I?”
“Inspector Algernon Lacey.”
Another five steps.
“And now?”
“Inspector Algernon Lacey.”
And another.
“Who am I?”
“Inspector - Inspector - “
There was - there was something -
“Von Stalhein? Hi - answer me!”
“I - “
There was -
There was someone beside him - a freckled someone, anxious-looking, he -
- he had a gun -
“Von Stalhein!”
There was something - pushing - in his head -
- he pushed back -
“Lacey,” he managed. “You are - Inspector - Algernon Lacey.”
Lacey almost smiled. Almost. “Well sung, canary.”
“There is - “ He swallowed. The air was growing hot, and stale. His head throbbed. And the things on the shelves - “There is a proximity component to the mechanism, it seems. Perhaps - perhaps out of the range of the machine - “
“- perhaps it’ll just wear off,” Lacey finished.
“Your friends could already be on their way back.” He took out his monocle; pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. There was - a high pitched hum - a pressure in his head - “Or perhaps the proximity is only needed to induce the effect - and once the amnesia is induced - “
Lacey’s voice seemed to come from very far away. “The question is - whether the machine is exerting a continual influence to maintain the effect - in which case, I could just blow the wretched thing up to solve the problem - or whether it causes a permanent change which needs to be reversed.”
He was - there was something he was meant -
“Von Stalhein?”
He opened his eyes.
“Come on, focus!” said the man, and he felt almost sure that he was meant to -
The lights flickered and dimmed.
“Lacey - “ he managed. “The power - the power effects the intensity - “
A hand at his elbow - dragging him forward -
“Do you know me?”
“Lacey - ?”
“And now?”
“I - “
Abruptly, the high-pitched noise dropped away -
- and the pressure was gone.
“And now?”
He felt sick. “Inspector - Algernon Lacey.”
Lacey had pulled the power cable away from the wall. He still had the gun trained on him, and considering how profoundly unthreatening he was sure he looked, then that was a compliment of a kind.
“So cutting the power removes the effect, at least at close range.”
“I’m glad I could assist you with your research,” he spat. There was a foul taste at the back of his mouth. “Would you object to my smoking?”
“Actually, yes,” said Lacey. “Your hands don’t go anywhere near your jacket pockets.”
“Do you imagine that if I had a gun there I would not have tried to use it by now?”
“Better safe than sorry. You just sit tight there while I take a look for the instruction manual.”
He was sitting on the floor, not far from the banks of darkened computer equipment and something that looked something like a long-wave radio transmitter, but also nothing like it. There was broken glass that scraped under his shoe when he moved. His head ached abominably.
“Are you planning on taking home a souvenir?” he said. “Your Commodore Raymond would be delighted, I’m sure.”
“I was considering it. If there’s any chance Biggles and the others haven’t recovered then we’ll need all the information we can get to set about putting things right.”
“If they have not recovered, then you may have a tricky time of it getting home.” He leaned back on his hands. “Perhaps you should consider working for me instead. We could find work for an entirely forgettable man.”
“You? Don’t make me laugh,” said Lacey shortly. “You’re going to have enough trouble saving your own skin after this mess.”
“The security of the laboratory was not my concern.”
“No, and neither was the work they were doing here, I suppose.”
“I have told you - “
“Look around you!” Lacey flared. “Look at the sort of operation your chums have been running here! Biggles used to say you were about the cleverest man in Europe, but I’ve seen precious little sign of it this last few years. You’ve sold yourself to every bully boy on the continent, and if you haven’t noticed the sort of thing they get up to, then it’s either because you’re an idiot, or because you’ve decided it’s okay to close your eyes to it.” He grinned. Lacey used his smiles like weapons. “So which is it, Erich? Are you a fool or a coward?”
“It was ironic, I suppose,” von Stalhein mused, curling his fingers idly around the shard of glass, feeling it bite into his palm. “That the machine should have singled you out for this treatment. How long did it take you to realise that there was something unnatural in your abandonment? Five minutes? Ten? Did you wonder all the way back to the landing field? Or was it only for a moment that you thought they really had just forgotten you?”
Lacey was studiously ignoring him, going through the drawers of the desk with singular focus.
The glass was hidden in his hand now, only a little slick with blood. Not enough to affect his grip.
“That’s always been your fear, hasn’t it?” he went on, pushing himself heavily to his feet. “Every time Bigglesworth left you in charge of the line of retreat, instead of making use of your talents. That one day he would forget to invite you along at all.”
“You should know,” Lacey snapped back. “You’re the forgotten man of half Europe. When was the last time the Fatherland called on your talents, hey? Even the Soviets don’t return your calls these days. You’re yesterday’s news, Erich - ”
He managed to get hold of Lacey’s gun hand and force it up, and the bullet went into the ceiling instead of into his head; and the scrap of glass in his hand went into Lacey’s wrist, and then the gun clattered to the floor, but the sudden lunge of movement had made his head swim again, and then there was a flare of pain in his good leg and the world went sideways -
“- bloody idiot,” Lacey was saying somewhere behind him, when the ringing in his ears receded. He was on the floor again. There was a tickling sensation, somewhere below his left ear; as though something was trickling downward. Sweat, or blood? “You can hardly stand up, what did you think you were going to achieve? Next time I will shoot you, just to put you out of your misery.”
His hands were tied with electrical cable, tight enough to make his fingertips tingle already.
“Perhaps next time I’ll have a chance to shoot you,” he rasped.
A crunching sound. A boot appeared in his field of vision.
“If Biggles were here, he’d probably give you a long speech about how far you’ve come down in the world, and how you ought to pull yourself up out of the muck before you drown in it. Well as far as I’m concerned, you’ve found your level at last. And I hope you rot.”
“I could wish that I’d had someone of your obvious talents on my side, over the years,” he said. “Bigglesworth clearly doesn’t make use of you as he should. I assume you are taking the documents?”
“If I don’t need them, I’ll burn the lot.”
He smiled. “Of course. Bigglesworth would never forgive you if you didn’t.”
Lacey crouched down; leaned over him, close enough to feel his breath against his ear. “If I could re-program this machine to make Biggles forget about you, believe me I would do it in a heartbeat.”
“That would undoubtedly make my life a lot easier.”
Lacey’s hand slipped into his breast pocket and pulled out the key card. Von Stalhein just caught a glimpse of the sharp curve of his smile in the flickering light as he stood up. “Oh, yes - the next time Biggles had got you beat and just shot you instead of letting you slip off again, I’m sure your life would be an awful lot easier.”
Algy heard the response when he was halfway across the wrecked room. “Perhaps it would.”
He called back, over his shoulder: “I’ve set the charges for half an hour. Good luck. I hope you’re good at knots.”
gattycat, so I don't need to pretend that it fits into any particular continuity (or characterisation.) I'm posting it primarily because I needed to demonstrate the sort of terrible way Algy and von Stalhein seem to end up treating each other every time I attempt to write them.So! Tropefic response for trope 'Reverse Amnesia' - ie. when everyone else has lost their memories of a particular person. Contains barely sketched pseudo-science, Soviet-era-adjacent activities, and Algy and von Stalhein mostly just being horrid to each other. c.4200 words. Sort of angsty, mostly grumpy. Extremely nebulous mention of Terrible Experiments but without accompanying detail.
“Do you know who I am?”
It was, of course, the first moment he had let his guard down since the incident. He had heard the explosions, cursed the KGB man who was meant to be in charge of security over in the research building, gritted his teeth, and set to to try to mop up the worst of the mess - co-ordinating the fire-fighters, securing the perimeter, re-organising the patrols to cover the personnel losses. It all felt depressingly familiar.
And then he had come back here to his room, bone-tired and stonily furious and trying to work out what he was going to report to his superiors, sat down at his desk, and -
“Well?”
Another jab of the gun’s blunt nose into the back of his neck.
“One of the many people who feels they have to point a gun at my head in order to begin a conversation.”
An arm snaked about his throat; gripped tight. The gun barrel slid to his temple. A chin dropped almost to his shoulder; a mouth hissed close by his ear. “I am having a very difficult day. Do you know who I am?”
“Lacey,” von Stalhein choked out; and the grip relented, just a fraction. “No one else from Bigglesworth’s group would be so - lacking in subtlety.”
“Subtlety I need like a hole in the head,” the man retorted. The choke-hold was removed; the figure stepped away; and yes, it was Lacey, freckle-faced, hard-eyed, steady-handed.
“I rather suspected that we had Bigglesworth to thank for today’s little excitement,” he murmured. “I thought you would have shown us a clean pair of heels by now. Did your friends manage to leave you behind completely this time, instead of just leaving you with the plane?”
He had intended it only as a passing barb, something to sting just enough to keep Lacey annoyed and hopefully off-balance; but he saw Lacey blanch, though the gun stayed steady as ever.
Interesting.
“What the hell have you been working on here?” Lacey spat. “What is it - brain-washing techniques? Some sort of knock-out gas? Racing the Americans for ESP weapons? What?”
Von Stalhein frowned. “I do not - “
“Yes, yes, you say you don’t know anything about it, like you always do, only Biggles isn’t here this time to give you the benefit of the bloody doubt yet again, so if you tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about I will shoot you. Starting with your bad leg and working up.”
He could almost believe it. “Ever Bigglesworth’s loyal attack dog,” he said, with a sideways smile. “It’s unusual for him to let you off the leash.”
“I’m not going to stand here trading delicate little compliments with you,” Algy said shortly. “Tell me about the lab.”
Von Stalhein shrugged. “You have seen more of it today than I have in the month I have been here, I think.”
“You’re in charge of security!”
“Of the civilian base, yes,” von Stalhein explained, with elaborate patience. “Which is run by a private security firm, which has hired me as a consultant. The research facility is attached to the base, but only physically. Administratively it falls under the remit of the state, and has state security.”
Lacey rolled his eyes. “You do delight in making life difficult for yourself, don’t you?”
“I might say that others have made it difficult for me.”
“Stop, please, if you make me weep then I won’t be able to shoot straight.” The words were caustic as ever, but delivered with a certain lack of relish. Clearly Lacey had other things on his mind. “Biggles said he didn’t think you could possibly be involved with this place. Too sloppy for you, he thought, if the security around the lab was anything to go by. Are you seriously telling me you don’t know what’s been going on here?”
“It is not my job to know.”
Lacey snorted. “Still just following orders? You are the most tremendous moral coward, you know.”
He swallowed down the sharp rejoinder. What would be the point? It would just serve to show the insufferable man when a jab went home.
“So when shall I expect Bigglesworth to arrive to pick you up?” he said lightly. “I should hate to miss him. Although I suppose he is likely to be in no particular hurry - one doesn’t rush down to the Lost and Found office after every lost umbrella, unless one is expecting rain.”
The blunt nose of the revolver jerked towards the door. “Take me over to the lab.”
“Are you mad?” von Stalhein asked, brows rising. “Believe me, there is nothing that would suit me better. We’re bound to run into a patrol sooner or later - “
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be telling me about it,” Lacey pointed out. “You’d just be letting me stick my head in the noose. But you forget - I’ve been keeping tabs on your short-wave radio communications from here. I know how short-staffed you are. You’ve put most of your own men on repairing the fences, and now we’ve dealt with that swine Lomidze you’ve set his men to bolster the perimeter patrols. So no - I don’t think we will run into anyone. And if we do, then you’ll just have to convince them of my good intentions.”
“That might be difficult.”
Lacey smiled. “You’re an intelligent man, allegedly. You’ll manage.” He picked up the plain dark suit jacket which was hung, neat and orderly, on a wire hanger on a peg on the wall, and draped it carefully over the revolver; then, gestured, with the neatly swathed gun, like a waiter gesturing with his napkin-covered arm. “After you.”
Von Stalhein gritted his teeth again.
Of course, they didn’t meet anybody, as they crossed the compound. The whole of Bigglesworth’s group had the luck of the devil. It presumably rubbed off from their leader. The place was silent, still smelling faintly of cordite and woodsmoke from the buildings that had burned. Evening was falling, quiet and cold. Everyone who could be huddling indoors was doing so.
“What was it that brought you here?” von Stalhein asked, pitching his voice a little louder than was quite necessary. “I rather thought I might be free of you in such an out of the way place.”
“Less chat,” said Lacey, shortly. Then - typically, of course, Lacey never could resist putting the boot in - “You must let me know how you manage to retain that iron-clad self-importance. It’s almost impressive. We hadn’t the faintest notion of you being here, of course. We followed your pal Lomidze, and his trail of discarded body parts. He’s a rather bigger fish than you these days - or was, rather. And it was hardly a difficult trail to follow.”
Von Stalhein frowned; began to turn, a question on his tongue, when the revolver jabbed into his ribs and at the same moment a voice called out an enquiry in Russian.
He replied in the same language - No, no trouble, just a routine check - a little unimaginative, but suddenly he had other things on his mind.
The owner of the voice grunted something unimportant, and von Stalhein took the keycard from his pocket - Lomidze’s keycard, he had taken it from his body that afternoon - and let them into the research facility.
“Nicely done,” Lacey breathed. “Let’s hope you can continue to be so useful.”
“I am not sure what you expect to find here,” von Stalhein remarked. “Surely any theft of intellectual property could have been carried out at your leisure earlier? Or were you so busy blowing things up you forgot to take notes first?”
“We didn’t come here to steal anything,” Lacey said. “We came to put a stop to this rotten place and the monsters who ran it.” He smiled, very slightly. “If there’s one good thing to come out of this, it’s that when Biggles finds you really were mixed up in this wretched business, he’ll stop making excuses for you. There aren’t any excuses for this sort of place. That is - “
He broke off, abruptly, that oddly stricken expression on his face again.
“What do you mean - ‘this sort of place’?” asked von Stalhein.
Lacey fixed him with his most inscrutable look.
Then: “I suppose you had better come and find out.”
The main lab looked like a battle had been fought there. In all probability, it had been. There was smashed glass everywhere; scorch marks; the smell of gunpowder and formaldehyde.
“I might have known you’d be left out of the loop,” Lacey was grumbling. He had dropped the suit jacket, leaving his gun arm unencumbered again, as he picked his way through the debris. “You’re not the biggest fish in the pond any more, are you? Your pal Lomidze would have been able to tell me what was going on. Shame he got shot, really. On second thoughts, maybe not.”
“And was it you who shot him? Or Lissie? Not Bigglesworth, I assume. He delights in an appearance of magnanimity.”
“You’d better be grateful for his magnanimity, it’s saved your worthless neck more than once.”
“There was nothing so very important going on here,” von Stalhein insisted. “They were working on some form of low-frequency broadcast technique, I believe.”
Lacey snorted. They had come to an unremarkable doorway on the far side of the lab. If von Stalhein had ever noticed it before, he had vaguely assumed it was a storage cupboard.
Lacey gestured to it. “You’re going to love this then. Lomidze opened it for us earlier, though he took a bit of persuading. It was right before he tried to make a break for it. His card ought to get us in.”
Von Stalhein took the card from his pocket again, and swiped them through.
There were steps, leading downward. The distinctive smell of damp concrete. Formaldehyde again, sweet and unnerving. A tang of blood.
The emergency lights were on down here: he hadn’t known about this place, to add it to the repairs list, and something must have damaged the electrics. The air felt a little stale already; presumably the ventilation system had relied on electric fans.
“I need to look at any paperwork down here you can find,” said Lacey, already foraging about amongst the filing cabinets. “We set charges down here, thank God they didn’t go off…”
There were - things. In glass jars, floating in cloudy liquid. Shreds of tissue, clumps of skin, things with wires stuck through them -
“Lacey - “
“Charming, aren’t they? Your pal Lomidze’s little pets.”
“What was he working on here?”
He was a soldier. He had seen men blown apart - shrapnel wounds were terrible things - but they were - impersonal. This -
“What happened to the rest of your team?”
Lacey paused, hand deep in a file of papers, head bent over the sheets. He still had the gun in one hand, but he wasn’t paying much attention to it. “Just - just look for documentation.”
“I cannot look effectively if I do not know what I am looking for.”
Lacey swore, and banged the drawer closed viciously. “They forgot me. That’s what.”
Von Stalhein frowned. “They forgot - “
“We were setting the charges up at that end - “ Lacey waved the gun towards the other end of the long, dim room. “I was working beside something that looked like a computer bank. Something was whirring in the machinery. There was a flash - and then suddenly I was on the ground, and the others had gone.”
“That is…odd,” von Stalhein conceded. “Your team has always prided itself on its overdeveloped notion of loyalty. Even if they thought you were dead, they would still have dragged home your corpse.”
“I know that,” Lacey snarled; but under the bluster von Stalhein could detect an edge of - uncertainty? “So of course I assumed that something had happened to them - perhaps they’d been captured and I’d been missed. Maybe they’d been forced to retreat. So I scarpered PDQ. The base was still at sixes and sevens, so I didn’t have much trouble getting clear. And I headed back to our landing field. Only when I got there - “
“They had gone?”
Lacey let out a small breath of laughter. “Oh, no, they were still there - just about. Just striking camp, mission accomplished, all ready to go. They weren’t very pleased to see me, I can tell you. Ginger let off a few shots that all but gave me a new parting. I shouted at them, called them by name, let them see me - it didn’t do me a ha'porth of good. I think you would probably have got a warmer welcome - in fact, I’m sure of it.”
The muzzle of the gun had dipped downwards as Lacey spoke, just by a fraction; and von Stalhein lunged for it while he had the chance.
The shot whistled past his cheek, close enough to feel its passage.
“Try that again,” Lacey grated out, “and I won’t start with your leg. I’ll go straight for your heart, assuming you have one. I very much doubt that anyone will hear a shot down here.”
“You can hardly blame me for trying,” said von Stalhein, mildly.
“Keep looking.”
Von Stalhein began to look through a stack of foolscap on a workbench - experimental notes, a long list of frequencies and responses, though what the frequencies meant or what the responses were, he couldn’t make out. “I am not qualified for this.”
“No, but you’re the best I’ve got. So look.”
“And you believe that it was the machinery here that caused this - amnesia?”
“I don’t know if it was the machinery or the brains in jars or little green men,” said Lacey, tightly. “But I know it was here. And if it was here, then it’s down to your pals somehow. So there ought to be notes on it.”
“If you hadn’t shot so many of them,” said von Stalhein, “then perhaps we could have asked them.”
“You would have shot them too if you’d seen what we’d seen.” Lacey shot a look in his direction. “No, maybe you wouldn’t. You got quite good at ignoring this sort of thing in the last war, I suppose.”
He felt the twist, somewhere his belly; but it was an old wound, and he was used to ignoring it. “What is it you hope to discover?”
“How to reverse it, of course.”
“What makes you think it can be reversed?”
“What’s the use in making someone forget somebody else for good?”
Von Stalhein shrugged. “In espionage, I can think of many uses. But you may be right - that may not have been the intended function of the machinery at all. You can see the state of this place - I doubt that an intermittent power failure and the occasional bullet hole precisely enhanced its function.”
Lacey’s hand stilled in its rummaging. “You think it was a malfunction?”
“As you said - what’s the use in making somebody forget someone?” Von Stalhein went back to the piles of papers, though he was hardly skimming them, more than half his mind on Lacey, on that not-quite-distracted-enough attention. “Never mind, Lacey. Perhaps it will wear off on its own.”
“Your sympathy,” said Lacey, through gritted teeth, “is overwhelming.”
Von Stalhein cast a look towards the other end of the room. He tried not to look at the jars on the metal shelves. The lights flickered; perfectly on cue. “Perhaps you should go and look at the machinery in question.”
The gun jerked again. “Perhaps you should go first.”
“Willingly. Perhaps it will erase my memory of you, too. That might be a blessing.”
Lacey looked into the gloom. “You think the machinery is still operating?”
“How should I know?”
“You’re a knowing sort of person.”
“We have no reason to think it has ceased to operate.”
Lacey swore. “Well - nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose. After you.”
Von Stalhein turned towards the darkness; walked forward. He could hear Lacey behind him, see the movement in his peripheral vision.
What would it feel like, he wondered - to have something creep into your mind and tear away a chunk of your memory? To take out a particular event, an action, a person? Would you notice? Would it hurt?
There were things in his memory that -
“Stop. Wait.”
He stopped. Lacey sounded - jumpy. That was never encouraging in a man who had a gun trained on the small of your back.
“Do you still remember who I am?”
“Getting nervous, Lacey?”
“You’re my miner’s canary, Erich,” came the answer behind him. “Start singing.”
The faint, brief touch of the gun between his shoulders. By way of encouragement, presumably.
“You are Inspector Algernon Montgomery Lacey of the Special Air Police,” he said, stepping forward again. “Late of 266 squadron. Late of 666 squadron. Late flight commander. You reside at Flat 4, Audley Mansions, Mount Street, West One, the property of your cousin, James Bigglesworth - shall I go on?”
“I don’t need you to tell me my life history,” Lacey ground out. “Move.”
He moved forward. The lights flickered again.
“If the ventilation system fails completely, this could become an unhealthy place - “
“Who am I?”
“Inspector Algernon Lacey.”
Another five steps.
“And now?”
“Inspector Algernon Lacey.”
And another.
“Who am I?”
“Inspector - Inspector - “
There was - there was something -
“Von Stalhein? Hi - answer me!”
“I - “
There was -
There was someone beside him - a freckled someone, anxious-looking, he -
- he had a gun -
“Von Stalhein!”
There was something - pushing - in his head -
- he pushed back -
“Lacey,” he managed. “You are - Inspector - Algernon Lacey.”
Lacey almost smiled. Almost. “Well sung, canary.”
“There is - “ He swallowed. The air was growing hot, and stale. His head throbbed. And the things on the shelves - “There is a proximity component to the mechanism, it seems. Perhaps - perhaps out of the range of the machine - “
“- perhaps it’ll just wear off,” Lacey finished.
“Your friends could already be on their way back.” He took out his monocle; pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. There was - a high pitched hum - a pressure in his head - “Or perhaps the proximity is only needed to induce the effect - and once the amnesia is induced - “
Lacey’s voice seemed to come from very far away. “The question is - whether the machine is exerting a continual influence to maintain the effect - in which case, I could just blow the wretched thing up to solve the problem - or whether it causes a permanent change which needs to be reversed.”
He was - there was something he was meant -
“Von Stalhein?”
He opened his eyes.
“Come on, focus!” said the man, and he felt almost sure that he was meant to -
The lights flickered and dimmed.
“Lacey - “ he managed. “The power - the power effects the intensity - “
A hand at his elbow - dragging him forward -
“Do you know me?”
“Lacey - ?”
“And now?”
“I - “
Abruptly, the high-pitched noise dropped away -
- and the pressure was gone.
“And now?”
He felt sick. “Inspector - Algernon Lacey.”
Lacey had pulled the power cable away from the wall. He still had the gun trained on him, and considering how profoundly unthreatening he was sure he looked, then that was a compliment of a kind.
“So cutting the power removes the effect, at least at close range.”
“I’m glad I could assist you with your research,” he spat. There was a foul taste at the back of his mouth. “Would you object to my smoking?”
“Actually, yes,” said Lacey. “Your hands don’t go anywhere near your jacket pockets.”
“Do you imagine that if I had a gun there I would not have tried to use it by now?”
“Better safe than sorry. You just sit tight there while I take a look for the instruction manual.”
He was sitting on the floor, not far from the banks of darkened computer equipment and something that looked something like a long-wave radio transmitter, but also nothing like it. There was broken glass that scraped under his shoe when he moved. His head ached abominably.
“Are you planning on taking home a souvenir?” he said. “Your Commodore Raymond would be delighted, I’m sure.”
“I was considering it. If there’s any chance Biggles and the others haven’t recovered then we’ll need all the information we can get to set about putting things right.”
“If they have not recovered, then you may have a tricky time of it getting home.” He leaned back on his hands. “Perhaps you should consider working for me instead. We could find work for an entirely forgettable man.”
“You? Don’t make me laugh,” said Lacey shortly. “You’re going to have enough trouble saving your own skin after this mess.”
“The security of the laboratory was not my concern.”
“No, and neither was the work they were doing here, I suppose.”
“I have told you - “
“Look around you!” Lacey flared. “Look at the sort of operation your chums have been running here! Biggles used to say you were about the cleverest man in Europe, but I’ve seen precious little sign of it this last few years. You’ve sold yourself to every bully boy on the continent, and if you haven’t noticed the sort of thing they get up to, then it’s either because you’re an idiot, or because you’ve decided it’s okay to close your eyes to it.” He grinned. Lacey used his smiles like weapons. “So which is it, Erich? Are you a fool or a coward?”
“It was ironic, I suppose,” von Stalhein mused, curling his fingers idly around the shard of glass, feeling it bite into his palm. “That the machine should have singled you out for this treatment. How long did it take you to realise that there was something unnatural in your abandonment? Five minutes? Ten? Did you wonder all the way back to the landing field? Or was it only for a moment that you thought they really had just forgotten you?”
Lacey was studiously ignoring him, going through the drawers of the desk with singular focus.
The glass was hidden in his hand now, only a little slick with blood. Not enough to affect his grip.
“That’s always been your fear, hasn’t it?” he went on, pushing himself heavily to his feet. “Every time Bigglesworth left you in charge of the line of retreat, instead of making use of your talents. That one day he would forget to invite you along at all.”
“You should know,” Lacey snapped back. “You’re the forgotten man of half Europe. When was the last time the Fatherland called on your talents, hey? Even the Soviets don’t return your calls these days. You’re yesterday’s news, Erich - ”
He managed to get hold of Lacey’s gun hand and force it up, and the bullet went into the ceiling instead of into his head; and the scrap of glass in his hand went into Lacey’s wrist, and then the gun clattered to the floor, but the sudden lunge of movement had made his head swim again, and then there was a flare of pain in his good leg and the world went sideways -
“- bloody idiot,” Lacey was saying somewhere behind him, when the ringing in his ears receded. He was on the floor again. There was a tickling sensation, somewhere below his left ear; as though something was trickling downward. Sweat, or blood? “You can hardly stand up, what did you think you were going to achieve? Next time I will shoot you, just to put you out of your misery.”
His hands were tied with electrical cable, tight enough to make his fingertips tingle already.
“Perhaps next time I’ll have a chance to shoot you,” he rasped.
A crunching sound. A boot appeared in his field of vision.
“If Biggles were here, he’d probably give you a long speech about how far you’ve come down in the world, and how you ought to pull yourself up out of the muck before you drown in it. Well as far as I’m concerned, you’ve found your level at last. And I hope you rot.”
“I could wish that I’d had someone of your obvious talents on my side, over the years,” he said. “Bigglesworth clearly doesn’t make use of you as he should. I assume you are taking the documents?”
“If I don’t need them, I’ll burn the lot.”
He smiled. “Of course. Bigglesworth would never forgive you if you didn’t.”
Lacey crouched down; leaned over him, close enough to feel his breath against his ear. “If I could re-program this machine to make Biggles forget about you, believe me I would do it in a heartbeat.”
“That would undoubtedly make my life a lot easier.”
Lacey’s hand slipped into his breast pocket and pulled out the key card. Von Stalhein just caught a glimpse of the sharp curve of his smile in the flickering light as he stood up. “Oh, yes - the next time Biggles had got you beat and just shot you instead of letting you slip off again, I’m sure your life would be an awful lot easier.”
Algy heard the response when he was halfway across the wrecked room. “Perhaps it would.”
He called back, over his shoulder: “I’ve set the charges for half an hour. Good luck. I hope you’re good at knots.”
no subject
Date: 2024-08-29 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-29 09:55 pm (UTC)YEP. Gatty and I had a chat about who we could best traumatise with that prompt, and Algy came out the winner, hands down.
I really enjoyed writing Algy and von Stalhein sort of unwillingly working together - they make a really effective team when they're both aligned on the same goal, so once von Stalhein decides that finding out what's going on might in fact take precedence over trying to get Algy immediately taken captive, they actually mesh really well. (Much to Algy's discomfort.)
I also like seeing this more ruthless side of Algy, which Biggles doesn't generally see.
Iiiiiii may possibly have a bit of a thing about ruthlessly competent Algy. And I think possibly von Stalhein would too.