Title: The Darkness Within (3/8)
Author: Rhiannon Langly  (fmacgirl@yahoo.com)
Rating: PG for language
Classification: Langly/other.  Angst.
Spoilers: LGM series 1x04: "Like Water For Octane"
Archive: Countermeasures, my own site, anywhere it's
wanted.  Just let me know first.
Feedback: For the love o' god, send it.
Summary: Langly confronts his own fears about never
finding love, as the Gunmen try to help a young
woman and Yves revenge their past.
Disclaimer, etc: See part one.
- - - - -

We Gunmen stared at Yves.  Her usual emotionless
exterior was cracking as she spoke.

[Shit, this must be something bad.]

"Guys..." Melinda said, her voice soft, "She didn't do
it on purpose.  She didn't know."

I bent over her and helped her up so that we could go
back inside.  Amazingly, she didn't flinch away from
my hand on her arm.

"Then what *did* happen," Frohike asked as we sat down
in the Nexus.

Yves sighed and rubbed her face in her hands.  "I'll
tell you what I know.  Then maybe we can end it all." 
She looked at Melinda, her face questioning.
Mel's face was stony, though tears dried on her
cheeks.  "Let them know everything."

- - - - -

"Two years ago," Yves said, "I was hired by a
government subsidy called Project Dominie to recruit
women of Scottish descent for a test project.  They
were dedicated, or so they said, to help the human
race reclaim their supposed psychic powers, lost in
evolution.

"I thought it was a focus group.  Supposedly the
"second sight" is predominantly carried by women in
Scotland.

"Melinda MacConnell was directed to me by a contact in
the Census Bureau who'd noticed her at an Enya concert
and checked her background in the records.

"I became friends with her over a period of time,
posing as another student at Georgetown.  The study
offered money, which she had little of, so I
encouraged her to enter.  She had an 'uneasy feeling'
about it, she said, but the possiblity of having to
drop out makes you ignore everything else.  She left
me in her dorm and she never came back."

- - - - -

Melinda interrupted.  "I can tell the rest," she said.
"I was put in a dark room, with nothing to eat or
touch."

"Sensory deprivation," noted Byers.

Mel nodded.  "Yes.  Their theory was that I would
depend more on my Sight, hone it, if I couldn't use my
other senses.  But when I use it too long, I get
horrible migraines.  Once, it got so bad that I broke
down, sobbing.  They sent a man in there to get me to
stop.  His way of doing that was rape.

"I got pregnant, but I lost the baby, thank god, under
the stress...blood all over.  That's why I'm afraid of
the dark."

I looked down, I couldn't meet her eyes, so damn
haunted.

Yves picked up the tale.  "After she and the others
had been gone for two weeks, I decided that Dominie
was not all it had told me.  Since I cared for Mel, I
did some research on my own.

"Dominie was a project of the Consortium.  You know
them?"  She saw us turn pale.

"Some friends of ours do," Frohike said.

"Anyway, they wanted to increase human powers in
various ways to breed an expendable army for their own
use, one that could control the minds of whoever they
choose, or see the future, or some other thing.  A
week prior to insemination, I organized a sting
operation and helped the women escape.  The details
aren't important.

"Melinda's trauma was hard for her to get over.  It
took months before she could even function again.

"Though the Consortium is gone now, the human
scientists involved with the project are still alive
and well.  They've started the project up again,
swindling the government of a few hundred million.

"I want them to pay.  They need to know what they did
to real people."

Yves looked up.  "I may not be very trustworthy, but I
don't betray people.  Not my friends."

- - - - -

Byers and Frohike looked at me.  "We'll do it.  It's
Langly who'll be the hard sell," Byers said.

"I can see the headline now.  'Celts: Watch For Alien
Breeding,'" I muttered miserably.

[Shit, Mel, why do you have to do this to me...]

She looked at me, enraged.  "Fine, too dangerous for
Langly, just too much for the *chicken.*"

[Calling me a COWARD!..Isn't this what she wants?  Me
to angry enough to help...]

I looked in her eyes, brushing my hair out of my
face...Something was in there.  She wanted help, she
wanted me to help her.  It was all *she* was living
for.

[I thought as I went with a sigh
There but for you go I]

I cracked.  "Where do we start?"

- - - - -

I'm a man who never thought he could be taken by
anyone or needed by anyone.  Byers and Frohike, they
don't need me for their survival.  They could hire any
hacker on the planet to take my place.  But when Mel
bit my head off, when she tossed my sarcasm right back
at me...

An equal, my match in ingenuity, even my superior.
Damn, you're BLIND, Ringo!  She might be...Her.

- - - - -


end part three