Chapter 18: "Lemmy, well Limerick, but everyone calls me Lemmy."

Lemmy focused on his paper for a minute while he wrote. "Went into bathroom together, left lady outside in the booth." When he looked up the lady was gone as well. He began to write this down but as he got to "gone as w-" he was interrupted.

"Your water sir?" a voice said from above his head. He knew he had a full glass already but if the service was this good there was no need to be rude and refuse.

"Oh, thank y-" Lemmy began to say as he looked up, but stopped short. Parker placed the glass down on his notes before he finished the sentence. "Yooouuu..." he trailed off as she sat down across from him.

"You indeed." Parker said, crossing her arms. She made a point to flex a bit as she did. Showing off the guns generally loosened people up a bit. Plus if she needed it her spare pistol was under her left armpit, and a little quicker to get to from this position.

"Y-you wouldn't happen to be about to ask me how the f-food was w-would you?" Lemmy stuttered, hastily putting his pen on the table and getting it as far away from his hand as he possibly could. The way she was staring at him he could swear she was looking at his soul.

"No. I am about to ask you who hired you, and why they would hire such an amateur." Parker clarified, tapping his notepad with her free hand. The taunt felt a little extra but it seemed to have gotten the point across.

"Ah, you are? Well, um. My wife, I guess." Lemmy blurted, sweat beginning to accumulate on the top of his scalp. His mind had raced to come up with some sort of lie but it had blown a tire and left him standing on the side of the road with the truth.

"You guess? I see. Can you go ahead and guess what that thing in your pocket does as well?" Parker added patiently. She unlocked her left eye and pointed it at his pocket for a bit of extra effect. She could move them independently whenever she wanted but as it screwed up her depth perception she normally kept them in sync.

"Um, it may be the trigger to a bomb... I don't know. She told me to press it when things went wrong." Lemmy explained, unnerved by both her eye and the sentence he'd just spoken. "I don't think it'll blow anything up in here, cause I'm in here too." He continued, noticing Parkers muscles tensing up.

"Does what's going on at this moment count as things going wrong?" Parker asked, locking her eye back into place.

"A-are you going to hurt me or that scruffy man you're with?" Lemmy asked, relieved at the slight return to normalcy.

"No. Not if you don't give me a reason." Parker replied, palm still resting on the grip of her pistol.

"Then I don't think this counts. Look, I don't know if I'm on anyone's side in this but if I am it's probably yours." Lemmy pleaded. He really didn't want to find out what the button was for if he could help it.

"That's good to hear. Next, what's your name?" Parker asked, slipping her hand off of her weapon.

"Lemmy. Well, Limerick, but everyone calls me Lemmy." He replied, squirming in his seat. He wasn't quite sure about telling her the whole truth. He could now see the pistol in full view. He didn't know anything about weapons really. Only that you didn't want to be on the side the barrel was pointing at.

"Good, there's the first. What's the last?" Parker asked, her annunciation leaning toward frighteningly sweet.

"Last? I'm not quite sure what you mean." Lemmy said, eyes still glued to the pistol. He might be able to feign stupidity and get away with it. Parker sighed. She hadn't wanted things to go this way.

"Watch this." She said, raising her hand toward a server momentarily. "Could you bring us an extra fork please?" She asked, prompting the server to begin walking back towards the kitchen.

"Why do we need a fo-" Lemmy began before he felt something hard press into his knee. His eyes locked back onto the now vacant space where the pistol had been.

"Lemmy, don't test me. Now, last?" Parker said, right arm below the table. Lemmy swallowed hard.

"Greigs. Limerick Meadows-Greigs. Sorry." Lemmy choked out. A wave of relief washed over him as he felt the gun pull away from his kneecap.

"Don't be. Everybody gets one. That in mind I hope you'll be more forward with information from this point onwards, yes?" Parker said, sliding the pistol back into its resting place.

"Yes, yes of course. I know it's not my place to ask questions, but how do you know I'm not lying?" He asked, trying to steady his nerves. He wasn't lying of course but some idiotic part of him couldn't help but be curious.

"I can see your brain Lemmy. Certain parts light up when people lie." Parker answered, no semblance of emotion in her expression. That was a lie. When most people made up fake names on the fly they tended to be much less creative than "Limerick". It was usually Johns, James', and Jessicas across the board in her experience.

"Oh." Lemmy said under his breath. The bluff seemed to have worked. It tended to work on anyone unfamiliar with the limits of ocular prosthetics. Of course she could see how hard his heart was beating from the way his throat kept bulging, but you could have seen that with normal eyes from a mile away.

"Now, Lemmy, who might your wife be? If you don't mind me asking." Parker asked, making her eyes whir in and out of focus. She'd learned a long time ago that unnerving people was actually quite easy. As long as you were alright with a bit of a headache afterwards all you had to do was move the little slider labeled sharpness back and forth a couple times.

"Um, I'm not sure she would appreciate me telling you. She can be a bit... intense." Lemmy mumbled, rubbing the sweat from his palms on his pants.

"Lemmy, I happen to be aware of who Asha Meadows-Greigs is, and I understand why you might be hesitant to sell out your wife. But, and I can't stress this enough, Asha is not here right now. I am." Parker explained, annunciating as many syllables as she could.

She didn't necessarily want to be as threatening as she was being at the moment. Aldon had taught her that avoiding violence while inspiring fear was the key, but it wasn't like he was an expert on keeping that balance himself. She'd seen him blow out his fair share of kneecaps during interrogations. Of course, those men had all had names like "Cutter" Moseby and "Roaster" Westcott, but there had been a significant deficit in kneecaps afterwards all the same.

Parker didn't enjoy interrogations. She'd definitely killed or maimed plenty of people during gunfights, but at least they shot back. It was, in a way, mutual. Interrogations on the other hand, no matter how many people the information saved, felt sadistic. Keeping a level head during the process was not an easy task.

Not an easy task when you were desperately attempting to hold down your lunch after the first broken finger. Not an easy task when all you really wanted was to be back at home with your cat and a big plate of chicken over rice after a long day. Not an easy task when you knew that if you showed even a hint of remorse they might use that to stall and an innocent hostage might die.

At the moment it helped that she didn't believe it would come to that with Lemmy. The good thing was that he didn't seem to know all that much to begin with. The bad thing was that even the information he had was hardly usable. A button that could potentially do anything and a wife so high up on the social ladder that if she spit it would hit terminal velocity and likely kill her by the time it got to her level.

"Did she tell you what to do once you've pressed the button?" Parker asked, hoping for some semblance of useful information.

"Yeah, grab your friend and run." Lemmy answered, an embarrassed expression passing across his face.

"Run where?" Parker asked, glancing around the room for any points of egress she might have missed.

"I don't know. She just said to run." Lemmy clarified, shrugging his shoulders in defeated acceptance.

"Fuck. Well, that's not very helpful is it?" Parker said, slumping back into her chair. Parkers phone vibrated. Careful not to take one of her eyes off of Lemmy, she checked it under the table. It was from Aldon.

It read: "How's it looking out there? Need to get Harvel out of here soon. Something weird going on with him."

"Not good. I think that would be a good idea. How weird? Weirder than the hand thing?" Parker texted back. She waited a few seconds before a response came through.

"Weird. Guy is turning into some kind of mushroom or something. Gonna try to get Hoang's son to let us out the back. What does "not good" mean? Just a feeling or you got something concrete?" Aldon texted back. Parker decided that texting a full explanation would take too much time.

"Coming back there. Got someone you'll want to meet." She typed. Sending out the message she re-synched her eyes and pulled out the gun under the table.

"I need you to come with me. Bring the button. No arguments please." She demanded, pressing the barrel into Lemmy's knee again.

"O-of course. Lead the way." Lemmy complied, nodding profusely.

Neither Parker nor Lemmy were quite prepared for what awaited them in the bathroom. Harvel was, for lack of a better term, fused to the side of the stall. An orange, spongey growth, the size of a small tree extended from the floor to the ceiling, encasing Harvels right forearm, effectively trapping him inside. Miniscule green particles, glinting in the dim light emanating from above the sink, had filled the room like a dense fog.

"Cover your face. Probably don't want to breathe much of this crap in." Aldon shouted as they walked in.

"What the fuck happened?! Is that what's keeping him alive?" Parker asked, promptly pulling her shirt over her face. Lemmy shook off his shock and quickly did the same.

"Don't look at me, he's the one who suggested we do a test cut. I may have cut a bit too deep. It just sort of shot out of there and pinned him. Wait, who's he?" Aldon explained, pointing to his folding knife, still lodged in the side of the growth.

Parker pushed Lemmy towards Aldon. "Tell him what you told me. Harvel, are you alright? You conscious?" She said, keeping a respectable distance from the open stall.

Harvel let out a groan. "Yeah. Wish I wasn't. I think I might be sick." He replied. Parker couldn't tell if it was the mist or his skin but there was something very green about the way he looked.

"I'm going to try to get you out alright?" Parker said, giving the growth a forceful pull. The substance felt as if it were rooted in place with steel bolts. With every attempt more and more green particles permeated the air.

"Stop! Stop! Hurts! Why does it hurt?" Harvel whined, clutching at the orange folds surrounding his arm.

"Look, I know it hurts, but we've got to get you out of there." Parker said, still mid tug.

"No, I mean, it hurts, and I can feel it. Jesus I can taste the floor. Why can I taste the fucking floor? I think I'm about to be sick." Harvel moaned, lurching forwards and clutching at his stomach. He felt as if his insides were being moved around like one of those shifting tile puzzles.

His mind was a torrent of different smells, tastes, sights and textures. He tried to close his eyes but he could still see the bathroom as if he were inspecting every square inch from a millimeter away. Images, flowing in as if from millions of microscopic eyes, were slamming full force into his skull all at once. It was like cramming thirty pounds of souvenirs into a carry on bag. The zippers were holding for now but he could almost hear them popping tooth by tooth.

He could smell Aldons sweat in the air. He could taste the plaster in the ceiling and the unspeakable things that coated the floor tiles. He'd felt Parker's attempts to free him as if she were trying to rip his own skin off, and could see the capillaries in her hands expanding. Whatever It was, It was also Harvel.