Breaking Things

"Would you hurry it up?" Leilani asked, glancing back worriedly at the entrance to the cylinder room.

"I'm hurrying as fast as I can," Carol ground out, carefully tracing a glowing orange line across the surface of a cylinder with one finger. She paused and shook her finger. "It's hard concentrating on just one finger."

"Then use two," Paul said, looking down at Carol's work from the cylinder next to her.

Carol shot him an annoyed glance. It wasn't even worth dignifying with an answer. The cylinder she was working on contained Morris who was standing as far back from her work area as possible. She shot him an apologetic smile. If it got too hot in there, he would start to solidify.

"Someone's coming," Court said from near the doorway.

Carol flicked him an annoyed look. She and Leilani had dashed through several interconnected labs, barely missing search parties to get here. The door hadn't even been marked as a cylinder room. Aarti had nearly taken their heads off when they ducked inside.

Now Leilani was organizing who should be let out first while Carol concentrated on letting people out. Whatever Court had going on, he couldn't coax the cylinders to open up. He kept saying that the language needed to be translated.

That worried Carol more than she wanted to admit. Court had deciphered those weird little doorway generators Aarti had secured from wherever, and a bunch of cylinders was now giving him trouble?

"So, been busy," she asked Morris to distract herself. She found that it was easier to concentrate her powers if she was a little distracted.

"Ah, not so much, just hanging out," Morris responded. His mouth hitched in that mocking half-smile he loved so much. "Just the usual, you know. Avoiding Disassembly and all that."

Carol lowered her head so he wouldn't see her answering smile. Morris had always been that way. He had appointed himself Paul's bodyguard very early on, rarely leaving his side. When Liberation Day happened, he'd had Court scramble the records so that it showed that he and Paul were more closely related than was true.

Since he was an amalgam of several different people, Court hadn't minded. Between him, Lucy and Jebediah, they had apportioned everyone out. Carol didn't even want to know just how they'd gotten their hands on the gene scan part of their records.

"So, what mayhem have you been wreaking?" Morris asked, shifting his center of gravity.

Carol snuck a quick glance. Morris' attention wasn't really on her anymore but on the door that Court was guarding. She stifled a sigh and forced a bit more energy out. It was harder here since there wasn't much ambient heat to suck out of the atmosphere and the cylinders themselves didn't generate that much.

She felt happy that she'd managed to store so much when she'd been hiding out at the campgrounds. Making the little candy village hadn't needed much, and she'd been able to top up here and there.

The thought of candy made her jaw clench. She had to replace one of her research materials when they were finished here. Trolli had gotten a bit excited at a picture of a gingerbread house and accidentally burned a hole through most of the book. Since none of them could bear to scold her, they had research where to buy a new one.

Carol had never thought that a little book would cost so much. Court had offered to put the thing on a tablet, but that would ruin the whole experience. Carol smiled at the memory of Dawnie and Leilani backing her up.

"Ah-ha!" Carol said as the circle of glass finally broke and fell into the cylinder. "That took a bit of forever," she muttered, stepping back.

"They thought I was someone else," Morris said, quickly crossing to the new opening. He eyed the fast cooling edges and then shook his head. "There's no time to be overly cautious."

Carol leaned against Paul's cylinder as Morris oozed through the hand-sized hole. She winced at the faint sound of sizzling. A few moments later and Morris was standing in front of her, adjusting his shirt.

"That's not real clothes, so what are you adjusting," Carol teased.

"Appearances matter always," Morris said, tapping her on the nose and looking past her at Paul. "Ready to get out of there?"

"Always," Paul said.

He sounded so strange that Carol had to turn to look at him. She hadn't given him much attention when she had first gotten here. Freeing Morris made getting everyone else out much easier. Aarti had already left for the further reaches of the cylinder room; the room itself was the size of a football field and the tell-tale glow of even more cylinders shone from the depths. Plus, there might be another entrance they could use to leave.

"What did they do to you?" Carol almost immediately asked. Her eyes skated over Paul's emaciated appearance and the dark circles under his eyes.

"They haven't been feeding him, obviously, or letting him sleep," Leilani said, circling back. She'd gone off to examine the other cylinders and their inhabitants. "I found Ella, but she's sleeping. Sphinxie says that she doesn't want to wake up, too much power still." Leilani glanced back at Ella's cylinder, rubbing her arms.

Carol and Morris followed her glance. Ella was sleeping fitfully in her cylinder. Unlike the others, the air visibly shifted and twirled inside.

"How long has she been under?" Carol asked Morris, her brow furrowing. She knew that type of swirl. Three of her containermates had been subjected to the same thing prior to their Disassembly. "Has she been awake at all?"

"Not since I got here with Paul," Morris replied. He swept a look over the rest of the occupied cylinders only to receive shaken heads. "Looks like they're trying to bring Sphinxie out."

"If you vent Ella's cylinder, do it high. That stuff is heavier than air," a new voice said, approaching them.

Carol felt the fine hairs on her arm stand upright. She turned around to see Niles walking towards her, disheveled in a way she'd never seen him before. A cute brown-haired girl trotted along in his wake.

"While you could burn it, from the looks of it, you don't have what it takes to get it all before it gets you," Niles continued, coming to a stop in front of her. He dangled a small box in front of Carol's eyes. "This will open most of the containers, but be quick because once it's used…" He let his voice trail off as he looked back at Court who was staring at him with stony eyes.

"It'll last until we can get everyone out," Court called. He placed his palm against the iris of the door. "Start opening them up. They're starting systematic searches."

Carol stared at Niles for a moment before giving a quick nod. She took the key and opened Paul's cylinder.

"Give me the key. I'll get San to help. You and Morris go get Ella," Paul said, leaning against his cylinder's console.

Carol and Morris nodded. They headed towards Ella.

Behind her, she heard Paul ask, "we're taking the baby, too, right?" That nearly made her stop walking, but then she remembered her primary mission and continued on.