sunnydalealum | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Columbia University
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
4:02am

It's about four in the morning, that dead time even in college dorms, when the door to Mark's room softly creaks open.

Leland's moving carefully in the near-darkness, stepping lightly across the somewhat cluttered floor; it's almost soundless when he pulls the chair away from the computer desk, settles slowly into it. His hand is steady as he reaches to turn off the speakers before waking up the computer.

The screen, once it powers up, is the strongest light source in the room.

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Jonathan checks his pulse, hurriedly, and then starts to almost gabble the words.

Andrew's body jerks as though with electric shock as the spell starts to take effect, his back arching, his lips pulling back from clenched teeth.

The wound begins to glow.

Jonathan takes heart from that, and keeps going.

When he's done, the bullet hole's closed enough to stop bleeding entirely; it's little more than magical first aid, and the wound isn't wholly healed by a long way, but Andrew's not going to bleed to death.

For a moment he just lies there, eyes still closed, gasping in breath as though he's just run up four flights of stairs.

Then, very slowly, he opens his eyes and looks up.

"Welcome back", Jonathan says with a faint smile. "Now we need to go to Milliways."

A slight frown. "How come?"

"So someone can finish fixing you."

Before he can think too hard about that, Jonathan has an arm under his shoulders, helping him sit up.

"But I thought you just ow frell."

Andrew moves a bit more carefully after that.

"...where'd Leland go?"

"Yeah, he, uh..." Jonathan looks away. "Ran."

That gets a closer look; not so much the information as the tone and evasive glance.

"I was busy", Jonathan says defensively. "Can we go now?"

Busy. With making sure I didn't die.

Andrew bites his lips to keep the swell of emotion down, and looks away -- and his eye falls on the computer screen.

"One thing," he says softly. "One thing first."

Jonathan follows his eyes, then nods.

"You want to see what he was looking at?"

They never did, after all.

"Yeah," he says, pulling himself to his feet with a wince. "Though I've got a guess."

He bends over the desk and reaches for the mouse with his good hand, bringing up the last document viewed on the computer.

It's a spreadsheet, with a list of names and columns of data points: number of courses taken this semester and last semester, grades, signs of financial trouble. The last two columns are dates, and highlighted: LAST KNOWN CONTACT WITH RL and DECEASED.

"...he really did figure it all out", Jonathan says, peering over his shoulder.

"And that's what Leland was after," Andrew murmurs. "The evidence Mark was collecting. He had to delete it before the computer got packed up and shipped home. Especially once he knew Mark's death was being investigated."

"So what do we do with it?"

Andrew shakes his head.

"I don't know," he murmurs. "If it goes public ..."

"It can't go all the way public. No one would believe the whole truth."

He stares at the screen, and chews his lower lip.

Finally he moves the mouse again.

"I'm gonna send myself a copy of this," he says, "and then ...."

"And then we're going to go to the bar", Jonathan says firmly.

"And then we should probably do what Leland was gonna do."

His voice is weary, and a little grim, and a little ragged from the pain in his shoulder.

"Delete it."

"...yeah, okay."

It takes only a little over a minute. Send the email; delete the record of the sent email; delete the original document. No trace.

Just over a minute is still enough time for his injured shoulder to stiffen. Enough that the pain redoubles when he tries to stand up, and the fresh raw scab tears at the edges, and blood starts slowly leaking out again.

Jonathan has to half-carry him to the door.

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