By the time Shrapnel delivers them to Mondragon Labs, Sonya/Teresa has had several extended opportunities to regret being so damned cavalier about taking him up on his offer.

Sure, it got them out of the hospital with no more than a couple of angry shouts from the parking lot, and gotten them here quite a lot faster than she could have driven… but she’d nearly passed out from the cold and the wind-chill three times on the trip. Even with “resetting” her body regularly to repair any damage, she still feels like she’ll snap in two if someone sneezes too strongly in her direction.

On the plus side, the blankets and her own body heat seemed to be enough to keep Michael warm, and he hadn’t lost too much blood on the flight over. Now that they’ve gotten him to a doctor, one where his father’s men won’t be able to find him, Sonya worries a lot less.

Of course, there’s a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy the guards at the front desk want them to go through – especially the extremely nervous-looking woman with the missing finger on her left hand, who seems neurotically adamant that nobody enters without going through the proper procedures.

Finally Sonya can’t take it any more. "Are you people INSANE???!! You have a kid BLEEDING TO DEATH IN YOUR #@!$!@#!#$ LOBBY and you will damn well get him to a doctor because I did NOT rescue him from his !@#!@#!@ mutaphobic father and their goon squad for him to die of neglect at the nine-fingered hands of some brain-damaged bureaucrat who left her soul in her other suit DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!? Call whoever you have to call and do whatever you have to do but get a doctor to look at this kid NOW!!!"

The yelling seems to get through to them, and a few hurried phone calls later Putto is being wheeled into the infirmary. Only after a puzzled conversation does Sonya realize that the fact that she is still covered in blood and vomit probably helped a little, too.

"OK… thanks for the ride, friend. Now, a deal’s a deal… what do you want to know about the Camp guards?"

> “No, problem that’ll be twenty-five fifty, plus another four bucks for the kids,
> and then there is the charges for the upholstery, can’t run around picking up
> people with blood all over the place.”

Sonya/Teresa isn’t entirely sure whether Shrapnel is kidding or not, but she decides it doesn’t matter; she splits the difference by laughing as if it were a joke, then pulling two $20 bills out of her wallet and handing them to him. "Keep the change, cabbie," she adds with a broad grin.

It occurs to her that she should not be this cheerful given how close she had just come to dying. Screw ‘close’… I pretty much was dead! The phrase “post-traumatic compensatory mania” does not come to her mind; she’s never heard it before. If she had, she might associate it with her current feeling of being on top of the world, and predict that it will collapse in a matter of hours now that the immediate crisis is dealt with. But she hasn’t, and doesn’t.

> “Names next to address are all I want. I will recognize them once I find them.”

She nods. "OK. I’ll have ‘em for you tomorrow. You want a printout, or should I email them somewhere?"

>. “So, how did you get the triads to hire outside of Japan?”

She blinks at that a few times, utterly clueless as to what he’s talking about, and covers with a shrug. "Oh, you know… everybody has a price," she replies vaguely.

Bored out of his mind at the desk, going over papers and information about the camps and Stalkers, Kaz rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. "You're crazy Hunter." He spoke to himself as he thought of the man, how he'd done this stuff for years longer than Kaz could grasp. His boredom was broken as an image appeared on his monitor, showing a picture of three people descending from the sky. "Shit." <What's done is done, can't do much about stopping them now...> He lifted up the receiver of the phone, calling the security commander. "Tighten security. Make sure everyone is ready for action when notified. If those damned robots and who knows what else comes at us, I don't want to be caught off guard." "Yes sir." Almost immediately Kaz heard the man giving orders before the line went silent.

Kaz picked up his mobile phone and pda for the labs and began making his way towards the front desk. On his way he received a call from secretary. After he gave permission for the boy to be brought to the infirmary, he snagged a few lab assistants who he had fetch some towels, wet rags, and a change of female clothes, <They'd probably get a pair of sweats or something similar.> With a shrug he continued on his way with a detour to pass near the infirmary, just in time to see the boy being rushed in. The smell of blood was strong, making Kaz wonder what had happened. Through he pda he saw both Teresa and Shrapnel in the lobby. He had the security team run a facial recognition program on Shrap, which came up with a 87% positive ID that he was Virote Srisai, Cyra's fiance. That information came from the background check they had done on the woman. When they had cheked Virote's, his and Cyra's backgrounds were similar, at least that they were decent people, though nothing about either being a mutant, which Virote obviously was.

He entered the lobby and had the guards back up a bit while dismissing the secretary for the moment. The smell from the boy was strong, but the stench from Teresa was horrid. "Quite the entrance Teresa, Virote." Looking at each one in kind. "Knowing what you know Teresa, is it really a good idea to do what you just did?" Shaking his head. "Whatever, what's done is done and can't be undone. Please, just don't do it again. Discretion is a good policy at the moment. Though, while the boy is being taken care of," The assistants that Kaz had sent off, returned with their gathered supplies. "I'm concerned and curious about what happened. I hope none of the blood is yours." He took the change of clothes and stepped near Teresa holding them out to her. "If you'd like, you can get cleaned up just down the hall in the bathroom, I'm sure you know where it is. Anything you'd need, beyond a long shower, I've brought." Kaz's body language and voice were very calm, sounding almost as if what happened wasn't a big deal. Not a small thing, he was trying to be polite.

He looked at Virote. "You registered willingly correct. On the first day if I'm not mistaken. Perhaps you've been in the camps then, and if so, you've escaped." Getting out wouldn't be right, not from the hell-like camps. "I'm greatly interesting in your story."

> "Knowing what you know Teresa, is it really a good idea to do what you just did?"

Sonya/Teresa is startled by Kaz’s arrival, but in retrospect it’s less surprising than it could be. She shrugs in response to his surprisingly politely worded censure. "Sorry. I used the most discreet route I could think of consistent with the kid’s medical state. If there’s a secret route I should use for this sort of thing in the future, let me know about it and I’ll use it."

> "I'm concerned and curious about what happened. I hope none of the blood is yours."

This, too, is more polite than she’s come to expect from Kaz... especially after the little tantrum she’d just thrown in his lobby. She wonders what the catch is but decides to take it at face value for now. "Thanks… I appreciate that. Though actually, it’s all my blood... I try to avoid leaving a trail of bodies behind, it gets messy. My own fault, though... you know how it is, I spend too much time hanging around folks like Abyss, and I forget I’m not bullet-proof. Forgot to duck. It’s OK, though… I got better. Healer. Though you probably know that."

She realizes she’s coming very close to babbling manically, if not in fact over the edge, so she shuts up. Also, she’s not really sure who Syn and Calley have revealed “Teresa’s” powers to within the Resistance, but it doesn’t matter – since she has no intention of keeping it a secret, she doesn’t have to keep track of who knows.

>> "You registered willingly correct. On the first day if I'm not mistaken. Perhaps you've been in the camps then, and if so, you've escaped. I'm greatly interesting in your story."
> " I would have the man's name who already has my own, before I answer any of your questions."

He was in the Camps? She mentally kicks herself for being an idiot. Of course. That’s why he’s so gung-ho about the guards. Should’ve guessed that. Hadn’t known anyone had escaped, though. Suddenly she’s interested n hearing his story, too… so she steps in quickly before things get too tense. "Oh! Sorry. This is Kaz… he’s running things here till the head honcho gets back. Kaz, I know you have procedures to follow and stuff, but he’s a good guy. Saved the kid’s life, and pulled both of us out of what would otherwise have been a pretty messy firefight." Granted, it had been for his own reasons, but he’d still been a great help. "I’d like to hear about your breakout, too, if you don’t mind?" She winks at him and adds with a broad grin "There’s another twenty in it for you if it has a happy ending…"

Kaz listened to Sonya as she explained and babbled a bit. Though he did get more information about her than he previously had. <A small price to pay.> He continued to wait before speaking again until Virote finished his story. "Interesting. I suppose it's good you got out then, same to your friend." He looked at Teresa. "The boy doesn't matter much. You could have brought him to a hospital instead of here. Unless there's a good reason why you didn't." Kaz looked her over for a moment longer, "You don't seem to be wearing the watch ((ATM I can't remember what it was suppose to be so those who left the labs could contact the labs, but the Kabal has watches that double as communication devices, so *shrug*)). If you were, we might have been able to tell you a better place to go than here." He couldn't change the past, but using it as a reference, while hinting at future actions he could do.

Kaz lied through his teeth about the boy. He wouldn't show it outwardly, but he was concerned bout him. "A boy in critical condition, a woman who's covered in vomit and her own blood, and an escapee. How the three met and under what circumstances intrigues me. Either of you feel like filling me in? Or I could wait and have the boy tell me. Though with what was probably a traumatic experience, his mind might be jumbled. Forceful and more unique methods might be needed, if straight questions don't work." No, he wouldn't really subject the boy to such things, but they didn't need to know that.

> "The boy doesn't matter much. You could have brought him to a
> hospital instead of here. Unless there's a good reason why you didn't."

"He was in a hospital when I found him. His father had put him there in the first place, and was about to kill him when we intervened. I figured another hospital would just postpone the inevitable. If Sanctuary were still running I’d have brought him there, but right now the Resistance is the only group I know of that’s taking in mutants. Even ones that don’t matter."

> "You don't seem to be wearing the watch. If you were, we might
> have been able to tell you a better place to go than here."

Sonya nods. "I'm not, and don’t intend to. But I should have called… you’re right, and I didn’t think of it. Next time I will."

> " Is the resistance in habit of integrating children through such means? Let me know if it becomes an issue by the time I return. "

Sonya/Teresa really wants to say “No, of course not,” but the truth is she’s not really clear on what the Resistance is in the habit of doing, and she’s fairly sure they wouldn’t consider torturing children out of the question. So she settles for "It won’t become necessary, I’m sure. Kaz, the truth is I don’t know all that much about the boy either, other than that he’s a mutant and his life was in danger. But I’m sure that once he’s conscious he’ll willingly tell you what you want to know."

Which she isn’t, really. But she hopes he will… or, at least, that if he doesn’t, he refuses relatively politely.

"In the meantime… it’s been a LONG day, and I’m still recovering from having been shot in the chest. So if you don’t mind, I have a date planned with a shower and a couple of bottles of vodka… feel free to email me any other questions you have and I’ll answer them once I’m over the hangover."

In retrospect, she can’t believe she’s being this snippy to Kaz, but she honestly can’t bring herself to care that much. What’s he going to do, kill her? She’s been there and done that.

To Shrapnel she adds "Thanks again for the help, and the rescue. I’ll get you your info tomorrow, like I promised. And now, if neither of you has any other questions…?" She indicates the exit and starts heading towards it.

Kaz's face showed a slight smirk as Virote and Teresa both gave him more information than they previously had. While Teresa seemed up to answering more questions later, Virote, who was against that, seemed willing to give up information if certain buttons were pushed. Beyond information, Virote was showing a bit of who he was, or his ideals, at least this is what Kaz believed.

“If you think I killed a bunch of thugs to have him put in other abuser’s hands, you are wrong; do I need to save the boy from you too? I believe you would find me more than apt to the task.” Shaking his head he smiled at Virote. "I don't doubt your abilities. I thank you for giving me more insight into what happened today." He moved towards Virote and held out his hand. "I give you my word, the boy will not be harmed in any way, he'll be treated with the utmost care."

Looking at Teresa, he nodded. "I may asking him a few questions, but I don't believe it'll be necessary. If he's a mutant, he's most welcome here, if he wishes to stay." He paused for a moment to consider Teresa's ability to heal. "I'm sure you're confident in your ability to heal yourself, could stop by the infirmary as soon as possible, just to be sure you're alright." He looked at the assistants and motioned for them to go with Teresa, in case she needed anything. "Any particular vodka you'd like, just ask one of them."

Turning his attention back to Virote, "When you leave, if you could be more discrete, I would greatly appreciate it." He would wait until both Teresa and Virote left before going back to his previous business.