The past few days had been hell, and Sebastian decided as he appraised himself in the mirror that he definitely looked like he had walked through it. When they had arrived in the country, he and Ghost hadn't even stopped a hotel before rushing in to help the victims of the senate bombing, then she had been captured, and he had been trying to organize a rescue ever since; finding the Underground, recruiting rescuers, coordinating arrivals, and generally not stopping to take care of himself. He hadn't slept much and couldn't even remember the last time he had bathed or what country he had been in at the time. He was running himself ragged and was just now realizing it.

He wondered if Lee had the same symptoms that he had since they were both affected by the same malady. She was set to arrive later in the day and the unicorn shifter was planning on meeting her personally when she arrived. Though, he figured he needed to take care of a few things first so he didn't scare her away. Nothing short of an eight hour nap was going to take care of the bags under his eyes, but he could take care of the smell. There had been a tour and at some point someone had pointed out the men's and women's shower rooms. (The underground headquarters was not exactly a five star hotel, but they did have running water, a functioning kitchen, and enough cots to go around.)

--

Two hours later the unicorn shifter was clean. He had borrowed a pair of clothes from one of the Romanian teens that was approximately his size and washed his own outfit. It was hanging up now waiting to dry. Sebastian was pacing, waiting for Lee. As always, he was nervous that the arrangements for arrivals he made would not be safe enough, that somehow the new undergroundlings would be caught and shipped off to the camps before they ever arrived. Or worse, that they would be followed and they would all be caught, thus ending any hope that the camp inmates had for escape.

Sebastian checked his pocket watch for the seventh time in twenty minutes; she still had ten minutes before the designated time. He replaced the watch in the uncustomary front pocket of the baggy "Limp Bizkit" sweatshirt he had borrowed. He ran his fingers through his hair for the eighth time; it was still tangled and he hadn't been able to procure a brush anywhere. He pulled at his week old beard fuzz. He paced another lap across the room. Then, finally, the garage door openned.

Lee had waken up the day after her 'meeting' with Nicholae Stancu to an empty hotel room, something that had been completely expected considering the fact that Tarin was with Slate. It was harder to get up, being in the room all by herself, but that had been expected.

And then Lee had turned on the TV. Images of the collapsing building filled the screen. Reports that it had been mutants, that they had been caught at the scene. Lee's eyes widened and her breath caught in her throat as her hand groped for her phone. Tarin's number had been dialled before she had even thought about what she was doing.

Then Lee's panicked mind started catching up with what she was doing, and she ended the call as the fourth ring started. If he had been captured, god forbid, Lee didn't want the Romanian authorities to then be able to track her down because she'd called him. Though, surely they couldn't get that kind of trace off a call that wasn't even connected, one that only lasted for four rings.

She tried the same thing calling Slate and Sam, but with no more success. Maybe, Lee thought as she got dressed, they were simply hurt, at a hospital or something, so didn't answer the phones. Not that that really made sense with Slate's ability to heal, but at the moment it sounded better than Tarin being in the camp. Or, better yet, he might just have no reception where him and Slate were; an old concentration camp, it's not as if there'd be a lot of call for cell phone reception there.

That hope in mind, Lee finished getting dressed: jeans, tshirt, sweater, coat, then left. She would go crazy if she just stayed in the hotel room all day, she needed to try and do something to find Tarin.

--------------------------

Lee hadn't slept. She wasn't sure whether it was two or three days since she had found out about the Senate bombing, but she hadn't slept. Instead, Lee had been checking her phone every five minutes on the off chance that Tarin had called and she hadn't heard it ring.

But the reason she hadn't been sleeping was that she was spending every moment she could in various bars, clubs, hangouts of any kind, trying to figure out a way of contacting the underground, and subtly siphoning as much energy as she could from the people around her in the meantime. Slate had been the one connecting with the mutant underground here, not her, she'd had other things on her plate to do.

And as a result, now had no way of getting a hold of them.

At least until she'd gotten a call from Sebastian. He'd made contact and had set up a meeting to get her in. Now all she had to do was survive a nervous car ride with a mutant she didn't know, her leg twitching and bouncing the entire time because of the energy coursing through her. Blindfolded. At least, Lee thought, she'd stand a chance if things went to hell here because of how much energy she did have.

Finally, Lee felt the car coming to what felt like a stop. Her leg stopped moving as her whole body tensed, preparing for what might happen. Next thing she knew, she heard a car door open and close, followed by the door beside her opening. "Out," she heard a slightly harsh, slightly gravelly voice say.

There were only a few people in the immediate area, Lee noticed. She could feel one, most likely the driver, right beside her. There were a couple, separate, just walking around, and then there was one who felt like they were standing still about ten, fifteen feet off to her right. Thirteen would probably be more accurate.

Getting out of the car, Lee stood, then tensed and flinched as she felt the person beside her coming even closer. To remove the blindfold.

Blinking in the sudden light, Lee looked around. They were in some sort of garage looking area, and sure enough she'd been fairly accurate about the locations of people. Except for the fact that the one simply standing there was Sebastian.

Lee just looked at the man for a moment. He looked...well, probably about as bad as she felt, only it actually looked like he hadn't slept in about as long as she hadn't.

"Her too?" Lee asked softly. She'd seen them at their wedding just months earlier. If he was looking like he was, his hair a mess like that, it had to mean something, right?

Swallowing, Lee took a deep breath, then started walking toward Sebastian. "Alright, what do we need to do?" She then asked, her tone much more firm, more businesslike than the first question had been.

>>>"Her too?"

He glanced down at the concrete floor for a second. He thought the shower would have helped, but apparently it didn't wash away everything he wished it could. He simply gave a slow nod to Lee's question before looking her in the eye again. Here was one person who could understood how he felt, and she, too, wanted to get right to the business of getting back what shouldn't have been gone in the first place.

>>>"Alright, what do we need to do?"

“Unfortunately, we need to wait. There isn't much to do at this point. At least, not things that seem worth doing when...” Sebastian trailed off, which was unusual for him. He readjusted his pants; the good thing about these denim low riders was that they allowed room for his tail without alterations to someone else's clothing. The bad thing was that they were low riders and he didn't exactly have the hips to keep them in place.

“Let me give you a tour, and I'll tell you what we have done so far,” he offered the lady his arm and clutched his waistband firmly in the other hand, “The final goal is a rescue mission to break the camp inmates out of prison. You'd think it would be a fairly simple goal, but apparently there is a lot of planning that needs to go into it,” so they told him. Apparently staging a breakout wasn't as simple as pointing the fighters in the right direction and shouting 'go', no matter how much he wished it was.

“First, we have the task of finding the secret site of the camps. They are actually hidden, rather than out in the open like the US ones were. The Romanians learned from the past, but learned the wrong lessons it would seem.” They reached a door he had to open. He let go of the upper edge of the pants and grasped the knob. The pants slipped a little, but didn't fall. Thank the gods for friction. How did the world's youth walk in this type of clothing?

Mr. Stone's face melted out of the wall on the far side of the door. Sebastian hadn't even seen how he had gotten there from the car so quickly. “Telling all our secrets to the newbie already?” he asked sarcastically in his native Romanian. Glowing eyes narrowed at Sebastian's blue ones. His jagged smile indicated that he didn't trust these English speakers trying to come in and run his revolution for him. Especially not this horned guy who was calling all the shots.
“She's an ally, and she has every bit as much reason to want to liberate the camps as you and I do. She also has an ability that will be helpful when the time comes,” Sebastian answered back in the rock traveler's tongue. He normally didn't like to pick fights with anyone, verbal or otherwise, but his nerves had been rather frayed lately and this particular man had been doing more than his fair share of fraying them.

Still staring into the glowing eyes, the unicorn shifter continued in English once again, “We've arranged for two separate ways of finding the camps. Are you familiar with something called a tracking device?”

Sebastian didn't say anything, but his simple look down at the floor before looking backup at her told Lee everything she needed to know: Maya was in the camps too.

And to top things off, there really wasn't much they could do at the moment. Not exactly the answer Lee had been hoping for. But then Sebastian was offering his arm to her, saying something about giving her a tour. Once, such a gesture would have shocked Lee, and she wouldn't know how to react at first, but being with Tarin had made Lee so much more comfortable with human contact. Looping her arm through Sebastian's, Lee followed him.

The camps were hidden, secret. Lee knew that from the time she had spent among the politicians and simply nodded. She had, however, hoped that the Resistance would have had more luck finding them by this point.

And then someone came out from a wall. Questioning the fact that mere minutes after she had set foot in the place, she was already being told their 'secrets'.

Sebastian was quick to defend her right to know, even mentioning how useful her ability would be when the time came.

Lee gave the other mutant a slightly off-looking smile. "I could show you now, but I already haven't slept in a few days, and would like to again sometime this week," she replied to him in Romanian. Then turned to look at Sebastian again as he told her they had two ideas for finding the camps.

"Well, don't ask me how exactly they work, but I know what they are..." Lee trailed off, and a moment later her eyes widened. "You can't be serious. I know we need to find the camps, but do you have any idea what they're like? We can't just ask someone to walk in there like that."

Mr. Stone glared at each of them with narrowed eyes that glowed even through his sunglasses. He didn't like the way the horned one had implied that he wouldn't be helpful during the liberation. Nor did he like the new girl's threat to demonstrate her helpful power on him. He didn't have to stay and listen to their crap, and so he didn't; he sunk back into the wall he'd come from. And if they were paranoid that he might still be listening, all the better.

Sebastian rolled his eyes like a teenager (though it had been a couple months since he'd last been one, he still remembered how). Good riddance.

Lee already knew about tracking devices, or at least what they did, which was more than Sebastian had known up until now. He never would have guessed that a small device made of metal and plastic could send psychic signals to another device that someone could follow. He wasn't sure he would have provided a very good explanation of one if she hadn't already had a basic understanding.

And then came the disbelief.

Unfortunately, he was serious about the plan. With the tools, technologies, and talents they had at their disposal tracking people to the camps was the best plan they had been able to come up with.

“I don't like it much more than you do. The two are taking a big risk, but they both know what they are up against. One of the two infiltrators proposed the idea and volunteered himself. The other was fairly certain that she could deal with whatever the camps could throw at her, as long as the stay in the camps is short term. And it will be.” It had better be. He had to trust that the plan would work, or the capture of those two people was going to weigh very heavily on his conscious, more heavily than it already did.

He didn't have to justify himself, since it wasn't just his decision, but he felt the need to try anyway. For some reason he wanted Lee to understand and forgive him for his part in the decision to send them. “It was the best alternative I could see. I could either send those two people to hell for a short time armed with the hope that their stay will be brief and the ability to spread that hope to others, or I could eave several hundred... or even thousand... people there for an indefinite amount of time, hopeless and despairing through the unimaginable horrors the camps are inflicting upon them.”

He looked down again at his own feet as they made their way down the corridor. To the left was the canteen area. To the right, the women's sleeping quarters, then the men's, another door to the left brought them past the workout room. Sebastian was not being a very good tour guide, they passed each door without comment on the actual locations.

“I... I can't leave Ghost in there.” Whatever he had to do to get her back, he would do it.

At least the man who had come through the wall disappeared again, though he didn't seem all that happy. Oh well.

Lee wasn't all that happy, either. Sebastian was talking about sending someone, no, make that TWO people into the camps. It was absolutely insane. Why would any one volunteer to do something like that? Surely there had to be some other way that they could find the camp. There had to be something better than sending people into the camp in order to find them.

But the fact was, even after all the time she had spent around the politicians, Lee was no closer to figuring out the location on her own If any of the men she'd talked to actually knew where the camps were, they weren't talking, despite her charm. Still, Lee found it almost impossible to imagine someone volunteering for something like this.

Sebastian was right, though. Despite how horrible it would be to willingly send these people into the camp, it would hopefully result in them being able to get everyone out that much sooner. To get Tarin out that much sooner. When she had been in the camp before, it had been bad enough; Lee could only imagine how horrible things would be there for Tarin since Lee knew that people died in those places.

Then she heard Sebastian's last, slightly stammered comment, and Lee's eyes dropped to the floor in front of their feet as they walked. "I know," Lee replied in a whisper. "I just can't imagine going back to a place like that, never mind being willing to go."

Lee paused, taking a deep breath, her eyes closed. "How long before they're ready to go?"

She didn't like the plan. Her face made that much clear. Sebastian didn't like it either, but he was a little short on other options and not doing anything was not an option he was willing to accept. Maybe this plan was not perfect, but he was desperate.

Was he so desperate that he would have volunteered to go into the camps as a prisoner himself? If that had even a sliver of a chance of succeeding he would have done it in a heartbeat, but he had no way of conveying the camp's location to the Underground if he did that, nor did he have a prayer of breaking anyone out all by himself once he got there. Then again, he was a healer, it was difficult to tell if he would be as willing to sacrifice himself if he wasn't so certain of surviving the excursion.

"Perhaps for those volunteers the end result is worth the sacrifice they are making, as it would be for me if my going in there would be helpful." They had made it to the end of the hallway, and didn't have anywhere else to go unless they backtracked or chose a door to go through.

Sebastian sighed and met Lee's eyes again, the worry and wear of the last few days shown plainly through his expression, "Honestly, I wish that I could have been one of the volunteers. It would feel so much, not 'better' really, nor 'satisfying'. I am not sure if there is a word for it in English, but it would ease some tension if I could do something active to help." Sure, making plans and gathering troops would help their cause, but there were no immediate results. He wanted immediate. He wanted his wife back.

Sebastain flicked his tail and ran his hands through his hair. Despite his lack of sleep or any caffeine, he was almost as fidgetty as a groom waiting for his bride to appear at the other end of the aisle.

"Was there anything in particular you wanted to see?" He really wasn't doing a very good job of playing tour guide.

Maybe they thought that the result was worth the sacrifice. Maybe these two who were going into the camp thought that it was worth the risk, worth what they were putting themselves into in order to help save hundreds, thousands of others.

Maybe it was something Lee just couldn't see herself doing because of her powers. Because, unless she could convince someone there to adjust her collar, it would almost a certain death sentence for her, since Lee couldn't shut her powers off. The only way she could stop from siphoning was to not be around people at all, and Lee could barely function after not being around people for just ten hours, so who knew what would happen if she actually really got cut off like that....

Then Sebastian started talking to her again. Was there anything specific she wanted to see? They were at the end of the hallway, and now that they had stopped moving, Lee was starting to feel a bit twitchy again with all the energy.

"Is there an exercise room or something?" Lee asked, turning to look at the man beside her. "I'm going to need to get rid of a lot of this energy before I have a chance of sleeping."

Sebastian nodded. "It's nothing fancy like some of the high tech things people have back in New York, but there's equipment for weight lifting and padded floors for anything you might do that involves falling on your backside." Personally, he made more use out of the free weights and the padded floor open areas in gyms than he did of the big machines. As for the hologram training devices like the ones at the Sanctuary, Labs, or mansion, he had even less of a chance of operating those successfully than he had getting a treadmill to work. And for the record, that wasn't much.

He walked her back to the appropriate door for the training room and held it open for her, his tail swished behind him with every step then rested against the cool door as he held it open. Perhaps she had a point, exercising would make him good and tired. Even hanging out in the room with Lee while she exercised might do the trick, considering her mutation. He just didn't want to unintentionally make her sacrifice her sleep for his. If needed, he could take his exercise elsewhere or even wait until later Perhaps it would be best to ask.

"Would you care for company while you work out, or would you prefer some time to yourself?" One eyebrow raised questioningly at the energy absorber.