by K Ryn
Blair took the sarcasm in stride, recognizing it as another sign of his partner's growing frustration, and plunged on with his train of thought.
"Jim, remember how you felt that first day in my office? Your whole focus was on fighting your senses, not on figuring out how to make them perform to your advantage. When I dropped the whole Sentinel concept on you, it turned your world upside down. Granted, your reaction was a little more intense than I'd anticipated, but you have to admit it worked. It made you stop and look at the same facts in a different light. That's all I'm suggesting here, man... a fresh perspective... a different point of view."
Blair reached up to sweep a stray lock of hair out of his eyes and caught sight of something unusual in the forest just ahead. His patter ceased abruptly, eyes widening in surprise.
"Standing on my head isn't going to find that missing bus," Jim snapped in irritation, his own gaze still fixed on the ground. "Drop it down a gear, and come back to earth, Chief."
"No... I don't think so..." Blair whispered softly. "I think you should join me instead."
The Sentinel glanced up, startled by the barely masked excitement in his Guide's voice. Seeing his partner frozen in place and staring into the trees, Jim followed the direction of the younger man's gaze and immediately caught sight of the damaged branches that had captured Blair's attention. Quickly focusing his vision on the overhanging limbs, he found scrapes of yellow paint.
Jim patted the younger man on the shoulder in approval as he scanned ahead for further traces of proof that this was indeed the passage that they sought. He almost grinned when he picked out another trace of yellow on another branch a hundred feet beyond the first.
"I'm going to have to take back that crack about your eyesight, Chief."
"Just remember that the next time you accuse me of missing the invisible grunge in the tub, man."
"Don't push your luck, Sandburg. The statement about the skewed perspective still holds."
Ellison gave the younger man a soft cuff on the back of the head and watched as Blair's face broke into a pleased grin. Dropping his hand to his Guide's shoulder, the Sentinel propelled him toward the waiting search teams.
"Time to get this investigation on track, Chief," he murmured. "Let's give your theory a try and test our hand at a little exercise in the fine art of manipulation."
To Blair's surprise, convincing Anders to split the search into two separate efforts was accomplished with astonishing ease. As he watched Bailey and his three teams disappear into the woods along the western path, Blair found himself breathing a sigh of relief.
Not that he was entirely pleased with the way things had worked out -- Anders had opted to remain with Jim's group. Blair dealt with the inevitability of Anders' presence by increasing the physical distance between them, choosing to wait for his partner under the canopy of broken branches which marked the beginning of the trail they would follow.
But even distance wasn't enough to stop the shudder which ran through him as the agent approached Jim for a final tactical discussion. Feeling his body fill with the anxiety that occurred every time Anders was in the Sentinel's proximity, Blair gritted his teeth and sought the solace of his favorite meditation mantras and breathing exercises. Closing his eyes he leaned back against the tree, focusing on the sensations of rough bark against his spine, the wind ruffling his hair, the cool earth under his legs. Finding his 'center' was becoming more and more difficult, and it was harder to ignore the unexpected, insistent flashes of raw emotion which were pushing at the limits of his control.
Jim's on the right track now, he told himself determinedly. We'll find the kids, and their teacher... what was her name?... oh yeah, Amanda... we'll find them and they'll be all right... they have to be...
"You ready, Chief?"
Blair's eyes snapped open and he found himself looking up into Jim's measuring stare.
"Yeah... just taking advantage of the downtime, man," he dissembled, grabbing his pack and scrambling to his feet, hoping the Sentinel hadn't heard his startled intake of breath. He turned away, intending to start down the trail, but the older man seized his arm and gave him a gentle shake.
"Blair..."
His Guide instincts responded to the Sentinel's worried tone immediately, overriding the fears and uncertainties of the terrified grad student who wished himself anyplace, but where he was. Their blue-eyed gazes locked and Blair felt Jim's compassion and concern reach out, enveloping him like a blanket, wrapping him in a cocoon of safety. In return, he managed a small, but genuine smile, trying to send back some reflection of the overwhelming trust and confidence he had in the older man.
"I'm not going to lie to you, man. I'm not fine, but I still need to do this," he whispered, hoping that Jim would understand and not press him further.
With a soft grunt and a look that warned that further discussion was simply postponed for the moment, Jim released his hold and held out a new headset. "We'll take the lead again. The rest of the search parties will be strung out on both flanks to make sure we don't miss anything. Anders strongly suggested that we try to stay in touch from now on. He gave me his word that they've been checked over. No more feedback problems."
Blair rolled his eyes to indicate what he thought of that promise. "At least Bailey's out of our hair," he muttered, taking the new headset and settling it into place. "One less set of prying eyes is just fine by me."
"Forget about Bailey, Chief." The stern command was delivered in what Blair had learned to recognize early in their relationship as Jim's 'listen and obey without question' tone -- the one he used when things were about to get dangerous.
Blair acknowledged the reprimand with a quick nod, but apparently that wasn't enough to appease his partner. The Sentinel wrapped his hands around the straps of Blair's backpack and pulled him a step closer, fixing him with a look that brooked no argument.
"Stay close, keep your eyes open, and your head into the reason we're here," Jim ordered roughly.
Blair realized that he was nodding again, mesmerized by the intensity of the older man's glare. As if satisfied that he'd made his point, Ellison's gaze softened and his grip on the straps eased a bit.
"And if you need something else to occupy that frenetically active mind of yours, Chief, concentrate on dampening down that magnetic field you generate that attracts trouble. I don't want you stumbling over something nasty behind my back."
Blair responded with his best "Who me?" expression and Jim finally released him, a ghost of a smile flickering across the older man's face. Settling his own pack into place, the Sentinel started down the trail with a renewed sense of determination, unaware of how prophetic his last comment would prove to be.
Following the yellow paint trail was like child's play after what they'd been through tracking the truck, and after a cautious start, Jim had pushed the pace as hard as he dared, hoping to make up for lost time.
At first he'd been suspicious at the ease with which he'd found each scrape and broken limb, wondering if he was leading the search party into a trap. After thirty minutes of painstakingly checking every overturned rock, he'd finally begun to relax and give a little credit to his Sentinel-enhanced senses. It was easy to forget that what he saw and heard so clearly was obscured to everyone else. He'd even tried dialing everything back to what would pass for 'normal', and realized that without his special abilities, the evidence would have been very difficult to find.
Following the path deeper into the rugged forest, he'd found other traces of the bus' passage -- a churned rut where the wheels had slipped on a downhill slope, a recently uprooted sapling that had been battered to the mossy ground, the broken shards of rock that held the slick odor of spattered oil -- all indications that someone had driven the vehicle through the dense foliage in a hurry.
He paused, fingers running lightly over another scrape of yellow on the trunk of a fallen tree, while he waited for Blair to catch up. Stretching out his senses to monitor his Guide, he frowned at what h
e found -- Blair's breath was coming in rough, noisy gasps and his heart was beating rapidly as his already stressed body battled the affects of the higher elevation and the strain of the pace that they'd been maintaining.
Still keeping tabs on his partner, Jim scanned the trail ahead, anxiously. The next paint marker was another fifty feet uphill, glowing in the shaft of pale sunlight which filtered through the leaves, seductively beckoning him forward. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to resist the urgent need to keep going. Feeling the painful throb of the headache that pounded against his eyelids, he struggled to dial down his sensitivity one more notch.
Blair isn't the only one who's struggling, he thought irritably. We've been on the move for well over an hour and a half and Anders still hasn't called a break. No one's going to be in any shape to do anything, much less take on these murderers, if we don't do it soon.
"Ellison, do you copy?"
As if in answer to his angry thoughts, Anders' voice thundered in the headset. Wincing at the increased pounding it set off in his skull, Jim had to take a deep breath before answering.
"I copy."
"I just heard from Bailey. They found the ATV. Turns out it belongs to a group of vacationers. They claim they went through the area where we found the tracks early this morning and one of them remembered passing a small school bus on the road. The Bureau's checking them out now, but it doesn't look like they have any involvement in this. Looks like you called it correctly."
Jim allowed himself a small sigh of relief. They were on the right trail after all. Maybe their luck was starting to change. "I've spotted the next marker, but there's still no sign of the bus." Jim glanced uphill once more as he continued his report. "I think we should regroup and give everyone a rest."
"Agreed, as long as it's a short break. If we don't find them soon, we'll have to take another look at our options."
"How much air support do you have available?"
"Not much. Two choppers sitting on standby and one medivac unit..."
Blair's eyes had been fixed on the rough trail, listening to the discussion between Jim and Anders almost absently, more worried about stumbling over a hidden tree root than their exchange. But as the voices in his headset began to break up, his attention shifted back to the conversation.
"How much... air... do you... availab...?"
With a crackle of static, the sound faded out altogether. He stopped and checked the connections, thinking that he might have pulled something loose. He played with the volume control as well, but nothing seemed to have any affect. Frustrated, he gave the unit a hard shake and was rewarded with a low level buzz, under which he thought he could detect whispers of sound.
I'd need Jim's hearing to use this technological wonder. Impressive resources, huh? Guess these were bought with whatever was left over after the government paid 1.2 million for that last hammer, he mused darkly, tapping the earpiece in frustration.
He glanced uphill and saw that Jim was waiting for him next to a fallen tree, apparently still deep in the conversation with Anders and unaware of his partner's 'technical' difficulties. Blair opened his mouth to call out to the older man, then snapped it shut as he realized what he had almost done.
Jeez, Sandburg, you are brain-dead. There's no need to yell at the top of your lungs and draw a crowd. He's a Sentinel, remember? He can hear your heartbeat from six floors away from a locked elevator, for crying out loud.
"Uh, Jim? I've got a little problem here," he murmured, still shaking his head at his own foolishness.
He watched Jim spin around abruptly, the older man's hand going instinctively for his weapon.
"Whoa, man. Don't shoot. This thing's already on its last legs." Blair tapped at the headset and added a 'thumbs down' gesture for good measure, as he moved forward to close the distance between them.
A garbled whisper of sound reached his ear and he shook his head.
"No go, Jim. I can't hear you. The volume's all screwed up," Blair explained as he joined the older man.
Disengaging himself from the unit, he handed it to his partner, dangling it by the cords like a dead mouse. The Sentinel's face tightened in annoyance, already in the midst of a heated discussion with the FBI agent.
"Anders, I thought you said you'd had these headsets checked out..."
Blair watched as Jim did a very good impression of his own patented eye-rolling dismay, and chuckled softly, imagining the agent trying to explain away the problem.
"Well, Sandburg's is out of commission... yeah... okay, I'll send him over."
Jim shook his head in disgust and touched Blair on the shoulder, turning him slightly to the left as the Sentinel focused into the distance. "You see the stand of brush to the left of that granite boulder?"
"The one on this side of the mountain or two passes over?" Blair responded innocently. He cringed a step away dramatically, as Jim glared at him, waving his hands in surrender. "Just checking, man," he grinned, enjoying the aggravated look on his partner's face. "Yeah, I see it... even without my glasses on. Is this a test? Do I get a prize for the right answer?"
"You're already a prize, Chief," Jim muttered, trying unsuccessfully to keep a similar grin off his own face. "Just hoof it over there and pick up a replacement, wise guy. Agent Dunn will swing over and meet you just beyond that rock."
"You know, Jim, this really isn't worth the trouble. I'd be perfectly happy without --"
"Go see the man, Sandburg," Jim growled, giving him a gentle shove to get him moving.
Blair shot the older man an offended glare, and made a show of stalking off in a huff. "Yes, Sahib, I go... I run... I stagger to do your bidding," the Guide whispered, knowing full well the Sentinel would hear every word of his good-natured harping. "'Go see the man,' he says. It's like being sent to the principal's office or something. What I put up with... me... an almost full professor... sent off on yet another errand..."
Ellison watched the younger man pick his way across the rough ground, shaking his head in wonder. Blair's resilience never ceased to amaze him. Minutes ago, Jim would have sworn that his partner was ready to drop like a stone from exhaustion. Now he was making wise-cracks and pushing all of the Sentinel's buttons, practically bouncing over anything that got in his path.
Winding his way through the trees, Blair passed out of Jim's line of sight for a moment, and the Sentinel felt a shiver run up his spine. He dialed up his hearing and relaxed when he picked up his Guide's playful, bantering monologue. Absently rubbing the back of his neck, Jim turned to look uphill again, his eyes drawn to the paint scratches that marked the trail.
A soft, fitful gust of wind brushed his left cheek. He watched it ripple through the trees, his gaze flowing with it, carrying his sight to another yellow patch, even further away. Eyes narrowing in concentration, Jim sought to bring it into focus, drawn by a sudden awareness that something was different about what he'd just seen. The headache flared with a sharp burst of pain and he pushed it away in annoyance, dialing down his sensitivity to the throbbing ache. Straining against his own limits and fatigue, the Sentinel zeroed in on his target, the rest of the world fading around him.
Blair wasn't sure where his new burst of energy had come from, but he made the most of it, hurrying to the appointed meeting spot. He paused at the boulder and cast a quick look over his shoulder, immediately disconcerted by the older man's unusually still pose.
"Don't go zoning on me now, man," he whispered. "You hear me, Jim?"
He'd expected the older man to turn toward him or show some response, but there was no movement. Nothing to show that he'd been heard. Growing alarmed, Blair tried again, raising his voice slightly.
"Damn it, Ellison, when are you gonna learn to wait until I'm with you to play superman? Can't leave you alone for a minute, can I? Come on, man, pull out of it!"
Panic flared and he swallowed hard to contain it when there was still no response. Glancing around wildly, he looked desperately for the agent he was supposed to meet.
Where the hell was the guy? He felt the soft caress of the breeze on his face and for a moment, he thought he caught a whiff of perfume. Pushing the irrelevant sensation aside, he turned toward the Sentinel again, nervously running his hands through his hair as it shifted in the wind, trying to keep it from obscuring his sight.
"Jim, you've got to listen to me... hear my voice..." he murmured, pitching his tone with an urgency that he hoped would reach his friend.
The breeze buffeted him from behind and he nearly allowed it to carry him toward his partner, before he realized that the sweet fragrance that he'd smelled before was back. Distracted, he turned into the wind and took a deep breath. Yes, it was perfume, but there was something else, too -- a sour, almost metallic smell. Puzzled by the elusive odor, he took two steps forward and parted the hedge of bushes.
And froze.
Whispers of sound stroked across the Sentinel's awareness, slowly pulling him back from the void. Sound became vibration, growing more intense, more compelling. Vibration which transformed finally into a single, comprehensible word, whispered by an anguished soul.
[Jim... ]
The tortured cry of his Guide connected itself to the sense of urgency and the real world returned in a rush of overloaded sensation.
Gasping for breath, Jim whirled, driven by the desperate need to locate his partner. The stench of blood-drenched wind staggered him. Shuddering, he wrenched at his imaginary dials in a frantic attempt to bring his flooded senses into line, nearly dropping to his knees as his controls slammed into place.
Bolting forward, he savagely thrust away the overwhelming awareness of the deadly, metallic smell. He focused on the place that he'd last seen Blair, and sent his hearing ahead, like an arrow, speeding through the trees. He crashed through a thicket of brush, straining for the familiar heartbeat of his young Guide, and was rewarded with the thundering of a trip-hammer pulse. The sound had barely registered in his ears when he caught sight of his friend, standing motionless near the granite boulder, just where he'd been told to wait.