9 Chapter Four: Edge of Insanity, Part III

Lance stared at the dispenser, unable to think. There... There had to be an explanation... He watched as the object was lowered, gently set down onto the center of the table, the same spot as before. As it happened, Lance saw the stranger's eyes change, becoming a lighter, softer shade of blue.

These eyes looked up to meet his, the bottoms curving as the stranger smiled.

"Your name's Lance, right?"

"How do you know that?"

A sheepish grin came to him, light blue eyes dimming a little bit. "I... Can hear your thoughts if they're loud enough. Accidentally picked up your name, I guess."

"You can hear thoughts?"

The question was answered with a nod. "It's part of what I am," he said. His posture straightened a little, arms coming to rest on the table. With his hands folded in front of his mouth, the stranger looked back to Lance. "You can call me Zidane, by the way."

'Weird name,' Lance thought. His stare dropped back to the tail, watching the tip unconsciously flick towards him. 'Guess it fits, if this guy isn't human...'

He looked away, pushing the thoughts out of his head. 'What am I saying? Of course he is!'

Then how could he have lifted that? The memory of the napkin dispenser played in his mind again, the shock echoing a second time. A string? Some sort of magic trick? But he wasn't even moving his hands... There was nothing...

"Look." Zidane stood up, placing both hands on the table. "I'd really like to stay here all day and not do anything, but we're kind of on a time limit here."

Lance's stared at the sides of Zidane's pants, where guns remained in holsters. On the left, a normal-looking handgun. And on the right, something else; narrower, thinner. Knives were below each gun.

Zidane's hands moved towards his legs, his voice coming to Lance as he spoke.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Lance. Trust me, I'm here to do the opposite."

He withdrew the knives, cautiously placing them on the table. He followed suit with the other, thinner gun, and Lance faintly recognized it as something similar to a sniper rifle. More compact, seeming as though the scope and barrel could be stretched out, as though the stand for the gun could be easily unfolded.

"You heard what I said, right?" Zidane asked him.

Lance looked up, watching Zidane's focus stay on him, his hand going into the small pockets on his upper arm. Lance's breath stopped in his throat as he saw the fingers withdraw a small ring around each of them. Compact spheres dangled; grenades.

Zidane extended his fingers, the grenades knocking against each other quietly.

"Inactive. They're mostly smoke grenades, but I've also never had to use them, so I really wouldn't know."

At Lance's alarm, he grinned. "Bad time for a joke, I guess."

The grenades were set onto the table along with the other weapons. He pulled the handgun from its holster, finally setting it near the sniper rifle on the opposite side of the table.

Zidane patted himself, feeling the remaining, unopened pockets.

"Everything else is just medical supplies. I can remove those if you want me to. Really just want you to feel as safe as you can..."

A thought suddenly struck Lance. "Where's everyone else?"

"Everyone else?" Zidane asked, blue eyes darkening again. "You mean there were more people with you?"

"Y-yeah..." Lance's mind was thinking back, retracing what he remembered. "I was in the hospital, my mom was there, my friends..."

Another realization came, and quickly his mind connected the pieces. Zidane looked up to meet his stare.

"The voice..." Lance said. "That..."

Zidane nodded. "Yeah, that was me." He sat back down in the chair, arm resting against the back of the seat next to him. "I'm pretty sure your friends and family are alright. They weren't supposed to get hurt."

"Get hurt?" Lance repeated. Anger flashed through him. "Like I was supposed to?"

Zidane thought for a moment. Then he nodded. "Unfortunately, yeah. But that's part of the reason why I'm here. I'm doing what I can to make sure you don't get hurt."

"I'm crazy..." Lance stepped back, falling over the coffee table and sitting on it. He didn't mind; it looked expensive but probably wouldn't break. Especially if it wasn't real in the first place.

"I have to be crazy. None of this makes any sense."

"That's why we're here talking like this," Zidane replied. "I can explain everything, if you'd like."

Lance turned to him. "Everything?"

Zidane shrugged. "I'll tell you what I am, what's happened to you. Where we can go from here..."

"What's... What's happened to me?"

"I need to explain a few other things first." The tail rose up again, directing Lance's sight to it. "We've already covered the tail thing, and the fact I'm not human. Part of what I am, and the same part that makes me have this tail, is a race called Spiro."

Lance repeated the word in his head. Then he looked down, dismissing the thoughts, the pads of his fingers finding his closed eyelids. "This isn't real..."

"Wait, but hold on; let me explain. You've probably noticed my eyes changing, right?"

Lance looked up, hands dropping to hang over his knees as he saw Zidane's eyes were indeed a little lighter than they were before. Lance stayed quiet, suddenly too worn out to voice an explanation about how the lights above them were just making his eyes brighter.

Zidane shook his head. "No, not lights. Another racial trait."

"Are you going to listen to every thought I have now?" Lance asked.

Zidane grinned, and Lance couldn't help but notice his eyes dim slightly. "I can't severe the connection completely, but I'll set the bar as low as I can, alright? You'll have to scream inside your head in order for me to hear it."

'Great.' "That another trait, too?"

"No, not for this race," Zidane replied. "That's the other half of me."

"One that's different from the tail..." Lance's voice trailed off, his stare once again going to the strange limb.

"Yeah. That's right." Zidane's attention went to his hand, and as he hooked his thumb underneath the grey fingerless glove, he kept speaking. "Razaleks and Spiros are pretty different from one another, but they do share the same common ancestor, so I guess that's a similarity."

With his glove removed, Zidane held up the back of his hand. Lance thought the design to be a tattoo at first: a blood-red, six-sided star with diagonal lines curved inwards, small circles in between the north-west and south-east spaces. A large circle enclosed the shape, going around every point except for the south line, which disappeared into Zidane's sleeve.

"For any healthy Razalek, this marking is supposed to be golden. Different colors mean different things, but dark red in particular signifies an infection within the body." The hand was lowered, the glove replacing the marking once more as Zidane continued on. "Both my sides see one another as a threat. It's part of having mixed blood."

"So you're both of them, then?" Lance asked. He looked to the tail again briefly. "This race isn't the tail one?"

"No," Zidane answered, and once again he levitated something. The empty chair across the table. "This is the race that allows me to influence my surroundings."

The chair was set back into position, leaving Lance to stare at it. He abruptly stood up, putting his hands in his pockets.

"Yeah, none of this is real."

He was across the room, hand reaching for the doorknob when Zidane's voice called to him again. Words spoken calmly but shocking him enough for Lance to stop.

"You've got Spiro cells injected in you."

Lance's hand was at the doorknob. He couldn't move, couldn't open the door. But his body was working; technically, he could very well leave this place. The shock just wouldn't let him. The sound of a chair scooting back pulled his attention to his right, and he watched Zidane stand, both hands spreading on the table. Almost as if presenting all the weapons there.

"Look," Zidane said, "the only reason you're currently not strapped to a table getting your insides torn open is because of me. I was supposed to bring you back and have that happen, but I'd honestly prefer as little blood on my hands as possible."

Lance blinked, mind trying to catch up to what he just heard.

He opened the door again. The hallway was bright. Almost looked nice.

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A/N: Pronunciation guide:

Razalek: Raz-a-leck

Spiro: Spee-row (not Spyro, the purple dragon!! LOL)