Lex had thought the couple of months they had before they had to go would have seemed longer, but each day had seemed to fly by like moments. She hadn't quite felt she could share her fears with Rolf, since she didn't have anything to pin them on except for her own dread, so she hadn't. Instead, she'd busied her thoughts with ways to get out of going.
Her first idea had her going to talk to Riss. It had been hard to find her, even on weekends, since she'd been spending almost all her time in the lab, so Lex had picked one of the evenings she'd been having trouble sleeping. The howling wind had woken her up sometime after two and she hadn't been able to rest again, so she'd wrapped up in her robe and slippers and made her way up to the lab.
She'd half expected to see Victor and maybe Derek there, as well, so it had surprised her to see only Riss. Her friend had seemed to be concentrating on something inside the top of Art's skull, which she'd turned upside down and sat on a small table beside his body, but it remained connected to the body by numerous wires. Other than that, his body had seemed to be complete, covered by only a towel wrapped around his waist. Lex had blinked a few times as she looked at him. From the neck down he'd looked like any other man who might have just stepped out of the shower. Lex had almost expected him to take in a breath at any moment.
"Wow," she'd said in a quiet voice, wanting to reach out and touch but holding herself back.
Riss had sighed then as she'd reached into the skull with a pair of tweezers and a scalpel and brought out a computer chip a few moments later. She'd looked up as she put the chip on the table. "I'm guessing you're not just here to look."
Lex had frowned at her friend's abrupt tone. "Is everything going all right? Can I help at all?"
Scrubbing at her forehead with one hand, Riss had shaken her head after a moment. "No, I'm just frustrated because I'm still trying to perfect Art's brain while Victor's already finished with his body. What's up?"
Sighing herself, Lex had replied, "Well, I just wanted to hedge our bets, to be sure we're taking the best course of action, so I wondered if you could get a hold of the information from those warrants that William was waving around the other day."
Looking up with a raised eyebrow, Riss had said, "I can try, but there's no guarantee. Have you talked to anyone else about this?"
"No, I haven't," Lex had replied, shaking her head. "I didn't want to give anyone false hopes if there isn't anything we can do."
With another sigh, Riss had looked back up from the table in front of her again, her eyes piercing Lex's with a sharp understanding that had made Lex look away. "You don't always have to take all of this on yourself, you know."
"I know, I know," Lex had said, focusing on the floor. "I just thought I could take care of this."
"I'm pretty sure you'll need money if you want to talk to a lawyer, so we'll need to get approval from everyone if it's coming from our general expenses," Riss had pointed out, her voice low and even.
"Could we take it out of my earnings?" Lex had asked, glancing up at Riss and then away. "I think we all have the right to spend what we earn, don't we?"
"Yes, all right," Riss had replied, her attention back to the skull in front of her. She hadn't picked up any tools, however, and after a long moment she added, "I just hope you know what you're doing, Lex."
"Thanks, Riss," Lex had replied too fast, turning away as she did, not wanting to think any more about how the look Riss had given her said that her friend had started to figure out what she'd been thinking.
It had been over a week before Riss had been able to find anything. When she'd turned the files over to Lex, she'd said in the attached note, "These seem like they might be old versions, but at least I guess it should give a lawyer some idea of what the charges are against us. They don't seem to be coming after us about the money, maybe because they couldn't prove it, but they seem like they're trying to come after us for everything else – breaking into MSI's lab, falsifying identification and other documentation, traveling on a falsified passport, etc. Good luck with the lawyer."
She'd made an appointment with the same lawyer she'd asked to review their special forces contract, because she'd trusted him and didn't know anyone who specialized in international law. Lex had come to see him on her lunch break, somehow managing to get away from the office without letting anyone know what she'd been up to, and had walked once more across the well-worn Persian carpet into Mr. Mathieu's office, taking a seat in front of his oversized polished wood desk.
He'd looked sad as he shuffled through some papers in front of him, and Lex had held her breath as she'd waited for him to speak.
"First of all," he'd said after a few long moments, "it's lovely to see you again, and I'm glad to hear that you've been doing well in the special forces. I'd been following the stories about the bank thefts like everyone else, and I felt happy to see that you and your friends caught them."
Mr. Mathieu had paused then and had looked into Lex's eyes. "As to this matter, I'm not an expert in American law or international extradition treaties, but I do have some experience with them. I've read through the warrants you sent, and there are a number of charges they talk about bringing against you. Do you know what the strength of the evidence is against you?"
Lex had shrugged. "Most of the things they're accusing us of, we've done, and some evidence probably does exist to prove it. We did it in the interest of getting free of the people experimenting on us, but I don't know that that would matter in a court of law."
Shaking his head he'd replied, "Unfortunately, things can be treated in too cut and dried a fashion in the courtroom at times. What is the purpose of bringing these charges up now?"
"They want us to come back to the states," Lex had said, looking back up from where she'd been staring at her hands in her lap. "They said that if we come willingly they won't serve these warrants and they'll wipe our records clean. From our earlier experiences, however, we don't trust them. I'm afraid that if we go back there that it will end up that none of us will see the world outside of the four walls of a lab again."
"It seems a likely supposition," Mr. Mathieu had conceded as he'd looked back down at the warrants; however, what the law can do for you is limited. We could delay the need for you and your friends to return to America, but it's unclear if it could be put off altogether. It depends on the amount of pressure that the Americans are willing to bring in order to repatriate you."
Lex had sighed. "They said that they're willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen."
The lawyer had nodded and had raised the papers in front of him, tapping the stack into a neater configuration. "I can pass this along to someone I know who is more of an expert in international law, but I think she might offer you the same advice. It's unlikely the government here will hold out against pressure like that too long. I don't think they'd be happy to extradite you, but we are close allies with the US. I doubt that the politicians here have the stomach to hold out against them forever. You may be better off taking their offer and just going on your own steam. Perhaps there may be other reasons that they want you to come?"
Smiling but not feeling at all happy, Lex had replied, "I suppose."
"But you don't think so," Mr. Mathieu had said with a raised eyebrow, putting the papers back down on the desk as he looked at her with sharp eyes.
